#mostly just terrified for whatever bones is going to give us next week

[keilemlucent]

long days for bad people

(r18+)

hawks | takami keigo x reader

ao3

word count: ~6k

Being a prized, adored possession was far better than you thought it would be.

warnings: light daddy kink (no age play, just the name in mostly jest), spit kink, crying kink, degradation, brief descriptions of blood + violence, kidnapping (consensual?? read a/n), brat taming, light sadomasochism, mind break, praise kink

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here it is, mafia au, villain hawks, dom, brat tamer, soft(?!) hawks. what more could you want? 

there’s briefly described kidnapping at the beginning of the fic but it is reiterated throughout that this is consensual! no yandere/stockholm stuff in this fic. 

i’ve been working on this one for a while and i’m happy to finally share it. hope y’all enjoy!!

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You shouldn’t have fucked around with the League.

God, it was common knowledge in the parts of town and circles you inhabited. Of all criminal syndicates, mobs, to fuck with, the League wasn’t one of them. They were known for their complete cruelty and violent delights. The League had such a reputation due to the fact that they openly left bodies carved up and burnt as they pleased.

But, you were a fucking idiot and got involved anyways.

It was a small loan, Giran almost seemed to scoff when he gave you the cash. You and your almost-stranger of a roommate were just very late on some bills and were going to lose a lot of material items if you didn’t scrounge up at least two paychecks in about three days. 

You swallowed your pride and took the first and easiest loan you could get. That just happened to be with gap-toothed, wide-grinning Giran of the League. He, you knew from what you’d heard, was somewhat fair in matters like yours. 

You had two weeks to pay him back.

...

You didn’t make it in time.

You were close to the amount, notably. You scrounged and clawed your way into getting the cash back. You weren’t much of a pickpocket, but you snagged some odd jobs around the apartment building that you and your roommate were still fortunate enough to keep a room in.

After one particular job, a nasty carpentry gig that you weren’t qualified for, you returned home tired and worn.

Sure, you were a day late on payment. But with this last gig, you were so close. The League would have to pity two, stupid, stupid young girls?

They didn’t, you realized, as you stepped into your apartment.

Your roommate's slain corpse was laying over the arm of your cheap couch, eyes vacant and mouth dripping blood onto the old beige carpet.

You dropped to your knees, horrified and completely stunned.

“You should’ve known better,” it was a hum from across the room, from a figure you didn’t even know was in the room until then. “Really, you’d expect folks to be smarter.”

Your mouth dried as the figure moved from the nighttime shadows, flashing a dazzling smile and ruffling crimson wings.

Hawks.

You’d heard of him, everyone had. Terrifying, fast, precise, and cutthroat. He took orders and didn’t ask questions other than snark. He talked too much, fucked too much. 

“W-wait,” You didn't know why you were pleading, but you had to try, right? “I’m so close, wait—”

Hawks sauntered up to you wielding one of his feather blades, the red of blood mixing with the filaments of his feathers.

He crouched down in front of you, tsking, “I don’t like begging, angel. I’ll make this quick for you. Your friend there?”

Hawks jerked his finger behind to your dead roommate.

“She fought, pleaded, begged, all that normal shit I don’t like hearing when shitheads like you two don’t make payday,” his voice was slow, talking about death like some casual thing. “I’ll make this nice and fast if you don’t run your mouth anymore, how about that?”

You swallowed, nodding.

The small percentage of your brain that was fully functioning figured dying quickly was a much better way to go than whatever the hell had happened to your roommate. There was far too much blood for that to be quick.

Hawks hummed, the tip of his feather blade tipping up your chin so you were forced to meet his gaze. You vaguely heard the pitter-patter of your tears hitting the carpet below. Blood rushed in your ears as you stared death in the face.

Hawks appraised you.

You watched the metaphorical cogs and wheels turning in Hawks’ skull as he looked you up and down before flashing forward, gathering you in his arms and flying from the apartment. 

Your first thought was obvious as you clung to him in the open air:

He’s going to drop you and kill you.

When you screamed, tears growing thicker, he slapped a gloved hand over your mouth, “I’m giving you an out, kid. Trust me. You’ll prefer this over death.”

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 Your new existence was certainly better than death.

If you were ever caught and convicted of any of the illegal things you participated in, you’d be fucked, thrown into prison until you rotted, until you were just dust and bone.

But, until then, you worked for the League.

You had groveled at the feet of their leader, Shigaraki, hands clasped on your lap, claiming your worth, or maybe lack thereof. Not many attachments, not many people who’d miss you, a semi-useful quirk. 

With a boot shoved into your skull, he sneered that you’d be the League’s new errand dog. 

The real reason they accepted you was due to the threatening air Hawks was exuding and the fact that their old ‘errand bitch’ had died the week prior. They needed a new body to act as a civilian and do things that only an unsuspecting-looking ‘civilian’ could. You fit the bill, and Hawks had taken a liking to you.

 Oddly, working for the League was actually pretty okay.

You got your own room. It was small, but you only had to share a bathroom with the somewhat unhinged Himiko, but she was fairly nice once she warmed up to you. Everyone lived in the League’s HQ and went about their business, getting drunk at their bar front each night.

Most of the mess happened at night, but it was important to put on a nice veneer and keep spirits high. Not to mention that no one would dared to fuck with the League, anyways. The cops and federal government had long been paid off due to the resources that the League had acquired for them. 

You felt somewhat untouchable.

A lot of this confidence was due to the fact that you had become Hawks’s... Keigo’s...

‘Songbird’

As he liked to call you, anyway. 

Keigo was the general, loveable annoyance of the League, but his connections were invaluable and his skills were unmatched. Despite how he could grate on people (read: Dabi and Shigaraki), he was respected and feared just as much as everyone else was, if not more so. And being his metaphorical and literal pet had its perks.

Sure, the first time he had you come to his ‘office’ and he fucked you against the window until it was smeared with cum and blood was a bit surprising, but god, if you didn’t fucking love it. Being Keigo’s personal fucktoy came with protection, pleasure, and a surprising amount of genuine attention. The dude was lonely, and so were you. The two of you made a good ‘couple’, if you could even call yourselves that. The sadism he doled out was always counterpointed by affections that did seem genuine. 

Keigo was fond of you, and you of him. Maybe your brush with death had twisted something in your head, to even allow yourself to get close to a man like Keigo, but you couldn’t make yourself care. 

You were comfortable and content. 

...

[bird boss]: hey babe ;^) get to my office in the next thirty minutes 

[you]: what if i don’t

[bird boss]: do u really want to find out

[you]: ...

[you]: im just curious 

[bird boss]: don’t get cheeky songbird 

[you]: u make me wanna u know

[you]: i know it gets you riled up

[bird boss]: tread lightly kid

[you]: oooo i gave you some guff over text

[you]: what’re you gonna do about it?

[bird boss]: use your imagination

[bird boss]: 25 minutes now, songbird

[bird boss]: don’t make this worse for yourself <3

 You set your phone on your cheap duvet, quickly primped yourself to see Keigo. He wasn’t too strict about your appearance but wearing dark clothes and some of the more expensive gifts he’d gotten you over the months he’d been screwing you never hurt. Something about ownership with him always got him hot and bothered. 

You tried to remind yourself frequently that Keigo saw you as some sort of possession, but a possession with feelings.

Meandering through HQ was always a bit daunting, despite your protections. Your skimpy outfit choice and hardly-hidden lingerie made you feel a bit more like an object than you liked too. 

There were hardly hungry mouths around the League, they kept you all fed, but god, were there starving eyes. 

Dabi wolf-whistled as you walked past him through a common room, shouting something about how Keigo was collecting his pound of flesh for the day. Maybe a line or two about being a whore, but that was all flavor at that point. Keigo called you far meaner, more sinful things. And hell, it wasn’t like Keigo hadn’t... shared you on more than one occasion. 

Maybe you were a little fucked up for enjoying your lifestyle to the degree you did, but why not indulge where you could? Life was far shittier scraping paint off old fences and picking up cans to just scrape by. 

Opulence was a breath of fresh air. And if you were Keigo’s fuck toy? Then, god, you were Keigo’s fuck toy.

When you arrived at Keigo’s office, you knocked gently on the door, quickly adjusting your skirt and blouse. 

The door opened, though no one was behind it. Only a single one of Keigo’s feathers allowed you entrance. 

His office seemed daunting and extravagant for a man who did most of his ‘work’ in far-shadier, far-bloodier places. The walls were covered in mirrors and old paintings, something out of vanity and pride, knowing how Keigo saw himself. There were several black leather couches scattered around against walls, some stained by your various... activities. There was a broad desk parallel to a back wall made entirely of windows. 

Night had fallen, leaving the room lit by a few lamps and warm fixtures. 

“Hey, boss,” You hummed as you stepped in, shutting the door behind you just before the lingering scarlet feather flicked the lock on the door.

And the other one.

And the deadbolt.

You swallowed thickly. 

As much as you enjoyed a lot of the perks of your... position, it was also daunting.

Keigo was daunting, all bloody colors, vanity, and hunger. 

He sat behind his desk, wings puffed up, and partially extended over the back of his chair. The desk chair was massive, specifically acquired so that you would have enough room to properly straddle his lap for hours on end if he so wished. 

Keigo idly clicked around on his desktop computer. He leaned slack and back into the chair, legs spread wide and exuding casual confidence that reeked of his own ego. 

Keigo normally wore a mix of black and red, as edgy as it was. He liked to seem clean, hide the stains of sanguine that undoubtedly lingered on him no matter how he tried to cleanse himself. His black slacks were pressed, the seams pristine. The black shirt he wore was rolled up to his elbows, the buttons of his red vest undone as well. His black tie hung half-undone and limp around his neck. His tousled gold hair was mussed as normal, ruffled by his flights. His feathers might’ve needed preening, but you doubted that that was the reason he called you to his office. 

And based on the deep set of his brow and the sickly smile on his lips, he was already on edge and in a mood. 

“Songbird, come over here, will you?” Keigo sat back from his typing, watching you from across the room. He took you in the same way a parched man sucks down red wine, greedily and soon to be fucked. “On my lap.”

You complied, despite your earlier attitude. You padded across the room, going around his desk. 

As you moved to straddle his lap, worn hands gripped your waist. His amber eyes gave you a warning, crinkling at the edges, “Not like that, sweetheart. Do daddy right.”

Oh, so it was one of those moods. 

Maybe you were Keigo’s sexual punching bag so he could exert control on something he could later kiss better and patch up. 

Sure, he was going to fucking ruin you, but part of the fun with him was that the more it hurt, the nicer he was after. And, all things considered, with some of the... other folks the League brought in to satiate its member’s desires, you fared far better. Keigo cared about you, in his own particular way. 

You tried to lean over his lap yourself, but his hands and feathers positioned you perfectly as he wanted. With the tight grip he had on your waist and shoulders, dragging you just as he liked, it was easy to see his need for control. 

Your head hung off of one of his thighs as you squirmed in his lap. His bulge already pressed into your ribs, a wonderful reminder of the reward you’d reap later on. Keigo’s hands gathered your hand to the small of your back, a feather replacing their grip a moment later.

“Sit with me while I finish this shit,” Keigo grumbled, going back to clicking the desktop. His leg bobbed absentmindedly, his free hand rubbing over the curve of your barely-covered ass. “Be a good girl, (Y/N). If you can stand that.”

He laughed under his breath. 

You let your head dangle limply downwards, blood rushing to your cheeks. 

You’d thought you’d be in for more of an ass-kicking, but it appeared Keigo was taking things unusually slow. You knew better than to complain, but kicking up a bit of metaphorical sand couldn’t be that bad, right?

“I dunno,” You hummed, kicking your legs lightly. “I don’t think you like it when I’m a ‘good girl’, daddy.”

“Watch it.” A single, sharp smack to your butt was hardly enough to shut you up, but Keigo did so all the same, rubbing over the covered flesh a moment later, “I’m not in the mood.”

“Are you sure about that?” You wriggled, intentionally pushing up against his growing erection.

His breath stuttered, a smirk pulling at the corners of your lips. The hand on your ass didn’t rear again, rather Keigo kept thumbing smooth circles as he continued to click around on the computer. He might have been actually doing work. Or, he was ignoring you, egging your sass on. 

“If you didn’t want anything, why’d you call me in here?” You asked, way too cheeky for the way Keigo’s body was practically vibrating underneath you. Pissing him off had consequences, of course, but you weren’t in the mood to play ‘good girl’ that day.

“I told you, I want you to sit with me,” Keigo pinched your ass. “But, you’re too mouthy to do just that one thing. You’re usually better than this.”

“Am I?” You played innocent, craning to give him a wide smile. “Hadn’t noticed. What I am noticing, is your already-hard cock, dear.”

“Oh, ‘dear’?!” Keigo paused on the computer. “Cheeky. Cute.” 

Keigo would just dig in more, lean in, before ‘snapping’, if you could call it that.

You gulped as his hand swatted at upper thighs, his nails almost knicking your skin.

“Up and don’t get smart about it.”

Oh, you were going to be remarkably smart about it.

You rose but hardly stayed upright for long. Sliding down to your knees, you pushed at Keigo’s legs, “Wouldn’t you prefer me down here? Just for a treat while you finish your work?”

Keigo clicked his tongue, gaze flickering down to you, “Fine. Behave yourself.”

Yeah, right. You both knew that that wasn’t going to happen. 

You were already tucked underneath his desk, undoing the fly of his pants. 

You pulled his cock from his trousers, pumping his cock to full hardness. Smearing around preek for a bit of extra flare before inching forward.

Wrapping your mouth around Keigo’s dick was somewhat of a feat— he had a decent girth to him, so you usually took the opportunity to warm him (and yourself) up with a bit of tip-kissing and kitten licks.

But, you were feeling bold.

You spit on his dick, a move that normally would have earned you plenty of verbal snark, but anything Keigo could’ve said to you was swallowed as you took his cock down to the back of your throat.

You sucked around it, massaging the vein on the bottom with the flat of your tongue. Drool began to pool at the side of your lips as you let the head bump your throat, gag reflex be damned.

All the while, Keigo had stopped moving above you. The fabric of his trouser balled up in his ringed-fingers as he gazed half-lidded down at you. 

You smiled around his dick, looking up at him innocently as you began to slowly bob your head. His wings fluttered, twitches and air stirring around you. 

Keigo stifled a laugh, a hand tangling in your hair, “All that talk earlier and now you’re treating me to a blowjob without even me having to tell you to? Dove, you’re too much.”

You pulled off of him to reply, “I can only try.”

Before he could reply, you spit on his dick again, and went back to slurping around him.

You held the base of his cock in your hands, twisting and spreading spittle. It almost felt like your actions were for show, but Keigo’s eyes were rolling back in his head all the same.

You smirked.

A drool pool from your mouth, puddling in your lap and soaking your skirt. Not like you weren’t already dripping from the sinful sounds Keigo stopped trying to hold.

“A-ah, that’s it, angel,” Keigo fucked into your mouth with his hold on your hair. “Just like that.”

Your hand rose to play with Keigo’s balls, teasing at the sack as he cried out a high moan above you. 

Considering the performance you were giving, it was unsurprising to feel him tensing above you. You’d been on your knees for him hundreds of times; you’d learned to see the little twitches and puffs of breath he’d give when he’d get close to coming. 

You pulled off his cock with a pop, detangling the hand from your hair in the motion. It was all fast enough that Keigo couldn’t have stopped you in his hazy, pleasure-filled state. 

Based on the look of rapid disbelief he was giving you, your trick had worked well. Knowing Keigo’s... tendencies made you hesitant to push him too much in the past, but for whatever reason, you were feeling stupidly bold. 

Consequences.

“Sorry, daddy,” You wiped at your mouth with the back of your hand. “Didn’t feel like swallowing today.”

Keigo’s disheveled appearance was more than gratifying. Knowing how easily you made him come undone by that point was one of the perks of your position.

His hair was more than ruffled, strands and tufts chaotically curled around his cheeks and ears. There was a bright blush on his face, spreading from his nose to the apples of his cheeks, down his deck. At some point, he’d popped the buttons at the top of his shirt. He was covered in a sheen of sweat, half-panting and based on the darkness in his brow and the far-too peachy smile on his face, Keigo was fucking pissed.

His wings stood on end.

You gulped from below him.

Maybe you pushed your luck too far.

Maybe. 

“You’re playing real cute today, aren’t you songbird?” Keigo didn’t move, but his feathers twitched above him, wings flaring out even farther. “Real fucking cute.”

You were fucked.

Good.

A few feathers flew from Keigo, one snagging at your wrist, wrapping around it, and pulling you up from the desk.

You wobbled as you stood, dragged across the room as Keigo leisurely followed behind you. When you tried to set your own pace, Keigo swatted your ass with a huff, “You never learn, huh? I thought I’d trained you better than this.”

You opened your mouth to spit some dickish retort, but you were cut off as Keigo’s shoved you onto one of the leather couches.

“Don’t.” Keigo’s tone was acidic as he stood over your, wings still flared out. “I told you I wasn’t in the mood for your cute bullshit, dove, and you still decided to test your luck, huh?”

You kneeled on the cushions, sucking down air, shaking with anticipation.

“You don’t feel like swallowing today? That’s fine, I can work with that,” Keigo shrugged easily from above you.

Keigo had an... active sexual imagination, and you could tell by the crook in his lips that he had something devilish planned as retribution.

A sharp slap came down on your cheek, Keigo catching the opposite jaw and keeping you from recoiling too far. You blinked as the pain spread around your skull like licking flames against a frostbitten body. 

You wanted more.

A little grin stretched against your mouth as Keigo rubbed at your cheeks with his thumbs, “Aw, you always get so sweet like this, dove. You can be a good girl if you try, can’t you?” 

His actions carried candor and his words absolute torment. 

Despite how Keigo was trying to goad you into submission, you had a bit of spark left in you. 

Plainly, you spit on him.

The glob of saliva landed on Keigo’s cheek, under his eye.

He blinked at you. 

You continued to smile.

His own expression grew strained.

“Oh, songbird,” Keigo damn near lamented, wiping away the kind gift you’d given him. His voice was smooth without any bit of waver, all of the sexually-charged anger rolling just beneath the veneer. “You’re just being pain slut today, aren��t you?”

You were, absolutely. You could feel your arousal wetting your panties, the heat of the strike from your cheek beginning to boil something in your gut. 

“You just need a bit of special attention today, right? That’s all.” Keigo tsked, fully removing the tie from around his neck. “You just need a little reminder.”

“Reminder of what?” You asked, tilting your head quizzically. 

Keigo flipped you, feathers pushing and bracing you as needed while nimble hands tore off your clothes without reverie.

“Plenty of things, especially with this attitude you’ve got today,” Keigo’s tie looped around your wrists, binding them together at the center of your back. 

“You definitely need a reminder of who’s the boss around here,” Keigo shoved you forward, stomach flush with the back of the couch.

You reeled from the pace of it all, shifting your knees for any bit of stimulation you could get. Keigo’s feathers were slicing and pulling your clothes from your body faster than you could keep track of. It was overwhelming, making your mind swim in the best possible way. You throbbed. 

“Maybe a reminder about who fucking provides for you,” Keigo’s own clothes were shaken off, dropped to the floor and forgotten.

It was true. Keigo always made sure than you were taken care of, in more ways than one. Despite how fast-paced and laid back he could seem, he was always on top of making sure you had more than enough material and immaterial pleasure whether than be in the form of food, fucking, or otherwise.

You yelped as a smack fell across your ass. A feather caught the elastic of your panties, snapping a moment later, leaving you fully bare before him. 

Keigo’s worn hand came to press at your throat and jaw, tilting your head back as he climbed behind you, “Maybe, you need a reminder about who keeps you safe.”

This phrase was softer than the others, a sweet kiss pressing to your cheek and his voice a bit more gentle. It was jarring at the skin still stung from his earlier strike, but you cherished the heat besides. 

Once again, true. The folks in and outside of the League were greedy. There were plenty of unwanted souls that stole glances at Hawks’s prized songbird. There were starved eyes that tore into you whether you were dolled up for Keigo or not. There had been some... close calls, one could say, but Keigo always was there, in the end, unafraid to get his hands dirty. 

“You know what the most important reminder is, dove?” Keigo rolled his hips against you, cock wedging between your thighs.

“N-no,” You stuttered, brain turning gooey as Keigo’s arms snaked around your waist, sharpened nails leaving indents in your hips.

He nosed at your neck, leaving a few love bites in his wake.“‘N-no’, what?” 

“I don’t know,” You leaned back into Keigo’s chest, rubbing your thighs around his cock. 

 “Oh, songbird, you sweet thing,” He chuckled, all teasing and self-indulgent. “I’m the one who makes you feel good.” 

He was so right, wasn’t he?

With the way he’d learned your body over the last few months, he’d had some undeniable pursuit to make you feel the best. 

Keigo was inquisitive by nature. He had kept you on your back for hours while he finger-fucked you, watching every twitch and roll of your hips to figure out just the right ways to break you. He’d kissed and sucked and slapped every inch of you, sussing out the perfect ways to make you writhe and cry for him. 

Sure, you were an absolute terror to him sometimes. Not to mention that Keigo jumping you covered in the blood of that day's targets was as macabre and horrifying as it sounded. 

But, fuck, if he didn’t know how to bring you to ecstasy that fucking ruined you in the best way. 

Keigo got off on watching you shatter for him. It was the reason he’d torn you from that cheap, bloodied apartment in the first place. A kind, naive little morsel that he could play with as he wanted. You didn’t complain. Fuck, you reveled in his attention. You gave it back to him, like the fucked up, semi-divine being could be any more debauched than he already was.

Corruption spreads, but you’d never complain. If being plucked from struggling for pennies to being fucked stupid by a man who could kill you at a moments notice, a man who would kill for you, somehow poisoned you?

You’d die with a bitter taste on your tongue and a smile on your face.

 Keigo rubbed at your clit, nipping at your neck, and rolled his hips greedily. His cock was covered in a mix of your slick and his own preek, easily sliding between plushness of your thighs.

“You love pushing me, acting all tough,” Keigo chastised, clicking his tongue. “I mean it when I say it's cute.”

You don’t have any more quick retorts in you, not when his fingers are down your throat, gagging you as spittle dribbles down your chin onto the leather below. It was sure to leave a mark.

“Behind all that bark and snark, you’re just a good girl, aren’t you?” Keigo punctuated his words with a bite and nip to your neck. “Just needed a reminder, right, dove?”

You whimpered against his fingers at the praise, grinding against Keigo’s touch needily. 

His fingers pushed pinched your tongue, breath curling over the shell of your ear, “What are you?”

You mumbled against his fingers, “A g-good g-girl.”

It was humiliating in the best way. Keigo’s light laugh at your attempt. The way he nuzzled his nose into the sweat at the crook of your shoulder was just aloe on the burn.

“I misspoke, if you can believe that,” Keigo’s cock pulled out from your thighs. “Songbird, you know what I meant to call you?”

You squirmed at the loss, but he was quick to hush you. His fingers left your mouth with a thick trail of spit. 

“You’re my good girl.” 

You melted in his arms.

Falling back against Keigo’s chest, you craned your neck to lock your lips to his. 

Maybe that was it, why all the filth didn’t bother you. Because you had worth. Maybe it was insecurity, or maybe it was self-aware in the face of your lived experience. Before being taken, the life you’d lived made you just a rusty cog in a dying machine. You wouldn’t have amounted to anything, probably. 

But with the League?

You were the prized, beloved consort of an angry god. 

Keigo owned you, body, mind and soul, and you let him. That’s not even to mention how you had him wrapped around your finger. He adored you, under all of it.

Fighting with him was for sport, not blood.

Keigo licked past your lips, pressing his cock to your cunt teasingly. You whined against him, wriggling in his arms.

“What does my good girl want?” Keigo loved making you beg for him, claw for any bit of stimulation. He liked it even better when you were already soft for him.

Stray tears pricked at your eyes, “Y-your cock.”

He pinched the meat of your thigh, shaking his head, “Not good enough. Speak properly, dove. Clear and correctly.”

You swallowed, searching for the words in your own haze.

Your words were willed to be solid.

“I want your cock, daddy.” 

It was just enough.

Keigo pushed forward, the head of his cock already stretching your cunt. Consider the girth of it, the lack of preparation stung and burned more than you would’ve liked, as good as it felt to finally be filled.

Keigo cooed at your soft tears, keeping your face to his with a firm hand on your jaw. He shushed you, far too sweetly while licking the salt from your cheeks, “Relax, angel. Big breaths.”

You nodded, sputtering as he speared into you. Keigo’s free hand went back to toying with your clit, encouraging the tension to drain from your body.

As he bottomed out, you shuddered, falling back into his chest. Keigo’s wings fluttered, twitching in wait. Hot breath fanned over your face, Keigo groaning and locking his jaw. 

The stimulation was overwhelming. You had expected Keigo to be meaner, considering how mouthy you’d been. 

Yet, it made sense. Keigo had figured out one of the better ways to make you break was softness. 

(Truthfully, it made him crack in the same way, but he’d never tell.)

“Feel that?” He asked, just barely rolling his hips. 

Keigo released your jaw in favor of wrapping a hand around the front of your throat, tugging you as close he could manage.

“Uh-huh,” You panted. 

You could, the kiss of his cock head against your cervix was almost uncomfortable. The delicious pressure and sensitivity already had you reeling in his arms, unsteady and wanting.

“I fill you up so good, don’t I?” Keigo praised his own ego, his cock, but he wasn’t wrong. The curve of his cock rubbed against all the right spots. He stretched you just right, the burn ebbing away into a need for more, more—

“Please, Keigo—” You gasped. Your legs shook as Keigo slammed into you, shoving you forward and into the wall.

His pace was brutal. Hands and feathers kept your back in a harsh arch as he rearranged your insides to his liking. He was kind enough to keep stroking at your clit, bruising your hips and babbling filthy nothings. 

“I’m the one who makes you feel this good, only me, right, dove?” Keigo growled into your ear with a particularly hard thrust.

You nodded against the wall, aware of the drool slipping down your chin as your mouth lolled open. Your insides were hot like white flames, searing any ability to use coherent speech. 

Keigo snickered at your state. Slowing, he gripped your ass cheeks. You yelped, inside jumping as he pried them apart. You flinched, hole twitching as he spat down, the liquid cool against the flushed skin.

It was little moves like that, Keigo just subtly making your shudder and feel dirty that got you the most fucked up and fucked out.

You pressed back on his cock, panting against the wall and keening. You would’ve spoke, if you could, but anything that you had the ability to say would’ve been torn apart by Keigo’s sharpened, silver tongue. 

“My filthy little dove, huh?” Keigo sneered, watching you try to bounce on his cock the best you could. “Such a glutton when you get broken down like this, needy whore.”

The pleasure of Keigo’s cock tearing up your insides was all you could focus on through the fog of your mind, desperate and wanting and greedy.

“Y-your,” You corrected, the words bubbling from your lips, disjointed and messy. “Yours.”

Keigo may have been avian, but he purred like a damn cat at your admission. He held you like a possession, cock throbbing as he fucked you just right. 

“God, you’re sweet, angel,” He nipped at your jaw before wrapping his hand around your throat. “Even all fucked up, you know who you belong to so well, don’t you?”

You nodded, rolling your hips back. 

Keigo must’ve taken pity on you, squeezing at the sides of your neck. Cruel as he could be, he must’ve noticed the way your thighs and knees trembled against the leather. Keigo knew the cloud in your eyes well— how to get you hazy and how to fuck you perfectly through the fog.

He fucked back into your dripping cunt, pace harder and faster than before. You were helpless to do anything other than fall forward into the wall, cheek squished against the scarlet. 

“Who’s brat are you?” Keigo squeezed a bit harder at your neck as you swallowed against his palm.

“Y-yours—!” You squeaked out, mind going numb from the stimulation and pressure.

A wicked sneer curled against your ear as Keigo’s movements grew sloppier. His tongue lolled over your shoulder, messy kisses and slobbery bites and marks left in his wake. He was close, but you weren’t far off easier.

“Little bird,” It was sweeter, closer and hotter. “Can you come for me? Come all over my cock?”

You nodded.

“Not good enough.” Keigo bit down, nearly breaking the fragile skin of your neck. “You know I like words, angel.”

You gave him words, plenty of them. 

Nearly incoherent pleads and cries poured from your bruised lips as Keigo pounded into you. Each blabbering wail was met with Keigo groans and grunts, condescending little phrases spitting over you without release.

Your lack of leverage and use of your arms made you thumping against the couch and wall, vision darkening on the edges as the pressure in your gut and the hold on your throat remained. 

You were breaking in his arms, tears rolling down your cheeks as you held yourself from cresting. The exertion of it all was taking its toll, legs jellied and chest beading with sweat. 

Keigo sensed it, shifting his hips to hit the spongy spot in your cunt, “Come, dove.”

You let go.

A sob shattered in your throat as your climax crashed through you. Keigo released your throat, holding you by your bound arms as he bottomed out. His own harsh cry panged against yours as he stuffed you full. 

Surprisingly gently, he rocked his hips against your own, letting the ambient throb of your cunt milk him dry.

You came down, rolling and spinning as you sucked down air a bit too fast. Keigo panted behind you, though the sound seemed dull.

The pressure from your wrists released, soft thumbs rubbing at where the fabric had bitten into your forearms, “Hey, angel, you with me?”

You could only nod weakly, exhaustion and aches creeping in. 

Keigo repositioned the two of you, setting himself against the arm of the couch, wings up free to drape and splay over the floor. He dragged you with him, pulling you to lay on his chest. The stickiness of his spunk, your slick, and general sweatiness might’ve been uncomfortable, but you weren’t quite lucid enough to care.

“How are you feeling? Still feeling a little mouthy?” Keigo teased, already knowing your answer. 

You muffled a groan against his chest, shaking your head against the sweat of his chest. 

“Awww,” Keigo chuckled, fingers brushing over your cheeks, “Is my dove a little fucked out?”

“Keeeigo, b-be nice.”

Your voice broke, parched.

Keigo snorted, pressing a kiss to the side of your forehead, “I guess I can manage that. Just for you, though. Can’t let the others see me get all soft.”

You wouldn’t; seeing Keigo warm and gooey, both of you mutually fucked-out, was a pleasure only you got to indulge in. And you loved every moment of it. 

++++++++++++

taglist: @sinclairsamess (msg me if you’d like to be on it!)

ko-fi

#salem writes #hawks x reader #takami keigo x reader #takami keigo #hawks x y/n #hawks x you #takami keigo x y/n #takami keigo x you #mha smut #mha x reader #bnha x reader #hawks #hawks smut #hawks fanfiction #takami keigo smut

[bloody-bee-tea]

Survivor

Jiang Cheng is bone deep exhausted and the only thought on his mind is to finally get some sleep. He has endured his siblings fawning over him and healers from two different Sects checking him over even though he told them all again and again that he’s fine and now he just wants to sleep.

It’s been a long, long day.

The tiniest bit of tension seeps out of his shoulders when his tent comes into view and he releases a breath of relief when he finally steps into it, only for him to whip out Zidian when he realizes that there’s someone in here with him.

“It’s just me,” Nie Mingjue says, his hands raised, but staying right where he is and Jiang Cheng slumps.

“Don’t fucking do shit like that,” he snaps at him, because he’s tired and cranky and Nie Mingjue really should know better.

They are at war. You simply don’t sneak up on anyone but especially not on someone who has been ambushed that same day.

“What are you doing here?” Jiang Cheng wants to know as Nie Mingjue walks up to him.

“I was worried about you,” Nie Mingjue admits as he pulls Jiang Cheng into a hug and Jiang Cheng immediately melts into him.

It’s a good place to be, exhaustion be damned, and they stay like that for a long time.

“’m tired,” Jiang Cheng finally slurs out and he feels Nie Mingjue nod.

“We’ll get you to bed,” he says and gently pushes Jiang Cheng towards his bed. “Are you hurt?” he asks and Jiang Cheng narrows his eyes at him.

“Shouldn’t you know? I seem to recall that besides my healers some other healers were there as well. I would think they reported back to their Sect Leader.”

He’s not really mad, despite the bite in his tone, but he nevertheless enjoys it when Nie Mingjue blushes slightly.

“I was worried,” he repeats, his tone defensive, and Jiang Cheng can’t deny that something warm and tingly unfurls in his chest.

“I was worried, too,” Jiang Cheng admits, because while he couldn’t say this to his siblings, he thinks that maybe he can tell Nie Mingjue about it.

He will understand.

“There was a moment where I thought—I was very worried,” Jiang Cheng whispers, and he tenses when he remembers the fight, the screams, the panic, the blood. So much blood.

It wasn’t his first fight, wasn’t even his fifth or tenth one, but it has never been this close.

“But you got them all out, right?” Nie Mingjue asks, coming up behind Jiang Cheng, hugging him to his chest.

“The healers are not sure if two of them will make it through the night,” Jiang Cheng chokes out and Nie Mingjue presses a kiss to his head.

“But you got them out. That’s what matters for now. You got all of them out of there alive. Now it’s up to them. But you gave them a chance. You’re a survivor,” Nie Mingjue lowly tells him and Jiang Cheng spins around in his arms to bury his face in his neck.

“It doesn���t feel like something I should be proud of,” he mutters. “They caught us off guard.”

“And you fought and you won. You made it out and they didn’t. That’s all that matters,” Nie Mingjue says again and Jiang Cheng notes the slight tremor in his voice.

When he pulls back to give Nie Mingjue a questioningly look he is completely caught off guard by the soft look on Nie Mingjue’s face.

“I was so worried,” he says, for the third time that evening and Jiang Cheng can’t help it, he simply has to pull him in for a kiss.

He was worried, too. Worried and terrified and angry and exhausted. But he knew he had to fight or they would all die, and so he fought as hard as he never did before.

And now he’s crashing.

“I need to sleep,” Jiang Cheng says when they part and it earns him a kiss to his cheekbone.

“Then we’ll sleep,” Nie Mingjue decides and swiftly gets Jiang Cheng out of his outer robe, before he strips himself.

Normally, this would lead to very fun activities, but Jiang Cheng is so tired he can barely even appreciate the fact that Nie Mingjue is mostly undressed in his own tent, and so he simply climbs into bed.

Nie Mingjue is right behind him and as soon as they laid down, he pulls Jiang Cheng into his chest again.

“I’m so glad you came back,” Nie Mingjue whispers into his hair and Jiang Cheng turns around again so that he can curl into Nie Mingjue’s chest.

“Me too,” Jiang Cheng says, pressing small kisses to every part of Nie Mingjue that he can reach.

Nie Mingjue presses kiss after kiss to his head and Jiang Cheng is exhausted enough that he almost immediately drifts off.

“I wouldn’t know what to do if I lost you,” Nie Mingjue whispers, so quiet that Jiang Cheng almost misses it and his last conscious thought is that this doesn’t sound like they are just fuck-buddies anymore.

He falls asleep with a smile.

~*~*~

Jiang Cheng knows what Nie Mingjue is going to say before he even opens his mouth. He can see it in his eyes, can see it in the way Nie Mingjue makes even more of an effort to stay straight and come off as stern, makes an effort to keep himself closed off and away from Jiang Cheng.

Jiang Cheng isn’t quite sure when it happened but over the last few weeks he learned to read Nie Mingjue.

And what he reads now is going to break Jiang Cheng’s heart, he just knows it.

“I think we should end it here,” Nie Mingjue says, and despite how predictable it is, despite the fact that he expected this, Jiang Cheng’s world feels like it’s going to shatter.

“I see,” he still gives back despite how he’s working his jaw in an effort to not beg Nie Mingjue to not do this.

He will not beg anyone. And especially not Nie Mingjue when he so clearly doesn’t want Jiang Cheng anymore.

They both deserve better than that.

“It was a war fling. It happens, but it also ends,” Nie Mingjue goes on and even though Jiang Cheng promised himself he would be calm he can’t do it.

Not when Nie Mingjue sounds like this didn’t mean anything at all to him.

“I said I see,” he snaps at Nie Mingjue who falls silent. “I’m not stupid, and I’m not deaf. I heard you the first time.”

“Oh,” Nie Mingjue says but then he nods. “We’ll be fellow Sect Leaders then, and nothing more.”

“It’s not like you would have had time for me anyway, what with your two new brothers and all,” Jiang Cheng bitterly says and he tries very hard not to think about the fact that he had hoped for a bond with Nie Mingjue himself.

A very different one than Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen now have with him but it’s very clear that that is never going to happen now.

Yunmeng Jiang will have to fend for themselves going on, just like they always did.

“I wish you the best,” Jiang Cheng forces himself to say before Nie Mingjue can say something to that, even though he feels like crying or screaming or both.

“If you need something—” Nie Mingjue starts, but Jiang Cheng cuts him off.

“Thank you for the kind offer, Sect Leader Nie,” he presses out, overly stiff and formal, and he forces himself into a bow. “Goodbye.”

He turns around without waiting for a response from Nie Mingjue and he has to clench his jaw to keep back the tears.

Jiang Cheng thought that they had a good thing, despite how it was first formed out of mutual terror of the war and grief for their lost people and pent up energy from the fights. He thought they had made something more of it, something that allowed for soft touches and sweet promises, but clearly he had been wrong. Naive and wrong, like always, Jiang Cheng scoffs at himself, because of course he would interpret something more into this when all it was to Nie Mingjue was a convenience.

And going on, Nie Mingjue won’t have much time for conveniences anymore, not with how he’s the hero of this war and with the new bonds he’ll have to form.

But it’s fine, it’s fine. Jiang Cheng will just—he’ll just go on, like he did numerous times already. 

If not even the death of his whole world could break him then a broken heart should be nothing.

It will be fine.

~*~*~

“Did something happen?” Jiang Yanli asks him when he sits down for dinner, clearly reading Jiang Cheng’s bad temper but Jiang Cheng really isn’t in the mood to lay out his stupid heartbreak to his sister, however understanding she would be.

It’s still too fresh.

“Where’s Wei Wuxian?” he instead snaps out, because he’s missing again and Jiang Cheng might have tolerated it when they were still at war, but that’s over now and Wei Wuxian will have to fall back into his role as Jiang Cheng’s second in command.

No more running off on his own.

“I’m here, I’m here,” Wei Wuxian calls out, lazily strolling into the room as if he has all the time in the world and it does nothing to lift Jiang Cheng’s mood.

“Where have you been?” he demands to know but Wei Wuxian only gives him that infuriating smile as he twirls his flute.

Jiang Cheng is too tired to even berate him over the lack of his sword.

“Here and there,” he gives back and Jiang Yanli hides her giggle behind her sleeve.

“And Lan Wangji?” she coyly asks and Jiang Cheng has to watch as his brother goes all suspiciously shifty.

“Ah, shijie, don’t be mean now. You know how nagging and annoying Lan Zhan can be,” Wei Wuxian says, but he doesn’t deny that he was with him.

And that’s enough for Jiang Cheng.

He will not have Lan Wangji of all people ruin his brother’s strenuous reputation any more.

“I am expecting a proper courtship,” Jiang Cheng says, effectively cutting whatever Wei Wuxian was about to say next off and Jiang Cheng can’t deny that he has to bite back a laugh when Wei Wuxian stares with wide eyes at him.

“A what now?” he repeats, because clearly his hearing took a turn for the worse and Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes.

“A proper courtship. I will not let Lan Wangji disrespect you like this. Either he is serious about this or he can stop right now.”

“But—Lan Zhan and I—what are you even talking about?” Wei Wuxian asks, trying to laugh his confusion off and Jiang Cheng frowns.

“Is he not serious about you?” he wonders, ready to get up and beat some sense into Lan Wangji, but Jiang Yanli’s hand on his arm stops him.

“A-Xian, is he not serious about you or are you not serious about him?” she asks and Jiang Cheng frowns, because that’s not even a possibility he entertained.

Wei Wuxian has been running after Lan Wangji since their time in the Cloud Recesses; if he wasn’t serious about him, he would have stopped long ago like he did with all his other infatuations.

“No one is serious about anyone!” Wei Wuxian exclaims all of a sudden and Jiang Cheng’s eyes go wide.

“Oh,” he breathes out, because he didn’t consider that they had a thing like he and Nie Mingjue did. “I see.”

“I don’t! Why would you even—it’s not like—no one is serious about this, right?” Wei Wuxian asks and his voice is suddenly very quiet and he looks pleadingly between Jiang Yanli and Jiang Cheng.

“A-Xian, it is rather obvious that Lan Wangji seems to be in love with you,” Jiang Yanli carefully says. “And going by your behaviour we just thought you are, too? Which clearly is fine, it’s just—A-Cheng is right. There should be a proper courtship.”

Wei Wuxian can’t seem to find his words at that, because he keeps staring at them, but finally Jiang Yanli’s words seem to have hit him. 

Wei Wuxian gasps and slaps his hand over his mouth, as tears fill his eyes.

“I love him,” he whispers and Jiang Cheng can do nothing but stare incredulously at him.

“You didn’t know? How the hell could you not know, with how you’re running after him?”

“And he loves me?” Wei Wuxian goes on, as if he didn’t hear Jiang Cheng.

Jiang Cheng wants to snap at him that the fact that Lan Wangji loves Wei Wuxian is even more obvious but he bites his tongue at the last moment.

He also thought that Nie Mingjue felt more for him than he clearly did, so maybe he isn’t in any position to judge here.

“Of course he loves you,” Jiang Yanli softly says and Jiang Cheng is not prepared for the blinding smile that breaks out on Wei Wuxian’s face.

He didn’t realize it before, but it’s been a long time since Wei Wuxian smiled like this.

One more reason to break Lan Wangji’s entire body, should he hurt Wei Wuxian.

“I have to go,” Wei Wuxian rushes out, already moving and Jiang Cheng doesn’t even have the heart to stop him.

“A courtship!” he still yells after him, because it’s important and Wei Wuxian is liable to forget.

“What an idiot,” he mutters once Wei Wuxian is gone and Jiang Yanli laughs.

“Blinded by love, is what he is,” she gives back with a wistful sigh and Jiang Cheng turns towards her.

If they already are at the topic—

“What about you and the pe—Jin Zixuan?” he wants to know.

Jiang Cheng will probably never like Jin Zixuan, especially not after the last stunt he pulled, but Jiang Yanli always had a soft spot for him and if she still wants to pursue a relationship with him, then Jiang Cheng will support her in this.

“It’s fine, A-Cheng,” Jiang Yanli says with a smile but Jiang Cheng shakes his head.

He’s tired of Jiang Yanli always doing what’s best for everyone else. 

“It’s not. It never was. Just tell me what you really want,” he insists and Jiang Yanli falls silent for a long moment.

“I always liked him,” she finally admits and while Jiang Cheng still wants to punch Jin Zixuan in the face, if this is what his sister wants then he’ll make it happen.

“But not like this. Not if he doesn’t like me back. I don’t want to be—” she bites back her words, but Jiang Cheng still knows what she wanted to say. 

It would be disrespectful to the dead though.

“I understand. We’ll do nothing for now, then. If he should show that he has a spine and actually knows how to appreciate you, we can talk about it,” Jiang Cheng decides and is not prepared for the proud look Jiang Yanli throws him.

“You’ve grown so much, A-Cheng,” she softly says and cups his cheek in her hand. “But you should have someone at your side as well.”

“I have you and Wei Wuxian,” he immediately gives back, even though he’s sure that’s not quite what Jiang Yanli means.

“Don’t misunderstand me on purpose,” she gently chides him. “You know what I mean. You should have someone you love and who loves you in return.”

It hits a little bit too close, with how recently Nie Mingjue told him to break it off, and Jiang Cheng jerks his head away from her because he can’t quite hide the bitter twist of his mouth.

“Don’t,” he begs his sister, because he’s not ready to talk about this, not ready to admit that he thought he had that already.

“What about Nie Mingjue?” his sister relentlessly goes on. “I thought it looked like there was something between you. You’ve been meeting frequently.”

“You thought wrong,” he snaps at her and then immediately feels bad when she flinches at his angry tone. “You thought wrong,” he says again, much quieter this time and understanding washes over her face.

“Oh, A-Cheng, I’m sorry,” she says and pulls him into a hug. 

Jiang Cheng promised himself that he wouldn’t cry over Nie Mingjue—he needs to be strong and composed for his people—but he can’t remember those reasons when he’s safely in his sister’s arms.

~*~*~

Jiang Cheng doesn’t see Wei Wuxian until the next morning, but he has Lan Wangji in tow, who does propose a proper courtship between him and Wei Wuxian, so Jiang Cheng chalks that off as a success.

He allows Lan Wangji to court his right hand man, of course, mostly because he truly wants to see Wei Wuxian happy, but also because it means the Lan Sect can’t quite openly go against them. Jiang Cheng will take any little advantage he can get.

He hates that he has to see Nie Mingjue at the banquet that evening, but he somehow manages a polite bow, before he turns away from him and then he tries to not look at him all night.

It’s harder than it should be and when Jin Guangshan gets up to say something unpleasant, Jiang Cheng is almost grateful for it.

He re-evaluates that when Jin Guangshan brings up a new betrothal between Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan. Jiang Cheng is glad he talked about this with his sister just yesterday, because he feels so much better shutting Jin Guangshan down now, especially when he can announce Wei Wuxian’s and Lan Wangji’s courtship in the same moment.

That, at least, gets Jin Guangshan to shut up for a while.

Jiang Cheng pretends he doesn’t see the small smile on Nie Mingjue’s face, because it doesn’t only hurt, it also brings out something bitter and mean in Jiang Cheng.

He turns away before the sneer can make it to his face. It does nothing to hide his pain, though.

~*~*~

When Wei Wuxian comes across Wen Qing, he has enough trust in Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng to ask for help before he blows up in everyone’s faces.

Jiang Cheng can’t bring himself to accept them into Yunmeng Jiang, no matter how sorry he is about it and how he can’t quite meet Wen Qing’s eyes when he tells them that, but Lan Wangji promises that he’ll settle them in Gusu Lan, since no one trusts Jin Guangshan when he tells them he can take care of them.

Jiang Cheng didn’t even dare to ask Nie Mingjue for help, and he excuses that with the fact that Lan Wangji offered and that Wei Wuxian was due for a stay there anyway.

He can help them get settled before he and Lan Wangji return to Lotus Pier and it will all work out fine.

~*~*~

Jiang Cheng can’t quite hide his surprise when Jin Zixuan is led into the conference room.

“What are you doing here?” Jiang Cheng snaps at him, because he’s not really over how this guy treated his sister and even her reassuring presence at his side does nothing to help calm him down.

“I’m here to—” Jin Zixuan starts and then trails off, his eyes apparently caught by Jiang Yanli.

“Apologise, I hope,” Jiang Cheng finishes for him, because that is the only reason he will excuse his unannounced visit.

“That, yes. And make amends. And—maybe start new?” Jin Zixuan awkwardly finishes and Jiang Cheng raises his eyebrows.

“You want to start new with my sister,” he warningly says, barely believing the gall this guy has.

“If the lady wants it, of course,” Jin Zixuan hastily adds, falling into a deep bow and it allows Jiang Cheng to roll his eyes as Jiang Yanli tries to swallow her giggles.

“A-Cheng,” she says when Jiang Cheng leaves Jin Zixuan in the bow for longer than is really necessary, but he can’t help it.

That guy made his sister cry. He can grovel for a while.

“A-jie,” he questioningly asks, but of course she’s already on her way to Jin Zixuan to ease him out of his bow.

“Where’s your entourage?” she asks him but Jin Zixuan just shakes his head, going bright red in the face.

“There’s only Mianmian,” he tells them and Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes again.

“Did you at least leave a letter at home?” he wants to know, because he’s not keen on having the Jin Sect accuse him of stealing Jin Zixuan away.

“I left it in my mother’s room. She should have read it by now,” Jin Zixuan gives back and Jiang Cheng sighs.

It’s clear that Jiang Yanli wants to give him another chance and as long as he behaves Jiang Cheng is willing to give that to his sister.

“Fine. You can stay. But if you even so much as stick one toe out of line, you’re gone again,” he promises him and Jin Zixuan’s hair flies, he’s nodding so hard.

Jiang Cheng just hopes that he’ll do better this time around. His sister deserves some happiness, too.

~*~*~

When Lan Wangji writes him that he and Wei Wuxian are on their way to Lotus Pier, bringing Wen Qing and Wen Ning, dread settles in Jiang Cheng’s gut.

The letter speaks of something urgent, something they have to discuss, something Jiang Cheng needs to know, and he’s not looking forward to that conversation no matter what it is.

It turns out his instinct was right when he learns about Wei Wuxian’s core—his own now—and demonic cultivation and how it’s killing Wei Wuxian and how it could all still blow up in their faces.

That conversation rivals the one he had with Nie Mingjue in terms in how desperately he wants to forget it, but he pushes through anyway.

He has to figure out how to help his brother.

~*~*~

It’s almost to the day a year after the end of the Sunshot Campaign when Nie Huaisang arrives in Lotus Pier, with little fanfare and without anyone accompanying him.

It puts Jiang Cheng on edge, despite Wei Wuxian’s reminder that they all used to be friends.

He thinks he’s proven right when Nie Huaisang asks for a private audience, with just Jiang Cheng.

“Jiang-xiong,” Nie Huaisang greets him and Jiang Cheng let’s the bitterness get the better of him.

“That’s Jiang-zhongzhu to you,” he snaps out and immediately feels bad when Nie Huaisang flicks his fan open in a defensive motion.

“I am not my brother,” Nie Huaisang presses out before he sighs. “I hoped we are still friends,” he adds and it’s enough to make Jiang Cheng feel guilty.

“We are,” he gives back with a sigh of his own. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for,” Jiang Cheng apologizes and then invites Nie Huaisang to sit down with him.

“You’re stressed,” Nie Huaisang observes and Jiang Cheng snorts.

“I don’t have that many relations with the Nie’s,” Jiang Cheng gives back and Nie Huaisang winces.

“Yeah, that’s my brother’s fault,” he says and gives Jiang Cheng a meaningful look.

So he knows what they had. Great.

“What brings you here, Huaisang?” Jiang Cheng wants to know, though he can already tell that he’s not going to like it much.

“I’m here because of my brother,” Nie Huaisang says and immediately proves Jiang Cheng right.

“I don’t talk to Nie-zhongzhu, in case you didn’t notice,” Jiang Cheng snaps out and Nie Huaisang laughs lightly.

“Oh, I definitely noticed. I especially noticed that you two stopped talking right after we won the war. He wouldn’t tell me why, though, until a few days ago.”

“It’s not that hard to figure out, Huaisang. He didn’t like me enough to keep talking to me,” Jiang Cheng says with a shrug and he doesn’t even care that he sounds bitter.

He is bitter. Let Nie Huaisang know, what does he care.

“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” Nie Huaisang says and hides behind his fan again. “Though it’s what he said to me as well. It’s a lie though.”

That makes Jiang Cheng freeze.

“What?”

“It’s a lie. He wouldn’t tell me the real reason until a few days ago, when he suffered a qi deviation. Not enough to kill him or even seriously injure him, but. It was still bad,” Nie Huaisang lowly says and Jiang Cheng can’t help the worry in his gut.

He wishes he could have just forgotten Nie Mingjue, could have found someone else to give all these feelings to, but he still wakes up more nights than not, searching for someone in his bed who is no longer there and hasn’t been for longer than he could ever be found in Jiang Cheng’s bed in the first place.

Sometimes he scoffs at himself for how ridiculous it is to keep wishing for something that was just such a brief moment in his life, but he can’t help it.

He loves Nie Mingjue, still, and it hurts. It never stopped.

“How is he?” Jiang Cheng forces himself to ask, because he can’t even imagine anything happening to Nie Mingjue or it will drive him insane.

“Not too well. Shaken, like we all are,” Nie Huaisang admits. “But it brought out some truths. He’s dying, Wanyin. He’s dying and he knew it a year ago. It’s the reason he broke up with you.”

Jiang Cheng blinks a few times because that is just too much information at once. His stomach drops when he registers that Nie Mingjue is apparently dying but his heart picks up when he thinks about how Nie Huaisang refers to their split as a break up.

“We never were enough to actually break up,” Jiang Cheng forces out, because he needs to make that clear right away.

“Yes, you were,” Nie Huaisang gives back without hesitation. “My brother loved you, I could see it back then and I can see it still. He’s still heartbroken, but he thinks he did you a favour. He has accepted that he’s going to die.”

That doesn’t sound right. He hasn’t seen or spoken to Nie Mingjue in a year now, but he doesn’t strike him as someone who would simply accept death as the inevitable outcome.

“Why would he?”

“It’s a family thing and no one could find a solution yet. Er-ge is trying with musical cultivation but I’m not sure how well that’s going. But Wanyin, please, that’s not—we can talk about this later. Did you hear what else I said? He loves you.”

Jiang Cheng did actually hear that, he just doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with that, even though his heart is telling him very clearly what to do.

“I heard you,” he whispers, though it’s still hard to believe.

Nie Mingjue didn’t look like he loved him when he told him they should end it.

“What are you going to do about it?” Nie Huaisang wants to know and Jiang Cheng huffs out a disbelieving laugh.

“Are you here because I you think I can help your brother?”

“Well—” Nie Huaisang drawls out but then he shakes his head when Jiang Cheng throws him a look. “Not only, okay? Yes, if you are inclined to help, that would be great, I don’t actually want da-ge to die. But I also just want him to be happy, no matter if you can help or not. I didn’t know why he broke up with you but now I do and it’s just so—so stupid! And I’ve been talking to Wei Wuxian a bit and Jin Zixuan too, and they said you don’t seem to be happy or looking for someone else and I just thought you both deserved to be happy.”

Jiang Cheng can do nothing but gape at him, because he didn’t actually think Nie Huaisang cared that much but it seems he was wrong.

“He—loves me still?” Jiang Cheng manages to ask and his heart does a funny thing when Nie Huaisang nods.

“What about you?” Nie Huaisang lowly asks and Jiang Cheng can’t meet his eyes.

He never admitted it before, not to his siblings and certainly not to Nie Mingjue, and it feels wrong to do so to Nie Huaisang now.

“I’ll come back with you,” he says instead of a real answer, but it seems like it’s answer enough anyway, because Nie Huaisang beams at him.

“I knew it,” he whispers but Jiang Cheng can’t find it in him to be mad at him for assuming.

Not if Nie Huaisang is assuming the truth.

~*~*~

“What are you doing here?” Nie Mingjue gruffly asks when Nie Huaisang pushes Jiang Cheng into his private room.

Jiang Cheng takes a moment to glare at the now closed door, but then he turns around to Nie Mingjue. Nie Huaisang has warned him, but Jiang Cheng is still surprised how shitty Nie Mingjue looks; he lost weight and there are circle under his eyes that weren’t even present during the war, when none of them got any good sleep, ever.

It really must eat away at him.

“I’m here to help,” Jiang Cheng says and before he can add that he’s here for maybe something more, too, Nie Mingjue abruptly turns away from him.

“There’s nothing you can do,” Nie Mingjue shortly tells him but Jiang Cheng will not be so easily brushed off.

“Bullshit,” he says and it startles Nie Mingjue enough to turn around to him.

“Excuse me?”

“I said bullshit, you heard me quite well,” Jiang Cheng repeats and angrily crosses his arms in front of his chest.

It’s not the first time since the war that he has seen Nie Mingjue, but it’s the first time that they are speaking like this and Jiang Cheng is more nervous than he would like to admit.

“Oh? And what are you going to do that my Sect hasn’t yet tried, huh?” Nie Mingjue bitingly asks, but Jiang Cheng isn’t fazed by that.

“We found a way to deal with Wei Wuxian’s demonic cultivation. We found a way to restore a destroyed core. I think we can find a solution for your qi deviation problem,” Jiang Cheng gives back, matching Nie Mingjue in tone and he has to admit he enjoys the dumb-founded look on his face.

“You did what?” Nie Mingjue breathes out. “Restoring a core is impossible.”

“So is transplanting a core but here I am, core and all. I think between Wen Qing’s genius, Wei Wuxian’s unorthodox thinking and my stubbornness, we can make it work.”

“You have a transplanted core?” Nie Mingjue asks, frown on his face but Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes.

“That’s not important right now. What’s important is that we can most likely help you.”

“Most likely,” Nie Mingjue tonelessly gives back.

“Do not be like that,” Jiang Cheng warns him. “Do not reject this opportunity just because it might not work. There’s more chance that it will.”

“But you can’t promise it,” Nie Mingjue says and it sounds so final, as if he’s already made his peace with dying.

Jiang Cheng would even believe it if he wouldn’t look so haunted.

“No one can promise that and yet we still go out on night hunts,” he gives back, because he will not allow Nie Mingjue to reject this chance.

“That’s different,” Nie Mingjue says but Jiang Cheng shakes his head.

“It’s not,” he says but he can see how Nie Mingjue closes himself off. “Do you really want Nie Huaisang to watch you die without even trying?”

That brings Nie Mingjue up short.

“You talked to Huaisang.”

“Yes. And he had some interesting things to say, besides the fact that you have qi deviations,” Jiang Cheng says and now the nerves settle back in.

It’s one thing to have Nie Huaisang tell him that Nie Mingjue still loves him. It’s another to confront Nie Mingjue about it.

“That little rascal,” Nie Mingjue mutters under his breath. “It doesn’t matter,” he then says louder and Jiang Cheng stomach drops, though he doesn’t allow it to crush him, not like the last time they talked.

He likes to think he has grown as a person.

“Doesn’t it?”

“I am dying. You already lost so much. I’m not going to add to that,” Nie Mingjue says, though he can’t quite meet Jiang Cheng’s eyes as he does.

Jiang Cheng can even see where he’s coming from, but it doesn’t change the fact that Nie Mingjue broke his heart a year ago.

“You could have just been honest,” Jiang Cheng lowly says. “And you could let me help now.”

“What if it doesn’t work? What if we—try, all of it, and it doesn’t work?” Nie Mingjue asks and Jiang Cheng can see how scared he truly is.

“Then at least we tried,” Jiang Cheng says and he decides to be brave and bold and he simply steps forwards and hugs Nie Mingjue. “At least I know I tried everything I could. At least we’ll have however long the tries will give us. It’s better than nothing, than knowing we could have done something—could have been something—but didn’t dare to take that step.”

Nie Mingjue is completely rigid in his arms but Jiang Cheng is not going to let him go so easily. He believed Nie Mingjue’s lies once; he’s not going to do it again.

“Let us try,” Jiang Cheng whispers after a long moment and Nie Mingjue slumps in his arms.

“I didn’t think you’d—I wasn’t very nice,” Nie Mingjue admits and Jiang Cheng has to snort at that, because it’s a bit of an understatement.

“You broke my heart,” Jiang Cheng admits and he can feel how Nie Mingjue jerks. “It—never really mended, either. I could never forget you. I still want—” he takes a deep breath.

He didn’t realize being honest would be so difficult.

“I still love you,” he forces out, because he will not let them walk away without being honest to each other this time.

The words barely left his mouth when Nie Mingjue’s arms come up around him and crush him to his chest.

“I’m so sorry for what I said back then,” Nie Mingjue mumbles into his hair and Jiang Cheng’s knees go a little bit weak when he realizes what this means.

What Nie Mingjue feels for him.

“It hurt,” Jiang Cheng admits and Nie Mingjue makes a pained noise. “I see now why you did it, back then, even though I truly don’t like it or think it was the right decision,” Jiang Cheng says and he frowns when Nie Mingjue pushes him away.

His face goes soft when Nie Mingjue cups his cheek in his hand.

“You’ve grown so much,” Nie Mingjue says and Jiang Cheng flushes when he hears the awe in his voice. “And I love you,” Nie Mingjue tells him, before he leans in for a kiss.

Jiang Cheng falls into it—he didn’t realize how much he truly missed Nie Mingjue—but it ends all too soon.

“I will accept your help,” Nie Mingjue mumbles against his lips and Jiang Cheng huffs out a laugh.

“You better accept my courtship too, you buffoon, because I’ll not let you get away a second time,” he decides and watches as Nie Mingjue blinks at him.

“We don’t know if you can find a solution,” he cautiously says but Jiang Cheng shakes his head.

“It doesn’t matter if we do or don’t,” he tells him, even though just the thought of Nie Mingjue dying is almost killing him. “I want this with you, regardless of that.”

“You’re always so much stronger than I give you credit for,” Nie Mingjue mumbles and rests their foreheads together.

“You better remember that,” Jiang Cheng warns him, because if he has to he will out-stubborn death itself for Nie Mingjue.

“I promise,” Nie Mingjue tells him and Jiang Cheng believes him.

And now that they managed to take this step, Jiang Cheng is going to make Nie Mingjue live long enough to grow tired of him.

(It never happens; they both cultivate to immortality and Nie Mingjue regularly teases Jiang Cheng that he’s still waiting for the day when he gets tired of his husband, his heart, his entire world. Jiang Cheng never really learns to handle that and he never grows out of his blush.)

Jin Zixuan courts the hell out of Jiang Yanli and decides to stay in Lotus Pier and marry in instead, since Jin Guangyao is such a perfect heir anyways. It curbs Jin Guangyao's more murderous urges. Mianmian accompanies Wangxian to the Wen establishment in Gusu and never quite leaves again before she becomes the Second Lady Wen. Wangxian still adopt A-Yuan. Xuanli still get A-Ling.

Everyone lives and no one dies because I said so.

Link to my ko-fi on the sidebar!

#bt writes #mingcheng #the untamed #mdzs #canon divergence #break up #temporary though #getting back together #love confessions #meddling brothers #core reveal #fix-it #everyone post sunshot campaign lives #hurt/comfort #fluff

[skellebonez]

Hmmm how about MK and Monkie King with number 1 and number 45

I wanted to write a follow up to a certain fill that got some wonderful art recently too! But then the finale happened and now I made it depressing, sorry. Spoilers for... everything as this is set 3 days after the final episode. This also plays around with the “Sun Wukong is still super immortal and powerful but...” and other theories. (second prompt line is only used as inspiration in fill)

Do not give me that look./ You may technically be an adult, but you’re still my child.

The moment MK's curse was lifted and he was re-aged from 4 years old to adult Wukong acted like nothing had happened at all. No understanding conversations about how his powers could hurt him, no cooking together, no video games, and no accidental couch naps. It was as if the entire day had been undone to the sands of time.

But MK remembered and when the literal next day Wukong announced he was going on vacation... let's just say he was not happy in the slightest. He had tried to voice his objections, citing the Spider Queen as a prime example for why they should be worried, but the immortal monkey just flashed him dual thumbs up with a “Monkey King Out!” and flashed off somewhere MK couldn’t follow.

And now he was back and while MK had been more than happy to get going at first, to push everything that happened deep down inside him and ignore it for as long as possible (why was he doing that, he needed to stop doing that, look where that got them he was a mistake a bad choice as a successor and now he’s barely a successor at all) there was only so long he could go before it became clear there was more wrong than what Sun Wukong was telling him.

There was more wrong with Sun Wukong himself that he refused to admit.

He tried to hide it as well as he could. Despite the heat outside and the fur covering his body he still wore full body clothing. Hiding away the gashes and healing scars that riddled his form now. There was a nick in his eyebrow that had never gone away, and when MK watched closely he could see his mentor sometimes place his hand too far to the left when grabbing something. He walked with a slight limp, though that had improved over the last few days.

And he was quiet. Yes, when someone was addressing him he was “yeah totally, we got this fam, onward westward!”, but when MK caught him alone... especially outside on the deck of the drone, watching the horizon, he was more quiet and still than the Monkie Kid had ever seen him before.

Or maybe he was always like this and now Wukong was too hurt or distracted enough or just didn’t care anymore that MK was finally seeing him.

It was hard to tell with how distant he had been the last three days. Distant in the same way the day after the curse was lifted, but quieter.

“We need to talk,” He said from behind his mentor, watching as Wukong’s tail jumped only a little. Maybe that was just surprise at the words themselves. “Alone. Please.”

He expected Wukong to brush him off, to say “aw bud, can’t it wait? look at the sunset!” despite the sun having set so far they barely had any light left or something else. But instead he straightened up (MK heard the slight crack of his back again, much softer than when he had first heard it after their crash landing, and he wondered how much his back had healed from whatever injury it had) and turned to his student with an odd expression. Somewhat soft and fond and somewhat worried and resigned. Like this was more than just 3 days coming (and it was).

“Let’s... get something to eat first, alright?”

MK didn’t mention that they had eaten just over an hour ago.

~

They sat in the kitchen of the drone, alone under the dimmed lights with cups of tea and sliced fruit between them (mostly for Wukong). Neither had said anything as they prepared the small snack, and neither said anything as they sat down and took sips of their tea.

MK had made it slightly too strong.

“What did you want to ask first?” Wukong started off, picking up a peach slice and biting into it carefully. Slowly. This was something else that was noticed. Before when eating the Monkey King would just shove whatever he was eating in his mouth and MK wasn't certain he tasted it. But now it was like he was trying to make every meal last as long as possible. “There’s... a lot. I can tell.”

“We spent an entire day together and then you left without telling me anything,” MK said firmly, gripping the tea cup in his hands. He squeezed harder, just to see what would happen. It should have shattered... it didn’t. “Why didn’t you just... say something?”

“... I thought I was protecting you,” Wukong admitted honestly, taking another bite of peach. “And the city, the others...  That if I acted distant you wouldn’t wonder where I went a-”

“Wouldn’t wonder wh- no!” MK interrupted, gritting his teeth. “No, Monkey K- Wukong.” The change in how MK addressed him made Wukong jolt, looking at him with wide eyes. He had never called him by his name before now. “We spent an entire day together. You took care of me, helped me when my powers went haywire, helped me make food! You never treated me like that before! You treated me like... Like I was...”

“My kid,” Wukong finished for him, now looking down into his tea cup. “MK... You’re an adult, I know that, but somewhere down the line I started to think of you as... I didn’t know till then I guess, and that terrified me. The idea of you getting hurt that day was the only thing that compared to admitting I got attached to you as more than just my student.”

Had this revelation come sooner MK might have been more surprised. More disbelieving. But after that day and everything that happened once the curse was gone...

“... you have a funny way of showing it,” MK snapped without thinking, eyes widening and jolting upright when he realized what he had said. “I-”

“Don’t,” Wukong said with a shake of his head, sipping his tea with a sigh. “You deserve to be angry with me. I talked to, uh... Pigsy? Sandy too. Tang.... Mei. Your boss in particular laid into me pretty hard after the excitement died down... Don’t know how I went 1000 years without knowing what a ‘lie by omission’ was.”

“... you abandoned me.”

“Yes... I didn’t mean it that way, but that doesn’t change that I did.”

“You didn’t trust me.”

“NO.” Wukong said firmly, voice raised for the first time in days. MK glowered at him. “No, that is one thing I will not back down on. Yes, I lied to you and left you behind and that was a mistake I will need to make up for over a long time, but it wasn’t because I didn’t trust you. I trusted you to take care of yourself, to teach yourself the lessons I left behind, and take care of the city. And you did! You did so much better than I even hoped for, and I hoped so badly that you would do as well as you did! I didn’t leave you there because I didn’t trust you, I left you there because I did... and because I thought I had to do everything myself...” He sighed, running a hand down his face. “I’ve been alone so long... I forgot I could do things with help on my end, I guess...”

“If... If Lady Bone Demon hadn’t finished what she was doing...?”

“Had the Lady Bone Demon not been working faster than I thought she was I would have come back with nothing less than even more trust in you as my successor.”

“... am I even still your successor without...?” MK trailed off, trying to keep his voice level. The tea cup still held strong.

“Yes,” Wukong assured, reaching out to put a hand on MK’s shoulder. MK noticed how he almost missed and corrected his hand. “The staff and my powers alone didn’t make you my successor. I picked you before those, remember? You’re still the Monkie Kid, MK. Nothing is going to change that for me.”

The young man went quiet for a moment, taking a shaky breath. He wanted to ask why he was chosen, what made him so special... but there would be time for that in the future. For now he had gotten at least some of his questions answered. But there was something much more pressing to touch on.

“,,, you’ve been lying to all of us,” he accused suddenly, reaching up and grabbing the wrist of Wukong’s hand on his shoulder before he could pull back. He looked his mentor in the face, watching as Wukong’s eyes widened in realization and horror. “Do not give me that look. Stop... please, stop lying. I’m not stupid, I can see you’re still hurt bad. You’re supposed to be invincible but you came back hurt and... and almost nothing can hurt you!”

Wukong didn’t meet MK’s gaze, looking down at their snack as he breathed heavily and shakily. He knew he was caught, that much was obvious.

“Please... talk to me, for once. I know I do the same thing, I lied to everyone else by not telling them about LBD or the calabash or Macaque coming back-” Wukong tensed at that, an odd sound escaping his throat. “-and look where it got us. We both need to talk. To everyone else. To each other.”

Wukong’s arm was shaking where MK held it, but he didn’t try to pull it back. Not until MK let it go. He sat back down, looking at the table like it held all the secrets of the universe before bringing his hand up to cover his eye. The one with the nicked eyebrow.

“Bud...” Wukong started, biting his lip. There was something wrong in his tone. “I... you were going to find out eventually. I can’t keep this up forever, not like Macaque can.” MK tensed at the mention of the other immortal monkey, watching as Wukong did not move his hand. “This takes a lot of focus. And... with my invincibility partly gone-”

“What?” MK asked, so soft he thought Wukong hadn’t heard him.

“... You didn’t get my powers from the staff, MK,” Wukong said. “And they don’t just duplicate. That’s not how they work. From day one I have been... siphoning my powers to you. Bit by bit. As you got better at controlling them I would give you more until I felt I didn’t need them myself anymore. When I locked away your invincibility I just undid what I had given you and slowed down the transfer... you’d been half invincible for weeks.”

“No...” MK started, slowly realizing what Wukong was implying. “No, no you’re lying again! This is a terrible, horrible prank!” Despite wanting to be quiet before MK found himself yelling. “Say you’re still lying!”

“No,” Wukong shook his head, looking down at the scar on his arm that was now visible as his sleeve had slipped down. “Most of this will probably heal eventually, except maybe one thing, and I’m still immortal! There’s no undoing that no matter what I do. I’m not dying any time soon. But my transformations? Cloning? My cloud...” He trailed off at that, breaking in a shaky breath. “You didn’t even get to use that... Lady Bone Demon took all of it when she took it from you. I still have some powers, some of my transformations and hair stuff and some invincibility... but I’m not the same overpowered Monkey King you met when you freed DBK...”

And as he trailed off, Wukong lowered his hand. Something flickered, something familiar. Too familiar. Reminiscent of Macaque’s shadows but brighter. And after there was something else reminiscent. In reverse.

MK had only seen it for a split second, when all of Macaque’s glamor magic had dropped. The milky white right eye and the scar over it that was left behind from his battle with Wukong 500 years ago.

And now Wukong looked at him with a similarly white left eye, a similar scar that wasn’t just a nicked eyebrow running down his face.

It makes sense in retrospect, much more. MK supposed that when you lose an eye you lose depth perception and it takes a while to get used to judging where things are.

“... what happened before you came in to save me?” MK asked quietly, watching as more of the glamor fell with a curse from Wukong. There was another nick on his cheek that was still healing, a piece of one of his ears had been ripped off too. No doubt there were more injuries under his clothes that Wukong hadn’t let anyone see.

“She has Macaque under her control,” Wukong said plainly, groaning as he held his head. “Damn, that... letting that down...” He groaned again and before MK could realize what was happening Wukong’s eyes rolled back into his head and he slipped from his chair to the floor.

“WUKONG!” MK shot up, rushing over to his side and yelling over his shoulder in the hopes someone would hear. “Pigsy! D-DADSY! Help, SOMETHING’S WRONG!”

When Pigsy rushed in with the others in tow Wukong hadn't regained consciousness.

#and i shall leave it there because I am clearly evil #monkie kid #lego monkie kid #gen fic #monkey king #sun wukong #mk #qi xiaotian #lmk spoilers #i have too may theories and this is just one #prompt fill

[mrstaeminlee]

Mission Complete Ch. 1

You had two goals in life. One: Complete your squad training without dying. Two: Fuck Levi Ackerman

Pairings: Levi/f!reader

Warnings: Swearing, eventual smut, lmk if I need to add anything~

You really had no idea what the fuck prompted you to join the military. Maybe it was to find some redeeming grace in the eyes of your dying mother, maybe it was because you wanted a life with as much stability as one could muster, maybe it was because you just fucking hated farming.

Whatever it was, you wished to any God that would listen that you would have buried it in the ground along with the countless friends and family members you had lost to the Titans.

The first week of the cadet corps was everything you knew you would hate and more. Between the foul smelling breath of the commandant threatening to make you puke up the bread you had managed to steal, to working your body to the point of sneaking away from one on one combat to puke behind the bushes, after seven days you had almost decided that maybe digging in the dirt for the rest of your miserable life wasn't so bad.

There was only one thing stopping you from making your own walk of shame to the wagon of regret.

Levi Ackerman.

AKA the man you fantasized about every night when you managed to find enough strength to finger yourself below the covers.

He was a couple of inches shorter, true, but you were willing to break your rule of not fucking anyone shorter than you for him.

You had only see him twice in your life by complete chance, the first had been when you happened to be by the gates in time to see the Scouts returning from what was undoubtably another failed mission, and you decided that what the hell, might as well have a look at Humanity's Strongest in the flesh. Granted, it hadn't been his best day; his green cloak was splattered with what could only have been the blood of his comrades as it didn't look as if he had a single scratch on him, but he looked like a god, albeit one that had just gotten his ass kicked out of heaven. His eyes seemed to be sunken in, and even from how far away you were you found yourself shivering from the intensity of his dead gaze. You weren't sure what possessed you to lift your hand as he eyes moved through the crowd, looking for whom, you didn't know, or what possessed him to raise those eyes to you, but you found yourself lost in haunted silver as you gave a soft wave. The way he seemed to look straight through you, not even seeing you even as you stared at each other, was enough to convince you that you needed to do whatever it took to see this man again.

You enlisted the start of the next week.

The second time was completely by chance.

Everyone was desperate for military recruits, and desperate times called for desperate calls to important people to make appearances in front of people that were well, not very important.

Erwin Smith, Dot Pixis, Nile Dawk, Levi Ackerman, Hange Zoe, Rico Brzenska, and even Darius Zackly graced the entrance ceremony of the new Cadets, and you thanked whatever bone in your body made you a teacher's pet because you had a front row seat to the man that had plagued your thoughts every single day in the past week. His appearance was brief and he didn't speak, just stared at the fresh faces, some cocky, some blank, but mostly terrified new recruits, and you could have sworn that you saw a tinge of sadness hidden in the silver, as if he could already foresee the deaths of everyone in front of him. He followed after Erwin immediately after the blond gave his speech about thanking you all for making the decision to serve humanity and you fought the urge to roll your eyes. 'I'm not doing this for humanity, I'm doing this for dick,' you thought as you signed your life away to this shit camp for the next two years.

How one man who was fucking shorter than you managed to convince you to trade the next 728 days, 14 hours, 37 minutes, and 15 seconds of your life for physical and emotional hell was beyond you, and yet here you were, standing proud and slightly hungover from the pre-graduation celebrating you did with Eren, Mikasa, and Armin the night before. They hadn't initially been your first choice in friends, but Armin was nice to you from the start and once you very quickly learned that flirting with Eren in front of Mikasa was not in your best interest, you had decided that they were alright; especially when Eren's Titan form had been revealed. If anyone was going to have to get close enough to keep an eye on Eren, it would be Captain Levi.

The very man you were thinking of walked on the stage along with Nile Dawk, Dot Pixis, and Erwin Smith as the three took turns giving their pitch. You hadn't made the top 10 but were happy for your friends that were, you were content with your place as 13th. In a class of over 500, you still considered it a win, and if your parents were still alive you knew they'd be proud. As the remaining members of the top 10 who had opted to join the elitest MP's went off to talk to Nile and the other scared fucks ran off to sign themselves to the Garrison regiment, you and around a hundred other members stayed where you were and you licked your lips, forcing your heart rate to calm itself. 'Calm down, you can't work your way up to fucking the strongest man in the world if you die of heart attack before-'

"Listen up you little shits."

Oh my God he was speaking you've never heard his voice before it's so fucking-

"Most of you are going to die. Are you prepared for that?"

Ah, so Humanity's Strongest was a sweet talker.

"Erwin is making me come up here and talk, so we're all going to pretend that I'm saying some meaningful bullshit. But here's the truth: If you aren't strong, you will die, and it will be painful. Imagine the thought of seeing your childhood friend's entrails being slurped up like spaghetti by a Titan, while the entire time he's conscious enough to reach his hand out for you, and you are able to do nothing for him because you spent exactly one second hesitating, or you were a moment too late to draw your blades, or react to the threat. If that scares you, then do us all a favor and put down that half assed salute and sell your soul to the Garrison where you'll spend your days fucking the best whores for a discount if you're in uniform and getting drunk on the clock."

After his touching speech you and your now dripping panties decided that you had indeed made the right decision in selling yourself to the Scouts.

One month later

It was moments like these, where you weren't quite trashed but definitely more than tipsy, that you had never been happier to be part of the survey corps. I mean, you were in peak physical shape (you still couldn't believe you had abs. Abs!), you were hot, you were fit, and you knew Sasha Braus, who had managed to steal a few bottles of top shelf liquor from the higher ups.

You were also horny as fuck. It had been over a year since you'd gotten laid, and you were using the dildo you'd bought on your first trip back into town as often as you brushed your teeth (twice a day, you didn't fuck with cavities). You briefly thought about enlisting the help of one of your current drinking buddies but after seeing your choices you decided to leave it to old faithful hidden in your pillowcase. There was Jean, who albeit was pretty hot even with the long face but was so in love with Mikasa it made you want to vomit. Marco, who you were almost one hundred percent sure was gay; Connie, who held the sexual appeal of a pile of horse shit, although he was super nice. Reiner almost looked promising but you knew underneath those stocky muscles was a shitload of emotional baggage you didn't want, and Bertholt was head over heels for Annie of all people. That left Armin and Eren. Eren you already knew was out, while your slut senses told you he'd be a great lay, you weren't quite ready for your life to end at the hands of Mikasa. That left Armin. You tilted your head, staring at him as you sipped on your god forsaken concoction and debated fucking him or not. He wasn't outright sexy, but he'd filled in well during the two years of training and you had seen glimpses of his surprisingly impressive muscles under his white shirt. He might actually do. He'd be shy as hell and you would have to lead everything, not to mention he'd probably cum in less than a minute, but it just might-

“Did you guys know that Captain Levi is a virgin?"

You spit the mix of vodka, rum, and whatever mixer Reiner had put in all over the face of the person you had just considered fucking.

"I'm sorry, what?" You turned your attention to Christa, apologetically handing Armin a napkin and patting his cheek.

Christa blushed at the attention and scooted closer to Ymir, who threw an arm around her shoulders and gave Reiner her customary 'If you even look at her weird, I will gut you' look. "W-Well, recently I started helping out in the infirmary because they've been short handed. You all know, it's that time of year where everyone has to get looked at and they give us that sheet of paper to fill out with all of our personal information to keep track of potential diseases. I was in charge of filing the paperwork the day they brought all of the officers in, and on the paper they ask you how many sexual partners you've had and Captain Levi wrote 0. But you guys, you have to promise not to tell anyone! This is private information, if it somehow gets out that I told you this I'll get into a lot of trouble!"

Ymir chuckled, placing a sloppy kiss at the top of the blonde's head. "Don't worry about a thing sweet cheeks, if any of these miscreants here says a word I'll kill them for ya. But we don't have to worry about that at all, now do we?" She glared at each person in the room, who all looked as if Christa were a ghost, and slowly shook their heads.

Your life was changed.

Captain Levi Ackerman.

The strongest man in the world.

Rumored former thug of the Underground.

The person responsible for killing as many Titans as a hundred soldiers.

The person whose squad every scout dreamed of being on, was a virgin.

You screeched out a laugh before you could help it, the alcohol doing nothing to try and make you quiet yourself as you fell onto your back laughing, cup long forgotten as it rolled across the floor. The person who initiated your drive to join the military in the first place, the person you literally dreamed of fucking, had never gotten his dick wet.

Clearly, you had your work cut out for you.

If you managed to live through the sight of Ymir reaching over to punch you in the face to shut you up.

#lmk if y'all like it plssssss #we're just gonna age everyone up here lol #I've been thirsting after Armin as a 30 yr old college professor who blushes when he sees you in your bra but chokes you out during sex #aot x reader #snk x reader #Levi ackerman #Levi Ackerman x reader #Levi x reader #Levi x reader smut #Levi smut #captain levi

[mari-beau]

GIVE ME A REASON: PART SIX - A Rogue One Fanfiction

This is a shorter installment, and maybe pointless… maybe I’m dragging this out too long… But also, who cares, I’m doing this for fun. I just love playing with them!

Read on AO3

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Title: Give Me A Reason: Part Six

Genre: Hurt/Comfort

Characters: Jyn Erso POV, Cassian Andor

Pairing: Cassian/Jyn (mostly pre-ship?)

Spoilers: Rogue One; Episode IV A New Hope

Setting: Post-Rogue One AU (Cassian & Jyn live); Also during/post A New Hope

Warnings: Some coarse language. References to wounds. And… Cuddling?

Words: 1,720

Story Summary: Jyn’s entire universe has been turned on its head, so maybe she’s clinging a little too hard to the one thing she feels certain of (strangely enough) as she tries to figure out her place in the galaxy. And maybe she’s being a little overprotective of a wounded captain.

Also can be found on AO3.

The Death Star had come for them.

Again.

But Jyn couldn’t bring herself to care. It did seem a little strange to have been spared the last time only to probably be destroyed this time, barely a week later. But either way, it was the end to her life she now knew to be her fate, or whatever. It just felt right. It just was. Not the Death Star specifically, but,

Jyn Erso would die in Cassian Andor’s arms.

Whether it should’ve been on Scarif. Or it was here on Yavin 4. Or the next day. Or thousands of days in the future.

And there was a sort of peace in knowing that. One that allowed her to climb into his bed, slide her arms around him, and bury her face in his shoulder. He stirred and her heart skipped a beat. It was easier when he was unconscious, to consider how she felt about him, how she’d been attracted to men before, even had something akin to a relationship with one or two, but it had never felt like this.

“Jyn…?”

“Yes, it’s me. We’re on the base on Yavin 4. Safe. In your quarters.” It was easier to preempt any confusion or alarm Cassian experienced when he woke from his heavy, partially drugged, mostly just exhausted from his body’s healing, sleep.

“How long?” he asked, then realized there were static-laden voices broadcasting over the basewide intercom. “What’s going on?”

“You’ve been asleep for 12 hours,” Jyn said, moving closer and partially on top of him to prevent him from trying to get up in a rush and falling flat on his face. Also, she was admittedly afraid on some level, afraid to be alone and facing death. When he was near her, when they were physically entwined in some way, she felt like everything would be okay. Even if she died, if it was in Cassian’s arms, then everything would be okay. Irrational, yes. But that didn’t make it any less her truth.

“The Death Star is here,” she said, once she could tell he was awake enough to understand, not muddled by pain meds. “The Alliance is scrambling their forces to engage. They’re leaving the comms open, since you know…”

“We’re all dead if they fail.”

His arms wrapped around her and engulfed her in his warm embrace. Cassian Andor, a man who, she didn’t think she was wrong to guess, hadn’t received much at all in the way of affection in his life, somehow was so good at holding a person he made the pain of the universe go away, made the entire universe fade away except for his hands on her body, gentle and undemanding but also firm and reassuring, his breath hot on her neck, sending shivers down her spine, and his body beneath hers, so strong despite his injuries.

“Are you okay?” she asked, remembering the physical state of him.

“Mmm… Yes.” His hands tightened their grip on her side and shoulder, reflexively, a gentle squeeze as he murmured into her neck. “Feels good.”

He probably meant he felt fine, but oh, yes, it did feel good. Or maybe he was still quite medicated?

“My weight isn’t putting pressure on your injuries?” Jyn asked. “Maybe I should…”

“No.” Somehow he managed to pull her further into him, her breasts flattening against his chest, her hip practically fusing to his, her breath hitching momentarily and then joining the rhythm of his own breaths...in and out… in and out… in and out...

Cassian sighed, made a frustrated, growling sound.

“I need to use the ‘fresher,” he said, loosening his grip on her.

Jyn rolled off from him, swung her legs around to sit on the side of the cot and waited to see if Cassian could manage to stand. He slid to sit on the edge of the bed next to her and took a moment. She didn’t press him, though an instinct inside of her wanted to offer assistance, wanted to take care of him, wanted to ease the pain and struggle his recovery was.

He stood, again pausing for a moment, then walked slowly across the small room to his private refresher facilities. Apparently, it was one of very few benefits to his officer’s rank, for the small quarters were nothing more than a glorified closet. But she supposed it spared him from having to sleep in a large barracks with a bunch of others, not that it would’ve deterred Jyn in the least from crawling into his bed.

Part of her felt like she shouldn’t watch his laborious movements, out of respect, but she couldn’t look away. What if he needed her?

Force, what if he didn’t need her? Not like she needed him? Aw, fuck. She needed him.

She watched the muscles in his naked back twitch, stiff from inactivity and injury. But her eyes were inevitably drawn to the perfectly uniform lines of small circular marks running down his spine. She knew there was a matching sort of trail along his ribs. Injections of some sort of bacta cocktail meant to speed the fusing of the fractures in his vertebrae and ribs, injections straight into the bone. How painful would that have been if he’d been conscious, she couldn’t help but wonder, couldn’t help but want to wrap her smaller body around as much of Cassian as she could, run her hands gently over his scars, old and new, make sure his wounds were healing and his bruises fading, hear him sigh contentedly against her skin, hold him forever.

As he disappeared into the ‘fresher, Jyn realized she was hopeless.

Cassian Andor had taught her about hope. And had made her absolutely hopeless at the same time.

But why fret about it? What did it matter?

Jyn was used to dealing with life moment by moment, day by day. And she might not have many more moments, anyway.

The loud, static-laden voices crackling over the basewide intercom announced the launch of yet another squadron of fighters, then abruptly switched over to some ship’s communication officer announcing visual confirmation of the target. The Death Star.

Looming on the horizon like a moon, a harbinger of death, bringer of eternal night. Cold, austere, which made it somehow more terrifying, somehow worse than staring down an angry brute about to put a knife in you. It was just so inevitable, indomitable. Made her feel so small, insignificant, so alone.

“Do you mind if I turn this off?”

Jyn startled. How had she not noticed Cassian reappear in the small room? He pointed at the comm, which was broadcasting the prelims of a battle to determine all their fates.

She didn’t want to listen to it either.

“Please do,” she said, already feeling less… alone.

She watched Cassian lean over to switch the speaker off, wincing in sympathy with him as he straightened again, taking a deep breath that expanded his chest and shifted the muscles beneath his skin, mesmerizing her more than a little. His mostly naked body preoccupied far too many of her thoughts.

But what else had she been supposed to do? She’d woken up drenched in sweat that first night in his quarters, had to strip out of the heavy infirmary clothes, found Cassian tossing in his sleep, nearly feverish, removed the sweltering clothes from his body, as well. Little did she know, how enthralling she’d find his lean muscles, the shape of his body, the feel of his bare skin, his-

His hands cupped her face and Jyn looked up at Cassian Andor, his kriffing gorgeous dark eyes fixed on her. His fingers swept some stray hair from her forehead, tucked it behind her ear, returned to swipe gently over the nearly-healed scar above her eyebrow, in her hairline.

“Are you okay?” A knot formed in her throat. Cassian was a good man, despite every questionable thing he’d done and tortured himself over. Of course he would care about her wellbeing. It didn’t mean-

“Ow!”

“Your blaster wound still hurts?” His fingers feathered over her shoulder, not touching the freshly healed injury this time.

“It does when you jab your finger in it.” She grabbed his wrist and tugged his hand away, throwing him off balance so that he fell into her and she managed to catch him and ease him onto the bed, right where she wanted him.

A chuckle escaped him and he smiled, making something flutter inside of her. And then he was reaching for her, pulling her close.

His embrace was everything she’d never known she’d wanted. His hands stroked her back and he buried his face in her neck, nuzzling a sensitive spot just behind and below her ear.

She sighed, wrapping an arm around his middle and burying the fingers of her other hand in his messy, soft hair. She pressed gently as she massaged his scalp down to his nape, eliciting a hum of pleasure from him that vibrated against her bare skin and into her flesh.

If this was to be her last moment, Jyn held no regrets. It was a good moment.

“Jyn?” His voice had a lethargic but happy edge to it, thick and low and sleepy. She could sympathize.

“Yes?” She twisted her finger in a lock of hair curling about his neck.

“Please don’t let me sleep so long this time.” His whisper tickled her ear. “No more than 10 hours. Okay? Please?”

He wanted her to wake him up in 10 hours… Like there wasn’t a battle raging in space nearby… Like he didn’t believe they were quite probably going to die soon, incinerated by a weapon her own father helped design. Like he didn’t believe they were going to lose, after all. Somehow, he believed they would be there, together, ten hours from this moment.

Hope.

Such a man as Cassian… The most unexpected thing she’d discovered about him was his belief in hope. That he possessed any at all after all he had done, all he had seen. And then he’d given it to her.

And again, it warmed her, deep inside, that small seed of hope. She snuggled closer to the man, hoping for something she couldn’t even begin to conceive of. But yearned for it, with every fiber of her being.

#fic: Give Me A Reason #Rogue One #fanfiction #rebelcaptain #my fic #Cassian Andor #Jyn Erso #Cassian x Jyn

[lilyharvord]

If you get the chance can you write a short fanfic about mare having baby fever? LOL the idea just popped in my head of like all her friends having kids and baby clara making it extreme and at first shes all like no kids and suddenly is like to cal gimme like 10, and ofc hes happy to do so :)

I love conflicted Mare. :))))

Baby Fever Drabble

“He’s gorgeous Lou.” Ruth announced as she held her fifth grandchild, and bounced him until he cooed and then gurgled. Turning to face the window so the light shone down on the massive blanket she was cradling, Ruth glanced him over again. The room was mostly empty, a majority of the cousins had been shuttled out to the little café downstairs to grab breakfast, and the rest of Mare’s family had gone with them. It was just her, Tramy, Lou, their daughter Elowyn, Bree’s eldest son Wes, Clara, Farley, and Ruth. It was nice though, the room had been so loud a couple minutes ago. Silence was precious by this point.

Glancing over her shoulder, Ruth grinned at her daughter. “Mare have you held him yet?”

Glancing up from listening to Wes as he chattered her ear off about the frogs he’d caught over the weekend with Kilorn, Mare shook her head. Next to her, Clara was napping in Farley’s lap after trying to stay awake all night waiting for her cousin to arrive, and stirred before sighing and settling again.

Before Mare could protest Ruth had already slipped the baby into her arms. “Oh, um, I—” He was heavy and Mare had to stifle a grimace as she imagined how much Lou’s back must have hurt the entire pregnancy. She seemed pretty content now though, and Tramy looked more like a bird puffing out it’s chest, as if he did anything for the past nine months. Their daughter Elowyn was napping in his arms exhausted just like Clara. How had her family gotten so big in the past few years? It seemed like the number of nieces and nephews had multiplied exponentially when she turned her back for a day. First Bree and Tora had Wes, and then Elowyn came along, and then Bree and Tora had announced the twins, and now there was this new baby. Even Sara and Julian had one of their own, a toddler now who stared at her like Julian used to over his desk. Everytime she turned around there was a new baby, and she would be lying if she said she hadn’t felt an… itch.

Because that was really all it was for a bit, just an itch. She scratched it by watch Wes and Elowyn, and babysitting Clara for a day. But after the twins and this baby, that itch was like a crawling wave all over her body. It drove her insane that she was thinking about it all the time. She’d think about it for hours while lying in bed, just watching Cal sleep. She’d think about it while making coffee, and while she showered and while she trained. She had started noting any new baby at the little market near her apartment every time she went. And a week ago, she’d almost not taken that little white pill that ensured everything stayed exactly as it was. When she had done that, she realized there might be a problem.

Her nephew yawned, stretching tiny pink lips into a perfect circle before closing his eyes. Ruth had been right, he was gorgeous. With little tufts of bronze hair, and delicate cheek bones that no baby really needed. Honestly, it was surprising Lou had let anyone else hold him. If this was her baby, Mare wouldn’t have let anyone near him. Her baby would be a lot prettier, she decided right then and there. Not that it mattered, she wasn’t planning on having a baby… ever. Mare Barrow was not built to be a mother. She was a wonderful aunt, because she could give the baby back whenever she needed to, and she could leave for the front whenever she was called for like she had to do. A baby did not fit into that mix.

But a baby that was half her and half Cal? She’d been thinking about it again yesterday while Cal was leaned over the sink shaving. It would be a boy, she decided that while he ran the razor over his jaw. He’d have Cal’s height, and build, and maybe a few of his other features. Those amber eyes wouldn’t hurt, and that smile? Well, maybe not the smile. That smile is what made her fall in love with Cal, and she could not deal with a string of broken hearts trailing her son around. Because without a doubt he would have her track record in that department. He’d have a face that was impossible to say no to, and a laugh that made her world a little bit brighter every time he let it loose. She’d name him Shade. It had been something itching at the back of her mind ever since her brothers had decided not to name any of their sons that.

“Now that is a sight.” Farley teased, making Mare startle and wake the baby in her arms.

Glaring at her friend, who smirked in response, Mare grumbled. “What’s a sight?”

“That face tells me you’re weighing the consequences and options.” Farley at least had the decency to drop her voice when she said that. It still brought all the blood to Mare’s cheeks at the insinuation, and the fact that she had been so obviously caught. She recovered quick enough that she wasn’t completely embarrassed though.

“What consequences and options?”

“Nine months doesn’t seem too long anymore does it, Mare?” Farley shrugged as she shifted Clara and went to rise from the plastic couch they’d occupied for the better part of three hours. “And besides,” bending down so her next words were for Mare only, Farley tilted her head in mock consideration, “Making it will probably be the fun part for you.”

If she didn’t need both hands to hold a baby, she would have actually slapped Farley for that. Mare’s neck joined her cheeks in burning bright red, and she tried to shrink away from that searching smile.

“You were thinking about it.”

“I wasn’t thinking about anything.” Mare grumbled before getting up as well, forcing Farley back a step so they didn’t smack foreheads. She stole across the room and deposited Tramy’s son in Lou’s arms, before trying to slip out of the room at the same speed. But Farley knew her too well, and Mare cursed her short legs once more when Farley’s strides caught up with hers.

“Just admit it, you have baby fever.” Farely teased as she shifted Clara to a better hold so she could nudge Mare’s shoulder. Not expecting the push, Mare stumbled to the side, and glared as Farley laughed.

Crossing her arms and standing her ground, she looked Farley up and down. The general was still beautiful, and would remain that way for the rest of her life probably. Even balancing a child on her hip, she was imposing. Mare twisted her lip at the thought. With a baby on her hip, Mare knew she would be far less terrifying.

“I don’t have baby fever because I don’t want kids.”

“For someone who doesn’t want them, you spend an awful lot of time staring wistfully at your husband while he plays with them.” Farley raised a brow, and smothered another smile which only made Mare raise her chin in argument. Even if she was right, she didn’t have to state that out loud within earshot of anyone.

“I don’t stare wistfully.” She argued, the words clipped and sharp. Like Farley, she had her own military tone now. It normally refuted any argument before it could begin, but Diana Farley had never been afraid of her. And that was not going to change with a few sharp words.

Rolling her eyes with a mocking nod, Farley turned on her heel to continue down the hallway. “Of course Mare.”

“I don’t!” Mare shouted at her back, drawing the attention of a nurse at one of the stations. Glaring in the woman’s direction, Mare stomped after Farley. It was pointless to refute whatever thought her friend had, because she wasn’t wrong. Mare just refused to admit it. She did sometimes catch herself sitting on her parent’s back porch watching Cal play with the horde of cousins. He never got tired of it, and the way he laughed when he was with them sometimes bit at her heart. They all adored him, and followed him around as much as the young Ardents had at the Notch. She knew he’d caught her watching a few times, and had given her a knowing, bittersweet smile she never returned.

And sure they’d… talked about things like that. But never seriously. It was always after one too many glasses of wine when they were sprawled out of the couch half-dressed and teasing. Fantasizing about kids was fine then, because they still didn’t physically exist. And Cal had never made an overt moves or comments to tell her that he wanted to have kids right this second. What if she was the only one feeling the itch this strongly and he shot down her idea? He was just as practical, if not more than her sometimes. They both knew the truth and the risk of having a child far outweighed the idea of having it. There were too many variables they couldn’t control, too many horrible outcomes that they’d face. It was better to just fantasize.

“It’s too dangerous.” Mare spoke quietly, and even though she thought her friend wasn’t listening, it got Farley’s attention.

Pausing so Mare could catch up, Farley raised her brow again. “What isn’t dangerous in this life Barrow?”

“This would be even more so. The Silver Secession has not let up, and with the State still in a precarious position—”

“The States will always be in a precarious position. It’s the nature of that mess of a country.” Farley argued with a huff. She wasn’t wrong, but it didn’t change the fact that Cal was always going to be running back and forth to uphold his duties as a general.

Pursing her lips in irritation, Mare glanced to the side to avoid Farley’s stare. No matter how many times she faced it, it still cut her to the core. Those diamond hard eyes were too perceptive, and they always found the truth, even when Mare buried it deep.

“I think there is something else keeping you. You’ve never been worried about the Secession and you’ve never been worried about Cal and the States.” Farley tilted her head to the side before shifting Clara again. The young girl blinked awake, honey eyes still dreamy as she looked at her mother and then at Mare. “But you’re obviously not ready to talk about it.”

Shoving her hands in the pockets of her jacket, Mare fidgeted with her ring. She knew there was a truth, a deep one she didn’t want to admit. A fear that ran deeper than the pestering Silver Secession and the nagging worry when Cal was gone in the States. It had haunted her for her whole life, and it would probably continue to do so.

“When you want to talk about it,” Farley whispered, her voice slipping into that gentle tone she so rarely used, “I am all ears Barrow.”

Mare considered it for half a second and opened her mouth to say something, only for the doors to burst open next to them and the twins to race by her, shouting like banshees. Clara perked up immediately, and squirmed until Farley sighed and set her down to race after the rest of the cousins. They all skidded around the corner together, pushing and giggling as they went. Craning her neck to make sure they went the right way, Farley sighed before turning back to Mare with an expectant eye.

Bree’s shoved his way between them though, grinning down at Mare and saying, “Pardon me, didn’t see you there.”

“Very funny. The short jokes died when we were ten, Bree.” Mare let a few sparks snap at his elbow as he tried to avoid her. Yelping at the sensation, he rubbed the spot and glowered like a child at her.

“Glad I’m not the only who gets that punishment.” Cal’s warmth always proceeded him, and this time was no different. Sliding an arm around Mare’s shoulders he pulled her close. “Is Lou finally sleeping?”

Pushing Bree along when he tried to linger, Farley responded for her. “Doubtful. The baby will want to eat, and then he’ll have to be passed around like a sack of potatoes for a little bit longer before she can sleep.”

“Sounds miserable.” Cal’s hand slid along her shoulders until his fingers brushed along Mare’s neck, tracing scars that he knew like a roadmap. The touch sent a shiver down her spine, and brought goosebumps to the surface. Glancing up, she considered him for a heartbeat. Maybe he hadn’t been joking when he told her she’d look lovely pregnant, when she’d insisted she wouldn’t. Maybe he had been serious when he said they should consider moving to the same neighborhood as Bree and Tora. Maybe he had been feeling this insatiable itch just as long as her.

When she finally dragged her eyes away from his profile, it was to see Farley struggling to hide a smirk. Even though it was completely childish, Mare stuck her tongue out at her bitterly.

“I obviously missed whatever just happened.” Cal’s hand slid away from her, but not before Mare caught it and laced her fingers with his.

“Farley’s being annoying, which is why we’re leaving.” Mare announced before pulling him toward the doors. Farley only laughed in response to her.

Throwing one more good glare over her shoulder as she pushed Cal through the doors, Mare stuck her tongue out one more time.

#(*ask lily*) #(*shut up lily*) #love me a good Mare and Farley relationship #snaps for Mare having baby fever #cause she would #and her family would be fucking massive #give me ALL the cousins #red queen #glass sword #kings cage #war storm #broken throne #post broken throne #technically this is a drabble #right? #its shorter than everything I normally write #But its still sweet ((: #also #I've got smut for ya'll #its coming #marecal #THE eternal ship #cause they did it ya'll #they made it through all the bullshit #I'm the captain of canon now #and I say there are 50 million Barrow cousins

[misterghostfrog]

So I was reading someones post about what if Jon went back in time to save everyone, and he managed it. He kept Martin away from Prentiss, he Kept Sasha alive, Tim never even know the unknowing existed and he never had Jons paranioa to ruin him. But They never knew, there was never those moments of bonding between the terror. Martin never had that moment when he realized Jon wasn’t just his shitty boss. And sure the assistants were close, but there was no room for Jon. And it gave me thoughts.

Under the cut bc I started to Ramble and it got Long, warning; its Big Sad Hours down there. No happy endings here.

Jon solves all these problems before they start, he fixes it without anyone ever knowing. The assistants are blissfully unaware, maybe he stops sending them on ‘real’ statement followup. The archives are a normal, safe job for all of them. Sometimes it gets too much, pretending he doesn’t know them. So he’ll record, mostly for himself. Sometimes for them, though he’ll never share. He sticks them all in Gertrude's old storage locker, where he knows they’ll never be found.

And then something goes wrong. He knows the unknowing can’t work, of course it can’t. But Nikola doesn’t, none of the avatars know. And Nikola still wants her skin. She still wants his skin, actually. And she’s not afraid to play dirty to get it, she’s hands-on like that. Because why stop at the archivist when he’s got so many lovely ignorant assistants?

So he fixes the problem before she can make good on her threats, she can’t be killed that easily. He knows. But she died during the unknowing, and there are some pretty simple steps to follow to replicate that result. He knows the easiest way to make sure it works is also a death sentence for him. But that’s a simple choice to make. Alright no, it’s not. He’s terrified of death, of dying. He doesn’t want to die, but he can lie to himself. He can delude and say maybe he’ll get another chance. And just in case, he makes sure the assistants know they can quit now.

Tim, Sasha, and Martin don’t know what to make of the news that their boss died mysteriously in an explosion. They know even less what to make of the notes he left them.

Clearly the ramblings of a very unstable man. They all knew Jon was a bit off but this... Well, they all know there’s something weird about the job. But the apocalypse? Really? 

Sasha believes some of it, she’s worked in artifact storage. She’s seen what this stuff can do. But, well. Jon’s never come off as the most stable person, and with no proper proof to back up any of this there’s no reason for them to follow suit. After all she’s known lots of people to quit the institute, she even knows for a fact that Eric Delano did it when she was rooting through employee records for perfectly rational legal reasons.

Then Martin gets called up to Elias’s office, and gets the news he’s the new head archivist.

He tries to turn it down, but he’s offered a pay-raise and a promise that he can step down anytime if he doesn’t feel suited to the position. Elias just sees so much potential in him.

Martin tries to feel flattered and not thoroughly terrified by the way Elias says potential. He takes the promotion, after all, he can always step down if it’s too much.

He offers as much when he finds out Sasha probably should have been given the position, but she turns him down. It’s not his fault their boss is a sexist old bastard, and at this rate he’d probably just turn around and give it to Tim.

Things are normal for a few months. Until slowly a strange noise starts to be heard around the archives, a weird sort-of squishing sound with no source. Along with a metallic scent of meat. 

An infestation, of course. They’re getting the problem worked on, or so Elias says. But aside from the occasional exterminator coming in to ‘take a look’ nothing ever seems to change. Weird statements start showing up on Martins desk, surrounding meat and twisted up things, eaten alive and wrong. Suddenly he understands how Jon went off his rocker so easily.

It’s hard to believe all this supernatural stuff as it’s suddenly getting crammed down his throat, after so long of the archives being normal in almost every sense of the word it’s like missing a step on the staircase. The more awful statements he finds- that Tim and Sasha confirm -the more he realizes how much his boss was hiding from them.

He wants to quit, he thinks about it, he tries to think about it. But he just, can’t.

It’s another or two month before it happens. Meat and bone and gristle erupt from the floor, taking on horrible mangled shapes of almost-humans reaching out with hands full of teeth and hungry.

They all survive, though Tim gets eaten up a bit more than the rest of them. And they’ll all have nightmares for the rest of their lives. They’re alive.

And they find Gertrude’s body, though none of them know how to feel about it. They’ve realized by now there’s something to Jon’s nonsensical ramblings. And they’re long past regretting not quitting before this all happened.

There’s a section of document storage that got uncovered during the cleaning,an old cot that was shoved behind some of the shelves, and a box that had a few sets of clothes, an old teacup, and a key. The cleaners say they burned the clothes, but the cup and the Key are given to Martin for him to keep to return to whoever left their things in the archive.

Neither of those items belong to Tim or Sasha, so they all assume they belonged to Jon.

They start following Jons footsteps, they find out he was a suspect in an arson case surrounding Carlos Vittery’s old apartment. Nobody was there except one unidentified body. He was arrested for trespassing on a dock, though no charges were filed. There was an incident that ended in the near arrest of one Jude Perry, though no charges were filed and she soon fell off the grid. And then he exploded using C4 he had no way of getting, Nothing concrete, no proper genuine evidence except a series of weird encounters their dead boss had.

Martin Decides to try and hunt down Jude Perry, it takes some time. He has a very nice cup of tea with one Micheal Crew. Who points him in a general direction and is just a bit weird about tall buildings.

Martin finds Jude, and asks her about Jon. She laughs at him, of course. But she tells him anyway. Jon was trying to have her arrested- no, not arrested. Killed. Officer Tonner would have seen to that, he knew one of the Hunt could do her in, well. At least of Officer Tonner’s sort anyway. Jude resisted, naturally. He escaped her clutches only barely, by running. Like a coward. And she escaped the policewoman by playing innocent. She’s still on her tail though, damn dog. It’ll be a long time before she’d rid of her, but she knows better than to run. Oh, he doesn’t know what any of that means, does he? Oh he really doesn’t, how sweet. Just a little baby archivist- she was going to kill him after this. But watching him stumble into his own ruin will be so much more fun.

She sends him on his way with a burn.

Martin is terrified, he genuinely tries to quit. Almost manages it before his computer shuts off. The others try too, and then they all have a lovely freak-out together.

They decide to try and talk to Detective Tonner, which proves easy. She’s the partner of the one who’s been interviewing them. She comes to the institute, and they ask her about Jon. She tells them they believed he was responsible for killing Gertrude, seeing as he was next in line. Martin accidentally Compels her into a statement, and then into admitting she's mostly just saying he killed her because dead men don’t put up fights.

She threatens him right then and there, though Basira comes in and intervenes before anything happens. He files a dispute with the station, and avoids the police after that.

Basira brings him some of the tapes, she says it’s an apology. He’s pretty sure she’s just trying to get him to drop the dispute in the weirdest way possible. He does learn some about Gertrude though, and through her what he’s dealing with. And something about an ‘unknowing’

A man named peter Lukas visits the institute, one of the doners. Elias says he wants to see how the archive runs, Lukas says a few choice words about it. And Martin tells him in the most polite of terms to shove off. Lukas threatens him, and very briefly makes him forget everyone he’s ever loved. And then tells him he got off lucky, and that Elias should have picked a better archivist. You can hardly trust someone so childish to run something as important as this now can you.

Daisy visits him in his home, and threatens him in much more physical terms now. She tells him if he tries to do what he did to her again he’ll get more than a scar.

After that it’s a bit unclear how he gets marked by the next two (Curruption, Stranger.) but he does.

There’s a delivery, a few weeks after the stranger mark. It’s not supernatural in any sense, just a young woman dropping off a small box in the archivists office. She says her name is Georgie, and no, she doesn’t know what’s in the box. She just had an old friend tell her to deliver it if he didn’t check in after a bit. Then she found out he died on the news, and then she hadn’t wanted to deliver them- clearly whatever was in the box was going to get someone killed. And she wasn’t scared of it, she wasn’t one for fear, but the thought of putting anyone in danger made her skin crawl. But she didn’t want it in her house, and she refused to be haunted be this box forever. And there was no reason to defy the poor guys apparent final wishes- wait, why was she saying all this again?

In the box was tapes, a dozen or so of them. All addressed to ‘the next head archivist’

It’s Jon’s voice, on the tapes. Talking to who he apparently assumes to be an entire stranger, explaining the fears. And how Smirkes 14 wasn’t wrong, but wasn’t right either. It tells the next archivist to avoid eyes, paintings, doodles, abstract representations, and to keep playing dumb. There’s a lot out there, and the more you know the worse it gets. There’s no fighting, don’t struggle the nets already around you. There’s a way out, but you’re not going to like it.

It gives an odd image of Jon, the man who awkwardly tried to make small-talk int he break room, only to shuffle away after it fell flat. Carrying this world-ending secret on his shoulders. Stiff, awkward Jon. Grim, sad Jon. not so far apart but still so far outside of what Martin had known about him.

What had Martin known about him?

Tim decides to quit, Sasha stays. Elias hires Melanie. Who turns out to be another connection to Jon.

Melanie says he was kind of a prick, he belived her about her Sarah incident, but refused to give her library access. Probably because he was sexist, or maybe just a dickhead. She’d been trying to learn more about her encounter for ages. And this was finally her chance. They try to explain the way out but she won’t listen.

Martin starts following Gertrudes tapes, things about the unknowing have been popping up on his desk lately, and it sounds like Jon was right about an apocalypse. He goes to america, gets a bit kidnapped, and meets Gerry. He offers to help, and then asks about the unknowing. Gerry points him towards the storage locker. And when he gets back He and Sasha and Melanie check it out.

It’s mostly empty, apparently somewhat recently cleared out. Though in the corner there’s a large box of Tapes. There has to be dozens of them, and when they pres play it’s Jon. Talking to them. Except it’s not them, it’s another version of them, and something this version.

And there’s another Jon to add to the mystery of a man he was. The jon on these tapes isn’t stiffly awkward or forcedly professional. He’s open, sad. He cries, he laughs at memories they don’t have. He apologizes, a lot. Too much really. He talks about time travel, about forgetting faces and losing friends.

“Sometimes I-I think- I can’t help but be a bit... upset. At how unfair it all is. You’re all happy and laughing and together and i’m- 

i’m alone. 

I suppose it must be some sort of- cosmic Karma, I doomed the world so in this new one bright an new I pay my penance in isolation.

Or maybe it’s the other way around. I doom the world- suffer its horrors, and get a little bit of time to taste what humanity would be like.

Or maybe i’m just not that likable without an apocalypse.

Probably says a lot about me either way.

Is it bad that I- I sometimes consider letting things play their course? W-without any of you dying of course I just... I suppose it is bad, to want to end the world because you’re lonely. Just because i’m a bit sad doesn’t mean the planet should suffer, no... maybe i’ll try and reconnect with Georgie, it’s been... well. No. Perhaps best not.”

Sasha says that if she knew she would have at least brought him out for drinks or something. 

But they did sort-of know didn’t they? Not about the apocalypse, but about the loneliness. After all, nobody chats so awkwardly in the break room because they have a thriving social life.

“I’m going to kill Nikola tonight- i’m not going to die. I’m not. I didn’t die last time, a-and there’s no reason for that to change. T-there isn’t. I’m going to try and be a safe distance from the blast this time, too. But... Well, it’s not like I have anyone to miss me if I do go.

I suppose... Martin, if you’re listening to this- I... I miss you. You always did say I should be more open with my feelings, and it’s weird. To miss someone who’s right there. T-to look at a face and see a friend and a stranger. To love someone you’ve known for years who doesn’t even really know who you are.

It’s all very stranger, ironic really. Considering what i’m about to do.

I love you, and I miss you. I know you’re not listening, even if I did die you’ve probably long since quit. I hope you’re happy, whatever you’re doing. Happy and safe. All of you. 

And maybe you are listening, maybe... maybe we do become friends, maybe you actually choose to talk to me someday. Maybe I tell you about all of this and... And you don’t think i’m mad. Maybe you let me take you out to dinner and we’d be together again. We’d never be like before- not that that’s a bad thing what with the eldritch horrors. There’d be bits missing, memories we don’t share- but, it would still be you... It’s always been you, I think. And maybe I've decided to give this to you as some sort of silly romantic gesture.

A-and in that case. I love you, Martin Blackwood. More than you’ll ever know.

[HE SIGHS]

When I come back, i’m recording over this.”

[CLICK]

But he didn’t come back. He died that night. He died loving Martin, who never even really knew him beyond passing awkward conversation. Martin doesn’t know how to feel about it, besides guilty that is.

The tapes point them towards Georgie Barker, the woman who delivered the other set to the archives.

Georgie doesn’t really want anything to do with them, she knows whatever they’re stewing in got Jon killed. But she tells them about her encounter with The End, though she’s tetchy afterwards. Martins finally starting to understand this whole compelling business and is feeling pretty sorry about it. He redirects, he starts to ask about Jon. Who he was, really. What she knew he was like.

They talk, Martins curiosity is part Eye and part knowing that someone loved him, really, really loved him. And feeling like he missed out, like he skipped a train he hadn’t known was there. And wanting to know what kind of person would- could love him the way Jon did. And why that kind of person could end the world.

They talk, Georgie explains why they broke up (clashing ideals, he didn’t believe in the supernatural and her trauma was so inherently tied to it. He was a sleep-clinger and she kicked when she dreamed) And why it took so long for them to break up (Jon was funny once you learned to get his jokes, the Admiral loved him, he had a weird way of caring that was really sweet) they talk about things, Georgie lets him hang out with her as long as he promises to keep the supernatural out of their conversations. And how is Melanie doing by the way?

Sasha has a hard time splitting her time in the archive and helping Tim. He can manage himself of course but it’s hard knowing he’s sitting in her flat alone, he’s getting back into publishing though. Sleeping easier now he knows that not only is he free of the eye, but Jon very much killed the thing that killed Danny. He only wishes he could have been the one to pull the trigger. Sasha is getting more involved though, the eye has it’s own grip on her.

They finally confront Elias. They know it won’t do any good, Jons tapes explained what he was, who he was. But they’re frustrated. Low on options. Jon never really explained what the apocalypse was- if Martins learned anything from the other tapes it’s probably because he forgot, thought he did somewhere and didn’t.

Elias isn’t entirely surprised that they’ve figured it out, he knew something was going on. Though he wasn’t quite sure what. He claims he knows what oncoming apocalypse Jon was talking about, and that he was likely underestimating the amount.

He sends them to Ny-Ålesund. And Martin views the black sun. Gets briefly taken hostage by Manuela. And gets “saved” by a man who pops out of a door to stab her.

He says his name is Micheal, and he’s not there to help. He does his whole distortion bit, confuses them. Stabs Martin when he tries to take his statement. Says he was going to kill him, but what happens next might be much better than death. And leaves after stating that he’s very excited to watch how the rest of this plays out.

They go back to the institute, and Elias says he must have been wrong. Oopsie. Anyway the web is planning a ritual you should go check out the spooky house from all these statements.

They meet Annabelle in person, Martin gets marked by the web.

This continues on for the end the slaughter and the buried. They finally confront Elias again about these wild goose chases, he claims innocence but he’s done it enough times they don’t believe him. They stop trusting Elias. Not that they ever really did, but they stop listening to him.

Melanie isn’t as angry as she was. Though she is still angry. She didn’t go to india so no ghost bullet, but she’s still trapped. Though she knows how to quit, it’s been a scary idea. But the longer she stays the more she realizes how low she is on options. So she quits.

Martin is angry, he’s exhausted, he’s confused. Nothing makes sense. And another one of Elias’s goddamn doners is visiting. A weird old man who, when he shakes his hand, makes him feel like he just dropped off a rollercoaster at a million miles into empty nothingness. He laughs when Martins regained himself, and says that that tricks better than a buzzer every time.

He visits Georgie again, he’s thinking about quitting. But he can’t figure out what the apocalypse he’s supposed to stop is, because according to Jon it’s pretty bad. And he’s the one who can stop, or maybe start, it. But he doesn’t know what it is.

He talks to Georgie about Jon some more, it’s funny, to grieve a man you already knew. Except four years too late. There’s a sort-of helpless frustration to it, every time he talks about Jon he wishes he could be learning this first-hand. Not from someone who hadn’t spoken to him in years before this.

He also finds himself glued to the tapes, he can relate, in a way. To Jons loneliness. To have a person so, so close but so far away. He wishes he could meet the Jon on the tapes now. Then neither of them would have to be lonely. But Jon is dead. And Martin... Martin might love Jon. Jon, who died years ago. A dead man who apparently loved him enough to consider ending the world for the chance to have a real conversation with him.

He goes back to work, frustrated and so, so lost. A million questions that genuinely can’t be answered. There’s a fresh statement on his desk. It’s a statement of Jonah Magnus, regarding stopping the apocalypse.

Certainly a goddamn roundabout way of giving Martin information, but he’ll take it.

He reads the statement.

The world ends.

Sasha, Tim, Melanie, and Georgie all get their own domains. And wander free in the hills of suffering. Martin is alone, well and truly alone. He ended the world, because he was too stupid and sad to read a few extra paragraphs before starting the tape.

But Jon went back, didn’t he? He went back in time and stopped this once. Maybe Martin can too. Maybe he can stop the flesh from attacking, maybe he can stop Melanie from joining the institute. Maybe he can meet the real Jon.

He goes back, he does it. Nobody remembers but him. 

Nobody remembers but him. 

And things keep happening he can’t have predicted.

Worms, Sasha is gone, Gertrude. It’s all wrong. And Jon isn’t the Jon he knew, he doesn’t know Martin, he doesn’t even like Martin. Nobody is the person he knew before.

He is alone. And things keep happening he can’t have predicted, worms tables and paranoia. He starts recording. Trying to follow in Jon’s footsteps and leave information behind, easier to access this time of course. In his flat, and he’ll have the key sent to the archives if something goes wrong. He’ll record until Jon trusts him enough to believe him, Maybe he’ll even stop him before it’s too late and he’ll never need to find out what happened at all. Maybe he can't get close as he was to everyone, but he can keep them safe.

He doesn’t get to finish his recordings, he wasn’t careful enough. Jonah catches wind and half the tapes are destroyed when he dies in a mysterious housefire. But what’s left does get delivered to the archives.

And the cycle continues.

#jonmartin #the magnus archives #tma #angst #writing #ghostly scribbles #Tma is a tragedy and so is this #not a proper fic more like a really weird outline

[proudfreakmetarusonniku]

If you're still doing the c!primeboys aus, one set in the L'Manberg revolution?

Of course! I adore doing them.

Blood pooled at the floor of the Final Control Room, the screams of agony and terror having stopped echoing off the walls and giving way to dead silence. Eret had lost whatever lunch she had, and refused to look at the bodies of her former comrades. Sapnap and Punz leant against the side of the walls, knees buckling and staring in shock at what they’d done. Even George looked a bit pale, used to assassination, but not of children.

Dream watched serenely, pride swelling in his chest. He couldn’t have hoped for this plan to go as well as it did. Three bodies dissolved into nothing as their owners respawned. One did not.

Dream's first thought was panic, looking at the bloodied and battered body of the boy he found fascinating. Tommy couldn’t have lost his first two canon lives without him knowing, right? Oh god, what was the point of all this if Tommy was dead forever-

No use panicking. He bent down and grasped the boys wrist and grinned. It was faint, but there was a pulse. Now, the question was what to do with this opportunity.

He could finish him off (but that would just be a waste). He could let him go (but that would just be boring). He could-

His grin widened under his mask. He could keep Tommy as a hostage, and kill two birds with one stone. He could get the rebels under his thumb and keep Tommy all to himself.

(“All to himself?” What the fuck was he thinking? Tommy wasn’t a fucking object, he couldn’t hoard him like a resource.)

(But he wanted to. Oh, he wanted to so, so bad.)

He picked up the too-light body of his Tommy (his Tommy? He didn’t own him) and took him to Eret's castle. He wasn’t going to keep him in the old “jail,” not only had he escaped from it effortlessly before but it was barely more than a bed and enough room to stand. The Pride Palace was more secure and less restrictive. After all, a songbird would hardly sing in a cage too small for it.

——

Tommy's room in the palace wasn’t anything like his home, and no matter how long he spent a fucking prisoner here he despised it. It was filled with fluffy blankets and pillows and gifts and comforts meant to bribe him into behaving. All he wanted was the feeling of rough cobblestone under his feet and his brother's smile.

Eret wasn’t that bad, honestly. Yeah, he was a fucking traitor, but there was something in the way he looked from the windows, the way he froze whenever his former friends was mentioned. He denied it, but there was something resembling regret there. Besides, he allowed Tommy to take whatever he wanted from the chest and roam the castle grounds to his heart’s content, and that was better than the first few days, where Dream had insisted he be confined to his room. For rest, he said.

Neither were Dream's friends, really. They got sent over to “guard” the new king, apparently to protect Eret from assassination, but it was clear the real reason was to keep Tommy from escaping. None of them really particularly cared about that. George mostly just slept. Sapnap hung out with Tommy, and honestly no matter how much he complained it was nice having a friend other than Dream. Punz just let Tommy leave for the right bribe, which Tommy was pretty sure could be anything. He once gave the mercenary a single dirt block and he looked the other way. It wasn’t even really necessary, honestly, to keep Tommy in the palace. He knew he had trackers on him at all times.

It wasn’t like him nearly dying had allowed him to come back intact, after all. His leg was basically destroyed, broken and twisted to the point of uselessness and unable to heal. The memory of lying in the too-large bed in his prison, so full of potions he was barely conscious and the feeling of the saw cutting through tendons and flesh and bone still haunted him. It wasn’t Ponk's fault really- they were the closest thing to a doctor the server had, but they'd never done anything like that before. Besides, they gave him a big ass lollipop and a weird smelling candle afterwards, and that was kind of cool.

It was only the next day Tommy had met Sam for the first time, and he was honestly kind of fucking terrifying- a creeper hybrid more creeper than human, scuttling about on four insect like limbs and towering over everyone- but he was nice. Nice didn’t mean safe- fuck, it definitely didn’t mean safe, Dream was nice in his visits every day until he wasn’t- but it was comforting. Sam was apparently some redstone prodigy who holed himself up in a mountain in the server to work on his creations, and Dream had hired him to make a prosthetic for Tommy.

Sam had worked surprisingly quickly- he’d had it done within the week- but he’d insisted that he come over every once in a while to check if it was working properly. Tommy's pretty sure it was just an excuse from Sam to make sure he hadn’t been murdered or whatever. He’d told him about the tracker in the leg, during one of his visits. Honestly, it barely phased Tommy. He knew what Dream was like.

(God, one of these days he had to apologise for ever calling Tubbo clingy. He never knew the meaning of that word until now.)

Figuring out what had happened to L'Manburg after he was taken as Dream's fucking spoil of war or whatever was- not difficult, but painful. He’d expected the country to be destroyed, the walls brought down, so that wasn’t a shock, but what was was what had happened to his family.

Tubbo was- quiet. Far too quiet, eyes downcast and always listening. Whenever they met, Tubbo would never be able to look Tommy in the eyes but would hold him tight like he could somehow keep him from leaving if he did. Fundy's talk of Dream, once far too kind and punctuated by the barely hidden blushing of a schoolboy crush, was harsh and angry and betrayed. And then there was Wilbur.

Wilbur, the kind, kind older brother who teased him and ruffled his hair and naively thought that words could prevail over violence. That would give anything for his ideals. He didn’t see that Wilbur when he looked into his brother's eyes anymore, instead seeing terror and anger and derangement. He smelt like cigarette smoke, so strong it made it hard to breathe around him. His clothes were ripped and poorly patched together, his hair too long and eyes with deep deep black bags underneath.

He spoke of violence and revolution and bombs and death, burning the whole server down if it meant getting Tommy back. He’d tried to drag Tommy to his rebel encampment in a ravine somewhere, only stopping when Tommy desperately mentioned he was being tracked. He barely so much as grazed Tommy anymore, as if afraid he’d break him like glass, but the few times he did the touch was possessive in a way sickeningly familiar.

The last time they were able to speak, Wilbur had a manic grin on his face as he took a long, long drag of his cigarette. “Technoblade wrote back, Tommy,” he said, uncontrolled glee in his voice. “He’s coming. We'll get you home, Tommy, I promise.”

The worst part was, even though the idea of being free was something he dreamed about, something he’d hoped and prayed for, part of him hated the idea and said that he was where he belonged right under Dream's thumb.

If anyone else wants to send in some more AU ideas it’d be lovely and I will make them heavily involve c!primeboys no matter what and again that’s a challenge

#dream smp #dsmp #dream smp au #dsmp au #c!primeboys #c!dream #c!tommy #tw gore #tw blood #tw amputation #tw obsession #tw possessive behavour #tw kidnapping #tw isolation #tw abuse

[whump-town]

A Cumbersome and Heavy Body

Chapter Five: They Told Me That The End Is Near

Summary: Stubborn until the very end, Aaron Hotchner isn’t going to go down without a fight. It’s just getting hard to tell the difference between fighting them and fighting the cancer.

Word count:  3195

Author’s Note: I’m about to fuck yall all kinda of ways-- buckle in babies cause shit is GETTING FUCKED

Warning: the subject of this fic is cancer and it’s treatment, cursing, maybe out of character (idk, man. hotch is weird)

Welcome to the final show Hope you're wearing your best clothes You can't bribe the door on your way to the sky You look pretty good down here But you ain't really good

She hates everything about labeling his days as “good” or “bad”-- this stupid emphasis on each thing that he does and how well he can perform it. The doctors will ask how he is, nearly expecting to be told something other than like he’s dying, and that always frustrates her beyond words. She can feel Hotch tense each time, looking to her in his desperate attempt to conjure a lie they will believe. “Good” or “bad” and he wants to say “okay” so that they don’t poke him more. So they don’t stand him up in the room and run their hands down his sides feeling for more swollen nodes and inclinations to infections or whatever other bad nonsense will rear its ugly head.

Mostly, she hates how there are “bad” days and there are days that aren’t gut-wrenchingly horrible but they aren’t “good” either.

Tuesday he’d smiled and sat for three hours with Reid. The genius turned on the sofa to face Hotch in the recliner, rocking himself gently as he spoke about anything and everything on his mind. Emily had watched them for a moment from the kitchen, shocked at the painless ease Hotch was sitting with. Enjoying something close to normalcy as Reid doesn’t look at Hotch and see the sickness overcoming his pale skin. Doesn’t see how tired he is or how weak. He’s just Hotch and they’re sitting in the living room talking about quantum mechanics and then attachment theory and diagnosing schizophrenia.

For three hours there is so much normalcy to their chaotic lives. For three hours there is “good” and for the remaining hours after Reid leaves there is something close to right in the middle. It’s fighting tooth and nail over some supplements he’s supposed to have in this meal replacement that tastes like chalk. She chases the fight with vodka and he locks himself in his office to drink the meal replacement in the sort of isolation that affords him endless frustration with no outward consequence. He ends up sitting in there and hoping she forgives him for being such a pain in the ass. He knows she probably will.

Then he does something stupid, something entirely brought on by impulse.

“You’re a fucking asshole.”

He can’t finish the job on his own, the clippers shaking painfully in his grip. His arm hurts and he can’t stand long enough to get the whole thing even. “It’s falling out, anyway.” He tells himself that it doesn’t matter, that he should be lucky he made it to this age without losing it. He tries not to think about it, mostly. To the way that his father used to smile at him and rustle it just to see the strands sit in all kinds of directions. How Haley would curl against him, arm over his shoulders, and brushing the strands as they talk.

But it’s just… hair. Mostly.

And “good” had melted into bad as Emily stood over him, running the clippers through his remaining hair. She’d cried and he had too but he had the free hands to wipe those tears before she could see them. She’s always the strong one, the least he can do is pretend for a moment.

Standing behind him, she can see every bone in his back. His pale skin stretched over each vertebra, like the hard pressure across knuckles clenched tightly. The plethora of scars in various stages of healing-- several from tubes and wires and tests and others from the childhood he refuses to speak of. A canvas with a story right there for her to see. There are no real secrets between them anymore.

The last bit of hair falls and she looks at what they’ve done. “You’ll have to wear a hat,” she tells him. She steps out of the tub, using his shoulder to balance herself. “I always thought you had a weird-shaped head but now I know.” There’s nothing abnormal about his head, she’s just thinking about how cold he always is. That at least now he’s got an excuse to wear a beanie inside and how he’ll look like a dork with the assortment of color and variations Garcia’s going to knit the second she catches wind of this.

She offers him her hands so that he can stand too and it’s a testament to their proximity that his shirtlessness isn’t strange. She’s watched his skin ease apart under the pressure of a scalpel. Sat beside him on the bathroom floor, head on his shoulder as the night moved on but they both knew he’d be back here all together too soon to get up. The scars are nothing to the vulnerability that he’s shown her.

Standing she… she sees the protrusion of his collarbone. Of the harshness, the invasion of the central line snaking into him. It overcomes her and she pulls him into her. Throwing an arm over one shoulder and around the other, pinning him against her. “I love you,” she whispers turning her face into his neck.

Her warmth seeps into him, in every place that her skin rests against his. The desperation in her tone makes him smile, the way that she holds him. He’s empathetic to her pain but it feels good to be held, to be loved like something someone is terrified to lose. “You know,” he says. “I kind of figured. You’ve stayed around too long for someone who, supposedly, hates me.”

She laughs. How many times had she gone out of her way to mumble “I hate you” at him? For waking her up to make her go back to bed so that she doesn’t spend her whole night on the floor as miserable as him. To have something to say in the face of the scary things that happen, when he squeezes her hand too tight or when he’s that numb calm she knows is no good.

“I do hate you,” she sniffles.

He laughs. An actual laugh. “Good,” he replies, wrapping his arms around her. “Good.”

Wednesday he makes her French Toast with a black beanie pulled down over his ears, one she’d seen only in the winter to stave off the threat of the ear infections the icy fingers of the wind give him. They talk while they eat and it’s a truly monumental thing to be shared between them-- a meal.

There’s something about sitting there and watching him perfect some glorified egg bread that annoys her. Knowing that likely, tomorrow this will be like a slap to the face. A taunt to see him now and then. Today he will the Aaron that she knows. The Aaron that peers over her shoulder while she’s trying to do things, baiting her into pointless arguments with his bad French and even worse German. To the Aaron who walks soundless and who grins when he turns up silently behind her and makes her yelp with a jump.

She watches the ease in which he takes to his french toast bleed away like the color in his face until lunch brings one of those meal replacements and he can’t do it. Then she finds the french toast she thought he’d eaten in the trash where he’d purposely tried to cover it. Knows that next week they’ll find the meal replacements didn’t work and do something else to his poor body. Cut another hole, insert another tube.

She hears him fall that night.

After hearing him laugh loudly over some stupid thing she’d said.

After playfully fighting with him over stealing one of his sweaters-- he has so many it’s not going to kill him to let her borrow one.

After just sitting with him on the couch for hours listening to music and sitting in the dark.

She hears him fall and, worst of all, she hears how hard he tries to cover it up. The sound is not as distinct as it should be with no crash that rattles dishes or a harsh thud. A stumble, really, a softer thump as he leaned into the wall for support but found none.

“Aaron.”

He’s sitting up against the wall, shoulders sunk in and head hanging. When he looks up she sees the blood pouring down his face, the tears pooling at the corner of his eyes. “...can’t stop it.” He coughs, wiping at the blood across his lips. “It won’t stop, Emily.”

She runs to the bathroom, grabbing a wad of toilet paper and not thinking twice about manipulating his face in her hands. One hand holding the back of his head while the other dabs the blood up. “We’re supposed to go to the hospital when this happens,” she reminds him. He’ll need platelets or something invasive but more than likely he’ll be submitted to an hour-long wait in the E.R. to be told it was the right thing to come in but altogether unnecessary.

He groans, not in pain but in the general theme of the awfulness he knows will ensue if she makes the decision they will be going to the hospital. To the cold beds and the wheelchairs.

“Water and bed,” she says, instead of what he’d thought would be her asking where his shoes and coat are. She smirks at him, knowing what he’s thinking and seeing the surprise written across his face. “We’ll tell them Tuesday about it,” she assures him. Tuesday when they’re probably going to tell them he needs to come back in another day. When they see the supplements aren’t working and he’ll probably need something invasive and painful. Then they’ll deal with the nose bleeds popping back (and that cough she’s noticed but has let convince himself she hasn’t noticed).

“Bed,” she says again when the words seem like they haven’t processed.  

“Bed,” he repeats thickly, her fingers clamped over his nose thickening the nasally quality of his voice.

They shuffle down the hall, Emily’s fingers curled around his hip and his arm over her shoulder. Heads bent in towards one another. He whispers an apology, feet hardly leaving the ground, and leaning on her a little too much. He imagines the beginning. When he’d laid on his bed, thinking about her and thinking about his father. The way the cancer had eaten his father away and he can see in the mirror, he watches closely and knows the same thing is happening to him.

His father had done what he can’t-- ended it.

It had been Aaron who found him. So strange to see such a violent man seemingly… peaceful. His memory is a patchwork of things, his childhood full of too many greys of undetermined moments, but that sight. Seeing his father’s lifeless body in the high-backed office chair he’d spent so many waking hours in has been unforgettable.

He can’t do that. He won’t make Emily see that or leave that sort of memory for Jack. It’s important to him that it be like this.

“You have to sit up.” She props him up on pillows, ignoring his complaints. The blood has slowed and there’s nearly no point in wiping it away. He just watches her, vacantly staring back as she tucks the blankets around his chest. “Sleep,” she instructs, kissing his forehead. “Do you want me to stay?” He knows she will. She’ll sleep right here beside if he asks but… no. He’ll be okay.

It snows.

He watches it from the only window in his room, she’d pulled the curtains back before she fell asleep. He sees her and her giant shadow with the yellowing light from the street pouring in, eating out the deep consuming darkness looming over him. Until today he’d only ever suspected she was dragging his office chair into his room but he’d never caught her, always waking up after she’d moved the chair back and gone back to her own room. Leaving behind only the three deep dents in the carpet where she’d sat for hours. There had been so many nights he’d spent sitting and watching Jack sleep as a baby-- some irrational fear that the baby would stop breathing in the middle of the night and so long as he was watching Jack would keep breathing. He needn’t ask silly questions, he knows she’s using the same irrational approach.

Clenching his teeth he tries to bite down against a cough breaking out, afraid to wake her some such peaceful slumber. He pulls himself upright, curling down as his temples throb, and his body shakes violently beyond his control. A goal in-sight-- the water on his nightstand and getting Emily back to bed-- he powers through it and overcoming the weakness of his body feels so satisfyingly familiar. To days when there was pain but no cancer and he loves the triumphant that washes over him.

The water is warm and stale, left there by Emily yesterday when she’d forced him to take his medicine (even though he thought he’d throw it back up and he had). It kills the ache of his throat, dry and bitter, and he clears his throat softly to take the rest away.

“Emily,” he whispers. Moving his lips cracks the dried blood on his face he grimaces as he smells the thick scent of the blood. “Emily, get up.” He won’t leave her to sleep in this chair all night. He’s made the mistake plenty of times, knows it’s no good. “Come on,” he touches her arm, palm against her bare skin. She jumps his touch is so cold. “Sorry, sorry--”

She really sees him and jumps even harder. Yelping in shock. “Oh! Oh, God!” She wraps her arms around her chest, breathing quickly, startled. “Fuck Aaron,” she shouts. “You scared the shit out of me!”

He rubs his nose, tries to dislodge the blood.

“Is-- Is something wrong?” She pushes her hair back from her face, “are you okay?”

God. He’s hurt her irreparably, hasn’t he?

“Nothing.” He offers his hand, even if the hand trembles visibly enough in the low light. “Nothing, I promise.” She takes his hand, allowing him to guide her up. “You shouldn’t sleep in that chair,” he informs her softly but still with that distinct fussiness to his voice.

She looks back to the chair and up at him, “I guess I’ve finally been caught.”

He smiles. The first time he’d put two and two together he was angry. Overly frustrated, seething over something so… sweet. She’d sat with him through the night, watching him sleep, just trying to be close and he’d been mad. Not now, though, now he can see how tired he is. He can feel her hand still clutching his. “It’s okay,” he shrugs. “It’s late, let’s go to bed.”

She frowns, brows crinkling as she looks around them in confusion. Sleep riddled brain torn between the rational thought that concludes he’s right, she should go to bed, and the worry she’d felt hours ago about leaving him in this room. She’s not sure what to do now, which thought to travel and act upon.

“Do you--” he looks down at the thrown back covers on his bed. Remembers this wouldn’t be the first time she’s slept in that bed beside him. Likely more than just the memories he can think of now, unprompted. He blushes, embarrassed he even had the thought but she looks down to and nods.

She doesn’t want to leave him alone.

He doesn’t want to be alone.

They start side by side, neither entirely comfortable. She falls back to sleep first. He can feel her breath even back out and within a few minutes she turns over towards him, her hand resting over his wrist. He looks back to his office chair, the giant back of the old thing. She’s so afraid to lose him, they all are. He can feel it in every little thing that they do. How Dave lingers a little more after each visit, hugs him a little longer. The way Derek looks at him, how close he stands. Even in Spencer and Jack who soak up his attention like flowers to the sun. Turning and facing him, finding him wherever he is to enjoy just one more moment. Hanging on to his every word.

He wakes soaked in sweat, shaking as Emily talks to someone rushed, too quickly to sound anything but frantic. Afraid.

He opens his eyes as a sea of red flushes through the room, the shrill of an ambulance breaking up the serene silence the snow has muffled the Earth with.

“Aaron?”

She’d woken to him struggling to breathe. Both had turned over in the night and while she’d turned toward him, he’d turned away from her. Her arm over his hip, her head against his back, they were nearly welded together. If not for the proximity-- his arm pulling hers closer, her leg in-between his, she likely wouldn’t have heard him at all. But she’d felt him jerk in his sleep, fighting his body for air.

And he wouldn’t wake up.

“Aaron?” she calls a second time. She should go open the front door, let the EMTs in but she’d seen a sliver of his eye. His cheek is cold against her palm but she cries, tears streaming when he opens his eyes. When he turns his face into her palm. “There you are,” she beams. His eyes slide back shut. “Stay awake,” she asks, her nerves getting the best of her and she shakes him. Pleased when his eyes open back up and find her. “Stay awake, don’t you want to see the snow?”

The stretcher is cold and he mourns the loss of his thick comforter but the drugs flooding into his blood makes him loose, pliable. He doesn’t fight being taken from his bed, even if he longingly looks back for it. Lets them strap his legs down place an oxygen mask over his face. The snow means nothing to him. He hates it, honestly, but as they step outside, Emily tossing his winter coat of him like a blanket, he looks up at it falling down on him.

Her hand slips away and he looks back for her, confused. She stands in the street, face turned to the fat snowflakes falling around her. All the light coming from street lamps high above her head. He’s reminded of a lifetime ago. When she’d gone against his orders and gone to investigate Michael’s death with a ferocity he hadn’t seen coming. When she’d avoided his eye and said she’d understand if he wanted her badge and gun after that little show. She’d forced his hand, made him call the Vatican, and consider his own allegiances. To when they were two very different people than they are now-- younger, naive… alone.

She catches up to them, slipping her hand back into his. Her fingers freezing cold as they curl around his. “Don’t you love it?” she asks. She looks back out, watching until the doors shut behind them and all she has is a tiny window.

He doesn’t but she does.

She looks young, weightless.

In a way, yes, he does love it.

@laiba-the-person, @emily-hottie-prentiss, @unionjackpillow, @clockedstar, @baumarvel, @blakeprentiss, @qvid-pro-qvo, @aaron-hotchner187, @ssalavellan, @lazyhater 

#criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #aaron hotchner #emily prentiss #david rossi #derek morgan #spencer reid #penelope garcia #jennifer jareau #tw cancer

[thegreenwolf]

Betting on the Ponies (originally posted at my blog at https://thegreenwolf.com/betting-on-the-ponies/)

(Above:  Breyer Classic Arabian Stallion made over into a winged unicorn with real wings from a barnyard mix rooster I raised for meat.)

If you’ve been paying attention to my social media or my shop links at all, you may have noticed that I haven’t really been posting much in the way of new hide and bone art for the past year or so. It’s not that I’ve stopped; I still make some fun things for my Patrons on Patreon every month, and I make some bone, tooth and claw jewelry on Etsy to order. But ever since events dried up, I haven’t been regularly making new batches of costume pieces or other Vulture Culture art. My usual M.O. was to make all sorts of new things for an upcoming event, and then once the weekend was done and I was home, post whatever hadn’t sold on Etsy. And since there haven’t been events…well…I’ve just found myself doing other things.

Some of that is because I’ve had to scramble to make up for the lost income; events were a pretty big chunk of my “pay”, and losing them meant having to tighten the belt. I also lost several other income streams thanks to the pandemic making it unsafe to be around groups of people, which didn’t help. So I had to rely on what was left, along with adopting a few new sources of bits and bobs of cash here and there.

And, honestly, I’ve needed a bit of a break. I’ve been making hide and bone art for over two decades now, and while I love it, any artist eventually wants to explore different media for a while. Sure, I’ve stretched my Vulture wings in new directions, going from costume pieces and ritual tools to assemblages and the Tarot of Bones. But ever since the Tarot came out, I’ve been feeling….not really burned out, but a little creatively wrung out, at least. I’ve really appreciated my Patrons and Etsy customers who have helped me keep a hand in that particular medium, while also allowing me to head off in other directions, too.

Which is to say that if you have been paying attention to the aforementioned social media and shops, you may have also noticed that I’ve been increasing the number of customized Breyer model horses and other animals I’ve made over the past couple of years. This might seem like a heck of a departure from skulls, bones, and other dead things. But in a way it’s really me getting back to long-neglected roots.

(One of my favorite customs I’ve done on one of my favorite molds, the Breyer semi-rearing mustang. )

See, I was a horse girl when I was a kid. Or, rather, I was a wannabe horse girl. I never got to lease or own a horse, and even now in my early 40s I’m still about the greenest rider you’ll find. (Seriously, I need one of those kid-proof horses that’s seen it all, done it all, and is probably more trail-smart than I am.) But I was obsessed with horses from a young age. It started with my very first My Little Pony that I got Christmas morning, 1983 (Applejack, if you must know), and then exploded further with a book on how to draw horses and my first Breyer model (Black Beauty 1991 on the Morganglanz mold) in my preteens. Horse actually took over for Gray Wolf for a few years as my primary animal spirit during my teens, so we have a very long history indeed.

And since I couldn’t have a real horse, I ended up collecting model horses, mostly Breyers with a few old Hartlands for variety. I had over 100 at the peak of my collecting, but I had to sell them all in my early twenties when I was between jobs. In hindsight it was probably for the best because having less stuff made it easier to get through the period of my life where I was moving about once a year, but I do miss that collection.

Back then I did my part to add to the artistic end of the model horse hobby, mostly with badly blended acrylic paint jobs and terrifying mohair manes and tails. But it made me happy, and that was the most important thing. Even though I only knew a couple other collectors in my little rural area, and my only real connection to the hobby was through the quarterly Just About Horses magazine Breyer put out, my collecting really made me happy in the same way that my first fur scraps and bones would catch my interest a few years later.

2020….well, it sucked. We all know that. Pandemic, political stress, financial roller coasters and more made it a really tough year for anyone who wasn’t wealthy enough to hide away and weather it all. And many of us found ourselves with more time at home, in need of distractions and solace. It ended up being a time where many people rediscovered their love of childhood hobbies. I’m one of those people. I’ve been slowly edging my way back in for the past few years, starting with repainting a few old Breyer models found at thrift stores, and then gaining momentum as I found that not only was I much better at customizing these models than I used to be, but I was having fun without the pressure to make a living off of it. (Yes, I love my hide and bone art, but when an art form is your bread and butter, it changes your relationship to it. But that’s a post for another time…)

So 2020 saw me really ramp up my customization efforts. I had to stop for a few months in summer and fall when I moved to a spifftacular new living space on the farm I’ve been working on the past few years (with, by the way, THE best studio space EVER!) but as the days shortened I found myself making more dedicated time to repainting and otherwise customizing models. I even started keeping a few of the models I’d bought to customize that were in better condition to create a small, but slowly growing original finish collection, and that really helped me feel like I was back in the (not actually a) saddle.*

That’s why a well-established artist of organic, pagan-influenced arts made from fur and leather and bone and feather suddenly started painting all these secondhand plastic ponies. It’s giving me that deep injection of childhood nostalgia balanced with adult skill and perspective, and it’s offered me a much-needed break from the exhausting schedule I’ve been living the past decade or so. Because suddenly, even with the time spent rearranging my income opportunities to make sure I could stay afloat, I found myself with a little time that hadn’t been scheduled to death, and when I thought about what I wanted to do with that time, I gravitated toward one of the few creative outlets in my life that was purely for fun.**

(Yes, this IS fan art of “The Last Unicorn”! I used a Breyer Stablemate rearing Arabian for the unicorn, and a Breyer Spanish fighting bull for the Red Bull. A LOT of fun to make this particular project.)

In a way having all my events canceled was one of the best things that happened to me, because it made me slow the fuck down. I no longer had several weekends a year where I had to spend weeks beforehand making art and otherwise preparing to be away from all my farm responsibilities for 4-7 days at a time, with all the packing and moving and setup and vending and teaching and teardown and going home and unpacking and exhaustion that goes with each event. I realized just how much each one was taking out of me, especially as I’ve gotten older. And I also recognized how much pressure I had been putting on myself to ALWAYS MAKE MORE STUFF FOR ETSY EVERY WEEK OR ELSE.

So the model horses are really sort of a symbol of the childhood joy I’ve managed to recapture, wresting time and energy back from my workaholic tendencies. I’ve even been thinking about what my professional life is going to look like once the pandemic eases up enough to allow events again, and whether I’ll put the same amount of time toward vending and and teaching at conventions and festivals as I used to. (There are a few favorites that I’m not going to miss for anything, so don’t worry about me dropping out entirely.) But for the first time in a very long time, I’m relearning to prioritize myself, and figuring out that maybe I don’t have to go hell-bent for leather every week, every year, in order to keep the bills paid and the critters fed.

And maybe, just maybe, it’s okay for this dead-critter-artist, pagan-nonfic-author, teacher-vendor-farmer, to indulge herself with something fun, and bet on the ponies to help her get through the tough times.

(P.S. Amid everything going on, I am back to working steadily on my next book, which I mentioned in this blog post almost a year ago. As a recap, its working title is Coyote’s Journey: Deeper Work With the Major Arcana, and it’s a deep dive into that section of the tarot using pathworkings with the animals I assigned to the major arcana of the Tarot of Bones. It’s not just a Tarot of Bones book, though; it’s a good way to get a new, nature-based angle on the majors in general, as well as hopefully gain a better understanding of yourself. My goal is to have it out later this year, self-pub of course, and at the rate I’m going it may end up being my longest book! Stay tuned, and if you want to get excerpts of the work-in-progress, become my Patron for as little as $1/month!)

*At the height of my “horse girl” phase, I had a really beat-up pony saddle I’d bought for ten bucks at a yard sale, and got a cheap saddle stand for it and put it in my room. And yes, I occasionally sat on it and pretended I was riding an actual horse. Hey, it made me happy at the time, and it was the closest I was ever going to get apart from a trail ride every few years.

**Yes, I do sell my customs. But I don’t make them on a schedule, I take commissions VERY sparingly, and I’m getting to stretch some new creative muscles, especially in the realms of sculpting and painting, so this is primarily for my enjoyment. The sales are just a side benefit.

(My ode to the forests of the Pacific Northwest, a Breyer deer repainted to resemble the Columbian black-tailed deer that frequent the farm I live on, along with hand-sculpted Amanita muscaria mushrooms, real and fake moss, and real lichens from fallen branches.)

#Breyer #model horses #vulture culture #artwork #artist

[the-magic-lava-lamp]

Harvest Moon

Summary: {A light sequel to: Unforgettable}  They laughed, sort of sadly. The full night sky enriched them with gentle peace, strengthened by the soft light of the stars. The temperature dropped considerably since Sam had initially come out. But he didn’t mind the nice chill, it braced his skin and left him with tingling goosebumps. It reminded Sam how real the moment actually was. Paying less attention to the hearty sloshes of water, Sam picked up his radio.

Ships: SamBucky 

Word Count: 5,285

The light from the orange sunset flushed Sam Wilson’s cheeks, encouraging the spread of an internally hot blush. Color blossomed under his soft complexion with all the grace of the water rings rippling under the rocks skipping on the lake. Though the sweat was just beginning to puddle in his palms and drip down his temple, Sam was only focused on the fevered senses of comfort which had been deep-rooted in his chest since arriving back home. 

The babbling waters had called him out to the docks just the same as they did when he was small. And following that nostalgia, Sam felt the ghost of supper on the stove. Turns out his fucked up Avengers mind could still remind himself to be home before the porcelain plates hit the table. No longer his Mama--but Sarah who would be annoyed with him and that was perhaps more threatening. He thought as his tiny radio played on. 

AJ and Cass had fallen asleep with the gentle nudge of a fuzzy re-run of ‘Whose Line is it Anyway?’ and the promise of a hot meal when they awoke. Sam’s absence would be noticed very soon.

‘Sittin' in the mornin' sun

I'll be sittin' when the evenin' comes

Watching the ships roll in

Then I watch 'em roll away again, yeah

I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay

Watchin' the tide roll away, ooh

I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay

Wastin' time…’

He swiped salty sweat from his brow and found himself dwelling on the evening, wanting to change the direction of the souring sun. No matter what, Sam always began to mourn the day at around 5 p.m. Everyday could’ve been better. The threat of night’s permanent closure and the bearer of nightmares fermented him with anxiety. He was working on that issue with his therapist. 

‘Now I'm just gon' sit, at the dock of the bay

Watchin' the tide roll away, ooh yeah

Sittin' on the dock of the bay

Wastin' time…’

Otis began the famed whistling as Sam leaned back on his hands, palms flat on the warm dock. He felt the movement just before a voice began whistling along behind him. It chirped delicately in Sam’s ear, until the song faded and with it--

Sam turned--Bucky Barnes sing-along.

Bucky grinned, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Nice to see you so…” He craned his neck and squinted his eyes. “Lazy.” Even he looked a bit confused by the word choice. 

“Thanks…” Sam chuckled. 

“I just mean--” Buck paused, scratching down from his chin to his neck. Sam saw that he did that often enough to earn patches of grainy red skin under his facial hair. 

Sam smirked, pulling his left thigh up and around from the edge. His eyes simmered Bucky’s blush. 

“Have you ever had the time to laze around?” Bucky asked, amazed at his own wondering. “To sit and watch the sun on the water?” He gestured frantically outward. “You’ve been a busy guy...not that I helped you with that any…”

Sam shook his head. “Nah, man. Tracking your ass for Steve reaped some rewards.” He gestured for the man to rest his old bones down next to him and Bucky hesitantly took the offer. His knees cracked with sharp pops all the way down. 

“No old man jokes, I swear-” 

Sam held up his hands. “I wasn’t planning on it, Bucky.” He glanced at Steve’s old friend and for a moment, couldn’t believe the man of history books and horror stories was ‘sun-setting’ in Sam’s home-town. The orange light caressed his face in the same eerie way it’d done way back at Tony’s funeral.

“Thanks for letting me stay-” Bucky went to rub his chin again. “Not quite separate vacations but…” He chuckled, fading off. It was subconscious, the way Bucky led in with no follow through. He wanted Sam to be the one to initiate the conversation. 

But Sam bit his tongue. He deserved to hear what Bucky had to say without having to pull it out himself. 

Bucky turned with those doe eyes, tired but with enough energy left to admire his partner. “I hurt you....” He frowned, bitter with himself. “I know that and I’m damn sorry, Sam.” His voice was crisp and steady but his eyes wavered. 

Sam sighed, eyes back on the water. “We were getting somewhere, man. And you just…” He flicked his hand out. “Disappeared on me.” He paused. 

“I shouldn’t have left you...especially at such an ambiguous time for us.” Bucky stumbled slightly on his words. 

Sam took a long blink, remembering the ‘unforgettable’  feeling of being held again. “I’m more hurt by the fact that I got nothing but radio silence from you-” He swallowed. “Past that-” He glanced at Bucky “Thing we had just started. I thought we’d reached a point where we could communicate.” He shrugged with muted emotion. “We were friends.” He added with a slight question in his voice. He watched Bucky’s eyes flicker with guilt.

“If you had given me a heads up, maybe. That’s all.” Sam patted his thigh. “I can understand needing space. I understand that even answering texts can be difficult as hell when your mind feels sick. I’ve been there, Buck. Shit’s hard.” He felt a dark twist in his stomach and tried not to dwell in his own memories. “I don’t hold this against you. I know you’re a good guy.” Sam made sure Bucky looked him in the eye for that particular sentiment. “But you should know how I felt about it. Whatever relationship we end up having; Friends, co-workers, partners-” He flicked his fingers. “I’d hope you’d think about how your decisions affect me.” 

They held the next silence for a few minutes, Bucky seemingly taking in what he’d said. “For me, it was like I blinked and you were gone with the wind. I didn’t know how you were doing for months--if you were even okay. But then, out of the blue, you come back and you’re pissed about something that wasn’t about you.” Sam shrugged, feeling a bit lighter for every word he’d been simmering on for weeks. 

Bucky grimaced, looking extremely pained. “I’m really sorry, Sam.” He repeated himself with genuine regret. The light around them bled darker. “I let a lot of my intrusive thoughts control me.” He hissed at his own words but quickly moved on. “Part of me let it happen because I’m not sure I could handle a competent hand on the wheel. I’ve lived as the...Winter Soldier longer than Bucky, you know-? And Holy shit that’s something I try not to perceive.” He turned, hoping he wasn’t over-sharing. “It’s terrifying to think it’s just in my nature...being destructive. I’m always nervous-” He paused again. “Not that I’m going to hurt someone--but the feeling that I need to will bleed back into me…” His voice faded off again as he picked at a loose string on his jeans. 

“This is something you’re talking about in therapy, right?” Sam quirked his brow, needing the answer to be yes but the distant pain in his head reminded him that he dodged plenty of shit from his therapist. 

Bucky nodded and before Sam could speak again, asked the question he’d been aching to for months. “I want to go back to you-”

“Of course you do.” Sam chuckled. 

Bucky rolled his eyes. “How have you been, really?” 

Sam thought for a minute. “Working myself to death, mostly.” He laughed, though it didn’t sound happy at all. “Been seeing Sarah and the boys as much as I can…” 

The sky purpled, darkness bleeding into the orange hues. The stars would soon be visible and Bucky was almost positive Sam would now push the question off, neglecting the details. For as much as he complains that Bucky doesn’t talk about himself enough, Sam often avoids voicing his own feelings. 

“Sarah was swamped and anxious, despite what she says-” 

“And what were you feeling, Samuel?” Bucky playfully tapped his friend’s knee with a smug grin. 

Sam rolled his eyes but grinned slightly at the familiar teasing. He wasn’t sure how to put his thoughts into words so he turned back to the water. “Thought a lot about the soul stone, actually.” The sentence rolled casually off his tongue but did nothing to relieve the stress it’d been causing him. 

Bucky tried to remain stoic but a glint of concern shined over his eyes. The infinity stone felt somehow personal between them. Though nobody had memories of their time dusted, Sam and Bucky came out with a new sense of intimacy for each other. It was as if something happened in those 5 years, which felt like only a brief nap to them and in that blip, they’d connected. Falling together was comfortingly natural after that. 

“My last thought before I...dusted, was ‘Maybe I’ll get to see Riley.’ ” Sam whizzed his palm in the air, voice breaking slightly and definitely against his will. 

Bucky’s heart twitched. They’d gone dancing in the evening after Tony Stark’s funeral. It was the most blissful Bucky’d ever been and he’d spent the night in Sam’s hotel room doing the most talking he’d ever spoken. Nothing physical happened nor did either man think of it, they were too busy soaking up all the information they could get from the other before the night ended. They could truly get to know each other for the first time. 

Bucky went on about his family, as much as he could remember anyway. Sam talked of his parents; Paul and Darlene and eventually trailed his way to Riley. 

Sam halted his next thought for a few minutes because it was damn hard to illustrate. “I know we weren’t actually dead-” He rolled his lips together “Or maybe we were, still not clear on all that.” He sighed into another little laugh. “But I just want a few more minutes with him...you know?” 

Bucky nodded, giving him a ‘go on’ expression. 

“I guess our souls were floating around in the stone but--” He broke off, looking down at the water. “For five years, Both our names were on gravestones and in all that time, I couldn’t just see or feel him one time?” Fists now clenched into tight fists. His body language was horrifyingly angry, contrasting the deep despair that was the expression on his face. He was almost sure that none of his words made sense, they’d been jumbling around in him for months like a virus and to be regurgitated so suddenly felt...messy. 

The radio, which Sam had long forgotten about, continued to roll-out soft volume static above glimpses of songs. “Fuck, Sam--” Bucky squinted towards the sky, taking in the brief glance into Sam’s head. “I know exactly what you mean…” He turned quickly, admiring Sam’s presence as his adoration for the man thumped like the heart-beat in his chest. “I always figured I’d never get that peace with my family...but I always assumed it’d be for some iteration of Hell.” He rubbed his palm against his neck and laughed. 

Sam elbowed him lightly, forcing Bucky to find his words again. 

“Knowing--through you and how I feel about you--” Bucky gestured between them. “That I had a mellow...impermanent afterlife(?) yet still didn’t get to see my family...well it feels like I was cheated.” He shrugged.

“I don’t think your soul’s going anywhere bad, Buck. Don’t know what happens after we’re gone for good but you’re not ditching me again.” He drifted off, feeling a sudden unbearable disappointment. “Nat’ll be there too.” 

Bucky took in a breath, enjoying the tickling static of Sam’s hand. “Riley too, don’t worry about that, ok?” He tapped Sam’s hand. “I think, when we go back into the weeds and the dirt--”

“That’s a tender way of putting it, Bucky.” Sam blinked, trying not to put himself in an internal coffin because he was significantly chilled now. 

Bucky smiled. “I think we get the peace of nothing. Just a return to nature with the souls of those we loved.” He rubbed his finger into the corner of his eye like a grandpa and sighed. “I’ve seen and experienced a lot of the Heaven/Hell folklore in my life and I’m not crazy about it, Sam” He wagged his finger and Sam pushed him slightly with a nice feeling of content. 

“We can only comfort ourselves, nothing greater will do it for us. So we write ourselves a multitude of fiction that may, or may not, ease us into accepting death.” Sam bumped their elbows together and eyed a distant bird as it darted across and just above the water. 

“I’m glad whatever it was that happened between us in that stone, happened.” Bucky added sheepishly. Turning to look at his partner under the increasingly vivid stars, Bucky hiccupped as a huge wave of affection hit him. “Cause I really like you, Sam.” 

"But don't discredit yourself. It wasn't just the stone that magically brought us together--" Bucky lightly pushed Sam's bicep. "I-...I can't begin to explain how much it means to me that you made an effort to be my friend...even during the last few months of me ghosting you and not listening to you about the shield. You didn't have to do that." 

Somewhere supper was threatening to get cold and Sarah was playing their meals with a concerned frown, Sam just knew that sister of his too well. He hoped to scrap together just a bit more time. "What can I say?" He smiled "I like you too. People need people, Buck. I wasn't gonna sit back and let you cut yourself off." 

Bucky laid back on the dock, laying his palm flat to his chest. He repeated the phrase over and over in his head. 'People need people.' "Goes both ways, you know Sam?" He spoke with deep confidence but continued to laze on the dock, trying to find an angle where the sun was blocked and he could stare up at Sam. “Meaning, I hope you’ve been letting Sarah help you out...and seeing your therapist.”  

Sam gently smacked his hand atop Bucky’s like a comforting beat of thunder. “Giving my best effort.” He nodded thoughtfully. 

Bucky fluttered his eyes with the pace of his heart. “This is the first time I’ve seen you so...still, Wilson.” 

Sam tossed his head back and laughed, knowing Bucky had hit the nail on the head with that one. The back of his neck cooled as he watched the slates of wood under them pale. The glimmers of tired orange light died and vapid pastel-white tones took their place, nestled in the cracks. Part of him wanted to disagree though he hadn’t the spirit. “I don’t like relaxing because it gives me too much time inside myself.” 

Bucky nodded, encouraging Sam to go on. Fearing the man would never pick it up again if he suddenly decided to close himself off again. 

“There’s too much to do...I feel like I don’t deserve it.” Sam shrugged, a clear illustration of his frustration. He’d definitely pulled this thread a few million times in his life. 

“Don’t deserve it?” Bucky sat up just a little, resting on his forearms, he slanted his head as if the adoring smile was just too heavy. “C’mon Doll--” He cut himself off a bit too late. 

“Slipping back into old habits, huh?” Sam rolled his eyes but waved a dismissive hand. “You’re cute.” He teased, shoving the guy gently. 

Bucky played along, pretending Sam had used enough of that strength of his to knock him back onto the dock. “I think now is a great time for a few days off Sam.” 

The man hummed, thinking about the public...what they expected of their new ‘Captain America’ and what the flicker of the new spot-light in his favor revealed about those who loved Steve for all the wrong reasons. Knowing, as a black man, he’d have to go above and beyond all those assumptions just to garner the same amount of respect they gave Steve. The anger he felt from that was righteous but god forbid he show any sense of hurt because then he’d just be labeled ‘ungrateful’ and ‘giving people grief’. He rubbed under his eye with a longing sigh. “I can’t really afford that right now, Buck.” 

His body shivered as he tried to push away the intrusive images; Walker slamming into the man over and over without hesitation, thick puddles of blood covering his shield, carrying Karli’s lifeless body over an audience where half of the people celebrated her death...perceiving and exploiting her as another ‘super-villain’. 

“Hey.” Bucky softly sat up and pulled Sam’s elbow until their eyes met. “I’ve been told I’m a great listener.” He didn’t pull away, instead hesitantly he curled his hand around Sam’s arm. His fingers pressed dimples into Sam’s skin. Bucky nestled there and his friend exhaled a little, unclenching his body. 

“It’s daunting.” He nodded to himself before tipping his chin to face Bucky. “A bucket doesn’t hold a tidal wave but that’s all I got.” He shrugged, noticing Bucky’s quirked brow. “Something my dad used to say...meaning there’s too much to say so I gotta give you a shitty summary, you know?” He shook his head. 

“I know I’m one to talk but try using more words...buzz-words if you have to.” Bucky looked momentarily proud of his modern vocabulary and squeezed Sam’s arm tighter. 

Sam chuckled. “Let’s say...nerve-wrecking.” He added, bumping his elbow into Bucky’s side. “With all that’s happened...I’m worried--” He landed on a word he felt comfortable with. “Being Captain America...it’s heavy on my shoulders, man. I know I can do it, I trust myself when it comes down to the wire. I hold myself to my standards.” He trailed off again, listening to distant sounds of kids skipping rocks across the water. “I know where this job’s going to take me and I’m ok with that, glad to do it.” He looked back at Bucky with determined eyes. 

“I’m not concerned with my fate.” Another deep breath racked his body, he wasn’t used to being so utterly serious with his current company. “I think about how it ended for Tony and I worry about the kid--” 

Bucky nodded, He’d only briefly been aware of Stark’s ‘surrogate’ son and spoke a handful of words to him at the funeral, Sam and Wanda at his side. 

Sam rubbed his neck with his free hand, feeling intense pressure all over his body. All his limbs tingled as if they were asleep. He’d not realized the true extent of how much this had been eating away at him. Speaking of eating, dinner was for sure cold by now…“Met his Aunt at the funeral.” She’d been proud of her boy but behind her eyes lived guttural fear, Sam knew that much. “I’m thinking about Rhodey because I sure as hell know the pain of losing your best friend.” 

Bucky tightened his grip on Sam even further. He’d lost Steve so many times but the time had come for the permanent end and by then...well had they even felt like best friends anymore? 

“I can’t even figure out what’s going on with Wanda.” Sam clicked his tongue with a bitter chuckle. “Girl’s doing her best to stay off the grid and I can’t imagine that’s good for her. I know Torres can handle himself but I wonder if I should be helping him more. Not to mention Bruce. What the hell is his mental state right now?” He added with a confused wave of his hand. “I’m even worrying about Scott!” Sam rubbed at his eyebrow and sighed. “This is all beside Sarah and the kids, who I’m constantly thinking about.” He laughed, voice strained and tired. 

Bucky waited a few seconds, just to make sure Sam had finished. In that short moment, his heart swelled for him. “You’re a good person, Sam. But you’re only one man.” He shook him just a little bit. “Truthfully, You’ll always be concerned for them. It’s just in your nature. Don’t fight the intrusive thoughts...accept their presence and remember you’ve got a team.” Bucky trailed off, going over what he’d just said again in his head. 

Sam’s shoulders sank with another deep sigh. “Thanks, Buck.” He swiped his hand down his face and noticed how much lighter he felt. 

Bucky responded physically. He tugged Sam down with him as he laid back on the dock, shoulders bumping together harmoniously which sent chills through Bucky’s entire body. The good kind...maybe the amazing kind. Hell, they tingled under his skin just about every moment he spent with Sam. That deeply buried fear that he might spend the rest of his life making himself excruciatingly uncomfortable in his own body, trapped under his skin which was always crawling,  faded from the realm of possibility each time Sam’s presence flushed Bucky with comfortable jitters. 

“You’re getting good taste, by the way-”

Bucky only squinted at him, still half in deep thought. So Sam started Otis’s whistling again and watched his friend realize what he was talking about. His nose scrunched up while he nodded. 

“How do you decide what to listen to?” Sam turned, they were nearly nose-to-nose. “I mean, how do you narrow it down when you’ve got decades to catch up on?” Sam’s mind flickered through artists like a jukebox--which was 1 thing he’d always wanted to buy, a real old school one. 

Bucky shifted his jaw, making an eerie click, a precursor to his amused grin. “I made a list of artists I remember liking before…” He waved his hand, turning slightly to watch the dewey clouds cover the moon. “And the periods in-and-out of being frozen...I have a list of what I remember by decade-” He chuckled. 

Sam sat up on his forearms. “I’d like to see these lists. The record set-up in Sarah’s living room is not a decoration, you know? It’s almost as great as mine back in D.C.” He grinned, thinking about the days, so far gone now. Mama and Sarah dancing around the kitchen. 

“It really faded off during the 80’s.” Bucky pushed up to level himself next to Sam. “And not that I’ve had much time, mind you--” he laughed. “But from there, I just follow what I’m fond of like family trees and consider the few recommendations I’ve collected.” He trailed off, starting to do the Otis whistle again. 

Sam let him follow through to the end, anticipating the tender connotations of the song to come after this day ended. “Out of all these decades...who are your favorite artists? Just curious.” Sam grinned. The answer to this question spoke loudly about a person, in his opinion. 

Bucky looked thoughtfully content with the question, grin cocking a bit to the right as he held out his fist above him. “I’d have to say...Ella-” He flicked out a thumb, no last name necessary. Sam knew that woman like the back of his hand. 

“Nat King Cole-” Bucky softened his eyes, searching again for that unforgettable memory in Sam, and smiling when the expression was reciprocated in his eyes which shimmered like sunlight through the trees. “Roy Orbison.” Two more metal fingers curled down. “John Denver and Billy Joel.” He let his hand fall back to his chest, satisfied for only a few seconds. “But I really love Judy Garland too.” 

“So you like the mellow ballads--” He hummed. “Slow and kinda sad, huh?” Sam bumped his arm lightly. It made good sense to him. Bucky enjoyed the peace which came effortlessly from lone singer-songwriters. His five--or rather six--showed a natural progression. 

“What about you?” Bucky asked, in a calm tone of voice though his eyes read eager. 

“Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, The Drifters…” Sam paused, really thinking over his picks. “Earth Wind and Fire, Linda Ronstadt and since you got a bonus...Billie Holiday.” Sam rested his palm flat on his chest, content to feel the steady beating that let him know he was still alive. A rich sense of comfort rushed over him as if a fresh load of laundry had just been dropped on his still body. There’d been too many days in his life where that buried thumping was only a reminder of non-stop existence, like a neverending rollercoaster. Installing him with dread, guilt and panic. He was glad to find those days fewer and farther between. 

“You make me feel like I’m livin’ in a Drifters song, Doll.” Bucky was only half teasing, for he was speaking a genuine thought but wasn’t sure how welcome it’d be.

“I like that one.” Sam hummed, turning his cheek once more toward the man beside him. “Tell me how you really feel.” He hiked himself up fully to return to his seated position, legs dangling over the side and casting faint shadows of foot-steps on the water. 

Bucky paused with concern, not sure he understood the reply before he processed it fully. He wanted to smirk but the sentiment out-weighed the amusement. He sat up too, pulling one knee up to rest an arm over while the other dangled next to Sam’s. “I got it bad, Sam.” He made their wandering eyes meet. 

“Me too.” Sam nodded with that dazzling grin. “You’re under my skin, what can I say?” He shook his head and tried to let his smile fade, finding he couldn’t. 

“If they weren’t gone...I’d be buggin’ you to meet my family.” Bucky ignored the twist in his gut because Sam’s reactions were his comfort. “Though who’s to say how they’d feel about the….” He trailed off and Sam nodded. “You being a fella part of it--”

“A fella of color, too.” Sam added with a bit of a smirk. 

“Fuck.” Bucky cursed quietly and playfully tugged Sam’s hand. They curled their fingers together in an exquisitely natural way. “They loved me…” His face stilled with longing. “I’d like to think--But maybe it’s best not to go down that road. I don’t believe I turned out how they’d wanted anyway.” He chuckled, pitfully. 

Sam tightened their grip on each other for a minute. “I know what you mean.” He bumped their folded hands onto Bucky’s thigh. “I’m always wondering what my parents would think of all this…” He flicked his free hand. “My career?” He almost wanted to laugh with astonished pride. Never had he expected to grow up to be a superhero. “Riley too.” He felt there was more to say but his mouth fell shut. 

“Just a way to hurt ourselves, I guess.” Bucky shrugged. “And we sure as Hell love to do that.” 

They laughed, sort of sadly. The full night sky enriched them with gentle peace, strengthened by the soft light of the stars. The temperature dropped considerably since Sam had initially come out. But he didn’t mind the nice chill, it braced his skin and left him with tingling goosebumps. It reminded Sam how real the moment actually was. Paying less attention to the hearty sloshes of water, Sam picked up his radio. 

‘Come a little bit closer

Hear what I have to say

Just like children sleepin'

We could dream this night away…’

He might have heard the song before, couldn’t be sure, and if he was alone he might have continued flipping stations just in case an older favorite was slipping through his fingers. But Bucky began to hum with the tune. 

‘But there's a full moon risin'

Let's go dancin' in the light

We know where the music's playin'

Let's go out and feel the night…’

Sam gathered himself up from the creaky dock, stretching his body little by little and watching Bucky’s wandering eyes. He gently held out his hands which was enough of a sign for Bucky to happily grab them and pull himself up. 

Sam shoved the radio in his pocket with a smile and though Bucky was more than just pleased to see him so jovial, he also felt a flicker of nervousness. “Man...for the first time in a while, I feel lucky as Hell.” 

‘Because I'm still in love with you

I want to see you dance again

Because I'm still in love with you

On this harvest moon…’

Sam raised his brow and initiated the first few dance steps with his partner hardly noticing the movement at all. “How’s that?” 

“I’m lucky to be in love with someone I like so much.” Bucky puffed out a relaxed sigh with his words and finally leaned into the dancing with real vigor. “Sam, I’ve never wanted to spend my life with someone as badly as I do with you.” 

Wind whistled past their shoulders but Sam felt perfectly warm. He let Bucky take the lead and allowed himself to be spun. The cool light of the moon acted as a highlighter, beams of translucent white caressed the shape of Sam’s body. Following the curve of his hips and sliding down the length of his legs. “Growing old with you...becoming a cranky old man couple, that sounds like fun.” He spoke as if he hadn’t had true fun in years which was probably true. 

A bush fondly bloomed under Bucky’s skin. Behind his fluttering eyelashes, Bucky indulged for once in his life. To drink in all that was this man in front of him. 

However Sam’s eyes were now focused on a cupped hand, which had somehow slipped from Bucky’s, where a yellow toned light would flicker every few seconds. Whenever the yellow light skimmed his face, he would grin with pure joy. 

“You never caught a firefly before, Sam?” Bucky asked in jest, with a huff of amused laughter. 

Sam gently guided the bug into Bucky’s face.

“Oh, fuck! You asshole” Bucky scrunched up his nose and swatted dramatically at his nose. “I change my mind, cancel my idea. Gonna crawl back into the absolute hole that is my apartment--” He playfully backed away from his friend. 

Before Bucky could slip the last inch of his skin from Sam’s hand, the man used the full strength of his extended arm to fiercely pull him back and into his chest. Like a damn professional dancer. “I’ve been seeing myself from grief’s eyes for too damn long. Think I’m ready to take control of my own life. I want to be with you.” He playfully grinned. “What about you?”

Bucky glowed in Sam’s arms. “For a long time, I lost my sense of self…” He scratched behind his ear. “But never my fuckin’ point of view.” His voice broke just a little. “I had to see and feel every horrendous thing the Winter Soldier did. “I’ll bear the consequences for the rest of my life and I accept that.” He shook his head. “But I’m ready to accept happiness too. I really want to be with you, Sam.” 

Sam nodded, content as he’d ever been. “I think we should get our dinner before Sarah comes to drag us by our ears.”

Bucky pressed a sweet kiss, full of longing and fulfillment. “Yeah, that’s probably for the best.” He laughed, taking Sam’s arm and pulling him down the dock with a spring in both their steps. 

‘But now it's gettin' late

And the moon is climbin' high

I want to celebrate

See it shinin' in your eye’

 ‘Because I'm still in love with you

I want to see you dance again

Because I'm still in love with you

On this harvest moon’

#sambucky #is this good? #idk #i feel too awful to focus #sam wilson #Bucky Barnes #winterfalcon #the falcon and the winter soldier #sarah wilson #my fanfiction #tell me what you think #Marvel Comics #marvel #MCU #marvel fanfiction

[irene-sadler]

severe thunderstorm warning

but wait theres more

a tropical storm is rollin through town so it is absolutely disgusting outside and (mostly unrelated) i was up until 2 am yesterday/this morning b.c i decided to watch the stupid seattle mariners steelheads go into extra innings yet again (tfw ur a fan of a west coast team and u live 4 timezones away so the 10th inning takes place at 1 in the morning) 

anyway during that time i wrote a lil follow up to the executioner so nobody will hate me until uh 

the actual follow up is written which at my usual pace will be in approximately october. 

yw enjoy todays double header of hot nonsense this one’s called 

Severe Thunderstorm Warning:

     A week had passed, and even if she’d maybe made up her mind, she still hadn’t actually talked to Reynard about it.

     In her defense, nonstop days in the saddle interrupted only by an all out battle with a Nilfgaardian relief force and a followup skirmish with their baggage train guards hadn’t left much time for side conversations.  By night, the army either marched or caught a few hours of sleep when it was too dark to keep moving. She could count the number of words she’d exchanged with Reynard about something unrelated to the wounded, the condition of the bridges they used and the towns they passed, or the unpleasant but not undrinkable casks of acidic wine they’d captured on two hands. Most of them were just greetings, offered in the morning with his usual overdeveloped sense of social protocol, at night with a hint of some underlying emotion to suggest he actually meant them. It almost made her nostalgic for the days when her total forces were, more or less, a ragged collection of highwaymen with slings, a half unit of Lyrian pikemen, and a stray dog.

    On the other hand, she wouldn’t exactly be able to rush to the Aedirnian’s rescue without the trailing, dusty, exhausted mass of soldiers that snaked along the road under the baking afternoon sun, from one end of the flat horizon to the other, and she didn’t have enough men, maybe, even then. A big enough opposing force with a little more rest, a few more horses, and a following wind might be able to take them out. A private conversation was a small price to pay for an army that could probably hold its own in the field, with even odds.

    “Storm’s coming,” Gascon announced, riding in from the head of the column with a scout and a thick cloud of dust trailing him. She snapped back to the present and looked skyward. ��A hawk or vulture crossed far overhead, almost too small to see. There were a few, smallish, grayish clouds drifting gently across the endless blue, and, above those, the edge of a very high, white cloud cover that might set in overnight and block the moon. She hoped she was wrong; she couldn’t march in total darkness, and the loss of four or five hours of moonlight would set them back seven or eight hours of actual travel time.

    Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. Reynard glanced upward and then shrugged at her when she looked back down.

    “Uh. Metaphorically?”

    “No,” Gascon said. “Literally. It’s crossin’ the plain fast, will be in sight pretty soon. Tipper, here, thinks it’ll be a bad one.”

    “Lot of lighting in them clouds,” the scout noted, squinting. “Looks just like th’ one from last week, if you ask me; don’t like t’ be out here in th’ open when it hits, but nowhere else t’ go -”

    “How much time do we have?” she asked, interrupting the man’s lecture, which seemed to be going nowhere fast. Gascon glanced behind himself, toward a vague, pale smudge on the northeastern horizon.

    “Thirty minutes?”

    “More like ten,” the scout said.

    “Better stop the column, then,” she said, resisting the urge to swear pointlessly and waste a few irreplaceable seconds. “Gascon - ride up to the front - have ‘em spread out, stay low to the ground. Reynard -”

    “The back,” he said, immediately, wheeling his horse around. “I’m on it.”

    The supply wagons wouldn’t be able to drop out of the wind and lightning in the open field, and would have to circle around and hope for the best, but she didn’t have to tell him that. He could do his job without her. She focused on the middle, diverting riders and scouts up and down the column with orders for every junior officer and NCO they came across. The result was that, as a black cloud blocked out the blue sky and the air abruptly shifted from dead still to a gusty breeze headed toward it, the army came to a grinding halt and spread out, laying out under canvas tarps and cloaks until the plain was dotted with clustered shelters. Loose horses drifted among them groups, ears tilted back.

    It would have to do, she thought, reviewing the sprawling, messy product of her efforts. If the storm was as bad as it looked like it would be, it was all they could do. She dropped off her twitchy, unhappy horse, turned it loose to fend for itself with the others, and realized that her own cloak was somewhere with the faraway baggage.

    She squinted up at the boiling cloud overhead and frowned dubiously. The wind had died again. Thunder rumbled nonstop in the distance and crashed overhead. It didn’t look good, she had to admit, and she was lucky to have a scout who could read the signs. If she hadn’t gotten ahead of the storm by a few minutes, it would have been a disaster. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much chance of getting her cloak or even a jacket before the rain started. She’d been caught unprepared and there was nothing she could do about it.

    It could always be worse, she told herself, pointedly. She spent a minute with her cavalry commander, come up on foot to report that his units had made themselves fast as much as possible.

    “Can’t answer for the horses, though,” he said. “We had to let ‘em go, on the chance this’ll be one of them hurricanes.”

    “Hurricanes?”

    “Whirlwinds.”

    “Yes. Good idea,” she said, picturing the havoc one of those would cause. She doubted there would be one, but -

    “You just never know what might happen,” the Colonel noted.

    “No. Good luck,” she said. “Once this clears out, we’ll be back on the move.”

    Eventually, if everything went perfectly. She didn’t have to voice the thought; he knew what could go wrong. He saluted and headed off toward a distant fork of lighting from the ground to the clouds. The wind suddenly picked up again as soon as he left, gusted toward the clouds, then back in the opposite direction, bringing a strong smell of rain and a strange, greenish cloud with it. She squinted at it. It was like rain, traveled along the ground like rain, but it was the wrong color. By the time she realized that it was a cloud of blowing grass and dust it was too late to duck before the mess hit her right in the eyes. She turned away from the wind, got caught up in the stinging hail that instantly followed it, and stumbled directly into something solid. Whatever it was caught hold of her by the shoulders before she could push off of it; she squinted at it and recognized Reynard in time to keep herself from decking him. He said something that the thunder drowned out. She shook her head.

    “Come on,” he shouted, into her ear. She let him drag her onto the ground, under the dirty gold cape he held over their heads. It was just about big enough to cover both of them, if they huddled close together. Another few inches and she would be sitting in his lap. It wasn’t like she was entering unprecedented territory; she told herself to not think too hard about it.

    “Where’s your cloak?” he asked. She shrugged.

    “Somewhere in the baggage train. Where’d you come from?”

    “There. I had time to grab mine,” he said, paused, for a deafening crash of thunder, seemed to be out of things to say afterward. The hail stopped banging off the cloth over their heads. A waterfall of rain followed it.

    “What a mess,” she said.

    “It’ll clear up soon.”

    He was maybe three inches away from her. She was extremely aware that the last time she was this close to him she had been in his bed. He glanced away, like the same thought had crossed his mind. Unfortunately for him, there wasn’t much else for him to look at; he was back to watching her, a little warily, a second or two afterward. She had plenty of things she could talk about, and one or two she should talk about, but the words just weren’t coming to her.

    If she kissed him, nobody would know about it, she noted to herself, instead of trying to find any. It would be easy; he was literally right there, watching her with a slightly too intense look in his eye. She had told him she was thinking their relationship, whatever it was, over, but she had always known what she was going to do. She just hadn’t had the time or the place. or the words to tell him. This was not any of those things. It was damp, because the cape was leaking slightly, and a little awkward, and she could barely hear herself think over the rain and thunder. Nothing about the situation was convenient for an extremely personal and delicate conversation.

    “I had a weird chat with Gascon, the other night,” she said, instead. He looked vaguely confused, like he had expected something else.

    “What about?”

 ——        

    It was two in the morning, probably, and they were still marching under the light of a dwindling half-moon. She was pretending she wasn’t tired and sore. Everyone else seemed to be half-asleep on their feet, at best.

    “Good morning, Meve,” Gascon said brightly, riding up next to her and interrupting her wandering mind. “You’re looking pensive and thoughtful. What gives?”

    “Huh?”

    “I mean, lately, you’ve been mostly surly and unapproachable. Which, don’t get me wrong, is a good look on you, but this one’s a little less terrifying.”

    She frowned at him and decided there was no particularly good response to the comment.

    “You want an apple? I stole some from th’ orchard we passed earlier.”

    He held one out, with the same encouraging smile he used when he offered his dog a bone. She squinted at the offering. It was definitely a crabapple, and definitely not really ripe. Her stomach growled anyway.

    “Yes, all right.”

    She caught it in midair; he waited for her to eat half of it before he asked, casually, “So. What are you thinking about?”

    She shrugged vaguely. When she wasn’t thinking about Villem or coming up with a dozen schemes and contingency plans for the next day, week, month, she was mostly thinking about Reynard. By unspoken consent, they had carefully avoided being alone together at any point in the last couple of days. The distance hadn’t made her feel any better. The only good thing about the situation was she was pretty sure nobody had noticed anything different.

     He rolled his eyes at her.

    “Silent treatment, is it? Been taking notes from Reynard lately?”        

    Nobody except Gascon, apparently. She raised an eyebrow at him, warningly. He blithely ignored it.

    “Or maybe you already had that little strategy down. You have known each other for a long time, after all. How long’s it been?”

    She cleared dust out of her throat. The question seemed harmless. She didn’t see any reason to not answer it.

    “Uh. Eighteen years. Maybe more.”

    “That long, huh?”

    He had a curious gleam in his eye. She eyed him cautiously.

    “What was he like back then?”

    She thought about it for a minute.

    “Well, I was - nineteen? So he was, what, maybe twenty-two? He was - I don’t know - about like he is now, only younger.”

    She had met Reynard at the same time as all her new husband’s other knights. She hadn’t really noticed anything particularly interesting about him specifically, at the time, if she was honest. He was young, barely said anything because he was so stiff with nerves and propriety, and had a patchy mustache he was trying to grow out, to make himself look older. The stiffness had largely survived the years, as a defense mechanism. The mustache, fortunately, hadn’t. She smiled a little; they had both gotten older and wiser, or, at least, less insecure. She wondered what they would be like in another twenty years.

    “You’re drifting again,” Gascon said. She snapped back to the present and eyed him.

    “What?”

    “Oh, you know; I bring up Reynard, you get this faraway look in your eyes and start staring off at nothin’. It’s a thing you’ve been doin’, lately. You should probably be more careful; people are bound t’ notice. Other people, I mean.”

    The side-eye turned to a glare; she turned her full attention on him.

    “What do you mean, exactly, Brossard? And keep your voice down, for once.”

    “Well,” he said, carefully, “I mean, I know you didn’t go dig through the stash we had in the closet, back in Rivia Castle; only two people had keys to it, far as I know - me and the quartermaster. Carver didn’t stir between midnight and dawn, like usual, and I had mine on me the whole time. Doubt you wandered off t’ look at the scenery for a couple hours, and I couldn’t help noticin’ that Reynard bunked not twenty feet away from your room -”

    “So?”

    “So, maybe, that’s where you were that night. Maybe. Don’t worry, I didn’t mention this, uh, theory of mine t’ anyone. If it’s true, far as I’m concerned, it’s your business. Well, yours and his.”

    “Then why bring it up?”

    He tilted his hat back a little, considered her suspicious face in the torchlight.

    “Because you look kind of miserable, if I’m honest. Did your chat after the Lester affair go that bad?”

    “No,” she said, looking ahead again, trying to pretend she wasn’t miserable, just tired. “No, not exactly. It’s - it’s complicated.”

    “You keep saying that,” he said. “Not everything has to be complicated, you know.”

——

    “Complications,” she said, vaguely. Reynard didn’t look any less confused.

    “What do you mean?”

    “I don’t mean anything. Listen,” she said, deciding maybe Gascon was right, just this once, in this very specific situation, “If I kissed you, right now, would it change anything between us?”

    He blinked at her.

    “No.”

    A trickle of cold water seeped through the cape and ran into her hair. She shifted forward, away from it and toward him, leaned in, and pressed her lips against his. He kissed her back, slightly uncertainly for a second or two, but when she moved closer and slid her right hand around the back of his neck his lips opened slightly and she could tell he stopped thinking about it. He was busy maintaining their ineffective shelter, but she had nothing in particular to do with her hands; she felt the pulse pounding in his throat with her left, ran her right through the short hairs on the back of his head, and let the electric feeling that crawled across her skin and the thundering in her ears drown out her thoughts until, after what felt like not much time at all, he gently pulled his head back.

    “Wind’s stopping,” he whispered. She paused, listening for the real thunder, from the storm. It still crashed overhead, but less often than it had before and mostly somewhere far off to the south; the rain had slowed from a waterfall to a minor downpour, and he was right about the wind. It had shifted direction again, to a gentler crossing breeze that smelled like the oncoming evening. She almost wished it wouldn’t, and the storm would keep going, but time passed whether she wanted it to or not. There were a lot of things she couldn’t control.

    If she was honest, given a few more minutes, she would be one of those things.

    “Damn,” she said, under her breath. “Just when things were going so well. Nothing can ever be easy.”

    “Complications,” he agreed, an ironic smile crossing his face that made her heart stop for a second. “What now?”

    “This,” she said and kissed him again for a long moment that felt like it would crash and burn if it went on. She dragged it out as much as she could, anyway, until a little voice in the back of her mind started warning that any more would result in them being discovered, or a Nilfgaardian cavalry unit would ride over the horizon while she was distracted, or someone would slip and fall on the wet grass, stab themselves on their own dagger, and trigger a day-long safety brief - or some other disaster would happen. He looked her in the eyes for the second or two more that she let herself waste, smiled slightly, like he knew what she was thinking, and then she forced herself away from him, out of the shelter of his cape and into the drizzle. A hint of blue sky was showing through the darkness on the northern horizon. The army was still battened down around them. An offended cluster of horses stood around a hundred yards away, dripping. Reynard carefully shook water off his cape and frowned disapprovingly around at the disorder.

    “About time we got going,” she agreed, reaching a hand toward him. He took it; she pulled him to his feet, smiled up at him for another strangely long second, and let him go.

    “I’m on it,” he said.

#witcher #thronebreaker #fanfic #romance #oneshot #bottle episode #mariners baseball :<

[sodone-withlife]

it's a sad song

heavily inspired by Hadestown, will feature lyrics from How Long? and Epic III. thanks to @yourlocalheartbreaker for indulging me and my rants about how much i love this musical

the musical's interpretation of Hades and Persephone's story is perfect for Hotch and Haley, so here is the self-indulgent cliche songfic. as usual, i did little to no proofreading so apologies for any grammatical/spelling errors. it's also more choppy than i'd like, but i really wanted to get it out so i can force myself to work on another angsty Hotch fic

warnings: canonical character death, non-canon character death, suicide

word count: 4k words

(And what has become of the heart of that man, now that the man is king? What has become of the heart of that man, now that he has everything?)

In the grand scheme of things, Hotch was lucky. He was further away from the bomb when it went off and only needed a day and a half in the hospital before he was back at the field office, taking the reins in handling the press and brass that was ready to tear Gideon apart.

The inquisition that followed in Virginia was vicious and by the end, Gideon was on indefinite medical leave and the unit was under the brass’s close scrutiny as Hotch took charge of the unit. As much as the word “temporary” was being parroted around in regards to the new chain of command, it was tacit knowledge that it was a permanent arrangement. A fiasco on the scale of Boston was enough to get an agent fired, and it was only Gideon’s seniority and excellent record that kept him with the bureau.

For Hotch, Boston and the months following only reinforced three lessons that were already hardwired into his brain:

Do not break and do not allow yourself to bleed where others can see, for there are always sharks waiting to tear you apart.

(Give them a piece and they'll take it all Show them a crack and they'll tear down the wall)

Nothing is certain. Even the strongest, the smartest, the most experienced, can fail. Do not fall victim to your own hubris, for it will be your undoing.

(Lend them an ear and the Kingdom will fall The Kingdom will fall for a song)

Death awaits everyone. It takes without mercy or regard for the lives left behind.

He was the new face of the BAU within the bureau, and even his prosecutorial and investigative record could not help protect the team from scrutiny.

So he straightened his spine and hardened his already severely sharp features, throwing himself into work and restoring the unit’s reputation.

Then Hotch came home one day to Haley’s brilliant smile and delighted excitement, and for a moment, he was reminded of the first time he talked to her nearly twenty years ago, when he told her he was quitting his smoking habit.

He had frozen when she first approached him in his dark corner a few weeks after school had resumed in the fall. She had smiled amusedly, his social ineptitude clear as day as he struggled to find words to greet her, to apologize for seeming like a creep over the summer when he first saw her outside on the sports field coaching younger students through vocal warmups before they started rehearsing the musical that was being put on that year, only to completely blank she plopped herself down next to him with her own school bag and lunch.

By the end of that day, he had convinced himself it was only going to be a one-off thing, that she wasn’t going to come back. If he had been honest with himself, part of him, the part that knew so intimately that his mother’s skin only remained free from bruises after his innocent baby brother was born was because his damned father finally had a son he could look at without being reminded of his self-hatred, wished it was.

But then she came back the next day, the day after that, and the day after that, apparently content to sit beside him in silence only broken by periodic comments about the going-ons in her life and the musical. And she continued going to sit next to him, even as he watched as others tried to warn her away, tried to physically guide her away from the bleachers.

What was stranger, he thought, was that she stayed even in spite of his silence, and in spite of his vices—he could tell she didn’t like his habit, but she didn’t comment. She just kept him company.

It was a few weeks into this arrangement, when he saw his still mostly full pack, that he realized that he hadn’t itched for a smoke during lunch for weeks, not while she was there and talking to him in ways he’d never been talked to before.

Sometime later, as the number of cigarettes in the pack remained unchanging, as the pack itself went untouched in his schoolbag, he finally threw it away.

That was the first time Hotch talked to her, to tell her that he’s giving up the habit. That small, but no less proud or bright, smile that spread across her face, he decided, was something he wanted to see again.

Slowly, he started talking more, and on good days, the two made conversation on topics ranging from classes to their favorite books all the way to whatever shenanigans Sean or Jessica was getting into. On other days, on bad days, the silence was never awkward, and she simply kept him company as he struggled to control the storm in his mind.

Those were the days his fingers itched for a cigarette, and those were the days she introduced to him a new book that he would finish within the day. The next day at school, they would once again be stuck in an in-depth conversation about the characters’ flaws and the absurdities of the antagonists, and the itch would be gone.

And it went on like this, even after he threw all caution and his doubts to the wind and asked her out on the first day of their senior year, even as they faced the townspeople’s questions about why such a good girl like Haley Brooks was dating someone of the likes of Aaron Hotchner, who, despite being so coldly brilliant, was just that.

Cold.

Dangerously unfeeling.

Barely human.

But she had seen behind the facade and she knew that he loved with the fierce burning of a thousand suns. She knew how terrified he was of losing everything, that he would be left alone and floundering in a world that was not kind to the lost.

So she stayed, through college, as she went into teaching and him into law, as the final straw came and went and he registered for the Academy and started training, breaking records along the way before finally being assigned to Seattle and quickly climbed his way up the ranks until he caught David Rossi’s keen eye and transferred back to Virginia for the BAU.

Every night, Hotch came home to his wife, the light of his life, and was reminded of why he was working himself to the bone. That day, when he came home a month after Boston for Haley to press a simple rectangular box into his hands, the stakes were raised once again, and he knew he had to fight twice as hard.

Not only for his team, the people he protected so fiercely under that steel mask, but for his son.

Early mornings and late nights became the norm as he threw himself into more and more work, and slowly, the unit began to recover as Spencer Reid and Jennifer Jareau joined the expanding unit, as Gideon returned as a senior agent, and as Elle Greenaway was pulled from Seattle just like he was all those years ago.

Then Jack was born, and he used his accrued vacation time to finally take a month off. Never had he been more terrified than in the moment he first held his son in the delivery room, acutely aware of his tiny size and sheer vulnerability to the dangers of the world.

That night, sleeping in the hospital bed with an exhausted Haley and their child in his arms, he swore to do whatever he could to make the world safer for his family.

His world.

So he tried. He tried and he tried, forcing himself to leave when cases that required their presence in the field came in, forcing himself to take on the heaviest burdens of the job so his team might be protected and his family would be safe.

Maybe a part of him was trying to get him to stop in his tracks and look up, to take a moment so he could clearly see that he was being consumed by the chase.

Maybe if he was strong enough, he could have lifted the weight of his world just enough to change the direction he was going.

But he was scared.

Scared that the moment he looked up, the moment he let go, he would lose everything he was defending.

And so he did not stop—not as Elle was shot in one place she had a right to feel safe in, not as Elle resigned and prevented him from making a terrible choice, not at Reid was suffering in a hell that could only be created by the lure of potent drugs, not as the unit was once again put under scrutiny because of her and Gideon’s actions.

Not even as he was forgetting important appointments, as he was struggling to be present for the important events and early milestones in his son’s life.

Not until he was suspended for two weeks because of the vow he made to himself the moment he stepped into the leadership position to protect the team to the best of his ability.

He stopped, looked up, and put in for a transfer.

But it was too late.

(It's true the earth must die But then the earth comes back to life And the sun just goes on rising)

(I’ve had enough)

The divorce did nothing to lessen the weight on his shoulders or the utter terror he felt at the prospect of stopping.

As more and more cases started piling on his desk, he kept his back bent and head down for hours as he pushed himself to the brink with a mental image of the smile that had not dimmed for twenty years and of the only proof of his humanity at the forefront of his mind.

Every day, he bent lower and lower, but he never let himself crumble, forcing himself to remain Atlas as Kate fell and Morgan nearly followed in New York, Reid and Prentiss in Colorado—

—as JJ and Will brought their first child into the world and he promised to protect her as best as he could so she would not make the same mistakes he did—

—as he wrangled politicians and major corporations in the aftermath of him fulfilling the promise he made to Megan Kane—

—as he called in favor after favor to get to the Vatican so Prentiss could get justice for her friends—

—as he compartmentalized as best he could when he found out about the anthrax attack at a public park he knew Haley and Jack frequented whenever they visit her parents’ house and when Reid got infected—

Then the Reaper returned after ten years of silence and ten years of being a silent spectator in Hotch’s nightmares to become an active participant in his night terrors for months.

But the night Hotch returned to his apartment with the intent of pulling out a glass of scotch and staying on his couch with a book, those dreams that left him nearly paralyzed with fear every night became his reality.

That night, as his team was sleeping in their beds, dead to the world while he was slowly bleeding out from nine stab wounds and floating in and out of consciousness in his own apartment, he only felt fear—fear for the team, fear for Haley, fear for his son.

He faded into unconsciousness with the expectation that that was it, that his hubris finally caught up to him.

Less than twenty-four hours later, Hotch was staring at the dried streak of red on the photo of his whole world and wondering if he had made his way into hell without realizing it.

When Haley and Jack visited him in the hospital, he could barely look at their faces, not wanting the scared and confused expressions they wore to be the last memory he might have of the two people whose lives he sought to protect in throwing himself into work but ended up putting in danger.

Then they were walking away, and he felt his walls slowly building themselves back up to a height and with fortifications that he had not needed since he last wore them in his youth to protect himself against the people in his hometown who had treated him with suspicion and derision.

The months following the day his world was ripped from his weakened grip was its own brand of hell, and more than once he wished he had been less of a coward and let himself look up from his chase.

Soon he was stepping down and ignoring all reason as he threw himself back into work yet again, wearing a facade that his teenage self would have been proud of while desperately trying to fulfill the promise he made Haley, that he would spend the rest of his life making everything up to her.

But of course, life has a funny way of reminding people of the promises they made and the important lessons they have learned at the worst times.

Suddenly, the sound of three gunshots was ripping through his head.

Suddenly, he was forcing himself to look away from Haley’s body, strewn on the floor like a doll with its strings cut, forcing himself to keep it together so he could clear the room.

Suddenly, he was straddling George Foyet and unleashing upon him years of pent-up hurt and anger that he had never allowed himself to feel in favor of remaining strong for the people he loved so fiercely.

Do not break and do not allow yourself to bleed where others can see, for there are always sharks waiting to tear you apart.

Nothing is certain. Even the strongest, the smartest, the most experienced, can fail. Do not fall victim to your own hubris, for it will be your undoing.

Death awaits everyone. It takes without mercy or regard for the lives left behind.

That day, Hotch was reminded of all three statements that he swore to live by after Boston.

Foyet was witness to his unraveling and poked and prodded at him, so much so that he uncovered the rage he inherited from his father and had vowed long ago to never express.

His hubris, his confidence in assumptions that had been made so many times in the past, his confidence that denying the deal that had been offered to him just over a year ago was the right thing to do, cut the threads of over ten people far too early.

Haley was lost to him.

Forever.

But in the years afterward, as Hotch found himself stuck in his head and mentally removed from the team’s present more and more often, he wondered if that was actually the moment that he lost her.

Perhaps the time he had to fly out to Mexico on his birthday weekend was the start and the stress of his suspension the catalyst.

Was he simply too destructive and too desperate to have a happy ending? Was anyone closely associating with him doomed to fall along with him?

Why else was his mother spared from bruising when she was able to focus on raising Sean, a son whose looks did not remind his father of the sheer hatred he felt for himself?

Why else had his brother, who he was estranged from, done so well in life and remained so carefree?

For what other reason could Haley have been murdered than the fact that she was collateral damage in a psychopathic narcissist’s dream to cause him as much pain as possible?

For a short time, Haley’s murder had given Hotch a chance to look up, to free himself from all the responsibilities he had taken on, but it ultimately only served to increase his fear and paranoia. The team had seen the tail end of his unraveling in that house, and he knew it had shaken them to the core, so the walls remained up. Strangers in the street were unsubs, and he was never far away from a weapon if he could help it, always fearing that he would be too late to be of any help.

Four years to the day he locked himself away, he was seeing Haley smiling radiantly at him and wearing the same dress she was wearing when he proposed as she waved him over to sit next to her in an empty movie theater and he was struggling to articulate her beauty.

The large screen in front of them was playing scenes from his life in the years since she was stolen from this life. While her eyes were glued to the projection of his memories, he was left unable to tear his eyes away from her, the woman who had been such an integral part of his life, whose death he would probably never forgive himself for, whose presence in his world he had so desperately missed.

Then he was looking down from the screen when their moment was interrupted by the man who had become a permanent fixture in his night terrors and surprising himself with just how prepared he was to kill again to protect Haley like he had failed to do years ago. It was only Haley’s repeated assurances that finally got him to look back up at the screen, and in the next moment, he was once again experiencing his nightmares in real-time.

His voice cracked as he tried calling out for help, becoming more and more desperate as it became clear no one was coming, and then—

You’re not meant to.

They were suddenly standing face to face in that dark corner of the school where they first met. Hotch froze, rooted to the spot by the uncharacteristically cold expression on Haley’s face.

Where is he?

It wasn’t right, the hard tone, the way she was looking at him as if he were a stranger—

I don’t see Aaron Hotchner in front of me. Where is he?

Then her face softened, and she walked over to sit against the wall, uncaring of the dirt that was gathering on her dress. She stared at him pointedly until he made his way over to her and joined her on the ground. It was with great surprise that he felt her lean onto him, a long-forgotten and now unfamiliar warmth settling over him.

I want to tell you a story.

She told him the story behind an old song, the story about the queen who brought spring and summer with her every time she walked the earth and the king who ruled the shades and the underworld. And though the king loved his queen so desperately, every time she walked the earth while he remained in the underworld, he doubted that she would come back to him, for what could he offer her except his darkness?

So he worked and he threw himself into building a kingdom of metal and glaring bright lights that might compensate for his darkness, but he could not bring himself to look up for fear that he would lose everything the moment he stopped. In his fear, he kept his head low and his back bending, he locked his love away so it wouldn’t be a distraction.

(But what he didn’t know is that what he is defending was already gone.)

When Hotch found himself on the edge of a roof being held against Peter Lewis, who had a gun at his temple, facing the team’s desperate and fearful faces, he could only think about that story Haley had told him and the questions she had sent towards him right before he woke up in the hospital four years prior.

(Where is the treasure inside of your chest? Where is your pleasure? Where is your youth? Where is the man with his arms outstretched to the woman he loves with nothing to lose?)

That was the first time he could remember crying in front of Jack—when the two were clinging to each other in the hospital bed after yet another close call—and he resolved it wouldn’t be the last. It hurt to tear down the walls he had so meticulously built around himself over the course of nearly five decades, but to see the smile that his son inherited from Haley…

He could only lament that he hadn’t started earlier.

Slowly, he rebuilt his world, and it was filled with a warmth that hadn’t been since those golden years between first meeting Haley and becoming a prosecutor.

But then Peter Lewis came and turned his mind against him, forcing him to watch his nightmares come to life. And when he found himself at MPD’s gunpoint with Jack watching, his world cracked.

And in that interrogation room, watching the recording of Lewis’s testimony against him, his world cracked again.

And seeing his son’s withdrawn affect, trying to get him to understand that he wasn’t leaving, that he wouldn’t ever abandon him of his own free will—

Then they were called to Arizona and he found his name carved into a victim’s forehead, and he knew it was only a matter of time before the attacks would become more and more personal.

Favors were called in, calls were made, and all the while Hotch tried to keep Jack as ignorant as possible to the way his world was going up in flames around him. For a moment, it felt like the immediate aftermath of Boston, with all of the non-stop workdays and the scrutiny of the brass falling onto him and the struggle to balance his work and Jack—

And then one day, Jack disappeared in the middle of the school day.

A day later, Rossi and Luke were holding him back, trying to keep him away from the security checkpoint at the entrance of the Academy office buildings that had been taped off as a crime scene. His eyes caught a sudden movement, and all the fight left him when he saw the white sheet being unfolded and lowered over the small body that was on the gurney.

Maybe he was supposed to be more grief-stricken than he felt.

Maybe that’s why the team tip-toed around him in the months afterward—they were waiting for the sand to run out, for the inevitable breakdown that was expected from a man such as him.

And the sand did run out, only it wasn’t where any of them expected.

The cold metal digging into his temple provided him an odd moment of clarity as he thought about the questions he had asked himself—because that wasn’t Haley, she never looked at him with such cruelty, not even when he probably deserved it, it was always that voice in the back of his head, the voice that led him down the road to hell.

That treasure that he kept in his chest—it was buried in the ground with Haley and Jack.

His pleasure, his youth, it was left behind in his past with that first strike he felt from his father.

A smile spread across his face for the first time in months and he closed his eyes, a strange peacefulness settling deep in his bones. He flung himself backward, letting himself become dead weight as he suddenly heard shouts of horror through the sound of the wind rushing around him and Peter Lewis as they fell.

Didn’t you tell me to find the man who was reaching out with nothing to lose?

I found him.

I hope you and Jack waited for me, Haley.

#criminal minds #bau #aaron hotchner #haley hotchner #hurt aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner whump #aaron hotchner x haley hotchner #hadestown #tw death #tw character death #tw suicide

[spiltscribbles]

andreil, 85 and 16??

Notes: Thank you so much love!!! A reblog is worth a thousand stars!

.-

16 » “I’m going to kiss you now.”

85 » “Sometimes I really dislike you.”.”

.-

Neil’s never been to a wedding. 

He’s never seen two people exchanging vows. Has never watched their first dance after being declared as partners, or eve attended an actual reception. Hell, the closest Neil’s ever gotten to one  was whenever Allison would drag him down to watch reruns of Four Weddings with her if Renee was busy. 

All this to say, even with Neil’s minuscule wedding expertise, he still has the foresight to tell Matt that choosing the cake’s flavor seems like a very bride and groom sort of job, even if it’s a moot point considering that he’s already said as much a total of three times.

“I know, I know,” Matt tugs on the ends of his hair, eyes wide and frantic. “But we over booked like crazy and Dan has gotta check out something at the venue and my suit fitting’s in like a quarter of an hour and.”

“And you’re desperate?” Neil gathers.

“Completely,” Matt pouts. “And I know that it’s totally last minute and—“

“Okay,” Neil interrupts because he feels like it’s the right thing to say and he’d really rather not listen to Matt actually beg. “I can go for you guys.”

“Really!” Matt beams.

“Of course,” Neil shrugs.

Matt pulls him into a tight hug.  “You’re a life saver Neil my man.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Once he leaves Neil pulls out his phone from his sock drawer to text Andrew, asks him if he’d like to tag along. 

Andrew: Boyd already paid?

Me: Yes

Andrew: Fine, give me 5.

Suddenly going to this cake tasting doesn’t feel so entirely dreadful. 

.-

“Stop looking at the joint like it’s about to swallow you whole,” Andrew toots, absentmindedly thumbs a circle into the hand Neil’s got interlocked into his own. It’s a gentle moment, something casual. It’s one that Neil enjoys the most, brilliant in its simplicity. It makes him feel grounded, feel alive. It reminds him that he can have this now, a life composed of warm smiles and warmer friends and gets to call Andrew his person. His person who makes Neil feel understood and wonderful and abuzz with something so splendid that he can hardly describe it. 

“Am not looking at it like that,” Neil sniffs, gives a gentle squeeze to Andrew’s hand, likes the feeling of his touch calluses and soft palms, thinks that Andrew was born to be a walking contradiction and Neil was always meant to find him and hold on tight.

“Don’t tell me you’re not a fan of frills Neil?” Andrew goads, one brow cocked and half his mouth turned up in a smile that isn’t mean, but it’s not nice either. “Princess will have a conniption.”

“Sometimes I really dislike you,” Neil informs him in a deadpan, turns his attention to the brightly smiling redhead who’s welcoming them inside for their appointment.

“You’re a terrible liar,” Andrew says lowly, is close enough so that his hot tendrils of breath skirt against Neil’s neck and blatant enough so the aforementioned redhead starts to blush.

Oh joy.

.-

“Everyone here at Love At First Bite is dedicated to making your special day the most memorable of your lives,” the baker, Madeline, crows as they take their seats, eyes glittering with genuine mirth.

Neil elbow checks Andrew once he catches the grimace passing across his face at the comment, offers Madeline an apologetic grin. The one that always makes Allison pinch his cheek dotingly and Dan give into whatever plan he’s plotting out.

“So you guys take up a lot of weddings huh?” Neil asks her, genuinely curious.

“We’re the top bakery in the city, third year running,” she crows.

“Bet there’s some stiff competition in this wonderful town,” Andrew says wryly, utterly unimpressed. Though Madeline doesn’t seem to notice, only giggles and gets some color in her cheeks once more. 

“So I’ve pulled out some slices that we think will fit your wedding perfectly from our conversation last week, let me just grab them from the kitchen.” The door swings shut in her wake and Neil nearly jolts forwards with the realization. 

“She thinks ’s our wedding?”

“Hmm,” Andrew glances towards him, molten eyes squinted in confusion. 

“Madeline,” Neil begins to clarify. “She thinks that me and you— that we’re, that it’s our— She thinks it’s our wedding.” 

“Pretty terrified sounding Neil,” Andrew needles in a menacingly flat tone. “What, the thought of marrying me such a burden?”

Wait, what?  No that’s definitely not it! That’s not even close to what Neil was thinking. He doesn’t care that she thinks they’re the grooms, not even slightly. It’s kinda the exact opposite. More like he didn’t even think of the possibility until this moment, and now— well now it’s making him feel disoriented in the best of ways. Like their’s something warm and splendid coiling deep in his stomach and his insides are pulsing with the realness of that possibility.

Neil doesn’t get to tell Andrew as much because Madeline walks in right then, hands filled by carrying a platter of various slices of cake, and sporting an exciting grin all the while.

“So I know you guys were interested in the strawberry shortcake over the phone, but actually our carrot cake is a total favorite from our customers, and I think you two would just adore it!” She says without a moment to breathe between words.

“Whatever,” Andrew huffs, grabs for the plate she’s offering and stabs his fork into the dessert with way more force than necessary. 

“You guys are just so cute,” Madeline tells them, glowing as she hands another slice over to Neil. “Congratulations on the upcoming nuptials.”

“Thank you,” Neil says mostly because he knows Andrew isn’t in the mood to make small talk, besides this lady has been nothing but kind and doesn’t deserve their sourness seeping into her day also.

“So I hope I’m not intruding,” Madeline starts, inches closer as she prepares the next set of cakes for them to try. “But what was the proposal like? I always think those are just the most amazing stories from our patrons.”

“Yeah Neil,” Andrew quickly interjects, already having finished his slice and still sulking. “Why don’t you tell the nice lady how you proposed, practically begged, for me to marry you.”

Neil hates it when Andrew gets petty, hopes that the glare he’s directing his way is properly getting across that notion. 

“It was quiet.” He ends up telling Madeline, though his eyes never leave Andrew’s face— a face he’s spent countless hours tracing the lines of and memorizing each slope and valley. He use to only map it out with his eyes, but then he somehow— miraculously— got to do so with soft caresses and eventually sure kisses. It’s a beautiful face, Neil’s favorite face. A face he would spend an eon just staring at if Andrew had ever been patient or willing enough to let him.

“Something private?” Madeline surmises, reminds Neil that they actually have company and she’s waiting for him to answer the question at hand.

“Yeah,” Neil nods, slow but sure. “Our friends were all over the place for the holidays, but me and Andrew stayed home, just the pair of us and our cats.” He continues to explain, knows that the best lies always have as much truth as possible mixed into them, and yes, in fact this was their precise situation this year over Christmas. And it was also one of the times that Andrew made it so Neil’s heart blossomed with something remarkable. One of the most recent times he was sure that Andrew was his world.

 “I woke up, and I looked at him and I just knew it. So after he woke up and we made breakfast, I just took his hands in mine—“ Neil does that now, hesitantly because he never wants to overstep, but is reassured when Andrew’s own go pliant and he turns ever so slightly towards him. “So I look him straight in the eyes, and I told him that I love him, and I love all he’s brought into my world. I told him that I don’t want anything to ever change between us. We’re the one constant I’ve ever had in my life and I’m thankful for it every day.”

Madeline gushes with her fist pressed to her chest, and Andrew follies a nasty grimace her way for the interruption. Neil doesn’t falter though, just gazes at Andrew, thinks of how he’s always been so enthralled by him. Neil feels it in his bones how he loves him so thoroughly that it takes his breath away. 

“Then what,” Andrew prods, words hugged in a tender cadence that probably no one else could pick up on, but Neil recognizes it well, and it makes his chest thud with wanting.

“And then I asked you to marry me, to stay with me till the end of time.”

A pregnant pause spills over them and Neil feels every breath escape his lungs, is only settled down when Andrew tilts his pale head and lets the smallest of grins turn up the corners of his thin lips.

“And I said yes.”

“You said yes,” Neil repeats, equal parts bewildered and amazed.

“Of course I said yes,” Andrew sniffs, but the posturing doesn’t last, his features melting into something so achingly open that Neil wants to kiss him right then and there.

“Oh how precious,” Madeline squawks, and this time it’s Neil who casts her a nasty glare.

.-

They ultimately decide on the chocolate marble cake for the wedding, and as they walk out the bakery— hands still interlocked— Andrew turns to him, slightly smug.

“Pretty sappy shit you thought of on the spot,” Andrew goads, bright and beautiful and the one sure thing Neil’s ever known. 

“I wasn’t freaked out that she thought we were married dummy, I was freaked out I hadn’t gotten to ask you myself yet,” Neil tells him, totally indignant.

A thousand emotions suddenly pull at Andrew’s face, settling on an expression that Neil could only ever describe as aw.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” he says, words stripped from any pretense, and gazing at Neil as if he had placed all the stars in the sky. As if he were someone worth that sort of adoration. And God does Neil love him. “Yes or no”

“Yes Andrew, of course yes.”

Andrew’s Arms circle around his neck, and Neil clasps his hands on either side of his narrow waste, and they fit so perfectly that it’s hard not to think of it as fate.

Gingerly, their mouths slant over one another’s, lips cloaked in sugar and tasting like a forever Neil once only dreamed of.

#andreil #andriel #andrew minyard #neil josten #all for the game #SPILT INK

[fourteenacross]

Hello, void, I’m back for more screaming. idk, following along the concept from this, which is in and of itself a follow-up to this.

*

When Sam gets back from his last lunch meeting before the holiday recess, Josh is on his way into the office. Seeing Josh around isn't strange--he pops in on occasion to see Donna. What is strange is that  Josh's arms are loaded down with folders and a tablet--he's clearly here for work, despite the fact the place has already mostly shut down for the holidays. His staff is largely gone and there's one senior staff meeting standing between Sam and nearly a month in New York with Will and his family.

"Hey, Josh!" he says. "Donna has a meeting--I'm late to that meeting, actually--but she should be out in twenty minutes or so."

"I'm here for the meeting," Josh says, just as Will pokes his head out into the reception area.

"Oh good, you're here," he says to Josh. Which is...incredibly out of character.

"Oh good Josh is here?" Sam asks, raising his eyebrows.

"You too, I guess," Will says. At Sam's incredulous look, Will absently busses him on the cheek.

"I don't understand." Sam turns back to Josh. "Did Evelyn send you to try and get me on board for the thing?"

"No," Josh says. "I don't work for the DNC anymore. I resigned two weeks ago."

"Wait, why didn't you--"

"You're both late for our meeting," Will says. He tugs Sam's sleeve. "Come on. Cathy, hold the calls?"

"Already on it," Cathy says from behind her desk. "Good luck!"

"Thanks," Will says, and ushers him into the conference room.

Sam's a little hurt that Josh hasn't mentioned quitting his job and a little perplexed that Donna hasn't mentioned it either. When Josh was briefly between jobs after President Santos' first and only term ended, she made sure to remind him and Will both, frequently, that she was the sole breadwinner for her household now, and she really needed a raise. Even more peculiar is Josh showing up here of all places, to meet with Will of all people. Sam gave up on the idea of Josh and Will getting along a long time ago, and while they're generally civil to each other at this point, they're certainly not actively spending time together.

Still, he follows Josh into the conference room. Seated at the table are Donna, Lauren, and Winnifred, all with notes and laptops spread in front of them. Will sits next to Donna, the two of them at the head of the table, and, to Sam's great surprise, Josh sits next to Will and slides him the tablet he was carrying.

"Have a seat," Will says, and Sam sits down hard.

"Okay, someone has to tell me what's going on because you're all freaking me out, now," Sam says. "Is this an intervention? Is this because I said I should take a meeting with Kavan Chowdhury while we're up visiting your parents? Because that was a joke, I'm not going to work over the break, I swear."

"No, it's not an intervention," Will says. A beat, then, "Though I know you weren't joking about that even if you think you were, but we can argue about that later."

"This is the first strategy meeting for your next campaign," Josh says before Sam can continue down that line of conversation.

And that...maybe makes more sense. Sam is genuinely shocked that Will would hire Josh to work on his campaign given their history and honestly almost more shocked that Josh would take such a breeze of a job. Also, it's way too early.

"That election’s still four years away, and not to tempt the wrath of the whatever, but do you really think it's going to be a big enough fight that we need to start planning already?" Sam asks. His first re-election campaign was nothing, and if anything, he's more popular now than he was in his first term.

"Yes," Will says. "Because it is four years away, but it's not going to be a cakewalk. It's going to be the hardest fight of your life and I'm determined we're going to win it."

"I really don't know--" Sam starts to say.

"Just show him the thing," Josh says to Will and Will rolls his eyes, but he turns on the tablet and then flips it over so that Sam can see the screen.

Seaborn for America it says, in stylized red, white, and blue.

Sam can hardly move.

"You're ready for this," Will says gently, switching out of his work voice and into the quieter one he uses in the moments just between the two of them. "You're ready for this and I think the world is going to be ready for it by 2018. I think we can do this."

"Will...." Sam starts to say, but he doesn't even know where to begin.

"It was always heading here, Sam," Josh says. "You know that. We've been talking about this since we were kids on the Hill."

Which isn't untrue--they have been talking about Sam's political career since the summer they first met. But most of those conversations unceremoniously died when Sam came out. Sam always assumed that Josh had transferred those dreams to Matt Santos.

"I don't...I can't...." Sam stutters, still staring at the tablet.

"You can," Will says. There's a fire in his eyes that Sam hasn't seen since he first decided to run for the Senate nine years ago. A bone-deep desire to make this happen. An unwavering determination that once got a dead liberal elected in the California 47th.

"We've started drawing up some preliminary plans," Donna says. "We're starting off in a good place--people are still talking about your speech at the convention over the summer. The younger demographics appreciate that you're active on social media and, well, to be frank, that you're kind of a nerd. Older voters still associate you with Bartlet, and that gives them confidence in your leadership skills."

"Did you...do polling?" Sam asks.

"Well, yeah, I'm your Media Director, of course I did polling," Donna says.

"How long have you guys been planning this?" Sam asks.

"We found out the week after the election," Winnifred says, and Lauren nods. Sam turns to Josh.

"Well, Will called me up after Evanson tanked the first debate and it started to become clear we were in for round two of the Sullivan presidency," Josh says.

"He told me when I started as Press Secretary back in 2006," Donna says.

Sam looks to Will, then, who's radiating pride and just a little of the Bailey smugness that drives Sam crazy.

"Since the moment you told me to give Kay Wilde your name," Will says, and Sam isn't sure if he wants to smack him or kiss him, but he'd settle for the latter, for certain.

He looks between the five of them, all of them so sure that this is what's next, so confident in him as a candidate, as a leader.

"Could everyone who's not married to me step outside for a minute?" he asks. He's trying to keep his voice even, but it goes a little high at the end.

"If you're gonna make out or shout at each other, can't we just turn around until you're done?" Winnifred asks.

"Come on," Donna says, nudging her to stand up. "They just need a minute to psych each other up. And then, yeah, probably be gross and romantic at each other.”

"Just, two seconds," Sam says to them, though his eyes don't leave Will. "Don't go anywhere."

The rest file out, and then it's just Will, sitting at the head of the conference table holding an iPad that's long since gone to sleep.

"Hi," Will says, when it's clear Sam's not going to say something first.

"Hi," Sam says. He gets to his feet, dazed, and walks over to Will.

"I know I've said it before, but the waistcoat is a good look for you," Will says.

Sam covers his face with his hands. "Will," he says.

Will stands too and goes just far enough to lean against the table, crossing his arms loosely against his chest.

"Very distinguished," Will continues.

"Will," Sam says again, and this time Will stays quiet. Sam drops his hands and stares at Will for a moment. "Since that first night?" he finally asks, soft, like he's afraid if he says it too loudly it will dissipate into the air and fade away.

Will nods. No cute remark, no explanation, no smug rejoinder. He just nods. Sam has both never loved him more and never been more terrified.

Something of it must show on his face, because Will's resolved expression softens and he says, "Hey, hey, come here," and reaches out to pull Sam into an embrace. "You have to know I love you too much to have started this if I didn't think you could win it." He presses his nose into Sam's hair. "I would never do that to you."

The problem is that Will thinks Sam can do anything. Will's unwavering belief in him as a person is sometimes so overwhelming that he's paralyzed by the expectations.

"I don't know if I can do this," Sam says into Will's neck.

"You can," Will promises. "And even if you don't believe it yourself, you've got me and Josh and the staff to believe it for you until it sinks in."

Sam closes his eyes and thinks about a quiet night more than a decade ago when President Bartlet challenged him to a game of chess.

Sam, you're gonna run for President one day, he'd said, and the shock of hearing his private dream spoken aloud by one of the people he respected most in the world had stunned him into silence. President Bartlet thought he could do it. He believed in Sam, which meant more than he could ever articulate. It's a memory he's held close, one he's never shared with anyone, not even Will, in part because was certain that his relationship with Will would put an end to those aspirations. In 2002, the idea of an out queer man running for President, let alone winning, seemed like an absurd fantasy.

In 2014, he's startled to realize it might actually be within his grasp.

Sam reluctantly pulls back from Will, just far enough that he can look him in the eye.

"You really think we can do this," he says. It's not a question--Will has made that much clear.

"I'm certain of it," Will says, that steely resolve back in his voice.

Sam loves him so much.

"Okay," he says. "Then I guess we should get the rest of the staff back in here so we can start."

Will's grin could light up the Beltway.

"Yes, sir," he says, and kisses Sam firmly before pulling back and moving for the door. Sam moves with him, an arm tucked around his waist.

"You really called Josh to help?" he asks, just to hear Will's beleaguered sigh.

"I wouldn't use the word 'help,'" Will says. He pulls open the door to the conference room, where the rest of the senior staff and Josh are milling around a little too casually to not have been listening at the door the entire time. "Come on in, everyone, I've bullied him into it."

"I was just telling Will how nice it is that he could ask for your help, Josh," Sam says. "Look at the two of you, working together."

"I don't need help!" Will insists.

"It's very sweet," Sam says. "Don't you think it's sweet, Donna?"

"So sweet," Donna says.

"Spending the next four years working together," Sam says, just to see Will make a face like the milk in his coffee's gone off. "It'll bring you closer together."

"And eight more years after that, knock on wood!" Donna adds, and Sam has to imagine that it's entirely to see Josh roll his eyes so hard it's a wonder he hasn't hurt himself.

"Listen," Josh says as he brushes past Sam and Will and back into the conference room. "I only answered this call because I want Sam to win this and I don't trust the guy who ran Bingo Bob Russell's campaign into the ground to pull it off."

"I ran Bob Russell's campaign into the ground?" Will says, stalking off after Josh. "I think it was more like you manipulating the convention from hell--"

"Excuse me, I did no such thing!"

"It's gonna be a fun four years, huh?" he hears Lauren say to Winnifred behind him.

"I think you mean it's gonna be a fun twelve years," Winnifred replies.

And while Sam is still a little terrified of tempting the wrath of the whatever and even more terrified that he might not be up to the job, he can't help but sincerely think that it will be fun.

"You're an idiot!" Josh snaps.

"I can fire you!" Will snaps back.

Well, a little fun, at least.

#fic by me #sort of #the west wing #sam x will #will bailey #sam seaborn