#read it on ao3 at least one chapter is best formatted for ao3

[faeriekit]

Quiet Respite (Masterpost) ❤🕸🕷

art (top) by @not-another-robin ❤🕷

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(DCxMarvel/'Dark Matter-genre" fanfic)

"Cassandra Cain is Batgirl. Cass is a newly adopted sister. Cass is a dancer. Cass has found a spider. What is to be done with the spider stands to be seen."

(AKA a sweeping attempt by the author to write something of a slowburn romance between Cass Cain and Peter Parker. Hits every trope under the sun and then some.)

Warnings for: Romance | Author blows up the MCU | Lack of regard for any canon timeline, really | Identity Tomfoolery | Non-Deaf author writes about/around ASL | Mentions of Injury | References to Homelessness

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Find the entire fic here on AO3 (art included)

Chapter list:

1 ❤ 2 ❤ 3 ❤ 4 ❤ 5 ❤ 6 ❤ 7 ❤ 8 ❤ 9 ❤ 10 ❤ 11 ❤ 12 ❤ 13 ❤ 14 ❤ 15 ❤ 16 ❤ 17 ❤ 18 ❤ 19 ❤ 20 ❤ 21 ❤ 22 ❤ 23 ❤ 24 ❤ 25 ❤

Enjoy!

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#something is hinky in the chapter count and I CANNOT figure out what for the life of me #anyway #read it on ao3 at least one chapter is best formatted for ao3 #YOU SHOULD READ DARK MATTER. GO SEE IT RIGHT NOW. Winningest fic of all time according to the stats #faer fic #quiet respite #fanfic of a fanfic #(somewhat anyway) #dcu crossover #dc x marvel #NO marvel ONLY Spider-man #mcu #but like only the parts of the MCU that are personally interesting to me #2212

[badkitty3000]

UPDATED 4/17/24! CHAPTER SIX ADDED!

☕Love In The Time Of Cholera And Coffee ☕

Chapters 1-6

Five x Female Reader, Klaus x Female Reader

You and Klaus are in a casual relationship. No ties, just sex. When you start spending a lot of time at his apartment, you somehow manage to break through his brother's prickly outer shell. He seems to like you, or at least tolerate you the best that Five can. When you start to realize that maybe there is more than just mutual friendship between the two of you, it opens up a lot of feelings and unanswered questions. And a lot of problems.

This story contains sexually explicit material! (But also lots of humor and fluff)

Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Multi-Chapter Fic, Cross-posted on AO3. Link to my Master List.

This story alternates between the reader's POV and Five's POV. I will update a chapter at a time going forward. If you'd like to read it on AO3's format, here is the Link to story on AO3.

Thank you for reading!

Chapter One: Motivation, Routine, and Caffeine

You have been sort of dating Klaus for several weeks already. Not exactly his girlfriend and not exactly not his girlfriend. You are something in between and you are ok with that. You don’t need a major commitment and you are content with a casual relationship. Maybe not forever, but for right now it suits your needs. Klaus is fun and easygoing, and always makes you feel relaxed. He can be selfish sometimes, that is true, but you are willing to overlook it for the most part. As long as he doesn’t bring his selfishness into the bedroom, which so far he has not, then you could live with it.

The sex is good. Which is probably the real reason you’ve been hanging around so long. Without the sex, there isn’t a whole lot keeping you there. You don’t have a lot in common, except that you both like watching old English-dubbed Samurai movies on TV late at night while passing a joint back and forth. You don’t even like smoking that much, but Klaus has a way of making everything seem alluring and sexy, so you never hesitate when he takes a long hit off a joint and hands it over to you.

You spend a lot of your time at his apartment. You work a lot of hours, and sometimes have to work late, and his apartment is much closer than yours. That’s actually where you had met Klaus, at the bakery and coffee shop that you manage. He had come in for a tea and started making small talk with you. Before you knew it, he had you cracking up when he made a joke about eating your muffin. You weren’t even offended; that’s just part of the magic of Klaus. He can say pretty much anything and get away with it.

It doesn’t hurt that he’s one of the most beautiful men on the planet. Honestly, sometimes you’re jealous of how every single piece of clothing looks amazing on him and he never seems to have a bad hair day. Being with Klaus is like walking around in the company of some ancient Greek sculpture come to life. He draws eyes wherever he goes, from both men and women, and he’s never shy about returning the looks, either.

He likes to go shopping with you to help you pick out clothes, and he always lets you know if they look good on you or not. He’s funny, and sweet, and it’s very easy to fall under his spell. With Klaus you get the best of both worlds; a fun best friend that you can share clothes and gossip with, but who you also get to fuck.

That initial run-in with him eventually led to a few hook ups, and now you are a regular visitor at his place. It works out well. He always stays up late, so it’s no big deal if you swing by on your way out of work at midnight.

You are also working a lot in order to hopefully buy the shop from the current owner. Soon, you’ll have enough cash, along with a loan from the bank, to buy it. And you already run the place, anyway. It has always been a dream of yours to be able to own your own business.

So, between the long hours and financial preparation for the purchase, you don’t have a whole lot of free time. Most of what you do have, you spend with Klaus since it’s convenient and fun. Which, as it turns out, means you are also spending a lot of time with his brother.

You knew from the beginning who Klaus was. You know all about The Umbrella Academy and the Hargreeves family, because everyone does. Not that they’re really a household name anymore, but you know all about their history and their powers. So, when you found Klaus shared an apartment with Number Five, you were intrigued. You knew he had gone missing for a long time, but didn’t really know the whole story. Klaus had filled you in one night, though, and you were left feeling sorry and sad for him. That is, until you met him.

The first time you were there, sitting on the couch with Klaus watching TV, Five had teleported directly into the living room and scared the living shit out of you. After you screamed, he looked at you like you were some sort of flea-ridden possum that had gotten inside the house when someone left the door open.

“Holy shit!” you had shrieked, clutching at your chest and trying to catch your breath.

Without addressing you in any way, or introducing himself, Five glared at you, then turned to Klaus with a scowl. “Keep your feet off the coffee table. And stop leaving the goddamn milk out.”

Then he was gone again, in a swoosh of light, leaving you staring at an empty space.

“Wow, that was intense. Does he always do that?” you had asked Klaus.

Klaus just laughed and nodded, putting his feet back up on the coffee table. “Oh yeah, that’s just Five. You get used to it.”

“He seems kind of scary. And angry.”

“Fivey? Oh no, not at all. My big brother is really just a mushy little teddy bear all dressed up in a three-piece suit. Trust me, his bark is much bigger than his bite.” Then Klaus creased his eyebrows together in thought and pointed his joint at you. “But, maybe try not to piss him off too much. Just in case.”

Because of what you learned about Five’s time travel mishaps, he looked younger than Klaus and a few years younger than you. You were somewhere in between the two of them. But Five definitely had the grumpy, older brother thing down. After you got used to him appearing and disappearing without warning, you started to loosen up around him a little bit. Even though Klaus told you he was really a softy inside, you have a hard time believing it from the way he acts around you. After several weeks straight of being ignored, you decide to call him out on his bullshit.

Five appears out of a portal of blue directly in front of you as you are on your way to the bathroom. As usual, he gives you his signature sneer and is about to walk past you when you grab him by the arm. He looks down at his arm where your hand is and then back at your face; a murderous glint in his eyes.

“What the hell is your problem?” you ask him, doing your very best not to show your nerves.

“My problem? I don’t have a problem, thank you. Now let go of me.”

His voice is hard, but he also hasn’t tried to pull away, and you keep your hand on him. His upper arm is much firmer and solid than you had expected and you can feel his bicep flexing under your fingers.

“Why are you always so rude? I haven’t done anything to you.”

Five rolls his eyes and sighs. “Christ. Look, I’m sorry if I’m not dying to be all buddy-buddy with you. I learned a while ago that it’s not exactly worth getting to know my brother’s flavor of the month.”

You know he’s meaning to insult you, but you end up laughing instead. It’s no secret that Klaus is a total man-whore and you’re fine with that. It’s nothing serious and if another man came along that you were interested in, Klaus wouldn’t mind that, either. In fact, he’d probably want to meet him.

“Look, your mean old man act is wearing a little thin. It wouldn’t kill you to be somewhat nice once in a while. Maybe even get to know me? Most people think I’m a fucking delight.”

Five gives a sarcastic snort of laughter and looks back at your hand on his arm. This time, you let go. “How about this, sweetheart? If you’re still around next week, I’ll consider finding out how much of a fucking delight you are.”

You smile and hold out your hand, ignoring his condescension. “Alright, old man. Deal.”

You notice a tiny twitch of the corner of his mouth, but then it’s gone again. He looks cautiously at your hand, like he’s not sure what to do with it at first, and then he gives it a quick shake with his own before muttering something under his breath and blinking away again.

It is exactly one week later, and you haven’t forgotten Five’s deal. He has been slightly more cordial to you in the past seven days, but he still doesn’t take the time to stick around more than two minutes to talk to you. So, you’re practically beaming with satisfaction that you get to rub it in his face and actually make him talk to you.

You corner him in the kitchen one morning, as he’s pouring a cup of coffee. “Hi!” you exclaim loudly as his back is turned to you, and you laugh when he almost spills his coffee everywhere.

“Fuck!” he yells, before turning around and glaring at you.

You bounce on your toes and clap. “Guess what today is?”

“I can only hope that it’s National Leave Your Boyfriend’s Brother The Fuck Alone Day?”

You give a fake laugh and shake your head. “No, dummy. And he’s not my boyfriend, anyway. It’s been a week and I’m still here, right in your grumpy little face. So, now you have to talk to me.”

“I most certainly do not,” he states dryly before taking a sip of his coffee and then making a face of disgust. “Damn it, Klaus cannot make a decent pot of coffee to save his life.”

“Oh my gosh, that’s what I told him! It’s the worst!”

That seems to pique Five’s interest a little and he gives a small smile. “He buys the cheapest shit ever. Everyone knows the secret to good coffee is –"

“Quality coffee beans.”

He looks stunned that you said exactly what he was going to say and he lowers his mug. “Yeah, that’s right.”

“See? If you had taken the time to know me a little, you would know that I actually manage a café. I know all about good coffee.”

You don’t know him well enough to recognize all of his expressions, but if you could guess, you’d say he looks somewhat impressed.

You continue on. “And, since I know firsthand that Klaus’s coffee is total shit, I have started bringing my own with me. Wait right here.”

You leave, go into Klaus’s bedroom, and pull out a small bag of coffee grounds from the overnight bag you brought with you. When you return to the kitchen, Five is still waiting there, and you hold it up for him to see.

“Now, move out of the way so I can dump that swamp water out and make us something good.”

Five actually does what you say, and moves out of your way, allowing you to clean out the pot and fill the coffee maker up with fresh water and your special grounds. He doesn’t say anything, but he’s watching you intently. It’s slightly unnerving but you try to ignore it.

When you’re done and all you can do is wait for the coffee to brew, the two of you stand on opposite sides of the kitchen, leaning against the countertop. Five has his arms crossed over his chest and you start fidgeting with your hands, picking at your nails and cuticles. Your boldness from just a few minutes ago has faded.

“So, you’re the manager of a café?” Five finally asks, breaking the silence.

“Yes. Soon to be owner, if things go well.”

Five raises his eyebrows and nods his head in approval. “Sounds like a smart move.”

“I hope so. It’s a big step, but I’m ready for it. I want to be my own boss.”

Five nods his head again, but doesn’t say anything. After another minute of silence, the coffee maker beeps. Thankful for something to do, you pull out two new clean mugs and pour each of you a cup. When you hand one to Five, he takes it from you and you notice his hands. They look strong, with taught tendons running down the backs and long, slender fingers. You’ve always had a thing for hands.

“Holy shit,” Five says, his forehead creased with lines.

“What? No good?” you ask, genuinely surprised that he wouldn’t like it.

“No, quite the opposite. This is perfect!”

You laugh and hold up your mug. “And you didn’t want to get to know me.”

Five makes a face that kind of resembles a smile and takes another drink. “Well, if I’d known you made coffee like this…”

You laugh again and shake your head. “Klaus insists you are just a big teddy bear, and maybe I’m beginning to see it. Underneath all that crabbiness, anyway.”

“I’m not crabby,” Five insists, giving you the crabbiest frown ever.

“Oh, ok. Sorry. Curmudgeonly? Would you prefer that?”

To your surprise, he actually laughs. You’ve never heard him laugh before and it catches you off guard. But you like the way his face breaks into a big grin and the sound that rises up out of his chest like it’s been stored in there for a very long time and is finally being released.

“Well, I’ll be damned…did you just make Senor Cinco laugh?”

You and Five both turn and see Klaus sauntering into the kitchen to join you, wearing nothing but a small pair of bright blue underpants. He sidles up to you and throws an arm around your shoulder, leaning down and giving you a kiss on the cheek.

“I did!” you exclaim with a smile, putting your arm around his naked waist.

“That just might be a new record. Usually, it takes at least three months, plus a few thinly-veiled death threats, before you get an honest to goodness laugh out of him.”

Five rolls his eyes and his face returns to its normal seriousness. “Actually, Klaus, I just don’t laugh at anything you have to say. Because you’re a fucking idiot.”

“Aw…I love you too, Fivey,” Klaus responds before he reaches out and ruffles Five’s hair.

Five bristles and runs a hand over the mess Klaus made, trying to restore his normal style.

“Well, as much as I’d love to continue this thrilling conversation, I’ll be taking my leave now. Enjoy your day doing…what do you two do, anyway? Contract various STDs and debate the nuances of Scooby Doo?”

You let out a loud cackle at that, which makes Five smile crookedly in your direction; right before he blinks away, leaving Klaus rolling his eyes and you with an inexplicably warm feeling in your chest.

Another week has passed and you and Klaus are still playing the no-ties dating game. Since you had turned Five on to your coffee making skills, the two of you have developed a bit of a friendship. While Klaus likes to stay up late and sleep in the next day, you are up early. Despite your long work hours, you generally don’t need a lot of sleep to function. You run mostly on motivation, routine, and caffeine. Which, coincidentally, so does Five.

Because you are both up in the early morning hours, you and Five will end up meeting in the kitchen when the sun is barely above the horizon. He will sit quietly at the small kitchen table and watch while you go about making coffee for the two of you. Neither of you say much until the coffee is finished brewing and has been poured. Then you sit down across from Five and he’ll actually engage in conversation.

At first, it was like pulling teeth to get Five to answer any questions, but after a while he warmed up. Now, you’re pretty sure he actually likes sitting down and talking to you. This morning is no different, and you and Five are in the kitchen, comfortably talking and sipping coffee when Klaus wanders in.

He yawns and stretches his sinewy body before flashing you a smile. “Morning, babe. I feel like waffles. You guys want some waffles?”

Five says nothing, but you smile back up at Klaus. “As long as you aren’t suggesting I get up and make them, then yes, I’m up for some waffles. We can go to that diner down the street.”

Klaus comes over and starts running his hands through your hair, massaging your scalp in the process and combing out the tangles with his fingers. It feels nice and relaxing and you close your eyes. When you open them again, your gaze lands on Five and your eyes meet. Something about the way he is looking at you makes your face flush with embarrassment and you gently push Klaus’s hands away, laughing.

“Quit it,” you say lightly, even though under normal circumstances you love it when Klaus plays with your hair.

He takes a step back, unfazed, and goes to pour himself a cup of coffee. Five is still watching you and you have to avert your eyes just to think straight. You scoot your chair back and stand up, turning to Klaus.

“So, are we going or what?”

Klaus shrugs. “Sure, you buying?”

You roll your eyes. “Don’t I always?”

“Yes, you do. And then I pay you back in a much more physical way.”

“You realize that makes you sound like you’re prostituting yourself for breakfast foods.”

“I’ve done a lot worse for a lot less.”

You laugh and then you see Five get up and start to make his way out of the kitchen. “Five wait!”

He stops and turns to you, coffee cup still in hand, and eyes you up. “Yeah?”

“Come with us.”

“I don’t think so. You two toddlers go ahead.”

You frown and jut your hip out. “First of all, stop insulting us. Second, name one good reason you don’t want to come with us. I mean, you do eat, don’t you? Or do you survive solely on black coffee and sarcasm?”

You see that faint smile playing on Five’s lips again. The one that gives you a little flutter in your stomach when you see it; because you know you’re one of the few that can actually get him to break.

“Yes, I do eat. If surviving on coffee and sarcasm were a thing, it would have made my life in the apocalypse much easier.”

He’s kidding, but you still feel bad about your comment and you cringe a little at the mention of his traumatic past. Klaus, though, just waves a hand in the air dramatically.

“Come on, Fivey! What’s not to like about spending time with your favorite brother, while also getting some free waffles?”

“Pleeeaase?” you beg while batting your lashes exaggeratedly in Five’s direction.

After another annoyed eye roll and a huffy sigh, Five relents. “Fine! I will go to your stupid diner and eat your stupid waffles.”

“That a boy!” Klaus goes to slap Five on the back, but he has already blinked out of the kitchen.

“I hope it’s ok that I invited him?” you ask.

“Of course it’s ok. I can’t believe he said yes, though. I’ve been trying to get him out and socializing forever. It’s like you have a special magic touch with him. You’re like the Number Five Whisperer.”

You laugh. “Yeah, right. I think he just wanted breakfast.”

Klaus shakes his head. “No, really. I’ve seen him around you. He actually listens to you and isn’t mean.”

“He’s mean to me all the time!”

“Well, compared to what the rest of the world gets from him, that’s nothing. He once called me the human version of a shart.”

When you can’t help doubling over with laughter at that, Klaus puts a hand on his hip. “It was very hurtful.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s hilarious. Say what you want, but the man is funny. Whether he intends to be or not.”

“Just you wait. When he starts comparing you to shitting his pants, then we’ll see how funny you think he is.”

Once you are all showered and dressed, the three of you walk over to the diner for breakfast. You are planning on going directly to work from there, so you have your bag slung over your shoulder. The weight of it is evident by the way you’re slumped to one side while you lug it around, and Five eyes it curiously as you slide into a booth. You and Klaus are on one side while Five is across from you.

“What do you have in there? Bricks?” Five asks you as he picks up a menu.

“Yes. I carry around a bag full of bricks. One never knows when one might need to perform an emergency masonry job.”

You see Five’s lips purse together in a failed attempt at trying not to smile, avoiding your eyes by pretending to peruse the menu.

Klaus lets out a loud hoot of laughter and puts his arm around your shoulders. “Looks like you may have met your match in the snide comment department, Fivey.”

Five glances up and flicks a stray piece of hair off his face. “Doubtful. I am, and will always remain, the king of snide comments.”

You and Five exchange amused looks and you peer down at your own menu. A waitress comes to the table to take your orders and Klaus flashes her one of his beautiful smiles and you can see she is instantly smitten by him.

“A round of waffles and coffee for the table, please.” Klaus gestures to all three of you. “And make sure to give the bill to my sugar mama over here.”

The waitress gives you a funny look and you shrug with a smile before she wanders off to put in the order.

“Klaus!” Five hisses, leaning forward.

“What?”

“If you can’t pay for your own breakfast, I will. Don’t make her do it.”

Klaus looks genuinely taken aback. “Why? She offered.”

“Because it’s…” Five pauses and sighs and if you thought he was capable of embarrassment that might have been what he was conveying. “…it’s not gentlemanly.”

You chew on your bottom lip and look down in your lap so that you don’t laugh, but also so that Five doesn’t see how completely shocked you are at this statement.

Klaus frowns at Five. “I forget sometimes that you’re an old coot under that sleek body of yours. Don’t be so old-fashioned, Fivey. The times they are a-changin’.” He turns to you. “Besides, am I nothing but a gentleman?”

They are both looking at you for some sort of response and you laugh nervously. “Yes, you are mostly a gentleman. And I don’t mind paying; I did offer.” Klaus looks smug and Five rolls his eyes. “However,” you point a finger at each of them, “neither one of you offered to carry my bag for me on the way here.”

You watch with satisfaction as both of their mouths hang open for a second before they realize they have nothing to say to that. Just then, the waitress comes by with your coffees and starts to set them down in front of you on the tabletop. As you smirk to yourself, you hear both men utter a soft “sorry” under their breath before taking a sip from their mugs.

Five clears his throat. “You never did answer me. What are you carrying around in there?”

You glance at the overstuffed tote bag next to you. “Well, some extra clothes and toiletries, but also my laptop and a bunch of notebooks and file folders. I’m applying for a large bank loan and need to make sure all of my ducks are in a row.”

“Oh, that’s right. You’re planning on buying your café.”

Klaus leans back against the booth. “Yeah, she’s cute and smart. Hey, another thing you two have in common!”

Five takes another drink and mutters over his mug. “I am not cute.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Klaus looks thoughtful as he scans Five up and down. “You’ve got more of that angry, smoldering, sex god look about you.”

“Shut up, Klaus.”

“He’s right,” you hear yourself saying and your cheeks immediately burn when you realize you said it out loud. You notice Five’s face reddens a little as well when he looks at you in surprise.

Klaus is oblivious and he clinks his coffee mug against yours in a toasting gesture. “See? Everyone thinks so. Now, the next step is to share some of that super sexiness with another human being and not just your fist.”

With his face still flushed, Five clenches his jaw even tighter. “Shut. Up. Klaus.”

“I know it’s convenient and doesn’t require you to leave the house, but choking the old chicken doesn’t replace the need for human contact. It’s nice to flog your log once in a while, but you need to branch out. Let someone else take Fivey Junior for a spin. Know what I mean?”

You are certain you are about to witness a murder firsthand as you watch Five pick up his butter knife in a clenched fist, leaning dangerously close to his brother across the table, when the waitress comes back with your food. As she plunks down the plates in front of everyone, Klaus continues to dig his own grave.

“Hey there,” he squints at the waitress’ name tag, “Sandra. What do you think of my brother over here?”

Sandra looks visibly uncomfortable as she glances from Klaus’s beaming face to Five’s murderous one and back again.

“I’m sorry?”

“On a scale of one to ten, with one being you would not bang him if he were the last man on earth, to ten being you want to jump his brittle old bones right here in this diner booth, how would you rate him?”

You sink down in your seat and close your eyes, thinking that maybe if you aren’t actually looking when Five rams that knife through Klaus’s neck, you won’t have to answer too many questions from the cops. You risk opening one eye a slit and you can see Five fuming, nostrils flared and neck veins bulging. The poor waitress is not sure what to do as she stands there awkwardly, so you decide to jump in.

You laugh theatrically. “He’s just kidding! I bet him $20 to say that. I’m sorry…I didn’t think he’d actually do it.”

Sandra relaxes a little and sighs with relief. “Oh, ok. No worries. Enjoy your meal.”

As she walks away, you turn to Klaus with a glare.

“What?” he asks innocently.

“You’re terrible,” you tell him, disapprovingly.

“I’m trying to do the guy a favor and help him get his ex-assassin wiener wet!”

Suddenly, Five’s palm bangs on the table, making the plates and cutlery dance and clatter. You and Klaus both jump in your booth.

“I do not,” seethes Five, “need your help or anyone else’s for that matter.” He relaxes a bit, unclenching his jaw and rolling his shoulders back. His eyes pass over to you as he starts to cut into his waffle. One corner of his mouth curls up as he stabs a piece with his fork. “Fivey Junior is doing just fine, thank you,” he quips before taking a bite and giving you a quick wink.

Your stomach feels warm and fluttery all of a sudden and you let out a snort of laughter. The subject is dropped after that and Klaus eventually moves on to something else that involves his and Five’s apartment. Your mind wanders as you eat your food, staring into space as the two brothers chatter next to you. You didn’t mean for your mind to wander to that, but now that it was brought up, you find it front and center in your brain.

You find yourself wondering exactly what Five’s sexual situation is. You’ve never seen him with a woman, or a man, but he’s certainly good looking enough to get either one. Maybe his surly attitude turns people off? You know all about his unique situation, and so maybe he’s never had the opportunity to be with anyone else in that way. You steal a glance over at him, noticing the way the tendons in his forearms tighten and relax as he gestures while he talks and that warm feeling is back.

I wonder what kind of package he’s working with in those pants of his? He’s not a huge guy, but he sure as hell carries himself like he’s got a giant schlong. I would not be surprised if he was packing some serious equipment in there. I bet it could do some real damage…all that anger has to go somewhere. And I bet he knows how to use it, too. Probably could bang you right through a fucking wall –"

“Think twelve inches is too big?”

You drop your fork onto your plate with a loud clang as Five’s question snaps you out of your perverted daydream. Your face is suddenly very hot.

“What?” you ask in a wide-eyed panic.

Five and Klaus both give you a weird look.

“The shelving unit to put under the bathroom sink, remember I was telling you about them the other day? What do you think about the size?” Klaus explains.

“Oh, right. Uh…I don’t know,” you stammer.

Five turns back to Klaus. “It might be a little tight but I bet I could make it fit. Probably have to shove it in there really good, though.”

At that, you dissolve in a burst of nervous laughter that has the other two looking at you like you’ve lost your mind. You can’t stop laughing, though, and you cover your mouth with your hand while your body shakes uncontrollably.

Five and Klaus exchange confused glances. “Ok…weird,” Klaus says before going back to his waffles.

After a good thirty seconds of hyperventilating, you finally calm down enough and you wipe the tears from your eyes.

Five points a fork at you. “What the hell was that?”

You shake your head, suppressing another round of laughter. “Nothing, I was just thinking of something from earlier. You had to be there.”

“Clearly.”

After a few more minutes of silence, Klaus turns to you. “I know you’ve been worried about this loan and making sure you have everything in order. I’m no good at that kind of thing, but our boy Cinco over here probably is. Maybe he can look things over for you.”

“Oh!” You turn to Five. “Really? You’re good with finances and all that?”

“I’m good at everything, so by default I’m also good at finances,” he answers offhandedly, not looking up from his plate.

“Oh, right, silly me. I forgot, you’re a goddamn genius.”

He looks up and nods without a hint of irony. “Correct. I am.”

You roll your eyes. “Ok, never mind, sorry I asked.”

“Alright, don’t get all huffy. If you want me to look things over, I can do that.”

“Well, if it’s not cutting too much into your time of sucking your own dick, then that would be great.”

Klaus lets out a loud laugh and Five raises one eyebrow as he leans back and drapes his arm over the back of the booth with a smirk. “I think I can pencil you in somewhere.” He picks up his coffee mug, stopping just before he takes a drink. “Incidentally, that would have been another skill I could have used during those solitary years. But, alas, as brilliant as I am, I found I lack the flexibility.”

You bite at the inside of your cheek to stifle your laughter. “There’s a visual I don’t need.”

Klaus nearly chokes on his food. “Holy shit, did you actually try that? I’m not saying I haven’t myself, but I just didn’t think you…well, I guess there were a lot of lonely hours to kill, so like what did you try first? Rolling up in a ball, or –"

You slap a hand over his mouth. “Ok then! I can see this conversation is headed in a very weird direction, so I am just going to excuse myself and head to work now.”

After you gather up your bag, Klaus gets up to let you out of the booth. As you hoist the heavy tote over your shoulder, you address Five. “If you really are serious, I would be glad to have your help.”

“I was serious.”

“Thank you. Would you be available later today around 4? You can come by the café. I’ll even make you some coffee.”

“Sure. See you then.”

You give him a smile and then turn to Klaus. “See you later?”

“Absolutely. I’ll be around.”

Klaus leans down to kiss you, which is nothing out of the ordinary of course, but you feel weird being so affectionate in front of Five and you break the kiss off quicker than normal. You say goodbye to them both and as you go to leave, Klaus gives you a slap on the ass. When you turn to give him a fake scowl, you catch Five looking at you. He’s watching you with that intense look of his that you still have trouble reading the meaning behind. Whatever it is, though, you’re finding that you kind of like it.

Chapter Two: Fivey Junior

As I leave the diner and Klaus goes off to do whatever the hell Klaus does, I stand on the sidewalk outside for a minute or two. My hands in my pants pockets, I lean up against the building and close my eyes, taking a deep breath. What the fuck am I doing?

It’s true I wanted nothing to do with her in the beginning. I’m tired of having to deal with Klaus’s random friends and whatever stray he decides to bring home for a week or two. They usually end up making a mess, drinking all of my good beer, and eating my Grape Nuts cereal. But then they are eventually gone and he moves on to the next one. Men and women. Sometimes both at the same time. It’s exhausting just watching him and I honestly have no idea how he does it. I’m definitely too old for that shit. Meanwhile, though, I have to live with it.

So, when she showed up, I could not have cared less. Just add it to the long line of other free loaders. But then she stuck around longer than usual. She was there most mornings and most nights. I couldn’t turn around without finding another stupid pink hair tie of hers and there was suddenly strawberry scented shampoo in the shower. According to Klaus things were not serious between them, but he liked having her around and apparently she felt the same about him.

Then, that day she grabbed my arm and accused me of being a mean old man, well I may have shifted my opinion of her just slightly. No one ever challenges me and they certainly never grab me like that. Not without a serious death wish, anyway. But when she did it, I don’t know why, but I didn’t mind. I hadn’t spent enough time around her to really study her up close, but once she was in my face, calling me rude, I could see the little speckles in her eyes. And see how pink her lips were and smell that strawberry shampoo. When I shook her hand, it felt soft and warm.

It was like she made it a personal mission of hers to wear me down, and I have to admit it really fucking worked. She’s nice and bubbly and sunshiny all the time, and that should be the most irritating goddamn thing in the world, but for some reason it’s not. She also calls me out on my bullshit, which no one ever does, outside of my family, and so I have to admire her for that.

That morning when she made me coffee for the first time, that sealed the deal. Not because it was damn good coffee, because it was. It was that she genuinely wanted to talk to me. I have no idea why; she wasn’t wrong when she called me rude before. Still, as much as I didn’t mind the company, I wasn’t going to put too much effort in. I figured she’d be gone soon enough.

The days that followed, though, she was still there. And now every morning I meet her in the kitchen and we sit and chat and drink our coffee. And it’s nice. Nice enough that I make sure to get up extra early every day just to have that time with her to myself. She’s intelligent and funny, and almost as much of a sarcastic smart-ass as myself.

She’s beautiful, too. I can’t stop watching her any time she’s around me. Whatever she’s doing, I’m mesmerized and I have to remind myself to stop staring like a creep. I like the way she moves with confidence around me and the way she gestures with her hands when she talks. I like her voice in the morning when it’s still a little raspy from sleep. I try not to look at the rest of her body, because I know she’s technically too young for me and I’m being a gross old man, but fuck, she is sexy. I know why Klaus likes her. She really is fucking delightful.

This morning I really didn’t want to get breakfast. After I saw Klaus stroking her hair like that, the last thing I wanted to do was see more of the two of them shoved in my face. When she berated me for not going, though, I had a hard time saying no again. She seems to be able to do that to me. But then what just happened back there in the diner? Was I flirting ? Did I actually wink at her while talking about my dick? Holy shit, did I just tell her I tried to suck my own dick? Yes. Yes, I did.

I drop my head back on the brick building, hard, and groan. What is wrong with me? I am a grown ass man. I am not some love-struck teenager with a hard on for every girl that looks in my direction. I do not pine for women. And let’s not gloss over the fact that she’s dating Klaus, my actual brother. They might not be serious, but that’s a pretty shitty thing to do. Fuck, I need to get a life.

And now, because Klaus is completely oblivious and also apparently thinks I have too much free time on my hands, I am committed to seeing her again today. Of course I don’t mind helping her and I’m happy to do it, but I’m nervous just thinking about it. Why should I be, though? It’s just us talking over coffee like we have been for several mornings now. The only thing different is that it will be in an outside location. At her coffee shop. Just the two of us, no Klaus. Almost like… I swear to god if you even entertain that idea right now… date.

“God fucking fuck damn it FUCK!” I yell out loud on the street while I kick at the brick wall with my good shoes, scuffing them up in the process.

Several people are looking at me like I’m an insane person and a couple of them are crossing the street to get away from the raving lunatic trying to beat up a building. To avoid the concerned stares, I blink away and reappear a few streets over. I might as well keep walking, maybe that will clear my head and stop with all these ridiculous thoughts.

It’s a nice day, at least, and I end up at a park, taking a seat on a bench as I wallow in my own self-pity. There’s an older man on the bench next to me, reaching into a bag of bread and throwing the crumbs out to the pigeons gathering around his feet. He looks over at me and I give him a nod of approval, thinking that looks like a nice way to pass the time, but have you seen the price of bread these days? I lean forward and put my head in my hands, groaning out loud at myself while my pigeon friend gives me the side eye.

One thing that has started happening since she came along is that I sometimes forget my real age. I was at least able to age myself up by 8 years or so when we arrived in this timeline, thanks to some tricky time-math and a whole lot of luck, but I’m still well older than my body portrays me. It used to shock the hell out of me every time I’d pass by a mirror and see a stranger looking back at me. Then, after a while, I got used to it and I’m not going to complain; trading your broken old body in for a new model definitely has its perks. No more aching bones, tired muscles, or mysterious bruises that seem to appear out of nowhere. And I won’t get started on the new and improved libido, but suffice to say it’s a nice bonus.

Even though I have gotten used to the newer, younger me, I have never felt young mentally. I have remained the same stubborn old man that has resided in my head for decades now. It’s a weird contradiction to have the energy to stay out all night, yet still rather be at home catching up on this season’s Antiques Roadshow. But this is the first time in the last few years that I’ve started to feel more like my younger self. And maybe it’s because I don’t want to feel like a dirty old man, lusting after a woman more than half my age. That is definitely part of it, but the other part is that she just makes me forget. She makes me feel younger.

The hours are dragging by, but I still don’t feel like going home, so I continue to wander around. I come to the conclusion that I am being a selfish, delusional bastard and I just need to cut it out. If I really think about it and start psychoanalyzing myself, there’s a clear reason why I’m having all of these misdirected feelings. It’s obvious that my years of solitude have left me ill equipped when it comes to forming human relationships. In my still-infantile mind, a simple friendship between a man and woman has manifested itself into something more, because it doesn’t know the difference. The chemicals in my brain are confused and don’t know when and how to release themselves at the appropriate times.

I know that dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine are produced upon initial attraction to another person, and that oxytocin is released when you presume you are in love. Everyone knows that. So, it’s obvious that I just need to reprogram my brain so that it is not confusing mutual amicability with something more. As usual, if you approach something from a scientific aspect and remove emotions from the equation, problems become much easier to solve. Simple science makes everything so much clearer.

It’s finally close to 4pm when I’m supposed to meet her at the café, so I start making my way over there. I have a new outlook on this meeting now. I am happy to look over her finances and make any suggestions that I see could be helpful. If she asks for my opinion, I’ll give it. Then, I will take my leave, go home, and continue on with my life. No more of this internal longing bullshit.

Then I arrive there and…well, fuck. So much for science.

I am standing outside of the café looking in through the windows and I can see her in there. She’s standing next to one of the tables, talking with another woman who is sitting down with a mug in front of her. I obviously can’t hear her, but I watch as her face breaks into a beautiful smile and she laughs. A laugh I can hear in my mind because I’ve memorized it. She crosses her arms over her chest, which squeezes her breasts together and accentuates her cleavage. When she finishes her conversation and walks back towards the counter at the front, my eyes travel down to her round butt bouncing along in the tight jeans she’s wearing.

“Excuse me.”

I am snapped out of my voyeuristic weirdness by an annoyed voice belonging to a woman behind me. Apparently, I’m blocking the doorway and she would like to enter the building. I open the door for her and she walks past me while I try to get a grip. I follow the woman inside and up to the counter.

When she sees me, she smiles and I automatically shove my hands in my pockets to try and portray an air of casualness.

“Hey there, Fivey,” she says with a big shit-eating grin.

I shake my head and attempt to look mad. “Do not call me that. It’s bad enough Klaus does.”

“It’s so cute, though! It’s like his little pet name for you.”

“I’m not sure why my idiot brother feels the need to make my name even weirder than it already is.”

She snorts out a laugh and then bites her bottom lip, and honestly both of those things are going to send me through the roof, she’s so fucking cute.

“Ok, so no nickname, fair enough. Still willing to help me out?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

She turns away, but not before I see an eyeroll, as she grabs a coffee cup and fills it up, handing it over the counter to me.

“Here you are. One free coffee. As promised.”

“Thanks. I can pay for it though, you don’t really have to give it to me.”

“No please, just take it. I promise I won’t think you are ungentlemanly for it,” she says with a small smile and I can see she’s obviously teasing me about my comment in the diner earlier.

“You make fun of me, but one of the perks of being with an older man is that we know how to take care of our ladies.”

It just came out of my mouth without thinking and I can feel my face getting hot. I’m just praying that she can’t see me blushing. What the hell is going on with me?

“Oh, is that so? I’ll be sure to keep that in mind, then,” she says with a flirty tone.

I have no idea what to say next without sounding like a complete asshole, so I just don’t say anything and instead take a sip of my coffee.

She clears her throat. “Well, let me go grab my stuff and we can sit down at one of the tables.”

She disappears into the back for a minute, returning with her heavy looking tote bag from earlier. I follow her over to a small two-top table and we sit across from one another. As she fishes around in her bag and unloads her laptop and some file folders, I watch as a lock of hair falls in front her face and all I can think about is reaching over and tucking it behind her ear. Obviously, I do not do this.

I look over all of her financial information and everything looks like it’s in order. When I start asking about something I’m reading on her laptop, she gets annoyed that she can’t see the screen well, and so she comes around to my side of the table, sitting directly next to me. I can smell that strawberry shampoo again and our legs brush together. I swallow nervously.

“I think everything looks good here. Your credit scores are high, you have no debts, and you’re asking for a reasonable amount. I don’t really see why they would deny you.”

“Do you think so? I know it’s stupid, but I’m so nervous! The meeting with the bank is tomorrow morning.”

“You’ll be fine.”

“It’s just…if I don’t get this loan I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve put so much into this place, I already feel like it’s my own. But I’m not going to work as a coffee shop manager for the rest of my life. I at least want to be a business owner. You know, something I can be proud of.”

I nod. “I think you should be proud of yourself no matter what.”

She scoffs a little. “Ok, thanks Dad,” she says sarcastically.

Just like that, I come crashing down to reality as I’m reminded who I really am. I am not a 20-something year old. I am old enough to be her actual dad. And while that really has no bearing on anything, considering nothing is going to happen between us anyway, it’s still a kick in the nuts. She must see it on my face, because I see her cringe.

“That was a joke. I don’t actually think of you as a dad.”

“I know.” My voice is clipped as I try to hide my embarrassment.

She leans into me and bumps my shoulder with hers in a friendly gesture. “Thank you. For helping me with this.”

“You didn’t need my help. You’ve got this.”

“Well, thank you anyway. And thank you for putting up with me. I know I annoy you by always hanging around your place.”

"It’s true, you are a giant pain in the ass,” I say with a smile. “But, as giant pains in the asses go, you’re not so bad.”

“Aw…thanks Fivey!”

She laughs at my irritated face, which I am only making to keep up the façade. She can call me anything she wants, really. I don’t mind.

I am sitting at home the next afternoon, when she comes bursting through the door of the apartment. She's absolutely bouncing up and down with glee and when she sees Klaus she runs over to him and he picks her up in a big bear hug. She has on what I assume to be her business attire from her bank meeting, and I can’t stop staring. It’s a tight pencil skirt with a short, fitted blazer on top and black high heels. When Klaus lifts her up, her jacket pulls up in the back and I am treated to a very small window of her bare skin just above the waist of her skirt. I’m not sure if I want to look there, or down a little bit lower to wear the material is hugging her hips and ass.

“I got it!” she shrieks and kisses Klaus before he sets her down again.

“That’s great, babe!” he tells her.

Then she turns to me, as I stand there staring like a dope. Before I know it she has her arms wrapped around me and my face is covered by her hair as she hooks her chin over my shoulder. I don’t know what to do, I’m practically paralyzed with shock. I can’t even bring my arms up to hug her back, so they just stay limply at my sides. I take a breath and close my eyes, inhaling the scent of her hair and skin. She lets go of me and steps back and my immediate impulse is to pull her right back into me again. But I don’t. Instead, I just continue doing nothing.

“I cannot thank you enough, Five. You helped me do this.”

“I…I really didn’t do anything.”

“Well, you gave me the confidence I needed and made me feel like I knew what I was doing before I went in there. So, thank you. Really.”

She is smiling so genuinely and sweetly at me and I just can’t believe she is giving me any credit for anything. But I figure if I keep putting off her compliments she’ll get annoyed, so instead, I get weird and flustered.

“Yeah, well, you’re welcome. No problem.” I look from her to Klaus and back again. “Alright, well I’m going to leave you two dimwits to yourselves. See you later.” Then I blink away before either of them can respond.

It’s the next morning and I wake up early, but I don’t get up to meet her for coffee this time. I can’t keep torturing myself like this and pretending we have some sort of connection is just sad and pathetic. The truth is, she is with Klaus right now. Maybe they aren’t technically in a committed relationship, but she’s here in the apartment because of him, not me. And because they supposedly aren’t serious, that also means they will eventually tire of one another and one day she just won’t be here anymore. And it makes me fucking sick to even think about it.

Instead, I start thinking about her running into Klaus’s arms and kissing him yesterday. I hate how much that bothered me. I hate how much I wanted that to be me. I’m lying here in my bed, alone, and all I can think about is lifting her up in my arms, her body pressed to mine as she kisses me. It’s so fucking pathetic and yet, I can’t stop. I replay it over and over in my mind; her smile and her lips and the adorable way she would squeak if I squeezed her to me.

Soon, my pathetic little daydream has evolved into something much dirtier than a hug and kiss. I think about how her tits would feel pressed up against my chest. About how her firm ass would feel under my hands. And how badly I want her legs wrapped around my waist.

I groan sadly and palm my erection through my underwear. Fuck. Rather than sit and jerk off in my bed, I decide I should just head to the shower and kills two birds with one stone. The bathroom is directly across from my bedroom and I make the quick blink over so that I won’t have the humiliating experience of bumping into the person that’s responsible for my boner problem in the first place.

In the shower, my imagination runs wild. I obviously have never seen her naked, but I can certainly conjure up an image in my head that I decide is probably pretty close. I picture her straddling me, my cock deep inside of her, while she fucks me hard and fast. Those tits that I’ve only seen the outlines of through her t-shirts are bouncing up and down in front of my face and, Jesus Chris, it’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. My hand is acting as a sad substitute for her tight cunt as I lean my head on my hand against the wall and close my eyes.

I imagine her moaning my name as she throws her head back and works her hips harder and faster on top of me. I can feel her soft flesh as my fingers dig into her sides and push her down; all the while thrusting my own hips up because I can’t get enough. As a final act of delusion, I throw her off of me and flip her over. I pound into her from behind, listening as she cries and sobs from the intensity of it all. I hear her pleading, telling me she’s sorry for ever wanting anyone else but me; that it will only be me from now on. I urge her on as I penetrate her harder, demanding she fucks only me from now on. She is mine and I’ll be goddamned if anyone else is going to touch her from here on out.

I’m only yours, Five…you’re all I want…all I need. I love—

“Hey, Klaus, have you seen my…Oh shit!”

The sound of her voice in real life has me floundering, trying to remember what the fuck is going on, and I turn around just in time to see her horrified face which mirrors mine. Our eyes lock for what has to be a fraction of a second, but feels like an eternity, and I see her glance briefly downward and then back up again.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” she stammers, before quickly closing the shower curtain with a flourish.

I don’t know what to say or do, and there’s no time to do it anyway, as I stand there with my eyes wide and my dick in my hands. I hear the bathroom door slam shut and I’m left alone again. If I have felt shameful or embarrassed about any of my actions in the past, they are nothing compared with what I’m feeling now.

I want to die. I want to dissolve into liquid form and slip down the drain, washing away with all the other filth and disappearing into the sewers. I quickly contemplate my options. I’m a smart guy, I can come up with something. I could blink away and never return to this apartment ever again. Klaus might wonder what happened to me, but eventually he’d get over it. After all, it’s not the first time I’ve vanished without a trace. I could try some serious time travel again, maybe jumping backwards this time. Give the 1800s a try; live out the rest of my days doing something mundane like a blacksmith or a chimney sweep.

Instead, I just stand there, the shame and embarrassment washing over me. The most fucked up thing is that I’m still hard. I saw her face and her shock and it still didn’t dissuade my traitorous hormones. I need to finish and I’m horrified at the thought. Not horrified enough, though, because I start stroking myself again. I keep picturing her in my mind, even though I know she knows what I am doing and maybe that’s part of why I like it.

In some psychotic part of my brain, I like that she saw me jerking off. She doesn’t know that it was her I was thinking of, but I can start to convince myself that she might like it. She might like that I was fucking my hand to images of her naked body on top of mine. She might actually be flattered that I’m thinking of her riding me hard and fast and violently. That I’m imagining her moaning my name and coming around my cock.

A few more seconds of vigorous self-pleasuring and my hand is stilling as I unleash ropes of cum over my stomach and onto the shower floor. It mixes with the water and rushes down the drain as my eyes clench tightly shut and I groan as quietly as I can through gritted teeth. It’s bad enough she saw me in here, she doesn’t need to hear me, too.

After I am milked dry, and my breathing starts to slow again, I let go of my shrinking dick and wash myself off. I feel like the loser of the century. She’s probably out there right now, telling Klaus all about it and laughing. They’re probably discussing how sad I am and how much I really need to get a life. And they’d be right.

Once I’m cleaned off and dressed again, I listen closely from inside my room, trying to determine if she’s still here or not. After a while, I still haven’t heard signs of anyone else, and I figure the coast is clear. I blink out of my room and head towards the kitchen. I need a fucking drink and I don’t even care that it’s still morning. Anything to help erase this horrifying feeling.

In the kitchen, I’m looking through the cupboard where we keep the booze, trying to decide if it’s a vodka or a whiskey kind of morning, when I hear soft foot-steps and a gentle clearing of a throat. Fuck. Can I just get a fucking break once in a while? My spine stiffens and I think of just blinking out of there without even turning around, but then she starts talking to me.

“Hey, so…I am so sorry for busting in on you like that. Klaus had said he was going to take a shower, so I just assumed that was him in there, and I was looking for my slippers that I thought I left in the bathroom, and that was really stupid of me to just assume that…I am really very sorry, I would never have, if I had known it was you, obviously I wouldn’t have, but like I said, I thought it was Klaus, and…ugh…I’m sorry. I hope this isn’t going to make things weird.”

I almost laugh at her run-on sentence of stammering apologies. Almost. Instead, I grab a bottle of vodka and turn around with a glare.

“So, when exactly are you leaving?”

She hesitates. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, when are you getting the fuck out of here? I realize you and Klaus are having fun playing house or whatever the fuck it is you do around here, but this is my apartment, too. In fact, it’s more mine than his, since I pay the bulk of the rent. And I don’t remember asking for a third roommate.”

I see a brief look of hurt cross her face before she is challenging back. “Look, just because I accidentally walked in on you, doesn’t mean you have to be an asshole about it. You don’t have to be embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed? I’m not embarrassed, sweetheart, so don't flatter yourself. And this has nothing to do with that. I’m just wondering when I can look forward to not seeing your face every time I turn around in my own goddamn house!”

She nods, her lips pursed together, and her hands on her hips. “Alright, Five, you win. I thought maybe we were beginning to be friends, but I can see that is not the case. I will do my best to stay out of your way. I’m sorry for any inconveniences I’ve caused you.”

After another few seconds of angry glaring, she turns around and leaves. I take the stopper out of the vodka and tip the entire bottle back, swallowing at least three full gulps before I can’t take the burning in my throat and stomach anymore. I don’t know why I’m like this. I don’t know why I have to be a fucking dick to everyone, especially the people I care about. Well, I guess I should look on the bright side. I won’t have to worry about letting my true feelings out around her. Because now she wants nothing to do with me.

Chapter Three: Crazy Train

It was bad, there was no mistaking it. And it was all your fault; at least the beginning part. You certainly hadn’t meant to walk in on him in the shower. You really had assumed it was Klaus in there. You had been wrong. Very, very wrong. So, yeah, you really fucked that one up.

Things had been going so well, too. You were actually getting along and finding that you really liked spending time with Five. You assumed he liked spending time with you, too, even though he never came right out and said so. Although, with him, you doubted he would ever admit to that. But you knew he did, otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered even speaking to you, let alone hanging out with you.

Even though you’re the one who did the unannounced shower barge-in, you still think he’s overreacting. Sure, you saw him completely naked, but it was only for a couple of seconds and it’s not like you haven’t seen a naked man before. And sure, you are like 99% positive he was banging out some knuckle babies while he was in there, but that part is not your fault. How were you to know there would be some salami slapping going on in there when you opened the curtain?

Now he’s pissed off at you and has gone back to his old, dickish ways. He’s barely acknowledging you anymore and he stopped coming into the kitchen for coffee in the mornings. You understand he’s probably embarrassed, but he should be able to get over it, for fuck’s sake. He’s always claiming he’s the mature one around here, but he sure as hell isn’t acting like it right now.

You definitely think he should be able to move on from that little incident, but you can’t seem to stop thinking about it, either. Although, not for the same reasons. It had only been a couple of seconds if that, but that image has been burned into your brain. And not necessarily in a bad way. In that tiny glimpse that you got, it did not disappoint.

You keep finding yourself staring off, lost in another inappropriate daydream, as you remember exactly what he had looked like. Wet, naked, and clearly aroused, it was enough of a picture to keep you occupied. If men have spank banks, what do you call it for women? Rub hub? Finger vault? Whatever it is, that image is in yours now. And, fuck, it’s a good one.

Klaus has an amazing body, there’s no doubt about that. He’s lithe and toned and has a cinched-in waist that you’re envious of. But when you saw Five’s body…holy shit. He’s a little more solid than Klaus, and his muscles are well-defined but not huge. His chest is smooth and firm, and his abs look like they’re cut from stone, all the way down to the soft line of hair trailing southward to the main event. From the quick peek you had gotten of the goods in his hand, he either somehow used his powers to beef himself up, or that may have been the one thing in his tragic life that he lucked out on. Because, damn. Combine that with a tight ass, the water cascading down his body, and his dark, wet hair pushed off his face, and that is definitely enough to give you some material for the next time you’re double-clicking your mouse.

It's a week after “the incident”, and you have just come back from work and it’s late. You haven’t been over to see Klaus in a few days because you’ve been so busy, but you decide to stop by because you know he’ll still be up. Plus, you’re feeling the need to get some sexual release that isn’t in the form of your hand or vibrator, and you know he’ll be up for that, too.

You don’t see Five anywhere, which is probably a good thing, and you and Klaus hang out in the living room for a while, having a couple of drinks and catching up. When you decide to head to the bedroom, that’s when Five makes his presence known. Loudly.

Mid-make out and partially undressed, the two of you hear the pounding bass and blaring guitar riff of AC/DC’s “Back in Black” coming from Five’s bedroom. He is blasting it at full volume and as much as you like listening to Brian Johnson scream at the top of his lungs, it’s not really setting the mood at the moment. You ignore it for a little while longer, trying to focus on Klaus’s hands working their way down between your legs. When it’s clear you’re not really into it, he stops.

“What’s wrong?”

You huff. “Seriously? Isn’t this annoying you, too?”

Klaus shrugs. “I don’t know, it’s not that bad. I like loud music, and Five has good taste.”

“Well, it’s distracting and you know he’s doing it on purpose. It’s just rude.”

“Just ignore it.”

He pulls you on top of him, and you straddle his waist. But when you lean down to kiss him again, it’s clear you are not going to be able to get your mind in the game; not with the walls shaking from the constant pulse of the mini-rock concert going on down the hall. You let out another frustrated growl.

“I’m going to go say something,” you tell Klaus, pushing yourself off of him.

He props himself up on his elbows. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

You roll your eyes. “Please. What’s he doing to do? I’m not scared of him.”

“Right, no, I know. Me either. But…”

“But, what?”

“You know, he’s just…testy.”

As you’re getting off the bed, you give Klaus an exasperated look. “He’s a big man baby is what he is. And I’m tired of his shit.”

Before Klaus can say anything more, you’re walking out the door and heading to the source of the music. The song has now switched over to “Crazy Train”. You pound on the door to Five’s room, waiting with your arms folded across your chest. That’s when you remember you are not wearing a bra. Or pants. You only have a loose-fitting t-shirt on and some ridiculous underwear with cartoon cats on them because you haven’t done laundry in a while and all your good panties are in the wash. Luckily, the shirt covers up most of your crotch area.

You’re not getting an answer, so you pound the door with your fist again. Mid-pound, the door swings open wide, the blaring music becoming even louder. Five is already in the middle of a rant.

“Klaus, I have told you a thousand fucking times, I do not have your lighter…oh.”

Five stops mid-sentence when he realizes it’s you. He’s standing there shirtless, with only his black pants on, belt unbuckled and hanging open. His hair is disheveled, and he seems to be swaying slightly; holding onto the door for balance. That’s when you notice he has a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand. He looks at you for a second, his hooded eyes slowly moving over your body with his mouth partially open before his face changes and he smirks.

He takes another swig of whiskey from the bottle before addressing you. “Something I can help you with, princess?”

You’re stunned into silence for a beat or two, trying to process the fact that you are once again blessed with another glimpse of his body, as well as the fact that he is drunk. You hesitate with your mouth hanging open like a moron, which Five obviously notices because he has that damn arrogant look on his face again. Finally, you snap out of it.

“Is there a reason you’re blaring your music that loud right now?” you demand.

“Yeah, there is. Because it’s my fucking room and I can do what I want in it.”

“God, you are such a dick! I know you’re doing it on purpose just to piss me off.”

Five shakes his head slowly and takes another drink. “Sorry to disappoint you, sweetheart, but not everything is about you. Pissing you off in the process is a definite perk, though.”

You ball your hands up at your side and grit your teeth. “I’m not buying any of your bullshit, Five. I know you’re mad at me, and that’s fine. But you’re acting like a fucking child right now!”

“I think you’re mistaken. I’m not the one who can’t stand to be alone for more than a few hours. I’m not the one that needs constant attention and validation from someone. So who’s the child now, hmm?”

“What are you talking about? I do not.”

He grins. “Oh yeah? Want to tell me what you’re doing here all the time then? Why you’re here when you have a perfectly good apartment of your own to go to? ‘Cause I bet it’s not because of my brother.”

That throws you off a little and you don’t immediately have a comeback. Five snorts derisively. You narrow your eyes.

“Fuck you!” you spit out.

Five raises an eyebrow and lets out a short laugh. “Ohhh…maybe that’s why you’re always here. Well, sorry, honey. Hate to disappoint you, but you’re not my type.”

With your own sarcastic smile, you shoot back. “I know I’m not, honey. From what I’ve seen, I’m guessing you prefer to take matters into your own hands if you know what I’m saying.” That seems to have shut him up and he stands there, clinging to the door frame with his hair hanging in his face. Before you let him think of another comeback you give him a tiny wave and turn around. “I’ll leave you and Mr. Daniels to it, then. Remember, Fivey, don’t go too hard at it. I hear carpal tunnel is a real bitch.”

As you walk away, you hear the door slam behind you. You’re irritated and pissed off. And now you are horny. How the fuck is that possible? Well, there’s a good solution for that, and it’s waiting in the other room for you. You stalk over to Klaus’s room, making sure to leave the door slightly ajar. Klaus is still on the bed on his back and he’s lit up a joint in the process. When he sees you enter, he sits up.

“Oh, good, you’re alive. How did that go?”

“Great,” you say under your breath.

Then you are pulling your shirt over your head and yanking your underwear off. You immediately climb onto the bed and over the top of Klaus, grabbing the joint and tossing it into the ashtray at the side of the bed. He’s shocked when instead of saying anything, you lean down, grabbing his face in both hands and forcefully kissing him. After a moment his hands are on your hips and he’s smiling against your mouth.

“That’s more like it,” he says before you’re devouring his mouth again.

You don’t want to talk and you don’t need any more foreplay. You just want to fuck. Hard and rough, and loud. Luckily, Klaus is already pretty fired up and you can feel him hard underneath you as you straddle him. He still has his briefs on, so you hastily tug them off. If he’s wondering why you’re all of a sudden trying to mount him like a wild dog in heat, he doesn’t say anything. He seems pretty happy when you line yourself up and sink onto his dick, letting it fill you up in one shove. You let out a whine before looking down at him.

“I want to fuck. Hard,” you tell him in between gasping breaths.

“Yeah, baby, fuck me as hard as you want,” he rasps before smacking your ass and giving you a sly smile.

“Don’t talk. Just fuck,” you instruct him.

He obviously doesn’t care that you’re ordering him around, because his hands are on your tits as you start riding him fast and hard. You don’t even work up to it, you’re just pounding yourself onto his cock and you can already feel the beads of sweat starting to form on your skin. You’ve never been this worked up in your life, and you have no idea why. That’s not true; you know exactly why. You just don’t want to admit it, even to yourself.

You squeeze your eyes shut as you work as hard as you can, thrusting your hips back and forth and grunting with the effort. Throwing your head back, you cry out as loudly as you can, practically screaming at the top of your lungs. If the neighbors can hear you, it probably sounds like you’re being murdered to the soundtrack of Ozzy Osbourne right now. You’re making as much noise as possible; crying, wailing, and begging for more. And it’s all on purpose because you want a certain someone to know what he’s missing out on. Klaus is either shocked into submission by your sudden change in demeanor, or he’s in heaven. Either way, he’s not saying anything.

With your eyes closed, and no voice attached to the body you’re penetrating yourself with, you start to imagine what you’ve been trying to push out of your mind. You might hate him at the moment and think he’s a total asshole, but that doesn’t mean you don’t want to climb on top of him like a spider monkey and fuck his brains out.

In your mind, it’s not Klaus anymore, it’s Five. And you want more of him, even though that’s not physically possible. You run your hands down his perfect chest and abdomen, clutching at his thighs as you lean back to get a different angle. He’s watching you with those piercing eyes, looking up at you with that damn smirk of his.

“That’s right baby, fuck Daddy hard.”

Whoa, Daddy? Where the fuck did that come from? Shit, I have some real problems.

There’s no time to dwell on that psychological component because you just can’t get enough. His hands are on your hips and then on your ass, long fingers gripping tightly into you and pushing you even further down onto his cock. You’re still crying out, moaning loudly while you lean down to kiss him. You can feel his hand in your hair and his lips pressed against yours as you continue to rock into him.

“You feel so good, sweetheart. Don’t stop,” he’s saying in that husky voice of his.

“I need more,” you’re pleading and he laughs at you.

“Tell Daddy what you want, darling.”

Fuck, what is happening to me?

You don’t know what’s happening to you, other than you’re so fucking wet, you feel like you’re going to slide right off of Klaus’s dick and onto the floor. You open your eyes, stop your crazy thrusts, and abruptly climb off. Klaus lets out a hiss at the sudden loss of your warm, wet walls clenched around him.

“Fuck me from behind,” you pant, even as you’re already getting into position on your hands and knees.

“Shit,” he’s murmuring under his breath, but he doesn’t argue.

You feel him behind you and the anticipation is driving you crazy. When he slams into you, hips smacking against your ass and his hands pulling you backward hard and fast, you let out a sound that might be close to a sob. Your fists clench the bedsheets and from this angle, you don’t have to keep your eyes closed to slip back into your imaginary sex fantasy.

Five is behind you, plowing you so forcibly that it’s hard to keep yourself steady. It feels so fucking good, and everything you’ve been wanting. You don’t know how he’s weaseled his way into your head like this, but it probably has something to do with that goddamn body of his. Or his impossibly handsome face. Or those hands. Fuck, you want those hands on you and in you, and doing whatever else he pleases with them.

“Tell me,” he demands as he rams into you over and over again. “Tell me what you want. Let me give it to you.”

“Oh god…please…don’t stop fucking me!”

You’re not even sure if you said that out loud or not, but it doesn’t matter. His hand comes around to finger you while he rails you as hard as possible. You’re going to lose it any second now, you can feel it. His fingers are pressing against your clit and he continues talking to you inside your head; telling you everything you are dying to hear.

“You like it when Daddy fucks you like this, don’t you? When I fuck you so hard you can’t think straight?”

“Yes…yes,” you’re whining over and over again.

His hands are working their magic while his impressive cock is driving into your pussy. No one has made your body react like this before and you want to cry from the sheer overload of emotions.

“Let me hear you, sweet girl. You know what you want.”

“I want you! Oh fuck…you’re going to make me come,” you whimper.

“Say it again,” he snarls. “Say it again and scream my name when I make you come.”

“I want you! I want you so fucking badly. Please…keep fucking me…I need…oh god yes! Fii—fff-fuck!”

You catch yourself right at the last second as your orgasm rips through you, creating shocks of pleasure all throughout your body. Your muscles are contracting and your skin is hot and tingling. You are moaning like you are in pain and the sheets underneath you are balled tightly in your fists. There is a layer of sweat over your entire body and your breaths are coming out in ragged gasps. You are vaguely aware of Klaus behind you, gripping your hips while he lets loose with his own climax.

Several seconds pass while neither of you move. After a while, he pulls out and you fall onto your stomach, sprawled out and completely spent.

“Holy. Shit,” Klaus breathes out as he runs a hand down your back. “Where the hell did that come from?”

You laugh softly and push your hair out of your face. “I don’t know. I guess I was just a little wound up.”

“A little wound up? Shit, babe, I’m fairly certain the authorities have been alerted by several people in this building. In which case, I should probably hide some shit.”

You move your tired body and sit up, your legs shaking. You feel bad that you went a little crazy on him, especially considering the entire smutty movie that had been playing in your head the entire time. The one that didn’t involve Klaus in any way. You smile and shrug, then start moving off the bed to gather up your clothes.

“I know, that was a little over the top. Sorry.”

Klaus shakes his head and picks up the joint out of the ashtray you had thrown it in and takes a hit. After exhaling a cloud of smoke into the air, he studies you with creased eyebrows.

“Do not apologize for that. Ever.” Then he pauses before that sly grin starts spreading over his face. “Wait a minute, I know what was different. What probably lit a fire in your kitty cat panties. Old Fivey in there!”

You are in the process of tugging your shirt back over your head and your face isn’t visible to him, which is a damn good thing because it is probably beet red at the moment. You take an extra long time to pull it down over your head and you try and keep your composure.

“That’s ridiculous! I am not hot for Five!”

Klaus lets out a small giggle and shakes his head. “No, no, not like that. I meant I bet it was that crazy sexy hard rock he’s been pumping out of his room. Gets you all pumped up, too, doesn’t it? I don’t blame you though, fucking to loud music with a pounding bassline like that is amazing.”

You let out a sigh of relief and then laugh. “Yeah, you’re right, it does kind of get me going. That must have been it. Not to mention I haven’t been over in a while. I needed to let off some pent-up sexual frustration.”

Klaus bows and it’s hilarious because he’s still naked with a joint in his hand. “Glad to be of service, madam.”

You walk over and pat him on the butt. “Thank you. As always, you know how to deliver.”

“Do you want to stay here tonight?”

It had been your intention to head home for the rest of the night, but now that you’re here and Klaus is offering, you don’t really want to go back to your apartment alone. You like staying here in Klaus’s bed, with his body heat warming you up as you lie next to him, quietly chatting together until you drift off to sleep. Sometimes you’ll be on the very edge of sleep and he’ll whisper something so stupid and off the wall that you can’t help laughing and you’re awake again, with no hope of sleep after that.

But if you stay, that means Five was right about you. You really do come over because you don’t like being alone. You don’t need constant attention from anyone, that part is not true, but you like the companionship. Even if you and Klaus stopped having sex, you’d still want to come over all the time. You like hanging out with him and even on the occasions he’s not there, the apartment feels cozier and more lived in than yours. You have thought about getting a roommate, but all of your current friends are either in serious relationships or prefer to live alone. The thought of trying to advertise for a stranger to move in and then interview people to decide if you want to share your space with them seems exhausting. So, you’d rather just stay here as often as you can.

Even though you just mind-fucked him like crazy, you internally curse Five for reading you so correctly.

“Yeah, I’d like to if that’s ok.”

Klaus pulls on his underwear before flopping back on the bed. “Of course! You’re always welcome here, you know that.”

“Yeah, well, tell that to your brother. He’s been giving me a ration of shit lately about being around here so much,” you grumble as you crawl in next to him.

“I thought you two were getting along.”

“Well, we were, but then…” you almost let slip that you walked in on Five in the shower. You hadn’t told Klaus about that because you already felt bad for embarrassing the guy, you didn’t need to get anyone else involved. “I don’t know, I guess he changed his mind or something. Because now he definitely is not a fan of mine.”

Klaus frowns. “Hmm..well, that sucks. We should be the three amigos!”

“Pretty sure he does not want to be mi amigo at the moment.”

“Alright, I’ll talk to him tomorrow. Tell him to stop being such a grouch.”

“It’s ok, you don’t have to do that,” you protest.

“No, no, I want to. It’s important to me that he can get along with you. Five may be a scary, unhinged assassin who once threatened to kill me by describing in excruciating detail all of the steps he was going to take to do it. Like, he literally wrote them out on a yellow legal pad with graphics next to each one and handed it to me. I don’t remember the full list, but it involved a step ladder, some Elmer’s glue, and a toaster oven. Anyway, he may be scary like that, but he’s not all bad. He just needs to lighten up a little. Don’t worry, I’ll fix it.”

You laugh. “What did you do to piss him off that time?”

Klaus rolls his eyes and sighs. “Oh, I don’t know. It wasn’t a big deal. I may have accidentally eaten a large number of mushrooms and decided to strip naked and crawl into bed with him in the middle of the night.”

“I mean, that’s pretty funny but it doesn’t sound that bad.”

“Well, no, that part isn’t. It was when I started violently humping him from behind and licking his neck that he kind of got a little uppity about it.”

You start laughing harder. “You humped him and licked his neck?!”

“Yeah. I don’t really remember a lot of it, but apparently, I had him in a pretty good death grip while calling him “Alberto” and demanding to speak with his manager. I guess he was able to blink away just in time before I unloaded my high fructose porn syrup all over his superhero jammies.”

You are laughing so hard at that image that tears are rolling down your cheeks. “Ok, I understand why he wanted to kill you, now. You kind of had it coming.”

Klaus waves a hand flippantly in the air. “Now you sound just like him.”

The next morning, you get up before Klaus, just like always. As you make your way to the kitchen, you can hear rattling around in there and you pause. You think about heading back to the bedroom just to avoid any confrontation, but then you change your mind. You’re not going to hide from him. As you walk in, there is Five, busy making coffee. He looks like shit and you smile a little to yourself. Good, serves you right.

“’ Morning, sunshine!” you exclaim cheerily, just to piss him off. “You’re up early. I figured you’d be sleeping the day away after your little one-man frat party last night.”

He turns to you with a look that you know is intended to intimidate, but is not quite working considering he looks like death warmed over. His eyes are bloodshot, his hair is a tangled mess, and he’s still wearing the rumpled pants you had seen him in last night. And of course, he has not bothered to put on a shirt again. Jesus, will this guy put some clothes on and give me a fucking break?

“Oh, good, it’s you. I was worried maybe you had decided to fuck off and leave me alone. But, nope, here you are again.”

You give a snort and sit down at the kitchen table. You’re not really sure why you’re still there, but you don’t want him to think he’s scared you off so you stand your ground. Instead, you say nothing but start humming Pink’s “U + Ur Hand” under your breath. You know Five hears you because you can see his shoulders tense and his hands flex. You smile to yourself.

When he turns to you again, his arms crossed over his bare chest and his hair in his face, he leans against the counter and eyes you up with a malicious grin. You really wish he weren’t so damn good-looking because it’s very hard to keep up your little show when all you are really thinking about is jumping on top of him.

“That was a nice little performance you gave last night, by the way. I had assumed you were the type to just lie there and have someone else do all the work, but good to know my brother is at least getting something out of it.”

You straighten up in your seat. “You’re welcome. I figured the least I could do is give you some material to work with.”

Five nods with a smirk, not taking the bait. He uncrosses his arms and grabs onto the edge of the countertop behind him, leaning back casually. You are immediately drawn to his sculpted chest and abs and your eyes drift over the many faded scars scattered over his body.

“I could say the same to you, love,” he says.

He throws you off your game with that statement. You’re mostly sure he’s just trying to be an asshole and get under your skin, but what if he does know? What if you yelled something out while you were imagining him fucking you so hard your teeth rattled in your head? When you were calling him Daddy and riding him like he was Sea Biscuit? You feel caught and your face must betray you because suddenly he’s not looking so smug anymore.

You are both staring at one another, not saying a word, but the passive-aggressive tension in the air has changed to something else. The look between you seems to last forever, and you can feel the warmth spreading up your neck and onto your face. And maybe a little between your legs, as well. Just then, the coffee that Five had been making is done and the machine beeps loudly, startling you both.

He looks away first and pulls down a mug from the cabinet. You are surprised to see him grab a second one. He fills them both and then sets one down on the table, sliding it over to you with a push so that it sloshes over the side.

“Thanks,” you mumble, as you pick it up.

“Sure,” he responds grudgingly, and you can tell it’s killing him to be even moderately polite right now.

After a minute or so of neither of you talking, it is starting to get awkward. Someone needs to say something or leave. Instead, you just sip your hot coffee and pretend the tabletop is incredibly interesting. You decide to chance it and you clear your throat, but you don’t look up.

“Look, I’m sorry, ok?” you say quietly.

It takes a few seconds, but he finally responds. “Yeah, I’m sorry, too.”

You nod and glance up, meeting his eyes as he watches you with that all-encompassing intensity of his. His stare bores right through you and once again you feel frozen in time and for a minute you think he’s somehow doing that, but in reality, it’s just your mind playing tricks on you. He just has that hold over you somehow and you pray that he can’t see it. You watch as he looks away, closes his eyes, and pushes his hair back with one hand, giving you a good look at the tight muscles in his arms. Fuck. You cross your legs and take a sip of your coffee to try and hide the fact that you are on the verge of passing out right now.

At that exact moment, the weird energy in the room is broken by Klaus’s appearance. He floats in, wearing some sort of ugly satin robe that barely covers anything, but somehow he manages to pull off the look. He stops in the doorway and looks from you to Five and back again. Then he claps his hands and smiles.

“Yay! So, you guys are buddies again? Is that what I’m seeing here?”

Five rolls his eyes and sighs. You shrug your shoulders. “I guess so. Tolerating each other again, anyway,” you tell him.

Five gives a tight-lipped smile and holds his coffee mug up towards you in a toasting gesture and you do the same with yours. Neither of you say anything else on the subject.

“Well, let me tell you, that is a relief,” Klaus exhales. “I was not really looking forward to having to put the hammer down on you, Fivey.”

Five raises his eyebrows at Klaus. “Is that right? And how exactly were you planning on doing that?”

“By giving you a very stern warning, of course,” Klaus says with a smile, shaking his finger at Five. Then he walks over to get his own coffee. He looks Five up and down and then gives his arm a squeeze. “Damn, Cinco, you been working out or what? Looking pretty fine there, I must say.”

Five frowns and swats his hand away. “You’re so weird.”

You giggle into your mug and Five looks at you with a crooked smile. Then he snatches the full coffee pot out of Klaus’s hand. “As much as I’d love to spend the rest of my day in the company of you two intellectuals, I must take my leave. See you later.”

Klaus lets out a cry of protest as Five disappears in a flash, taking the coffee with him, and leaving his brother with an empty mug.

You try to hide your laughter as Klaus looks at you in disbelief.

“Well, that was rude,” he says in a huff.

With a shrug, you get up and pour some of your coffee into his cup. “Yeah, but I’ve come to realize that rude is Five’s love language.”

Klaus pouts. “He must love us a lot, then.”

With a smile, you think to yourself how much that statement is probably true. If Five doesn’t care about you, he’s not going to waste his time and energy to speak to you, even if it is in the form of an insult. It makes you feel good inside to know that he probably really does like you, at least a little bit. If not, he just wouldn’t bother with you at all; he’d avoid you like the plague. And you like knowing that. You like it a lot, actually.

Once again, you find your mind drifting off. And once again, it’s filled with images and scenarios starring one very sexy, teleporting ex-assassin.

Chapter Four: Love In The Time Of Cholera

“Jesus, what’s the matter with you?”

Five walks into the apartment to find you huddled on the couch, wrapped in a blanket and shivering.

“Nothing. It’s just a cold I think,” you answer between chattering teeth.

Five strides over to the couch and leans in to peer down at you, squinting slightly. He stands up straight and crosses his arms over his chest, flicking the hair out of his eyes with a superior shake of his head.

“I don’t think that’s just a cold. You look like shit.”

“Gosh, thanks, Five. Charming, as always,” you snap back. Or at least, it would have been a snap had you not just started coughing violently, your entire body shaking with the effort.

Five’s eyebrows furrow together. “Have you taken your temperature?”

You shrug. “No.”

With a heavy sigh, Five leaves the room, returning a minute later with a thermometer in hand. He presses the button and when it beeps, he holds it out for you. You eye it and him suspiciously.

Five jabs it towards you again when you don’t reach for it. “Take it.”

“How do I know you or Klaus haven’t used that to take your temperature in other ways besides orally?”

Five rolls his eyes. “I keep this in my room, away from Klaus for just that reason, and I can assure you it has never been used in my or anyone else’s ass.”

After another sigh from Five and another dubious look at the thermometer, you relent and take it from him. You place it under your tongue and you both wait in silence for what seems to take forever before you hear the beep again. Before you can take it out, Five reaches down and removes it from your mouth for you, frowning at the digital display.

“104.3. You’re burning up.”

You shiver again, wrapping the blanket around you tighter. “Great.”

Five is quiet for a moment, and then he glances around the room. “Where’s Klaus?”

You shrug again, and it reminds you how much your muscles are aching. “I don’t know. I came here right from work since it was closer than my place and I was feeling pretty crappy. I texted him to let him know I’d be here, but so far I haven’t seen him. He didn’t answer my text, either.”

You figure Five is probably more than annoyed with having you here without Klaus, and spreading your germs around his apartment in the process. With a guilty look, you start to stand up.

“Sorry, I’ll go. I’ve rested a bit, so I should be ok to walk home.”

As you stand, you are overwhelmed by a bout of dizziness and you sway on your feet, your vision blurring. Five reaches out to catch you around your waist and you let him take most of your weight. When your vision returns and you can stand, you look up at him to find he actually looks concerned rather than his usual expression of deep irritation. His facial features are softer and his hair is in his face again. His eyes scan over your face, lingering on your lips before meeting your eyes. Your legs are bearing your full weight now, but he still has his arms around you.

You clear your throat. “Or…I can get a cab.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he says, although it’s missing the usual snark he reserves for you. “You obviously are too sick to go anywhere.”

Five lets you go and you both stand there awkwardly, avoiding eye contact.

“So…you want me to stay here?” you ask weakly.

“Well, I wouldn’t say I want you to stay here, but I’m also not sending you off on your own while you’re half dead.” He manages a small smile that appears genuine. “You need someone to look after you.”

You try to hide your shock but your eyebrows raise. “And you’re going to look after me?”

He looks away briefly before sighing dramatically again. “Until Klaus comes back. Then you’re his problem.”

A slight smile twitches at the corner of your mouth. You can’t believe Mr. Crab Ass is being this soft. Soft for him, anyway. And you can’t believe he’s willing to take care of you. You’re trying to picture him as a caregiver, though, and it’s like your brain isn’t computing.

“Ok,” you say softly. “Thank you.”

“Come on,” he says, holding out his hand. “I need to get you into bed.”

Despite the pounding headache in your skull, you start giggling as Five realizes what he said, and his face flushes.

“That’s not…you know what I mean,” he stammers. “You can lie down in Klaus’s bed.”

You nod, still smiling and take his hand. It’s warm and dry against your clammy one, but he doesn’t seem to care. Even though your head feels like it’s filled with mashed potatoes, you still feel a little zing through your body at the sensation of his touch. You know he’s strong and he can kill a man with these same hands if he needed to, but he holds yours gently.

He gets you situated in Klaus’s bed, with an extra blanket thrown over the comforter to keep you warm against your chills. He brings you medicine to bring down the fever, and a glass of water to keep next to the bed. He places a cold compress on your forehead and dims the lights so you can rest, slipping quietly out of the room after he makes sure you’re comfortable.

As he leaves, you notice he hesitates near the door and takes a look back at you before he goes. You’re not quite sure how to interpret the look, mostly because you’ve never seen him like that before. He looks…sad? Concerned? You’re not sure, but whatever the meaning behind it has your heart racing just a little faster.

Even with Five’s continued care, your fever remains and you somehow manage to feel even shittier as the day goes on. Your entire body aches, right down to your bones, and you’re so exhausted you can hardly keep your eyes open. You’re sweaty and shivering and every time you cough it feels like fire in your lungs. You might even be hallucinating, because each time you wake up and open your eyes, Five is there. He usually has some amused look on his face, like you just said something interesting or funny, but you’re pretty sure you’ve only been sleeping.

At one point you wake and he’s not in the chair across from the bed like he has been, but you can hear him out in the hall. He’s talking to someone and he does not sound happy. He sounds like you’re used to him sounding. All frustration and rage.

“What do you mean you’re not coming home?” he spits out. There’s a pause. “And like I told you , she’s sick.” Pause. “No, dickhead, like really sick! You need to get your ass back here and act like a fucking adult—” Pause. “Because she’s your girlfriend!” he yells, and you can practically hear his jaw clenching from the other room.

There’s another long pause and you can hear him pacing back and forth. He laughs sarcastically at whatever has been said to him on the other end.

“Yeah, great idea…you stay there and enjoy yourself. I’ll take care of her. Just like I take care of everything else around here.”

He must have hung up because you hear him muttering angrily to himself. “Fucking, self-absorbed asshole! I’m not sure why I expected anything different. Fuck!”

After a minute or two, Five comes back into the room. He’s obviously still upset but is trying to cover it up. Seeing that you’re awake, he comes to stand next to the bed, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“So, I got ahold of Klaus finally,” he tells you.

“Yeah, I figured that part out.” You smile weakly up at him. “And it also sounds like he’s not coming home?”

Five rubs the back of his neck. “It appears not. Not for a couple of days, anyway. Seems like he went with a random group of people he met at a club last night and he somehow ended up in Toronto, the fucking jackass. Without a valid passport! Only Klaus would somehow figure out how to cross international borders on charm alone. Either that, or he blew the border guard.” His voice softens and he looks down at you. “I’m sorry he’s not here.”

“That’s ok. I think I’d rather have you here taking care of me, anyway. Klaus is usually much more interested in taking care of Klaus.”

Five gives a short laugh and shakes his head. “What the hell do you two have in common, anyway?”

“Well…” you smile knowingly, even though just that motion of moving your cheek muscles hurts.

“Ok, no, please don’t finish that sentence. I’m sorry I asked.”

Throughout the next day and night, Five continues to care for you. You’re not really sure why he’s so invested in making sure you’re ok, but you never question him. Instead, you let him fix your covers, and take your temperature, and bring you cold drinks. He makes you soup and watches to make sure you eat all of it. It’s absolutely hilarious to see him like a mother hen, fussing over you and scolding you when you don’t take his directions.

Even though you’re not well enough to leave yet, you are starting to feel a little better. Enough that you’re able to get up and take a hot shower. While you’re in there, Five takes the opportunity to change the sheets on the bed and he helps you back in when you’re clean and feeling more like a human again. Once you are all set up in bed again, you are able to sit up and stay awake, which is more than you’ve been able to do over the past 24 hours. Five stands there at the side of the bed awkwardly.

“I’m really sorry for all of this,” you tell him. “Thank you for taking care of me, though. I had no idea you made such a good nurse.”

Five scoffs, but there’s a small smile there. “Yeah, well…you shouldn’t be. I’m good at everything, remember? Also, I’m not that heartless.”

“I never thought you were heartless. Maybe a little bitchy, but never heartless,” you say with a smile.

“Well, you’re about the only one, so thanks I guess. Although, I’m not sure being described as bitchy is any better.”

You start to laugh, but it turns into a racking cough, and Five looks at you with concern.

“All right, enough talking. You should really go back to sleep.”

You shake your head as you wipe at your watery eyes. “I’m sick of sleeping. Entertain me.”

“Entertain you? Jesus, here I am busting my ass to make you better and now I have to entertain you, too?”

He’s trying to sound aggravated, but he’s not quite pulling it off.

“But I’m borrreddd,” you whine dramatically.

“Christ, fine, I will find something to entertain you, as long as you stop fucking whining like that.”

You smile with satisfaction since you got your way and Five tries his best to look unamused.

“I have lots of books; do you want to read?”

You nod. “What do you have?”

“Fuck, I don’t know, I’m not going to list off an entire library of titles for you. What do you like to read?”

After thinking for a minute, you answer, “I doubt you have any, but I like classic romances.”

Five smiles slowly. “Well, then you’re in luck because I happen to also like classic romances.”

You almost start coughing again with surprise. “What? You? Number Five ‘Hard-Ass’ Hargreeves loves romance novels?”

“I am a very romantic person, I can’t believe you’ve never noticed,” he says with a hand on his chest.

“Oh my god, well now I’ve heard everything. Alright, then, Mr. Romance; what do you have for me to read?”

He leaves for a few minutes, returning with a paperback novel in his hand. He holds it up for you to see the cover.

“Love In The Time of Cholera?” you read.

“It’s fitting, don’t you think?” he answers with a smirk.

“I don’t think I have cholera.”

“Well, maybe not but you have something just as disgusting. The plague, maybe. But this was the only book I have that includes both a deadly disease and romance.”

“I haven’t read that one, but wasn’t it written in the 1980s or something? Is that considered a classic already?”

“Look, do you want to read the fucking book or not?”

You nod with a smile. “Yes, please.”

Five steps closer to the bed and holds out the book for you to take it, but you don’t move. Instead, you look up at him with the saddest expression you can manage and poke out your bottom lip.

“I don’t know if my eyes will be able to read such small print in my weakened state. Will you read it to me?” You bat your eyelashes dramatically.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Five sighs. “Read to you? Are you a child?”

“Please? Come on, what else are you doing? Nothing.”

After another huff and a sigh that isn’t very convincing, Five throws his hands up. “Fine! I’ll read you the stupid book. But you better sit there and be quiet and not interrupt.”

You nod obediently and then pat the empty side of the bed next to you. You were halfway kidding, but after a look at the bed and then back to the chair and then back to the bed again, Five walks around to the other side and climbs in, propping himself up beside you. If his heart is pounding just a little faster from the proximity like yours is, he hides it well.

“Will you do different voices for the characters?” you giggle.

“Shut up. Also, you have a booger hanging out of your nose and it’s making me sick. Get a tissue,” he grumbles.

After blowing your nose and using the hand sanitizer that Five holds out to you, you settle into the covers. But not before you take your index finger and poke him right in his cheek dimple. “I’m ready now.”

He bats your hand away with a scowl as you snort from trying to hold in a laugh with your stuffed-up nose.

“You are such an idiot,” he tells you with a shake of his head, trying to hide a smile.

Five turns to the book and starts reading while you lie next to him. Pretty soon the sound of his voice has you closing your eyes and you sink deeper into the covers. When you hear him stop, you open your eyes and peer up at him.

“Why did you stop?” you ask blearily.

“You were sleeping.”

You close your eyes again and sigh. “Keep reading, even if I fall asleep. I like listening to your voice. It’s nice.”

Even though you can’t see him, you think you hear a breathy little laugh. “Ok,” he says softly, before continuing on with the story.

You doze off again, and when you wake up the sun is lower in the sky and the room is dim. Your eyes adjust to the darkness and you see Five is still there. The book is closed and lying to the side and he is asleep on his back next to you. Then you see that your arm is flung over his stomach and you freeze. He’s still sleeping soundly, so you slowly take your hand back, but not before making sure you get a good feel of his hard abs under your palm. You look at his face and see that it’s softer, his forehead uncreased, with his dark lashes fanned over the tops of his cheeks. His lips are parted just slightly while he breathes deeply and for a very brief moment, you think about running your fingers over them to see if they’re as soft as they look. Instead, you clear your throat and he stirs.

When Five looks over at you, you smile shyly at him. “I think we both fell asleep.”

He runs a hand down his face and looks around him. “Yeah, I guess we did.” He turns back to you. “How are you feeling?”

You nod. “Better, actually, thank you. And thank you for reading to me. I missed some of it, but I liked what I heard of it so far. And I get the gist that this guy in the book is going to start whoring his way around the world because of his unrequited love?”

Five laughs. “Pretty much, yes.”

“Guys are disgusting no matter what time period they live in, I guess.”

Five raises one eyebrow at you. “You do realize whose bed you are currently sleeping in, right? Probably the most disgusting one of them all.”

You frown. “Klaus isn’t that disgusting. He’s just…free.”

Five gives a snort of derision. “Is that what you call fucking your way through several different timelines, including, but not limited to, an entire congregation of his own cult members?”

You feel your face turning red from embarrassment at being one of the many in Klaus’s little trail of conquests, but you already knew that and hadn’t cared before. So, why is it bothering you now? Why do you care what Five thinks? Instead, you change the subject.

“So, you asked me what I have in common with Klaus, but what about you? Why do you live together if he seems to be a constant source of irritation for you?”

Five is quiet for a minute and he sits up in the bed and for a second you think he’s going to leave. But he just leans against the headboard and looks back down at you with a sad smile.

“You’re right, he drives me fucking crazy and I would most definitely prefer to live on my own.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“Because Klaus is a hazard to himself.”

“What do you mean?”

“Even when we were kids, he was constantly getting into trouble. Whether he was getting bullied by some dickheads on the subway or being used by my father in some horrible way, he was always getting hurt. Both physically and mentally. He’s just too damn trusting. When I was there, I would stand up for him. If I saw him getting pushed around or harassed in some way, then you could bet that whoever was responsible was getting their ass kicked. At home, there wasn’t much I could do about that, but he would come to my room when he was scared or upset and I’d let him hang out as long as he wanted, just to let him talk and calm down. When I left, among a million other things that haunted me during those years, I felt terrible that I had left Klaus unprotected.”

You stare up him, and you can see the hurt on his face as he’s remembering all of this.

“After I came back, I couldn’t believe how far he’d fallen. I know you can’t blame yourself for someone else’s choices, but I kept thinking maybe he would have been ok if I hadn’t jumped. Then, almost right off the bat, he gets kidnapped and tortured by people that were looking for me and then accidentally fucks off to Vietnam to earn himself some more trauma and heartache. Instead of protecting him, I was causing him more pain and suffering and I’d hardly been back in his life for more than a couple of days. So, after a few more screw-ups and a grand old time in the 1960s, here we are again. I know what he’s been through and it’s a lot.”

“So, you decided to live with him to watch out for him? To try and protect him again?”

Five nods. “I know Klaus isn’t stupid. And he’s a survivalist, just like me, so I’m not saying he can’t get along without me. I just feel that I owe him something, at least. And the only thing I can really offer him these days is to try and look out for him. Maybe stop him from making mistakes that will end up causing him more harm in the end. Like taking too many drugs, sleeping with dangerous people, or getting stranded in Canada with strangers. So, as you can see, I’m doing a real bang-up job.”

You smile up at him. “I don’t think that’s your fault.”

Five frowns. “Well, anyway, there you have it. He drives me fucking crazy and makes me want to put his head through a wall most days, but if I’m here then at least I can keep an eye on him.”

“So, am I one of these dangerous people you want to keep him from sleeping with?” you ask just to be a smart-ass and maybe a little flirty.

He gives you a look you don’t know how to interpret. “You are most definitely dangerous, but not in the way you might think.”

You’re not sure how to answer that as you feel your cheeks blush. “You’re a good big brother.”

“Not really.”

You rest your hand on top of Five’s, giving it a light squeeze and he looks down at it. “No, I mean it, Five. You’re a really good brother to him.” And you do mean it.

He swallows hard and looks you in the eyes, holding your gaze for a long time. He gently strokes his thumb against the side of your hand, and it’s the most contact you’ve ever gotten from him. It’s only an instant before he’s taking his back again.

He shakes his head and his voice is almost a whisper when he speaks. “You don’t understand. I’m really not.”

After another awkward moment, he clears his throat and moves off the bed. He pauses in the doorway and turns back to you.

“I’ll bring you something to eat, ok?”

You nod. “Thank you.”

Then he’s gone and you’re left lying there wondering what the hell just happened between you two.

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

I thought I had finally gotten my shit together. After that little setback when she caught me beating my meat in the shower and I turned into a giant asshole, we had been back on friendly terms. And I had told myself to stop being a delusional creep and fantasizing about things that weren’t ever going to happen. So far, I have been doing pretty well. Then she got sick.

Normally, the only reason I would care whether or not someone was sick would be so that I could stay away from them. I have dealt with more than my fair share of horrible illnesses and injuries in my life and managed to come out of them mostly unscathed and with no one else’s help. So it’s hard for me to feel too much sympathy for folks with access to advanced medical care and simple things like aspirin or Neosporin. I lost track of how many times I would have killed just for some Imodium and a bottle of Gatorade after eating some not-so-great canned food.

As soon as I saw her all miserable and shivering from a fever like that, though, my heart couldn’t stand it. All I wanted to do was make her feel better and I didn’t care if I was exposed to her germs or not. I would have taken all of them if it meant she’d feel well again. That’s how much she’s gotten to me.

My first instinct was to bring her into my bed, but I quickly changed my mind. I didn’t want it to seem like I was hinting at anything or being a weirdo, so I opted for the better choice of Klaus’s bed. Even though the thought of her being in there, no matter the purpose, leaves me with a gnawing feeling in my stomach. But that’s ok, the only thing that mattered was that she was cared for.

Those first 24 hours were interesting, to say the least. I’m still not quite sure what to think about it. She was feverish and exhausted, and she started hallucinating and talking in her sleep. At first, I didn’t think much of it. It’s not abnormal for people with high fevers to experience these things. But when I didn’t leave her side except to get her more medicine or anything else she needed, she must have realized I was there even if she wasn’t totally in her right mind. She started talking to me, but it didn’t make sense. At least, I told myself it didn’t make sense. Because I don’t want to acknowledge the very unrealistic notion that it may have been her true feelings.

“It’s you,” she had said weakly, her eyes barely open as I sat in the chair across from her.

“Yeah, it’s me. Did you need something?”

She shook her head very slowly and her eyes closed again. “No…I mean…it’s you, Five. It’s always you.”

I didn’t how to take that or how to respond, so I didn’t say anything and she drifted back into a sound sleep.

It had turned dark outside and I hadn’t bothered to turn on a light in the room, but I was still sitting there and I had almost fallen asleep myself. Then I heard her speak again.

“Five?”

I got up and went to her side, and even in the dark, I could tell that she wasn’t completely awake or lucid. She had a sheen of sweat on her forehead from the fever and I placed my hand on her head, hoping the coolness of my skin would feel good. She sighed and smiled.

“You’re hot,” I told her, obviously meaning the temperature of her forehead.

She had laughed dreamily, her eyes still closed. “So are you.”

I took my hand away and smiled down at her, deciding to go ahead and tease her even though I knew she wasn’t with it. “Oh yeah? I think you’re just saying that so I’ll continue waiting on you hand and foot.”

“Nooo…like soooo hot. Can you not be so hot all the time? It’s not fair. With no shirt…"

It was like talking to a drunk person, which I have lots of experience in, from both points of view, and I laughed again. “Ok. Go back to sleep.”

She had turned over on her side and curled up, facing away from me, but she was still mumbling out loud.

“Ok…I’ll do whatever you say, Daddy,” she giggled.

After that, she was back into a deep sleep and I just stood there, frozen in place and trying not to read too much into that. The logical explanation was that she was dreaming about her father in a completely innocent way. However, the other, less plausible one would be that she meant it in a totally different and very naughty way. A way that if I thought about it too much was going to cause me some major problems in the crotch department of my pants. And she had said I was hot, too. Which again, I chocked up to her fever, but still. I didn’t mind hearing it.

The third such incident had happened in the middle of the night. I was asleep and had been for some time. She seemed to be resting peacefully, but I still didn’t want to leave the room just in case she needed something if she woke up. I was still in the chair when I was awoken by her nonsensical ramblings again.

“Why don’t you?”

I rubbed my eyes and got up, standing next to her to make sure she was ok and was going to fall back asleep again. In the dark, she must have sensed me, because she reached out and took my hand and pulled me towards her. She hardly had any strength, so I didn’t have to move, but I did anyway and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Why don’t you?” she asked again, her voice thick with sleep and her hand still latched onto mine.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t like me,” she answered softly.

I didn’t really know if she was talking to me or not inside of her head, but I decided to answer her. “I do like you.”

“Good,” she murmured, and then she was quiet again. I was about to get up and go back to my chair when she started talking again. “I like it when you call me that, you know.”

I frowned. I had no idea what she was talking about. “Call you what?”

“Sweetheart,” she whispered and in the dark I could make out a smile on her face.

My heart just about jumped out of my chest. But then again, maybe she hadn’t even meant that for me. Maybe she was talking about Klaus, or someone else. Maybe it was all a weird dream and it didn’t mean anything rational at all.

I couldn’t resist, though. I took my hand from hers and touched the side of her face, running my thumb over her warm cheek. “Ok, sweetheart,” I said softly and my voice cracked. It was the first time I had said that without being a sarcastic jerk.

She smiled again and then burrowed deeper into the covers with a sigh. “Five…”

I wanted to die right there on the spot. I hated that I was letting myself create this little fantasy world for the two of us. All of these things she was saying meant nothing. She was delusional and not in her normal mindset. These things were most likely complete gibberish and had no bearing on anything. She was probably saying my name because I was right there and she had heard my voice. Or, more likely, she was telling me off in some dream she was having where I was being my usual pleasant self.

But that tiny little possibility for any of that to be true…that was all I could think about. And damn, it was driving me crazy.

When she had fallen asleep while I was reading to her, I kept going for a while because she had said she liked hearing my voice. But when I was sure she was deep enough asleep that she wouldn’t notice, I stopped. I should have left then, but I didn’t. Instead, I watched her sleeping for a while; noticing the rise and fall of her chest and the way her lips were slightly parted as she breathed in a steady rhythm. I wanted to pull her next to me and hold her. I wanted to stroke her hair and kiss her forehead. I didn’t do those things, but I did stay where I was. I laid there next to her, comfortable and warm and I didn’t want that moment to end. I loved it.

Now it’s two days later and my stupid ass brother still hasn’t shown up. Not that I’m really complaining, but I’m sure she wishes he were here. I meant it when I said I know I’m not a good brother to him. I’ve let him down many times in the past and now I’m lusting after his “non-girlfriend.” Pretty shitty if you ask me. Still, he should be here. Leave it to Klaus to up and abandon her when she needs him the most. Although, she had said she was happy I was here for her.

She is feeling better, at least, and is up and around more. We have developed a kind of routine and have fallen into a comfortable companionship. I know she likes chicken and rice soup and not chicken and noodle. She prefers Sprite over ginger ale and her favorite tea is chamomile. She loves the movie Grease and hates any and all sports movies. And of course, she loves classic romance novels.

I’ve continued reading the book to her, even though she’s well enough to continue reading it herself. She said she likes listening to me and I like doing anything that makes her happy. She still can’t get over the fact that the main character in the book ends up banging 622 women during his decades-long fuck-a-thon.

We are nearing the end of the book today and I’m sitting on the couch with my feet on the coffee table (I know…hypocrisy at its finest). She is sitting next to me when she scoots over and lays her head on my shoulder.

“What’s this?” I ask, trying to act annoyed, when of course I couldn’t be happier.

“I want to see the pages while you read. Make sure you’re not skipping anything to get to the end faster.”

I roll my eyes. “I promise I am not skipping anything. What do you take me for?”

“A cynical bastard?”

She looks up at me with a grin and I do my best to look irritated. “Do you want to finish this damn book or not?”

“Yes, darling.”

It’s heavy with sarcasm, obviously, but I still get a little rush when I hear her say it. I want so badly to lean my cheek against her head, feeling the softness of her hair against my skin. Instead, I sigh heavily and open the book.

“Hey, wait, so we’re almost to the end now and Florentino has been whoring around for a long time. I forget, how long has it been exactly?”

“51 years, 9 months, and 4 days.”

“Damn,” she says with a chuckle. “That’s a really fucking long time to wait around. Even if you are banging a bunch of people along the way. I mean think about it. That’s like…5 decades just…putting your life on pause. Can you imagine? God, I’d go insane.”

I’m suddenly very uncomfortable since that statement hit a little too close to home. I shift in my seat and the movement makes her lift her head and look up at me. I don’t meet her eyes, though.

“Oh, shit,” she gasps, covering her mouth with her hand. “I am so sorry, Five. I didn’t mean—"

“It’s fine.”

“No. No, I just forgot and that was a really insensitive thing for me to say, and…god dammit, I always do stupid shit like this. I’m always just blurting things out without thinking about what I’m saying.”

“Really. It’s ok,” I assure her.

She lets out a frustrated exhale and she’s starting to mess with her fingernails like she always does when she gets nervous. 

“Hey,” I say, putting my hand on her leg. “You don’t have to feel bad. I’m not offended. And it’s true, you would go insane. I can vouch for that.”

She looks down at my hand on her leg and I quickly take it back. When she looks at me, her eyebrows are drawn together in concern.

“Can I ask you something, then?”

“Sure.”

“So, I know all about your ‘accident’ or whatever you want to call it. Klaus told me everything and it’s just so awful, Five. The fact that you are here and functioning and not locked up in a looney bin somewhere is nothing short of amazing.”

I let out a short laugh. “Thanks, I guess? Although some days I feel like I should be locked up. But that usually just has to do with having to deal with my moronic family.”

She doesn’t laugh at my joke to deflect, and instead, she continues looking at my face with not exactly pity, but something close to it. It makes me uneasy.

“Ok, well, anyway, there’s something I’ve wanted to know. Have you…have you ever been in a relationship with anyone? Like romantically?”

Well, if I felt uneasy before it’s nothing to how I’m feeling now. I would like to sink down in between these couch cushions and smother myself to death. How am I supposed to answer that without sounding like a fucking lunatic? Then again, if anyone would understand, it’s probably her.

I clear my throat and rub the back of my neck. “That’s kind of a loaded question.”

“Is it?”

"Well, the short answer is yes. I was in a serious relationship for a very long time. Decades, in fact. But that ended a few years back.”

“Oh…I thought you were alone that whole time. So you had a partner?”

“Yes, you could say that. Dolores was more than my partner, though. She was all of the things I needed when I wanted to give up. She was my rationality, my calm in a storm, my teacher and my friend. She taught me love, patience, and perseverance above all odds. She was my entire world and the main reason I’m still standing here today. She was my everything and the love of my life.” I pause and I look her directly in the eyes. “And she was made up entirely of my imagination and a department store mannequin. But she was very real to me.”

She blinks a few times and I can tell she is trying to process all of that. And I can’t blame her. What is the appropriate response to that? If you’re a dick, you laugh. If you’re some sappy, bleeding heart with no control over your emotions, you cry. But if you are a normal, sympathetic person with actual brains, then it gets complicated.

“Five, I…I don’t know what to say. That’s…”

“Sad? Disturbing? The most fucked up thing you’ve ever heard?”

“Beautiful.”

I look at her in disbelief. “What?”

“If she was all of those things to you, then that means you are all of those things. You are the reason you persevered and survived all those years. Because you made sure of it in the only way you knew how. And Dolores was the vessel that helped you compartmentalize everything, letting you deal with the horrors of your reality while still maintaining all of the good parts that are inside of you. It’s brilliant, actually. And hopelessly romantic.”

“No one has ever interpreted it in that way before. Although to be honest, I haven’t really told many people. In fact, come to think of it, outside of my siblings, you are the only one I’ve told.”

“Wow, really? Thank you.”

She sounds sincere and I know she is not judging me. I am very protective of Dolores and if she had said something flippant or thoughtless, I would have defended my lady love. But she didn’t. She understands. Which just makes me want her more.

“You’re welcome.”

“Ok, so other than Dolores, have there been other women in your life?”

I sigh and run a hand through my hair. “Yes, there have been. Not many, but a few. And none of them were relationships to speak of.”

She smiles. “Ah, I see. A slew of one-night stands to make up for lost time?”

I chuckle and shake my head. “More like a select few professional dancers.”

She makes a cringey face. “Yikes. I guess that can be fun in its own way, though. Bringing home some hot strippers maybe isn’t a bad way to spend a Friday night.”

“Oh, no, I never brought them home. Or even left the club, actually.” Her raised eyebrows have me laughing. “It is in my personal experience that the adage of ‘there’s no sex in the champagne room’ is not entirely true.”

She draws in a dramatic gasp with a big grin on her face. Then she slaps me on the arm. “Five Hargreeves, you are a giant slut! I can’t believe you give Klaus shit all the time when you’re going around banging strippers in the back of the clubs. What did they do, lure you back there with lap dances? How much does it cost to bone a stripper these days?”

“I never said I paid for it,” I say with a smirk.

“Whoa whoa whoa…hold on. Let me see if I’m understanding this correctly. You go to a strip club, probably buy a couple of drinks, maybe get a couple of dances, and they just magically take you into the champagne room and let you rail them?”

I shrug and drape my arms across the back of the couch. “That’s pretty close, yeah.”

Her mouth is hanging open and I know I’m acting like an arrogant prick, but I don’t care. Her reaction is too funny. It’s also all true.

“Holy shit.” She shakes her head with a smile. “Well, I hope you know that is not the normal experience for most guys. And the fact that it sounds like this has happened more than once leads me to believe you must be doing something extremely right in that room because girls like to talk.”

“Is that right?” I say with one eyebrow raised.

She nods. “I’m not entirely surprised. After I was able to get a quick preview of what you’re working with down there, I have no doubt you left these ladies with some major organ damage and a big smile on their faces.”

Now my mouth is hanging open in shock, but before I can stammer out some words, she starts laughing. It’s immediately contagious and I join her, and I haven’t laughed that hard in a very long time. It feels good and it almost erases the crushing feeling inside when I think about how I never want this time with her to end. Almost.

Chapter Five: Bizarre Love Triangle

The next day you are back to feeling normal again, and you should be going. You’ve missed a few days of work and you really need to get back there. But you don’t; you stay. You like the little infirmary Five has created for you. You feel safe and cared for, and if you leave that feeling will be gone.

Klaus decides to return sometime during the afternoon. He breezes in, smelling of cigarettes and unwashed clothes, with a smile on his face and seemingly not a care in the world. You are annoyed, sure, but you secretly don’t even care that he’s been gone. And it’s just so hard to stay mad at him because it’s Klaus. He is who he is and it’s no surprise, really.

Five, however, finds nothing amusing about it. You stand there and watch as he loses his ever-loving shit.

Barely two minutes after Klaus is in the door, Five is appearing in front of him in an angry swirl of light, already leaning in with bared teeth and clenched fists.

“Where the fuck have you been?” he growls in Klaus’s face.

Klaus, always immune to his brother’s rage, raises a hand to his head and closes his eyes. “Shhh…Fivey…please, can you keep the screaming to a dull roar? My skull feels like it’s breaking in two.”

“It is going to be breaking in two when I’m through with you. What the fuck is wrong with you? Don’t you have any decency? She has been on death’s door for the past two days and you don’t bother to come home or even call to check in?”

Five is gesturing to you while you stand off to the side, not sure whether you should be jumping in or not. You don’t really appreciate being talked about like you aren’t there, but you’ve never seen Five this worked up before and it’s intimidating, to say the least.

Klaus sighs dramatically and looks over to you. “I’m sorry. You’re ok now, though, right?”

“Uh, yeah, I am…”

“See? She’s ok, so no harm done,” he tells Five.

“Yeah, she is ok, thanks to me. That’s not even the point, though! You need to stop thinking about only yourself all the time. Grow the fuck up and act like an adult.” Five is still yelling loudly and Klaus is flinching with each word thrown in his face. “God, you’re so fucking useless sometimes!”

“Hey!” you interject. “Five, stop. I know you’re mad but you don’t have to be mean.”

He whips his head in your direction and the ire is still there. “Mean? I’m being mean? You do realize he just up and abandoned you, right?”

You stand up straight and raise your chin. “I think abandoned is a strong word. And I’m an adult, too, you know. I appreciate everything you did for me, but I think I could have survived without either of you.”

Five is silent, but his eyes don’t leave yours. He’s still angry, but there’s something else there. Hurt.

“Fine,” he concedes and his shoulders slump a little. “Forget I even said anything. You two dumbasses really do deserve each other.”

After that, he’s gone. Disappeared again before your eyes and you know he’s not in the apartment anymore. You doubt you’ll see him back here again anytime soon. You fucked things up again, and you don’t know how to fix it this time. You look at Klaus.

“Why didn’t you come back? It would have been the decent thing to do. I thought you cared a little more about me than that.”

Klaus massages his temples with his hands and lets out a loud exhale. “I know, I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be gone that long, and it was a little tricky to get back into the country without documentation. Especially when the guards on duty that day are all alpha males with no sense of humor.” He looks at you with concern. “I really am sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“You seem back to normal, now, so that’s good. I’m glad at least Five was here.”

You nod. “Me too.” You look towards the door, even though that’s not the way he left. “I don’t think he’s going to want to have anything to do with me again, though.”

Klaus is already on his way to the bathroom and he waves a hand in the air dismissively. “Nah, don’t worry about him. He’ll get over it. He always does. Come on, want to join me in the shower?”

“No, thanks,” you answer with a pinched smile. You may not be that angry with Klaus, but you are pretty annoyed. And certainly not in the mood for anything more than chit-chat right now.

It’s later that night, and why the hell you’re still here you have no idea. You should have left hours ago. You just can’t help but want to see Five again and to maybe try and smooth things over. And you’re worried about him, too. Obviously, he can take care of himself, but that doesn’t mean he won’t do something stupid just because he’s pissed off and not thinking clearly. So, while Klaus is in his room sleeping off his three-day bender, you lie down on the couch. You can’t sleep though so you’re staring up at the ceiling in the dark when you hear a familiar whooshing noise and brief flash of blue light coming from the kitchen. You get up and enter the kitchen quietly.

Five stops short when he sees you, his eyes wide for half a second before he corrects himself and he adopts his signature glare. You watch him as he walks to the sink, grabs a glass out of the cabinet, and fills it with water from the tap. You notice how he swayed a little when he walked and the way his eyes were momentarily unfocused. He turns his back to you as he takes a long drink of water.

“What are you still doing here?” he asks after he swallows.

“Are you drunk?” you ask, ignoring his question.

He gives a short and haughty noise, half snort, half laugh, and he swallows down another gulp of water.

“Hardly,” he answers, still turned away from you. He is deliberately not looking at you, probably waiting for you to give up and leave first.

“Yes, you are,” you insist.

Five turns, spinning abruptly around and facing you head-on. He slams the empty water glass on the counter behind him.

“And what if I was? What the fuck does it matter to you?” he barks, his face hard and angry.

You aren’t going to let him win this one. You aren’t going to let him chase you out of there.

“Where were you anyway?”

He puts his hands in his pockets and leans back against the counter. His hair is disheveled and hanging in his eyes again. His shirt, although slightly wrinkled, is unbuttoned just far enough that you can make out the hard line of his collarbone and the outline of his pecs. He is all tense joints and sinew, skin tight and smooth over rippling muscles; everything coiled tight. He notices you staring at his body and he smirks.

“Aw, did you miss me tending to your every need, princess? Not getting enough attention from my dear brother in there?” He nods his head toward Klaus’s room.

You cross your arms defensively over your chest, staring him down. “Don’t you dare fucking talk to me like that, Five. We are past that.”

He gives another sarcastic huff and turns his back on you again. “Go back to your boyfriend. Leave me alone.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” you answer flatly, although that’s hardly relevant.

Five doesn’t say anything in response at first and you think you’ve won this weird little game you two are playing. Then you see his shoulders slump and his head hangs down.

“Then what are you doing with him?” he asks quietly.

You pause, blinking into the dim light of the kitchen, watching the muscles in his back flex through his shirt as he presses his palms harder into the countertop.

“What do you mean?” you ask with a tremble in your voice.

Five turns around to face you, the softness you had heard for just a moment gone again. He takes a menacing step toward you and you instinctively back up.

“I mean, what are you doing with Klaus? Why are you with him?”

Five continues to slowly make his way into your personal space. His eyes are dark and he’s breathing hard with anger or drunkenness, or both. You back up, but you find yourself trapped against the wall. Five pauses for a moment, like he’s unsure he wants to follow through on whatever he’s thinking. But then he’s taking another step toward you, and another, until he’s so close you can see the tiny flecks of brown in his otherwise clear green eyes.

You take a shaking breath in and you can smell the whiskey on his breath, and the leathery scent of the soap you recognize from the shower. You can hear the squeak of his leather dress shoe on the floor and the way the fabric of his pants brushes softly between his legs as he moves in.

When you don’t answer, he asks again, his voice low and demanding. “Why are you with him?”

You swallow hard and try to look away, but his stare is too intense. “I…I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. Tell me.”

He’s leaning in, trapping you between his forearms as they are pressed against the wall next to your head, his lips just inches from yours as he waits for your answer. You have a feeling he’s not going anywhere until he hears what he wants to hear.

Your voice is barely a whisper when it comes out. “Because I don’t like being alone.”

One half of Five’s mouth curls up in a self-satisfied smirk. When he closes the already small gap between you and him, he rests his hand on your hip as your thigh grazes against his groin. You can feel the firm bulge starting to form in his perfectly fitted pants as you hold your breath.

“Fuck,” he murmurs painfully.

Before you can react, his mouth is on yours, hungry and rushed, like he’s trying to get as much of you as he can before he changes his mind again. But he doesn’t pull away. Instead, he presses further into you, flattening you against the wall, his hands clutching firmly to your hips. The weight of his entire body is pressed upon you, your breasts pushed against his chest and your groin flush with his. You take in a gulp of air between open-mouth kisses, half-resisting and half-responding to his touch.

If he senses any hesitation from you, he ignores it. Instead, he moans pitifully in his throat, raising both of his hands to bunch your hair into his fists. The feeling of his fingers against your scalp is like a spark; igniting the rest of your body so that you find yourself grabbing the back of his shirt and pushing your lower body into him.

His hands release from your hair, only to trail down the sides of your face and onto your neck. Hot and insistent, you feel his fingers tracing over the tendons on either side, across your jugular, and dipping into the hollow curve above your collarbone. His mouth leaves yours and follows the same route of his fingers; kissing softly but urgently in a linear pattern.

You are still grasping handfuls of his shirt on his back and then his chest. “Five.”

You don’t know what the meaning behind you saying his name is. You don’t want him to stop, but you can’t think clearly so it’s the only thing that comes out.

“It’s not fair,” he growls into your skin, moving to the other side of your neck. “Not fucking fair.”

A whine escapes your throat and you find yourself arching into him. Into his kisses and into his body. You want more and you don’t care that he’s drunk or that he all but forced himself on you. You’re not going to push him away and you stop kidding yourself that you were even thinking about it in the first place. It feels good. He feels good. And it feels right.

His kisses abruptly stop and when you open your eyes, you’re met with his intense gaze again. His mouth is parted as he labors for breath, chest heaving against yours. His hands are on your neck again. This time, they are encircling it, his palms warm against your skin and his thumbs on your chin, holding you in place and forcing you to look at him.

Five’s eyes are searching your face, taking in every detail.

“I want you. And I don’t fucking care about Klaus or anyone else. I want you,” he states quietly and breathlessly. “But if you want me to stop, tell me and I will. I’ll leave and you can go back to him.”

You frown, your eyebrows drawing together, as you take in the sharp angles of his face and the evident pain and longing that is written all over it. You could end this right now. He would step back, remove his hands from your body, and let you go. But that’s not what you want.

You shake your head slowly. “No. Don’t leave.”

“Fuck,” he breathes out again as if he’s disappointed in your answer.

There’s no time to contemplate that, however, because you are being hoisted up in one boost, Five’s strength more than enough to lift you easily off the ground. On instinct, you wrap your arms around his shoulders and your legs around his waist. You can feel how hard he is as you pass over his groin and he gives a little grunt at the feeling.

It’s all a delirious haze as you cling to him, kissing his face and neck and winding your fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. All while he is carrying you down the short hallway to his bedroom, bumping into the doorjamb on the way in, and closing the door behind him with a kick of his foot.

He walks over to the bed, dropping you down a bit ungracefully. Not that you care. You’re too busy trying desperately to shed your clothes as he does the same, the room filling with the sound of your loud and ragged breathing.

Since you were only wearing a t-shirt and shorts, you’re finished before he is and you lie back, watching as he fumbles with his belt buckle and shoves his pants hurriedly down. His shirt is off already, and you take in the hardness of his chest and the way his shoulders and biceps flex and relax with each movement. The tight boxer briefs he is wearing are damp where his hard cock has been leaking into them.

It’s all happening so fast, and he’s on top of you in a matter of seconds, pinning you down to the mattress, both of you naked and clawing at one another. He is grabbing and kneading your ass with one hand while the other one is on your breast, squeezing almost to the point of pain. But it feels so fucking good, and you’re just as forceful; digging your fingers into his hip and raking your nails roughly down the smooth skin of his back.

“Five,” you whine, unable to say anything else as he bites and sucks at your chest.

He’s groaning and gasping against your skin, like he’s drowning; like he can’t get enough. His mouth is everywhere. Your tits, your stomach, your neck.

He lets out a frustrated growl, even as he takes everything he wants and you let him.

“I hate it…” he mumbles, words cut off as he drags a tongue across your hardened nipple.

“What?” you ask after inhaling a sharp breath, your fist tangled in his dark hair.

Five doesn’t stop, even as he answers you, moving further down your body.

“I hate that he kisses you. I hate that he touches you,” he moans, his lips grazing over you and the words hot against your skin.

He pushes your legs apart and you pull in a deep breath, your hips rising off the bed in response. His mouth is on your inner thigh, pressed against it while his words vibrate over and through you.

“I hate that he makes you wet, and knows how you taste.”

Five is on his knees, face buried between your legs as he licks at your pussy, tongue lapping up the continual flow of your arousal and spreading it up through your aching folds. He’s holding you by your waist with both hands, steadying you as you thrust up into him. His mouth is hot and wet as it engulfs you in messy kisses and licks, the tip of his tongue darting over your clit as he drinks in your wetness and swallows it down.

The accuracy is tortuous, as he hits his target each time, leaving you writhing desperately beneath him, biting your bottom lip as you try in vain to quiet the noises he’s eliciting from you.

“Fi-ive…,”you whine pathetically before inhaling another loud breath.

His mouth is off of you again, leaving you soaking wet and desperate for more. Five is back to kissing up your body, going back over the trail he left on the way down. When he gets to your mouth, he kisses you hard and deep. You can taste your own sex on his tongue as it slips past your lips and inside, colliding with yours. As he bites and pulls at your lips with his teeth, you can feel his cock pressing against the inside of your thigh as he moves his hips rhythmically against you.

“I hate that he fucks you. I hate that he makes you come.” He pauses as he lets out another quiet moan. “And I hate that I hate it.”

He has pulled away from you, green eyes boring into you as he looks into yours. He hasn’t bothered with asking if anything he is doing is ok, probably taking your moans and involuntary hip jerks as proof that you were ok with everything. But now, he seems to be waiting for something. An acknowledgment of what he said. A sign that you want what he wants.

“Don’t you know?” you ask him, panting, as you look back at him. “When I close my eyes, it’s always you.”

One corner of his mouth is turned up, more than satisfied with your answer, as he is repositioning himself and shoving inside of you. You cry out, not even trying to hold it back, as your head falls backward and you clutch onto his shoulders. Five’s own loud groans are punctuated by each slow thrust of his hips as he holds himself over you on his forearms. Your eyes meet again, his face hovering over yours, dark hair hanging in messy strands off his forehead.

“Fuuck…I’ve wanted this for so long,” he breathes out, not breaking eye contact.

He’s slamming into you, his more than sizeable dick filling you up with each push. And it’s like nothing you’ve ever felt before. The way his body fits into yours. The way he looks at you. The intensity mixed with need and want. This is how fucking should feel. And you want to feel this way forever.

He has lowered himself so that your faces are closer; lips just an inch apart. He hasn’t changed his pace, though, still penetrating you over and over again in the perfect rhythm. Your hands run over the tight muscles of his rounded shoulders, nails raking red lines down his back as you lift your legs higher and angle your hips up.

“Look at me,” he demands and you open your eyes immediately in response. “I want you all to myself. I want you to fuck me. Scream for me. Come for me.”

There was no question posed, but you find yourself nodding along, agreeing with each word he says; arching into him and pulling him closer.

It’s not long before the tension is building, the heat spreading out through your groin until it’s no longer bearable. He’s pounding into you with precision and just enough force that you know you’ll be sore tomorrow. But that thought is far back in your mind, and you focus on his loud breathing against your skin, the feral look in his eyes, the way his body moves so perfectly in time with yours.

You come for him, just like he wanted, and you’re loud and desperate; thrashing underneath him, clutching tightly to his sweat-dampened skin. When you moan his name, long and pleading, his thrusts stop as his hips slam into you one more time, his cock unloading inside of you as he shudders and buries his face into the crook of your neck; a painful-sounding growl mixing with his stuttering breath.

Five stays like this, breathing in the scent of your skin and hair, for a minute or two before he lifts himself off of you, lying next to you on his back. He’s still breathing hard, but you can already see the wheels turning in his head; the regret and shame washing over him. You don’t want him to feel like that, though. There’s no reason for him to feel that way.

“Five?” you ask hesitantly.

He turns his head toward you, slowly, hands resting on his chest. You’re not really sure what to say. You want to tell him it’s ok. That you were just as much of a part in this as he is. But you know that will probably make him angry.

“Do you want…” your voice breaks as you look at him, realizing this passionate moment is most likely coming to an end. “Never mind. I can go.”

You sit up and start to maneuver off the bed when you feel his hand on top of yours. When you look back, his face is different. It’s more resolved now, like he’s figured something out.

“No,” he says softly. “Stay.”

“But…” You glance at the closed door of his bedroom, and he knows what you’re thinking because he’s probably thinking the same thing. Klaus. There’s also zero chance that Klaus hadn’t heard your loud cries of his brother’s name and the bed slamming against the wall.

“I don’t care. Stay.” When you look back at him, he smiles just a little. “Please,” he adds.

You return the smile, pushing the covers down so that you can both get underneath. He draws you to him with an arm around your middle and you nestle into his chest. He’s warm and his arm around you is strong, and it feels good.

Neither of you say anything more as you give in to your tiredness, drifting off while Five trails soft lines up and down your arms with his fingers.

Sometime during the night, you feel Five behind you, pressing himself against you and pulling you closer. He’s hard again and lightly kissing your shoulder, running his hand down your arm and then your thigh. You smile sleepily, not even opening your eyes, and push back into him, wordlessly letting him know you want him again.

You’re both caught in that hazy delirium of not being fully awake and Five thrusts into you slowly, rubbing his cheek softly against your hair. It’s passionate and pure, and you might have thought it was a dream if the words he was saying to you weren’t so real.

“I want this,” he whispers into the darkness. “I want this with you. Not just tonight, every night. Please.”

You sigh contentedly, pressing your backside into him as he fucks you perfectly.

“I want this, too. It’s always you, Five,” you answer, reaching your arm back to cradle his head in your hand.

He’s groaning low and desperately, his forehead pressed into your neck.

“I’ll take care of you like you deserve,” he’s pleading as he thrusts harder into you and his hand moves between your legs, urging you on. “Whatever you need, I’ll give to you. I’ll make you happy.”

You whine quietly, already feeling the need for release. “I know you will…I know…” You gasp when he gives one forceful thrust, fingers pressing hard against your clit. “You’re all I need.”

“Please,” he’s murmuring against your neck. “Please let me. I’m all yours, sweetheart. Please,” he keeps repeating, right before you’re both shuddering and moaning as everything builds and you reach your apices together.

The post-orgasmic high you are feeling is mixing with your emotions and your exhaustion, and you blink into the darkness of the room, feeling Five pull out; the hot cum he just pumped into you seeping out and sticking between your bodies. It doesn’t matter, though. He still has you in his arms as you both sink further into the mattress again.

He doesn’t say anything more, and neither do you. You feel him nuzzle into your neck and your hair, his lips pressed against you and you sigh happily. Who knows what the morning will bring, but that is still several hours away, and no matter what, you belong to each other now. You interlace your fingers with his and settle into the perfect curve of his body as you fall back into a peaceful sleep. 

When you wake up, the sunlight is streaming through the window and across Five’s bed, and you are alone. But it doesn’t take long to figure out what woke you up in the first place. Loud voices are arguing, sounding like they are coming from the kitchen, and growing louder by the second.

“You are a massive asshole!”

“Oh, get over yourself, Klaus! You’re only mad because it’s a blow to your fragile ego.”

Klaus gives a sarcastic snort. “Uh, no, actually, I’m mad because my own BROTHER fucked my GIRLFRIEND!”

“She’s not your girlfriend! You’ve made that perfectly clear.”

“What-fucking-ever! It’s still fucked up. It’s still a betrayal!”

You hear Five laugh dangerously and you can picture his stance; body strung tight as a bow, jaw set in defiance, fists clenched.

“You don’t even care about her, Klaus. Admit it.”

There’s a pause as neither one of them say anything. You listen carefully for Klaus’s answer, if he gives one. Finally, he speaks. It’s quiet, but you can just make it out.

“Maybe not. Not in the way that I should, anyway.” He pauses. “But here’s the thing, Five. I cared about you. You know, you’re always reminding me to be careful all the time and not to be so trusting of everyone. Well, you were right; I trusted you and look how that turned out. You’re not my brother. Go fuck yourself.”

You hear footsteps and then the door slams. There’s silence again.

You don’t know what to do, so you stay put. You’re still naked, though, so you scramble off the bed and gather up your underwear and the t-shirt you were wearing. As you yank it over your head, Five opens the door and walks in. He’s carrying two mugs of hot coffee and he hands one silently over to you.

You say thank you as you accept the mug, but your smile of appreciation goes unreturned as Five crosses back the way he came and stands in the open doorway. His face is impassive. Uncaring. The opposite of the passion you saw in his eyes just hours earlier. You frown over your coffee as you take a small sip.

“I heard you and Klaus and I’m so sorry. I know this is hard, but…” you start to say, but Five cuts you off.

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it. Look, I have a lot of things to do today, though, so you should probably get going.”

You flinch at his abruptness and you can’t even pretend to hide your hurt. You see a faint flicker of some emotion in his eyes before it’s gone again. Blank.

“What do you mean? I thought we…” your voice trails off, unable to finish the sentence as the words catch in your throat. You swallow and try again. “You said…”

Five jumps in again before you can finish. “I was drunk, I didn’t know what I was saying,” he replies, his voice flat and unmoving. “I’m sorry if I misled you. Obviously, this was a mistake.”

He says nothing more; just turns around and walks out, leaving you sitting on his bed, coffee cup in hand, and a sick feeling in your stomach. Your chest is tight and it’s hard to breathe. You can’t believe what’s happening right now. How he’s treating you. Your heart is breaking into a million pieces and it’s humiliating.

After you gather your things, pull on your clothes, and pack your bag with the few toiletries and other things you’ve been leaving there, you head out to the living room. Five is there, dressed in his normal black slacks and white button-down, sitting in one of the chairs. He has a newspaper in his lap and he doesn’t look up when you enter. You stand there, staring, until he reluctantly meets your eyes.

You are trying desperately to hold back tears, and for the most part you are doing a good job. But they are there, threatening to spill over at any second. You try to steady your voice.

“I get it if this is hard for you, Five. It’s hard for me, too. I didn’t want to come between you and your brother. But pretending that this was a mistake? That what you said last night didn’t mean anything? That’s bullshit and you know it!”

He cocks his head to the side and crosses one leg over another as he gives you a condescending smirk.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart? Never heard of a one-night stand?” he sneers.

“Fuck you,” you spit out, your voice hitching in your throat.

You turn away and head for the door before he can see you cry. On your way out, you stop and turn back. He’s still sitting there, looking after you, the same non-expression on his face.

“One last thing before I go. You did this, Five, not me. You pushed me away. So, if you wake up one day and you’re all alone…you only have yourself to blame. Because this could have been something really good.”

You turn and close the door behind you, not even bothering to look back again.

Chapter Six: My Own Worst Enemy

I’ve dealt with a lot of regret in my life. Times when I’ve wanted to kick my own ass and beat the living shit out of me. A couple of times I’ve been successful in rewinding time by a few minutes to fix my mistakes. Other times, not so much. But none of those times, barring that little snafu when I ended up living in a barren wasteland for 45 years, have come close to how much I hate myself right now.

After she slams the door shut, I blink myself over there. My hand is on the doorknob, mid-turn, when I stop myself again. I can’t think straight and I don’t even know what is right or what is wrong anymore. All I know is that all of this is my fault. If I had just kept to myself and kept my dick in my pants, I wouldn’t be standing here like this now. I rest my forehead against the door and squeeze my eyes shut. I briefly think about going back and changing this. I only need a few minutes, not long. I can tell her I’m sorry and that I don’t want her to leave. I can tell her I did mean everything I said before. I can try and fix it. But I don’t.

I slam my fist against the door and kick it at the same time. “FUCK!”

That’s all there is to say in this situation because I may have just lost the two most important people in my life. All because of my stupid, thoughtless actions. I feel bad about Klaus, but I know he’ll eventually get over it. He might not forgive me, but I know he’ll be ok. But her…that look in her eyes when I told her I didn’t mean any of it…I don’t think I can fix that. I wouldn’t even know how, because I don’t think I’ve ever hurt someone that badly and that viciously before. If I have, I hadn’t cared until now.

I had panicked. I thought I had made peace with everything and then Klaus had said what he did to me. You’re not my brother. And he was right. Not only am I not even his biological brother, but I have been on my high horse pretending I can protect him, when really all I do is make shit worse. What kind of a brother, adopted or not, does that?

The thing is, if I had just gone about this in a completely different way, it probably would have turned out just fine. I could have gone to him, told him I had feelings for her and that I thought maybe she felt the same way, and apologize. Maybe he would have been a little mad, but in all reality, he probably would have been fine with it. It’s the way that it happened that really threw a monkey wrench into the whole thing.

I know he wasn’t all that into her, and vice versa. But to take the same girl that your brother has been sleeping with on a regular basis and fuck her (loudly), right down the hall from him without so much as a heads-up-pre-coitus email…that’s probably some sort of code violation right there. Granted, I’m sometimes oblivious to social norms and things other people might describe as “tact”, but I do know this is a pretty blatant faux pas.

I shouldn’t have gotten so pissed. I shouldn’t have gone off to drink my feelings away. I shouldn’t have stayed in the kitchen talking to her. I shouldn’t have done a lot of things.

I was mad at Klaus for not stepping up when he should have, but I was mostly just mad at him for having her in the first place. And then when she came to his defense…that was too much. I had to get out of there before I said or did something even worse. So, I did what I usually do when things get too scrambled in my brain; I went to find some booze.

The bar I chose was the first one I had come across while I was storming down the sidewalk, and I found an empty barstool where I could sit and wallow in self-pity. The place was a total dive, but it was dark and crowded and the bartender had no issue serving me as many shots of whiskey that I asked for. I think I was on my fourth when I noticed the girl on the other end of the bar eye-fucking me. She was cute, with dark brown hair and a minuscule top that didn’t do much to hide her impressive rack. In my drunken state, I found myself staring back at her, which she took as an invitation.

I can hold my liquor, but after five shots, even I’m going to get a little sloppy. Everything was a blur. It was dark, loud, and my senses were all screwed up. She was standing between my legs, leaning in to talk to me, and I could smell her perfume which I didn’t particularly like. I don’t even know what she was saying to me. Her hand was on my thigh and she was purposefully pressing her tits against me as she talked close to my ear. I could feel her hand moving higher up my leg, and she was saying something about leaving together and going back to her place. It sounded like a good idea, but something was off.

I felt her lips brush against my cheek and that’s when I had a moment of clarity. Her voice was all wrong, her perfume was giving me a headache, and if I was paying attention to what she had been saying, I’m sure I would have found her boring. More importantly, she wasn’t her. And if it wasn’t her, I didn’t really give a shit. Grabbing the woman’s wrist with my hand, she stopped her kiss and pulled back, confused.

“Stop,” I said, gradually snapping out of the trance I had been in. When she questioned me, obviously irritated that I would be turning her advances down, I let go of her hand, pushing it off of me. “Go shove your tits in someone else’s face. I’m not interested.”

With a glare, she turned around, but not before she flipped me off and called me an asshole. That’s when I figured I should get out of there before I drank enough that I wouldn’t be able to find my way out. I also figured it would be safe to go home because she would have left the apartment hours before that. Wrong again.

When I saw her there, I just couldn’t keep it up anymore. I couldn’t see the point. And if she had slapped me across the face, or asked me to stop, I would have. I would have been humiliated, but I would have stopped. But she didn’t want me to.

God, I can still feel her body against mine and hear her moaning my name. I can still taste her on my tongue and smell the sweat on her skin. She invaded all of my senses and she’s still clinging to me. I have never begged anyone for anything in my entire life, and yet there I was, pleading with her to be with me. She had said she wanted to, and I could feel how much she meant it. We were going to be happy together; I had promised her I would take care of her like she deserves. It was all right there for me. All of the things I had been dreaming of and wanting for so long. Then I went and fucked it all up.

She was right, too. I will wake up all alone one day, and I will have no one to blame but myself.

It’s a week later, and I’m busy packing up all of my shit into boxes since I plan on moving out tomorrow. I haven’t seen much of Klaus because he hasn’t been around a lot and when he is, he avoids me and locks himself in his room. I had immediately started looking for a new place and I found one that is ok and will be fine short term. It’s also fairly close to her coffee shop, which had not been intentional, but it’s not my fault that’s where it’s located. I’m packing up some books when Klaus comes and stands in the doorway. I look up, startled. He’s holding a bottle of vodka in one hand and two shot glasses in the other.

“Mind if I come in?” he asks.

“Sure, come on in.”

He walks in and sits down on the edge of my bed. He puts the shot glasses on the side table and pours vodka into each of them, filling them to the top before he sets the bottle down. He hands one over to me and I take it from him even though I’m confused as hell right now.

“What’s this for?” I ask.

Klaus shrugs. “I don’t know, but I feel like we should have one more drink together before you move out.”

I don’t know how to respond to that, so I just follow his lead and hold my glass up in a toast before slinging it back. It burns on the way down but it tastes good.

“You don’t have to leave, you know,” Klaus says after a long pause.

“Yes, I do.”

He sighs and looks around my room. “Look, I know this is a weird situation, and I am still mad at you, but that doesn’t mean I want you to leave.”

“You told me I wasn’t your brother and to go fuck myself,” I remind him.

“Ah, yes, well…perhaps I was a bit over-dramatic. I was just a tad hungover still and you were yelling just so loudly. Really, Five, your voice just pierces right into the brain sometimes and makes people say things just to get you to stop.” I shake my head. “No, you were the appropriate amount of dramatic and I don’t blame you. You’re right, I’m a shitty brother and I messed up big time. Which is why I need to leave.”

“Look, Five, I didn’t mean all of that, ok? Yes, I was pissed. And yes, maybe what you did was not the greatest thing ever. But you were also right.”

“About what?”

“About not caring about her. I realize that regardless of our status, I still was a pretty shitty friend to her. I’m glad she had you here. Even if you did rail her hard enough I think even I could feel it.”

I cringe. “Klaus, I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t begin to cover it, but I truly am sorry.”

He nods thoughtfully. “So…how long have you been in love with her?”

I stare, open-mouthed and wide-eyed; dumbstruck. Klaus laughs.

“You think you’re so smart and slick all of the time, but I got news for you Fivey…you ain’t.”

“What are you talking about?” I sputter out, even though it’s about the worst acting anyone’s ever done.

Klaus rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “It’s ok, you can admit it. I’m not dumb or blind. Or deaf, as it turns out. I know how you operate around people, and I have never seen you like you are when you’re with her. You are one smitten kitten and you know what? Good for you.”

I am about to protest again, but when I go to deny it, I realize I just don’t have the heart or the energy for it. “Ok, you’re right, I love her. I’m sorry, but I do. I have for a while now.”

He nods and smiles, not shocked by this information. “Like I said, good for you. You deserve love and happiness in your life, Five. Would I have preferred it to be with someone I hadn’t also bumped uglies with? Probably. But hey, love works in mysterious ways, right? I mean, look at me! I fell in love with someone I met after falling out of the sky in the middle of a fucking war zone. Talk about bad timing! I guess we Hargreeves are good at bad timing, though, aren’t we?”

He laughs, even though it’s more sad than funny and I stand there for a minute in thought. Then I come to a conclusion.

“There’s only one way I’m going to feel better about this and be able to move on with a reasonably clear conscience.”

“What’s that?”

“You have to hit me.”

Klaus looks at me in disbelief. “Uh…yeah, ok, Five. I’m not falling for that.”

I shake my head and roll my shoulders back, facing him head-on. “No, I mean it. I want you to punch me directly in the face. I won’t hit back or defend myself.”

“Five, I don’t want to hit you…”

“Come on! I’m sure you’ve thought about it on several occasions before. Well, now here’s your chance. For the second time in your life, you can hit me in the face without any backlash. I promise.”

He chuckles. “Oh yeah, that was a fun day. But seriously, even if I did want to hit you, which I don’t, I’m not even good at it, you know that. I never have been. I’m like one of those guys in old cartoons where they swing and miss and just spin around in a circle.”

“Klaus, for fucks sake, stand up and punch me in the fucking face!”

After another pause, he stands up in front of me. He’s still taller than me, despite me being at my full height now. He looks down on me nervously and I see his fists clench and unclench.

“Really? You really want me to do this?”

I nod. “I really do.” Then I hold my finger up. “However, just remember this is one hit.”

He shrugs and lifts his fist up, pulling it back and I close my eyes to brace myself. WHAM! He gets me right in the jaw and he is a big fucking liar because he is good at it and it hurts like a motherfucker.

“Son of a…Fuck!” I yell, holding my face. I swear I can already feel a bruise forming and I run my tongue over my teeth to make sure they are all still accounted for.

“Oh my god, Five, are you ok? Shit, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I actually did that!” Klaus is panicking at first but after a couple of seconds, he starts laughing. “I can’t believe I actually did that. And you haven’t killed me or even maimed me! Man, I got you good, too.”

“Yeah,” I mumble, still rubbing my throbbing jaw. “Turns out it hurts a whole lot more when you know it’s coming.” Klaus continues to laugh at my pain, and even though it hurts to move my face, I grin up at him. “This was a one-time offer, by the way. So, don’t be thinking you’re hot shit, because I will drop you without a second thought.”

Klaus gives a sarcastic salute. “Message received, big bro.” He purses his lips together and gestures to the boxes around my room. “So, are you still leaving?”

I nod. “Yes, I’m still leaving. And it’s not even all because of that. I don’t think it’s doing either of us any good to be living together like this. I have realized that I was using you as an excuse not to move on with my life. I told myself I was doing you a favor when in reality, I was just looking for a purpose. Any purpose. But I need to figure that out for myself.”

“Ok, but you’re just going to leave me all alone here?”

I shrug. “Maybe Luther wants to move in.”

Klaus looks horrified. “Good lord, no thank you! You skipped out on the grosser years of having to live with that barn animal and let me tell you, it’s no picnic. I don’t need giant pairs of tighty whities thrown around my bathroom, or having boxes of my favorite cereal eaten up in two days.”

I grin and clap him on the shoulder. “You’ll figure it out, Klaus. You always do. And you don’t need me to help you do it, either.”

“Thanks, Fivey,” he says softly, before catching me off guard and pulling me in for a bear hug, trapping me against his chest.

“Ah! My face! Let go, you stupid asshole!” He lets me go and I rub at my jaw again, glaring up at him. He is unfazed so I just shake my head. Klaus will always be Klaus, and I meant what I said. He’ll be just fine without me here.

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

“Feet. Off. The coffee table,” I say as I whack at Klaus with a rolled-up newspaper like he’s a cat on a kitchen counter.

“Hey! Geez, alright…keep your shirt on, old man,” he protests as he tries to guard himself with his hands while removing his feet from where they were propped. “What’s got your little assassin bonnet full of bees today?”

“Nothing! Maybe I just don’t want your disgusting feet all over my furniture.”

Klaus tilts his head to the side, looking up at me. “No…I don’t think that’s it. You seem even more murderous lately than normal.” Then his face lights up. “I know! I bet you haven’t been laid in a while, that’s got to be it. That’s an easy fix, too, because I bet if I go outside right now and made an announcement that the infamous and very sexy Number Five Hargreeves was looking for some action, you’d have a stampede of pretty ladies and probably some pretty men breaking down your door.”

“Klaus,” I start to say before he interrupts.

“Wait! Here’s a better idea. Me and you, we go on the prowl tonight. I’ll take you to some great clubs where you can meet someone that’s suitable for banging. Well, they’re not clubs as much as warehouses full of people tripping on acid, but still. I guarantee I can get you laid by the end of the night.”

“Klaus.”

“Yeah?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

When he manages to look like a kicked puppy, I roll my eyes and sigh. “Thank you for your concern over my sex life, but I do not need to get laid. I’m fine.”

He eyes me up and when I look away guiltily, he gasps with a hand on his chest. “Hang on. Do not tell me the last time you put your banana in a fruit salad was with…”

My silence is the only answer he needs and he gives another dramatic gasp, which makes me grit my teeth together.

“Holy shit, Fivey! Well, no fucking wonder you’ve got your man panties in a wad lately.”

“Again, and I say this with the utmost love and respect…shut the fuck up.”

He stands up. “No, no, no…I will not shut up! So, you’re telling me that over the past six months , you’ve been carrying a torch for her? Wow, that is some romantic shit right there. But still, that shouldn’t stop you from driving the ol’ Pope mobile into some lucky lady’s Vatican now and then.”

“What is wrong with you?”

“We don’t have time to get into all of that right now. Besides, this is about you. I’m serious, Five, you can’t go on re-living your virgin years just because you’re a little hung up on one person.”

I shake my head and put my hands in my pockets. “I’m not just hung up on her. She’s all I think about. All day, all night. I still love her, Klaus.”

I don’t know why I let my walls down just now and told him the truth, but the fact is we have actually been getting along much better now that we aren’t under the same roof anymore. I’m starting to feel a little more comfortable talking about things with him. And the nice thing about Klaus is that he’s done so many weird and fucked up things in his life, he never judges.

“Oh, Five,” he says sadly. “I had no idea. You never mentioned it so I just assumed you’d moved on.”

“Yeah, well…it’s fine. I’ll get over it eventually.”

“You know, the easy solution to this is to walk your cute buns over to that coffee place of hers and tell her what you just told me. Confess your undying love. Sweep her off her feet.”

I laugh and run a hand through my hair. “Yeah, I don’t think that would work. Pretty sure she hates my guts. And for good reason.”

“Listen, as someone who had a very close seat to the ‘Five Hargreeves Fuck-tacular’ show, I’m going to bet she doesn’t hate your guts. No one sounds like that while getting their naughty bits plowed into oblivion and then just forgets about it.”

Ignoring that little comment, I shake my head. “You don’t understand. I really fucked this one up and I don’t think there’s any way to come back from it.”

“Well, all you can do is try. If she hates you, then it’s as you suspected and you can move on. If not, then you two can sail off into the sunset together. There’s really nothing to lose here.”

He has a point, but the thought of just walking in there to try and talk to her is terrifying. I’m not sure I have the balls for it.

“Want me to go talk to her for you?” he asks.

“What? No!” When I see him smile mischievously, I jab my finger at him. “I’m warning you, Klaus, if you go over there and so much as even mention my name, I swear to god I will blink you to Antarctica and leave you there.”

Klaus waves his hand at me. “Please…you’ve been threatening that since we were kids. You really need to come up with something new. But, fine, I won’t go over there.”

When I nod my approval, I assume this conversation is done. It’s not, apparently, and Klaus grins at me again.

“In the meantime, how about I set you up on some casual dates? You don’t want to be out of practice if your lady decides to take you back. What do you think? You up for a game of pelvic pinochle? Burying the weasel? Filling the cream donut? Launching the meat missile?”

I massage my temples with my fingers, trying to fight off the headache I can feel forming behind my eyes. “For the love of all that is holy, Klaus, can you please shut the fuck up? I am begging you.”

He gives his annoying little Klaus giggle. “Sure thing, Fivey. Whatever you say.”

“Thank you.”

Four days later I’m whacking at him with the newspaper again. This time for a different reason.

“Ow! I didn’t mention your name, just like you told me, I swear! Ow!”

“You talked to her and gave her my address!” I yell, whacking at him harder around the head.

“Damnit, cut it out! You said don’t mention your name and I didn’t. She just happened to know who I was talking about. OW!”

I stop my assault and stand there, breathing hard through my nose as I glare at my stupid ass brother. “Why? Why the fuck did you do that?”

“Listen, Fivey, I love you and all but you are really your own worst enemy. I’m trying to move things along for you; help you out. You can’t stay here, all pent-up with sexual energy and moping around the house for the rest of your life. Don’t you want to get out there and live? Don’t you want someone to share your life with?”

I sigh and flop down into an armchair. He’s right, of course, even if I don’t want to admit it. “Maybe,” I mutter.

“Of course you do! That’s what everyone wants in life. And you, old timer, have been given the gift of time and the chance to start over. That’s like everyone’s dream! So, don’t just sit here and waste a gift like that. Not when you could be out there spreading a little of that teleporting-genius-infused DNA around with your special man sauce.”

I make a face. “Gross. Please don’t say ‘man sauce’ again.”

“Anyway…she didn’t say she wanted you dead and she accepted the piece of paper I gave her, so…I don’t know, those are both good things, right?”

“I guess. Did she say anything else?” I ask, trying not to get my hopes up.

Klaus shakes his head. “No, sorry.”

I wasn’t expecting anything, but it still feels like a bit of a blow. I nod, and then I look at Klaus suspiciously. “Did you say anything else?”

He puts a hand to his chest. “Who, moi ? Of course not. Well, I did apologize for everything that went down, but like I said, your name didn’t come up.”

“Hmm…why do I get the feeling that’s not the full truth?”

Klaus shrugs innocently. “I have no idea, but trust me. I bet any day now she’ll come knocking on your door wanting some more of that sweet, sweet loving from you. Just you wait.”

As if his prophecy was about to be fulfilled at that precise moment, I glance towards the door. What would I even say if she really did show up here? I had been avoiding her place like the plague, even though that meant taking much longer routes to certain places. Except for those few times when I couldn’t help myself and I watched through the windows from across the street and then blinked away before she could spot me. Otherwise, the thought of having to face her again makes my stomach churn. So, maybe Klaus did do me a favor. Maybe she really will hunt me down and knock on my door one day soon. If she does, I’m sure it will be just for the opportunity to chew me out. But, even so, the thought of seeing her standing in front of me again makes my pulse race just a little faster.

Link to the next few chapters here!

@baileebear

#five hargreeves x you #five hargreeves x reader #number five x reader #number five x you #five hargreeves #number five #klaus hargreeves #the umbrella academy #tua #number five fanfic #umbrella academy #tua fanfic #five x you #five x reader #tua five #smut #female reader #five hargreeves smut #fanfiction #requests open #umbrella academy fanfiction #umbrella academy fanfic #multi chap fic

[starry-bi-sky]

ive been hesitating to ask this bc youve been on a roll with the clone^2au (which i am frothing over) but could i poke you for some childhood friend au? bc GOD i wanna see how danny reacts to reuniting w jason or how the rest of the batfam react to learning jason never told danny of his resurrection or wondering if dannys gonna put jokers dead body on a display/offering to jasons grave. i havent been normal about this since i first read it and was wondering. thank you for your writing.

RAAAAHHHH DON'T BE HESITANT I AM JUST AS FERAL OVER MY CHILDHOOD FRIENDS AU AS I AM WITH CLONE^2 I AM DELIGHTED BY THIS. Like.,,,, i literally love them,,, so much. I can't listen to The Crane Wives without thinking of them.

(which is my fault - the ao3 fic of them has literally only crane wives lyrics for each chapter title and summary (posted AND the ones not written) so of course im gonna associate with them.)

(if you wanna listen to some of their songs while thinking of cfau here are my recommendations: "Once & for All", "Here I Am", "Hollow Moon" is a Danny AND Jason song to me, this would be my go-to song for an animatic of CFAU if i had the skills for it. "Tongues and Teeth", "Curses" and "take me to war" is a heavy cfau danny song to me, and of course, "the moon will sing")

Like they're BEST friends dude, they're two sides of the same coin and when they were kids they would do this thing where their 'fingers crossed'/'double-crossed' was them hooking their index fingers in the fingers crossed gesture.

and i'm actually currently rewriting my original post into a more fic-like format, and when I'm done I'll post it on here under the cfau tag - with the original post still in tact. But its,,, gonna be so long dude,,,, the original behemoth was just over 9000 words,,, and I've written 3k words already of the new one and we haven't even reached Jason and Danny reuniting at the gala yet,,, i need to get back to that,,,

and then to answer your questions!! god im almost hesitant to answer because i dont wanna spoil the little fic i had planned for it but also like,, its not like im gonna spoil everything, right? and answering the questions isnt the same as writing the scene down so!!

i love danny and jason's reuniting, like i've thought about it SO much and I've thought about it happening after Danny kills the Joker. I know the reveal could have been before that, and it could have been equally just as dramatic but like??? Thematically, doing it after danny kills the joker is SO good. To me at least.

Because like?? Jason's been in somewhat denial about danny's plan to kill the joker for months. ever since danny told him that he wanted to at the gala. And from Jason's pov its not even technically a plan. He sees his best friend for the first time after five years and his best friend still isn't over his death. He hasn't stepped foot in Gotham since his funeral and now suddenly he's here.

And he's still so full of grief over his death that he tells a masked vigilante that he's going to kill the guy that did it, who lives in said masked vigilante's city. And danny's got that look in his eyes that Jason knows so well that means he's being serious. And yet he still doesn't know if he should believe him or not.

And then he does. Danny kills him. And Jason can't fucking believe it. And when he goes and sees Danny, Danny's hands are still covered in blood. And that reunion? God like a fucking firework show. Danny's so fucking angry, and pissed, and hurt, and so goddamn overjoyed that he's alive and here that he sends them both to the ground, and if he doesn't calm down he's gonna take out the power in a five block radius.

there's just so, so much yelling on Danny's end. And then so much crying, first from Danny and then them both. because god, you're alive. you're here. i've missed you so much. i'm never letting you out of my sights again.

and Joker's death! God I don't want to actually say too much about that, but the way I have it set up thematically makes me actually not want danny to take any part of the joker with him as an offering. and he may actually forego that particular ghost etiquette and offer something else as an offering to Jason in substitute to not bringing him the Joker's heart/head/ritualistic body part.

Because you know what the last thing a man whose been spending the last two decades of his life building himself up to be larger than life would want? A death that's unremarkable. :) and that's all i'll put on the matter for now.

and the batfam!! they technically already know that jason hasn't told danny he was resurrected, and plenty of them have mixed feelings on them. largely bruce and dick i think, considering they saw firsthand how close jason and danny were when they were kids.

Dick was honestly surprised at first when he found out that Jason hadn't told Danny he was alive - and on one hand he understands the reasoning for it, and on the other hand he isn't sure if it was such a good idea. Especially after he sees Danny again after he arrives back in Gotham and sees just how badly Jason's death was still affecting him. But it's not like he's going to try and convince Jason to tell him - he can make his own choices, even if Dick has questions about them.

Bruce has much the same thoughts as Dick, so there's not really much to add here other than he might bring it up once or twice to Jason like, vaguely. And then immediately drops it when Jason shuts him down. He might actually somewhat...?? prefer that Jason hasn't told Danny because that raises a lot of questions and could jeopardize their identities. However, again, Jason can make his own choices and there's not much Bruce can do about it other than disapprove from afar.

Tim who knew of Danny from stalking the Wayne family shares similars sentiments of being surprised that Jason didn't tell Danny, but again, yeah, understands the thought process to some extent. Doesn't bring it up ever.

Everyone else who hadn't seen firsthand how close Danny and Jason are don't really have much opinion on it -- Jason didn't tell his best friend he was alive, great, he also didn't tell them either so it's not like its that much of a surprise. It would've been more of a surprise to them if Jason had told Danny before he told Bruce and co. Damian may make a comment or two about Jason not telling Danny, but its not about how he can't believe he didn't tell him or anything like it.

#dpxdc #dp x dc #dp x dc crossover #danny fenton is not the ghost king #cfau #childhood friends au #danny and jason are such best friends i love them so much #BUT YEAH ASK ME MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT CFAU I'LL SCREAM #AND THEN TRY AND ANSWER THEM TO MY BEST ABILITY #like i could go on RANTS almost SPECIFICALLY about rath (dan) and then about jason and danny #and their friendship like i've thought about this au with a combined soulmate au and immediately hated the idea because no! #no! i can't call them soulmates. i can't it doesnt fit. their bond goes DEEPER than that. its *better* than that #this wasn't written in the stars it was forged in the back alley streets of gotham with all the broken glass under their feet #and the smell of nicotine weaving itself into the fabrics of their shirts. their souls aren't intertwined because the universe said so #they're two balls of yarn tangled together because they batted it at each other and decided to play cats cradle. and then never bothered #to untangle the string from one another. you'll never know where one ends and the other begins #i actually have a cfau miscellaneous facts post in my drafts that i need to finish too and i might do that today because of this ask <33 #the fastest way to starry's heart is through her ask box #asking me questions about my aus is the fastest way to make me make more content about them ajshld #see: clone^2 (i've been coasting off the fanart i got from them for the last two days) and now this #i need to stop more before i start waxing more poetic about jason and danny's bond with one another. #also also jason is equally as feral about danny as danny is about him (see: him plotting joker's demise since he was 14) its just not #showing as much since a lot of this is from danny's pov. like dw this isn't one-sided obsession its mutual. #see: jason seeing danny's scars and immediately wanting to find out who caused it and getting murderously angry about it #its not a starry post unless its long #idk maybe im just obsessed with the idea that relationships are chosen and forged with time and that the bonds we have arent because they #were predetermined but because we made them to be. Like how clone^2 said 'i choose to be brothers' and how danny and jason said #'i choose you. i will always choose you. you're my other half. the one who watches my back. i choose you.'

[amywritesthings]

silver underground. / chapter 16.

( Read on AO3 )

Pairing: levi ackerman x f!reader (attack on titan / shingeki no kyojin)

Word Count: 5.4K

Summary: flashback six - also known as the day of the heist

Warnings: this chapter heavily explores and discusses themes of peril, thoughts of self harm and self destruction, hopelessness, death, violence, and torture. if you are triggered by these topics, i would suggest skipping this chapter.

Previous Chapter. / Next Chapter. | Masterlist.

CHAPTER 16 - FLASHBACK: SIX

note: the next couple of chapters will be heavily influenced by the ova 'no regrets'. they are my interpretations of the material. please watch those episode first, otherwise you will get spoiled on elements revolving around levi's backstory.

The silence of the Underground City spoke volumes.

At this rate, you’ve gone over the plan — and the potential ways it can go horribly wrong — at least a dozen times. 

Only so many distress signals can be sent from three people outrunning an entire Military Police unit, so you've employed all of them.

First, there’s the stolen flares.

They’re sparingly used, if ever, when it’s the four of you on a job. Two teams of two has easily been your best formation tactic.

A slight change to a single team of three should not cause much difficulty, especially when it involves veterans like Church, Ackerman, and Magnolia.

(You've already waited a half hour. No flare ever ignites.)

Next, if someone loses their grip on a flare canister, then the pursued team resorts to high-altitude flying.

At the height you’re perched upon — the rooftop of a dilapidated apartment complex overlooking the northern half of the Underground — you’d be able to see at least one person flipping and weaving through even the tallest buildings.

(Another half hour passes. No one ever breaches the skyline.)

The last option, should any ODM gear jam and fail, is more human: eyesight. 

With the B-team units ordered to be stationed around the Underground City, your three friends should be covered. If it looks like the Military Police have the upper hand, then you can quickly get the rest of the gang to safety.

You told Levi you wouldn't run after him, that you would keep your promise and stick to the plan, but now that it's been over an hour of radio silence?

You're not so sure.

Because there are no clouds in the Underground, your sightline is clear. Idly your ODM gear sits on either hips, hands occupied by the mechanism's handles that will boost you at a moment’s notice. Below you on the street stand your appointed security, both gang veterans, looking for any stray MPs roaming the area.

Every second waiting for Levi, Isabel, and Furlan to return from their heist route spans to eternity.

Over and over your eyes scan, checking between rooftops — nothing.

Your attention drops to the streets — nothing.

Silence creeps to a ninety-minute drag.

No flares sound.

No bodies fly.

“C’mon, Ackerman,” you mumble under your breath, flexing your left hand to give your body something to do — to avoid pulling the trigger too fast on a rescue operation.

He was explicit about not coming for him.

He was explicit and he was stupid to think you’d never come for him.

He was stupid to think—

“James!”

A panicked, shrill voice, however, sounds from the street.

You whip your attention to the east, taking your eyes off of the skyline for a belated beat.

The rogue voice screeches with urgency a second time.

“James!”

It's young and feminine and terrified.

You shift a boot towards the sound, squeezing the metal handles in your palms with your index fingers at the ready.

“Hey! Where is she? Please, tell me James is here.”

She seems out of breath, like she ran a great distance to get here.

You draw a line with your sight from where her footsteps originated: she came from the south.

Most of your units are pushed towards the north, where Levi stated the job would take place.

One of the seasoned lackeys, a younger man, grunts to her in response. “Who’s askin’?”

“I need to speak with James,” she urges, ignoring his question with a wavering tone. “Please—”

“She’s busy, kid,” the second man replies. “Spit it out if somethin’—”

“They caught Levi!”

Her shriek almost makes your foot slip, causing a roof shingle to dislodge.

Time ceases to exist.

Levi.

Below you hear the young men argue with her and the exchange of pleas that follow, but there is no distinction of sound to you. Their words are muddied as if your head has been dunked underwater.

You can't run to her. Anxiety grabs you by the scruff of your neck to hold you in place.

What's wrong with Levi?

Move.

Did something happen to Levi?

Move.

Without thinking, your hand ignites the ODM switch in your left hand to propel a spear into the stone wall from across the street. 

You swiftly swing down from your perch, finally catching a glimpse of the girl in question:

The girl — you remember her first name being Lucy — is as pale as a ghost. Her entire body trembles like a decaying leaf, as though she’s witnessed something horrific that she can’t scrub from her line of sight.

(What the hell did she see?)

Her shoulders relax once she spies your face, but not enough to quell your concern when tears well into her eyes.

“James! Oh my god, you’re here,” Lucy breathes, taking a step forward like you’re willing to console her with a comforting arm. "I tried to get here as fast as I—"

“Repeat what you just said about Ackerman,” you demand without solace. “Now.”

You take one pace back, ignoring the spike in your heart rate as the scenario snowballs in your mind’s eye.

From your peripheral vision, you see several others from the gang join the fray.

The two other lookouts on Lucy’s team run down the tiny guarded street, equally out of breath and panicked.

“We saw it happen in the southeast corner!” one of the running girls exclaim.

You — and the rest of the gang — turn in that direction. You can feel your throat seize.

He said the job was going to be in the northern half of the city.

How the fuck did they end up in the south quadrant?

"We followed them when the job changed course," Lucy explains as if she can read your mind. "Levi ordered Furlan and Isabel to cut south. Too many MPs were waiting in the north."

"But the job was in the north," you numbly reason.

“It might have been a trap, we don't know!" she desperately chirps. "A bunch of MPs went after them on ODM gear so we followed by foot. They were chasing Furlan through the streets. A few of them fell back and we thought maybe they gave up, but then a bunch of new people came out of nowhere and they all had green cloaks with wings—”

“Wings?” you snap, unable to stop your eyes from widening.

You whip your attention back to the young girl. Lucy cowers at your unyielding gaze.

“...yeah,” she answers, meek and uncertain. “They didn’t have the same jackets as the MPs. They had wings on their backs, on the cloaks and the jackets.”

A cloud of fearful whispers spreads like wildfire through the small crowd, infecting the minds of the reconnaissance team under your command.

It isn’t uncommon anymore for the Military Police patrolling the Underground to show up with ODM gear. It used to be a rarity, but now? They know better than to show up empty-handed.

Years of embarrassment have taught the thick-headed MPs a valuable lesson.

But green cloaks — and wings?

You can’t be mistaken by their meaning:

The Scout Regiment.

The military branch where suckers with death wishes band together to expire. They seek to explore the unknown, taking off on brainless expeditions past the city walls and into whatever Hell awaits on the other side.

(Why the fuck would they send the goddamn suicide squad to the Underground?)

You don’t need to live on the surface to know the stories: a third of Scout recruits barely make it past their first mission. And by the end of their first service year, the death toll rises to half. 

The only dumbasses left standing with the Wings of Freedom on their back are those who desperately want to die but can never find the right titan to eat them.

And, according to the stories, their missions beyond Wall Maria always come up empty-handed.

A thought passes through your mind like a papercut, stinging your blood cells with the very real possibility that they’ve turned their efforts inward — whether at the demand of the king or the disappointment of the people paying their salaries is unclear.

(Is the Underground City their new playground?)

If so, then Levi — this gang — could very well be their first dedicated target.

“Where?” 

The word spills out of your mouth, starting in your mind as a demand but dissolving to a murmur.

Going, running, to wherever the Military Police — or God forbid, the Scout Regiment — have your friends is the only plan of action you can think of. 

You’re supposed to make sure the people here are fine.

The need to run — go, go, go — far outweighs your logic.

“I…” The girl falters.

You hate how your voice erupts in the wake of your fear. “Where, Lucy?!”

“I don’t know! I lost track of them!” she yelps, squeezing her amber eyes shut. The hands at her sides are balled into tight, painful fists. “Isabel and Furlan got taken down by some MPs, but Levi kept going on ODM gear. He outran most of the MPs, but there was a man, a tall blonde guy, who—”

“Was he a Scout?” you press on, gritting your teeth. “Did you see the Wings of Freedom?”

“The fucking Scouts are here?” someone yelps behind you. “Oh, shit, dude. Oh, man…”

“What the hell are they doing down here?” another asks next to him. “They don’t fuck with the Underground!”

“Did the Wall missions fail?” an older girl asks under her breath. “Are they coming to wipe all of the Underground City out now?”

“Quiet,” you order, holding up a hand. It takes tensing your arm to keep the limb from shaking. “Lucy: where did you last see Levi?”

“The blonde man chased him out of the sky and into the streets. No one knows. We couldn’t see where they went, but it… I’m so sorry, James.”

Lucy’s voice is so small that you barely hear her.

All you can focus on is his voice ringing in your head, a whisper against the thin line of white noise filling your body.

Protect them.

You’re ready.

You’re so ready to fire up your ODM gear to chase after him, to fight off every single bastard who thinks about laying a finger on your friends.

We won’t get arrested. We’re too fast on ODM gear.

“What do we do, James?”

The MPs won’t stand a chance.

“Can she hear us? Is she freaking out?”

You want me to be the last person standing.

“James!”

Lucy shrieks in your face, breaking your delusion.

You blink back into your body to see a dozen faces staring back at you in various stages of grief.

Fear.

You focus on the way a tear streams down Lucy’s youthful face. It brings you back to when you picked her up off the streets. A kid, just like you, looking for food scraps and shelter — her mother had passed away at a young age, leaving her to fend for herself.

You knew what that was like, so you promised protection. A roof over her head. Food in her belly.

A chance at life.

Just like he once gave to you.

Now you’re the only leader left standing. The other three are either arrested — or worse.

You’re all that stands between dragging her back to the streets or pushing her to the gallows.

(You’re all anyone in this gang has.) 

I need you to be safe.

Levi’s voice tickles the outer shell of your ear, whispering past despite the dead wind.

You want to hate him. You really do.

But you promised.

Lucy’s lower lip trembles as she takes a step forward. 

This time you stay put, too frozen from the numbness in your body. 

“James… please, tell us: what do we do?”

You don’t know.

You wish you did, but you don’t know.

You want to tell them to run, to run as fast as they can and never look back.

You want to tell them that you don’t know how to do this without Isabel or Furlan.

You want to tell them you’d rather die than know a life without Levi.

But you promised.

I’ll keep them safe.

I know you will. Echoing in your mind like an omen. I trust you.

“If they’re arrested, then the MPs will be storming the apartment at any minute.”

You finally answer without an ounce of emotion. You can’t stomach thinking past protocol.

“We don’t have time to get our stuff. Organize yourselves into teams of three. Find the safe houses and don't come out until you hear from me. Take a single runner out to Roxy’s. They owe me a few favors, so they should give you table scraps until this blows over.”

“Are you getting Ackerman?” An older girl holding onto her brother’s small shoulders pipes up from your right.

“And Church?” Another person asks. “Magnolia?”

Refusing to think further than the present crisis, you shake your head.

“They all knew the risks of this heist. Right now, my priority is keeping everyone here safe. So go — and avoid detection the best you can. Leave the rest to me, alright?"

You pause, making eye contact with those staring at you. In front of you is a gradient of nerves.

(Everyone knows the risks of running with a gang in the Underground, no matter the price.)

"I said go, goddamnit!”

At your shouted order, most don’t hesitate to run.

The crowd forms into smaller clusters of refugees as they run towards the emergency routes you’ve mapped a hundred times before.

You don’t have time to panic.

You don’t have time to mourn about what could have been.

(A house gleaming in the sunlight with its windows open. The scent of a fresh meal being cooked. The soft meow overlapping over pleasant conversation about nothing at all.)

After all, you made a promise — 

And if three of the Underground’s most notorious gang leaders have been caught, then it’s only a matter of time until the manhunt ends with you.

.

.

.

.

  Week after week, your numbers dwindle. 

Day in and day out, houses are raided for anyone associated with Ackerman, Church, and Magnolia.

Bars, brothels, and drug dens are scoured for that missing puzzle piece.

Military Police, emboldened by their victory, are adamant to find anyone involved in their gang.

Most found are arrested.

Some offer information for a chance at immunity.

By the fourth week, the gang dissolves into half of its original number.

However, the rampant pursuit slows after the sixth week, and by the seventh, the Military Police stop searching.

The city becomes boisterous again for an entirely different reason, falling back to its routes of debauchery and strife.

Panic of those still in hiding twists into remorse, remorse into doubt, and soon the doubt creeps into what was once an impenetrable fortress.

And somewhere you failed.

Maybe it was because you kept your promise and never went after Levi, Isabel, and Furlan the day they disappeared.

Maybe it was because no one ever saw them again, creating a shroud of mystery in their disappearances. Most people assumed they were arrested and tortured for information. Others hoped they were able to at least die in a merciful way.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because you gave up.

The longer you fought without your three friends, the longer you ran around the Underground City hiding from authority, the harder it became to remember why you were trying so hard to be the last person standing. 

Hiding with nothing to go back to — that was what waited for you at the end of all of this.

To make new headquarters on mere piles of rubble, alone.

People continue to get caught. 

People continue to lose their lives.

You were ready—

Ready to give up.

Ready to join the fate of so many others.

Ready to lose.

(All things considered, you had a good run.)

.

.

.

.

  Eight weeks.

It takes eight whole weeks for someone to finally rat you out.

In exchange for immunity, a scared newcomer snitched to the Military Police about the location of your hideout — and you can’t blame them.

The Underground City has always been a dog-eat-dog pit.

That, however, doesn’t mean you don’t still run.

The crisp, metallic zip of the pulley cuts the air every time you push through the alleyways, leaving the Military Police unit in the dust. Wind frays your hair, whipping pieces of it into your face as you run along brick walls and push for the a momentous swing.

It has been weeks of these chases, all evaded in the dust, but something feels different about this pursuit.

The officers feel confident this time.

Ready.

Another unit of MPs pursue on foot, shouting and taunting for your surrender, but they're no match for your swift escape.

The two officers following with ODM gear cannot match the sharpness of your turns.

You don’t know why you keep running.

Why can’t you just stop running?

In your lingering rage you almost want to turn back, take a knife, and attack.

To earn the heaviness of a murder charge on your shoulders. 

You want to lash out—

To make someone hurt— 

But you just keep running.

In your time of solitude, you've wondered how the end of all things went that day. Did those pigs take turns kicking Furlan with his hands tied behind his back? Did they drag Isabel through the street? Did they cut out Levi's tongue for back talk?

You hope they gave the MPs hell.

The imaginative injustices — the cruelty — fuels your fantasy of revenge.

Through another alleyway and into the streets, you latch onto another building and swing to your left to continue through the streets of— 

Wait.

Skirting around a corner, you see something briefly whip around a corner in a cloud of exhaust.

(Was that emerald?)

Your attention turns to the distinct color that entered your line of sight before it disappears.

Your eyes widen with recognition, but it's too late.

You failed again.

One look to your side is all it takes for a solid, heavy object to slam straight into you from the opposite direction, knocking a spear clean out of the neighboring wall.

The ODM gear jolts, causing you to jerk and drop abruptly to the dirt beneath. Your forearms shield your face from the dirt and debris as your body skids across the dirt path.

Before you even realize what's happening, you're scrambling to your feet. Metal clangs from the jostled handles in your palms as you push yourself up.

Your right arm reels back, fist clenched, and flies in an attempt to connect — and it does.

The punch lands directly in someone's face. The bone crunches under you knuckles.

A person yells in pain and grabs their nose, giving you ample opportunity to attack further. Your leg swings, kicking your boot square into their abdomen. You recognize the way their breath squelches: the wind rips right out of their lungs.

You want them to feel pain, just as you’ve felt pain.

You want them to suffer, just as you've suffered.

It doesn't matter who they are.

When the attacker is incapacitated, you make a choice: you turn the opposite direction, taking off into a sprint.

And you run, if only for a few seconds.

Because that very same emerald flash appears in your peripheral vision.

In just one breath, your feet get tangled up and send you flying to the ground you'd just found yourself lying upon.

A pair of hands suddenly tug at the back of your shirt, pushing you further into the muddied street. A forceful forearm presses down harder, pinning you to the ground. A pebble digs into your cheekbone, its jagged edge slicing into your skin. 

Trapped.

You grit your teeth, fighting the painful hold with everything you have. You shout and yell like a woman possessed, kicking your boots deeper into the Earth to propel forward, but you can't move.

(Give up — why can’t you just give up?)

Then a deep baritone voice pulls you from your erratic defenses, smooth like honey.

“James.”

Your last name on a stranger's tongue makes your stomach churn.

You continue fighting, digging the toe of your boot further for purchase.

Suddenly pain explodes in your scalp. Something pulls your chin high from the crown on your head, forcing your attention to the sky. What greets you is a tall, built figure above.

From the street lamp, you see it’s a man — early thirties, broad shouldered, with piercing blue eyes and neatly-combed blonde hair.

This mysterious man stares down at you, standing at full height. He doesn't acknowledge the person holding you down, knotting your hair in their balled fist.

One after the other, two more emerald cloaks drop down from the sky, their faces obscured by their hoods.

Blinking away from his face, you see it: his tan, cropped jacket, with white and blue wings outstretched against one another, pointing high with dignity.

The Wings of Freedom.

It's the Survey Corps, in the flesh.

“Four whole Scouts for little old me?” you chide.

The person holding you down rips your torso up higher, causing an immense strain in your spine.

You wince at the sensation of nearly being broken in half but refuse to make noise.

They don't get that satisfaction, not yet.

(You've felt worse.)

The blonde man above you does not react. He continues to stare, however, when he addresses another in his squadron.

“Get her up on her knees, Miche.”

The man behind you — presumably Miche — yanks you from the dirt to settle you on your calves. Without your arms to support you, you’re left floundering at his will.

“What?” you ask through clenched teeth. "Are the Scouts so bored of getting eaten alive that they've come to the Underground on a field trip?”

The man makes a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. His crystal blue eyes slide slowly from the crown of your head, past your face, then rest at your chest.

“Surface made?” he comments in a languid, baritone voice.

When you jostle against Miche's grip on your back, a feather-esque sensation brushes across your sternum.

Then you realize:

He’s staring at your necklace.

“Stolen?” the blonde man asks again, and venom poisons your tongue at his slander. Somehow you manage to hold a response.

You sneer instead, turning your attention to the side of a building.

A painful beat passes.

You hear the man’s boots near, crunching under packed dirt.

“My name is Commander Erwin Smith, of the Survey Corps," he introduces, not fazed by your lack of cooperation. "I was informed that you’re not only the muscle of this operation, but one of its four founding leaders. Is this true?”

He’s met with another stretch of silence.

“Handling operations for seven weeks without the help of your comrades is impressive.”

Another step.

“Or has it been closer to eight?”

“What do you want, surface scum?” you finally murmur, eyes locked on a particular patch of moss growing at the foundation of the building.

He exhales through his nose, contemplating. You continue to look away.

“Your protection is gone, James," Erwin begins. "Your gang, eradicated. Your people have fled — abandoned you, to save themselves.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you tell him.

Erwin evades your feigned ignorance. “A bounty has been on your head for two months. You’ve done all you can to avoid detection, but from where I stand, I see someone out of options.”

Your nostrils flare, unwilling to betray yourself in the face of the truth.

He isn’t wrong — it’s been the end of the line for weeks now.

You’ve run on borrowed time and a promise you barely believe in anymore.

You’re so tired.

“The Military Police would be glad to round out their gallows with someone responsible for embarrassing them so thoroughly.”

Is that where Levi ended up, in the gallows next to Isabel and Furlan?

(Are they no longer alive, just as everyone suspected?)

When you continue to stare at the adjacent wall, the man behind you tugs at your mangled hair and rips your focus back to the man in front of you.

The toe of the Commander’s boot is in line with your muddied knee.

From this angle, he's practically on top of you.

“However, I believe the finality of a noose is a great waste of potential talent.”

His eyes bore into yours when he slowly, carefully, drops to your height. His ivory-white knee plants gently into the dirt.

You blink up to his face, unable to suppress your confusion.

“Potential talent?” you hiss back, ignoring the searing pain in your scalp. “What is this, a pitch?”

The Commander hums. “I don’t pretend to know how extensive your crimes are, James. What I do know, however, is that you have an out.”

“Yeah?” you ask. “And what’s that, O' Golden One?”

Erwin’s eyes drop to the ground, so you follow suit without moving your head. From the edge of your vision you see it — the ODM gear still hooked around your hips.

“How long did it take you to properly handle ODM gear?” he asks with a genuine intrigue.

“Barely took me a week,” you lie under your breath.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” he agrees. “Most of our recruits take months, sometimes even years, to masterfully scale the way you can.”

“Sounds shitty to me.”

“In a way.” A beat passes. Commander Erwin’s jaw sets. “Which is why I’m asking you to join the Scout Regiment under my command.”

You can’t help it — the anger disappears in a bark of a laugh.

It’s a request you never see coming, not a million years or a thousand lifetimes.

You’ve avoided the Military Police for weeks, only for a Scout to offer you… what? A twisted version of salvation in his army? 

The words blurt out of your mouth faster than you can help it.

“Join the Scouts?” He nods once to your yelp of a question. “Are you fucking insane?”

“Are you?” Erwin challenges. “Both options lead to your death. The only difference is choosing to make your death matter.”

“A noose or being eaten alive,” you snidely respond. “Gosh, Commander, which sounds less painful?”

“What do you think your friends would have selected, if given a choice?”

The swiftly-timed question is a punch straight to your gut.

Unable to stop your eyes from widening, you hate how your blood chills with panic.

How you can see that glint in the commander’s eyes when he’s finally, finally, caught your weak spot.

Seeing the visceral reaction, he continues. "Before they expired, would they have chosen to die here? Or would they have chosen a new life."

Was he saying…?

Was he saying they were already dead?

Isabel. Furlan.

Le…

Your lower lip trembles as you hold back from thinking about that final name.

You barely recognize your own voice when you speak, low and dangerous.

“How dare you…”

Erwin’s gaze is unwavering. “I’m asking you—”

“Don’t talk about them.”

“—what would they have chosen.”

“I said don’t talk about them!” you shout in his face, losing your cool.

His chin tilts a fraction of an inch, expression stoic.

“Then what about your fellow comrades, the people who laid down their lives for your safety — would they have wanted a chance?”

Despite yourself, you push with your boot to propel towards the blonde. “You disgusting piece of sh— fuck!”  

Miche rips your head back impossibly further, exposing your neck to the Commander. Erwin stands tall, pulling out a long sword from its metal sheath. The cool, sharp end of the blade rests against your throat.

If he wanted to, he could end your life right here in the streets.

If he wanted to, he could make this so much easier on you.

But he won’t.

This isn’t about ease.

It’s about power, control — total submission.

A part of you wants to push against the blade to make it easier.

No noose. No titans.

Just here.

But you promised.

Last one standing.

“...what happened to them?” you ask, unable to stop the crack in your voice.

If this is it, then you might as well know.

Commander Erwin keeps his blade held towards you. “I don’t know.”

“But it was you that day, wasn’t it?” You ease down to your knees again. Miche loosens his hold on your body. “You're the one that went after them two months ago. When there was a heist, it wasn’t just MPs chasing them. There were Scouts—”

“I don’t have all day, James.”

He interrupts the beginning of your emotional spiral with cutthroat apathy. His arm lowers when you do not retaliate. 

“Your hand-to-hand combat expertise is needed within our regiment. Combine that with your unique ODM handling, and I see a formidable redemption in your future—”

He continues to speak, detailing your servitude should you accept his terms.

You can feel the fight, the fire, ebbing to dying ember.

You’re so tired.

You’re so done with running.

(I’m so sorry, Levi.)

“—and you would presume a title under my command, the rank of a Lieutenant—”

“Wait.”

He pauses when you speak up, catching the oddity of his words. Your lifeless vision connects with his.

“Lieutenants don’t exist in your shitty Scout Corps.”

Erwin nods. “That’s correct. Lieutenants do not."

"Then why..."

"A title will deter animosity. Those who look down at you cannot question your authority."

"Because I'm not from the surface," you reason.

"Yes," he says.

"You're willing to give me an edge on the rest of your people. Why?" You watch him, trying to figure him out before he tells you for himself. “Why not just make me regular front-line titan fodder?”

Erwin seems to consider this, if only for a beat.

Then he speaks with an unshakable certainty:

“Because you know what it means to survive. That, in itself, is vital.”

Your shoulders slump as your body shuts down from the eternal fight.

So this is a choice, but it’s no choice at all.

Your life will not matter in the Scouts. The commander is right: you will die, perhaps not today, but at least choosing the Scouts guarantees the sunrise one single time.

Just like you once promised you'd see with the three of your friends.

And in the moment you mourn — the loss of your friends, the loss of your life, what could have been if that job really had worked out.

(What does it matter when you die, so long as it's soon?)

You grip onto a sense of hopelessness like a vice.

Grief.

Then—

Rage.

As swift as a sudden earthquake, you feel it tremble from your shins to your knees, up your torso and through your heart, filling every red hot blood cell in your body.

It was him.

You’re so sure of it.

Commander Erwin would have been the one responsible for turning Levi, Furlan, and Isabel into the Military Police. He was the one who would have sent your friends to their deaths — or did he kill them himself?

And if he was the one to kill them, then why would he offer you a choice to escape?

(Was this the same choice he gave the others?)

Levi would have never agreed to the Scouts. Furlan, Isabel — they would have followed whatever he chose.

They must have died the very day the heist went wrong eight weeks ago.

It’s why Erwin won’t confirm or deny their fates.

Sickness floods your body, but you hold onto the one thing that will keep their spark with you.

That rage.

They really think you’ll comply.

They really think you won’t burn and take the Scout Regiment down with you.

You’ll kill him.

You’ll kill Commander Erwin Smith, then Miche, then every single Scout that steps into your path until someone’s smart enough to take you down themselves.

“Fine, then.”

You speak, knowing your word is as doomed as the fire in your veins.

“I’ll do it."

You meet Erwin's intense gaze, signing your fate with blood on the dotted line.

"I’ll join the Scouts.”

.

author's note: I'm glad we collectively giggled and screamed and kicked our feet in the last few chapters. It was a marvelous time. Now I'm out here ruining everything.

tag list: @lazylizzy3 @notgoodforlife @sad-darksoul @dailydoseof-love @maliakealoha @nube55 @kateastrophies @blinkingsuns @gomigami @voidszoro @tanyeonn @chishiyasan @im-just-a-simp-le-whore @vigilancio @nomi98 @urfavcelestialangel @milkersonmac @blossomedfloweroflove @carries-blenders-and-stuff @hurtcomfortwhore

#levi ackerman fic #levi ackerman fanfiction #snk fanfic #snk fanfiction #attack on titan fanfic #attack on titan fanfiction #aot fic #aot fanfic #shingeki no kyoujin fanfiction #shingeki no kyojin fanfic #levi ackerman fanfic #shingeki no kyojin fic #levi ackerman x you #levi ackerman x reader #levi ackerman x f!reader #levi x you #levi x reader #levi x fem!reader #silver underground #amywritesthings

[sprainedwriting]

where are you? (i don’t want to die alone) 3

all might x child! reader

chapter 1 ; chapter 2

tags/cw: child neglect, slight self harm, unhealthy coping mechanisms, VERY unrealistic everything

read on ao3 for better formatting + tagging

when you turn up on time to your first class, your friends seem relieved. ah, you nearly forgot, since its the 20 year anniversary for your school, the students will hold a cultural festival. there will be a concert, dancing performances and food.

you don’t perform on stage, especially not in-front of huge groups of people. your stage fright was too severe. still, you will spend the day helping to set up everything. being the man behind the scene and everything.

right now you were behind the gymnasium with your best friend, he was rolling a cigarette for himself. you were too paranoid to smoke, what if your voice changed too much and everyone ends up hating it?

leaning against the wall, you finished telling him of your crazy morning. he was the only one who knows who your father is. not because you told him, but because all might barged into your apartment and revealed his own secret identity. you don’t know how that could have happened, because you extra texted him AND left a message on his voice mail. who would have thought, he didn’t answer and screwed himself up.

the gymnasium is painted in a graffiti style, the new first years alway re paint it. a few years ago your group project was presented for everyone to see. now, it is buried under layers and layers of paint. even though the wall has been painted again and again, it still had a rough texture. your finger glided across it, nervously.

“…when’s your birthday anyways?” he asked, while patting his pockets, searching for his lighter.

scowling at him, you pressed your finger harder against the rough surface. your finger was starting to become raw.

“dude, that’s like the least important information in the whole world you could ask for.” reaching into your pant pocket, you pull out a lighter and give it to him. he quickly thanks you.

“it’s important to me! mmm, what’s your zodiac sign?”

sighing, you rub your forehead. you made sure not to tell the birthday story, yet. if someone congratulated you for your birthday you would start crying at this point. you straightened up when you heard voices coming close towards you. your best friend puts his cigarette out against the wall and puts it in his hoodie pocket. he stepped towards you, trying to look who was coming.

of course it had to be class 1a with their two teachers. so they were able to make it. with them was the director, giving them a tour of the campus. ugh you can never catch a break. you have to think fast, do you leave as quickly as possible or stay?

thank god you’re not a hero, so you don’t need to be brave and face uncomfortable situations!

“..i’m running, bro.”

“huh? wait..!”

before you could really think everything through, you started sprinting. not too far, just to put some distance between you and them. after a few seconds you slowed down and looked over your shoulder. the group just rounded the corner. quickly looking ahead again, you decided to walk towards the main building, since your next classes will be there. while you walked, you ignored the feeling of being watched.

________________________

end of the day, somewhat.

while your classes did end, it didn’t mean you could go home yet to rot away in your room. since today was the anniversary of your school, your job is to prepare the stage, so others can perform.

you aren’t late for the preparations! which is a blessing in disguise. right now you’re behind the stage, stashing away your bag.

“…so that’s why the hero class is here.” someone explained, a first year.

immediately perking up at the mention of hero class, you asked,

“why are they here?”

“ugh! dude, i explained it, like, 100 times already! they are here to play through like a boomb threat scenario. you know, since hero work also includes assisting during terrorism threats.” you knew if you were not an upperclassman, they probably would have refused to answer. children.

nodding your head at the explanation, you straightened your back and sighed. maybe you could fake sick…nah. gotta pull through.

massaging your temples you simply tried to focus on breathing.

“they will leave before the perfomances tho! they hid like a secret paper cut out somewhere. they also are not allowed to disturb us. so don’t worry, senpai!”

“well at least it is something. image how annoying it would be if they, like, were around us all the time…annoying like flies, man.” with those words you left backstage area. stepping into the stage was, maybe, not your best move.

the class, with their teachers (because why would they ever need to be independent) stood infront of the stage. at least they were no on here with you and a few others. you diged your thumb nail into your raw finger. the pain should ground you.

“ah! yagi! you know, our school was able to bring out not only small starts, but also a few big ones.” she winked at you.

schooling your face to stay neutral, you could hear a few whispers from the students. of course they remembered your face from the morning. that was some wild shit you pulled there. jesus.

“oi! aren’t you the one from the train station?!” called someone out.

furrowing your brows at the question, and thanking yourself for taking that action class as a joke, you answered in monotone voice, “huh? no, sorry. i have never seen you guys before, in my life. i swear on my fathers life.”

and then you smiled at them, brightly. fuckers.

what the hell are you supposed to say? yes? no way. why did you even do that. are you mentally unwell or something? …maybe it is some time for self reflexion.

turning around and scanning the stage, you make a mental note on what was missing. the piano was already there, thankfully. speakers, microphones, the drum set, amplifiers, the lights have to be tuned. and and and and.

much to do, with not a lot of time to spare. is the piano even tuned properly? ugh.

fucking back off back stage, you decided on starting with the lights and speakers, since you aren’t sure on what kind of perform order there is. not everyone needs microphones, but everyone needs lights.

“ayo! do we have anyone on the lights yet?” you called out. the answer came fast with a solid no.

thank god, you have a job. taking out your phone, you checked you text messages. your friends were not here yet. those traitors, tell you to be punctual but can’t do that themselves.

while you send out text messages, you could hear hushed whisper in the background.

“hello there! kid, which i have never meet before! could you assist me?”

great.

#all might x reader #bnha toshinori #yagi x reader #toshinori x reader #bnha x reader #bnha x you #bnha angst #angst #mha x reader #mha angst

[stillness-in-green]

On Heteromorphs and Heteromorphobia (Arc XXI-B + Conclusion, Final War-B: The Hospital Attack)

To preface before I start documenting these final four chapters, there’s been a lot said (not least by me) about how wildly out of touch the resolution to this plotline is.  While I didn't set out to rehash all of that again, it turns out I can't actually talk about how the series portrays heteromorphobia without talking about how it resolves it—if I'd wanted to do that, the place to stop would have been with the last post. This whole piece is also destined for AO3 eventually, so it needs to be readable for those who don't follow me on tumblr. Therefore, if you've been following my #heteromorph discrimination plot posts for a while, there are portions of this post that will be pretty familiar territory!

If you're new and want my full breakdowns, you can find them in my Chapter Thoughts posts or in this pair of posts rounding up the asks I’d gotten on the topic.  Here, I will simply say that I don’t think Horikoshi’s fumbling of the plot can be read to mean that all the stuff I’ve documented thus far was just me reaching too hard, reading stuff into the manga where nothing was intended.  While I’m sure some of it is—I definitely went out on a few limbs!—I think the main answer to, “How can heteromorphobia be such a well-thought-out depiction of a logically foreseeable form of discrimination while also having such a terrible resolution?” is, “Because the mainstream opinion about how best to handle discrimination is wildly different in Japan than it is in progressive American circles.”

That doesn’t mean I’m willing to wave the wand of Cultural Differences over this resolution and forgive everything—there were plenty of Japanese fans critiquing it as well![1]—but it does somewhat modulate my feelings about it.  In any case, let’s get to it.

1: Most of what I saw was on Twitter, but there’s a Japanese site called bookmeter that’s kinda goodreads-esque, and which had several critical reviews posted for the volume, including one that felt like every point laid out was something I’d complained about as well.  Super validating, but a shame it was necessary!

(I'll be changing up my formatting just a bit in hopes that I can find a way to present sub-sub-bullet points that tumblr won't choke on in this 13K post. Pray for me.)

Chapter 370: 

O We open with a scene which we’re led to believe is about Spinner but which the end of the chapter will reveal to be about Shouji.  It’s shockingly open about the extent of the discrimination Shouji faced, and there’s worse yet to come, but here we find people throwing stones at him, telling him to die, saying he has dirty blood that will defile the land, that he should stay inside the house, and that no matter how much time passes,[2] they will never accept “his kind.”

2: Viz renders this as “no matter how much society progresses,” but the word jidai means something more like “the times”/”the age,” and the progression term used can mean improvement, but in the circumstances, probably just means forward movement.  I think the intention is more like, “No matter how much the times march on,” if only because it would be very odd for the people yelling this vitriol to frame it as themselves resisting progression.  After all, bigots don’t typically think of themselves as “regressive” compared to everyone else’s progressiveness; they think of themselves as normal or valuing tradition compared to everyone else’s moral laxity/perversity.

So, remember how I talked about the spiritual/religious charge to the language the CRC used to talk about their “sanctuary” and the League/Spinner’s presence in it?  Here’s the full scope of that.  It’s about kegare, a Shinto concept of uncleanliness associated particularly with blood and death, and while that’s normally something that can be purified simply by undergoing the proper ritual cleansings, when something is, in itself, intrinsically unclean, no amount of purification will fix it; you can only keep it sealed away.  Hence the yelling at Shouji not to leave the house.

The spirituality-based discrimination calls to mind the burakumin, originally an outcaste group of people who made their living working with all the aspects of life Shinto considered kegare—butchers, tanners, executioners and the like.   They were made to dress and cut their hair in ways that identified them on sight, barred from entering temples or schools, and lived in their own villages.  The laws mandating much of this were abolished in 1871[3] and urban sprawl gradually rolled over burakumin villages, turning them into slum areas.  While today it’s not uncommon for people to not even know they’re descended from burakumin lineage unless they’re specifically told,[4] more subtle discrimination does endure.  While it’s clearly not the only inspiration, there’s a lot about anti-burakumin bias that’s reflected in heteromorphobia.

3: Albeit not without considerable and violent protests against the liberation of the burakumin/the idea that they were henceforth to be allowed to hold other occupations and become ordinary citizens.  Arson, destruction of villages, attacks and deaths—all things considered, the anti-Kaihourei riots are probably a decent place to look for inspiration on the historical massacres Spinner’s #2 will be talking about shortly.

4: Or find out because someone who knows the significance of those old neighborhoods finds out first and they’re suddenly on the bad end of some discriminatory act or another.

O We find out that the group Spinner’s leading consists of fifteen thousand people, that number split between PLF remnants and ordinary civilians who support the PLF’s cause.  It’s unknown exactly how that split breaks down, but based on how the rest of the attack goes, I think it’s probable that the group is mostly civilians—if it were more PLF, it probably wouldn’t be so wholly defanged by Shouji’s big plea for peace.  So that’s what we might call a “bad look,” that fifteen thousand ordinary civilians feel so incredibly hard done-by that they not only flock to join a known terrorist, but that they do so for the purpose of attacking a hospital.

O They’re opposed by about two hundred police and heroes, the relevant of whom for our purposes are Present Mic, Rock Lock, Officer Gori, Shouji, and Koda.  With the exception of Present Mic, who will in any case be heading inside very shortly, they’re all minorities of some sort, with Rock Lock being very visibly, obviously Black, and the others being heteromorphs.  None of them are immediately thinking about the composition of the crowd, but rather about how difficult the crowd is being to handle.

O Rock Lock yells out that the rioters are too organized to be some random mob, a dismissiveness that gets him shouted at by the Spinner fanboys—tragically their only appearance in all of this!—that, “Folks with human faces just don’t get it!”  I have to assume that putting Rock Lock in this scene is no accident, but rather is there to make the rioters come off as short-sighted, so deep in their own pain that they lash out at someone who, if HeroAca!Japan is anything like present day Japan, almost certainly understands better than they think!

The phrasing, in any case, points towards the dehumanization that heteromorphs, especially animal-associated ones, are subject to.  After all, as Re-Destro might point out, in the post-Advent world, isn’t it the case that any given heteromorphic human’s face, no matter how strange it may be, is de facto a “human face”?  Yet the vitriol from the Spinner fans clearly reflects how internalized it’s become for them, that they don’t look “human,” despite the fact that “looking human” means nothing at all in the time of quirks.

O Koda gets called a traitor by an elderly beaked heteromorph from, apparently, a rural area, underscoring what’s been alluded to a few times prior to this, and which will be laid out explicitly in a few pages, that heteromorphobia is far, far worse in the countryside than it is in the cities.  Mr. Beak assumes—correctly, it seems[5]—that Koda’s a city kid, because why else other than ignorance would a fellow heteromorph stand against them?

5: Koda’s from Iwate Prefecture, which is only above Hokkaido in terms of population density; a bit of research suggests that its largest city, Morioka, is considered to be a mid-sized city.  So that’s definitely the hard upper limit on exactly how “big city” Koda could reasonably be.  That said, Shouji also identifies Koda as someone who grew up in a city, for which I assume he must have at least some basis.

O Spinner’s #2 fulfills the promise of his early shorthanded characterization of being a fiery, well-spoken zealot by standing on top of a building over the mob and exhorting them onward with revolutionary, inflammatory rhetoric.  And boy, does he bring up a lot to talk about!    

Demagoguery for Fun & Profit

O Quirk counselling and quirk education?  Phony nonsense, he says.  That’s a fairly confusing grievance to bring up in this context, so let’s consider what he might have in mind.

• For quirk education, I would contend that BNHA has shown very little of it, in spite of having Academia right there in the title.  The academics in question are about Heroics, after all, not quirks in and of themselves.  Here’s the complete list of what I would say the reader has seen that could be qualified as actual education about quirks:

Aizawa telling the kids(/low tier villains at USJ) some broad generalities, things like a very basic explanation of how quirks work on the genetic level or how they’re classified.  Most of this is delivered in the context of how his quirk works; the only outlier that immediately comes to mind for me is his explanation of how quirks are like muscles, and can be strengthened via training.    

Mirio and Tamaki’s middle school class doing “quirk training,” which is framed as a P.E. class and is specifically aimed at finding ways for each kid to be “useful to society,” not about them learning anything about quirks in a broader sense.    

Endeavor’s recent reference to Nedzu’s alleged “quirk morality education,” about which I have already registered my skepticism.    

The bit in Re-Destro’s monologue to Shigaraki where he mentions he was taught not to judge others by their quirks.  It’s hard to judge how applicable this is to normal society because Re-Destro was raised in a cult, and the book shown during this sequence was released by Curious’s publisher.

So of those options, what is #2 talking about?  I’d say the last one is probably closest to what he means: don’t judge others by their quirks.  But of course, people judge others by their quirks all the time.  Family, classmates, teachers, people in the same neighborhood, heroes and police—we see examples from literally the first page of characters who are being judged by their quirks or lack thereof.  While that judgement doesn’t apply only to heteromorphs, they are, by dint of their visibility, going to face it everywhere they go, regardless of whether any given situation—say, going to the grocery store or on a date—involves quirks or not.  So, whatever lessons people in this society are getting about quirks and judgement, they clearly aren’t absorbing them.

It also bears pointing out, of course, that #2’s personal affiliation is with the Metahuman Liberation Army, and he definitely shows signs—as I’ll get to in a bit—of the quirk supremacism that group is so unanimously painted with in the endgame.  So while the supremacy he’s preaching is about heteromorphs rather than quirks more generally, he could well be saying quirk education is phony because he’s all for judging people on their quirks!  However, his criteria for that judgement differs from both forms of judgement taught by the society he’s railing against—what they practice and what they preach.

• Then there’s quirk counseling, a practice the story most prominently associates with Toga, who’s barely a twitch of the needle away from baseline (though her abuse is not wholly without reference to her appearance, in that her natural smile is repeatedly branded as scary or deviant).  So why bring it up in association with heteromorphs?  My suspicion is that a heteromorph—especially a heteromorph with an animal-associated quirk!—being visibly “different” in some way makes the people around them hyper-sensitive to behavioral “deviations.”

For a start, you see that hyper-sensitivity brought to bear against Toga.  Curious contends that Toga’s sense of “admiration” was a perfectly normal thing, but it was the tie to blood that made it wholly unacceptable.  It’s notable that, before she snapped, Toga was never shown to actually want to hurt people: the bird was already injured when she found it, her friend got a scrape the way any child might, Saito was involved in a fight Toga had no hand in.  She hurts people now because a lifetime of rejection and dehumanization, but Toga’s admiration of blood was not intrinsically indicative that she’d grow up to be violent; people treated it that way because of cultural attitudes towards blood and blood-attraction.

So, might the same sort of thing be true of e.g. animal-associated heteromorphs?  That they might exhibit behaviors which would, in different circumstances, be totally fine, but which they’re judged for unduly harshly because of cultural beliefs about the animal they resemble?  Let me just spitball a few possibilities:

A cat heteromorph who, as a child, showed affection by nuzzling.  That’s fine when a literal kitten is doing it, and funny and cute when a baseline child sees a cat doing it and imitates it for fun, but when the cat heteromorph does it, he makes people uncomfortable, makes them wonder if he lacks self-control, comes off as weird and too-forward.  So his parents rebuke him and bring him to a quirk counsellor to break him of the habit, leading him to feel ashamed and alienated from a harmless natural impulse.    

A snake-headed girl is the first heteromorph in her family line and the way she stares at people so fixedly, never blinking, creeps them out, makes them feel like she’s dangerous.  She isn’t and has no intention of being so, but she’s sent to quirk counselling anyway and the lesson she learns is to just never look people in the eye at all.    

A condor heteromorph develops a morbid interest in corpses in middle school.  He doesn’t want to eat them, he’s not some kind of cannibalistic animal—at least that’s what he told himself before quirk counselling, where his counsellor, like his teachers, assumed that his interest had to be tied to animal instincts.  He wanted to be a mortician, or join the police and get into crime scene investigation, but when he told people that they just looked at him like he was already holding a fork and knife.  (He ends up getting into photography, and just has to live with the fact that now people have two excuses to call him a vulture.)    

Two children—one with a plant-based emitter quirk, the other an eight-eyed spider heteromorph—are caught in the act of killing some insects by a local police officer.  It’s the sort of innocent childhood cruelty you might find anywhere, and, indeed, when the officer calls their school about it, that’s what gets decided about the emitter—he was just a child who didn’t know any better.  But the heteromorph gets recommended for quirk counselling instead—after all, spiders kill insects.  What if this is an early warning sign for instincts towards predatory behavior?  It’s important to nip these things in the bud.

That’s all off the top of my head or taken from some conversation with friends on the topic, and maybe it’s a reach, but it’s also a very plausible explanation for why a heteromorphic idealogue might bring up quirk counselling as a specific grievance—because, like the Villain-designation for criminals, it’s unevenly and unfairly applied.

O The next point #2 makes, and definitely the one that made the biggest splash in fandom at the time, is his invocation of a pair of historical incidents, possibly both but at least one of which was a mass murder targeting heteromorphs, carried out by a bunch of baseline types.  He names them as the 6/6 Incident and the Great Jeda Purge.  These are both stealth Star Wars references, though the former is disguised a bit better by being in the same format that Japan sometimes uses for naming events like attempted coups.[6]  Given the image we see, it’s fair to assume the event in BNHA was similar.

6: See for example the May 15 Incident or the February 26 Incident, called the 5・15 Incident and the 2・26 Incident respectively in Japan. You see this in China as well, with the Tiananmen Square massacre being referred to there as the 6/4 Incident.

Notice that the perpetrators here are mostly holding weapons.  Were they quirkless themselves, or were they avoiding using quirks such that they couldn’t be branded as Villains?  Knowing the answer to that would give us a timeframe for this.

He goes on to declaim, on the basis of these events, that the history of the paranormal is one of persecution and oppression of those with “differing forms.”[7] The term in Japanese there is kotonaru katachi, 異なる形, which uses a different reading of the kanji in igyou (異形) and muscles in a verb conjugation, which has the effect of softening the harshness of 異 somewhat.[8]  This would be a great catch-all term for those with heteromorphic bodies who might or might not have heteromorphic quirks[9] if it weren’t for the fact that literally the only person we ever hear using it is an anti-social zealot.  No one on Team Hero ever makes this kind of distinguishment.

In any case, #2 is obviously over-simplifying to play to his audience—recall the baseline woman we saw back in that shot of Persecuted Early Quirk-Havers back in Chapter 59—but, as I’ve discussed extensively, being more visible does make one a more ready target.  Also, of course, the presence of the CRC in the story lays the groundwork for this sort of historical horror story even long after the worst days of the Advent.

7: I provide my own translation here because the Viz one, “those who don’t fit the mold,” is vague to the point of uselessness.

8: The koto reading, as best I can tell, seems to be pretty rare, often tagged as archaic in words including it.  The i reading is far more common, in words that denote wrongness, divergence, abnormality, and so on.  But it may be less about the reading and more about the fact that adding the verb conjugation makes the term more of a descriptive phrase than a direct noun.  As ever, take my talk about Japanese language minutiae with a grain of salt.

9: “Differing forms” is broad enough, however, that it could also be read as covering, say, people with amputations, congenital anomalies, or other sorts of non-quirk-related disfigurements from accidents or disease.  As in real life, navigating the linguistic space between specificity and Othering can be tricky.

O Next, #2 rhetorically demands what excuse was given by those who perpetrated these slaughters?  He answers his own question with the quote, “They give me the creeps.” Note how this ties in with my earlier suppositions about the likelihood of discrimination worsening the farther one is from baseline, as well as those about the necessity of putting up a good, positive, appealing front.  It’s a perfectly intuitive leap, that more extreme variants of heteromorphy, or those who evoke negative associations—animals tied to rot or bad luck, people made wholly out of green ooze—are going to be more likely to be found “creepy” than those who look like e.g. sexy bunny girls or straight-laced guys who just happen to have pipes jutting out of their calves.  Of course, that’s on something of a sliding scale; the more biased an area is against heteromorphs in general, the easier it will be to find oneself on the wrong side of that line.

O #2 presents the idea that society has reflected on their actions and made amends, or at least that’s how society’s narrative goes.  Illustrating this, we see two of the three heteromorphs in the police force, as well as Nedzu.  Interestingly, the panel does not include any heteromorphic heroes!  I might guess that this is because heroes are meant to use their quirks to serve others; they’re really just enforcement tools, lacking any particular authority beyond a quirk-use license and some admittedly broad soft power courtesy of the social contract.[10] Conversely, a school principal and a police chief (Gori remaining the outlier here) have actual authority, such that the average heteromorphobia-denier can point to them as evidence that heteromorphobia doesn’t exist anymore.

10: Which is to say, I don’t get the impression civilians are required to take orders from heroes, such that they would actually get in legal trouble for disobeying.  The fact that people do typically follow those orders speaks more to the power heroes wield via their association with the police force, as well as the general tendency of people to assume that someone in a uniform giving orders during an emergency is probably a professional whose orders it would be safe and wise to follow.

In the same panel, we also see a baseline guy palling around with a vaguely murine heteromorph dude (he looks more like a mascot suit mouse than an actual mouse, but he’s certainly nowhere close to baseline!), illustrating another way society wants to pretend it’s moved past heteromorphic discrimination.  I can’t help but note, in regards to this specific pair, that the manga uses faces the readers know to illustrate the point about heteromorphs in positions of authority, whereas to make the point about baseline/heteromorph friendships, it has to make up a new pair to show us because the series hasn’t made the time to actually build any (heroic) relationships that actually look like that!

Now, one could argue that using familiar faces to underscore #2’s speech would imply that he’s aware of those faces, and while that’s fine for figures of authority, there’s no reason for him to be aware of e.g. Natsuo and his mousey girlfriend.  However, the same would apply to anyone placed to demonstrate a random urban friendship crossing the “differing forms” line, including those two strangers.  Who are those two, after all, that #2 is any more familiar with them than he would be of Natsuo and mouse gal?

Honestly, I think the best relationship candidate we have—a pair who would both communicate what the panel needs to communicate to the reader and who would feasibly be enough in the public eye to get pointed at for rhetorical purposes by an in-universe speaker—would be Kamui Woods and Mount Lady.  Unfortunately, they don’t work because Horikoshi has never seen fit to actually reveal Kamui Woods’ real face, so they’re much less visibly “a baseline person being emotionally close with a heteromorph” than the random two Horikoshi made up.

O The oratory continues into discussing the divide between city versus rural views on heteromorphs, and this is, to me, the first clear sign that the series is beginning to lose the thread of this plot.  Taking #2 at his word asks us to concede the heteromorphobia has been completely wiped out in cities, eradicated with that wonderful antidote called “education.”  But discrimination very much does exist in cities!  It may be less violent, less extreme, less vocal, but in the form of things like law enforcement bias, housing discrimination, microaggressions, the quirk counselling #2 himself brought up, it’s very much still there!  Now, it could be that he’s just downplaying that discrimination to focus on the really ugly stuff you don’t see in cities, but I don’t know what his reasons for doing so would be?  Not when there’s so much else he could say that would be equally inflammatory without alienating urban heteromorphs by dismissing their still very much present, modern suffering.

O He then brings up the talk of “light”—echoing Skeptic’s earlier rhetoric—and it not reaching those gathered at the hospital, so they must make their own, for people who’ve never once regretted the quirks they were born with can never be their heroes.  What this primarily puts me in mind of is Hawks’s background with heroes prior to his father’s arrest—that heroes were only on TV, not present to save him in his actual life.  Keep that in mind for Shouji’s response later on.

O Towards the end, #2’s speech finally tips over the line from what could plausibly be read as protesting unequal treatment to an outright call for supremacy.  Notably, he doesn’t call for quirk supremacy, but rather for heteromorph supremacy—for the tables to be turned, the cards reversed, for them to not merely be equal, but rather to be superior.

It’s unclear how much of this he’s sincere about and how much is just convenient rhetoric disguising views that are more quirk supremacist in actuality.  For many reasons, I want to read him in good faith: because the MLA originally struck me as being written in good faith throughout MVA and the first war arc; because #2 never once uses his quirk in this mini-arc, casting doubt on him having such an amazing quirk that he’d benefit overmuch from quirk supremacy anyway; and especially because it would be incredibly bad faith on Horikoshi’s part to make a character delivering a speech like this a total bad faith, manipulative outsider.  Unfortunately, #2’s inner monologue in later chapters will make a good faith read all but impossible to sustain.    

O Halfway through his speech, #2 unmasks himself, revealing both his face—dominated by four pairs of pedipalp-esque mouthparts, though the markings on his head are pretty eye-catching, too—and his scar.  We’re never told how he got it, but the implication is certainly that he was attacked for his appearance.  That may just be a conclusion it serves him to let people make, given his bad faith elsewhere, but thankfully the manga doesn’t go so far as to say that explicitly.  In any case, his deliberate reveal turns his wound into a form of performance art, drawing attention to it, forcing it to be a part of the conversation—the polar opposite of Shouji covering his scars because he doesn’t want them to be a part of the conversation about him, and those scars being revealed because his mask is torn off against his will.[11]

11: This also fits a larger pattern of villains, by and large, choosing their expressions of vulnerability, making deliberate shows of agency in how their weakness is perceived by the broader world—Shigaraki taking his hand off for the first time, Dabi’s video, Toga approaching heroes with genuine questions, and so on.  There are certainly exceptions, but generally if a villain shows his “true face,” it’s because they’re making a conscious decision to do so, and may be actively manipulating how that reveal is going to land.  Conversely, heroes want to present a powerful, confident, untarnished image to the public, so their shows of vulnerability all have to be forced out of them after pitched battles or acts of violence.  Heroes don’t make themselves vulnerable to the public on purpose, which feeds into the way the public then treats them when they are forced into vulnerable positions.

O Spinner’s a mess at this point, and the reason he’s a mess is all tied up in his faith in/desire to help Shigaraki.  It’s not explicitly about heteromorphobia, but on the other hand, given that the thing that drove Spinner to be here at all was his horrifically low self-esteem caused by heteromorphobia, maybe it’s not so irrelevant after all.  It may have taken Spinner longer than the Tenkos, Touyas, and Chisaki Kais of the world to reach the “fall victim to a dark influence due to the neglect and abuse you faced at the hands of Hero Society” plot, but he certainly got there in the end![12]

12: I call this The Sekoto Peak Problem, and it’s a big criticism of mine about how the final arc is framing all these conflicts as being solely brought about because Bad Faith Villain Men like AFO are scooping up vulnerable people and driving them towards violence, without acknowledging the much worse circumstances those vulnerable people might be in if they were just left to their fates.  Touya, for example, if not for AFO’s timely rescue, would likely have simply died on the mountain long before Endeavor was able to find him.

O Shouji takes the mob to task for attacking a hospital without ensuring the safety of the uninvolved innocents within, a laughable bit of sophistry[13] that accurately foreshadows how disastrous his reasoning will be throughout the rest of these chapters.

13: It’s laughable sophistry firstly because the heroes knew this mob was coming but chose to leave Kurogiri at a hospital anyway; one can mount a very reasonable argument that Kurogiri’s teleportation power qualifies him as a military objective, which would make stashing him at a hospital an actual war crime in an international conflict, as well as negating the hospital’s protected status as a civilian object.  It’s laughable sophistry secondly because it criticizes a Villain-led mob for failing to evacuate the building, as if said mob had exactly the same social cachet possessed by heroes, that they could freely walk in the front door of a hospital and start shouting evacuation orders with reasonable confidence that they’d be obeyed.  Finally, it’s laughable sophistry because Shouji is quite simply wrong about the order of the actions he’s describing—the heroes’ evacuation of Ujiko’s hospital was concurrent with their invasion of said hospital, not precedent to it.

   

Chapter 371: 

O Shouji accuses Spinner of taking actions that will set them back thirty years, which is just a really egregiously victim blamey sort of thing to say, placing the responsibility on heteromorphs for the crimes of those who hate them.

O Koda’s perspective gives us a flashback to Shouji telling his classmates about his history—his town and his scars and his reason for wanting to be a hero.  It’s all material that works in the context of all the set-up we’ve gotten—the CRC and the religious inflection of their specific brand of hatred, the rural heteromorphobia, the hints about Shouji’s own discrimination, the attack on the Ordinary Woman, and so on—but that would have been far better served to have been integrated into the story more naturally.  Koda has no specifically established relationship with Shouji (seriously, there is absolutely nothing; it’s shocking how out of nowhere his sudden deep dedication to Shouji is), nor does the scene he remembers have any specific flags for when it might take place,[14] leaving the memory feeling less like a natural extension of their arc than it is a graceless sequence muscled in to attempt to rouse some emotion in the audience when Koda has a quirk awakening he is not otherwise remotely in dire enough straits to have rightfully earned.[15]

14: Shouto and Bakugou being missing might suggest that they’re off at their remedial license course, which would put the scene somewhere in late September up through December (stretching from the aftermath of Overhaul to the introduction of the MLA), save that there are several other students missing as well—Sero, Iida, Sato, and Aoyama, none of whom where in the remedial course.

15: Nearly every other inarguable quirk awakening[※] we know of in the series has as a chief component serious physical injury: Bakugou, Ochaco, Toga.  Geten’s is the only exception, and his is tied to the strength of his feelings for Re-Destro, which are clearly and overridingly his most significant character trait!  Shouji is not anywhere near that central to Koda’s life, and he sure as hell isn’t injured enough to have gotten it that way.

※: By which measure I exclude stuff like the change in Shigaraki’s Decay or Mina’s acid attack against Gigantomachia.  Shigaraki was explicitly just breaking through a mental block to access power he already had.  Meanwhile, if Mina’s Plus Ultra moment had been a sudden quirk evolution, she wouldn’t already have an attack name picked out for it, nor would her horns have gone back to normal after it.  Acidman: ALMA is an Ultimate Move, not Mina having a quirk awakening.

O The flashback itself calls for another subsection.    

Ignoring the Difference Between the Personal and the Systemic for Fun & Profit

O The big thing here the description of the whole town coming out for a “blood cleansing” whenever Shouji touched someone.  This is depicted as Shouji, probably a preteen in this sequence,[16] being savagely attacked with farming tools, the most visible of which is a pitchfork.  This visual, as well as #2’s invocation of historical slaughters, is the darkest heart of heteromorphobia: a child being ritualistically assaulted in the open street as a matter of course, as a consequence for touching someone.  This is the image you should hold in your mind as The Problem through all of the potential answers and responses that get trotted out through the rest of these chapters.

16: Visibly older/bigger than, say, Kouta, but also visibly younger/smaller than middle school Deku.

Before moving on, I do want to examine this image in just a bit more depth.

This is, firstly, the moment that Shouji got those scars, and it’s very important to note that what we’re being shown is likely not a random, representative sample of what the town “coming out in force for a blood cleansing” looks like.  The strong implication is that this is in the immediate aftermath of the sequence we’ll see shortly of Shouji saving the girl from the river: he’s wearing the same clothes and shoes,[17] he’s the same size, and there’s a spray of blood from where he’s being struck across the mouth where he didn’t have his distinctive scars when he saved the girl.  Does that mean the blood cleansings were typically not this violent?  That’s hard to say.  On the one hand, we don’t see any other scars on Shouji, and he wears his arms pretty bare!  On the other hand, we never see any part of his body bare except his neck and arms, and since he can regrow his arms,[18] they’re not exactly conclusive evidence that he’s never been scarred there.  Also, he does say talk about his situation—the scars he bears—as something other children in the country have to bear, suggesting that the norm is rather worse than a little symbolic gash across the palm or something!     17: In fairness, he may not own very much different, as I’ll discuss shortly.     18: The duplicated ones, at least.  I seem to recall reading once that he could regrow the base set as well, but I’m still working on tracking down a citation on that.    

Secondly, as was the case with the image of the historical massacres, the adults here are using tools/weapons in the assault, not quirks.  As I mentioned in a footnote last time, them not using quirks to carry out this attack makes them merely criminals, not Villains, and therefore not nominally a Hero’s job to deal with.  While I can’t imagine any Hero in the manga these days would stand back and let this go on, the absence still stands out—no Hero is participating in this, nor observing from the sidelines, nor trying to intervene.  Heroes simply don’t figure into this picture at all.    

Thirdly, we can see a few children in the background, both there with adults, I assume their parents.  The child on the right is a passive observer, clinging close to their mother and simply watching; their father has one hand supportively on their shoulder.  Neither parent seems distressed, insomuch as we can tell from their somewhat indistinct features and rather clearer body language.  The child on the left is being actively held back by their mother, who’s standing with her back to the violence, her body interposed between it and her child.  The kid is reaching out towards the scene, but it’s unclear what the intent is.  Are they trying to intervene or do they want to join in?     Neither child appears to be the little girl Shouji saved—the one on the right is dark-haired, and the one on the left—the more likely prospect just going by the body language!—is wearing a long, dark T-shirt instead of the little girl’s overalls.  I suppose the left one could be the little girl if we assume she was hustled out of what she’d been wearing by her parents, eager to get her out of now-tainted (and also soaking wet) clothes and into something dry and warm and, in more ways than one, clean.  However, that seems like the sort of thing that would take longer than what looks to have been a pretty impromptu, disorganized bloodletting, unless everyone just held off on assaulting Shouji right out on the street until the “victim” could be present.    

Finally, there’s the pair of adults right at the center of the background.  If anyone in this picture is actually related to Shouji, I’d put money on them being here, watching but not attempting to intercede.  I don’t think it’s conclusive, though; the woman is thin and hunched, making her look older—I’d guess Shouji’s grandmother before Shouji’s mother.  That hunched posture and her hands being raised to her mouth do give her the most obviously distressed appearance of any of the adult, though, to the extent that the person with her is focused on supporting her rather than watching what’s going on in the foreground—and forward attention is what I’d expect if the dark-haired figure is related to Shouji.

So that’s the image we have of the crowd—actively taking part or observing with varying degrees of reaction running from distress to indifference to, potentially, enthusiasm.

O Next, let’s talk about Shouji’s parents.  He implies they were baseline—at the least they were significantly more baseline than Shouji himself, as they lacked arms “like his.”  That makes it quite telling that Shouji’s parents are nowhere to be seen in his story beyond the simple mention of how they were different than him.

Now, I don’t want to suggest here that Shouji’s parents are completely irredeemable people.  While I would imagine that—at least initially—they shared their town’s bigotry, having a heteromorphic child themselves would have exponentially increased the hardship of their own lives.  In a town like that, I’m sure that many if not all of their neighbors must have come to regard them with suspicion of wrongdoing or transgression—recall the first page of the last chapter, where Shouji is accused of tricking the town in his having brought dirty blood to it.  Hie parents almost certainly lost friends and likely became ostracized themselves, and ostracization in a small Japanese town can be a horrifying thing to deal with.

And yet, even with all that being the case, they didn’t abandon Shouji or give him up; they didn’t commit family suicide with him.[19]  Assuming he wasn’t removed from their custody after the incident, they’re presumably paying his school and living costs;[20] likewise, unless he just ran away from home or is carrying out an incredibly elaborate deception about what school he’s attending, they almost had to support his desire to attend a hero school to begin with.  In his situation, parents who support his desire to be a Hero is a big fucking deal.  After all, between the winning and the saving, heroes will de facto be touching people all the time!  If Shouji’s parents still live in his hometown, how do you think those people will take it when someone first realizes the Shouji family sent their kegare-riddled monster off to be a Hero?

19: The history of honorable suicide in Japan casts a very long shadow, and when it’s combined with the meiwaku culture, you get an underreported epidemic of things like parents who can’t see their way out of a bad situation taking their lives and their children’s as well, so as not to leave messy loose ends that others will have to bear the burden of dealing with.

20: I won’t get into whether or not the U.A. students’ parents are paying for any given thing on the following list, but here are some potential costs to consider, assuming that Shouji, like Uraraka, was commuting from an apartment prior to the dorms being implemented: tuition, school uniforms, textbooks, school supplies, school meal plan, food not served at school (e.g. breakfast and dinner or meals when the school is on break), non-uniform attire, personal care and hygiene, housing and transportation costs, a measure of spending money for unanticipated expenses or culturally expected gift-giving, etc.

All that being said, it’s obviously not a glowingly loving relationship, either.  Think back to Shouji’s absolutely barren room in Chapter 99 and consider it in the context of the information we get in this chapter.  Is he really so ascetic by inclination, or is he just used to making do with as little as possible?  After all, it goes without saying that if him coming into contact with someone called for blood purification, anything he himself was in regular contact with was also to be considered incredibly impure.  That includes his clothes, personal belongings and living space; even setting aside his parents’ view on it, who in his hometown would even want to provide or sell things to the family that they think will go to the child with the dirty blood that’s defiling their land?

Shouji’s parents’ absence is also glaring in other ways.  For example:

They’re either not in the beating scene image above at all or they’re that central background couple hanging back and just watching; whichever is the case, what they’re assuredly not doing while their son is being beaten so badly he will still have glaringly visible scars years later is “trying to stop the violence or take the blows themselves.”    

Shouji says he has one single good memory about his body, but his parents are nowhere to be found in that memory.  Ergo, his parents have not given him a single moment of positivity about his heteromorphic form.    

Parents of U.A. students were evacuated to U.A.—not just the ones near it, but even ones like Uraraka’s parents, who live at least a two hour drive away, in a wholly different prefecture with a third prefecture in between them and U.A.  Every student we see in the departure scene in Chapter 342 is shown with their parents except Shouji.

To sum all that up, Shouji’s family situation is not maximally bad, but it’s certainly proximally bad.

O Next, we get Shouji alleging ignorance on the part of heteromorphs raised in cities, that there are still parts of the country in the modern day where stories like his happen.[21]  It’s a milder version of the same assertions made by #2 and the beaky heteromorph last chapter, in that Shouji doesn’t suggest heteromorphobia doesn’t exist at all in cities, simply that there are extremes of violence that can only be found in the country.  It still feels off, however, to suggest that absolutely no one else in Shouji’s class might ever have heard of this through any channel at all: being from similarly small towns, reading about an attack in the news, reading about factors that impact the public approval ratings for Heroes, going through a morbid phase in middle school and researching it, being talked to about it by their parents, etc.

21: The suggestion of the Viz translation of this suggests that city-raised heteromorphs do know this, but only because they’re read about it in textbooks.  My sister-in-law, who does professional translation, tells me this was a subtle mistranslation of the original text, however; the textbook framing is supposed to imply a remove of time, not merely of distance.

It’s not as unrealistic a story beat here as it would be in an American comic, as Japan does tend more towards using silence as a weapon against bigotry—children won’t learn what they aren’t taught, and similar reasoning.  Still, to portray the class as so unanimously ignorant reflects a deep incuriosity, be that in the kids themselves about the world around them or in their author about how the knowledge/perpetuation of discrimination spreads.

This is particularly the case when you consider the story’s handling of the Ordinary Woman—attacked in her own town because people were suspicious of a heteromorph out after dark, turned away from multiple shelters because of her heteromorph status.  It’s certainly true that things got worse for heteromorphs after the first war arc, but for discrimination in that specific form to emerge, there needed to be something for it to draw on.  The fear of villains and the association of villains with heteromorphs are the foundation for the upswelling in anti-heteromorph sentiments in cities.

O Mina’s reaction to all this is one of rather theatrical anger.  That is, no one around her takes her broad declarations—that the world would be better off without the people who hurt Shouji—as anything more serious than hyperbole.  This is, it would seem, the only sort of anger that’s acceptable to show in response to hearing a story like Shouji’s—empathy to the wronged, sure, but no real intent to confront the wrongdoers.

O Mineta stares into space for a second before emphatically apologizing for calling Shouji an octopus once—a call all the way back to his microaggression in Chapter 6!—and asserting that it wasn’t his intention to say Shouji was gross or anything.  Shouji responds gracefully, saying it’s “only natural” that his arms would make people think of octopus.

He doesn’t go on to say, “But that doesn’t mean people have to say it out loud,” but it’s possible that Mineta’s apology is meant to suggest that regardless.  At least, one certainly hopes this isn’t the author’s way of quietly absolving his more popular characters of all the times they’ve done the same thing!  It’s notable, however, that none of the other Class 1-A kids that have done this are in the scene.  Shouto and Bakugou, who have both used that kind of language in anger (and in the latter’s case, also just with no provocation whatsoever) are the missing elephants in the room, and even Sero, who was the actual person to call Shouji an octopus, is, in his absence, Sir Letting The Gag Character Handle This Apology So I A More Serious Character Don’t Have To.

O Shouji brings up the Heroes Who Look Like Villains rankings.  We know the Number 1 on that list is actually Endeavor, per a movie bonus booklet, but bringing it up in this context does implicitly confirm that said rankings have an unseemly slant towards heteromorphs, and what did Skeptic say about Villains and heteromorphs again…?

O Shouji says he wears the mask because he knows that if people see his scars, they’ll wonder about them, and fear he’s out for revenge.  He doesn’t want people to think that, so he covers them up.  He’s praised for this by Tokoyami, and the narrative pretty clearly also thinks it’s admirable and cool.  I have serious issues with this—chiefly that it’s prioritizing the oblivious comfort of the baseline citizens over the fellow feeling and affirmation of other persecuted heteromorphs—but I’m also curious to see if the mask will come back now that its meta-narrative purpose of hiding Shouji’s scars from the reader has been fulfilled.  I note, for example, that Shouji is not wearing the mask in the color spread for Chapter 394, and the color art does have some precedent for being an early predictor of stuff in the body of the manga.[22]

Incidentally, while I’m talking about Shouji’s mask, I do wonder how effective it would even be for him to cover his scars up?  I have my doubts for two reasons.  First and most obviously, heroes are such celebrities, all over the news all the time, such that if Shouji really does get as popular as he intends to, there will be people who want to know what he looks like.[23]

22: The big one is Aizawa’s eyepatch.  It showed up in two pieces of color art (the popularity poll results spread for Chapter 293 and the new art announcing the BNHA Drawing Smash Exhibition) before it was revealed in the manga.  Both pieces released within days of each other in early December, 2020, three months after Shigaraki raked his hand down Aizawa’s face during the war and almost two months before the latter showed up in bandages in the hospital, with another two months to go beyond that before the eyepatch itself made it to the manga in late March.  In a more stealth spoiler, the same popularity spread revealed Shigaraki’s blackened, burned face-hand two chapters prior to Spinner digging it out of Shigaraki’s pants.  The 394 spread is also my basis for asserting that Mina’s horns have gone back to normal after her attack against Gigantomachia, compared to Shouji lacking his mask and Koda having his new horn in the same spread.

23: Edgeshot’s character profile page notes that his fans are split into two factions: those who’re mad to see his real face and those who think the mask is what makes him cool.

O More importantly, though, heroes have to be licensed, and Hero Licenses are photo IDs.  Photo IDs don’t typically allow face coverage because not being able to provide a visual reference to what the bearer looks like defeats the whole purpose.  While we don’t know what full-fledged hero licenses look like to say if they’re taken in or out of costume, we do know the provisional licenses the students carry showed them in their school uniforms, despite the fact that they definitely had working costumes by then:

Pardon the sudden screenshot. The manga has this shot, too, but the anime fills in the details of the text a bit more.

It seems probable to me that the photo on a Hero License must show the bearer’s face, so that if they’re tooling around a crime scene and a cop who hasn’t seen them around before asks for their license, it can reliably be used as a form of identification.  (I wonder how Hagakure manages?)

Also, think back to the press conferences we’ve seen in the story, most recently the one post-war: at every one, the heroes are in serious, solemn black suits, not their costumes.  So at any press conferences Shouji ever has to speak at in the future, he’ll have to show his face there, as well.

O We see a direct flashback to Shouji saving a little girl from drowning in a choppy, swift-flowing river as he says in voiceover that he’d rather cling to the single good memory related to his body than dwell on the bad memories.  He very much uses his quirk to do it, with his right set of limbs used to hold onto the bank while his left ones reach out to the girl, extending out another few “nodes” of arm-length when he at first can’t keep hold of her fingers.  As they sit and catch their breath afterward, the girl clings to one of his tentacles and cries.  This is not quite what his entry in the Ultra Analysis databook was hinting at[24] when it said he wears the mask due to his scary face making a little girl cry; that’ll be next chapter.

24: My apologies for not bringing this up before; it’ll be covered on AO3.  The gist is as detailed above; the databook came out circa the Endeavor Agency arc, so this was a known factoid about Shouji by the time this chapter came out three years later.

O Wrapping up the flashback, we’re left with Koda’s memory of Shouji saying that he knows it’ll take longer than a generation to tear down a wall that’s stood for over a century, so, just as previous generations have done, he’ll keep paying it forward, being the coolest hero the world’s ever seen, “to give good memories to generations to come.”  Which sounds really nice when he says it that way, as opposed to the broader implication that people whose children have been or are in danger of being maimed by bigots should just keep their heads down and “keep paying it forward.”

The whole “be a cool hero and give good memories” bit is particularly egregious to my eye, for a few reasons.

How much good did cool heroes do for Takami Keigo when they were just on TV?  Which is where Shouji will be, because in order to be “the coolest hero the world’s ever seen,” he’s going to have to be at the top of the rankings, and being at the top of the rankings means prioritizing cities, which means all those heteromorphs out in rural areas are never going to see him in person.  And anyway, what’s stopping all those bigots from just changing the channel or going on a rant about Woke Mutie Agendas every time a heteromorphic hero crops up on TV?    

How much did the visibility of previous generations’ cool heroes do for Spinner?  Does Shouji think Spinner was super inspired and uplifted by seeing e.g. Gang Orca on TV using the emitter-like hypersonic waves his quirk gives him to beat up Villains, an undue percentage of whom are also heteromorphs?

It’s certainly nice that Shouji was inspired enough by heroes on TV to want to emulate them, but he is demonstrably not the norm when it comes to wildly disadvantaged and victimized heteromorphs.  Also, I have to wonder how much his admiration of TV heroes would have done him if he’d gotten to the girl just a little later—say, in time to get her out of the river, but too late to be able to save her life without knowing CPR.  As bad as it was for him when he saved a little girl but had to touch her to do it, can you imagine how much worse it would have been if he’d touched her and then failed to save her, being found or having to walk back into town with her body?

I realize that's incredibly dark, but it's the kind of question that presents itself when the story is so insistent on Shouji's exemplary behavior being the model for heteromorphs to follow in their own lives.

   

O Exiting the flashback, when Shouji calls out to the heteromorphs, we finally get a straight-out look at how disastrous this conclusion is going to be in the way he shouts that no, the people who hurt them weren’t justified, but that there has to be a better way, that they should think about how to use their rage—but offers exactly zero suggestions himself for what that better way might be, or what they should be using their rage to do instead.[25]

25: I have seen the argument put forth that Shouji is one (1) teenager, and one (1) teenager cannot fairly be asked to Solve Bigotry.  To this, I would counter that if Shouji doesn’t have even one (1) single idea to offer, why is the camera lens holding him up as the hero who quelled a fifteen-thousand-strong mob with only words?  He doesn’t have to Solve Bigotry, but if he’s going to be used as a counter for other peoples’ misguided but at least active attempts to address the problem, he needed to be better than a mere white knight for the status quo.

Spinner’s #2 calls Shouji out on this directly, saying that if the situation were that easy to resolve, it wouldn’t have come down to this, and accusing Shouji of having no feasible solution to offer, just childish and naïve egotism.  And call me a hopeless MLA Stan and you’d be right, but truly, where’s the lie?

His efforts in this regard, however, wind up pushing Koda to what certainly has all the markings of a quirk awakening because it upsets Koda to see Shouji being “mocked.”  Man, sure is a good thing quirk awakenings are just a dime a dozen and definitely don’t require life-threatening injuries and/or incredibly severe emotional distress over someone who means more to you than your own life, right?

O In a last little stroke of ugliness for the chapter, Spinner calls Shouji gross.  Just to, you know, make it really obvious that the villains are all totally bad faith representation for this cause and thus can be safely dismissed.  (Christ, I hate these chapters.)

   

Chapter 372: 

O We get the flashback of Shouji and Koda asking All Might to assign them to the hospital defense group.  Points of note:

Neither Shouji nor All Might can be bothered to use the Ordinary Woman’s real name, instead just referring to her by her size.  Seriously, I get the intent behind insisting that she’s just an ordinary woman, that there’s nothing in particular stand-out about her in the current age; it’s pretty much the same deal as Shinomori saying that OFA can no longer be wielded by an “ordinary” person, with that phrasing being used to ironically emphasize that quirks are now seen as ordinary, while those without quirks are the unusual ones.  However, it obviously wouldn’t work in-universe for characters trying to specify who they’re talking about to say, “That ordinary woman,” with the end result being that they have to grab for what stands out about her if they want to be understood—in this case, her obviously unusual height.  In trying to emphasize that she’s normal, Horikoshi forces his characters to define her by what makes her stand out.    

Koda says that if Shouji’s going, he is too, a moment that would really land much better if they’d had literally any interactions of note at literally any point prior to this exact moment.  Frankly, even last chapter’s flashback is pretty thin on that front, since Koda is not one of the students who gets speaking lines when cuddling up to Shouji to comfort him.  (I’m not even convinced it’s very in character for Koda to be one of the kids diving in for cuddles—he’s usually pretty shy!)    

Shouji says that he could never call himself a hero if he were to stand back while the hospital attack plays out, implicitly emphasizing the role his reaction to his own oppression plays in his heroic motivation.

O Another flashback[26] gives us Koda’s mother discussing the possibility that he might get horns like hers someday, and what those horns can do, as well as mentioning that she used to have to put up with considerable mistreatment herself, and, lastly, telling her son to grow up into a man who gets angry when people mock those dear to him.

26: The sheer number of them crammed into this mini-arc really says a lot for how rushed it is, but complaining about the structural problems of the last few arcs would be a different essay.

Breaking those down, we’ve got:

The fact that Koda’s mom says he might grow in horns like hers suggests to me pretty strongly that her own horns are a quirk evolution she just doesn’t have the language to name as such.  If it were just a matter of maturation, something that came in with puberty, there’d be no “maybe” about it.  Given what we know about the context of quirk evolutions elsewhere, this in turn suggests that she did not exactly get her horns under peaceful, wholesome, uplifting circumstances!    

This is backed up by her mention of the “real cruelty” she faced.  Interestingly, this kind of raises some questions in relation to Shouji’s assertion last chapter that people like Koda who grew up in cities lack an understanding of the extremes of heteromorphobic violence that endure elsewhere.  Did Koda’s parents move to the city from the country at some point when Koda was young/before he was born, and the “real cruelty” was out in the country?  That might track with the overalls she was wearing.  And of course, Koda’s mother was a younger woman then, so maybe it’s just the fact that heteromorphic discrimination was worse at the time.  Either way, Koda’s mother is clearly open with him about the fact that she was mistreated because of her appearance, though she may have downplayed the severity of it.    

The idea of Shouji being “dear to Koda” is immensely frustrating for how utterly groundless it is, based on absolutely no prior grounding within the story other than the general bond among the 1-A students.  That’s just me complaining, though—more pertinent for this essay is the problem with how this moment frames anger.  Like, the whole mini-arc has the same problem, but this chapter is particularly rotten with it.  To preview: Koda’s anger is portrayed as righteous, as was his father’s, because their anger is about protection, about defensive reaction, about intervening with harm currently in progress—basically all the stuff Heroes are supposed to do.  It is notably not about action based on past harm or proactive attempts to prevent future harm.

O Koda’s bird attack knocks Spinner’s #2 off the roof in one of the most egregious examples of, “I can’t come up with an actual counterpoint for his arguments, so I’ll just shut him up through force,” I’ve ever seen.  Sure, there’s something to be said for not engaging bad faith parties in good faith arguments, but like…  That guy already had a platform of his arguments—he was standing on the roof of a tall building!  The author gave him several pages to make his pitch; the argument’s already out there in the readers’ minds!  The only thing getting rid of him does is guarantee that the person the taciturn Shouji actually has to argue with is…Spinner.  Who is not exactly a born orator at the best of times, and he’s very far from even that level here.

Now, #2 will get a few more lines next chapter, but they’re against one of the people on his own side.  No heroic character has to argue #2 down; instead, they get to match wits with the literally drooling Spin-zilla.  Which is a bit like stepping into the wrestling ring with someone who’s had a bag thrown over his head and his hands zip-tied behind his back.

This confrontation is, woefully, not the only place in the endgame where a heroic character gets all the time and freedom in the world to make their big pronunciations while their opponent gets shut down by some outside factor—interference from other villains, psychological decay, literal possession—but it’s in particularly stark relief here.

O Shouji contends that the crowd is letting their pain be exploited, which is a fair cop, but will become difficult to square with his praise of them next chapter.

O He says that these peoples’ children might be the next targets, presumably because of their actions here today.  This is particularly maddening because it’s coming from someone who was, himself, already targeted as a child!  Not because of anything his parents did, and certainly not because of anything bad he did, but simply because of the bigoted, backwards views of his town.  Children already and still are being targeted!  Shouji’s backstory is all wrong for this stand, and there’ll be another angle on that next chapter as well.

O Here we finally fulfill the promise of Shouji’s databook entry and see the Little Girl Crying Because His Face Was Scary.  She wasn’t crying because she was just scared of his face in isolation, but rather because she sees his face being scary as her fault, directly correlating his wounds to her rescue.[27] Those wounds stand in marked contrast to what happens when other people save small helpless children from danger, and underlines the biggest problem with this whole resolution: the idea that simply Being An Hero will create change.

27: My big question is, “Given that him being in contact with her was so bad it got him scarred for life, how did she even sneak out to see him again to give him this tearful apology?  Did young Shouji even want this apology, or would he have preferred she not risk the two of them being seen together again for both their sakes?

Now, it’s certainly likely in Horikoshi’s world that this little girl will, herself, grow up to be different from the people around her, that she won’t think heteromorphs are tainted.  And like, that’s at least one less person being awful, right?  And doesn’t every one count?

Sure, of course—but what happens when she runs up against that prejudice herself?  Will she try to intervene the next time she sees a blood cleansing?  Will she simply abstain from such action and teach equality in her own household without trying to change the village around her?  Will she simply move away and leave her hometown worse for her absence?  If she does stay in that town, will she herself become an outcast for her views—a form of silent, passive harassment that can be absolutely life-wrecking in those small Japanese villages?  If she gets married and has children, will her husband have her back in trying to raise those kids free of hatred?

For that matter, isn’t there a chance that, being surrounded in people who think heteromorphs are tainted, that she’ll just internalize something like, “It was my carelessness that got that poor heteromorph boy beaten so badly.  He was trying to help, and it only got us both hurt—him for the beatings, me for being in contact with his filth.”  Like, she’s so young in that scene; she’s got a whole lotta years of having the anti-heteromorph narrative reaffirmed at her before she’s old enough to do anything different herself.  It feels to me like the kind of thing that she could easily fall back into as she grows up, only to have a huge spiritual crisis about it once she hits her late teens to early twenties.

In any case, it's just a lot to put on a single child—on her and Shouji both!

O Spinner rallies enough to yell out a message of his own, but it’s just a quote of what he told his followers when he first sent out the call, not anything new to rally them, nor tailored to respond to what Shouji’s saying.  This has been the danger of the plotline all along, and here it comes to fruition: in putting bad faith villains with ulterior motives[28] up against an underdeveloped character who’s hidden the evidence of his mistreatment from Day 1, someone with no apparent intention to ever speak up for others like himself, no one comes out looking good.  Truly, heteromorphs deserve better rep.

28: #2 is the obvious one, but Spinner’s here in bad faith, too.  While I’m sure he’s not totally indifferent to the matter of heteromorph rights, it’s self-admittedly not his current priority.

O That said, if what Spinner says is old hat to the crowd, it is new to the audience, and it serves to sharply up the ante on from what we knew previously about the persecution he faced in his hometown!

But it would have gotten better if he’d just put on a mask and dealt with it, amirite?

Recall that Spinner has previously only said that people in his town called him names—this is self-evidently many steps worse.  Note, though, that it’s another example of the violence heteromorphs face not involving anyone using quirks—that is to say, nothing that’s a hero’s jurisdiction to deal with.  That being the case, how much could Spinner get away with fighting back or running before the “it’s okay to use quirks in self-defense” stops holding?  After all, is it still self-defense if biased cops[29] can accuse him of “escalating” the conflict?  How far away can he get by climbing on walls before it becomes, to some small-town local Hero, unlicensed public quirk use?

29: If policing in HeroAca Japan still works basically the same as it does in IRL Japan, then in truly backwater areas, ones too small to afford the upkeep of a police department, an officer would be sent in from another area to live in a home attached to the police box.  That being the case, it’s not a given that the officer would share the locals’ bigotry.  That’s where we come back to the whole “what percentage of Villain-designated criminals are heteromorphs” statement and what it implies about bias in the law enforcement system.  Also too, building a strong relationship with the community is absolutely essential to rural policing, and there are, oh, so many stories about what happens when someone new in a small Japanese town gets between the inhabitants and their “traditional spiritual practices.”

O Pig Nose Guy starts making an impression by noticing the doctors—most prominently Dr. Yoshi, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a baseline nurse—forming a human chain in front of the hallway leading to the Inpatient Ward.  This drama is undercut on both fronts by the fact that Spinner is not looking for the Inpatient Ward, and in fact barrels right on past that hallway without even glancing in its direction.  So, the mob stops because they’re struck to hesitation by a group of people protecting a part of the hospital that the mob was not even intending to assault in the first place.

O As part of stopping, Pig Nose Guy seems to have some sort of flashback to a time he saw Dr. Toad caring for an elderly baseline man.  This raises a lot of questions to my by-this-time hyper-critical eyes.

What past circumstance brought Pig Nose Guy—presumably fairly rural, as most of this crowd is implied to be—to Central Hospital, the most technologically advanced hospital in the entire country?    •  If Pig Nose Guy is not rural, but was still so fired up about heteromorphobia that he joined a terrorist-led mob to attack a hospital, wouldn’t that suggest that a lot of people in the story have been misleading us about the extent of anti-heteromorph sentiment in cities?    

If the person in the bed is someone related to Pig Nose Guy—perhaps someone with a rare illness that requires specialized treatment?—why is the guy entirely baseline?  If it’s just a friend, then they must be very close, given that PNG was willing to take a trip to the Tokyo metropolitan area to visit him.  But if PNG is that close to a baseline guy, why did he ever believe that baseline folks are such a lost cause that he, again, joined a terrorist-led mob to attack a hospital?    

Why is this important, impactful memory one of a heteromorph in a caretaker role instead of being taken care of?  To elaborate on why that question matters, a common issue you’ll see minority groups raise when talking about representation in media is the role any given minority character performs in their narrative—the gay best friend there to give the straight female lead advice, the Black person there to help a white person self-actualize, that sort of thing.  This is not so much a critique of any given, specific character as it is criticizing the restrictions on of what demographics are allowed to be portrayed as full, rounded individuals in popular media versus which are relegated to stock stereotypes or supporting cast.     This isn’t something BNHA addresses explicitly, but I do think we have some precedent for suspecting heteromorphs in this world have similar problems—think of the image for Class B’s play in Chapter 173, Gang Orca playing the Villain at the license exam, and, most egregiously, the Hug Me Corporation and its all-baseline-all-the-time image of bystanders and victims.  That being the case, it really gets to me that Pig Nose Guy’s memory here has the man in the hospital bed being baseline while it’s the doctor who’s the heteromorph.     Like, what does that communicate about his mindset, exactly?  “Oh, I remember this time I saw a heteromorph who’d managed to actually kind of Make It in society and he was nice to the baseline guy in his care.  But the spider guy leading us, he didn’t sound like he wanted us to be very nice at all.  Is that what I am?  Not nice?”  On the other hand, if the whole point of this memory is to remind PNG that there can be peace and support between heteromorphs and “people with human faces,” why in heaven’s name isn’t this a memory of a heteromorph being cared for and supported by a baseline person?  Why does the person doing the labor in this picture have to be of the oppressed class?

I hate this panel so much.

   

Chapter 373: 

O The last conversation plays out between Pig Nose Guy, #2, and Shouji, revealing #2 to be a bad faith idealogue who thinks of Shouji with microaggressions and his followers as meatshield patsies.  It’s real bad.

O Shouji says that the feelings that led the mob to come today are neither useless nor wrong, and that their willingness to keep thinking about everything makes them look like a bright and shining light to his eyes.  However, he carefully does not engage with the fact that those feelings, which were previously aimless and directionless, were only stirred up and stoked to the point of “coming today” by the villains.  It’s the same sort of thing the villains always get told, really—you may have a point, you have suffered, but when you act on that point, that suffering, then you’ve gone too far.  All you’re really supposed to do with that pain is—what, exactly?  Thinka bout it and choose to Nobly Endure?

O The last little bit of insult to this chapter, to my eye, is #2 getting an apology from some anonymous hero we’ve never seen in our lives, who says, “We’ve heard your voices loud and clear today.  Sorry for not realizing sooner.”

Remember the bit where the person who apologizes to Shouji for the octopus comment is Mineta, the gag character, instead of Sero, the serious character who brought it up in the first place?  Remember the conspicuous absence of Bakugou and Todoroki, who have actually used that language with conscious demeaning intent?  This apology is the systemic version of that absolute unwillingness on Horikoshi’s part to let his sympathetic/popular/important characters look bad.  It’s the same thing that led to none of the heroes who retired after the war being heroes the readers know and care about, the same thing behind the total collapse of the series’ critique of All Might.  Heroes are allowed to be ignorant, but they are not allowed to be complicit.

Notice, too, what this random hero does not say, what Shouji does not offer, the absence that damns this resolution: any promises of concrete change.  We’ve finally gotten to the crux of Horikoshi’s point, as delivered by Shouji, and it really does all boil down to this:

And I can’t overstate enough what a terrible resolution this is, especially given how Shouji’s own experience puts the lie to it.  Remember, Shouji saved a child from drowning, one of the absolute most prototypical actions someone can do and get called a Hero by the bystanders/victims/evening news.  The only thing he could have done that would have been more stereotyped would have been saving her from a burning building!  He saved that little girl from drowning and the townsfolk attacked him with farming tools for it.

How much more heroic would he have needed to be?  How much more of a shining light could he possibly have been?  In what universe could someone with that backstory possibly think that the answer to systemic bigotry—violence that goes wholly accepted by the community and wholly unpunished by the broader society—could be this Model Minority bullshit?

Ultimately, for Shouji’s backstory to realistically have given him the motivation he professes, his actions needed to have changed the people in his village for the better.  If the reader is meant to believe that Shouji’s “answer”—the premise that selfless heroism can change the hearts of bigots—then we have to see it.  And, you know, even if that had been what we got, there would still be grounds to criticize it!  It would still be a perhaps-too-idealistic depiction of fighting oppression; it would still put too much responsibility on the victims!  But at least it would justify Shouji’s own stance.

As it is, we have Shouji choosing to believe in the changeability of people who specifically shouted while throwing rocks at him that, no matter how much the times advanced, they would never accept him.  His answer does not entail a single non-heteromorph working to bring heteromorphs living in the darkness a light; it entails them kindling their own.  As with Pig Nose Guy shutting down in the face of a memory of a heteromorph doctor, this resolution asserts the life-changing power of…being told that heteromorphs have to do all the work to make baseline people feel better.

   

Conclusion

Do I think that this terrible resolution means heteromorphobia was poorly set up or retconned?  No, I don’t.  I just think it means that Horikoshi is a Japanese man writing a Japanese story from a position of demographic privilege in Japanese society.  I think he’s fully capable of setting up a detailed, intelligent, thoughtful discrimination allegory, a logical, internally consistent extension of the discrimination in the world around him to the alternate future he’s created—and then coming to a completely different resolution than I would because his context led him to different answers than I wanted or found acceptable.  Compared to the U.S., Japan as a culture is more communal, more collectivist; they have less history with successful protest movements, more history with protest movements turning violently extremist or just being ignored by those in power.  The idea of “not making trouble for others” is an incredibly deeply engrained value.

I have a decent idea why this resolution is what it is.  I can try to make myself view it through the more generous, forgiving lens of Cultural Differences; I can fail to do so and instead conclude that this is portrayal is much less about Cultural Differences than it is yet another in a long chain of Well-Meaning Majority-Culture Author Writes Discrimination Allegory, Fucks It All Up Because of His Well-Meaning Majority-Culture Centrism.  That doesn’t mean I believe heteromorphobia came out of nowhere, and I hope this essay has at least demonstrated that much, whatever you might think of its resolution.

——————————

Thank you so much for taking this journey with me, all! At 42,000 words and 93 pages in Word, there's definitely more I'd like to do with this, chiefly taking a spin through the Vigilantes spinoff, which I've always found to be very good at grappling with practical questions and concerns BNHA Core largely ignores. The character of Kamayan is particularly relevant to this topic.

However, for now, I'm going to take a break on this subject and turn my attention to something else. I'm not sure what it'll be quite yet, but meta projects that have moved towards the top of my list concern the ridiculous series of nerfs Toga has been subjected to in this endgame, arc thoughts on everything I hate about the stupid, stupid All Mech fight, and an organized argument for the endgame being chock-full of retcons that are obvious if you look at them for more than the five minutes it takes to read a chapter each week.

You may notice that all of those are pretty negative-sounding, and you would be right. Given that the whole reason I stopped doing my chapter posts is that I was weary of the constant negativity, the actual next thing I do will probably be to get back to one of my neglected MLA fanfic projects.

'Til next time, all!

#bnha #bnha meta #bnha worldbuilding #heteromorph discrimination plot #octolad #plf advisors #my writing #preview for Vigilantes: #Kamayan is a crank and that distracts everyone #from realizing that Kamayan is also right

[somethingblu3]

The Discovery Of Love (Chapter 1) | Quinten Quist

Read on Ao3 here

18+ minors dni.

Masterlist | The Discovery Of Love Masterlist

Fandom: The Discovery Of Heaven, De ontdekking van de hemel

Summary:

When Onno discovers you and Quinten childhood best friends are Soulmates he's over the moon Max not so much. Max is terrified at the thought of his possible son being in a relationship with his best friend's daughter while he's in denial that you and Quinten have been seeing each other for months. You both try and keep it under wraps but you both know it's only a matter of time before someone finds out the truth.

TW: secret Relationship, Virgin Quinten, the birds and the bees Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Healing, Healing Soulmates, Canon Divergence,Alternate Universe,POV Second Person, Forbidden Love possible incest

Pairing: Quinten Quist x Female Reader, Quinten Quist x Afab Reader

Word Count: 2,801 (Finally wrote something over 1K! for once)

Graphic Credit: @keep-it-light

Note:

Lightly edited. To be clear i've aged Quintin up to 19 years old. Max's daughter is AFAB and uses she/her pronouns. Also I hope the formatting is alright tumblr's sucks.

Onno Quist figured that at one point in his life he would have to tell his young and innocent virgin son about sex but today would not be that day. Quinten seemed far more interested in architecture than girls that was until he finally noticed you Max’s daughter. At first Onno was taken aback by his growing attraction but as he observed his son it seemed like a match made in heaven in Onno’s eyes at least. Max seemed totally against the idea when Onno brought it up one winter evening over dinner. As he spoke and dug into his turkey Onno’s eyes were fixated on Quintin and you outside in the snow Quinten with his nose stuck in a book of course and you were showering for bugs to add to your collection butterflies especially seemed to be of your most recent hyper-fixation.

It was sweet watching you two bond even if Quinten did seem vaguely disinterested at first that was until he finally looked up from a page in his book bookmarked between two fingers and watched in awe as you bent over to collect a wounded butterfly and shove it into a clear jar.

Onno grunted at the sight. What kind of partnership would you two be, he wondered. Obviously, it's less complicated than his own with Ada. Max was intelligent of course funny and affectionate, and he had been Onno’s best friend for decades, but Onno did find it odd that he knew nothing of the Mother.

“So she just abandoned a baby on your doorstep?” Too interrupts what must have been Max’s hundredth argument on why you and Quinten being together would be a terrible idea.

“Yes, that’s right. Just a name tag I hardly remember the women a one night stand” He recounts.“And so, how did you know she was yours?” Onno inquired. Max paused as he cleansed his pallet with a sip of wine.

“She was a virgin. Part of the deal was that I would make her night the most memorable of all, so in return, she would heal my Emphysema.” Onno nods. “Seems like a fair deal. You really need to quit the smoking though why don’t you give those patches a try? I think they even make gum now.”

“Gum? Have you ever seen a guy my age chewing gum?” Max scoffs. Onno drops the subject these days Max was careless about his health he had gained some weight and he was getting weaker even you had started to notice. You and Quinten were always out running around in the garden either chasing after the dogs of each other.

“Their not”“I never said they were.”“You're reading too much into it like you always do.”“Nonsense” Onno frowned as he rested his chin on his hand “Look at them! Don’t they remind you of someone?” Onno hums as he raises his brow subtly.“I have no idea who you are talking about”, Max rebuttalsOnno rolls his eyes.

“You and Ada, of course,” Onno coos. “You were head over heels in love with her, practically drooling over her when you first laid eyes on her in that bookshop”, Onno remarks. “Was not?” Max says defensively, “Why deny it? Onno probes

“Does it matter if they’re soulmates or not?”Onno scoffs “When did Max Delius loose interest in daughter’s soulmate?” Onno scoffed; he couldn’t believe it. What was the big deal? Before they had met Ada in that bookshop, all they used to pound over was Soulmates, other than science and philosophy.“Since her Soulmate was Quinten Quist”, Max snaps. He knew it. He bloody knew It.

“You thought he wasn’t.”

“I was wrong.”

“When did you discover?” Onno asks curiously, his complete focus on Max and Max alone.“Last Summer. Quinten spent most of his days in the lawn chair reading he had a nasty sunburn didn’t you notice? He was red like a chilli pepper, and then she touched him, and he was back to his normal pale self. Not only that there was a time when Quinten burned himself with a hot glue gun when he was trying to make a replica of a building she touched his finger, and it healed in a matter of minutes no burning sensation” Max recounted.

“Those could just be a matter of coincidences”, Onno suggested. “Just like us.”“No not like that” Max says shaking his head.“There was another incident one that I hadn’t told you about” max says he pauses as if he’s trying to collect himself. “Which incident?”

“We went out to the lake one hot evening teaching Quinten how to sail, if you remember. Well one night he fell into the water. We were both horrified we though something terrible had happened to him he could have died or he could have experienced head trauma. Luckily, I managed to swim in and save him. When I rescued him onto a nearby dock, she kissed him, and he was perfectly fine.

“You never told me” Onno.Max shrugs lightly. “I didn’t want to worry you about everything going on with Ada; besides, Quinten was fine. She healed him, kissed him, and he woke up; his bruises faded away, and his concussion was gone”, Max explained.“She kissed him?” Onno asks, taken aback, his eyes wide“Yes. She was attempting CPR,” clarified Max“And after the kiss, what happened?”“We went home. They didn’t say anything to each other. Quinten stormed off to his room; he was in such a state,” Max recounted“He was angry? About the kiss?”“He broke one of his plane models on purpose.”

Onno’s eyes flickered back to the two of you in the garden. Quinten’s eyes hadn’t returned to his book yet his lapis lazuli eyes where completely transfixed on you as you show him the little creature you had just added to your collection for once he seemed actually interested in the insect as you shovel it into the palm of his hands. Quinten never liked dirt, but Onno figured he would make an acceptation for you.

“He must have forgiven her then” Onno observes himMax turns in his chair as he watches the two of you giggling.

“Yes he must have” He obverses. You were getting to close for Max’s liking he couldn’t have you two together certainly not as soulmates you were both already best friends, inseparable since birth. Now that you were both adults, it would be merely impossible to keep the two of you apart. It would be only a matter of time before you two begin to act on your feelings and become intimate; it was a topic that made Max feel sick to his stomach the thought of his daughter being with his best friend’s son in that way, just like he was with Ada.

He could remember It like It was yesterday being so young and in love tangled in each other he had never seen such an obvious pairing than to two.

“You’ve had the talk with him, I presume?”Onno looks up perplexed he’s already devouring the pudding the table was still completely covered in food you and Quinten had barely touched your supper.“About Soulmates? Yes, he’s always known they exist. I’ve never shied away from that.”

“No, not Soulmates. Sex. I would prefer it for your son not to knock up my daughter, especially as she has just turned eighteen. Her mother would have a heart attack.”

“And you wouldn’t.”

“You know what I mean,” Max says as he sucks on his bottom lip. “When are you going to tell him?” Max probes, “Tonight. That is my plan if things go accordingly.”Max hums.

“I’m sure it’ll go down well. Remember the time you told him Pluto was a planet?”“He was devastated and didn’t talk to me for weeks”, Onno reflects.

“And how do you think he’ll react to learning that babies don’t come from Stalks?” Max inquires Onno groans he had high hopes before but Max’s comments were enough to diminish his attempts.

“Alright then I think we best be going” Max announces as he gets up. You and Quentin must have been out there for hours you must have been freezing cold Onno pulled Max by the wrist of his suit.“Huh?” Max murmurs

“Wait” Onno instructs him firmly his eyes still on you and Quinten in the garden.

As you take the butterfly back from his hands, Quinten jerks his hand away immediately. He kisses his finger as if he had been bitten but still seems to be in pain. You then murmur a few words to him barely audible through the glass door he then seemingly stretches out his finger, and you kiss it.“There's your proof right there”, Onno comments.“I knew they were I just didn't want to admit it to you” Max reveals. “The thought of them..”

“Is it just because he's my son?” Onno asks, “No, not just because of that...”

“Then why?” Onno prods. Max sighs as if he's trying to compose himself, but then he catches his wristwatch in the corner of his eye.“It's getting late; thank you for having us.”

“Why won't you answer my question?”

“It's not important” Max shrugs Onno doesn't by it something's off.“Would you like the rest of the food wrapped up then?” Onno asks as he stares down at the full table; he can hear you giggling from outside as Max opens the door.

“That would be nice” He comments his eyes still transfixed on his daughter.“My Ladybug it's time for us to go” Max announces he's clearly caught you and Quintin of guard sharing a moment as you stare into his bright sparkling Lapis lazuli eyes.“But Father” You groan can I stay for a few more hours? I want to see Quintin's train set.” Max rolls his eyes “No” he says firmly. “You have your exams next week to prepare for.”

“Aw fine” You groan as you shove the jar into your satchel Onno grins.“Did you catch a good one?” Onno asks “A Saddleback”, You announce joyfully “I'm sure Quentin will be researching it later” Onno comments “Not after the thing bit me.”

 “It wasn't a spine it was a bite and It only did that because you almost crushed it with your big hands!” That comment earns you a smack from Quentin. You hiss and Max glares at him “Enough we'll be going” Max says as he takes the tin foiled wrapped food from Onno and they walk down the hallway.“Goodnight,” Onno says as he closes the door

“Good luck”, Max whispers“I'll need more than that”, Onno remarks as he reaches for the bottle of wine.*******“What did you want to talk to me about, Father?” Quinten approaches him with a book in his hand about the history of butterflies. Perfect, Onno thinks.“I wanted to talk to you about something important” Onno starts Quentin doesn't look up from him as he sits at the table; he is completely immersed in the book's pages.“Is it about Mother?” He asks, “No”, Onno replies.

“It's about something more serious.” This finally makes him look up and push the book away from him.

“Alright then, what is it about? Quinten wonders.“You know how we've always told you that stalks deliver babies?” “Yes”,Quinten confirms.“Well, that's not entirely the case.”“So you lied to me?” Inquires Quinten“I wouldn't say lied more bent the truth.”

“Why?” Quinten asks his Father curiously Onno takes a breath wishing he had taken a sip of the wine instead but it was too early he had to man up and get this over with.“Quinten. As you know, a man falls in love a woman sometimes they are soulmates sometimes they are not when they are though they can heal each other's wounds, emotional or physical.”

“I already know this, Father” Quinten buts in“I know but let me get to the point” Onno stresses “When they fall in love they might decide to have a baby but the stalk doesn't deliver it the stalk doesn't exist so get that story out of your mind. To have a baby, the couple they procreate...As in, they have sex.”

“Sex?” Quinten repeats, “Sex, yes.”

“And what's that?” Onno sighs yet he reists the wine “It's a partnership between two people someotimes to produce a child sometimes just to have fun and produce hormones” Onno tries to explain in a way Quinten would understand.

“And why are you telling me about this, Father?” Quinten asks him, seemingly not phased yet.

“Well, I've noticed how close you and Max's daughter have been getting recently, and I wondered if you were both...intimate.” “Why would you want to know that?” Asks Quinten

“Well if you were I would like to know that you where both beeing safe. If not, you could risk her getting pregnant, and Max wouldn't be too happy about that,” Onno remarks.

“But aren't babies a blessing?” Quinten questions. “They are, but not everyone wants one or can have one, and I thought I would make sure that if you two were together, that you were both safe.”“Well, we're not”, Quinten announces. “Good”

“But we're soulmates, aren't we? You saw the way that butterfly bit me...spited me,” Quinten recounts “I did...Max told me about the sailing incident:” Onno reveals“He did?” Quinten asks defeatedly 

“Why were you angry? You would be lucky to have that girl as your soulmate she seems like the perfect match she's intelligent, curious quirky and wise like you” Onno observes.“You would think” Quinten sighs “But I guess...i was scared I didn't want to ruin anything between us as friends” He reveals.

“Oh well, that is very respectable, Quint”

“Please don't call me that, Daddy. I'm not five years old anymore”, Quinten groans.“Oh well, very well. I'm just glad that you and her are just friends.

*******

“Oh fuck!” You pant as Quinten thrusts himself deeper into you. He had to keep you quiet. The palm of his hand was wrapped around your mouth as he rutted inside you in The Greenhouse.“We can't let them hear us”, Quinten reminds “Slow down!” You reprehend him. Since you had become intimate over the past few months, Quinten was like a wild animal in a heat and seemed to show no signs of slowing down.

You didn't mind of course, it was a nice distraction and a nice stress relief but it would be nice for you two to spend time together without the sex for once no matter how mind blowing it truly was.

You groaned as you came down from your orgasm and you prayed it was your last your legs were shaky as you held onto one of the plant pots for your life. Quinten held your waist firmly and you felt a mix of your and his cum dripping between your legs luckily the aroma was easily hidden by the musk of the plants. Quinten buries his lips into the back of your head. Seemingly satisfied, you watch his reflection in the window's glass.

“You told him we weren't seeing each other, right?” You ask “Of course” Quinten replies as he steps away and helps you get dressed picking your torn skirt from the floor.

“Do you think he bought it?” You ask him curiously Quinten had to be smart about this Onno Quist was a very smart man much like Quinten.“I think so,” He recalls.

“Although I don't think this tear in your skirt is going to help much” He comments and a grin spreads across his lips.“I hate you”, You murmur rolling your eyes.

“That's not what you were crying out a few moments ago.”You hit him just like he did on Christmas. You watch him as he leans closer, parting his lips and pushing your hair behind your ear.

“We probably shouldn't see each other for a while just so they don't catch on. Why don't we stage a fight?” He asks, cupping your cheek. Lost in his Lapis lazuli eyes, you didn't have much room to think this through.“Okay,” You tell him. He was about to lean in and kiss you, but then there was a knock on the greenhouse door.

“Darling,” Max calls. “You should be studying.”“Alright fine Father” You reply. You give Quinten a small nod as you leave, but he feels Max's eyes on him. You both had to sell this fight you couldn't risk his Father and Max finding out you where sleeping with each other behind their backs may as well have fun with it Quinten thought as he watched you leave.

#neil newbon fanfiction #neil newbon smut #the discovery of heaven #quinten quist #quinten #quinten quist smut #De ontdekking van de hemel #the discovery of love #neil newbon universe #quinten quist x reader #quinten quist x female reader #forbidden realtionship #best friends to lovers #secret love #possible incest #neil newbon x reader

[rhondafromhr]

Nerds corruption au chapter 5!!

Thank you so much to everyone who’s been reading so far! This is the first thing I’ve written in literal years and all the likes/reblogs/comments have been super encouraging :) Also, quick update: I have an ao3 account now (same username - rhondafromhr), where I’ll be uploading what I’ve written so far. I’m going to adjust the formatting and fix any mistakes I happen to catch but other than that it’ll be identical. After this, I’ll probably just update there and post the link on here whenever there’s a new chapter. Unless anyone strongly prefers to read it in tumblr post format (I can always do both). Hope y’all enjoy!

Previous chapters:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

“We’re Gonna Become The Bullies” - Chapter 5: No Matter The Cost, Idle The Threat

Hey gang, I have another plan <3 Let’s all meet at Beanies when Max is done with football practice and I’ll give you the rundown

Suddenly, Stephanie’s a lot less excited to have her phone back. How did Grace even get her number? More importantly, why is somebody whose last plan almost ended in manslaughter out here cooking up more plans? Stephanie knows she probably shouldn’t encourage this, but her morbid curiosity is just strong enough that she’s compelled to reply: cool, see you guys there. This better not be about Grace’s campaign to cancel the dance. Stephanie may or may not have an itemized list of cute homecoming proposal ideas for Pete and she’ll be damned if she doesn’t get to use at least one of them. If only Grace could see that she’s totally wrong about co-ed dances. They’re not just an excuse to dry hump in the gym. It’s heavily in the mix, sure, but it’s not the only thing. There’s also underage drinking and dancing awkwardly. It’s an essential high school experience. Now that she thinks about it, Grace has probably missed out on a lot of dumb teenage shenanigans thanks to her sheltered upbringing. Huh, that’s actually kind of sad. Maybe if Grace is open to it, they can help her catch up.

Before she can ponder that too much, she notices Brad Callahan passing by in the hallway, which obviously means she has to stop what she’s doing to raise her fist at him threateningly and call him a weak ass bitch. He flinches and hurries along. God, she’s been doing that every single time she encounters him and it still hasn’t gotten old. She might feel bad if it was anyone else, but Brad sucks. The best part is knowing he can’t do anything about it. She’s beginning to understand why Max does this sort of thing.

She has a couple of hours to kill before they’re meeting up, so she opts to spend them in the library at least trying to get some homework done. Not her idea of a good time, but she figures she should keep her grades high enough that her dad doesn’t get on her case again. Between the better grasp of the material that she now has courtesy of Peter’s tutoring and once again having access to her favorite chill lo-fi study beats playlist on Spotify, it’s not as painful as usual and she manages to finish most of her math worksheet before heading out.

True to form, Grace is already there waiting for everybody when Stephanie arrives. She has two disposable coffee cups in front of her, at least one of which Stephanie assumes contains hot water (seriously, what is her fixation with drinking plain hot water? Even if she’s anti-caffeine, why not just drink herbal tea or something?). Stephanie orders a hot chocolate for Pete along with an iced americano for herself, then joins Grace at the cozy table in the corner. The dainty little bell attached to the door dings to indicate Ruth’s arrival.

“Hi, Ruth,” Grace greets her, sliding Ruth one of the drinks as she sits down “This is for you. It’s tea with honey, the barista said it would be good for your voice. Gotta make sure it’s rested up for the show!”

“Since when are you in the show?” Stephanie asks Ruth “I thought you were doing the lighting board.”

“As of right now, yes,” Grace answers for her “but if you saw her perform, you’d agree she should be the one up on stage, not Trevor.” She says his name with absolute contempt.

“I still don’t know about this,” says Ruth “What if we get in trouble? I don’t want this to affect my chances of getting into college. Everyone knows that’s where all the really spicy sexual experimentation happens, watch some porn!”

“Oh, that won’t be an issue. Haven’t you heard? I’m the hall monitor,” Grace replies.

“Wow, Chasity, no comment on the porn thing? You must be laser focused on whatever this plan is.”

“There’ll be plenty of time for Ruth to reconsider that vow of chastity later,” Grace says as Ruth emphatically shakes her head no “but right now the most important thing is to make sure that lead role goes to the person who actually deserves it.”

Max and Richie arrive next, barely taking notice of the rest of the group as they sit down. Max’s anxious energy is palpable (even if he’s no longer taking his bad moods out on them, he sure can drag down the energy in a room). Richie seems to be trying to talk him down.

“Max, there’s nothing to be worried about! You guys looked great at practice today. There’s no way we’re losing to Clivesdale tomorrow. This is what you’ve been training for,” Richie says.

Max doesn’t seem convinced. “Yeah, but that’s what I thought before the last game and we got destroyed. I don’t want to sleep outside again, it’s been getting really cold out! I could die from hypothermia and become a ghost. You know how I feel about ghosts, Richie!”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Richie asks, racking his brain to try and figure out the connection between losing the big game and becoming a hypothermic ghost.

“When we lost to Sycamore, my dad locked me out of the house and made me sleep outside that night,” Max explains “but this is fuckin’ Clivesdale we’re talking about. If we lose to them, it’ll probably be for a week straight.” Richie, Ruth and Grace stare at him in stunned silence. Stephanie just gives him a sympathetic pat on the arm.

“Max,” Richie says, gentle and reassuring “we’re your sworn friends now, which means we’re not letting you sleep outside even if you single-handedly make us lose to Clivesdale. Just stay over at my place.”

“But doesn’t Paul, like, hate me?”

“Oh, he does not hate you. He’s just a little weary of you on account of the years of relentlessly bullying me. He’s going to be out of town, anyway.”

“Ooh, we should all have a sleepover, then!” Ruth says excitedly “That’s where sexy pillow fights happen!”

Stephanie shrugs. “Sure. Beats going home.”

“Oh, that actually does sound fun! My parents would never let me go to a co-ed sleepover, though,” Grace says wistfully.

“Just tell them it’s an overnight bible study and maybe conveniently forget to mention that the boys’ll be there,” Stephanie suggests “if it makes you feel better, I’ll even let you read, like, one passage to me so you’re not technically lying.” This elicits the brightest, most genuine smile she’s ever seen from Grace. Stephanie hopes the passage is at least one of the cool, violent ones and not something basic like “Love is patient, love is kind.” With Grace, it could go either way.

Richie doesn’t comment on everyone essentially inviting themselves over to his house. He simply leaves the table and returns with two mint teas, one of which he hands to Max.

“Here. This always makes me feel a little better when I’m anxious.”

“What? Thanks, bro. That’s so sweet.” Max can’t remember the last time he felt so loved. He never thought he’d have friends who care enough about him to bring him tea when he’s stressed and not let him freeze in the Michigan winter all night just because he loses a game.

All this talk about freezing to death reminds Stephanie that Pete’s hot chocolate is getting cold. Beverages at Beanie’s are best consumed piping hot - the spit is less noticeable that way. Hatchetfield has its fair share of strange, unexplainable phenomena, but why the health department has yet to crack down on this place might be the biggest mystery of all. Why people still come here fully knowing about the spit thing is a close second. Peter finally arrives and gratefully accepts what is now essentially gross, lukewarm chocolate milk.

“Alright, now that everybody’s here we can get started,” Grace begins “As you all know, the theater department cast Trevor in the lead for The Barbecue Monologues. Trevor!” Once again, she utters his name with vitriolic hatred. “Obviously, this is an absolute travesty and it’s our responsibility to fix it. I watched the rest of that rehearsal and he completely phoned in ‘Just For Once’. He can’t even get his lines right, let alone understand the emotional gravity of that song like Ruth does. You can’t tell me it’s God’s will to have Trevor up on that stage instead of her!”

“So, how are we getting Trevor off the stage, then? I need to know how deeply I should regret getting involved in this,” Peter quips. To his surprise, he doesn’t actually feel all that apprehensive. If anything, he’s kind of intrigued, wondering how they’re going to pull this off.

“Well, tomorrow morning I’m going to arrive at school for my usual morning duties and discover a heinous act of vandalism. I guess Trevor and his understudy decided to pull a little senior prank.”

“Wait, we’re framing Rudolph, too? Isn’t it way too convenient that the lead and his understudy both get in trouble this close to opening night? It’s going to look suspicious,” Richie replies.

“Well, those two do everything together! It’d be weirder if they weren’t both in on it. In fact, they’re so close they have these adorable matching friendship bracelets that they never take off. Except during dress rehearsals, that is. You got them, right, Ruth?” Ruth produces two thin, handmade woven bracelets from her backpack. “And at the scene of the crime, apparently, because that’s where they’re going to be found.”

“The scene of the crime?” Peter echoes back.

“The gym. They had the audacity to spray paint…” Grace lowers her voice to a whisper so the rest of the café patrons don’t hear the absolutely vile phrase leave her mouth “…‘Go Clivesdale’ on the wall right before the big game!” The rest of the group audibly gasps. Richie chokes on his tea.

“Go Clivesdale?” he sputters, “isn’t that taking it a little far? Maybe we should just write some swears or something.”

“Or anatomically correct nude drawings!” Ruth chimes in “I have a ton of pictures on my phone we can use for references.”

“Ruth, no. And Richie, the whole point is that it’s too far! We need to do something severe enough for them to actually get in serious trouble. Do you want Ruth to get her moment in the spotlight or not?”

Of course he does. Ruth has been by his side for years and helped him through some of the worst times of his life. He knows how much performing means to her. How she’s been missing out on it for years not for lack of talent or passion, but simply because her anxiety holds her back. If she finally feels confident enough to get up on stage, he decides, he’ll do anything to make that happen. Besides, Grace’s last plan worked out pretty well in the end.

“Okay, I’m in,” Richie says.

“For Ruth,” Pete agrees.

“I still don’t know her super well, but sure, for Ruth,” says Stephanie.

“See, this is why I love you guys! This plan is so smart and sneaky. I’d usually just beat him up and scare him into quitting, but this is way more fun!” Max adds.

“There’s a thought. That might actually be less effort than breaking and entering,” Stephanie muses. She is, of course, purely concerned with efficiency and is not at all thinking about the adrenaline rush she got from beating up Brad and itching to feel it again.

“We’re not breaking and entering. I’ve been a little preoccupied lately and I just might have forgotten to lock the side door to the gym this morning. We’ll just walk right in,” Grace responds with a wicked smile “speaking of which, we should head over. All the staff should be gone for the day. Steph, you’re our getaway driver!” They all follow Grace out of the café, blissfully unaware that they lingered for twenty minutes past closing time.

While her coworkers grumble about entitled customers ignoring their posted hours of operation, Zoe smiles to herself. She caught most of that conversation and can’t help but root for those kids. Committing sabotage to steal the lead role like that? Iconic. They’ve also stolen her heart. She wishes she was half as bold at their age. Their drinks will be on the house next time they come in. Maybe she won’t even spit in them.

The next morning, principal Blim arrives at work feeling less than his best, to say the least. He kicks himself for agreeing to attend “Thirsty Thursday” on a work night - he’s in his forties, who is he kidding? He really needs to stop hanging out with his cousin Barry. That guy was sure “in a hurry” to slam as many consecutive tequila shots as possible last night. He really didn’t care for Barry’s sketchy friend that joined them, either. He got way too drunk and made some comment about locking his kid out of the house whenever his football team loses. The dirtbag seemed completely serious about it, too. He knows Barry’s been going through it with the divorce, but he’s going to have a serious talk with him about how he’s been coping and the company he keeps. He drags himself to the teacher’s lounge for the coffee he desperately needs, trying to ignore the obnoxious fluorescent lights boring into his eyes and making the pounding in his head exponentially worse. As he makes his way to his office, he begs whatever higher power might be listening for a calm, uneventful day. Said higher power must be feeling vindictive, because he’s immediately greeted by a crying, frantic Grace Chasity.

“Principal Blim, thank goodness you’re here! I was doing my morning rounds a-and I stopped in the gym and somebody wrote-“ she sobs “it’s so awful, I can’t even say it!”

“It’ll be okay, Grace. Let’s head over there together and you can show me.”

There’s no need to panic yet. Knowing Grace, this could easily be her reaction to something that’s mildly crude at worst. At least that’s what he thinks until they enter the gymnasium and he realizes she’s absolutely right to be so worked up. See, there’s a beautiful, haunting, hyper-realistic mural of a nighthawk flying over the Hatchetfield Witchwood on the wall opposite the bleachers. It’s been there for about fifteen years now, painted by a former student who was slated to go to a prestigious art school, but sadly went out into that very Witchwood one day and did not make it to the end of her senior year. Now that mural has been desecrated in a manner absolutely unforgivable. As he gazes upon with horror, he drops his mug and the sound of glass shattering on the linoleum floor echoes through the empty gymnasium. This is the foulest, most offensive thing he’s ever seen in his life. He can’t even begin to imagine what type of disgusting human being would do something like this. “Go Clivesdale!” Somebody had the nerve to write “Go Clivesdale!” over the Nighthawk mural! Right before the big game, no less! He’ll catch the perpetrator and make them pay if it’s the last thing he does.

#nerdy prudes must die #npmd #npmd corruption au #max jagerman #peter spankoffski #ruth fleming #stephanie lauter #grace chasity #hatchetfield #richie lipschitz #barry swift #man in a hurry #cw child abuse mention #max jagermans shitty dad #lautski #cw alcohol #corruption arc

[pilesofnonsense]

RQBB 2023 Writer Sign-Ups Open!

[ID: Picture of a black banner with the Rusty Quill show logos and a text in white and red that reads Rusty Quill Big Bang 2023]

Writer Sign-Ups are now open for the Rusty Quill Big Bang 2023!

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#rusty quill #rqbb2023 #the magnus archives #rusty quill gaming #trice forgotten #stellar firma #inexplicables #chapter and multiverse #nonsense mod post #pon mod post

[vgilantee]

Worlds Apart {Neteyam Sully} Masterlist

neteyam te suli tsyeyk'itan x human/avatar!reader

TOTAL WORDS: [to be updated upon completion of series]

Life on Pandora was the only one you had ever known, born in space and raised on the moon's surface. Spending your childhood around scientists and raised by a soldier, it was natural that you would spend your childhood alongside the Sully children. However Neteyam was quickly dragged into the responsibilities of being the future olo'eyktan while you were unable to venture too far from Hell's Gate, and the young friendship was dragged apart.

reader's pronouns: she/her

Author's note: My original plan for this fic was for it to be gender neutral, but while writing I ended up using fem-directed language. This does phase out a little after the first chapter/prologue, but the pronouns do stay. All of the kids, bar Tuk, will be aged up for the fic. Chapter 1 begins with the year, and canon events that occur during the prologue happen during the canon years. Because of this, Neteyam will be aged up to ~16/17 as will Kiri, Spider will be ~16/17, Lo'ak will be ~15/16, while Tuk will remain ~7/8. This is because I thought that Nete was ~17 and Lo'ak was ~16 when I watched the movie, and while I was wrong, I'm going to write like I wasn't. The reader herself is born in 2153. (other notes will be at the start of each chapter, however this is important for the whole series)

This series will be canon divergent from both the comics and The Way of Water. I haven't read the comics, and I'm assuming y'all haven't either. But just know that other than the name of Miles' mother, I am basically ignoring the comics.

Childhood friends to estranged friends to lovers + (un)requited crushes + neteyam is an idiot For additional warnings and tags that do not fit the tumblr format, see the ao3 posting of this fic

If you would like to be tagged, please fill out this form

Chapters

Prologue

Warnings: side character deaths Words: 3.5k

Chapter 1

Warnings: Words:

Chapter 2

Warnings: Words:

less serious warning: i have... daddy issues to say the least. so i did my best in writing a healthy father-daughter relationship. if at times it reads more a friendship or anything that's non parent-child it's because i have nothing to base it off lmao

#char rambles #char writes #rhp housekeeping #neteyam sully x reader #neteyam te suli tsyeyk'itan x reader

[aquathewriter]

I'm just thinking and throwing this out there but I've had the inspiration to write one of my original stories recently and I'm thinking of uploading bits of the original draft as I write it, like I do on AO3 for my fanfiction, because I want critiques, ideas, and whatnot on my stuff, especially my original stuff since I want to get it published one day.

Nothing will be uploaded just yet, I'm holding myself back from jumping the gun too early especially if this is just a hyper fixation, until I have at least 10 chapters for the one I'm working on and then release a chapter weekly or bimonthly. This gives me time to work a lot more stuff out and work on more of the plot.

I made my start on Wattpad like 10+ years ago but they changed a lot of things back then that I didn't like at the time and some other personal stuff made me leave. It's weird to be on the site again but I know it is a good site to test out original stuff and whatnot. If I do go through with this, my fics will stay on AO3, and my original stuff will stay on Wattpad.

If you’ve followed me for a while, you've probably seen me talk a bit about how much I love my lesbian mermaid and her forbidden human girlfriend, and it is true (they’ll come at a later point), but the first story I would post, if I decide to go through with this, would be one that I’ve been working on and off again since 2020. It is called “The Crown in the Ice” and it's about 18-year-old twin brothers, Jack and James, it follows them how their best friend, Alyssa, gets kidnapped right in front of them and how this all leads to a magical world and to secrets and mysteries of their late father’s origins.

There’s going to be a lot more to this too that I think there might be two books. I’ve even written a short couple page story of Jack and James’ father and two other characters and I went fancy on the formatting at one point that it made Google Docs mad.

So yeah. Comment on this post if you would check it out if I did post it and if you want to follow me now on Wattpad my username is @/aquaseekerofdarkness. Thank you for taking the time to read this and have a beautiful day!

#writing #asking the real questions #asking for asks #asking for help #just asking #author #book edit #please and thank you #kingdom hearts #i know this isnt kingdom hearts but im a kingdom hearts fic writer and im just asking if anyone would do this for me

[vellaphoria]

Hi! For the writer's ask game: 25, 27, and 29 :) Also, I reread Midnight Elegy recently and it's even better then I remembered!

Hello!! :D as;lkdjfa;skldjls I'm glad you enjoyed it enough to reread it! I had such a good time writing that one. Thank you for the incredibly kind words! <3

Answers below the cut:

25. What fic do you wish you got more of a response on? Gethsemane in Winter, probably For context, at one point I wrote a DickTim Earth-3 series because there was a very specific interpretation of the concept that I desperately wanted to read but that didn't exist. So I set out to write it myself, knowing that it probably wouldn't get too much attention, given the number of (accurate) warning tags I slapped on it. I worked hard on it and am proud of the result, but there's still a bit of wistfulness about it because of the nature of incredibly niche things.

Though if anyone is curious enough to look at the part of the map labeled here be dragons, then the series is A Fact or a Weapon, which comes from a wonderfully haunting (and apt, for the fic) line from the poem "We are Hard" by Margaret Atwood:

A truth should exist, it should not be used like this. If I love you

is that a fact or a weapon?

27. What is your most and least favorite part of writing?

My most favorite part is writing descriptions! I tend to be a visual thinker, so I spend a fair amount of time thinking about where things are in a scene, how they would look, and how to describe things in a way that builds the sort of atmosphere I'm going for.

My least favorite part is writing transitions between scenes. I tend to over-write them and draw things out that aren't important to the plot (one reason why everything I write spirals out of control lol). Sometimes it's hard for me to know when it's best to put a scene break in vs. when to do an actual transition via text.

29. What’s your revision or editing process like?

I tend to go chapter by chapter for multi-chapter fics. My first goal is to get the thing written, so I try not to commit to serious revisions unless there's some sort of overarching problem with what I've got.

Revisions start once I have a mostly finished rough draft of a chapter. At that point, I read through it to make sure that I'm not missing anything and then send it to my beta reader so that they can give me a general vibe check (i.e. does it make sense, does it flow right, is the tone consistent/does it work for the fic, spelling and grammar, etc.). They also do a lot of cheerleading which really gets me through a lot of the tougher parts of writing <3 After I have the beta-approved version, I do another pass through for spelling and grammar and probably tweak some things. If it's a chapter, then it probably sits for a bit while I work on other parts of the fic. If it's a oneshot, then I format it for Ao3 and finalize the title and tags that I'm using before posting.

There's also a secret step where sometimes I don't like what I have, so I tear it up and recycle the parts into other things lol (questions are from this list)

#jagn answers #captain-ursula #ask games

[fantasyinallforms]

It's an end-of-the-year recap!!!! And what a year it has been! Thank you, @fellowshipofthefics, for putting together this wonderful recap list! Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all the people who have supported me on my writing journey this past year. The Bagginshield fandom has been a haven filled with some of the kindest and most talented people I have had the pleasure of getting to know.

I look forward to another year with all of you.

Let's begin!

~~~~

What is something new you tried with your writing this year?

This was my first year as a fic writer, so everything was something new! I was really focused on building the "voice" of my writing, and I think I did that.

Did you participate in any fandom events?

Oh yes. I did the Thorin Spring Forge (TSF), Kinktober, and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Collaboration (THAUC). I also did about half a dozen drabble events and fotfics monthly events.

What's been your favorite project to work on?

There were not many, but I think for me my favorite was the TSF event. It was a big chance to produce my first ever long-format fic, and the reception it got was more than I could have imagined. You Should Be Safe With Me now sits as my highest kudo's fic.

What was the hardest project to work on?

Sparks & Gardens, for sure. The story is one I'm in love with, but bringing it to life in a way that does it justice can be a struggle sometimes. A struggle I enjoy, oddly enough.

Did you start any projects?

Too many.

Did you finish any projects?

I did! Happy Accidents is a completed Modern AU trilogy.

How many WIPS do you have now?

Four (two posted to AO3)

Share your favorite scene/line!

In chapter three of You Should Be Safe With Me, Thorin busts into Bard's house because he thinks harm is befalling Bilbo. I love how gentle and soft Thorin is when helping Bilbo in that scene.

Share your favorite story title!

I'm very fond of Not Yours To Touch. It took me forever to name that fic!

What does your writing system look like? (i.e. brainstorming, writing, editing - how do you do it?)

Usually, it starts with a scene I like or a general concept. Then, I daydream about it a little and determine if it's a one-shot idea or a long-format idea. One shot, I start writing and see where the idea takes me. Long format I start jotting down ideas in bullet form until I have a really rough outline. Then, I flesh that out until I have a plot. When I have a series of events in order, I want them to happen with maybe a few vague details I start writing. I pause and reread/ rough edit after every chapter and check that my continuity is still good. When it's all done, I ignore it for a few days and re-read it again, then edit. Then it's off to my lovely beta reader, who edits and tells me if something doesn't make sense. Once I get that stamp of approval, I post.

What's the best atmosphere for you to write?

Left alone and quiet

Any particular snacks or drinks while writing?

I'm a beverage girly. I have water, coffee, and some fruit near me at all times. I don't normally snack and write. Most of the time, if I'm writing, I've forgotten to eat.

Do you form playlists/soundtracks for your stories? Or even just for your "writing time"?

Playlist, not really. As I said above, I prefer absolute silence when I write. I do have Pinterest boards for all my WIP's, however.

What advice would you give to a new writer?

You're going to have to be bad at it before you become good at it. So be bad at it and enjoy the process.

What are some goals you have for 2024?

Finish Sparks and Gardens. Finish reputation be damned, and if I'm really lucky, debut my Biker Gang AU. But really just to have fun.

Last but not least, General stats

Words posted to AO3 this year: 191,187

Fics posted to AO3: 22 (all but one was Bagginshield)

Current active WIP's: 2

I can't wait to see what 2024 brings, and I couldn't have done this without you.

#the hobbit #bagginshield #fic writing #end of year review

[heniareth]

Fanfic writer bingo

Tagged by @greypetrel and @shivunin and thank you so much for the tag!! I had a blast with this XD XD XD XD Let's go!!

We got ourselves a bingo!!!!! (I think. I never played bingo)

Some notes on the above below the cut

I do roleplay online!! Apart from playing D&D of course, I have met some really cool people here with whom I also roleplay my Dragon Age OCs. It's a ton of fun

I have beta-read for friends from time to time and I enjoy it! I like going through a text and picking up what works and doesn't work and also squeal about it

All my published fics are unbeta'd (though I do rewrite each chapter once before publishing it)

Screams and typesmashes are a love language and go with more analytical bits like salt and vinegar go on potato chips (best flavor)

Fanfiction is a literary genre with its own conventions, rules, sets of expectations, and so forth. Fight me

I have so many unpublished fics and stories. Mostly from other fandoms. I have been writing since I was 11

Editing and formatting before posting was once hell to me (now it is no longer). I formatted everything I posted on AO3 with html. Which means I went through the whole chapter to put this <p> before every paragraph and this </p> at the end of every paragraph just to get a paragraph spacing I liked. Not to mention italics and shit. It was exhausting. Thank God for the rich text editor, now I do about a quarter of the work for the same result

I have never written drunk, but I have written sleep-deprived, which has about the same effect

And when I write I don't need any food or drinks, but precious we wants them!! What I do absolutely need is music. Mostly ambiences. Skyrin, the Witcher, Unravel (which I know nothing about except that it has a beautiful very calming soundtrack), AmbientGuild, or ambiences of the places in DAO are all things I have running in the background on a regular basis. For action music I also sometimes put on D&D battle music. For extremely calming music I recommend this DAO camp ambience (link takes you to Youtube)

All my fics deserve more attention, and I say this very flippantly. I really don't look at the numbers anymore right now XD XD XD XD The story is worth the writing

I will have published at least one fantasy novel before I die

This was very great fun XD XD XD XD I am going to tag, of you want to participate, all of my ficwriter friends. @oxygenforthewicked @bumblewarden @icy-warden @wild-houseplant @scribbledquillz @kingdomvel @the-iron-lion @yukichouji feel free to take a go at this if it feels fun ^^ And also you, if you have gotten this far and would like to participate. Have a lovely day all of you!!

[sapphireshineauthor]

A Personal Breakdown and Comparison of the Big Three of Fanfiction: Archive of Our Own, FanFiction.Net, and Wattpad

Considering the whole chaos with AO3 that happened recently, I wanted to write about this again since it's been on my to-do list. Disclaimer, I am trying to be objective, but some factors may still appear as personal opinions on the matter, so keep that in mind. This is a long one, so be prepared for an extensive read, I still tried to be concise but thorough. Experts on these sites, feel free to step in and offer your expertise as well on here. Also do correct me on any potential mistakes, this was a long one...

Archive of Our Own:

Pros:

Easy User Interface

Tagging system/fic filter system

Various options for site customization

Search by tag system, addition of major warning tags

Html support, picture and audio integration options

Copy and paste function

Zero advertisement

Engaging comment sections

Friendly UI, writer and reader friendly.

Has function to download fics for offline reading (formats: AWZ3, MOBI, PDF, EPUB, HTML)

Cons:

Tags can get cluttered

Search Bar doesn't work as well as search by tag filter

Rusty crossover format

Rusty character/relationship involvement sorting

Cannot upload documents

No personal DM function.

Can take awhile sorting through tags depending...

Archive of Our Own (AO3) has been my personal favorite of these websites. I've been using it for several years and despite dabbling in various other sites, this one is still my preference.

To start off strong, the pros for AO3 (obvious or not) is the interface. I personally find it extremely easy to use and all the options given are extremely nice for writers and readers alike. For writers, you can give yourself pseuds to help categorize your own fics, sort by the fandoms you write, add tags, allow co-writers, moderate and respond to comments, mass edit stories, and so on. While the site doesn't seem to have an option to upload a document, it does have options to include pictures, audio, and various other media, including links to other stories or videos. It also allows authors to directly respond to comments on their fics and allow for more discussion and engagement in the story (or fandom) between authors and readers (don't be afraid to leave comments!)

In terms of being a reader (and writer) one of my favorite functions by far is the bookmark, history, and subscribe functions. They are what they say, bookmarks can be a public or private tab that are various favorite fics you wanted to save for later or keep note of and not want to search for it again. History is a list of all the fics you've clicked on and it's private solely to you, no one can see your fic history, so if you don't want to bookmark, but remembered something you read, you can look for it in your history. Subscriptions are also a favorite if you don't want too many tabs, you subscribe to a story and you'll get an email every time that fic is updated with a new chapter. Additionally, fics can be downloaded for offline reading (most popular format it seems are epub and pdf).

Now then, onto the main event, tags. If there's one thing AO3 is known for, it's tags. All sorts of them.

The pros of the tags: easy filtering, searching, and organizing.

The best part about AO3 tags is how easy to filter fics are.

It's part of a writer's duty to tag what they have in their stories (and at least tag what we think is relevant if we have trouble thinking of specifics) and most uphold this duty, even at the most basic forms of relevant characters or themes or warnings.

AO3 has an extremely well made filter system (in my opinion), and I've been making good use of it in recent days. If you want stories with a specific character or genre, or theme, use the "Include" function and type in those relevant tags.

If you want to exclude fics specifically, you can "Exclude" the relevant tags and the system should exclude all works with those tags, ratings, or themes, in them from your search. If there is an issue with it, my only gripe is that there aren't any "filter preferences/presets" for the site. By that I mean if you click on a new character tag, you need to re add all of your filters to get your specific stories again unless you're well adept at using the back button (which honestly most people are adept at) and re-organizing your filters there, but it's an extremely minor issue that doesn't really affect the experience.

Now then, the cons of the site. There aren't many, but there are a few. Which again, involves the tags. AO3's extensive list of relevant tags for various fandoms is a blessing as it is a curse. One such factor is the idea of crossovers. Crossovers may be easy for other series, but for series that have various media forms for the same fandom, they end up having different fandom tags.

For example, my fic "Scarlet Eyes in the Academy" had a total of 5 fandom tags, even though it's only a crossover between two series. This is because both have different media that have their own tags, My Next Life as a Villainess (Anime)/(Light Novel)/(Manga), and Moriarty the Patriot (Anime)/(Manga)

The reason why a lot of authors tag all various media forms for a series is simply so the most people can see it, regardless of which medium tag they defaulted to. Especially if the mediums don't have many differences to the series.

I can understand why some series need separate tags to differentiate the medium, but in the long run (especially if the medium doesn't have many unique changes to the canon), it's various tags for the same series and since linking more than one fandom tags will equate to a crossover, trying to find an actual crossover fic is a challenge (some fandoms don't really apply since they don't have multiple tags, such as Genshin Impact and Red vs Blue).

On another point, which is mainly the character tags. This is a common issue I see from time to time, but like the crossover aspect, is a small issue compared to the pros of the site. The thing with the character tags (or relationship tags) is that writers can add them, even if the story is not focusing on them. They appear in the story, but how much focus is on that character/relationship is in the eyes of the beholder (at the whim of a writer). It's not a major issue, but one that I see from time to time when comparing/analyzing fic sites.

But if there's a plus to the character tags, it helps filter through the fandom medium tags. As it will link all the fics that have the character regardless of fandom tags.

Other Notes: unlike other sites, AO3 doesn't have direct DMs and is unable to do document uploads, but even without those two things, it's a wonderful site for fanfiction. It also allows fic downloading for offline reading (just don't do any fic reposting without author's consent, that's just rude).

In conclusion: AO3 has a lot of benefits and has a relatively friendly UI for writers and readers alike. The tag system overall is extremely well done to help narrow down your fic search. I consider it to be the best of the three. The only downside is that it's not the best when looking for crossovers and fics for specific characters, themes, or pairings can get lost among the tags. There are also many guides available on this site in regards to the many functions of AO3.

Fanfiction.net :

This one, I think, sparks a certain level of nostalgia in many of us (especially those a bit younger in age). It was one of the first fanfiction sites to be made "mainstream" (i.e. the most prevalent option when fanfiction is searched for). But it has seen better days…

Pros:

Private DMs

Document uploads

Major character tags

Main genre tags

Easy crossover functionality

Good app, easy UI.

Cons:

Annoying/Invasive ad placement

No option for warning tags

Cannot interact openly with comments

No easy pic support (if any, for inside the fic itself)

Fics can be easily reported even for small reasons

The copy and paste function is extremely broken.

Okay, once again, starting strong with the pros. Ff.net has been a site that is prevalent for older fandoms. It has a nice filter system to go by genre, characters, and ratings and the UI is quite easy to use (the more nuanced filter system also makes it easier for searching compared to AO3's more… fic tag cocktail mixing experience). The site allows for uploading word documents to upload fics (which is a double edge sword as their copy and paste function is extremely wonky and broken last I checked). It also allows for checking traffic on a fic, which I find is a very fun statistic to look at every now and then.

It also allows for private DMs within the site itself so if authors want to talk, there's no need to rely on an external DM site/application (Discord, Tumblr, Reddit, etc).

The biggest pro for FF.net is it's crossover archive (specifically when you go into a ff.net fandom archive and click on crossovers). It sorts out all the crossover fandoms by fic count and it is easy to look for a specific fandom crossover if it exists.

I think that roughly covers all the pros, now, the cons. The main issue I have with FF.net is… the ad placements.

If I could include the horrified duh duh duuuuh! Sound effect I would.

On mobile it's even worse, anyone recall the days when the ads were those odd little boxes next to the review box at the bottom of the chapter? I miss those days.

However, while the ads have been an issue, I think the biggest issue is with how content is moderated on the site and reporting works. I personally haven't had bad experiences with the site, but I've seen other authors apparently get their fics taken off the site due to reports (despite the fact the works themselves not having anything wrong). The famous RWBY reacts to RvB fic (React Watch Believe Yikes) was taken down because of copyright reasons despite the fact they clearly stated that they got permission to use the RvB transcripts in the fic (that fic is now on AO3). I haven't heard much beyond that, so do fill in what I missed if this issue had gotten worse or better over the years.

The other con for FF.net is interaction, while the site allows for private DMs, it doesn't allow public interaction with comments. Authors can still reply, but it's then taken into a private DM chain specifically between the author and the specific commenter. Perhaps it's a minor issue, but it's one that should be brought up.

And also, last I checked, the DMs are supposed to send you an email notification everytime someone DMs you, but it's been wonky for awhile and straight up broken at points.

And lastly, while the more succinct filter system is fine, it does so at the consequence of not letting additional tags be shown. So ratings and genre can be filtered, but nothing more. It doesn't help that the summary boxes are short either, so authors either have to make shorter summaries to put important warnings, or omit the warnings so the full summary can be in place. I also believe this lack of tagging is another reason why reporting fics seems to be an issue there.

In conclusion, FF.net is a fine site, it's easy to use, perfect for crossovers, allows DMs and has fun statistics. However, you should probably keep anything "explicit" pretty mild, or proceed with caution. I learned the terms lemons and limes from somewhere after all.

Wattpad:

Cracks knuckles, okay, this one. I used this one the least, but I do have some thoughts on it (Wattpad experts, feel free to add onto this if you'd like).

Pros:

Can comment on specific paragraphs

Easy picture integration

Decent chapter/book format

Decent story saving/favorite book

Okay UI

Cons:

Bad tag filters

Hard search function

Ads can be a bit annoying.

As you can see, I have an issue when it comes to filtering. Both Ao3 and FF.net have good filtering/tagging systems. While Wattpad does have a filter/tag system, I think it leaves a lot to be desired.

Okay, once again, starting with the pros. I think my favorite feature when it comes to Wattpad is the option to comment on specific paragraphs rather than just the whole chapter/story. I dunno, I find it fun as a reader (and as a writer) to see if people had specific thoughts on specific passages.

Secondly, the writer UI is decent and quite friendly once you get the hang of it. You can start a "book" and update it as you see fit. Although the way to add/update/edit an ongoing book is a bit more cumbersome than AO3 or FF.net…

Lastly, the picture integration for Wattpad is pretty nice, allowing easy insertion of images directly into the passage or on a "chapter banner" at the beginning of the chapter.

That's pretty much it for the major pros, and onto the cons. Which is surprisingly not many (as least that I've experienced), but those few in number make up for a lot in experience.

So, the cons, which is once again, the tagging. It always rolls back to that aspect/function. The tagging for Wattpad is honestly quite messy. Not only can several tags for the same thing exist, but they exist because the tags themselves (like in Tumblr) become different tags depending on how they're formatted (ex. "xreader", "x reader", "characterxreader", are three separate tags), so filtering out tags can be quite an issue. Not to mention more work on the author's part to add literally every iteration of a tag/phrase/pairing to make sure it appears where it's supposed to appear.

The other issue from what I can see rn actually is that a guest user (someone not logged into an account) cannot do manual searches on the site, at least on mobile. You can only search externally on the web, which is technically a minor issue, but an issue nonetheless.

Additionally, readers can't see all the relevant tags when browsing through stories until they click on it and see the summary. Again, a minor issue, but an issue all the same that should be brought up.

Also, from what I heard, there's supposedly paywalls on the site now. Looking into it, Wattpad does seem to have a paid subscription service. One feature of that service is "paid stories". I assume this only attributes to original works (since fanfiction will be in hot water otherwise). Additionally, the paid subscription gives access to offline downloading and site customization (for which AO3 has for free), it also says it offers options for "early access to subscribers" which I assume again is for original stories and functions like a creator's Patreon account. The subscription also allows for ad free viewing of stories.

In conclusion, Wattpad isn't nearly as chaotic as I last remember, but it still seems leagues behind the tagging and UI of AO3 and FF.net. The writer's UI for posting stories is fine and the picture integration in combination with paragraph comments is a fun feature. The fact it's asking for subscriptions for functions that the other two provide also knocks it down a peg. It's a fine site, but definitely not the most ideal for fanfiction. Especially as it seems to shift more to original stories than fanfiction. Finally, unlike AO3 and FF.net, Wattpad doesn't really have anything exclusive to its site that puts it above the rest (unless you count the comment on specific paragraphs bit).  

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

In conclusion: Everyone has their favorite sites for fanfiction. All of them have their pros and cons and for which one is "the best" it boils down to what you're looking for in your fanfiction stories.

Archive of Our Own: Seems to be the mainstay for newer fandoms, perfect for creating your own fic viewing experiences and filtering, allows for website customization skins, more interaction between author and readers, allows fic downloads for offline reading.  

Fanfiction.Net: The home to older fandoms, good for a more casual browse, allows private DMs, perfect for looking for crossovers, just beware of the ads.

Wattpad: An okay site, interface takes a bit getting used to, but filtering is not as good as the others, ads are present but not as much as FF.net, requires subscription to remove ads and allow customization. It also seems more curated to original works than fanfics.

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

And that concludes my analysis of what I consider "The Big Three" of the fanfiction world. Shall I do other sites as well? Did this help in regards to looking at sites? Experts in any of the three mentioned, do add your own notes to correct or add to any of the points I made. I primarily use AO3 so I may have missed some things for the other two.

Either way, I hope you enjoyed this surprisingly long essay. Hope you enjoyed ;)

#archive of our own #fanfiction.net #wattpad #fandom #writers #ao3 #ffnet #ff.net #wattpad fanfiction #wattpad stuff #ao3 feed #tl:dr ao3 is perfect for sorting fics of the same fandom #fanfiction.net is perfect for crossovers #wattpad isn't bad but doesn't do anything overtly unique compared to the other two #reposting because of tag issues...

[sprainedwriting]

i know you and i like you anyway (1)

chapter 2

nathan prescott x reader ; warren graham x reader

summary: when the pressure and eyes are on you, it’s hard to stay afloat. especially when your not so forgotten best friend comes back into your life. and they are ready to mess up the plans others have for you.

having parents and peers constantly nag you about your grades, interests and lack of an significant other can bring you down. but meeting the new kid in the academy can change at least one of your mocking points.

yn is implied to be afab (lives in fem dorms) but is genderneutral otherwise!

tw/cw: mentions of poverty, mental health issues, canon typical violence, swearing, implied/ref drug use, modern au as in its not 2013, huge canon divergence and messed up time line, obsessive behaviour, possessive behaviour, tell me if i missed smth!

read on ao3 for better formatting and tagging

unlike popular belief nathan prescott did not grow up in arcadia bay. the heir to the prescott name grew up in fort lauderale, florida. his family, from his mother side, lived there. she was able to convince his father to let them live there, bless her soul.

(“it will be good for him! for us! the pressure will destroy him. just look at how kristine treats us.. i don’t want to lose another child.”)

he spend his time at prestigious elementary and middle schools. and at middle school is where he meet you. people started quickly talking about you, simply because you were the only scholarship student. unlike everyone else you didn’t come from money.

your uniform was constantly 3 sizes too big, your hand was constantly raised and when you got anything less than an A there was clear panic on your face. the biggest difference to everyone else were your empty eyes and constant deadpan. seemingly nothing truly got a reaction out of you. there was a boy who tried to, by pulling at your hair and messing up your homework.

you beat him up so bad that the whole class just decided to leave you alone. and fact is, everyone who was near you also got left alone, so nathan was naturally pulled towards you. he wanted nothing more than to be left alone.

middle school was hard, simply because nathan`s problems started to really show, he wasn`t a child anymore who threw temper tantrum’s. he was now a boy with violent emotional outbursts. and quite frankly, children are cruel. getting a rise out of the weird prescott kid was more entertaining than torturing their maids and nanny’s.

because you were the only one who could handle his temper, simply because you didn’t care about it as long as he didn’t touch you, you got paired up for different projects.

and that’s how you meet his family. his father didn’t like you, but he doesn’t even like his own children, so his opinion didn’t matter. his mother and sister loved you, simply because you were very polite. dinners were filled with you being questioned to hell and back while you were trying to eat as much as possible.

“uhhh.. i have an older brother, he’s 2 years older than me…i have a twin brother, too. and another 3 little brothers. my father works at a la…actually he’s unemployed right now. my mother works as a teacher and during the summer break she works..where ever they need someone. what i want to be when i grow up?…middle class.”

meeting you after school was hard, responsibilities which nathan couldn’t even imagine carrying were put on your shoulder.

(“sorry. i have to study and babysit. so sorry, i need to grocery shop and take care of dinner. i wish i could, i have to cut the hair of all my brothers and clean the house. if i don’t pass this test my father will murder me.. i have to study. thank you for being so understanding.”)

to be honest, at first nathan didn’t even want anything to do with you. his mother insisted for him to invite you over. he now knows she pitied you. he now knows, too that you even were able to pull on the heartstrings of his father, because he would ask when you would visit again.

when nathan asked you, why did you have to care for everything, what did your brothers do to help? “have fun, i guess.” he felt angry for you. “how can you just roll over and take it? what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“well, who else would do i? why are you angry? i’m not angry, and i’m the one with the responsibilities.”

nathan learned to love you and the emptiness you carried around.

just like everything good in his life, your friendship (or was it more? it felt like more. he misses you, he misses your mean comments, your eye bags and exhaustion.) ended slowly.

once middle school was over, and he was able to graduate with a dirty record of violent outbursts, which was magically clean once he looked over it. the prescott family moved to arcadia bay. he was enrolled in the blackwell academy.

he found this out at the end of the summer break. to be honest he was getting suspicious, because all his questions regarding the highschool he was supposed to attend were being ignored. his father send him away, his mother smiled at him with sadness, he insisted to go to the same school as you.

“please, don’t forget me at your new cool school.”

“i will NEVER forget you, idiot. you’re the only tolerable person i know.”

the way you smiled at him was still clear in his head. you were beautiful in a way he has never seen, and the older he gets the more he realises he never will see anyone quite as pretty as you.

when nathan is 13 he meets dr. jacoby and starts treatment for the anger he feels. he knows that he fells ptity for him. nathan misses you, when he told you about his father, about the bruises and pressure he is under you simply talk about an escape plan. a way you both will be free from the shackles your family put on you and live happily everafter.

maybe you pitied him, but that would never stop you from treating him normally. you didn’t try to avoid his outburst, his meltdowns, you were always direct to him and never lied. he respected you more than anyone. he sees it in his mother, and relatives, how they dance around him as if he is fragile.

when nathan moved away, the first year he visited every break he could. summer, fall, winter and spring spend together. when he wasn’t there with you, he texted you. sending letters, postcards and hour long phone calls. his father hated this, more than anything.

(“depending not only on someone, but on such a low class person? don’t you know that you’re being used? they only see you as a walking wallet! i will put an end to this.”)

the only time dr. jacoby has seen sean prescott in person is when he expressed his concern regarding a codependent friendship with someone from florida. looking back on it, the doctor realised he was lied to and he was able to convince nathan to stop the contact, the only stable and positive influence in his life.

nathan wishes he could say that he got back in contact with you, that you were best friends again, but life is cruel and he’s a coward. he misses you, more than anything. he thinks he’s obsessed with you, dreams were about you (both dreams and nightmares), his day was spend imagining what you were up to, what you look like now. the silly thing is, nathan has never told anyone about you. victoria knew that he had an ex best friend in florida, but she didn’t know any details, rachel knew he was hung up on someone, jefferson knew that there was someone inhabiting his heart and mind.

and well. the school knew somethings. see, the thing is, when you’re high some things slip out. sometimes you mumble a name once or thrice when you’re passed out, and when you (try) hooking up with someone, you moan the wrong name. more than once. with different people. yeah. when one person claims he said the wrong name it’s one thing, but three? he was in deep shit.

victorias nosiness didn’t help, she wanted all the gory details, but he couldn’t say anything. what was he supposed to say? i fucked it up with the best person, because i couldn’t stand up to my shitty father and useless psychiatrist? sure. part of him was sure that she saw the pictures of you he has in his drawers, in his albums, hidden away.

for a short time nathan thinks he moved on, when he met rachel. she was pretty, smart and nice. she was less than you and much more. and he thinks he’s ok, ok with the distance and unknown which surrendes you. why did all your social media accounts have to be private?

nathan is 18 and it has been nearly 4 years since he has seen you. blackwell turned into the senior focused art academy, just like it was planned. he entered his first year in the 2 year programme and finally he was able to make a name for himself. victoria turned the vortex club into a group for the elite just like how she planned, with nathan’s help. he wasn’t the victim anymore, he finally ruled over the school grounds. summer passed and before he could register it, it was fall break.

it was the last few days and students started to move back into their dorms. the talk right now where the new students attending, some students dropped out because they were catched with drugs on their person, some couldn’t afford the rising tuition prices and others simply moved away because of their parents. nathan couldn’t careless, those who left aren’t close to him, but who is truly close to the prescott heir? he can’t lie though, he lost one of his best customers, or more like frank did.

victoria was in nathan’s dorm room, she was checking out the new student’s. according to her, there were no new people in the girl dorm’s who fit in the vortex club. how tragic. outside on the hallway was some commotion,

“please, move and unlock your door before i decide against helping you with your furniture.” could be heard from the outside, spoken by an unknown voice. the room besides nathan was being occupied. sad. he will miss the privacy and silence. especially now, with furniture being build. fucking hell.

“oh my, hottie alert. two of them even.” victoria was peeking out of his door.

“oh yeah? found some new members?” she hummed, “let’s go over and introduce ourselves. first impressions are everything. before the freaks come and snatch `em away.”

nathan groaned, “give me a minute. i’m still fucking hangover from yesterday. fuck, frank needs to stop stretching his shit or one day i’m going to die, for real.” victoria only chuckled at her best friend.

stepping away from the door she got out here phone and looked herself over in the camera, fixing a few strands and wiping away lipstick which started to smear over her lips. in the meantime nathan got up from his bed, going through his har with his hands and putting on his iconic jacket. with that he left the room, victoria right behind him. looking his door before they make their way over to his new neighbours.

and honestly, he should have expected this, because you always meet someone twice. or that’s what you always said. the door was open, and some guy had his back turned towards them. damn, he’s tall. it’s kinda overkill. turning around, the stranger nearly ran into him and victoria,

“shit! my bad, i didn’t see you there…do we know each other?”

you weren’t who nathan saw when he found out you were back, or more like you were here. in his life. instead, he saw face to face with your twin. the guy was freakishly tall, nathan remembered how small he used to be, now he was over 6 feet tall with clear defined muscles.

nathan with his proud 5`7 feet felt his fragile ego being tested, simply by the fact that some guy he used to know when he was, like, 13 was now way taller than him. and part of him wants to lash out, yell at oliver for not watching where he’s fucking going. but nathan was aware that this would kill any chance of reconciling with you. starting a fight with your brother would immediately put him on your shitlist, even if you hate oliver. sometimes.

(“he’s still my brother. if you talk badly about him again, i’m going to throw you out of this window.”)

“jesus himself could stand before you and you wouldn’t recognise him. stop bothering people, this is the third time you have asked someone this. get your stuff already.” your clearly annoyed voice rang through the room. thankfully this took away n

oliver scratched his head, “man, not my fault i can’t recognise faces for shit. my name’s oliver. nice to meet you guys!”

victoria the angel (or devil) took over the conversation, noticing that nathan was a tiny bit overwhelmed, “hi! i’m victoria and this is my best friend nathan. we just wanted to welcome you to blackwell. if you need any help don’t be afraid to ask us.” she put on her best mask of friendliness. “we are the leaders of the vortex cub, a group for blackwells elite. i’m sure you will fit right in.” taking out a flyer she gave it to him.

reading it over oliver said, “me? for sure. i don’t know about grumpy bear back there.”

“what’s that supposed to mean?”

“you’re my twin, and i love you but you’re mean. like, even teachers are afraid of you. well, i better get going before you throw something at me.” with that oliver left his spot at the door and nathan finally can look at you. you were sitting in the middle of the room, an unfinished shelf laying on the floor and a toolbox was at your side. in one hand you held a screwdriver and in the other hand, raised into the air you held a pillow, obviously ready to throw it.

you look just like he remembered and at the same time it feels like he’s looking at a stranger. you’re not quite as skinny anymore and your eye bags weren’t as dark anymore. wearing a oversized hoodie and jeans, just like when you were a kid. but now he knows it’s probably more a fashion choice instead of only owning hand me downs and extra big clothes to grow into. of course, you still have to be stupidly attractive. now you wear glasses, too.

you lowered the pillow back to the ground, now that your target left. looking down at the shelf you pouted and said in a small voice, “i’m not mean.” your piercing gaze drifted over to victoria and then nathan, “hi, i’m the mean y/n, apparently.” when you saw him, you did a small double take. victoria and her awareness immediately caught that. stupid artists and their eye for details, especially since she has heard that name mumbled many times.

“oh? where are you guys from?” she asked, smiling at you.

“uhh…florida,” when you saw her raise a brow, hinting at waiting more details you continued, “fort lauderdale, to be exact.”

“what a coincidence! nathan here also grew up there. do you perhaps know each other?” the way victoria smiled reminded you of a dog barring it’s teeth in a warning.

nathan knew you and you would play along with whatever lie he went with, but part of him doesn’t want to lie. here’s his chance to actually start a path, to be friends again (or to be more. but you probably hate him, on the other hand who doesn’t?).

“…long fuckin` time no see, y/n.” what a lame way to say hello after nearly 4 years, but it’s not like he can rewind time.

before he could register it he was hit square in the face with the discarded pillow, “what the fuck? what happened to forgive and forget? huh?”

“woah..” only now did nathan register that fucking warren was also in the room, sitting on the bed. the guy was impressed, he never thought he would see someone attack nathan fucking prescott. warren is putting you on a pedestal right now.

“what the fuck are you looking at, loser?” in true nathan fashion he had to lash out at someone and it couldn’t be you. warren quickly put his hands up in surrender, regretting ever speaking.

“no fighting in my room, guys.” oliver returned in his hands two boxes stacked on top of each other. looking at nathan, he said “so i do know you, what kind of unforgivable act did you commit for grumpy to punish you with the pillow of hatred?”

“stop calling me that!”

oliver walked further into the room, dropping his boxes near you and asking you something, in a hushed voice and a language unknown to the others in the room. when you answered his eyes widened in shock.

“the rich kid! of course i remember you, dude. in fact, y/n will forgive you for whatever you did and marry you. so we- you guys can be rich and shit, together.” oliver nodded wisely, while you looked so tired. shaking your head, you simply started to screw around with the screws in the shelf.

quickly dismantling the shelf, you dropped the screws messily on the floor and stood up, pointing to your brother you said, “you’re horrible,” pointing to nathan, “i’m incredibly angry with you,” pointing to both warren and victoria you spoke your last words, “it was nice to meet you both. warren, i will take you up on that offer to show me around.” and then you walked out with the tool box in hand.

“are you finally going to tell the story about y/n?”

“…fuck, i don’t know how to put up any furniture.”

#life is strange #life is strange x reader #nathan prescott #nathan prescott x reader #warren graham #warren graham x reader #life is strange imagine #x reader #nathan prescott imagine #warren graham imagine