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thefanficmonster · 3 years

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Tell Me It’s Not Too Late

(Sequel to Switchblade)

Corpse Husband x Reader (Female)

Warnings: Heartbreak, Swearing

Genre: Angst, Fluff

Summary: When is it considered ‘too late’ when it comes to expressing feelings? Is there even a time limit? Is the chance only momentary - is it a second that passes you by with no possibility of returning? All Corpse can do is hope that’s not the case. Cause if it is.....he’d rather not think about that.

Requested - sort of, but not in a typical way. Thank you to all the readers of ‘Switchblade’ that wanted to see the story have an ending that’d lead to a new start. Here it is, guys! Hope it lives up to what you expected. Love you all to the moon and back. 💖💖💖

I end my stream after almost three hours of constant scares. I sigh, slipping the headset off my ears so it’s hanging around my neck. I don’t feel that fulfilling feeling that I’m always met with upon ending a stream. I look at the countless scratches and little holes on the surface of my desk - evidence of the fear and frustration I experience while playing certain games. Not all of them are caused by that, however - Coming home after possibly the most humiliating night of my life, that desk and a few other pieces of furniture suffered my wrath and are now decorated with stab wounds that were a result of uncontrollable rage, hurt, self-hatred and self-pity. It took me a while to put an end to my hazardous, switchblade wielding rampage throughout my house, but the tears didn’t stop until the early morning hours.

I didn’t care that my feelings weren’t reciprocated. That was and is the least of my troubles. The most amount of hurt comes from the fact that I ruined something wonderful for myself. Corpse is the only person I’ve felt this close to all my life and now, due to my own poor decision making, I no longer have him. He no longer wants to be a part of the shit-show that is my life. Especially not now that he knows how messy things get when I show my forever-hidden feelings. I can’t blame him. I know I’d be running for the hills if I were him. He deserves a person who knows what’s going on in their life. Who has themselves and their surroundings figured out. Not someone who has an irregular streaming schedule and catches feelings for her best friend, ruining the friendship altogether in the process.

As I stand up from my chair, accidentally hitting the handle of the switchblade on the edge of my desk. I look down at it and how tightly I’m holding it. I seem to not be able to let go of it. Almost like I see it as my last bit of link to Corpse. The remnants of the connection I felt between us.

Maybe I should return it.

No, that’d be weird. I’d either have to go over there and give it back or send it via mail which is worse. It just feels like a harsh gesture - mailing something so meaningful as though it’s as worthless as the bills people get in the mail. I can’t send it through others, I don’t want anyone else getting involved. The more people know, the more real it is.

I’m aware I’m being both overdramatic and irrational, but you have to understand how much pain I’m in. I can’t guarantee the pain will go away or even lessen if I let this switchblade go, but it’s the only thing I haven’t tried.

Only problem is - I can’t let it go. I can’t find it in me to destroy it or throw it away. A part of me is willing to take the suffering of keeping it just cause it wants to hold on to that little connection it resembles. It’s evidence it existed to begin with. I believe it’s worth the pain. The hurt will go away eventually, but the memories are forever. I’ll look back at the time I had an amazing person such as Corpse to call ‘best friend’ and I’ll have something to prove to myself that it wasn’t a fever dream.

“Oh for fuck’s sake.“ I mumble as I finally uncurl my fingers from around the damn thing and put in down on my desk.

I take the headset off and proceed to head out onto the balcony to light what I call a ‘stress cigarette’. I’m not a regular smoker, but when everything just caves, I prefer to resort to a quick puff rather than grabbing a drink. I can say no to a second cigarette but not to a second drink. That second will then turn into a third and so on. And I don’t trust myself when drunk. I don’t personally know, but I’ve been told I’m rather unpredictable.

For the first few seconds while I’m standing there I don’t notice the pouring rain by some strange miracle. I can only focus on the chill of the breeze and the fresh breath that’s finally entering my lungs. I take a moment to breathe in the cool air before I start mixing it with the cigarette smoke.

With my eyes closed, I hear more than I feel the rain on me. Storm noises always distract me from the actual storm, they calm me down. However, the sudden loud thunder causes me to open my eyes in a matter of milliseconds. I frown, slightly upset that I didn’t catch glimpse of the lightning that the thunder probably followed.

I’m not upset for too long, though. A lightning flashes right opposite me, creating the most mesmerizing of pattern you can see in the night sky during a storm. It’s so bright, it allows me to see my whole, usually unlit garden perfectly in that second or two it graces the sky.

Wait

My balcony has a clear view of my entire front yard and all it takes a glance to the left to be able to see the front doorstep.

Don’t freak yourself out, it’s just a trick of the light

I stay quiet and as still as a statue as I await another flash of lightning, my heart speeding past the point of a healthy pulse and into the realm of a near heart attack. The storm seems to be on my side because maybe a minute later another lightning bolt cuts through the black of the night.

Sure enough, there’s a person standing outside my front door.

Fuck, what do I do?!

The person doesn’t appear to be moving. They are standing just as still as I am, facing towards the house.

I thank the universe the lights inside the house are off. I turned them off cause I wanted the ultimate scary experience playing that game. The only light is the faint glow of my computer screen which is, thankfully, barely visible. I slowly start backing up towards the sliding glass door, never taking my eyes off the figure that I can just barely make out now that my surroundings have fallen into darkness again. If it weren’t for the lightning I would’ve never been able to see them.

I manage to get back inside, soaked as though I just got out of a pool, without making a single sound. Just to be safe, I shut my monitor off. I grab my phone to use as a flashlight in one hand and the switchblade just finds its way into the other, my fingers curling around it tightly, more on instinct than to use as a weapon. I know I probably won’t be able to stab whoever’s out there.

I tiptoe my way down the stairs where all the lights are also off. I flick the blade out as I hesitantly and shakily make my way to the door to look through the peephole. I let out an unsteady exhale as I look at the the figure who is now standing further away and seems to have one arm in the air, curled at the elbow.

Just as I’m about to pull away from the door to dial 911 another flash of lightning illuminates the yard, the figure along with it.

Can we go back to it being an intruder?

It’s no intruder, surprisingly - to my dismay.

I turn my phone’s flash off and reach for the switch next to the door, flicking the light on before opening the door and walking out.

“I NEARLY STABBED YOU WITH YOUR OWN BLADE!“ I yell in a desperate attempt to be heard over the waterfall of rain.

I can finally see him properly thanks to the light in my hallway. He looks like he hasn’t slept in years. He has his hood up but his black locks are sticking out in every direction from under the soaked material, not being protected from the droplets whatsoever. I read the shock in his eyes, almost like he didn’t know I lived there. He doesn’t make an attempt to approach or walk away from me so we just stand there, in the rain, staring at each other as though it’s the first time we’ve seen one another.

I snap out of the trance he has put me in, shaking my head at the ridiculousness of the situation as I step towards him, grabbing onto his wrist, “Come on, we look like drowned rats.” I don’t give him time to react as I drag him inside, closing the door once we enter. “OK, from the top now: Why were you embracing your inner serial killer on my front porch?” I keep blabbering, diverting my gaze to anything but him. “Fucking hell, I could’ve stabbed you! You could’ve gotten really badly hurt! I -...”

“You know, I wish you stabbed me.“ He finally puts an end to my sorry excuse for frustration, I’m aware I look and sound miserable. His voice drags my eyes straight to his, fixing them there. “I know you can’t kill a cockroach on your own, and I know you most definitely wouldn’t even scratch a person, but I wish you had hurt me. Inflict fifty stab wounds on me and you still won’t hurt me as much as I hurt you.“ His hand swiftly pushes the hood off his head, grabbing onto his drenched locks as an expression of pain paints itself on his face. He’s the one diverting his gaze now, “I know what you mistook my silence for and I want you to get that out of your head.“

I wince at the pang in my chest, barely restraining my hand from flying up to rest over my heart, “Don’t humor me, Corpse! I’m not a child and this is not a game!”

“I’m not humoring you. I’m telling you...“ he makes a step towards me, grabbing hold of my ice cold hands, “I’m telling you I’m an asshole that freezes up when it’s least acceptable. I’m telling you I’m the worst at expressing how I feel. I’m telling you I can’t open foil. But you already knew all that. And you still liked me.“ He breaths in, refilling his lungs before continuing his rant, “I know you can be very chaotic. A real handful. A fucking tornado. But I love you. I love you as every natural disaster you represent. And if you could humor me...“ One of his hands releases mine, coming up to push a strand of hair away from my face, resting his hand on my cheek. “...by giving me one more chance. You always let me try multiple times when I stumble over what I’m trying to say. Can you do that, for me? For us?“

I let out a dramatic sigh, rolling my eyes. “If I say yes will you stop showing up like that on my doorstep?“ Of course, my primal instinct is to act tough and cool when my heart rate is once again going at the speed from back at the balcony. The skin of face and neck is red and burning hot. My eyes are rimmed with tears, I hope he doesn’t notice.

“Yeah. I’ll start coming in through the chimney instead.“ He visibly relaxes, a smile dancing at the corner of his lips. He lifts the hand that’s still holding the switchblade, prying it out of my grasp. “No sharp objects, please.”

He drops it in the pocket of his hoodie, finally leaning down to erase any last bit of doubt I have left. This kiss teaches me a lot of things.

Love isn’t linear - nothing about it is linear. Not falling in nor falling out of it. Feelings aren’t digital or binary - it’s not always as black and white as we might want to believe. Feelings don’t just come and go. They are always present, but it depends on us weather they’re suppressed or expressed. We fear the latter cause we fear vulnerability and change. But we also crave the positive outcome we have a 50% chance of getting. It’s a fifty-fifty game, but here’s the thing: if you never express your feelings it’s a zero-a hundred chance that you won’t receive the outcome you’d like.

I took the fifty over the zero chance and regretted it for a day or two. It gave me closure if nothing more. It let me stand under the spotlight and carry my pride on my shoulders despite the tears in my eyes.

My feelings being reciprocated is just another benefit. But no longer being able to call Corpse ‘best friend’ cause he’s now got a bigger and better title is the positive outcome I have been dreaming of.

He makes it all worth it. He is worth all of it.

And if I had to go through all that again, you can bet your ass I would.

@susceptible-but-siriusexual @simonsbluee @save-the-sky @hacker-ghost @itsminniekat @bi-andready-tocry @imtiredaffff @jazzkaurtheglorious @hereforbeebo @fandomgirl17 @chrysanthykios @maehemscorpyus @loraleiix @letsloveimagines @annshit @i-cant-choose-a-username-help @enigmaticmaze @divine-artemis

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wolfling06 · 3 years

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Bigger they are, the Harder they Fall (sequel)

“Hope you two are ready, cuz you’re gonna be stuck here for a long time.”

That’s all the 2 heard from the bomb man above, looking into his orange eyes glistening with playful revenge and mischief, though still slightly tired out from before. they trembled in anticipation, their giggles bubbling out on occasion, but they didn’t feel to be in danger, this was Whitty they were with after all. That still didn’t mean he wouldn’t keep his previous promise.

Without warning his arms wrapped around the two, pulling them into a big bear hug. with his arms their length, as compared to the small kids in his grasp, he was able to wrap his arms around each child and still be able to tickle their sides individually, that, and have an opening to their necks for raspberries.

he started with Skid, his startled laughter sounded the squeakiest and highest of the two, and he seemed too distracted with trying, and failing, to push Whitty’s body away from his own. he blew a raspberry into the crook of his neck before he could register even breaking eye contact.

“eeeek!! nahohohoho, nohoho neheheck!!” He squealed out, wriggling like a little worm in the man’s grasp. he only chuckled some, amused by the mixed euphoric reactions. meanwhile, where Skid was struggling, for the most part, Pump became like a ragdoll in his arms, as if already succumbing to the tickles. that didn’t stop him from jumping suddenly and squealing out when Whitty’s hand found a sweet spot at his hip.

“Nahahahahaha! Whi-Whiihihihity, wahahait!!” This was when Whitty played a card he had seen Pico play on these two before.

“Whitty? there is no Whitty! you’re dealin’ with the Tickle Monster now!” he exclaimed.

“Nohohohoho!!” both cried gleefully in unison, the tease coaxing more laughter from the spooky duo. their similar reactions got a bit of a laugh of his own from Whit- I mean, the Tickle Monster.

“Yes!” He mocked teasingly, “and the Tickle Monster is very hungry for some little kids’ ribs right now, lets fix that, shall we?”

without a moment to spare, he readjusted the two with surprisingly graceful and smooth movements. the two were now pinned beneath him and pressed side by side, with one of each hand pinned to the couch above their heads while the other was free to move around, that that it would help them given that he would be attacking the opposite side of their free arms. Pump’s left and Skid’s right.

He gave Skid a break from the raspberries and went to Pump’s side, nibbling into his ribs and making obnoxious nomming and growling noises, allowing Skid to catch his breath and watch the show, fully aware that he was next. “EEEEK! NAHOHOHO!!!! DOHOHOHONT EHEAT MEHEE!!” He squealed out, startling himself with a sudden snort at the end of that sentence.

“Hm, wasn’t aware I’d be eating pork today,” Whitty continued to tease,”and such a squealy one at that.” He went on to give a few more raspberries after pulling up the kids shirt to the soft, pale flesh beneath and making a good target of his belly. afterwards, he gave the poor lad a break and moved on to Skid, showing even less mercy than before.

“NAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!!! w-wait!! WAHAHAIT!!” the small, squeaky child cried. but his halfhearted pleas fell on deaf ears.

however, Pump managed to find a different way out, one hand was free, and Whitty was too busy with Skid to notice anything he did, so what if he just-

“PBPBFT- HMF! HEHEY!” Whitty cried suddenly, pulling away entirely and hugging himself upon feeling a tiny hand scitter along his side, he felt someone jerk out from under him, leaving only Skid who was still catching his breath. Pump got up and ran off the couch as fast as he could, aware that Whitty would chase after him and give Skid some time, making it harder for the former to get a firm grasp on both of them.

“Hey! get back here!” he called, chucking slightly at the over childishness of this game. he got up and ran after him, not taking long to catch up, he returned from the hallway with a giggling and panicked Pump lugged over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and then tossed carefully onto the couch with a sound “Oomf!”

He we straight for Pump instead of evening it out, Skid was worn out enough there’s no way he’d be able to help. He straddled Pump’s legs and proceeded to torment the poor boy’s hips, having previously kept a mental note on his reaction to a single hand before. he still couldn’t help but feel surprised at the near screaming it produced at first.

“NAHHAHAHAHAHA!!! WH-WHIHITTY, NOHOHOHOHO!!” he cried, grabbing Whitty’s wrists and throwing his head back into the couch in sheer mirth, his legs kicking out only slightly behind the two of them, though not much given they were almost completely, albeit, unintentionally, underneath Whitty’s long ass legs.

Skid panted slightly, hearing the squealing euphoric state his best friend was in and knew he had to help. slowly, he krept closer and closer until he was standing upright on the couch nearly beside the bomb head.

“lehet him go!” he shouted, laughing some as he jumped some and attempted to pull Whitty away from Pump, only succeeding in the much taller being to turn around and grab Skid, giving him the same merciless treatment as he did Pump. the two of them were both laughing messes now.

“NOHOHO MOHORE MOHONSTER!! NOHO MORE MOHOHONSTEHER!!!” SKid cried, though there was no real desperation in his voice. Whitty had almost forgotten he was still the Tickle monster. “Yes, more Tickle Monster! He’s here to tickle you all day!” as he said that he released one hand from Skid and latched onto Pump’s side with it. his own laughter, however, was drowned out by the louder, shriller laughter coming from Skid. However, the two eventually began to reach their limit and began to cry mercy.

“Mehercy! MEHERCY!!” Pump cried, sounding rather breathless.

Whitty then knew to take pitty on the kids and slowed to a stop, backing off and allowing them to catch their breath, lying there on the couch as giggly, panting puddles. he got up and grabbed the spooky duo 2 glasses of water, allowing for them to drink and help their potentially hoarse throats and voices. he sat on the other end of the couch, thinking they probably didn’t want any physical contact until the ghostly after tickles had completely left their body. so he was surprised when the two came up and began to cuddle with him. but it wasn’t unpleasant. as they began to clam down, Mario Kart long forgotten, the three sat there in a peaceful silence, enjoying one another’s presence.

a few hours later

“Hey Whitty, I’m back! sorry i left for so long I-” Carol stopped in her tracks upon entering their shared home after a friendly game of golf with Gf to see Whitty asleep with Skid and Pump cuddling up against his chest, his head tilted back and he was snoring a little. Carol looked at the long since lost and ended game though it was still running, she went over and turned it off before taking out her phone and carefully snapping a photo of the peaceful three. they all looked so tuckered out, she would ask about what happened later. all she knew now was that this was an extremely adorable scene that she dare not disturb. slowly, she crept out of the room so as to let the three sleep, only to grab a blanket of her own and join them, the four all now snoozing off peacefully together after a long day of video games and tickle fights.

what a satisfying end to one’s day, right?

END

Note: yea i know i sorta rushed the end there, i wanted it to have a satisfying and fluffy ending but feel I might have rushed it but eh, it was taking me for fucking ever to finish it so i hope it was worth the wait, peace out!

#fnf whitty tickle fight skid and pump carol mario Kart switch!skid and pump switch!Whitty took me forever to finish. worth the wait

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silverflame2724 · 3 years

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Hello there! Can you make a sequel to the golden core reveal prompt where WWX verbally lashes out at a few of the cultivators for pitying him?

Sure! But just to warn you, even if he lashes out, people will probably brush it off as him being temperamental cause his core can’t regulate the resentful energy that’s probably irritating him! :)

______________________

Wei Wuxian couldn’t hide out in the forest forever. He eventually had to come out and go the banquet. But.....But.....

Everyone knows. He leans heavily against a tree. Everyone knows I don’t have a core now.

What do I do now?

After all, he just can’t get it out of his mind. The stares of pity everyone shot him. Wei Wuxian could brave anything, whether it be disappointment, failure, dishonor, shame, anger...... It couldn’t really affect him.

But if there was one thing he hated, it was pity.

He hated that feeling with a passion. If people fear him, think he’s the devil, a demon, fine. He can take it. But for someone to pity him? Think he’s weak and fragile? That’s where Wei Wuxian crosses the line.

Maybe he could just run away and find somewhere to die. He had been planning on dying in the war. He just miraculously survived it and had no choice but to return and do his head disciple duties that he couldn’t perform as well as before.

Maybe this will be the last straw that finally gets Jiang Cheng to abandon him. After all, what use is there for a coreless Head Disciple?

But Wei Wuxian was coward. He wanted to leave on his own terms. Perhaps, if there was some reasonable, justifiable factor that could make him leave, then maybe--

“Wei Ying!”

“A’ Xian!”

Wei Wuxian whipped his head around to find his two most favorite people catching up to him. He caught the worried looks on both their faces and just fled. He didn’t want to analyze their expressions any further because what if he found pity in their eyes? If the two people he wanted approval from the most had that emotion, then Wei Wuxian might not be able to handle it anymore.

It was a futile effort to try and run from them when they were so close.

After all, Lan Zhan had such a strong core and Shijie, while her core was weak, still energized her and both of them caught either of his wrists, stilling him.

Wei Wuxian trembled for a moment but stopped trying to pull away from their grip. They let go but he refused to turn around. He took a deep breath and gave them the best smile he could manage.

“Is something wrong? Why did you come after me, Lan Zhan, Shijie?”

Lan Zhan seemed hesitant, trying to gather his words up. Shijie went first, carefully grasping his hands. “A’ Xian......A’ Xian, forgive your Shijie.”

Wei Wuxian shook his head. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Shijie.”

She just glared at him. “I do and you know it. A’ Xian, I asked you to pick up your sword many times without a care for your feelings. I knew something was off. I knew something might have happened. But I left it be because I knew that you would tell me eventually.” She studied his face. “Even if it wasn’t the whole truth.”

“Shijie......”

“I know I shouldn’t be confronting you so soon after this had happened, but I wanted you to know, and I’m speaking for A’ Cheng when I say this. We will never abandon you, even after this. You will still be the head disciple, you will still have a place with us.”

“But--Shijie--!”

“But nothing.” She said firmly. “Of course, neither of us will force you to. But A’ Xian, if not A’ Cheng, you could have at least turned to me for help. You know I wouldn’t judge you. You’re my didi, no matter how much the world denies us of that fact.”

“Shijie.......” He trailed off. “Okay.”

It seemed like Lan Zhan gathered himself together at this point. “Wei Ying.” Lan Wangji started. “Wei Ying, I.....I’m sorry.”

Out of everything he expected Lan Zhan to say, that was not it.

“Wei Ying, I am guilty of forcing you to stop demonic cultivation. I did not stop to think why you would go down that path. I kept pushing where I knew it hurt and I didn’t stop. I.....I apologize for that.”

“Lan Zhan, no. It’s fine. You didn’t know. I made sure no one would know.”

“Still.”

Wei Wuxian shook his head. “It’s fine. I’ll be fine.”

Neither of them believed him, but let it pass.

..........................................

No matter how much Wei Wuxian wanted to decline going, he was still the head disciple of the Jiang sect. He was required to attend.

He should have known, though, that despite the banquet starting off as normal with the reinstatement of Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan’s engagement, that things wouldn’t go on so easily.

Namely because of Jin Zixun.

“And why is he here?” Jin Zixun, who apparently hadn’t learnt his lesson, pointed at Wei Wuxian. “He’s not even a cultivator.”

Wei Wuxian barely suppressed a flinch as all eyes in the room swiveled to him.

“He is my brother.” Jiang Cheng glared. “He is the head disciple of the Yunmeng Jiang sect, regardless. And you will respect him as such.”

Jin Zixun snorted, ready to unleash a tirad, until Jin Guangshan cleared his throat and told Jin Zixun to be quiet or he’ll be escorted out.

There was a moment of silence before whispers started up about Wei Wuxian giving his golden core to Jiang Cheng, and oh, how did that happen?, there were rumors that Sandu Shengshou lost his core to Wen Zhuliu, oh really.......

The gazes of the people in the room turned from concern to confusion to pity and Wei Wuxian just couldn’t take it anymore.

“Stop looking at me like that!” Wei Wuxian yelled. “Stop that! I’m still the demonic cultivator that you all love and hate, so don’t look at me like that!”

“Wei Wuxian---”

“A few days ago, all you could ever talk about was how uncontrolled and feared I am. I’d rather have your fear than your pity! So don’t look at me like that!! I don’t need your pity, I’m fine!!”

That didn’t help.

The cultivators merely brushed off his tirade as a side effect of demonic cultivation that he was unable to ease due to being coreless. Wei Wuxian felt the continuous noise of people talking about him drown his senses. He breathed harder and harder.

He felt a familiar hand wrap around him but he shook it off and fled the room. He couldn’t stay in there a moment longer. He didn’t think he could stay anywhere a moment longer.

Because everyone knew.

That he was weak and vulnerable and pitiful.

Wei Wuxian broke.

___________________

Don’t know if this was satisfactory but here you go! I’ve turned off asks at the moment because I need to fill out a few more prompts and want to have the time to get to all of them, but I hope you enjoyed it regardless!

#wei ying #wei wuxian #lan zhan #lan wangji #jiang yanli #jiang cheng #jiang wanyin #mdzs #angst #hurt #comfort #despite wwx's insistence that he's okay he's not

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nerdyfangirl67 · 4 years

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Now I Know - Criminal Minds Reader Insert

Pairing: Hotch x reader

Warnings: language, slight angst, fluff, wide range of emotions expressed by reader in the letters

Word count: 2248

A/N: This is a sequel to If You Only Knew, set in the future when Aaron finds the letters the reader wrote. The reader is married to Aaron now. And my requests are always open so feel free to send me some!

Aaron is cleaning out the attic and finds the box of letters the reader wrote for him during a relationship break. He reads them and finds out how the reader truly feels

AARON’S POV

It was one of those days when I didn’t know exactly what to do with myself. I had fixed the squeaky step leading up the front porch, replaced the garage door light, and even cleaned the gutters. And it was only one in the afternoon and I wasn’t sure what else to do for the day.

On any typical day off, Y/N and I would be spending time doing something with Jack. Today though was different. Y/N was out with Garcia and Prentiss on a much-needed girls’ shopping trip. Jack was over at a friend’s for a playdate and wouldn’t be back until Y/N picked him up on her way home.

After a quick lunch of a PB&J sandwich with a side of a macaroni salad Y/N had made the other day, I decide to head up to the attic and clean out some of the many boxes that had been pushed aside and forgotten when we had moved into the house.

Pushing open the attic door sends up a dust cloud, causing me to have to wave my arms around like a mad man to clear the entry as I let out a harsh cough. Once the dust clears, I trudge up the rickety stairs, my eyes scanning the room as I reached the top. There were quite a few more boxes than I had anticipated, all strewn haphazardly across the floor.

Heaving out a sigh, I move forward, examining the boxes and decide to start with those marked miscellaneous.

Two hours and six boxes later and the attic looked no cleaner than it had when I started. I start looking for the next box of seemingly random crap when I come across a small wooden container, resting atop a large cardboard box with Aaron written across it.

Curiosity had me stepping forward to grab the wooden container. Intricate designs were carved into the top of the container and a small gold latch held the lid closed. I trace a gentle hand across the top before carefully opening it.

I pull out a thick bundle, quickly realizing that it was a stack of letters wrapped in gold and silver tissue paper. I slowly unwrap the paper, careful not to tear it.

Written in thick, black ink and staring back at me is my name and the address of my old apartment. No name is in the left upper corner, leaving me with a mixed feeling of confusion and curiosity.

After deliberating for a solid five minutes on whether I should open the letters, as all were addressed to me, none of which had a return address, I decided to go for it.

I grab the top letter of the stack and neatly open it. A glance at the paper tells me that it is from Y/N, dated four years ago.

Aaron,

I don’t have words that will ever truly tell you what I feel.

How could you do this to me? To us? I’ve spent the last year falling a little bit more in love with you every day. And I love Jack as if he was mine. He feels like he is.

But you threw that all away. You told me I deserved something, someONE, better and then walked away with my heart.

You are the sun to my moon. How in the hell am I supposed to be me without the biggest part of me?

I hate what you did. I hate that I can’t make myself go into work because I’m afraid that I might run into you. I fucking work in an entirely different unit, on a completely different floor, and yet, your presence hangs over that building like a shadow.

I hate that I let myself become someone who didn’t know who they were without their partner. I hate that I’m constantly looking at the door, hoping you’ll walk back into my apartment, pull me into one of those bear hugs I love, and tell me it was all a mistake and you’ll never leave again. But the thing that I hate most is that I am still in love with you. That’s what I hate the most.

You ripped my heart out and walked away, leaving me a blubbering mess.

How could I ever forgive you?

Y/N

The letter leaves me breathless. She never told me how she felt during that almost two-month break. And I can’t believe that I ever let her feel that way.

It takes me less than a second to rip open the next letter, much more destructively than I had the first.

Aaron,

It hurts so bad. I feel like I’m slowly dying and I can’t bring myself to care. It’s like I was flying and then you brought me crashing to the ground. Hard.

Whenever you speak, I hang on to every word, as if I was drowning and your words could save me. Well, I’d do anything not to have clung so tightly as you ripped my buoy out from under me and let me drown.

That’s what I’m doing, drowning.

How can I ever live life without you, when I know how good it was with you?

I know it’s all cliches, but that’s how you make me feel. Like a protagonist at the end of a cheesy rom-com, running away with my prince to live happily ever after, except I don’t get my happy ending.

Gosh, it hurts so bad, the pain of losing you. You were my everything and it turns out, I was more of your nothing.

She didn’t sign her name at the bottom of this one. Combining that with the dried, smeared ink on the page and it becomes apparent that she was crying so hard that she couldn’t finish.

A lump settles in my throat, making it hard to breathe as the guilt consumes me. I’m slower this time, as I move to grab another one, afraid of finding out how much I truly hurt her.

Aaron,

I miss you.

And I will always love you.

And if I can’t make you as happy as you make me, then, as much as it will hurt me, I hope you find someone who will.

With love always

Although this one is short, the profoundness of what was written is clear.

She had been willing to give up if she knew I wasn’t happy with her, no matter how much it hurt her.

I open another, ready to see more of what she wrote in these letters.

Aaron,

The past couple of nights I have been having the same dream.

It starts normally. I’m in the kitchen, making breakfast on what I assume is a Saturday morning. Jack comes barreling into the room, excited to help make pancakes. You come in a short while later, much slower and quieter than the first Hotchner did.

In your arms is our four-month-old son, whom you had grabbed from the nursery on your way downstairs. Jack is rambling about a dream he had as he starts pouring a bag of chocolate chips into the pancake batter. I smile at you, which you return with a silent ‘I love you.’

The scene changes and instead of being in the kitchen with the three of you, I am in my bed, waking up to light shining through the crack between the curtains. I roll to my right to find another person in the bed with me.

At first, I think it’s you, with the dark head of hair peeking out from under the quilt. I move my hand to trail through it, realizing it is not you. At all.

My hand, which I had quickly removed upon coming to the realization it wasn’t you, causes the person next to me to stir and turn over, revealing someone nondescript, someone who wasn’t you. I scramble out of the bed, finding that this isn’t the home that I had just been in with you and Jack and our new son.

I scramble towards the door and fly down the hallway, only stopping to open the doors along the way. None of the rooms I open have any evidence of you or Jack existing. There are no pictures, no children’s toys, no red ties casually strewn across the back of the vanity chair, no case files scattered on a bedside table, nothing.

I soon come to the realization that you don’t exist in this version of my life, which absolutely breaks me. I can’t even imagine a life where I didn’t have you or Jack at least as friends.

I couldn’t be happy in this version of my life and I know it. That’s what makes this dream a nightmare. The fact that it shows me what my life could very much end up like if I don’t fight for you, or for Jack.

I don’t want to share my life with anyone but you Aaron. Forget the idea of ‘you deserve someone better’. That doesn’t matter to me because all I want is you. YOU are perfect. YOU make me a better person. YOU make me want to strive for a life full of laughter and love.

No one but you.

Y/N

This letter truly makes me realize what could have happened had Y/N not come to my door, had she not fought for our relationship, for me.

I reach for another one, but just as my fingers grasp it, I hear a car pull up in the driveway. A glance out the window tells me it’s Y/N and Jack.

I set down everything that had been in my lap while I was on the floor and hurry down the stairs to the kitchen. I manage to beat you there and I lean back against the kitchen island as I wait.

Jack comes rushing into the room and excitedly starts telling me about his play date. I admit I was only listening half-heartedly as I watch Y/N enter the kitchen. She has several different bags in her hands, yet she doesn’t seem to be struggling.

I listen to Jack for a while longer before I send him to pick up his room. Although Jack’s room wasn’t the neatest, I mostly sent him there to get a moment alone with Y/N, who had just returned from our bedroom after dropping off her shopping bags.

I stand fully and call out softly across the kitchen. “Come here, Y/N.” I open my arms up, inviting her in for a hug.

She doesn’t even question my request. Rather, she sets down the knife she was using to prep for dinner and steps into my embrace.

I pull her as close to me as I can, wrapping one arm around her waist and another up to pull her head into my chest.

I simply hold her, the feelings that came when reading those letters rising and falling within me. I don’t know how to bring up what was in those letters, but I know I have to. Not only because me reading them was a violation of her privacy, but also because what she wrote about in those letters was something I had never known about, something she never talked about with me.

“Y/N,” I murmur as I pull back just enough to look her in the eyes, her Y/E/C that always seemed to pull me in. “I found the letters you wrote and put in the attic.”

As I watch her, I can see the moment she realizes exactly what I am talking about. Her eyes widen and she moves back a step. She opens her mouth to respond, but I place a gentle hand on her face.

“I never realized how I had made you feel. I always thought that I was doing what was best for you. You didn’t deserve a man who works all the time, who can’t leave the job at the office, who brought home the darkness and evil he saw every day. I thought you deserved better than that.” I pause, brushing away the lone tear that was trailing down her face.

“I realize now though, that despite what my intentions were, I still hurt you. And it kills me that I can’t go back and take that hurt away or keep myself from doing what I did.” I step closer to her, pressing a kiss to her temple.

“What I can do is promise you that I will never let you feel that way again. I promise you that I’ll tell you how much I love you and how important you are to me everyday.” I finish my impromptu speech, watching her as she looks at me.

She doesn’t say anything for a while, which honestly scares me. But then she is throwing her arms around my neck, pulling me down to her lips.

The kiss is hard and short before she puts her head on my chest. “Thank you Aaron. I know what I said in those letters and a lot of it came from deep down in me.” She presses a kiss to my t-shirt covered chest. “And to me, you’re perfect. You always have been and you always will.”

A feeling of contentment and happiness bubbles in my chest. And I know that whatever happens, as long as I have her by my side, I’ll be able to get through it.

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tundrainafrica · 4 years

Text

Title: A Free Spot

Summary:

"While she was still a commander in the midst of a war, she had to shut out all raw emotion while she watched Levi take down titan after titan, as the airship took her further away from where she had wanted to be. She did too good of a job turning off her emotions then and her last memory of Levi had become a free spot in her mind.”

Slight AU! Levi sacrifices himself in Chapter 132 instead of Hange and Hange deals with the consequences years later.

Written for @levihanweek Angstober 2020. Prompt: Free Spot

Link to cross-postings: AO3

Notes:

A part of me felt like Levi should have gone instead of Hange. That is, if one of them had to go. I'd still rather they both lived and got their happily ever after

I’m in the middle of writing for the greetings and farewell prompt but it's really just not looking to good rn so I'd rather not share it for now. Hopefully, I manage to get the motivation to finish it up. I’m probably gonna write some fluff and domestic Levihan after this. These prompts are just too heavy haha.

Either way, I had so much fun writing for angstober. I hope you enjoy and do tell me what you think!

You know Levi, it feels like my time has come. I want to act as cool as possible so let me go out like this...

It had been two years since the rumbling had stopped for good. Eren was dead. The Eldians and Marleyans had established a peace treaty and the survey corps was declared redundant, replaced with a special defense squad.

Mikasa and Armin willingly took over what was left of building the defense-oriented military. Having seen enough violence and loss to last a lifetime, one soldier slowly and quietly stepped down.

That one soldier helped build what became the new city of Paradis, but still felt the burden of responsibility. Disappearing from society and retiring to some farmland on the outskirts of central Paradis felt wrong although tempting.

That soldier had seen things first hand that most people would never experience, so it was easy to take on a job as a teacher. This was especially since most Eldians did not want a repeat of the last war and who better to teach the future generation than one who had experienced it at the front ranks.

The subjects taught were easy to pick up.

Math. Science. Languages. History.

Most kids would end up mastering the basics anyway and that was more than enough for most jobs. What most people from both sides had failed to master though, was how to empathize and how to critically think. They failed to learn how to talk things through or how to question orders.

How to talk things through. How to question orders.

That was what motivated the soldier-turned-teacher, to supplement lessons with anecdotes from the Survey Corps days. It was like living in one's dreams again. The anecdotes before and after lessons kept the students entertained and it also kept the memory of one important person alive.

Three months into the lesson, one of the students had turned out to be more invested than the others and had raised her hand in the middle of one of their story times.

"Did you marry Levi?"

Maybe the former commander did get carried away.

"The soldier I mean. The one in your stories," the young girl clarified.

“Lena, you shouldn’t have asked that,” another student muttered.

Lena jumped up and bowed her head in embarrassment. "I'm sorry… You always got so excited when you talked about him that I thought…"

Hange only realized then that for a second she had not moved from her spot. She put a hand to her face to see that it was wet. She hastily looked back at the blackboard and wiped her face with the collar of her sweater.

"What would make you think we married?" She managed to ask as she looked back at the young student. Most of the kids in the room were roughly twelve to thirteen years old. At that point, she was still figuring out what could be mentioned and what couldn't to a bunch of preteens.

Lena blushed. "My big sister talked about her boyfriend like that and now they're married."

"Well that story could wait another time. It looks like classes are done for the day." The teacher quickly gathered up her learning materials into one messy pile on the table, thanking whatever god existed for the timing of that question at least.

Some students protested but the teacher did not budge. The latter looked back again at the blackboard as she listened to the students pack up their things and file out of the classrooms.

As soon as the last student left, Hange quickly closed the door behind her, slid on the floor and buried her face on her hands.

Why are you crying? It's been fucking years.

She slammed the floor with her fists, letting the pain that shook through her wrists, act as punishment for that random bout of emotion.

How many stories has she told them?

They had started off as stories detailing the lives of the survey corps members who had given their lives to fight a war fueled by the hate of two nations. Somehow, the stories had shifted to her own relationships. She had talked about Moblit and Erwin, the values they had upheld for the greater good of humanity.

How had she described him for the students to think they married?

Before she knew it, she had started to talk about the strongest soldier with ironically, the most unwavering regard for human life.The one soldier who was probably capable of taking down fifty soldiers without so much as a scratch was the same soldier who would ask her privately after meetings, if she could think of a better plan which would cost less lives than the one they had thought up just a while ago. He was a soldier who would always voted on alternatives that could preserve more lives.

At that point, Hange could not even recall what words she used or what tone she kept. She started to treat those story times she promised the students after every lesson as a reprieve, a way to just imagine once again the past that she had missed, and the memory that made her relax the most was that of Levi.

It had been three months since she started teaching. She guessed that she had probably started bringing him up after the first month. It had occurred to her until that moment that she had never really implied his actual fate.

Did she talk about him in present tense?

Did she say something to make them think that he had survived?

You know Levi, it feels like my time has come. I want to act as cool as possible so let me go out like this…

Her chest constricted as she remembered how she felt saying those words. At that moment she thought she was going to die.

How to question orders. How to talk things through.

Levi had never questioned her orders or tried to talk things through in public, in fear of undermining her position. At that moment, right in front of everyone, Levi had said, "No. You're the commander. They need you out in the field. I'm not letting you die."

He had made a good point as he prepared his gear. Although he was humanity's strongest soldier at that time, he had become a little more than deadweight due to recent injuries. Either way, everyone had enough fate in his skills then, to know that even with those injuries, he'd still have enough power to take down a few titans and buy them some time to launch the ship.

While she was still a commander in the midst of a war, she had to shut out all raw emotion while she watched Levi take down titan after titan, as the airship took her further away from where she had wanted to be. She did too good of a job turning off her emotions then and her last memory of Levi had become a free spot in her mind.

Levi is alive. Levi exists in all nighters back in the office. He exists in the late nights in the forest, injured and half asleep.

As she allowed herself to relive that moment of two years ago, the only moment Levi blatantly disobeyed orders, the dam of emotions she had kept closed somewhere inside her started to flow free. She poked a few holes into it, allowing herself a few tears as she carried herself home.

It felt like it took ages but Hange finally found herself inside her empty apartment. She locked the door behind her and slid down once again on the cold wooden floor. She neglected to turn on the lights. The darkness that slowly swallowed the room as the sun started to set, only reminded her that she was alone, alone to her own devices and her own thoughts.

Levi existed before but now he is dead.

The free spot in her mind started to disappear, replaced by what should have been the raw emotion at seeing him burn and fall into the deep ocean. The grief came in large waves and Hange drowned in the emotions she had failed to release a year ago.

She called in sick the next morning and the day after and she sat alone on her bed, only standing up to eat or use the bathroom.

By what seemed to be the fourth day, it was as if she were floating. The waves had receded and she was left to survey for any damage.

Did you marry him? Another burning question came up from within her.

Hange rephrased it, given her present circumstances. Would I have married him?

Would marrying him have meant experiencing a continuation to those late night trainings as new soldiers?

Would it have meant a sequel to those late night conversations in the commander's office over tea?

Would it have meant someone welcoming her home every night after a long day’s work?

Would it have meant someone would be sitting beside her at that moment, hugging her, while she was too paralyzed by emotion to even get up?

Hange shook as she tried to imagine how it felt like again to be hugged. She knew she could have easily called someone, Mikasa, maybe Armin for a little company. Levi though was the last one she felt completely comfortable crying to, the last person she had ever shown complete vulnerability to.

And without him, she was alone.

The cruel truth was that that memory of Levi alive had overpowered her memory of his death. That sudden realization came as the memory once again became vivid, at a time where she had no more responsibilities of keeping soldiers alive in the midst of a battle.

Hange kicked her side table and watched as it toppled over, her belongings spilling out from underneath. She smashed her chair on top of the side table then the flower vase on the dresser.

The crown and the military had given her enough compensation to replace everything and that small afterthought was what only fueled her motivation to just release the pent up emotions. Everyone she had ever lost died for them anyway.

She went for the dresser to the side of the door and pulled out the drawers one by one, spilling out the contents on the floor before smashing them into the pile of remains of the furniture she had broken only a while ago.

She stopped at the third drawer when she saw the familiar green cloak and the wings of freedom insignia. At Levi’s last moments, she was wearing his cloak since she had expected to be the one to go.

As she spread out his cloak on the floor, she smelled traces of the familiar odor of titan’s blood. A year cooped up in the drawer had preserved the original scent. She buried her face on it and started to make out the scent of blood and sweat. At a certain point, she also made out the traces as well of the scent of old wood. The cloak had also started to adjust to the new world with no titans.

She threw the cloak on her still intact bed and sat cross legged on the floor.

Am I the only one who hasn’t moved on? She let out a burst of laughter, and sprawled on the cold wooden floor.

The Titans are gone. The Survey Corps is gone. Everyone is dead. He’s dead.

Free Spot

In total, Hange took a week out of work. She used that extra time to clean up and apologize to her neighbors after that breakdown.

Surprisingly, most of them had been understanding. Hange though did not want to use the excuse of being a shell shocked soldier to be a bother to anyone and had compensated all those who lived closest to her.

When she finally showed up back to the classroom, she was surprised to see all the students on their seats as if they had expected her to be back that day.

Of course, the substitute probably told them.

“You’re surprisingly behaved today.” Hange commented as she emptied her book bag on the table.

It was Lena who came out from behind her desk with a box and placed it on the teacher’s table.

“We heard you got really sick for a while so we got you a present which could maybe help you stay healthy,” she explained, still looking apologetic.

“Thank you.” Hange blushed as she started to untie the bow and opened the box underneath. Hange fought back a wave of nostalgia and the stinging sensation in her eyes as she opened the box to find a tea set, complete with a bag of black tea on the side.

“My dad told me tea is good for the body,” one student volunteered.

Hange put one hand to her mouth, as she felt her lips tremble. A part of her wanted to laugh and a part of her wanted to cry. She had told them enough stories to keep them busy for months but she had never mentioned tea. It was an irrelevant detail in the grand scheme of things, of course she wouldn’t. “He liked black tea. We spent a lot of our free time talking over tea,” she admitted as she traced the rim of the tea cup, holding it the same way she had seen him hold it countless times before.

For a second, Lena looked panicked. “I’m sorry we didn’t mean to… You don’t have to talk about it anymore. ”

“No. It was my fault. I’m sorry.” She stood up and put her hand on the head of the young girl. “It looks like everyone pretty much guessed what happened to that soldier huh?” She smiled, keeping her tone deliberately light.

A lot of the students kept a sullen look and Hange was sure someone had explained it to them or at the least, they had picked it up on their own.

“Well, that’s the reality of war. A lot of the soldiers don’t get to marry and have kids. Just so that everyone here could live in peace.”

That night, Hange emptied the contents of the gift box on her kitchen table.

Levi would have liked the tea set. Hange thought to herself as she allowed the black tea leaves to boil on the kettle. The smell of the black tea wafted through the air and Hange closed her eyes as she allowed herself to be brought back again to those many nights when he was the one who would serve her a cup of warm tea.

Did I add too much water? Did I add too much black leaves? Would he be disappointed?

She poured the contents of the kettle into the cup and watched the tea leaves settle to the bottom of the cup.

She positioned her hands on top of the teacup, attempting to hold the cup just like he used to. The heat right on top of the boiling water, almost scalded her palm and Hange gave up after a few tries.

I never really understood how you did it.

The warm malty taste of black tea in her mouth was nostalgic. Hange only realized then that she had unknowingly abandoned this luxury right after the war. It was as if her subconscious had been protecting her from a breakdown just like the one she just had.

The smell and the taste of black tea had always been about Levi who was long gone by then. As she caressed the intricate linings of the cup though, she also started to think of the efforts of the students who had thought up the present and saved up for it.

She looked back at the memories leading up to his sacrifice at the hands of the colossal titans. The pain was still there but it was far from excruciating. It was bittersweet. Somehow, she did not need to delude herself anymore. She just had to let that bundle of emotions and memories within her untangle themselves.

Levi was gone. To Hange though, he was still alive.

He was alive in the black tea she had allowed herself to enjoy once again.

He was alive in the anecdotes she had told her class in between lessons.

He was alive in every single person who was alive because of his sacrifice.

It’s the living who give meaning to the soldiers’ deaths. It's the living who keep the dead alive.

#levihan #levi ackerman #hange zoe #levihanangstober #fanfic #levi x hanji #levi x hange #attack on titan fic

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capnjay21 · 3 years

Text

The Wind Blows White 2/6

It’s been two years since Killian Jones and Emma Swan managed to escape the clutches of Brooke House, two years of waiting for it all to catch up to them and two years of pretending the cracks in their happy ending don’t show. But when the vision appears to Killian of a young boy unearthing the dagger and the darkness they had long since buried, it’s a race against time to try and stop another innocent from befalling the same fate. If they have the strength to face it.

Sequel to ‘A House is Never Still’.

A/N: Aaaand here is chapter two! Firstly I'd like to give MASSIVE thanks to @hollyethecurious who has been kind enough to make the lovely art for this fic <3 I'm so pleased with it! For those who don’t know, Hollye designed the art that inspired the original fic so that makes this EXTRA cool.

And secondly I'd like to say thanks so so much to everybody who picked up the first chapter, I'm so thrilled you're ready to hop back on board the spooky train with me. I hope you like this!

AO3 | chapter one

Rating: T Warnings: Mentions of canonical character death and some certified Spooky Business™.

Taglist: @carpedzem @optomisticgirl @snowbellewells @kmomof4 @phiralovesloki @hollyethecurious @stahlop @peglegsjones @mariakov81 @seasailia @courtorderedcake @jonesfandomfanatic @wyntereyez @marrtinski @thisonesatellite @klynn-stormz @teamhook @lfh1226-linda

If anyone would like on, or off, the taglist, just let me know!

-/-

2. that featureless space

-/-

The ground beneath him was moving. No, it was growling. Rumbling for more, then receding, hurtling forward and then retreating, leaving him a helpless passenger. It was a car. The old Mustang, in fact, he recognised the flowery smell of the vinyl seats that Liam had never been able to scrub out. The car window was a little too high for him to see properly out of, it was just a blur of colour whizzing by, and his hands had been folded neatly in his lap. His legs were small, just barely long enough to touch the bottom of the car, the jagged metal that grumbled underneath him.

This was the car that Liam had died in.

Killian wiped his eyes, groggy. He couldn’t remember getting in this car.

“Where are we going?” he asked the driver. His voice sounded high, and squeaky. And young.

The driver was Liam.

“Nowhere,” Liam said, then changed his mind. “Somewhere. Somewhere better.”

With great effort, Killian turned his neck to see if anyone was in the backseat. They were alone, but a large suitcase sat where a person should be.

“Where’s Dad?” he asked.

Liam kept his eyes on the road. Killian only noticed now because it seemed more deliberate than before.

“Dad isn’t coming.”

For some reason, this was surprising. Killian wanted to ask why, but Liam was shaking his head firmly.

“Go back to sleep, Killian.”

To his amazement, he did.

This time when he woke, he was outside. He knew this because he could feel the soft warmth of the sun on his skin, and nearby the sound of water rushing by drowned out the buzz of insects around him. It was bright, he had to shield his eyes and keep them narrowed until they adjusted, and he could finally take in his surroundings. He was sat on dry rock, a few metres away from the edge of a rushing stream, an everchanging palette of vivid sapphire and frothy pearl, and on the opposite bank a sparse array of thick trees stood swaying gently in the breeze.

On either side of the wide, open current, walls of rock rose up for hundreds of metres, and Killian realised he had been here before.

It was the memory of a memory, perhaps a recollection of something he had been told rather than something he had lived, but everything about this place was familiar, and bright, and achingly, desperately sad.

This was the creek that Liam had died in.

Then he saw the boy.

The boy was crouched down so near to the surface of the water that his gaze had easily skimmed over him the first time, huddled tightly on a rock near the centre of the current with his arm thrust into the water.

“No,” Killian said, before he even realised what was happening.

He stood. At his feet was a hastily rolled up jacket, which must belong to the boy.

The boy who was reaching for the dagger.

“Wait,” he called, desperately.

The boy ignored him, or he did not hear.

“Stop!”

Triumphantly, the boy pulled back with his prize.

In the sparkling sunlight, its shiny edge was unmistakable.

There was the dagger.

Come.

“Put it back,” Killian hollered, his chest hurting from the force of his yell. “Listen to me!”

The boy looked up. Stared him straight in the eye.

“I am,” he said, “I’m listening.”

-/-

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

Killian was sat with his legs folded underneath him on the floor of Elsa’s bedroom, warmly lit by an array of candles across every surface. Dim light streamed in through an open window, casting orange splotches onto the immaculate powder blue carpet. After their discussion with Tink, she had invited him back the following day for a private session with them both, an attempt at a more guided scry, and Killian had jumped at the invitation. Anything that might provide him with more concrete answers.

Emma had gone again to the office of the skip they were after; apparently his credit card had been used in a convenience store near to it the day before. Killian had wanted to go with her, but the lingering invitation from Elsa and Tink, combined with Emma’s emphatic insistence that she wouldn’t need help had left him at something of a loss.

Although he was sure her determination came from the same place that insisted his coming home and finding their kitchen flooded was nothing to be concerned about. She claimed she had just left the tap on, and had been meaning to clean it up before he got home but had fallen asleep before she had the chance.

She was awake when he got home, though. And when he’d called her earlier it had rung through to voicemail. He was concerned – that was easy enough to admit.

By the third time he had probed her about it, she had declared that she’d really prefer it if he didn’t come with her to the office the following day, and had shut down that line of questioning with perhaps more vigour than it required. Killian didn’t know what else to do.

They were supposed to be a team. If she was having trouble, she was supposed to tell him so they could solve it together. He knew she was holding something back, but if she refused to confide in him then he couldn’t exactly pull or pester the truth out of her, and he wouldn’t want to, anyway. Perhaps she was frustrated that she was still having setbacks like these; after her rescue from Brooke House they had been frequent, the nightmares near constant, and her sense of drifting from moment to moment was something they had discussed at great length together, developing coping mechanisms and strategies to help her get past it.

They had been a team. More than anything, Killian just wanted her to be alright. He had just hoped his days of needing to scale Emma’s walls had ended the day she told him she loved him.

Unless she didn’t. Love him anymore, that is.

Something squeezed tightly in his chest.

“At this point,” he cleared his throat, forcing his focus back to the other occupants of Elsa’s bedroom, “I’m ready to try anything.”

Tink was sat perched on the bed in her bare feet, her blonde hair tied up into a haphazard bun as she carefully emptied a large glass jar of water into a white ceramic bowl. The bowl, Killian presumed, he would be scrying out of. Elsa was stood preparing something at her desk on the other side of the room, and Killian could hear the sound of something bubbling. It reminded him distinctly of the living room back in Regina’s house, with the large desks and varied array of vials and candles resembling an incredibly ancient chemistry set, or a set perfect for the potions and brews she liked to assemble.

It had been a while since he’d spoken to Regina; he should make an effort to give her a call. It wasn’t as if she was likely to do the reverse.

Tink eyed him over her task as he fidgeted on the floor. “It would really help if you told us what this dream was about.”

I am. I’m listening.

“It’s – it’s really better if I don’t.” The less they knew about the dagger, the better. He didn’t want anyone else exposed to its evil.

“Ooh, mysterious. Are you predicting a murder? Was some poor, desperate soul murdered before your very eyes?” she grinned. “Was it me?”

“Tink,” Elsa admonished from across the room, “please.”

Tink let out an exaggerated sigh, and sealed the glass bottle once the bowl was full. Carefully, so as not to spill any, she stood and set the bowl down in front of him. The water was clear, and smelled fresh. He couldn’t imagine seeing anything in it other than his own reflection.

“You were right about rainwater being generally more effective,” Tink began, folding her legs as she sat across from him. “Really, anything from nature is supposed to make scrying a little clearer. You’re lucky Elsa was happy to donate this to the cause.” She gestured to the bowl. “It’s water from a natural spring.”

“I collected it a few years ago in Oregon.”

Killian eyed the bowl warily. “Alright. Do I – just –?”

It felt bizarre to try and do with two people watching, in the middle of the afternoon. As if by casting light on the process it somehow took something out of it; getting his mind to that place where he really believed this would work would be a little more difficult, and in his experience, perception was reality when it came to flirting with the otherworldly. Not to mention his brushes with real magic had only ever occurred in the dead of night, in the middle of fall, and Elsa’s bedroom felt too neat, too warm, to be somewhere something close to miraculous could happen.

“Not without this,” Elsa informed him, finally revealing what she had been working on. In her hand she held a steaming mug of – well, he wasn’t exactly sure what, but its scent was distinctly herbal and earthy. Killian had a sneaking suspicion he was going to be made to drink it. “I’ll warn you, this isn’t going to taste good.”

Killian winced. “What’s in it?”

“Bitter grass.”

“It makes dreaming more vivid, or last longer,” Tink added. “I’ve never tried it myself, but apparently it can make scrying… well, more.”

“‘More’?” Killian carefully took the mug from Elsa, peering at it dubiously.

The hot liquid had settled on a murky acid colour and leaves were still floating aimlessly on its surface. It did not look in the least bit appetising.

Tink huffed, as if his attempt to quantify her deliberate vagueness offended her. “I don’t know, like you’re in the front seat rather than clinging to the rear bumper?”

Killian was beginning to question the wisdom in attempting something their so-called expert had purported never to have tried.

“Scrying is a mess,” she continued sharply. “I avoid it for this very reason. It’s like –” Tink hesitated, trying to find the right words. “It’s like walking into a CVS and trying to buy a hunk of plutonium. You’re sort of along the right lines, you’re in a store, and a store is where you buy things, but you’re so far out of your depth that all you can really do is cross your fingers and ask the universe, and hope someone answers back.”

Killian took a tentative sip of the tea, and immediately grimaced as the acrid mixture began to slip down his throat.

“You’re right, this is revolting.”

Elsa smiled sympathetically. “And it’s illegal in Louisiana, so that’s got to be a win for the rebellious teen in you, right?”

He forced himself to drink a little more. “I always preferred sneaking rum.” He paused, contemplating. “Any chance we could add rum to this?”

“Listen to me,” Tink snapped, and his gaze shot back to her. “Scrying is dangerous. You’re effectively setting your mind loose from your body. Do that for too long…”

If he wanted to go deeper, he had to let himself fall.

“And I’ll be stuck in CVS forever?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

Killian thought of the sparkling summer day, of the boy, of another innocent life the dagger wanted to claim. It had already taken Liam, and left its mark on Emma forever.

Consider this him jumping in with both feet.

Fall away.

He finished off the rest of his tea and returned the mug to Elsa.

“Are you sure you still want to do this?” she asked gently.

Killian nodded firmly, and pulled the bowl a little closer towards him.

Elsa laid a hand on his arm. “Don’t go too far. Let us help you back if you need it.”

He had no idea what that meant, but he thanked her all the same. They had already done so much for him.

Tink blew out the last few candles, the curl of smoke rising from them smelling faintly of rosemary; he had known an unlit candle’s purpose for years now in these sorts of rituals – to let energy out. It struck him only then that the very thing they were expecting to let out was him.

Killian turned his attention to the surface of the water, perfectly still in the bowl.

After he leaned closer, he could see the details of his face more clearly in his reflection. The dark lines under his eyes, the barely visible scar on his right cheek from when Regina had flung a pencil at him a little too hard in eighth grade. His eyes didn’t even look blue anymore, in his reflection they looked less somehow, washed, like a faded grey. As he stared, he became aware that something around him had changed – like a noise that had always existed in his periphery had suddenly dropped out, and now he wished he had been paying closer attention to discern what it was. The tea had settled warmly in his chest and he felt light, lighter than air, and tried to focus on that sensation.

Moments ago, he had felt that if he had reached out to either side of him, he would feel Elsa and Tink there. He was not sure he felt that way now.

His right hand twitched.

It was a foreign, surprising sensation, like someone else had reached through his shoulder all the way to his fingertips and jerked it without his permission. It begged for his attention but he tried not to let his mind wander beyond its purpose, and forced himself to keep looking at the surface of the water.

Or what had once been the surface of the water.

Ripples scattered across its edges, as if a sharp wind were blowing until it folded over itself, oozing, and his chest wanted to fall forward, forward, to topple over until he collapsed and could feel the sharp sting of ice cold water filling up his lungs. His chest felt tight. Hard. Like he had to force every breath through a sheet of glass until it reached him. He thought about Elsa, what Elsa had promised, to help him back if he went too far and he reached for her –

His hand fell through empty air.

The ground beneath him was moving. Growling, rumbling, hurtling forward; was he back in the car? Liam’s Mustang, like he had dreamt last night? Even as he thought it the colours materialised, but the vinyl of the seat felt searing hot beneath him and the cream was so bright, he had to blink his eyes against it. He wanted to turn and look at the driver. He wanted to turn and look at Liam. He would give anything to turn his head and be able to look at Liam one more time and for it to be real.

“Go back to sleep, Killian.”

Show me the boy, he thought fiercely, the boy at the creek with the dagger.

His chest tugged him toward the door of the car as he fumbled with his seatbelt, falling against it as the car started to speed up. With effort, he pulled the handle open and the door swung away from him, his grabbing onto the roof of the car the only thing that stopped him hurtling out of it and into the black.

If he wanted to go deeper, he had to let himself fall.

So, the outside beckoned, fall.

Killian let go.

-/-

“Thank you,” Emma said, her cheeks flushed with glorious delight, “for always knowing exactly what I want before I do.”

Killian blinked. Granny’s Diner smelt like burnt cheese and vanilla cake and Emma’s arms were around his neck. The bus ticket sat on the table beside them.

“I know this part,” he said, feeling dazed. “This is the part where I kiss you.”

The corner of Emma’s lip curled unpleasantly.

“You had to go and ruin it, didn’t you?”

-/-

“I think you should do it.”

“Do what?”

Come back, he breathed.

“Go and live with the Nolan’s.”

“Killian, come on.”

Haunt me.

“I’ll be out after high school. What’s the point?”

Just as he reached for her, Emma dived into the ocean.

Killian – Killian, don’t –!

I love you, he shouted. She didn’t reply.

He jumped in after her.

-/-

“Go back to sleep, Killian.”

Show me the boy.

-/-

Killian gasped as he broke free from the surface of the water, gulping in oxygen like a man starved. His limbs felt numb, only sluggishly responding to his demands as he struggled to stay afloat. His chest was tight, freezing, and as he spluttered he could feel fresh water pushing its way out from his throat. Was he drowning? This felt like what drowning should feel. like Water was everywhere; his nose, his eyes, and though he tried to wipe it away so he could see, he was doing so with a hand that was also soaked and made little difference against his blurring vision.

He had to get out. He had to find shore. Killian kicked his legs into action, pumping them through the black to try and propel him forward, push him toward something; everything around him felt so permeable, so susceptible to the slightest change in thought, and he tried to focus on the feel of the water around him. Water could be good. Water could take him to the creek.

The creek, he insisted, bringing his arms in to give his strokes more momentum, the dagger.

His feet brushed what felt like the murky bottom of the pool, slick with seaweed and soft, and his toes scrabbled for purchase while his arms tried to aid in treading water – and that was when he saw him. A few metres in front, the boy fumbling for the dagger.

“Hey!” he hollered, but the noise was drowned out by the current flooding around him. Water flooded into his open mouth and he choked. “H—hold on!”

The boy was already scampering away, hopping from rock to rock with his prize hidden underneath his shirt. He was calling to someone Killian could not see on the opposite bank.

“Just a minute, Dad!”

Two firm hands reached underneath Killian’s arms and hauled him out of the water. He flopped down onto the bank, coughing and spluttering.

Gasping, shivering, he tried to focus on his would-be saviour.

It was his father.

It was impossible for Brennan Jones to be that tall, not while Killian was a man grown, but that was how he remembered him – broad shoulders, lined features, and an easy sort of smile when he wanted it.

He wasn’t smiling now.

“What have I said about staying in bed?”

Killian’s heart was galloping against his ribcage; he had done something he knew he could not take back, the oil had spilled and poison was beginning to blacken the depths of the ocean. Something white hot and fearful had ignited in his chest, Liam would know what to do, Liam would – Liam would –

“Why can’t you just do as you’re told?”

His father’s arms thrust out in front of him – and although Killian hadn’t been touched, he felt himself flung backwards through the air.

Why can’t you just do as you’re told?

There was nothing but empty space behind him.

He was falling, he was falling, he was falling.

His watch beeped: 2:17am. Right on time.

There was a searing pain in his right hand, but his scream was swallowed by the dark.

-/-

Go back to sleep, Killian.

“Killian!”

He was lying on his back, staring at the intricate pattern of Elsa’s ceiling, and his right hand hurt like a bitch.

“Ah,” he hissed, wincing, instinctively lifting it to try and identify the cause. It was covered with blood. “Ah – the – fuck.”

“Sorry, sorry!” Someone was yelping in response, then something cold and wet was pressed against his hand as he tried to sit up. “We didn’t know what else to do!”

He felt dizzy. The sight of blood didn’t help, and a wave of nausea surged within him.

“Oh god, he’s gonna – Elsa get the –”

Something plastic and cylindrical was thrust underneath his chin and he promptly vomited into it.

The whole room was spinning. He tried shutting his eyes but it only made it worse, the horizontal slamming into vertical behind his eyelids. Someone was attempting to rub soothing circles on his back and he tried to focus on that, while someone else kept a cold cloth pressed against his bleeding hand. Elsa and Tink. Right. Elsa and Tink. Slowly, so he didn’t aggravate his already deeply upset stomach, he tried to glance at the space around them.

The ceramic bowl of water had been overturned, and a visible wet patch surrounded it. Beside it, a large kitchen knife had been discarded, its sharp edge scarlet with blood that was now dribbling onto the otherwise pristine light blue carpet. His blood, he realised, dazedly drawing the connection between the knife and his bleeding hand.

“Did you – to me –?” he mumbled, wiping his sweaty forehead with his free hand.

“You gave us quite a fright,” Elsa replied. “Nothing we did could bring you out of it and you looked – well. Distressed.” Gingerly, she took the bin away from him and left the room to dispose of it.

“The worst,” he began, then coughed, “worst cup of tea ever.”

“I underestimated you,” Tink growled, as she tied the wet cloths ends around Killian’s palm with a show of force. “You really just jumped right in, huh? This is why I steer clear of this crap. It’s a fucking shitshow. You could have died and then, what, I’m explaining you wanted to stare at visions in a fruit bowl to your pretty girlfriend? No way. No fucking way.”

“Sorry,” he said, because he wasn’t sure what else he could say.

“Don’t be sorry, be smart.”

“Here. Water,” Elsa returned with a glass, and Killian reached for it eagerly. His throat felt like something had crawled in there and died. “Feel any better?”

Killian nodded, and he meant it. He had never been so aware of his own limbs before, of the heaviness of his own arms and legs. It was like he’d been living without gravity and these were his first few moments back on Earth and feeling the weight of his cumbersome form.

Was this how Emma felt, he wondered, when she lingered in that featureless space between?

“So? What did you see?”

Why can’t you just do as you’re told?

Killian tried to clear his throat, but something stuck tightly in it.

In a sea of opalescent and obscure images, that had felt very clear. It didn’t marry up to his memory in the same way the others did; he was certain he did not have any memories of Brennan Jones associated with such a moment, but it was just – it was so vivid.

“I don’t, uh,” he rubbed his right eye tiredly. “I don’t know.”

-/-

In their line of work, there was nothing that irritated Emma more than wasted time. Wasted time meant loss of income, and the unreasonably elusive skip August W. Booth was getting on her last nerve. She had gone to his old office the day before, armed with the information regarding the credit card purchase, only to be turned away at the front desk with the claim the entire company staff were away on a corporate retreat. Her instincts had wanted to call bullshit, but a cursory glance of a few of their social media pages confirmed it. It didn’t matter if she was ninety nine percent certain her bail jumper was hiding out inside the office, if the actual employees weren’t there then she couldn’t exactly magic a reason to be admitted out of thin air.

Annoyingly, it meant they had to put it off for another day. This damn bail jumper was one slippery fucker, and the more time Emma had to waste rounding him up, the more irritated she got. Their time was their own in this profession, which most of the time was an advantage, but every second spent on the same guy was a second she couldn’t spend securing their next pay-check.

Killian had insisted on joining her this time, and she couldn’t think of any good reason for him not to. Her slip up with the tap in the kitchen had thankfully drifted into the near-past and there were no other demands on his time. Not to mention given how tricky this August W. Booth was proving to be, better they put their heads together and get it sorted out, pay-check cashed, as soon as possible.

Emma watched enviously as Killian slid the Chevelle smoothly into park at the side of the road – the old car was never that cooperative with her, spitting like a feral cat as she wrestled with the stick shift. The morning was dim and gloomy, the sky overhead a bruised and leaden grey slathering the streets with scattered showers at unpredictable intervals. Currently only one wiper was working, albeit lazily, succeeding in keeping only the driver’s side of the windshield clear while rain loped down in waves in front of Emma.

Through the passenger side door, she squinted out at the office block, the embossed directory helpfully just a few feet away from where they’d parked. Gepetto’s – 6th Floor.

“Alright,” Emma sighed, drumming her fingers on the passenger door. “The receptionist said by now they should all be back from their… I dunno, business boy-scouting, or whatever. You wait out here, I’ll go in and chat to the office manager, ask if she’s seen any funny business. Really hammer home the whole ‘he’s a criminal’ shtick. Throw out a few ‘harboring a fugitive is a prosecutable offence’, etcetera…” Emma turned to get Killian’s input, but he wasn’t looking at her. His hands were still resting on the bottom of the wheel, and he was staring out of the front windshield.

His eyes held the same vacant look she had been catching him with all morning, and every time she spotted it something inside her twisted unpleasantly. It felt like he went somewhere, and she wasn’t used to Killian checking out into places she couldn’t follow him.

“Hey.” She snapped her fingers next to his ear, startling him. “Paging Killian Jones.”

“What?” He straightened abruptly in his seat. “Oh. Yeah, I’ll QB from down here.” He made a show of peering past and her and toward the office block. It didn’t fool her. “See if he makes a run for it once his cage gets rattled.”

Emma watched him curiously, hoping for any sort of clue, but he didn’t meet her eye. He likely was trying to avoid what they both knew was her superpower, to spot a lie a thousand miles away; and immediately, unbidden, a wave of self-consciousness rose within her. He hadn’t really said anything about the flooding incident – but what if he wanted to? He’d been quiet since yesterday, so it wasn’t unreasonable to assume he had been mulling the whole situation over. It wasn’t paranoia when the logic was sound.

Maybe he was finally getting fed up of cleaning up after her messes.

With effort, she pushed the feeling down.

“You okay today?” Emma asked. “You’ve been spaced out all morning.”

Killian waved a hand, and smiled in a not-all-that-convincing manner. “I’m fine. Really.”

“No blood pacts with the Witches of West Bellevue on your mind?”

“Ha, ha, very funny,” Killian replied drily, smiling despite himself as he unconsciously picked at the bandage with his opposite hand. “I wish you wouldn’t call them that.” She knew he was intending to sound reproachful, but there was no heat behind it.

“I wish they wouldn’t send you home bleeding,” she smirked. Killian had come back to their flat last night sporting a rather nasty gash on his right palm – he had insisted it was his own fault, some incident with a bread knife, but Emma had enjoyed teasing him to no end about blood sacrifices and voodoo rituals.

“That was my fault,” Killian said absently, clearly not registering her jest. “And it was an accident.”

Emma arched an eyebrow, wondering which it was: his fault, or an accident.

“Hey.” She laid a hand on his arm to get his full attention, and he finally looked her in the eye. She wasn’t particularly enthused about hashing out the events of the other night, but if there was something genuinely bothering him then she wanted to know about it. “Is there something on your mind?”

Killian’s lips parted, as if debating whether to speak. “It’s… nothing important.” He shrugged, offering her a smile. “Really. I’m just a little too in my own head.”

Emma was far from convinced. “Well, I’m here if you want to talk about anything.”

This time when Killian smiled, he tilted his head and his eyes softened, as if he were looking at her for the first time that day. Even after all the years they had known each other, there was a thrill in being seen so gently. He leaned forward and she met him halfway, their lips meeting in a slow kiss.

After they parted, he let out a contented sigh as he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

“You’re my favourite, you know that, right?”

Emma grinned. “And I promise you’re a close second behind Regina.”

“Wow.”

Emma laughed as she shrugged on her coat. “Alright, time to nail this son of a bitch.” She dropped a final kiss on his cheek before reaching for the door handle. “See you in a bit.”

After stepping out into the downpour, she jogged as quickly as she could to the front door of the office block, lifting her jacket over her head for as much protection from the elements as she could manage, but wasn’t convinced it would do much to abate her looking either washed out or a little drowned by the time she spoke to somebody from Gepetto’s. The receptionist recognised her from the day prior, and after waving in greeting immediately phoned up to the sixth floor to see if anybody was available to speak to her.

There was a bit of negotiating, but before long the office manager for Gepetto’s had come down to meet her and was escorting her back up to the sixth floor. She didn’t want to launch into the reason for her being there before she’d had a chance to look around the office, so to avoid spooking her Emma offered up some general lines of enquiry about the office structure with information she had managed to glean from the company website. Almost flattered by her interest, the office manager was only too keen to rattle off her answers for the duration of the lift ride until the doors finally reopened.

It took only a few steps out of the lift lobby for Emma to stop dead in her tracks – because there, leaning against the desk at the entrance to the office, stood her mark.

Emma felt herself tense, instinctively readying herself to run, but she had to forcefully remind herself that August W. Booth had no reason to know who she was in the slightest, which would make everything a lot easier. He was here, that was what counted, and now she just had to figure out a way to get a pair of cuffs on him.

The office manager had been speaking, and Emma tried to tune back in and pick up where they left off, and as they reached the desk August looked up at the two of them.

And immediately straightened, his eyes widening the moment they landed on her.

Emma schooled her expression into one of nonchalance – but it made no difference. She could spot a skip about to hit the ground running a mile off, and she reached for her handcuffs as subtly as she could manage.

“Emma?” August gaped.

She was momentarily taken aback – what the –?

If possible, August looked more stunned than she felt. “How did you find me?”

His gaze dropped to her side and landed on the handcuffs.

He was moving before she even had a chance to process what was happening.

“Hey!” she barked, immediately sprinting after him. Somebody was yelling something from behind her, and the office around her became a blur of colour and noise as she shot through it, narrowing her focus on the man running in front of her.

She collided heavily with someone she couldn’t duck out of the way of, and had just enough time to distractedly mumble an apology before taking off again, and in a beat she realised where he was heading – the stairwell toward the fire exit. There wasn’t enough time to get out her phone and warn Killian, she just hoped he’d be ready in case she didn’t catch him before he got out of the building.

August wrenched open the door to the stairwell, pulling at a filing cabinet beside it until it crashed into the ground, sending a whoosh of papers and folders scattering out onto the floor. Beside it some office workers had gasped, and Emma yelled at them to jump out of the way as she approached, skipping past documents that might slip her up and leaping over the cabinet to the door.

Her skip was already a flight of stairs down and Emma wasted no time following him.

“Hang on a second!” she demanded, but there was no indication on whether he had heard her. “I just want to talk to you!”

And arrest you, and claim the reward, but why the fuck would you care?

She chased him all the way to the ground floor, where she heard him letting out a string of expletives against the sound of metal rattling in its frame – he was stranded at the exit, unable to get the door open and scrambling for any way out.

Emma slowed her pace as she descended the final flight, trying to get a good look at him – he looked exactly like the photos they had been provided with, except for the shadow of a few days without shaving scratched around his chin. His leather jacket was battered and his hair unkempt, and he was currently grunting with effort as he thrust his shoulder into the door in an attempt to get it open.

“Look, just give it a rest,” Emma growled, “you had to know this was coming. You missed a pretty important court date.”

August paused his efforts, turning to glance at her nervously. “You can’t arrest me.”

“Three counts of property damage, theft and disturbing the peace say otherwise. Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.”

“No, you can’t arrest me. It can’t be you.”

Emma was getting fed up with his bullshit. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

The look August was giving her was pained. “I’m so sorry.”

Then he slammed his fist through the glass protecting the fire alarm.

The stairwell exploded with sound.

Overhead the alarm bell rattled blisteringly loud, August was swearing profusely at his bloodied hand, and the magnetic lock on the door buzzed open. As the man stumbled out of it, the stairwell was flooded with light and the sound of rain rattling against the alleyway outside – but Emma didn’t notice any of that.

From the moment the alarm sounded, a searing pain had blasted through her temples and she cried out; something was rattling, cracking against the casing of her skull and she gasped her way through it, stumbling down onto the ground. She couldn’t see anything, her vision was blinded by spots of white, and it was all she could do to fight for some semblance of control over her motor functions. Everything hurt. Something was stealing the breath from her lungs, and although she knew it couldn’t be real, she felt her fingertips curling into damp soil underneath her.

I don’t know where I am.

Emma could feel hot tears rolling down her cheek as she tried to think of anything except how much her head was throbbing, the alarm blaring across her senses as if it had come from inside her. It was too much. It was all too much.

Killian?

I don’t know where I am.

I thought –

I thought I heard your voice.

It was the cold that she remembered most about Brooke House. That terrible, awful absence of warmth, that numbness, that sense that her limbs were not truly moving because she could no longer feel them. It was ice, it was loss, it was knowing the world she knew was gone forever even though just seconds earlier it had swirled in a storm of obsidian light, and Killian –

Killian had wanted to save her.

And she had told him not to.

Killian – Killian, don’t – !

The sky was full of birds.

Her parents left her on the side of the road on a crisp autumn morning, while the sky was alive with birdsong.

Emma –

There was too much sound, too much light; she couldn’t see. Something hurt. It was her. Around her the forest breathed slowly, in, and out, and the old wood of the house creaked unheard. It had nothing else to show her. She had read all the books. She had written on all the walls. She pleaded for the chance to walk amongst the wood, to feel the crunch of delicate, copper leaves underfoot and the patter of rain on her skin.

She waited for him to come home.

The sky was full of birds.

“Emma!”

I thought I heard your voice.

-/-

It was 2:17am.

Robert should have been home hours ago, and Belle couldn’t sleep for worry.

He had gone to that wretched house, she knew it. Nothing else had been able to impress upon his waking mind for weeks, he was consumed by whatever he had found in there and left Belle to mind their livelihood alone. Stood in the centre of the shop floor, the room lit in an orange glow drifting through the blinds in strips, it somehow felt worse than the odd looks the townsfolk had been giving her when they came in to sell their wares, or find something for someone else.

The pawnshop had always been Robert’s, not hers. It was his name on the door, Gold. It didn’t matter that she’d taken his name when they married – everyone in Storybrooke still thought of her as ‘that funny Belle French’. She had always been something of an outlier in the realm of small-town opinion; but then, that was something she and her husband had always shared.

Brooke House was something he had pointedly kept from her.

He refused to take her there. He refused to discuss his work there. Every day he departed with trinkets and materials and vials of vividly coloured liquids of which she hadn’t a clue of the contents. Something powerful had captured his attention so desperately within its walls, something that made him see right through her.

And tonight – tonight, he had practically prowled about the shop until he had finally departed out into the night.

You’ll see, he had told her. You’ll see.

Well, she was tired of waiting.

She wanted her husband back.

She stalked into the backroom to retrieve her coat and changed out of her heels and into something sturdier, boots more suited to clambering through woodland than minding the pawn shop.

It was just as she was shrugging on her coat that she heard the tinkling of the bell over the front door, and her heart leapt hopefully.

“I was just coming to –”

She cut herself off once she saw it was not her husband who had entered, and shielded her disappointment in an expression of reproach.

“It’s the middle of the night,” she pointed out sharply. “We’re closed.”

The intruder stood their ground.

“It won’t do any good,” they said, quietly. “Your husband isn’t coming back.”

Belle stopped dead in her tracks.

“But I think you already know that.”

-/-

It was a migraine.

Just a migraine.

All the symptoms were there; white spots, sensitivity to light and sound, nausea – a rapid onset migraine. Their skip had gotten away, and when Killian had come looking for her amongst all the chaos August left behind, he had found her slumped at the bottom of the fire escape and had immediately taken her home. As it always did, time produced the most rational of explanations, even if Emma still had no idea how August W Booth had known who she was. The most logical reason was that somehow he had gotten in touch with the agency, or knew someone who had been able to tell him the name of the bail bondsperson who had been assigned to his case.

She had spent the afternoon recovering back in their flat, the blinds drawn and the bedroom door closed while Killian worked silently in the sitting room on their next case, and by the evening she felt back to her old self again. It had still made it difficult to resist Killian sitting her down and pleading with her to come and see the Bellevue coven at the weekend, to meet the Elsa he had told her so much about; if for no other reason than the home remedies that members of that community swore by when it came to migraines or insomnia, frequent ailments that kept catching Emma off guard.

Emma had no interest in ingratiating herself with the Bellevue coven, no matter how often he spoke of its charming members or how much he felt it might help her to connect with others who might have experiences with the otherworldly comparable to their brush with Brooke House. She had made it clear from the start; she didn’t believe a single soul could speak to what she had been through, and she was not interested in finding out.

This will not define me, she had said, the day they had ridden themselves of the dagger for good.

She wanted to believe that. She wanted to look forward. Minor setbacks aside, she still didn’t feel sitting around with a group of born-again self-ascribed ‘witches’ talking about how grand and mysterious the universe was would do anything for her focusing on her real life. It was this life she wanted to contemplate, not the one before, or the hell that awaited them after.

Besides, she knew what hell was. Hell was nothing. Barren, a void the soul was left to wander within.

Still, she could sense how important it was to Killian that she make this effort, and after all the considerate care he had given her over the last week – the appeal, the flood, the rescue after her migraine – he deserved her giving it a shot. Apparently they were having some sort of midsummer celebration anyway, and the evening didn’t have to amount to anything more than a fancy garden party. Emma preferred the idea of facing this part of Killian’s life without having to commit to making it part of hers too.

There were still significant drawbacks, though.

“You didn’t tell me there was a dress code,” she grumbled.

After arriving, they had been directed to walk around the side of Elsa’s house through a pathway of tall, sweeping archways plaited with ivy and lavender, leaving the path with a distinctly herbal and earthy scent. It reminded her of Regina’s garden. The evening was balmy and gentle, the setting sun painting the sky in broad, orange strokes, and the mellow flutter of a flute or clarinet could be heard drifting from the clearing ahead of them. Emma could already taste woodsmoke in the back of her throat.

Killian had kept her hand folded tightly in his, as if he were afraid if he let go she would turn around and go home. She wasn’t sure how to reassure him, since she wasn’t entirely convinced she wouldn’t do it herself.

“There’s not a dress code,” Killian frowned. “At least not one they told me about.”

“You’re wearing it!” she pointed out accusatorily.

In keeping with the warmer temperature, Emma had opted for a simple pair of denim shorts and boots, with a dark green blouse she had thought would look suitably on theme for an event clearly thrilled about nature. Killian, on the other hand, looked far smarter in a crisp white shirt and a tan pair of chinos. White, she was now realising as they emerged into the main event, was clearly the theme.

A large bonfire had been stacked in the centre of the clearing and had been lit from the bottom, so currently the flame was only licking at the edges of the wood lying nearest its centre, but she could imagine as the night wore on it would grow significantly in size. There were around thirty, maybe forty guests scattered around, speaking jovially to one another, some lingering near a few fold-up tables laden with a wide array of food – that, at least, hadn’t been an exaggeration on Killian’s part. Just at a glance she could spot trays of roast beef, stuffed bell peppers, smoked salmon and an entire glass bowl filled with strawberries.

It was like walking into a garden of plenty, alive with wildflowers and the scent of freshly baked bread, while a small wind band played towards one edge of the clearing.

Most of the women were dressed in white or wearing light floral patterns, and every man she could see was sporting an identical white shirt to Killian’s. He fit right in – and to her chagrin she could now see how her attempt to slip into the background was now setting her apart.

“It’s not a dress code,” Killian waved her off, “it’s nothing like that.”

Emma spread her free hand across the clearing in a pointed sweep.

Killian had the good grace to look a little sheepish. “Maybe it’s a little like that. But me – this – it’s a complete accident, I swear.”

He looked so eager to reassure her that she couldn’t help but laugh. There was something so light about his countenance tonight, something that buoyed her along without even trying – the entire drive there he had barely been able to contain whatever energy he had been carrying, drumming his fingers restlessly on the wheel of the Chevelle. She couldn’t tell if it was excitement about finally bringing her along to one of these things, or if he was just enthusiastic about getting out of the city, but either way she couldn’t really remember a time he had been this animated about an evening out. It was hard to find fault in that kind of simple delight. It made her feel like they were teenagers again.

“Fine, whatever,” she said, but she was grinning. “You promised me food.”

“Right, definitely,” he smiled back. “But for fear of appearing too obvious so soon after we’ve arrived, how about we start with a drink?”

“Sure.”

Her every assent seemed to have the instantaneous effect of brightening his mood even further. “Anna’s been going on about her punch for weeks – oh, Anna, I’ll make sure I introduce you –”

He tugged at their joined hands, but after a split-second Emma resisted.

“Why don’t you go and grab some for us and I’m just gonna… take it all in.” She looked around the garden. “Give me a sec to get my bearings.”

Killian didn’t question her, just squeezed her hand before letting go and promised to be back in a few moments.

She wasn’t sure what it was, but there was a lot of sensory information to process. Her life with Killian was so insular, they didn’t spend a lot of time at big events – they both preferred places they could blend into the background. Attending a gathering of this size was probably something she hadn’t done since the last time she was in Storybrooke – something in her gut twinged at the thought. David and Mary Margaret would have loved a celebration like this, something like the Miner’s Day celebration the town used to throw every November. Good food, warm feelings; it was everything she and Killian used to good-naturedly mock when they were teenagers.

Tonight, while her partner’s enthusiasm was sweet, it was still a little jarring; especially when she remembered exactly what this community was, and it wasn’t just small-town eccentricities.

This was a coven, she had to keep reminding herself. Practitioners. Like Regina.

At least they didn’t appear to be making any sacrifices on that bonfire.

“Hey, Killian!” Emma watched as a petite blonde woman called Killian over to the group she was standing with, and he pivoted in their direction on his way to the refreshment table. She was smirking, and her hair was piled up messily on the top of her head. “Help us out, we need a tie-break.”

Emma couldn’t hear what she said after that, but watched as one of the men clapped him on the back, another one shaking his hand enthusiastically. He never really mentioned having friends in the Bellevue coven, but she supposed he must do – he had been going every week for over two months. In the sea of white among the grass, he all but disappeared into the crowd.

Watching him speak to them, she realised it really did remind her of when they were teenagers. Specifically, of when she had been sitting on the floor of Brooke House, her knees curled up to her chest as he traced a pentagram into the floorboards in thick black marker. Behind them their friends had bickered over the spirit board, and as the cold settled in she had watched Killian gently reaching for something beyond all their understanding.

The woman said something quiet and Killian laughed, a hearty and warm sound, but the sick feeling in Emma’s stomach only deepened. He fit here. Somewhere he could keep reaching.

“You must be Emma.”

Emma turned, and saw she was being approached by a taller woman, her bright blonde hair tied into a plait which hung over her right shoulder. Like everyone else, she was dressed all in white, in a long, light gown that trailed down to her feet.

“Uh, yeah,” Emma replied; if Killian had told them she was coming, her vivid green blouse likely gave her away. “Hi.”

“I’m Elsa,” the woman said, holding out a dainty hand for her to shake. Her palm was smooth, her skin so light it was almost white.

“Right,” Emma said, understanding dawning. “So this is your place?” Elsa nodded. “Great to meet you. This all seems… it looks great.”

Elsa smiled demurely. “We’re just lucky the weather held.”

Given Seattle’s propensity for continually being soaking wet, Emma couldn’t help but agree. “Pretty much.”

Killian was still standing with the other group, and while Emma could see him attempting to pivot away from them, apparently whatever animated discussion they were having kept drawing him in.

“You know, Killian has told me a little about you.”

Her hackles immediately rose. “Oh yeah?”

“He thinks of you all the time,” she continued. “I can tell he looks for you in the work we do here.”

Without her really noticing, the flutes had drifted into a different song, something that floated drowsily across the still air. It felt like she should be relaxed, like every variable had been carefully constructed to draw out the hazy, heady sensation of early summer, but Emma just couldn’t feel herself falling into it like she should.

Still, she didn’t want to disturb the tranquil atmosphere by getting too defensive with someone Killian often spoke highly of.

Instead, the corner of her mouth tugged upwards. “And what work is that?”

To her credit, Elsa laughed. They both knew there was little point in being coy.

“I actually think you and I are a lot alike,” the other woman mused, a cheerful twinkle in her eye.

Alright, she’d bite. “How d’you figure?”

Elsa took a long, slow breath, averting her eyes to the rest of the gathering. A man and a woman standing near the fledgling bonfire had begun swaying to the music.

“Putting up walls, it works to keep the bad things out. And keeping everything contained inside, all those… messy, confusing instincts – that stops us from hurting others.”

Nobody can control this door except you, Emma.

“But it also closes us off to them completely.”

Emma felt herself beginning to bristle; she wasn’t sure she would appreciate a lecture about Killian Jones from somebody who had known him all of five minutes. Not to mention she was growing uneasy with the amount that Killian had perhaps chosen to confide in a complete stranger.

“What exactly has he been saying about me?”

“Almost nothing,” Elsa was quick to assure her, but it was the almost that stuck. “Which I think is quite telling in itself.”

Emma said nothing.

“Answer me this – why do you think Killian chooses to come here?”

She let out a huff of frustration. Where the hell was Killian with that drink?

“I don’t know, just gotta scratch that witchy itch?”

Elsa hummed indulgently, but she was undeterred by Emma’s attitude. “I’ve asked him myself, but I wasn’t convinced by his answer. I’m not sure he even knows.” After a beat, she clasped her hands in front of her. “But I think he comes to us because he can’t talk to you. And believe me, we’re a poor substitute.”

“He can talk to me,” Emma replied indignantly.

Elsa met her gaze, hard. “About everything?”

This will not define me.

They were supposed to be the same. Two complementary halves of the same brave, desperate fighter. Kids who had been lost together, who had been found, together. That was the promise they’d made before Brooke House, and the one they had fervently renewed in the wake of it.

There weren’t supposed to be things they could not talk about. Quiet, desperate things they could not say.

So good of you to finally come and see me.

She became distantly aware that she hadn’t said anything for a few prolonged seconds, and she turned away from the sharpness of Elsa’s gaze.

“I’m tired of letting the past control us.”

“The past is who we are,” Elsa said simply. “Don’t you think he deserves to find meaning in whatever he has experienced?”

Emma folded her arms. Meaning. Was that what he was supposed to find here?

“That’s easy,” she muttered. “There’s no meaning in any of it. The only thing I know for certain is that darkness doesn’t discriminate.”

It was born with you, it died with you, and sometimes, in the middle, it liked to remind you that it was there.

Elsa murmured her agreement. “It does not.”

“There we are!” Killian’s voice was loud and cheerful as he sprung up beside them, holding two glasses of a vivid pink liquid. “Sorry for the delay, Tink was just – well, she’s a royal pain in my arse, that’s all you need to know.”

He held out one of the glasses to her and Emma took it gingerly. It tasted like something citrusy. The sudden change in atmosphere left her feeling a little off-balance.

“I see you met Elsa – the place looks fantastic, by the way.”

Elsa bowed her head in pleasure.

“I’m glad you could make it. How’s your hand?”

“Oh,” Killian’s cheerful visage faded for just a moment as his gaze dropped to his bandaged palm, “it’s fine. Barely even feel it.”

Once again, Emma was struck by the idea that there was more to that story than he had told her.

“I better go do the rounds. But Emma – if you ever want to talk, I want you to know this is a safe space. For anyone.”

Something warm burned beneath her collar as she felt Killian turn his eyes on her. Elsa seemed to be expecting some kind of acknowledgement of her offer, so Emma cleared her throat.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Mercifully, after that Elsa left them.

“What was that about?” Killian asked curiously.

Emma took a large gulp of the punch. “I think she was trying to read my mind.”

Killian laughed.

“She doesn’t read minds.”

“Or cast a spell on me.”

“Don’t be daft,” he snorted, before slinging his free arm around her waist. “Did you want food?”

Emma sighed heavily. “Oh, God. Please.”

This was going to be awful.

-/-

This is what happened: it was not, in fact, awful.

It was this: the food was great, the company wasn’t bad, and Killian was alive with good humour and enthusiasm, carrying her nimbly from moment to moment.

It was this: finding herself in thoughtful conversations with other guests and forgetting momentarily that Killian was not even with her, on the occasions she found herself without him.

It was this: listening contentedly as Elsa caught the attention of the crowd, recounting fond memories of the solstice from her childhood in Denmark, and reciting the great tale of the battle between the Oak King of daylight and the Holly King of night. During Litha, on the day of the summer solstice, the Holly King would win, from then on claiming every day until Yule and making each darker than the last. It was a fanciful thing, but its whimsy somehow fit exactly right into the festivities of the Bellevue coven; and surprisingly, Emma did not mind.

It was this: the bonfire catching with a glorious roar, sparks shooting up into the midnight blue sky as the night grew darker, and allowing Killian to tug her into its glow and twirl her around to the lolling beat of the music.

And it was this: allowing herself to forget, for a single second, that there was anything at all in the world to fear.

And then she saw the scaled man.

He was standing at the entrance to the garden, by the ivy archways, his entire figure shrouded in darkness. She couldn’t make out his features, but the nasty curve of his mouth and the basket of spun gold twine at his feet gave him away. Something in Emma’s chest lurched, she wanted to throw up. She reached for Killian but Killian was not at her side, Killian was talking to Elsa, and maybe it was that, or maybe it was the cold, hard longing that had settled in her chest ever since she had called David, or maybe it was the soft buzz of alcohol running through her, but she was caught by a wave of courage she had never before experienced.

The scaled man beckoned, and she followed with purpose.

He raised a hand toward her, she could feel the brittle and knurled edges of his fingernails against her cheek even twenty paces away, and she left the comfort of the fire behind her and began her walk into the black.

She would tell him. She would tell him no, he could not have her.

She wanted to be in the light.

And she would tell him so.

Except as she got closer, she realised it was not him at all, and she could not understand how she had ever thought it was. She balked, trudging through the blur of her recent memories, but no – when she had noticed him, when she had stood by the fire, it hadn’t been the scaled man at all, but a normal person. The state of it being him, and not being him existed simultaneously, and Emma shook her head to try and regain her focus.

Because the man standing at the edge of the garden was August W Booth.

“Did you see him?”

It took Emma a few moments to realise August was speaking to her.

Her lips parted. “Did I see… who?”

August let a breath of dubious laughter, shaking his head. “Yeah, okay.”

Emma was still struggling to marry up the two scenarios in her mind – she was at the Litha celebration with the coven from Bellevue, and August W Booth was standing in front of her.

“Look,” he continued, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “I thought I’d come and find you before you had a chance to find me again. You’re very good at what you do, Emma.”

A thousand questions flashed across her mind, too quickly for her to count. What was he doing here? How did he find her? What did he want?

“How do you know my name?”

That one, though, had been weighing on her mind for longer. August hesitated, glancing furtively over his shoulder, then peering past Emma out toward the bonfire. Whatever he saw did not seem to appease him.

“Not here,” he said quietly. “Don’t you feel it?” Despite the warmth of the evening, Emma shivered.

“No,” she said, although she was certain she did.

“You can find me at this address,” August continued, pulling a business card from his pocket and holding it out to her. Without thinking, she took it. “And, yeah, you can come and arrest me if you like, but I think you know that if you do you won’t get what you want.”

Emma eyed him curiously. “And what’s that?”

The corner of August’s mouth curled upwards, and his dark eyes glittered in the distant firelight; the world had granted him a secret, and he was thrilled to be its keeper.

“The truth,” he said. “The truth we both know.”

He nodded behind her. When Emma turned, she could see Killian standing motionless by the fire, staring straight at them – he looked puzzled, as if he were trying to make out who she was talking to. She was certain that if he knew he would’ve already stormed over there.

“Bring your court jester, if you like,” August continued brightly, before brushing his eyes across the rest of the clearing. The dancing, the music, the fire. “If you can tear him away.”

Emma glanced over her shoulder again to look at Killian, but he wasn’t watching them anymore. He was staring into the centre of the flames with that same blank, vacant look she had seen for days.

When she turned back August had slipped away.

She stared at the business card in her hands.

The truth, he had said. Which truth was that?

The sky had turned black, and the breath of the wind through the trees was stirring something strong, but uneasy, inside of her; the air tingled with woodsmoke and possibility, and Emma was ready.

#jay writes #the wind blows white #cs halloweek #cs fic #cs ff #captain swan #cs au #halloweek #killian jones #emma swan #I hope you like this one guys!

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pogues-never-say-die · 4 years

Text

What Have I Done?

Hello my beautiful OBX friends, I had such a good response on my first OBX piece I decided to do another one.

This is part sequel, part an alternate view of my first story “Rome” so I would read that first for some context. A lot of lines double up and it’s because this whole story is from JJ’s point of view.

I’ll give you a second to go read “Rome” first. Here you go.

Good, now that’s done feel free to listen to the song that’s featured in this fic. Since this is just an alternate view to “Rome” I decided to use another Dermot Kennedy song so it all made sense.

You can listen to that Irish beauty here.

We good? Let’s do this.

Oh wait, If you guys like the one too let me know and I’ll turn this into a whole series. I want to do a playlist series with JJ and this version of y/n, each themed to a different song I listen to. Let me know if you want more!

CHARACTERS: JJ Maybank x Reader

WARNINGS: lots of angst, but also lots of fluff. curse words. using the Lord’s name in vain. that kind of stuff.

LENGTH: 2.3k words

What Have I Done?

Woke up this morning, light poured in, you're with me

I thought I'd be better off alone

Now, my soul has been torn and reborn, started breathing

I can’t believe I’ve been sitting here talking to this girl for hours. There were hot tourons in skimpy clothes left and right but here I am, sitting on the beach with Kie’s friend. Y/N. God that’s a gorgeous name. Everything about her is perfect.

“And that’s when I smashed so hard into the reef it literally snapped my board in half,” Oh shit, she was telling a story. And oh my god is that the sun coming up? Have we really been sitting here all night?

“You broke a surfboard in half? I didn’t even know that was possible.” I say back with a laugh.

“Oh yeah, I’ve snapped two boards. My dad has snapped easily a dozen. We keep them in the garage as mementos. He said he wants to build a table or something out of them.”

Where the hell did this girl come from?

“I could probably help him with that, ya know?” Did I just offer to build this girl a fucking table with her dad? “I’m pretty good with my hands.”

“Oh I don’t doubt it,” she winks at me before reaching over to play with my fingers.

“Did you just hit on me?” I gasp in a southern belle accent, “Little ole me?”

“I would never!” She gasps back, still playing with my fingers. Her hands are so soft, and warm.

“Oh really?” I ask leaning forward, my breath fans over her face. Wow, she’s beautiful. Even just looking at her makes me feel whole.

“No, not really” And then she closes the gap, putting her lips on mine.

Good God her lips are amazing.

What have I done?

I don’t think I’ve ever stood up so quickly. Oh my fucking God, did I just kiss Kie’s friend? And why did it feel different than all the other girls I’ve kissed. Fuck, fuck, I’ve gotta get out of here. Before I can make it more than 2 steps away I hear her voice from behind me.

“Are you leaving to go pick up a book on kissing because that was awful,” she says, getting me to whip around.

“Are you kidding?” I say, looking at her with that shit eating grin on her face. She’s seriously so cute I want to fucking die.

“I mean it could definitely use some work,” she says as she inches closer to me.

If this is a challenge, I’m not falling for it. Oh fuck yes I am.

“I can teach you a few things,” she says grabbing me by my necklace and pulling me back in.

This girl is going to be the fucking death of me I swear. But what a sweet, sweet way to go.

So, don't you fall back asleep for this moment

Just be, I wanna get it right for once

Oh, I've been knocked out and beat but this feeling is fleeting

I can hear people screaming but it’s all just ocean waves in my brain, I can’t stop swinging. My fists are getting bloody and I’m pretty sure I’ve lost a tooth but no piece of shit is going to go around touching girls without permission, especially my girl.

Just as I’m about to drown this piece of shit in the ocean I feel a small, soft hand grab the back of my shirt. I’d recognize that warmth anywhere.

“Jay, he’s had enough. Come on,” Y/N says rather softly. Somehow she’s not the only one screaming at me. But my grip on his shoulders doesn’t loosen. All I can see in my brain is him grabbing her and then it’s all red. Like fire. I want to burn it all down.

“Baby,” she says again, this time wrapping her arms all the way around my waist. “Baby, let’s go. Please? I want to go. Just take me home Jay.”

I finally let go of him, dropping him into the ocean. Not before spitting on him and getting one last word in, “I better not see you on the Cut again scum”.

As we walk away and back to the Chateau, I keep my distance. I don’t know if she wants me to touch her, I wouldn’t want to after witnessing that. As we make our way into the house I prop myself on the counter, letting her go to the back of the house by herself. She probably doesn’t want to look at me right now. I don’t want to look at me either.

But nonetheless, my girl is back in mere seconds with a first aid kit in her hands and a clean shirt from my bag.

“Move,” she says sternly, tapping my thighs so that I spread them so she can stand between them.

Next thing I know she’s pulling out supplies left and right like a nurse on a mission. I’m too busy trying to read her face that I don’t even notice she’s pressed an alcohol soaked cotton pad to the spot on my forehead.

“Ahh son of a fucking bitch, fucking shit.”

“Hey, watch your language there mister,” she says before giggling and doing it again. Her laugh is enough to distract me from the pain that comes with cleaning the wound.

“Wait, you’re not mad anymore?” I hope my voice doesn’t sound as desperate as it does in my head.

“Mad? Jay I was never mad, except when he touched me but I was never mad at you,” she says while applying a bandage to the spot on my head.

“Why aren’t you mad? I just wailed on this random kid 5 feet in front of your face.”

“He wasn’t a random kid Jay,” she says softly while cleaning up the mess on the counter and then looking up at me from her spot standing between my legs. “He touched me without my consent. I wasn’t even talking to him and he came up and put his hand down the back of my pants. That’s not okay, and a guy who’s so comfortable doing that has definitely done it before. I’m sure if you gave him a punch for every girl he’s touched like that we’d still be on the beach.”

Well, this is strange. Most girls I’ve hooked up with get mad when I fight, hell even Kie yells at me every time and I’ve known her for years. Wrapping my legs around her I pull her even closer, putting my hands on each side of her face.

“You promise you’re not mad? You can tell me if you are,” I say stroking her soft skin with my thumbs.

“I’m going to be mad if you ask me one more time if I’m mad,” she says before leaning forward to give me a kiss.

I didn’t ask again.

Ever since the other night, I've been

Thinking 'bout the way you smile golden

Wanna move inside of your light

I can’t get the thoughts to leave my head. Trash, scum, garbage, not good enough. He’s right, everything he said is true. I’m not good enough, especially for her.

“JJ, you better hope for your sake that you’re here right now,” I hear coming from outside. Looking up from the horror movie John B and I are watching I realize I’m so fucking screwed.

“Oh you’re in trouuubblllleeee,” John B says in a sing-songy voice.

“Shut the fuck up man,” I sneer at him getting up from the couch to meet her in the doorway.

“Hey, what’s up?” I say standing in the door to the front porch.

“‘What’s up?’ Are you serious? You’ve been ignoring my calls for 3 days and all you have to say to me is ‘what’s up?’ Really?” she says with a tone I’ve never heard before.

“Bro you haven’t called your girl in 3 days?” John B says from behind me. “That’s fucked man”.

“I swear to God dude if you don’t shut the fuck up right now,” I say grabbing y/n by the wrist to pull her outside and away from his dumbass commentary.

“Look I’m sorry, I just needed some space,” I tell her as we make it to the front yard. That’s the dumbest excuse I could think of but it’s all I’ve got. How do I tell her the truth? That she’s too good for me. That I don’t understand how she hasn’t realized that I’m just Outer Banks trash who can’t stand up to his own father.

She’s too pure to be tainted by me. Her light is too bright, I’m just twisted fucking darkness.

“Don’t pull that with me, that’s the oldest excuse in the book,” she says, still fuming.

“It’s not an excuse, it’s true. You’re smothering me,” I yell at her. Lies, such a lie, but I don’t know what else I can say to get her to leave.

“That’s bull and we both know it,” she says yelling back at me. “Why won’t you just tell me what’s going?”

I can’t tell her, I can never tell her.

“What the fuck do you want from me y/n?” Why am I shouting at her? I never shout at her. And did I just swear at her? She hates that shit. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What have I done?

“Number one, I want you to stop cursing at me right now, you know I don’t like that. Number two, I want you to talk to me!” I’ve never heard her shout this loud before, I didn’t even know her voice could carry this much. How far have I pushed her?

“Fine, you want to talk? Let’s talk about how I want you to fucking leave me the fuck alone, let’s talk about that”.

Why did I just say that? It’s not true. None of it’s true. This is just what I do though. I push people out when they get close - and she’s way too close. She’s all encompassing, she’s everywhere.

“Is this it? Are you too broken to let me in?” She said it so softly I almost didn’t hear her, I was too distracted by the tears slowly starting to run down her face.

Oh god no, I’ve done it. I’ve pushed her too far.

What have I done?

Oh no, what have I done?

You be brave for me, now

“I will never, ever, give up on you,” she said, wrapping her hands around mine. “You keep trying to get me to run, but I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. As long as you want me, I’m right here”.

I don’t think I’ve ever breathed so deeply or smiled so big in my entire fucking life. Leaning forward to kiss her felt like the first time all over again.

As we pull away in the van light I see tears running down her face still.

“Baby, why are you crying? I thought we were good?” I say wiping the tears off her beautiful face but they just keep coming. Was I wrong?

“No baby we’re okay, but I’m not okay,” she says staring me down with those gorgeous eyes. “Why does he treat you like this? You don’t deserve it. You’re so kind and caring and generous. You deserve so much better than that.”

“I don’t know honey, I don’t know if we’ll ever know. We just can’t think about it okay?” I tell her, wiping the last of the tears from her face.

“You good?” I ask as the van light finally turns off. We’ve been sitting here with the door open that long.

“I’m good Jay, I’m a brave girl remember?” She says laughing.

“So brave,” I say leaning forward to steal a kiss. “You brave enough to sneak a dirty pogue into your bedroom window so he can stay the night?”

“Oh yeah, but I don’t know if John B would want to come over this late?” She says with a giggle before closing her door and sprinting out the van.

“Oh you get back here you little monster”

I never thought I needed saving, I was right where I should be

Good God, I know it's dangerous, but it's you that I need

I'm in love this time, I'm in love this time

“Was our first kiss really that awful?” I ask as we lay in her bed, lights off, TV off, just holding her from behind like I never want to let her go.

“Jay I’m so tired it’s been such a long day,” she groans.

“Just answer the question y/n” I grunt back, squeezing her tighter against me.

“No, it was perfect. I was just trying to trick you into kissing me again,” she says with a giggle. “Now shut up and go to bed”.

“Yes ma’m,” I say before shoving my head into her neck. God she smells amazing. She is the best part of my whole world - I was trying to push her away but it turned out I needed her right here with me all along.

Oh god, what am I about to do?

“What would you say if I told you ‘I love you’ right now?” I say whispering it into the night, part of me hoping she doesn’t hear me or is already asleep.

I’ve never said those 3 words to a girl before. I was on some dangerous ground, but I knew if I held it in for one more second it would swallow me whole.

“I’d tell you ‘I love you too’ Jay,” she says, kissing my hands that are wrapped around her from behind . “But if you don’t shut up right now and let me sleep, I’ll take it back”.

“Okay fine, I love you baby”.

“I love you too Jay, good night”,

Good fucking night indeed.

#jj maybank #outer banks #imagine #fanfic #obx #jj obx #jj x reader #outer banks imagine #obx imagine #original writing #angst #fluff #rudy pankow #jj maybank x reader #jj maybank angst #jj maybank fluff #john b

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miss-kittys-magical-library · 3 years

Text

Auld Lang Syne (Jack x Rin)

Word Count: 3200

Warnings: None! Complete fluff.

A/N: inspired by @magic-multicolored-miracle winter prompts. New Year's kiss. o one asked for it 🤣 This is a sequel to "I'm A Creep" <-- Found here

She came to this little bookstore as many days a week as time allowed. Maybe it was becoming a bit obsessive, Rin’s constant reasons to spend hours there instead of a library. There was a collection of unread novels piling up on the coffee table of her council flat off the high street. Any excuse to be nearby

With the holidays fast approaching, her catering job kept her busier than ever. The constant flirting and serving and pleasing executives and drunk administratives and book editors and bankers managed to fend off the memories of the last time she ended up in the psych hospital. That and plenty of time made everything slow down and spread out over days instead of the constant hours she once spent. Her senses now and then brought Jack back to her like the waves in his mental pond crashing over her. She would be taken off guard for just a moment or two, but the parties kept them back at bay.

Two months in the psych hospital was all they spent together. A month that seeped into her dreams and waking moments for half a year after Rin was released. How she and Jack never spoke again after that night. He grinned awkwardly in her direction during their next group therapy session. Squinting his eyes like he was trying to place where he knew her from, but that was part of her gift. Sometimes, they woke up from a dream and forgot she was ever apart of them.

Before Rin could blink, Emma had come to take Jack home. Emma who smiled fondly at the “barking” girl with scarred hands who carried the flame of hope from her heart to her brother. At least that's what she communicated to Rin as they brushed fingertips on the way out. Jack was safe. He was loved. Emma would make sure he could handle the world without messages and the dead people who plagued him for so long. A few more days, and Rin was dropped back out in the world too.

Still, as the song goes, she learned to muddle through somehow. It had been a rather peculiar stretch of time Rin had gone without thinking of his unearthly eyes or that mass of dark curls on her neck and chest as they.. A bell over a door she didn't remember stepping in broke her out of the reverie.

Rin found herself inside a small shop with shelves eight or nine feet high. That musty smell of tangible books invaded her nostrils and she inhaled deeply. With eyes closed, she put her hand on the first row she could find and melted into the memories imprinted on them. She was struck by an unexpected wave, but instead of drowning she rode it to shore. There was a squeaky creak that often accompanies a wheel and just knew someone was on one of those ladders that glided across the shelves.

“You alright, loov?” that Yorkshire accent filled Rin’s ears and she squeezed her eyes shut tighter. “You look like you've seen a ghost,” he chuckled at a joke he felt only he understood.

He was a few feet above her when she finally opened her eyes. He dipped precariously from the ladder like he was swinging from a rope on a pirate ship. Those eyes shining brightly as they reflected the white lights decorating the store. Rin didn’t need to touch him to know he was happy. She could see it on his face as he smiled in her direction. Even in hospital she never knew he had dimples.

“Jack,” it came out before she could help herself.

He arched an eyebrow curiously in her direction. Head tilted in thought. Then looking down at his name tag he puffed air out of his nostrils “Right,” he tapped it “Forgot I was wearing this.”

Rin’s shoulders sagged in defeat, then unexpectedly “Have any Dickens?”

What the hell, she chided herself.

“Do we also have tea in the Queen’s country?” he teased. Rin’s cheeks grew hot with embarrassment. “sometimes we forget all the books we've read. I've forgotten loads since I was sick a few years back. Lived rough then was in hospital while. Dunno why I said that.”

“I think we tell strangers our secrets because we’ll never have to see them again,” Rin spoke softly.

“If you never come back, I was a bad salesman. Always looking for repeats.” Was.. he flirting? “Any Dickens will do?”

“Oliver Twist?” Rin signed and closed her eyes. Her face was on fire. You've had sex with this bloke, and he's got no bloody clue.

“Oi! I like Edwin Drood best. Old man dropped dead right in the middle of it all. Never got a proper ending. Ever been on one of these?” Jack gestured towards the ladder. Rin shook her head so he opened an arm. “Hop on with us then!”

“You give all the girls a ride?” Rin found her voice. She climbed up and settled herself against Jack’s body. Her naked hand closed over his; she felt a jolt go through his chest which tensed in response.

“Not- Not usually?” he stammered and tightened his grip around Rin’s waist as they slid along the shelves. “Do we know each other from somewhere? You just feel familiar. Dunno why I'm thinking of a bird.” Jack spoke more to himself.

“Well, actually, name is Wren-”

He cut her off, “But your brother couldn't say it right, so everyone calls you Rin.”

Jack’s body relaxed into the young woman’s. Maybe it was reflex, but he cautiously buried his face in her hair and inhaled.

Rin swallowed a smile, and found little ways to touch him that day. Little ways to touch exposed parts of Jack everytime she visited the store. Innocent explanations for their hands lingering when he handed her the twentieth book she didn't need. To flirtatiously brush the curls away from his forehead as he leaned over the counter when they talked.

And almost every single time Jack leaned into it. Reciprocated. Started remembering little parts of Rin from their time in section. Not the big messy memories, just bursts from time to time. She was ok with that. She would take him anyway she could.

Now here she was, two days before Christmas with her hands on the ornaments in the shop window. She had something wrapped in brown paper in her purse and was biding her time as Jack helped the customers buying last minute gifts.

Soon it was her turn, and Rin placed the gift on the counter simultaneously with Jack doing likewise. There was unexpected laughter, the way Jack's tapered off into a giggle from a loud outburst. Infectious as it was, Rin joined in.

“If we got each other identical presents, you're coming to mine for New Year’s,” it wasn't a question. “Emma and her partner know you somehow. Must be from around the visitor’s during..” His voice trailed off.

“Our time in the nuthouse?” Rin offered.

Jack leaned over and brushed his nose against Rin’s cheek out of the blue. They lingered momentarily, before he pressed his forehead to hers.

“I've done that before,” another assertion as his verdant gaze settled on Rin’s lips.

Picking up the package, Rin shoved it playfully into Jack’s chest so that he was forced back. “Open your gift!”

“Fine!”

Jack mimicked her tone as he tore into the wrapping paper at the same Rin dove into hers. They both held up books simultaneously and fell into a fit of giggles.

“OLIVER TWIST!”

“EDWIN DROOD?!”

In unison: “FIRST EDITION?!”

“I can't believe I never knew how much you loved books,” Rin was blunt.

“I'm not sure how much we spoke for you to find out.” Jack hugged the book tightly to his chest. “I'm not sure how much I spoke to anyone outside of group and therapy.”

Rin took one of her million chances when she placed the palm of her hand against Jack’s cheek. He relaxed into the touch, eyes closed and sighed contentedly. Under the surface he was warm and bright like the Christmas lights. She wouldn't let herself pass any further than the happy memories. Impassioned ones of mouths and hands and fingertips and hugs.

Perhaps it was the particular sensation Rin spread out from herself to Jack that triggered a reaction. One of him leaning across the countertop to bring their lips together in a chaste kiss that lingered longer than it should have.

Jack recovered and righted himself before apologizing. He was compelled in the moment out of gratitude. “Meet us here on New Year’s, yeah? So we don't have to be alone.”

“You've got family, Jack.” Rin reminded him.

“So we don't have to be alone for the New Year,” he only repeated. It was a date.

------

Rin took the early shift on New Year’s Eve so she could tear out and get ready. The nerves coiled in her stomach as she scrambled to fix hair that wouldn't fall right or apply make-up that made her resemble a street walker. She sighed, defeated, and told herself this was all she could give.

Still Jack threw a large grin in her direction as he closed up the shop. He wolf whistled and Rin felt her face catch fire.

“Aren't you a stunner?” he pecked her cheek and gave the woman before him a spin. She loved the way it came out sounding like “stoonah.”

“You got a big date or something?” he teased before taking her by the hand.

“I needed extra money for the holiday so I thought I'd hang around a street corner. Fifty quid and a warm cot, I'll do whatever you like” Rin shrugged and winked coyly.

Jack rolled his eyes, but his demeanor changed as he traced the network of scars on the back of her hand so delicately Rin felt tears in her eyes. She swiped at them swiftly hoping he thought it was the chilled breeze.

“Dunno why I did tha,” he dropped the hand abruptly and buried his own in a jacket pocket. “Not my place to touch (tooch) you when you didn't ask.”

Uncomfortable silence.

“does anyone else work here besides you?” Rin gestured towards the store as they started walking, she assumed, to Emma’s house.

“Sometimes Emma and Billy. Only when I get too overwhelmed.”

Rin linked her arm with Jack's to break the weird tension. “Do you manage it?”

“I own it. Why need a job? Maybe a bit of a conflict if the boss has a bit of a flirt with the shopgirl innit?”

“OWN IT?!”

Jack laughed, “Not bad for a nutter who talks to dead people and was not long for Big Issue. Why do I say this shit to you?!”

“I'm like a truth serum?” she offered.

They wound their way through a lovely neighbor with houses no one Rin knew could afford. She remembered Jack’s brother-in-law was a lawyer. He told her his sister left him not long after he got out. Had to be spousal support and a settlement, but she didn't prod.

“I helped someone a while back. Someone kinda connected. Well-known, I guess? I tried to sort out his missus when she tried suicide.”

“It didn't work in the end.”

“At first. It's how I got sectioned. The voices. His voice. She was ok for a bit. His family sent me letters. They figured I knew something. What I knew got them a conviction. I got a reward. Doesn’t always feel like one if everyone’s dead now does (dooz) it?”

It was Rin’s turn to lace her fingers with Jack's. “You helped someone's family find peace. Sometimes that's enough even if you kinda lose yourself in the process. Look I let what I can do almost kill me. That’s what put me in hospital.” She held up the gashed scar along her wrist. “But that gave me yo-” Rin swallowed the word. “I got to use my gift one last time. And he's happy! Even if he forgets who I am.”

“Who could ever forget you, love?”

They were quiet the rest of the journey.

-----

Rin sat on the edge of the pool as her feet dangled in the bath warm water. Her brain flashed back to the lake where she experienced Jack drowning in his own mind. Bogged down by medication he didn't need while the dead clung to him. Then they had surfaced, she nearly torn apart by the ghosts Jack fought with. Bellowed that he was no longer their messenger. They tried to take her as compensation.

Now false water filled Rin’s lungs as a fake grin spread across her cheeks. The chlorine and tropical air made her nauseous, ready to vomit. Of all the things Jack could have suggested they do, swimming at 11pm would not have ever crossed her mind.

“There was a kid, lived here before Emma, died right. Mean little bastard too. Suppose dying like that might get a kid angry as long as he was tied to it.”

Jack stood on the pool’s edge, toes curled around the stone. His face went a bit dark as he narrowed his eyes in the direction of something Rin couldn't see in the opposite corner. He clenched his fists. She knew it was a silent standoff between Jack, and most likely, the dead boy.

It was only a flash of his old self before Jack snapped to. He grinned like the Cheshire cat as he undid his jeans and tore his sweater off. Then headfirst into the deep end leaving Rin to squeal.

“WHAT are you doing?!” she yelled as he bolted towards her underwater.

“Dunno fancied a swim. It's rather lovely water considering it's January. Plus,” he pointed towards the ceiling, “Look up.”

Rin followed his finger and gazed upwards. A large glass window spread the night sky before them. Millions of stars shone through, stars she never really bothered searching for. She was overwhelmed by other people's emotions, literally, that she never had a quiet moment to herself so that she COULD look up.

“Don't you wanna to join me?” Jack’s question was rather coy as he side-stroked back and forth.

Rin shook her head, “I'll sit here and watch.” She glanced down at the wine bottle she nearly forget, “And drink.” So they did.

Now her anxiety was churning her stomach. A coat of alcohol warmed her further than just the temperature of the pool room. Her chest was tight with lack of oxygen as she struggled to not cry. So she focused on the long, thin body completely relaxed on the water's surface. What a lovely distraction it was.

Jack floated along lazily on his back, boxers leaving nothing to the imagination. That secret part of him Rin had not seen in two years clearly visible. Now her face grew flush with desire and the memory of how good it felt for once to be touched by a man because he cared about her. How they made each other sing.

Jack must have sensed something because he righted himself and swam towards her. Those hands on her calves and knees to part them slightly so he can stand between them. He was silent as he reached for the bottle of wine.

“Rin, be honest,” his voice filled the silence of the room. “Can you swim?”

Rin's heart pounded so loudly in her ears that Jack was muffled. The way he looked at her, desire emanated from him. There was a disconnect between his brain and body. Those hands on her thighs remembered exploring her but the rest of him didn't. They lingered between innocence and the verge of obscenity. If he wanted, Rin would have sex with him while a houseful of people partied and danced within ear shot.

“i can swim!”

Jack pushed off the wall and splashed her in the process. “Do you think I'm sexy?” he was drunk. Head tilted as the wet curls clung to his face.

“A blind person would think you're sexy. You're taking the piss because I won't get in.”

“Of course I am! Come on. I'll hold you?” he raised an eyebrow. “It's almost midnight. I want to be with you when it is.”

“We're together enough, Jack”

“No!” he waved his hands. “I want to hold you.I don't know why, I know I have before? I feel like there's just this.. Ever since you came to the store it’s been like trying to remember a dream I had once. And some part of me is saying you know how to help because you've done it before?”

Realization spread across Jack's face, “Rin, am I the one who forgot you?”

“It happens sometimes. I think.. I think my abilities shut off a part of people who no longer need me or want me?” she shrugged it off.

“How could I not want you?”

It was such an innocent thing to ask. One Rin had asked herself every time someone used her. Her parents turned her into a sideshow freak for their religion. Men and their sick desires that she tapped into. Even she didn't want herself most of the time.

But Jack had been alone. Left to his own devices and literally haunted. Rin never needed to touch him to know how sad he had been when he first was sectioned. It emanated from him. He knew about self isolation and mistrust. And especially about gifts that would ruin you if they could.

There wasn't a thought left. Spurned on by the purity of his question, Rin hurried out of her clothes and eased herself into the pool. She swam as quickly as her body allowed before throwing herself in Jack's waiting arms.

Their arms and legs tangled together in the water. Rin wrapped herself around Jack's hips, her arms draped across broad shoulders. She twisted her fingers up in his hair and let her body meld into his.

Jack held Rin's head in his hands. Their foreheads pressed together as he nudged the tip of his nose along her face. Careful, at first,

to only brush his lips on her cheeks and eyelids. Then the countdown started.

Everyone in the house started counting down excitedly, and Jack stopped being cautious. It was cliché how their mouths found one another hungrily as the guests screamed Happy New Year! How Rin's empathic touch sent a wave of electricity that visibly shocked Jack's body as they began to sing. As if she plugged his body into his brain and there was a spark that brought him to life.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

For days of Auld Lang Syne

They relaxed into one another. Their kisses became languid but no less passionate. Everyone stormed the pool around them, splashing and laughing and hollering. Emma drunkenly interrupted the couples’ warring lips and tongues.

“Took you fucking long enough,” she teased her baby brother. “I kept hoping this would happen.”

Rin buried her face in Jack's chest as he held her tight. That bright fire that flowed from Emma to her and Rin to Jack back in hospital took root again in this house and pool.

“Me too.”

We’ll take o cup of kindness yet

For days of auld lang syne

#robert sheehan #jack #the messenger #robert sheehan character fics #jack x rin

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spell-cleaver · 4 years

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DAY 17: WHUMPTOBER: I Didn’t See That Coming - Dirty Secret @whumptober2020

The Pirate Son AU Masterpost. This is an immediate sequel to the previous ficlet (The Song).

Luke was still sitting in a small puddle on the floor of his room when Vader returned, staring into space. Vader just sighed, knelt down next to him, took the towel and wrapped it around Luke’s shoulder, starting to rub at his hair.

Luke looked up at him. Now dressed in a complete departure from his usual black ensemble, some ragged brown trousers, a beige shirt and a scrappy dark jacket, he looked totally different from the monster who’d hunted him for so long. That, and—

“Your…” Luke swallowed. “Your mask.” He wasn’t wearing it at all.

His father smiled at him—it was a quick, bitter smile, more a flash of the teeth, as though he hadn’t bothered with letting anyone see him smile in a long, long time. “It was getting rusty, and cold. I took it off for now.”

“Oh.” Luke was still staring.

Vader looked… He’d been right, Luke thought, all those years ago when he’d first met his father and worried that they looked alike. They did look similar, from the colour of their hair to the clefts in their chins to the shapes of their eyes. Vader’s were a vicious yellow though, and Luke found it uncomfortable to make contact with them for too long.

His father was deathly pale, too, with his skin clinging close to his skull and faint blue tinges at his temple. His hair was cut severely short, shorn close to his head, only adding to the harsh effect, enhancing the blue, and Luke couldn’t help but compare it mentally to his own hair, getting long enough that Leia had starting braiding it in the few days before his capture. He wondered what his father would’ve thought if he’d shown up with that. He wondered if he could try and braid his own hair, now that it wasn’t like he had much else to do…

He wondered why he kept distracting himself.

“What…” His voice was hoarse, his back ramrod straight—he wanted to lean into Vader, but he couldn’t—as he whispered, “What happened, then…?”

Vader paused in drying Luke’s hair and laid the towel around his shoulders again. “When Palpatine inherited the crown of Coruscant and started expanding his Empire with the promise of eradicating piracy from the seas, I joined him wholeheartedly. I hated pirates—they carried the slave shipment that my mother died in—and he promised he knew a way to make sure they never stained the seas again. My wife, Padmé, the light of my life… She was pregnant. I had a family to protect—scouring pirates from the face of the seven seas was certainly a way I was going to achieve that. So I joined him, as one of the most powerful sorcerers to sail the seas, and when I confided in him that I was worried about one day dying in battle and leaving my family alone, the way my father did to me… He told me there was a way to stop myself and others, from dying.”

Luke swallowed, and tried very hard not to think of the way that bullet three years ago had punched right through Vader’s chest, yet still he’d continued on. “That way was to become undead?”

“It was to strip you of your humanity, in the long run,” Vader said, his voice flat. “Taking your mortality is a vital part of that. I cannot eat—not that I need to—and nor can I die. Padmé was horrified by what I’d done to myself—and…”

Vader hesitated. He stood up, to open a drawer and pull out a change of clothes for Luke, so his back was turned to him when he said, “Horrified by the implication that this sort of half-life was what I’d been planning to give my wife and child, as well.”

Luke sucked in a breath.

He felt like he’d been punched.

“You…” He took several heaving breaths. “You— you want me to live like this!?”

“No,” Vader said. “I had not asked Palpatine for the details of the curse, and nor did he offer them. And it is a curse—one that was passed onto all my men, once he gave me a ship with which to serve him. I am bound to him so long as I am in this form, he can sense me and track me wherever I go, he can control every aspect of my life, and I will serve him.”

Luke gaped. “And you agreed to that?”

“No. I did not know what he was offering me—Padmé was right to object to foisting this hellish existence on our child as well, but…” He straightened up again, a nightshirt in hand, and half-turned back to Luke. His eyes were closed.

“She left,” he whispered. “She left me, when she was still pregnant. I searched for her for months.”

“I thought you said you killed her.”

“I searched for her for months,” Vader reiterated, slightly more harshly—then calmer, again, when Luke flinched. “I did not find her until I boarded and inspected a small fisherman’s craft, which she had paid for passage to Alderaan on, with our baby. She’d… she’d set up a life in the hills of Naboo, as far from the sea as she could be, in the months she was away, she’d said, but then… But then you had got sick,” his throat was tight, “with some illness, something magic-related that she couldn’t understand… Sorcerer children get it, frequently. She was travelling to Alderaan, where she would find Kenobi, an old friend who’d turned her against me when I was first cursed, who’d convinced her to leave me in the first place—”

“I know who Ben is,” Luke said shortly.

Vader took a breath. “Yes.” He turned around fully to sit cross-legged opposite Luke, and passed him the nightshirt. Luke put it on with scepticism, but it was dry and warm; he felt slightly better. “She had been travelling to him, to get advice, leaving her home in Naboo under the care of her sister.

“I told her that I could help you. I offered all my services, all my training—magic-related illnesses are tricky, but they are rarely fatal, and I could have found something—so long as you both came back to me. I wanted you back. But she refused and… we fought…”

Luke clenched his fists in the towel and didn’t meet his father’s eyes—suddenly, suddenly he had an idea— “Tell me you didn’t… No…”

“Pirates attacked.”

Luke jerked his head up. Vader continued, “Pirates attacked the ship we were on—bold of them to, but the Executor was separated from their little schooner by the fisherman’s ship, and they couldn’t easily fire on it without fearing to hit me… They boarded the schooner. I ran out to fight them off. But it was only me and a few of my men… You were in a crib on the other end of the ship, watched over by the fisherman, and…”

Luke bowed his head. He… could see where this was going.

“I tried to fight them. But they knew you were my son—they threatened you, they took you, and in the heat of the battle, I— I pulled out my pistol and I shot—”

Vader let out a breath.

“She was in the way,” he said. “I should have been more careful. I should never have argued with her—not to the extent that she made sure you were separated from us, away from our spat. I shouldn’t have ever driven her away.

“The bullet caught her in the chest. She died in minutes. And by the time we were able to hunt down the pirates… We caught up to them days later, but they said they had thrown you overboard and laughed as you drowned.”

Luke… didn’t know how to react to that.

That was awful.

“I… I knew that Ben rescued me from pirates,” he said shakily. “That he saved me as a baby. And he told me that you were my father, several years ago, and that my mother had made it clear to him while pregnant that if anything were to happen to her, she wanted him to look after her child rather than let me go back to you.”

Vader clenched his fists at that, stiffly, but said nothing.

“I made,” he said, “a grave error. And I have lived with it, and my curse, ever since.”

Vader looked away violently, for a second, voice choked. “They took you, son. I was haunted by dreams of a little ghost boy wandering the seas for years. I— I watched that ship retreat and knew that I had lost everything, and when I learnt your name—”

“When you learnt my name,” Luke said, “you decided that anything was justified, in order to get me back?”

Vader let out a breath. “Yes.”

“Killing my friends. Hunting me. Nearly sending me to the gallows—”

“I cannot disobey my master—he ordered that you join us, or be hanged, and I had to tread very, very carefully—”

“You sent me to my death!”

Vader said, “Yes. I did. And I am going to make sure that that is something that will never happen, ever again. I am going to break this curse.”

“How!?” Luke gave him a sceptical look. “It’s a blood oath, isn’t it? It has those hallmarks. Only Palpatine can break it, unless...”

“It is not quite a blood oath, no. It was his adaptation of an old myth—about pirates who stole the wrong person’s gold. Once you took a single coin from that chest, you were cursed for life, until it was broken. He adapted it to swords—there was an old creed of sorcerers, the Sith, who forged a thousand sabres and hid them in a cave on the island of Mustafar. The perfect killing weapons, imbued with the sort of magic that sees its wielder become the ruler of the seas, but once you fasten your hands around the hilt, the curse sets in. You cannot die—but neither can you truly live.”

Vader met Luke’s eyes again, for the first time, and somehow the yellow even had a tinge of red to it, now. “He married it with a blood oath, to make it especially binding. I am his immortal servant, forever.”

“And how do you break it?”

Vader was suddenly very interested in the hem of his shirt. “It is a steep and difficult price,” he said. “Now rest. You need it—your back—”

His back had been in agony the whole time, yeah, but that wasn’t what was important here. “What is the price?”

“We will find a way,” Vader promised, and then he left the room.

Luke listened carefully, but there was no tell-tale click of a lock. He wasn’t locked in, this time.

How did his father plan to break the curse?

Blood oaths… blood oaths often required, well, blood to be broken. The death of the person bound, or the person binding. Or…

Or of someone who shared their blood.

Luke swallowed.

His father had killed his mother.

But he wouldn’t do that, would he?

Luke didn’t know. He didn’t know the man at all. Everything… everything he told him could be a lie. Everything he did could be a lie.

Had he saved him from the sirens just so he could sacrifice Luke himself, later?

Luke didn’t want to die. He especially didn’t want to die like that.

He didn’t sleep very well that night at all.

#the pirate son #thepirateson #luke skywalker #darth vader #for darkness shows the stars #my writing #random words on a page #flash fiction #flash fiction: star wars #whumptober2020 #whumptober

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she-who-fights-and-writes · 4 years

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She-who-fights-and-writes Coronacation Book Rec List

I know that a lot of people are stuck at home right now in dire need of entertainment, so I decided I’d put out a book recommendations list of all the books I’m currently reading and all of my must-reads!

(Just a note that a lot of these are Fantasy because I’m a fantasy nerd haha)

Books/Series I am currently reading

1. The Folk of the Air Trilogy by Holly Black (Currently on #2, The Wicked King)

Genre: High Fantasy

Setting: The land of Faerie which is kind of historical, but in the human world it is modern day

Main cast :

Jude Duarte (white, human, cutthroat, if I saw her in a Denny’s Parking Lot at 3am I would RUN)

Cardan Greenbriar (white, faerie, the true embodiment of Bastard)

Vivienne (Jude’s half-sister, lesbian with canon gf, half-human half-faerie, I would totally try to be her friend)

Taryn Duarte (Jude’s twin sister, queen doormat, still, I would take a bullet for her she’s jUST TRYING TO FIT IN)

Rating: 5/5 Stars

These books have been on my “To Read” list for so long now and for some reason I just never got around to reading them! Hands-down, these are some of the best high fantasy books that I’ve read in a long, long while.

I finished the first book, The Cruel Prince, in just two days and rated it 5/5 stars! Even though these books are high fantasy and focus on the traditions and ways of life of faeries, somehow all of the characters seem like I could meet them in real life!

The main character actually has genuine flaws and not just “””“flaws”””” and is a Bad Bitch down with murder, and the plot had me on the edge of my seat from page one!

The summary makes it sound like it’s going to be about their romance, but it’s really mostly about a power struggle and Jude being a badass.

Goodreads summary for The Cruel Prince:

Jude was seven when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King. To win a place at the Court, she must defy him–and face the consequences. As Jude becomes more deeply embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, she discovers her own capacity for trickery and bloodshed. But as betrayal threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself.

2. The Raven Cycle Series by Maggie Stiefvater (Currently on #1, The Raven Boys)

Genre: Present-Day/Realistic Fantasy (?)

Setting: The fictional town of Henrietta, Virginia

I haven’t gotten around to much of the book, so there’s not much I can tell you about the characters and I can’t properly give it a rating yet.

These books were also on my “To Read” list for a while; I was a huge fan of her book The Scorpio Races and have also been looking for something to quench my thirst for “private school/ghosts/magic” that I’ve been dealing with ever since I read The Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo.

I’ve only JUST started The Raven Cycle yesterday, but so far I am hooked! I’m super worried because I’m TERRIBLE at juggling two series at a time but both of these are just so interesting!

Goodreads Summary for The Raven Boys:

“There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,” Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him.” It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive. Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her. His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble. But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little. For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

MY MUST-READ BOOK LIST

1. The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee

Genre: Historical Fiction

Setting: 1700s Europe (England, Paris, Barcelona, Marseilles, Venice)

Main cast (I’ll try my best not to spoil anything because you find out a LOT of different stuff about these characters throughout the book):

Henry “Monty” Montague (white, bi/pansexual, attitude problem)

Percy Newton (mixed race, gay, very sweet boy, definitely got “most likely to bring home to mom” in the yearbook)

Felicity Montague (white, Monty’s little sister, headcanoned as asexual, I love her to death)

Rating: 5/5 Stars

Daring adventure, gay representation, historical setting, hilarious characters!

This book literally has it all! I would consider it one of my favorite books of all time, yet for some reason I’ve never gotten around to reading any of the sequel books! The ending is very satisfying and ties everything together, which I feel is part of the reason why I haven’t gotten around to them yet.

Therefore, it can serve as a one-shot read or a full series if you want to dive into something good!

The humor made me laugh out loud at points and all of the characters are very real and very, very relatable, not to mention the vivid settings of 1700s Europe!

Goodreads summary:

Henry “Monty” Montague was born and bred to be a gentleman, but he was never one to be tamed. The finest boarding schools in England and the constant disapproval of his father haven’t been able to curb any of his roguish passions—not for gambling halls, late nights spent with a bottle of spirits, or waking up in the arms of women or men. But as Monty embarks on his Grand Tour of Europe, his quest for a life filled with pleasure and vice is in danger of coming to an end. Not only does his father expect him to take over the family’s estate upon his return, but Monty is also nursing an impossible crush on his best friend and traveling companion, Percy. Still it isn’t in Monty’s nature to give up. Even with his younger sister, Felicity, in tow, he vows to make this yearlong escapade one last hedonistic hurrah and flirt with Percy from Paris to Rome. But when one of Monty’s reckless decisions turns their trip abroad into a harrowing manhunt that spans across Europe, it calls into question everything he knows, including his relationship with the boy he adores.

2. The Ninth House By Leigh Bardugo

Genre: Horror, Fantasy

Setting: Yale University and the town of New Haven, Present Day

Main cast:

Galaxy “Alex” Stern (Hispanic, sees dead people, very scary)

Daniel Arlington “Darlington” (white, rich, an angel who can sometimes be a dick)

Pamela Dawes (tbh I honestly don’t remember what she looks like, only that she’s a tired grad student with big nerd energy)

Detective Alan Turner (Black, takes shit from nobody, husband material)

Rating: 4/5 Stars

(NOTE: THIS IS VERY DARK ADULT FICTION AND CONTAINS MATERIAL THAT MAY BE TRIGGERING FOR SOME PEOPLE, WOULD NOT RECOMMEND FOR PEOPLE UNDER 16)

This book is a great read for someone who’s looking for a disturbing, gritty book with layers upon layers of secrets that you have to peel away as the mystery unfolds. I love the secret societies and the intricate magic systems that the book introduces, and it actually made me hungry for more books like it!

Alex is a three-dimensional, very real character who also serves as an unreliable narrator who witholds or warps the information that she’s telling you, making the narrative all the more riveting.

The only issues that I have with it are the fact that Leigh Bardugo kind of just dumps you in the middle of it without explaining stuff first, to the point where it kind of feels like you’re reading the second installment of a series rather than the first one, so things can get a bit confusing at first.

The book also can drag and draw things out for a bit too long, but once the plot fully kicks into gear, you will not be able to put it down!

Goodreads summary:

Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her? Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.

3. The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Setting: Earth, Space, The Moon

Main cast :

Linh Cinder (Chinese, based on Cinderella, cyborg, certified badass)

Scarlet Benoit (French, based on Little Red Riding Hood, farmer who is not afraid to shoot you)

Cress Darnel (White, based on Rapunzel, nerd, I will protect her with my life if I have to)

Kaito “Kai” (Chinese, based on Prince Charming, kind of has to run a whole country, a very kind soul, deserves a nap)

Carswell Thorne (White, based off of Rapunzel’s Prince, bastard)

Winter Hayle (Black, based off of Snow White, royalty, has super special powers)

Wolf (Race unspecified, based off of the Big Bad Wolf, charming killing machine, furry????)

Rating: 5/5 Stars

Do you like fairy tales?

Have you ever wanted to know what fairy tales would be like if they took place in the FUTURE instead of the PAST?

Do you like an amazing, hilarious cast paired with a super interesting plot?

These are the books for you!

I haven’t read them in so long, but I remember how much joy I felt while devouring these pages. Definitely something you will not able to put down!

Goodreads Summary for Book #1: Cinder:

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth's fate hinges on one girl. . . . Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She's a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister's illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai's, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world's future.

4. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Genre: Fantasy

Setting: Ancient Greece

Main cast:

Patroclus (Greek, Gay, quiet pining)

Achilles (Greek, gay, very strong, student athlete energy)

Brisies (Anatolian, clever, literally the only one in this story who has a brain cell)

Rating: 100000/5 stars

This is basically the Iliad but if historians hadn’t completely erased Patroclus and Achilles’ relationship. “Haha yeah these guys were totally bros” they say, even though I have read the Iliad and their relationship isn’t even subtle.

This book made me cry at least ten times. It’s just so beautifully written and has such a distinct vibe to it that whenever I crack it open for another time, it takes me straight back to the vacation that I read it on. (Needless to say, sobbing your eyes out can be less than helpful when you’re on the beach)

If you can only read one book on this list, it should be this one. I could talk all day about it and write novels on just how much of an incredible writer Madeline Miller is, but I feel like you’d get my drift a bit better if you actually read the book.

Goodreads Summary:

Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. By all rights their paths should never cross, but Achilles takes the shamed prince as his friend, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine their bond blossoms into something deeper - despite the displeasure of Achilles' mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But then word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus journeys with Achilles to Troy, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear. Profoundly moving and breathtakingly original, this rendering of the epic Trojan War is a dazzling feat of the imagination, a devastating love story, and an almighty battle between gods and kings, peace and glory, immortal fame and the human heart.

Hope this list helps you through your coronacation, and please don’t be afraid to reblog or message me to tell me if you’ve read/will read any of these!

#books #book recs #book rec #book reccomendation #book reccomendations #coronacation #corona #coronavirus #covid-19 #book rec list

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mrevaunit42 · 4 years

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Stability (Soul Eater)

Hey everyone, Mr.E hoping you all had a great week! That's right I am slowly getting back into consistent writing! yay! This is the pseudo sequel to the other piece and I hope you enjoy it. I forgot how much I love writing Soma, they're so much fun.The song referenced is called heart and soul by Hoagy Carmichael, a song I highly recommend giving a hear. That's it for me. Stay safe, wash your hands, wear your masks and have a great week!

Summary: Alone in their apartment, Maka gets caught up in her thoughts as a thunderstorm rages outside. Reflecting, Maka realizes how much Soul has become a stable constant in her life and how far they've come together.

“Soul’s fine. He’s a death scythe.” Maka murmured softly, pacing back and forth across their cozy apartment flat “He’s just gone to the store. He’s fine. Of course he’s fine. He’s too much of an idiot to do something stupid.”

Maka flinched as the thunder boomed overhead without warning, the windows rattling under the force of the sound.

Maka wasn’t afraid of thunder per say, she just wasn’t a fan.

She sighed tiredly, staring at her haggard appearance in the mirror: Her face sagged and twisted in a worried expression, her signature pigtails were uneven and mismatched lengths while her green eyes seemed dim and lifeless.

She ran her fingers through her hair, trying to focus her wandering thoughts onto something, anything that wasn’t Soul.

It was pretty impressive how deeply her partner managed to insert himself into her entire existence.

They lived together. They worked together. They sat in a comfortable silence together with her reading a book while he scrawled musical notes.

Even her trademark pigtails were a product of Soul’s work rather than hers. Given his usual spiky choice of hair (that took an embarrassingly large amount of hair gel and effort but shh don’t tell anyone) he was better at styling and maintaining it. Maka could barely manage this mess of a hairstyle in the 10 minutes the white haired death scythe had been gone.

Soul, for all his faults and infuriating behavior, was her stability.

Stability.

Maka’s life hadn’t exactly been the smoothest of rides and while she wouldn’t change any of it, she privately admitted it did leave some holes in her upbringing.

Papa, oh lord her papa, might’ve been a womanizer, irresponsible mess of a man but she basked in the quiet pride he treated his role as Lord Death’s personal scythe. When it came down to it, he took his duty to her and the world seriously, refusing to back down even when facing his own demise. A man who was not scum but someone she could respect and admire.

If only he had the rest of his life put together she would be able to show him more respect publicly. Just because he did his job well did not give him an excuse to be lax in his personal choices and responsibility. Even if they are closer after the whole battle to the death on the moon.

Mama, Maka’s hero and role model. Her biggest inspiration and the most respected person in her life. A woman on the highest pedestal Maka could place someone on.

Maka used to say a person who could do no wrong but now that she was older, wiser her mother seemed less like a perfect being and more like a talented yet ultimately flawed parent.

She still admired her strength for leaving her father to pursue her own life, to move forward from a failed marriage with a well meaning but unchanging man. That hadn’t changed.

But

Maka wished she was physically present more. Her post cards, which once were a source of happiness, now were met with conflict. Yes it was nice she was enjoying her time aboard, living her life and completing important work yet Maka felt lonely. She couldn’t recall the last time she held her mother, talked to her longer than a few minutes on a phone call. She had moved forward with her life without her mother and begrudgingly dragging her father.

She followed her mother’s example to the letter growing up: Men were scum, she should rely only on herself and she would create the next death scythe. Maka just added the whole youngest death scythe meister herself. Just as a little personal goal.

Maka grew up fast but she also missed out on a lot of her life: Mama never taught her how to braid her hair, to cook or how to do taxes. Maka learned most of that stuff on her own.

Until Soul came into the picture.

Soul put up an unnecessary cool, distant persona into their partnership at first but he also brought her a gift she never realized she so desperately needed: Stability.

Her world was constant jumble mess of an unrelenting drive and an inability of backing down from any challenge.

Soul, ironically, was the cool and collected of the two despite his questionable decisions from time to time.

She didn’t know what to think about the strange noises he produced with his piano nor did she understand how exposed he left himself to her that night. She just felt drawn to him, a conflicting yet balancing soul to her own. She just felt they would work, that with his help she could achieve anything.

It was an intoxicating feeling to be honest. When she was younger, she assumed it was a freedom he drew out in her. Now she understood it wasn’t freedom, it was comfort. A soothing presence to quell her aching loneliness. A constant in her chaotic life.

No matter what happened: the black blood, the dissonance in their souls, the angelic flight, Soul was there every step of the way, refusing to abandon her like her father, like her mother.

Maka cringed at the memory of the book of Eibon. That had been an embarrassingly low point for her but Soul refused to give up on her. On them.

Her heart skipped a beat and Maka could feel her cheeks burn a bright pink as she remembered Soul’s appearance in the book.

Could it be that he….?

“Maka! I’m home.”

Maka frozen, caught off guard by the trudging figure of Soul, wrapped heavily in a thick jacket with the triple wrapped groceries.

He shivered as the warmth of the apartment washed over him.

“Maka?”

Maka snapped out of her stupor “Here Soul! I was just….”

Soul’s ruby red eyes glanced her way, raising an eyebrow as he took in her appearance.

“Tried making your own pigtails again?” Soul questioned, gently placing the groceries onto the counter.

Are you okay? Soul asked silently, unable to keep the worry out of his face.

“Y-yeah! I figured I’d give it a shot! It’s embarrassing you still have to do my pigtails. Imagine if Blackstar found out.”

I’m okay she answered without words.

Soul gave a little “Hmph.” as he slipped out of his jacket, hanging it on the coat rack by the door before making his way closer to his meister.

“Here. Before you hurt yourself.” Soul carefully took one of the uneven, messy pigtails in his hand, undoing it while gesturing with his chin “Sofa.”

Maka nodded, sitting cross legged on the floor as Soul took a seat behind her.

Her tense body relaxed as Soul softly ran his fingers through her hair

“Braids or pigtails?”

Maka tilted her head back, staring at her weapon in an upside down fashion.

“Braids? You hate doing braids.”

Soul’s eyes shifted to the side, refusing to look at Maka directly “Yeah they’re a real bitch but I need to make sure I can still do it. Never know when you’re gonna decide to go on a date. No one needs to know you can’t do your own pigtails until after you get married.”

Maka snorted loudly.

“Yeah yeah.” Soul rolled his eyes, carefully twisting her hair into a braid “You say you want to be a spinster but one day you’re gonna find the least scummy guy in existence and be like ‘yeah I think I’m gonna compromise my standards for this one.’”

“Maybe. I hate compromising.” Maka mumbled into her knees.

Soul paused for a moment “No book?” Maka sighed in relief as Soul’s hands returned to work.

“Not today.”

Boom.

The thunder violently rocked the windows once more and Maka shivered under the noise.

“Any requests?” Soul asked, resting his hand on her shoulder.

Maka took his hand in hers, squeezing it tightly as she whispered “You know which one.”

“Alright but don’t get the wrong idea okay? I happen to like singing that one.”

Soul cleared his throat, his hums filling their apartment like a private orchestra just for her. She reached for his soul, a calm warming presence she grew to love.

She closed her eyes as the sounds of a piano played in her ears, the soft keys joining Soul as he sang

“Heart and Soul, I fell in love with you. Heart and Soul, the way a fool would do.”

Maka closed her eyes and leaned against Soul as he carefully worked to finish the braid, his voice clear and strong as her favorite song drowned out the thunder and the world.

There was only Soul and Maka.

A sound heart and a sound soul.

Together.

And she wouldn’t have it any other way.

#Soul Eater #maka albarn #Soul Evans #Soma

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maxdark158 · 5 years

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CHAPTER FIVE IS HERE! ALERT THE GUARDS! The fic is almost done and I can’t even believe it... Luckily I’ll have more to write after this due to the partner fic and the sequel that I am planning.

Please check out @ozmav they started this whole au and are still an inspiration to me ^^

tw for panic attacks and violence

Characters are probably OOC because MLB is a kids show and there’s SO MUCH Batman just too much

Angel in Gotham: Part 1 ~ Part 2 ~ Part 3 ~ Part 4 ~ Part 5 ~ Part 6 ~ Ao3

Demon in Gotham: Part 1 ~ Part 2 ~ Part 3 ~ Part 4 ~ Ao3

Fanart for AiG: Riddler ~ Joker thank you @thegreysman

Please tag me in any fanart you draw for this guys ^^

oooOOOooo

As soon as Joker said those words, Marinette threw her chocolate bar at his face.

It wasn’t much, obviously. It was just a chocolate bar. But it still hit him across the eyes and distracted him long enough for her to grab the vending machine and throw that too.

Well, throw is the wrong word. She wasn’t able to pick it up and hurl it like Superman would a building, but she was able to quickly move it and sent it falling in the Joker’s direction. She saw it land but didn’t want to stick around to see him get out from under it.

“Run!” she yelled at Lila. She didn’t move right away so Marinette grabbed her wrist and pulled.

Lila began to run with her. Then she changed their course toward the elevator. Marinette didn’t like that – having to wait was bad enough, but the doors wouldn’t shut the Joker out if they sensed his limb in the way. She tried to lead Lila toward the front doors so they could get some help.

“What the hell are you doing?” Lila hissed.

“We can’t lead him to the others, and I don’t want to be trapped in an elevator with the Joker,” Marinette let go of Lila’s wrist. “Besides, the vending machine won’t hold him for long-”

Lila growled and grabbed her wrist. “I am tired of your superiority complex, Marinette-”

She ripped her wrist from Lila’s grip. “Look who’s talking! Besides, I’m only being rational. We can’t win, we need help, and our teachers and classmates won’t be able to do sh-”

The vending machine’s glass shattered when it crashed to the floor. Joker staggered up, clearly injured. Even in the dying light of the vending machine, Marinette could see his wide grin. It made her bones shiver.

“You certainly are a challenge, Parisian brat!”

She reached for her purse. She had two stale cookies, her key card, and the purse itself. She could maybe use the cookies as-

A playing card, razor-sharp, whizzed by her hand. Her purse fell to the ground, clearly cut by it.

He had projectiles. He had a deadly chemical. She had to assume that nobody was coming for her, that Joker somehow distracted them or they just didn’t care. She had nothing. She was nothing she wouldn’t ever be anything she was useless, unworthy, unlov-

Marinette ducked automatically to avoid another round of the sharp cards, the movement jarring her mind. She had to focus! She didn’t have time to panic now!

Deep Brea-

“I’m going to take great joy,” The Joker laughed, “In watching you laugh and seeing you smile, girlie. Maybe I’ll even see what you look like under that spotted skin of yours.��

Marinette tried to keep the imagery of him peeling her freckled skin off her face out of her head. It didn’t work.

His gait was slow. He was bleeding through his suit. He had to rely on the cards more. These were all good things.

Her earlier maneuver caused her to end up next to the front desk, where she was entirely visible in the only remaining light source. She could still hear the Joker’s steps and see his shadow in the dim light, but it wasn’t much. Her purse was on the ground, a few feet away, the strap cut off. These were all bad things.

She couldn’t breathe. The walls were closing in, she was drowning, her lungs screamed.

But she had to do something.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lila continuing toward the elevator. When it opened, a new light source from the inside of it illuminated her and her position.

The Joker noticed – of course he did he wasn’t as stupid as Hawkmoth – and threw several sharp cards at her. Marinette yelled a warning and Lila screeched, dodging barely.

Well, mostly dodging. Several chunks of her hair were cut by the cards, but right now Marinette couldn’t care less. The elevator closed when Lila didn’t enter it.

The Joker was heading toward Lila still – No! Marinette reached up onto the desk and grabbed the first thing she could and hurled it at him.

She saw it flying – a landline phone – and heard it made contact. It was only after she threw it that she realized she should have maybe used it to call the police.

Oops.

The Joker growled. “Ed failed to mention how annoying you are. I can’t blame him. He prefers rules, regulations, patterns. He doesn’t understand anarchy. He doesn’t understand that chaos is-”

Marinette cut him off by throwing the battery-powered lamp from the desk at him. The lightbulb shattered on his jaw and plunged the entire hotel hobby into pitch-black darkness.

Marinette was now heavily disadvantaged, but so was her adversary. And hopefully, her experience in swinging around rooftops at night, and fighting akuma in pitch black rooms would help her come out on top.

Two sets of footsteps. One pair heavier, gait slow and uneven due to injury. The other lighter, along the walls across the room.

Marinette tuned the other out, focusing on the footsteps that were trying to end her life right now. She could feel the carpet underneath her bare feet, the slight sting of rugburn. It grounded her, kept her from spiraling.

“Where are you, girlie?”

She silently rolled over to her purse. The clasp would make a click when she opened it, so she didn’t. She picked up the card used to cut it, carefully, and cut it open.

Two stale cookies, her key card, and the strap that was removed from the purse earlier.

She heard his footsteps move past her and put a hand to her mouth to muffle her breathing. She heard the sound of wood being sliced – he must have thrown a bunch of cards at the desk where she once was.

Marinette, as silent as a cat, crawled along the carpeted floor toward the front doors. She still remembered the layout of the room, luckily.

“Do you know the power of laughter?” The Joker sounded further away, but not by much. His footsteps were walking away from her, toward the elevator.

It was only after Marinette had been blinded by a light that she realized she should have paid more attention to where Lila was. The girl has walked along the wall behind the desk and turned on the lights by the front door.

The Joker whirled around to see her, grabbing some cards-

No.

No, Marinette couldn’t let him do that, no no n-

“No,” she screamed, throwing a crumbling and stale cookie at the eye she could see from the side angle. It hit, and the Joker let out some strong obscenities as it did so.

Marinette noticed him trying to regain his balance and slid her room’s key card under where his feet landed. Luckily, her plan worked and he slipped cartoon-banana style onto his back while still rubbing cookie crumbs out of his eye. His fall aggravated some of the still bleeding cuts on his body if his angry scream had anything to say about it.

Lila had begun to run to the elevator. As stupid as her classmate was, Marinette was glad. The Joker was fully focused on her, and wouldn’t care that the elevator was being used so long as he was occupied with Marinette. She wouldn’t have to worry about Lila’s life.

The Joker turned to face her, eye still red from the cookie. His pant leg seemed to be more blood-soaked now and he had a few newer cuts on his jaw and neck from the lamp. And he was furious.

Very furious.

Marinette couldn’t count on any help. There was a chance that Lila would leave her to die to the Joker, hoping he would go away after she was finished. She didn’t want to assume any of the heroes were coming, she didn’t want to think of them right now.

There was no way she’d beat the Joker.

But she had to stay alive long enough to call for help herself.

“If you weren’t so resistant and,” The Joker lolled his head and grinned, “Dull, I’d consider allowing you to become my new Harley-girl.”

“I’d rather die,” Marinette said without thinking, slowly standing from the floor. She clutched her purse strap tight. Her last cookie was too crushed to use.

“And so you will,” The Joker raised his cards.

Marinette wouldn’t be able to dodge fully, but if she could avoid dying instantly she can still fight while injured – she’s done it before.

But then a vine grabbed his arm from behind her.

No, not a vine. A whip. A whip made of a vine.

“I suggest leaving the girl alone,” Marinette glanced behind her to see a woman with bright red hair and an outfit made of plants.

Poison Ivy.

She looked back to Joker, who’s grin was now a snarl.

You see, Joker was the A++ of the villains because he’s the one that got all the normal questions and all the bonus questions right. Everybody in the world knows about him. Ivy, in terms of ferocity and general evilness, she scored lower than Joker.

But the Joker is injured. He had a limp and he’s bleeding and Ivy isn’t. Plus, for all Marinette knows, the Joker has been cheating on all his tests.

Though right now who was the better villain didn’t really matter because one was trying to kill her and one was trying to save her.

Marinette rolled out of the way of the two villains and stood. Joker wasn’t focused on her; his angry eyes were trained on Ivy.

“You stole my Harley,” he growled. Marinette couldn’t find it within herself to feel an ounce of sympathy for him.

“She wasn’t ever yours,” Poison Ivy spat the name ‘yours’ like a curse.

Marinette felt like they were two nuclear bombs about to go off and she was just waiting to see who would blow up first.

It was Joker.

He grabbed onto the vine wrapped around his arm and pulled. Ivy lost her balance but let go of the vine so it hit Joker in the face as he yanked it. The vine landed near his eye that still leaked cookie crumbs and Joker howled.

Marinette tried to remember something about Ivy’s powers. She was immune to all poisons and toxins. She could make other people immune too. And…

Marinette’s eyes went to the plants by the hotel lobby’s windows. She knew they were real, she could smell it when she first walked in. Fake plants didn’t emit the same scent that she started picking up on the longer she was Ladybug.

While Joker and Ivy were fighting – Ivy just kicked him in his bad leg after he tried to use Joker Venom on her and failed – Marinette ran to the plants.

“Let’s see if I can help her,” she mumbled, picking up one of the larger pots. It had a rock about the size of papa’s fist in the pot, likely to keep it from falling over. It was still light compared to the vending machine.

“IVY!”

Poison Ivy glanced at her, then Marinette threw the pot, hoping she wasn’t skinned alive for throwing a plant. But she seemed to get the message and extended a hand out to the plant.

In midair, it expanded. Grew. The plant was well taken care of, so it grew enough that the pot burst, it’s roots hit the ground and its rapidly expanding stalk punched Joker in the throat.

It stopped growing once it hit about four and a half meters. The high ceiling of the hotel was about six meters, so nothing stopped it from falling.

She heard someone say something. It sounded like, “look out,” but Marinette was more focused on scrambling out of the way of this plant that chose to fall toward her instead of Joker.

It crashed through the window, spilling shattered glass onto the street. The sound was loud and Marinette flinched, her back against the wall adjacent to the window to avoid becoming smashed like a bug.

She barely had time to think before more playing cards were thrown at her. She hit the ground, using the huge plant as cover.

“You dirty rat,” he spat out. His voice was raw, and she couldn’t see the bruise forming on his neck. She could imagine it though.

Her lungs ached. Marinette covered her mouth and breathed in, trying not to make noise.

“You best leave her alone, Jester,” Ivy snarled. She sounded fine, slightly winded, but uninjured.

“I wanted to see the little Parisian smile,” he sounded wistful, sad. Marinette closed her eyes and remembered his face. She wouldn’t fall in his little trap. She hoped Poison Ivy wouldn’t either.

“You wanted to kill her.”

“Killing you would be a dream come true too.”

She heard more cards. She heard the vine whip being used. She heard something be sliced – the door? She heard Joker laugh.

She smelled blood.

“What?” Ivy’s breathing was labored. “You think a little flesh wound would bother me?”

“It’ll bother that brat you stole from me,” Joker sounded utterly delighted. “It’ll bother her more if she finds it on a lifeless body!”

Marinette’s heart lurched into her throat. No, no she couldn’t let this happen. She couldn’t expect Ivy to save her without risking Ivy.

She still had her purse strap. Silently, Marinette moved around the plant.

She heard Ivy lash out with her whip again. It sounded slower.

Marinette ducked and rolled under a stalk that was high enough off the ground to go under.

After a brief scuffle, she heard something else being sliced. It hit the ground, and for a moment Marinette panicked before realizing it was too light to be Poison Ivy.

While crawling, her hand landed on some far-reaching glass from the knocked over vending machine. The pain registered, but Marinette didn’t care about it for long.

“You bastard,” Ivy sounded winded. She had to help, please let her be able to help.

Her eyes landed on a rock, one about the size of papa’s fist. The one in the pot earlier. She picked it up carefully and began tying her purse strap around it. It wouldn’t have as much range as her yoyo, and it would be heavier, but it was better than nothing.

“Afraid you can’t beat me without your little plant?”

She turned, now past the plant and on the side with Joker and Poison Ivy. Her newly-made weapon in hand, she crawled slowly and silently behind Joker. She was still under a large leaf, so Ivy didn’t see her. She could see both their legs and the cut whip at the ground.

“I think you’re underestimating me.”

Marinette could see blood trickling down Ivy’s left leg. She was bleeding much faster than the Joker was. She pushed forward, ending up behind Joker. His legs were within arm’s reach.

“There’s not much to underesti-”

She swung her rock-and-purse-strap yoyo as hard and fast as she could at the Joker’s injured knee. She heard his leg crunch under the force, saw his leg beds an unnatural angle before he fell, heard his scream.

Marinette felt sick.

All she could cause is pain all she can do is hurt she’s useless she can’t save anyone-

“You,” Joker’s words are muffled against the carpet of the hotel lobby. He calls says a word in English she doesn’t know. It rhymed with the English word witch.

“Takes one to know one,” Poison Ivy huffs out.

Then the other window – the one that wasn’t shattered by the plant – shatters. A dark and cloaked figure looks odd standing under the lights of the hotel lobby.

“Poison Ivy,” he paused, just then noticing the Joker.

“I can see I’m not needed anymore,” she turned around, “I was just here to save the kid, no need to arrest me this time.”

The Joker laughed. “You call her a kid?” he asked. “She threw a vending machine at me! Broke my leg! This brat is not a kid, she’s a menace!”

Her breath left her. She’s a menace, a villain, a revolting person…

Marinette looked at her hands. They were bloody.

She barely heard him repeat menace a few times before his breathing evened, likely falling asleep. Poison Ivy made no further comment as she walked out of the miraculously still functioning door. Marinette didn’t hear it close until two pairs of footsteps walked in.

“Batman, why’d you let Ivy walk ou- oh,” a voice she didn’t hear at the manor, Damian’s older brother, spoke. Dick Grayson, his name was.

“Father,” Marinette froze at Damian’s voice. “What is Joker doing here?”

“It appears she was rescuing…” Batman paused, clearly still trying to asses the situation.

Marinette is an idiot. She must be, because she chose that moment to shakily stand up, revealing herself to Batman and Nightwing and Robin.

Robin’s breath hitched.

And that little sound is what made the dam break.

“I’m sorry,” she was spiraling, but she didn’t care anymore. “I’m a hor- horrible person and-”

“Hey now,” Nightwing took a step closer. “I’m sure you’re not-”

She held up her hands, showing the blood on them. Her blood, but that didn’t matter.

“I broke his leg,” she took a big gulp of air. It sounded like a sob. “With a rock. And I threw things at him. A chocolate bar, a cookie, a phone, a lamp, a vending machine-”

“A vending machine?” Batman sounded far away, muffled.

“Miss, please calm down,” Nightwing’s voice was grainy. She wasn’t hearing it fully, she wasn’t there she was away, far away.

“I’m terrible, horrible, I shouldn’t have done this,” all she could hear was her words – were they thoughts? She didn’t know anymore.

She wished she didn’t exist, then she couldn’t make mistakes.

Her vision began to grow spotty. She couldn’t tell what was up and what was down.

“Angel,” Damian’s voice seemed to whisper. “You need to breathe.”

Her lungs ached. She didn’t care though. She didn’t need to breathe. She didn’t matter that much.

The world went dark around her.

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talkingismylifewrites · 4 years

Note

27 for the Pina Colada verse and 28 for DYLDYL please for the fic asks!

27. if you were ever to do a sequel to piña colada verse, what do you think might happen in it?

alright, so i’ve basically accepted that i’m probably never going to write this, but i had it all planned out on how to write about the night john wrote misfire. basically, roger embarrasses john somehow, and as revenge, john takes a very specific story that ronnie told him while she was drunk and writes it into a song. he writes it just specific enough that roger would know that john’s writing about how the first time he had gay sex he blew his wad way too soon and ruined the mood. so he writes misfire and presents it to roger first as a kind of ‘haha i can FUCK YOU UP PRETTY BOY!!!!!” and roger freaks. the fuck. out.

immediately he’s like you cannot show that to the others, don’t you fucking dare, i’ll kill you and john’s like fucking watch me. so john plays it for freddie and brian and roger’s like ready to kill him, the whole time sitting there sheet white and terrified. and when it ends, john’s like, see, roger, it DOES matter if you come within two minutes!!!

and right when he thinks he just won, brian lets out this strangled gasp and is like ‘roger!!!! i thought you weren’t going to tell anyone!! it’s not my fault, i’d never had sex with a man before!’ and then flees the studio.

that’s when john realized a) that he fucked up and b) ronnie never actually specified that roger was the one who blew his wad early.

cue a lot of groveling, both john and roger in the dog house, the appearance of dominique AND tim, brian trying to drown himself in peppermint schnapps and chocolate buttons, and freddie not getting paid enough to fix their bullshit.

it would have been epic, y’all.

28. in dyldyl, what is a happy, post-fic headcanon you have about [so because you didn’t specify which pairing i’m gonna do freddie and jim i hope that’s okay!! if not lemme know and i’ll redo it!!!!]?

freddie meets jim one night out while out with john and roger at one of the gay clubs that john used to frequent before he and roger got together. he and roger have been having a grand old time dancing before john decides to go buy them drinks. up at the bar, he’s putting in an order for three vodka sours when someone taps him on the shoulder.

“john? is that you?” says a man with a brilliant mustache, his face familiar in the way that almost everyone is now. maybe they’d met at a show? or maybe he was a friend of freddie’s.

“erm, hello,” said john, angling himself in such a way to pay the bar tender without having to engage too much with the man. “how, erm, are you?”

“m’good! really good,” says the man, sidling up to john and holding out a finger to try and catch the bartender’s attention. “how have you been? better, i hope?”

john, who’s just been getting over a rather terrible cold, nods his head appreciatively. definitely a friend of freddie’s then. he’d gone around telling everyone it was terminal before john had even left the gp.

“oh, yeah, mate, thanks, much better. feeling fit as a fiddle!”

“great!” the man smiles, and again john finds himself mentally scratching his head to try and figure out who the man was. “i know things were rough with the whole roger situation--”

john flinches, the accident still a raw piece of him he doesn't particularly care to revisit. the man notices his reaction and his gaze softens.

“hey,” he says, quiet over the thudding base. “it’s okay. things are better now, right?”

“yes,” john says emphatically. “much. in fact why don’t i--”

arms wrap around john’s shoulders possessively, a chin sharp over the jut of his collarbone. immediately, john relaxes into roger’s hold, once hand coming up to rest on his broad forearm.

“what’s taking the drinks so long?” roger pouts, his tone friendly but his gaze hard as he inspects the man standing before them. “and who’s your friend?”

fuck.

panicking, john mentally flails before jumping straight into the fire. “this is roger!” john shouts, gesturing at roger. “you remember roger!”

the man’s eyebrows shoot up practically into his hairline as he stares at roger, clearly taken aback. john’s about to jump ship and flee when the man’s face breaks out in a wider smile, laughing incredulously.

“wow!” the man chuckles, holding his hand out for roger to shake. “wow, can i just say, i did not expect that. roger, it’s an absolute pleasure to make your acquaintance. john, you bastard, why didn’t you say anything?”

john was wondering that himself.

“pleasure to meet you, too,” roger grins, teeth flashing dangerously. “i’m sorry, i’m afraid john’s been hiding you away. how did you two meet?”

the man looks at john, his eyebrows moving in a way that suggests he’s trying to say something with them. john, an idiot, has no idea what is going on and settles for grabbing his drink from the bartender and downing it in one go.

“john and i met a few years ago,” the man says carefully. “many many years ago, back before you two got together.” the man widens his gaze, flitting from roger to john and back to roger. “i’m jim,” the man adds as an afterthought, as though that answered anything.

john furrows his brow before it hits him in the face, wildly and horrifyingly. jim. jim the man that john spent a whole night crying on his couch about how roger didn’t love him. jim the man that john went home with with the intent to fuck before his supposedly unrequited love for roger got in the way. that jim.

“holy FUCK!” john sputters, spilling the watery remains of his drink all over the floor. “jim! how are you, mate? how you been? christ, it’s been years! rog, this is jim, the bloke i was telling you about--”

roger clearly was the smarter of the two, as he was able to pick up what jim had thrown down a lot faster than john had.

“pleasure to meet you!” roger smiles as he detangles himself from the death grip he’d had on john. “thanks for being so nice to deaks. he’s told me all about you.”

jim blushes, rubbing the back of his neck. “s’the least i could do! i’m just happy he’s managed to win you over.”

roger preens, fluffing his hair like the diva he is. “took a while, but eventually i had to give in. quite the charmer, this one is!”

the three of them laugh.

“you’re a lucky one,” jim grabs for his drink. “i just had some bastard come up to me in the line for the loo demanding to know how big my cock was. i had to throw my beer on him to get him to fuck off! some men have absolutely zero tact!”

as though his ears were burning, freddie appears like a vision in leather and denim, scowling.

“i’ve had the most terrible night darlings,” freddie scowls, gesturing at his beer stained chest. “some areshole had the audacity to throw his beer on me-- all i did was tell him i like my men well hung!”

[blah blah blah jim gives john his number to get back in touch, john (at freddies insistence) invites jim round for drinks and scrabble where he meets freddie when freddie is NOT on hte prowl, and they fall in love and live happily ever after]

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emma-nation · 4 years

Text

Within You - Bloodbound AU - Chapter 6

Summary: One year after defeating Gaius, the gang has finally found peace… Until a tragic incident awakens the ultimate and most dangerous threat they ever faced.

Genre: Angst/Adventure/Romance

Rating: T - Warning for violence and language

Notes:

- Sequel to the fics For You, In The Daylight and Without You. You can read all of them here.

- Sorry, I couldn't resist using the garden plot 😍

- In case anyone is wondering this is the song I picked for their wedding dance. I just thought it fits them really well.

Tag List: @supersphynxsworld, @lightning-fury, @spacecarrousel, @tigerbryn11, @gavryllo, @annabellewerecorgi, @whoinvitedalx, @sheyah, @imnotdonewiththeelementalists, @scaryqueenbee, @bigmemesplz, @la-guerra-69, @kamilahsayeed-owns-me, @morvengarde, @tephy24, @iam-the-fuckin-queen, @voltos9, @scorpistraub, @leavemeandmyshipsalone, @jen825, @andreear17, @justejuste727, @aureliaxj, @graceschoices, @mrskamilxh, @msuhailey, @zoe6111, @noodledragon22, @tigerbryn11, @shanuuh, @ilovetaylor13m, @ilovekamilahsayeed, @allaboutchoices, @fal-carrington, @scarlet-letter-a0114, @trouble-with-the-curve

Kamilah

A couple of days had passed since the failure of the debut party. Amy couldn't be more distant and hurt, even if all the misfortunes of that night weren't Kamilah's fault directly.

When she arrived home from work that night, the girl was still on the couch wearing an oversized t-shirt and watching a TV show. Empty ice cream containers and Cheetos packages were lying on the coffee table. An antique and rare coffee table Kamilah bought decades ago in an auction. That was a major red flag that she needed to do something urgently to fix the situation her wife.

After a quick shower, Kamilah went to the kitchen and prepared dinner. Mac n' Cheese. With all the food in the world, Amy seemed to enjoy that above anything. Not even the fanciest restaurants she visited could change her mind. Respecting that, Kamilah prepared a more refined version of that dish.

Amy was quite surprised to see her in the kitchen.

"You're cooking," she pointed. "Aren't we ordering?"

"Not tonight," Kamilah told.

The girl sat at one of the counters to watch her add the final touches to the dish.

"Mac n' Cheese?! You find it distasteful."

"But you love it, don't you? I'm learning from your tastes I guess."

Amy silenced and look at her in disbelief.

"Wow, we have been ordering for weeks. We never have time to cook something nice. Are you sure you're alright?"

"Absolutely, Amy. I was just thinking, we have all the time in the world. We should make the best of it. That's why we need to start changing some habits."

"Like what?" Amy asked.

"Let me see," Kamilah took her cell phone from her pocket and handed to her wife. "This is my schedule from now. I'm not working over 8 hours a day or traveling so often. I need to spend more time with you."

A smile finally lighted up Amy's pretty face. Her green eyes sparkled with joy.

"I... I'd like that."

"And so do I," Kamilah placed a kiss on her lips. "There's something else."

"What is it?"

"I'll show you tomorrow."

As she predicted, Amy was curious for the rest of the night, trying to guess what other change Kamilah could be planning for their lives.

"Are we... buying a boat?" She attempted a guess.

"No," Kamilah furrowed her brows confused. "Why? Would you like that?"

"I don't know, I'm just guessing."

She turned off the lamps, but she still could sense her wife awake and intrigued, even in the dark.

"Are you finally letting me adopt a cat?" Amy grinned. She had been begging for that in months. Kamilah always postponed with the excuse they spent too much time away from home.

"Uh... no," Kamilah sighed. "But I'll think about that too. I promise."

She kept it a surprise until lunch time, when she texted Amy requesting her presence at their house in Hamptons.

"Meet you there," she added.

----------

Amy

Everything about Amy's debut party had gone terribly wrong. Especially the hangover, that felt way worse now she was a vampire, when she woke up in the morning. And also the flashbacks of her arguments with Kamilah.

"God, I should've waited until the Awakening Ball just like everyone else."

She still couldn't sit down and talk things out with her wife for the following couple days. Not until she was able to fully calm down and process her feelings. Maybe she acted too harsh. Kamilah always hated being away from home for too long. She made sure of calling all the time to check how she was doing. She'd also surprise her with gifts from all her trips. That realization made Amy suddenly feel extremely guilty.

"I'm a horrible wife," Amy lamented drowning herself in ice cream.

Kamilah was the one to raise the peace flag. She cooked them dinner. Her favorite meal. Her own version of it, at least. She always wondered how Mac n' Cheese could be Amy's all-time favorite dish. In the end, she apologized and promised she'd be spend less time working and traveling, dedicating herself more to their marriage. That was enough to soften Amy's heart, but Kamilah still had another surprise.

It was about lunch time when she texted her asking her to go to their Hamptons' house. Amy quickly grabbed her car and started driving, wondering what she could be planning.

"Okay," Amy said when she arrived, "I'm here but... what's the matter?"

"Follow me," Kamilah ordered. She walked to a green area they had outside the house, surrounded by trees but rather empty. "Isn't it a perfect place for a garden?"

Amy opened a huge grin. Kamilah always dreamed of having a garden on her own and now she was able to walk in the sun, she finally could.

"That's right! It has always been your dream."

"I was thinking we should dedicate more time doing things we love."

For a few minutes, she heard as her wife gladly explained her plans for the space. Then, she had something else to show her inside the house.

"Kamilah," Amy's eyes went wide in surprise. "You really bought... a piano?!"

"You said you've always wanted to learn," Kamilah sat down at the piano by her side. "I'd be more than glad to teach you."

"You never told me you could play!"

"Well, it has been a few centuries."

She started playing the first notes of the song they picked for the first dance as a married couple. The way her fingers moved graciously, hitting every note with perfection and her sweet low voice, singing along with the melody, made Amy's eyes fill with tears.

"That was not supposed to make you cry," Kamilah stopped.

"I know," Amy smiled and wiped off the tears from her face. "But it was just... wonderful."

"Enough for you to forgive me for the last few days?"

"Kamilah, I... I should be the one to apologize for the way I acted. It wasn't your fault."

“Amy, I’m truly sorry,” Kamilah sighed. “You died in my arms, I can't bear the thought of losing you again. This is why I want to protect you and make sure you’re safe all the time.”

“I understand,” Amy spoke. “But I’m no longer frail and vulnerable as before, you know. I need to learn from my new powers and instincts.”

“I won’t lie to you, Amy. Being a vampire can be amazing, but it also can be a disgrace. It can change and destroy you. It can turn you into your worst self. I don’t want you to go through the same experiences I did.”

“I won’t, trust me. Now regarding the darkness…”

Amy finally revealed the two occasions where she saw a dark version of herself, capable of killing her own wife.

“I told Lysimachus and we both believe they’re unreal and could be produced by…”

“The First Vampire,” Kamilah completed.

Amy had tears in her eyes again when she finished her story.

“I would never do anything to hurt you. You know that, right?”

"Of course," Kamilah pulled her closer to her body, embracing her tightly. "Whatever that bitch is up to, we'll fight together."

With her face buried on Kamilah's shoulder, Amy let out a muffled laugh.

"What?"

"You said 'bitch'."

"Yes," Kamilah laughed too, caressing her hair, "I did."

----------

Lysimachus

After waking up in the morning after the party, Lysimachus locked himself alone inside his apartment, ashamed of his own actions. Not only he got very drunk, but he ended up in bed with two women, one of them being Priya.

He'd check his answering machine and his messages at every thirty minutes, waiting for an answer from Ivy. Or a text from Katherine. But there was nothing.

Loneliness had never been a problem for him, but he truly desired to have someone who he could share his theories and suspicions.

"Hey," Adrian said as he entered the office. "I was starting to wonder what the hell you were. I barely saw you at the party."

"Oh well," Lysimachus sighed, "let's not talk about the party."

"So why are you here for?"

"I've been training with Amy and she has shared some of her latest visions with me. Together with the stuff I heard from Balthazar... I think the First may be back."

"What?" Adrian sat in front of him, reading carefully all his notes. "When the sap of the tree rests in the blessed chalice... the First shall walk again... Oh my god."

"I tried to make sense of these words but..." Lysimachus told, "nothing comes to my mind."

"What if the 'blessed chalice' is actually Amy, this generation's Bloodkeeper, and the 'sap of the tree' is any vampire's blood? Kamilah's blood when she Turned her?"

"Makes sense. But did we ever find her tomb?"

"I had some clues," Adrian told. "With the help of Serafine, I came to the conclusion she was there all along, inside the tree."

"And assuming she's free, where she could be right now?" Lysimachus wondered. "I mean, she spent over two millennia inside that damn tree. It's not like she'd know how to catch a plane or even speak our language!"

"We need to pay attention to all vampires, all over the world."

"How do we do that?"

They called the most appropriate person who could help them with that task, Lily Spencer. Most of the vampires from all over the world were part of the Fangbook, her social network. Including from Europe and the Five from Japan.

"Lily, send them a warning," Adrian ordered. "Any unknown vampires sightings must be reported to us. We need to be aware."

Then, he went to his desk to make a call.

"According to my friend Elias, no one has been seen around Mydea since we destroyed the Order's compound. Only my researchers when they extracted those samples."

"Guys..." Lily was pensive for a second. "If she has this connection with Amy, her first impulse would be to come to find her, right? What if she's already headed here somehow?"

"We have to pay attention. Any new vampires in New York must be carefully studied by The Council."

Lysimachus quickly had two people in mind. Rheya, Kamilah's new employee, and Nadine, the female vampire he slept with. He'd be investigating them by himself before taking extreme measures.

He set a dinner with Rheya first, with the excuse he'd like to interview her before the voting process with The Council. She showed up just in time, wearing a business suit. That woman was extremely gorgeous. She radiated confidence and kindness. He wasn't able to notice that so well at the party.

"How were you Turned?" Was his first question.

"I lived with my husband and daughter at a small village in Greece," she told. "A king was willing to take possession of our lands. Most of our people got slaughtered, including my family. Gaius Augustine found me and Turned me."

Rheya wouldn't break eye contact for a single moment, or exhibit any signs that suggested she could be lying.

"Gaius... what did you think of him?"

"A real maniac. I deeply despise that man for not letting me join my family in death. Only to use my pain to turn me into my worst self, but... when I noticed what I was getting into, I resisted. I escaped."

She couldn't help letting her emotions show telling this last part of her story.

"And then you spent centuries in Europe, until the Order caught you?"

"Exactly. I was tortured, humiliated and..." she broke down in tears. Lysimachus sighed, feeling bad for submitting that poor woman to those questions.

He apologized and offered her a tour around New York. She was mesmerized by the buildings and attractions the city had to offer.

"The Phantom Of The Opera," Rheya said, reading a flyer about the current attractions playing at Broadway.

"Are you a fan?" Lysimachus asked.

"I find it amusing and strangely familiar. A mysterious creature, living in the shadows, who mentors a young artist he becomes fascinated with."

"Fascinated? The man develops an obsession."

"That's a way to see it. Maybe he believed they could've accomplish something greater together. A real masterpiece."

"A real tragedy, you mean."

Rheya stared at him serious for a second. That very same look that brought him chills at the party. Then, she grinned playfully.

"Hey," she patted him on the shoulder. "I was just toying with you, you're always so tense. He sorta reminds me of Gaius himself, don't you think?"

"Yeah," Lysimachus relaxed and smiled too, "the obsession he had with my sister. It was very similar."

They spent the next hour joking and chatting about their favorite books and movies. Nothing about Rheya indicated danger.

There was only one option. Priya's friend.

----------

Kamilah

They had barely started to enjoy their timing together when Kamilah had to stop and answer her cell phone that was ringing insistently, even thought she told at the company she didn't want to be contacted. For her surprise, it was Amy's mother. She was headed to New York to meet them.

With everything that was happening recently, Kamilah had forgotten about that one detail. The detail Mrs. Parker was familiar with her nature.

"What?!" Amy asked when she told. "How does she know?! I mean, I never told her anything!"

"I don't know," Kamilah was focused on the road back home. "Didn't you let any details slip?"

"No, I'm pretty sure. She'd be deadly worried if I told. You know how paranoid and overprotective my parents can be."

Kamilah was pensive for a moment. She remembered the papers Serafine gave her. The Bloodkeeper abilities could be passed from mothers to their daughters. Now it all started to make sense. Now she knew why Mrs. Parker hated her from the beginning.

"It explains a lot of things," Amy said. "When I was a child she had those moments were she'd become distant. Sometimes she'd spend hours locked in the bedroom."

"I'm surprised how she allowed this marriage to happen. I mean, she probably saw... things about me. Things I've done in the past."

Amy cracked into laughs.

"Hey, this isn't funny!" Kamilah frowned, quickly blushing and trying to hide an embarrassed smile. "Okay, maybe it is. But not in a good way."

They arrived shortly after Mrs. Parker. Kamilah invited her to the penthouse and prepared some tea. That conversation promised to be intense. In the living room, Amy was sitting on the couch in front of her mother, showing some discomfort.

"So Mrs. Parker," Kamilah decided to break the tension, "what brings you here?"

"Amy hasn't been really answering my calls or properly replying my texts," the woman accepted the cup of tea Kamilah offered. "I came here to check how she's doing."

"I'm sorry," Amy said. "I just have a lot going on right now. There's my job at the company and I've been focused on... my training."

"You're a vampire now."

"Y-Yes. How do you feel about it?"

Kamilah decided to leave mother and daughter alone. That conversation should be private between them. She locked herself in her home office, remembering her own mother. She wondered how she'd feel about the path both of her children followed in life. Would she ever forgive them for everything they had done? For what they had became?

One thing she was sure, her mother would have loved Amy. No one could dislike that girl. She had something magical in her personality and in that bright smile. She was able to gain the affection of everyone she met.

"Kamilah?" Mrs. Parker knocked at her door some time later. Her eyes suggested the conversation with Amy was full of emotions. "Can we talk for a moment?"

"Sure," Kamilah pointed at the chair in front of her desk. The woman sat down and sighed, thinking of her words.

"First of all, I'd like to thank you for saving my daughter's life. Even though you had to Turn her."

"I... I would give my life to protect her. I apologize for not noticing earlier she was in trouble. Trust me, Turning her was the last of my options."

"I know."

There was an awkward moment of silence. Looking into Amy's mother eyes, Kamilah wasn't sure of her perceptions about her anymore. The fact she had access to her entire past made her feel very vulnerable.

"So, you're a Bloodkeeper," she spoke. "Like Amy."

"I wasn't familiar with the term until now," Mrs. Parker told. "But yes, I've had these visions since early and so did my daughter. This is why I was concerned for her safety."

"Especially when she got involved with me."

"Exactly."

Kamilah closed her eyes, remembering Amy's mother reaction since the very first moment they met. She had all the reasons in the world to fear her, to feel disgusted and wish for a different future for her daughter.

"I'm not proud of who I used to be, or the things I've done in the past. However, I can't change it. Everyday I have to face the guilt. I hope you know, Mrs. Parker, I'm an entirely different person now. And Amy did help me. She makes me want to be better everyday."

The corners of the woman's mouth curled up in a small smile. She placed her hand on Kamilah's in reassurance.

"I can't say I accept it, but I'm not judging you. Not anymore. I can see that. I can see how Amy has grown with you, Kamilah. I can see how happy you make her. This is why I'm willing to give you a chance."

"I appreciate that."

----------

Amy

"How do you feel about it?"

That was probably the hardest question Amy had to ask her mom. She never had a good relationship with her. Since she was little, Mrs. Parker was a distant and closed parent. Sometimes she felt unloved, rejected by the woman who brought her to life.

The conflicts between them intensified when Amy became a teenager. Her mother was excessively protective and mistrusted her actions. One of the reasons why she wanted to leave their small town and explore the world. She wanted to escape the suffocating environment of her home. And she wanted to prove her wrong. She wanted Mrs. Parker to know she was capable of living on her own, doing what she loved.

"I can't say I'm happy," her mother said. "But otherwise, you'd be dead. I couldn't lose you, Amy. You're the most important thing in my life."

A small spark of anger appeared in Amy's heart. Somehow she felt betrayed. If she had been told about the visions, about what they were since early, she'd be prepared. She'd be stronger.

"Why didn't you tell me?" She asked, grinding her teeth. "Y-You always knew it! You had visions and you hid it from me. Instead, you... you pushed me away. You made me feel unloved. How could you???"

At this point, she was already standing up with tears in her eyes and clenched fists.

"Amy..." her mother grabbed her shoulders, looking deeply into her eyes. "I wanted to protect you. When I noticed you were faded to experience those visions too, I... I was scared for you."

"What about dad? Does he know?"

"Yes, he does. For years he supported me, helping me to find all kinds of treatments, medication, therapy... Needless to say it was useless."

Amy stopped for a moment, trying to process what she was hearing. Most of her life, her father was all she had. During her mother's crisis moments he'd do his best to comfort her and keep her distracted. He'd assure her that her mom was experiencing a strong headache or stress due to work. He was also a liar.

She let out a small ironic laugh.

"Great," Amy shook her head in denial. "My whole life is a lie."

"It doesn't have to be," Mrs. Parker grabbed both of her hands, "not anymore."

In silence, she heard her mother's stories about her dreams and visions. It all started with a cave and a tree, the mysterious woman and her two soldiers. Long before Amy moved to New York, Mrs. Parker already knew Adrian Raines and Kamilah Sayeed, without even knowing her daughter would accidentally become so close to them.

"Sometimes I wonder if it's fate," she finished. "If all of this has a bigger purpose. For me and especially for you."

"I wonder about that too," Amy agreed. "Especially now my abilities have... expanded."

After telling her about The First Vampire, she closed her eyes and she could hear her mother's thoughts. She was hurt, traumatized by those visions. She carried an immense guilty and regret for keeping them a secret, wondering how different Amy's life could have been. There was only one thing she desired in that moment... forgiveness.

"I'm sorry, Amy. For all I've done. I love you more than anything in this world and I only intended to keep you safe. And I'm sorry for being so intolerant about your relationship with Kamilah in the beginning. Once I got to know her, I figured out she's not the monster from my visions."

"That's okay, mom. I'd have probably done the same in your place. Most of the time I kept my visions a secret too. I understand why you did it."

Amy embraced her mother tightly, catching a glimpse of a memory from when she was pregnant with her. How she chose her name, meaning 'beloved' and how she'd sing for her. A tear ran down across her cheek. For the first time, she felt so connected to her mom as most of the daughters were.

"Is it..." her mother started sobbing too, "is too late to make it up for our lost time?"

"Not at all, mom," Amy smiled.

"Good, I'm going home and I'll be sending you some journals and drawings I kept from my visions."

"Thank you so much, it'll be a great help."

After Mrs. Parker left, all Amy wished for was to cuddle with her wife in bed. Kamilah patiently listened while she told her everything about her conversation with her mom.

"I feel better know, you know?" She said. "All my life I felt so unloved and rejected, but now I know I was wrong. She loves me, Kamilah. And I guess she's starting to like you too."

"Really?" Kamilah sighed. "Yet, I don't feel any less embarrassed to know your mother can look at me and access my memories. It's still intimidating."

She couldn't help but laughing again. Her wife eventually stop fighting against her own smile too.

"I feel like a weight has been removed from my chest now I've forgiven her and I was thinking..." she paused, raising her head and facing Kamilah. "I'd like to start a family on my own someday."

"Oh. Someday?"

"Soon?"

"Soon as...?"

"As in the next couple years? Like when we solve things regarding the First Vampire or when I'm completely adjusted to my powers?"

Kamilah took a moment to respond. Then, she kissed her forehead and pulled her closer to her chest again.

"It think I'd love that," she finally said.

----------

Lysimachus

After solving things with her wife, Kamilah had finally decided to make it up to her brother too. Amy had told her about the visions and hearing his version of the facts, she agreed with his suspicions.

"How do we find her?" She asked. "She could be anywhere."

"This is what I'm trying to figure out," he answered.

The meeting with Nadine was nothing but a disaster. She was just a young foreign vampire, lost and confused, who was being quite mentored by Priya, what wouldn't probably go well. There wasn't a single part of her that indicated she could be a vampire goddess. Lysimachus took her to the Shadow Den, Jax would probably provide her the guidance she needed.

Kamilah followed him to the warehouse he turned into a personal training center. It was time for another combat lesson with Amy.

"Kamilah," the girl smiled in excitement to see her, "you decided to join us?"

"Yes," she cracked her knuckles, "my twin brother's technique has some weak spots. You don't want to get them for yourself."

"Teach me your ways," Lysimachus mocked her, master."

They had just started training with daggers. He taught Amy some basic moves, but she would easily become bored and beg for more complex stunts.

"Okay then, Kamilah and I will be doing a little demonstration for you. Then, we can discuss together the moves you should learn."

"Hell yeah, that will be awesome!"

Amy pulled a chair and sat down to watch as Lysimachus and Kamilah positioned themselves for a small, harmless combat.

Lysimachus waited. He wouldn't strike first. He knew how Kamilah would easily deflect that blow and counter-attack.

"Well, brother," she teased, "afraid much?"

"No, just being honorable. Ladies first."

They continued to move in circle, facing each other. His sister's gaze was deep and intimidating. Though he was a psychic and a skilled fighter, he could never predict what she was up to.

Lysimachus made the mention of a move, what triggered a reaction from Kamilah. As she placed herself in a defense position, he drew his daggers and attempted to strike.

"Too close," she smirked, ducking and sweeping his legs out from under him.

As he fell on his back, Kamilah's daggers were already pointed to his neck.

"Witchcraft," Lysimachus complained. "It's the only explanation for this abnormal speed of yours."

"Don't be a cry baby," Kamilah continued to brag. "It's called practice and discipline."

None of them saw Amy coming from behind, locking her arm around Kamilah's neck. Though she was caught by surprise, she had no difficult to free herself.

"Nice one, Amy," she complimented. "You must analyze and take advantage of the situation. I'm proud, but now... disarm me."

Amy tried all the techniques she learned from both Kamilah and Lysimachus, but her wife wasn't make it easy for her.

"Get creative," Kamilah suggested. "Just like you've done. Sometimes technique isn't enough."

The girl was focused on Kamilah's hands. On her daggers. Dodging her attacks but with no clue how to disarm her.

Kamilah moved forward to strike one more time, but this time her daggers flew away from her hands, hitting the nearest wall.

"W-What... How did you..."

"I didn't do anything," Amy said.

"Of course you..."

Lysimachus entered the fight, lunging forward for a surprise attack at his sister in law and test her reflexes. He couldn't get any close. Intense balls of energy that came out from her hands, sent him and Kamilah flying across the warehouse.

"Oh my god," Amy covered her mouth in shock. "Are you guys okay? What have I done?!'

Stunned, Lysimachus and his sister exchanged a concerned look. Never in his 2065 years of life he had seen a vampire with those powers. Especially a newly-Turned.

#bloodbound #kamilah sayeed #kamilah x mc #playchoices #choices stories you play #bloodbound fanfiction #within you

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captainchrisfics · 5 years

Text

“I’m yours.”

About: Chris’s (first person pov) girlfriend insists on coming to set when he films a pretty fervid scene from Gifted’s sequel with his ex, which leads to more than a little bit of jealousy, a fight, and (unsurprisingly) a make up makeout. Requested by @tabseus - hope you enjoy!

Word Count: 3,042

Warnings: I wouldn't call this nsfw, but it does get a bit heated

I stood by the snack table, picking at a muffin that grew stale since breakfast. The craft service crew on the set for the sequel to Gifted was usually really great, at least the few times I’ve been on set. This just seems to be my luck today. Tensions were high with Chris and me today. He thought it was ridiculous that I insisted on coming and would only result in unnecessary jealousy while I argued there shouldn’t be an issue if this sex scene he was filming with his ex was really just that. If I’m honest, I would’ve been just fine going about the rest of my life without the image of Chris and Jenny tearing each other’s clothes off and rolling around in the sheets burned into my memory. Would I ever let Chris get the satisfaction of being right from seeing how uncomfortable I was? Certainly not. So instead I found myself picking the blueberries out of this muffin. Not because I didn’t like them, just because I needed something to do.

As if the universe needed to remind me that a hard pastry wasn’t the worst thing in the world, Jenny bounced over to the table, looking at the display of food up and down. She picked a stem of grapes and popped a couple into her mouth, which I wish I didn’t notice was still red and swollen. I recognized the pink irritation around her chin and cheeks as well, a side effect of kissing a bearded Chris. Seeing it on another person rather than my reflection in the mirror made me lose what little appetite I had left.

Jenny leaned against the table, looking at Chris who was talking to the director in preparation for their next scene. I hated how her eyes on him made me think of how her hands explored his body instead just moments before. I hated how it reminded me they’ve done much more than that before. Jenny sighed, popping another grape in her mouth before turning to me. She could probably sense my stare, the kind of look that made you wonder what would happen if I spontaneously discovered I had laser vision.

“Hey, do you mind if I make a confession? I’ve just got to tell someone,” Jenny said in the low, excited tone I recognized from discussing crushes on the playground. I nodded against my better judgment. “I missed Chris,” she breathed like a weight was lifted from her chest. “Being with him like that is just so… God, I want him back. Even if it was just a one night stand.” The grape she was twisting snapped off its stem. I hoped it was loud enough to drown out how something inside me splintered simultaneously.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk about my boyfriend like that.” I made the words out through gritted teeth, squeezing what was left of the muffin so hard it crumbled at my feet. Jenny’s head snapped to me with raised eyebrows as the rest of her face fell into a look of shock. “I didn’t know-”

“Well now you do,” I shot back louder than I meant to. The more I looked at Jenny, the more I noticed the little things like how her hair was all over the place from the way Chris ran his hands through it and the way her dark eyes searched my angry face. The jealousy that’d been on a low burn in the pit of my stomach since I watched Chris attach his mouth to hers so desperately it was like she was his oxygen tank finally boiled over. I felt my cheeks growing hot and red as the steam rose to my throat. To stop myself from screaming like a kettle, I stormed off, throwing the muffin into the trash can hard enough it shook. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chris looking at me with his eyebrows furrowed in concern over the director’s shoulder, but he didn’t make an effort to come after me.

I paced up and down the short corridor in Chris’s trailer, trying to do anything with all of the nervous energy and pent up jealousy other than scream. I kept thinking about how I would explain this all to him, exactly how I’d tell him he was right in the least humiliating way possible. Rationally, I knew Chris was only doing his job. I knew it was a part of a script and just for show, not some senseless act of passion that actually happened. I knew he was directed to kiss her like that, to look at her with so much love in his eyes. But no matter how many times I told myself that, there was nothing I could do to make myself feel it.

After a while of burning a hole in the carpet with the soles of my shoes, the trailer door swung open to reveal a frantic Chris. “There you are,” he said, chest rising and falling as he caught his breath. “What happened?” I stood in front of him stunned, still reeling to find the words to explain feelings I could barely understand myself. As if I needed to contradict myself any more, it occurred to me that even though I was angry with Chris for taking this long to check on me, I wished he would’ve given me more time to figure out the rest of my internal disputes. I stared at him with wide eyes, suddenly confronted with something I thought I had longer to work through.

“I’ve been running all around looking for you. Jenny said-” The rest of his sentence was drowned out by the sudden rush of angry blood to my ears. The sound of her name coming out of Chris’s mouth in the same breathy tone he’d used before brought back the intensity of my feelings that I hadn’t realized subsided with time until that moment.

“Jenny said a lot of things today,” I huffed, crossing my arms to drive home the point that her comments weren’t exactly pleasant. Chris cocked an eyebrow, snagging on my tone. “What’re you talking about?” he inquired in a way that was painfully tentative. He wasn’t sure he wanted the answer. I told him everything, maybe with a little more venom than necessary. “This is why I didn’t want you to come,” Chris concluded, tugging on his hair like he did when he was stressed. It occurred to me that, for the first time it was as blatantly obvious as now, I was the source of his problem.

“So you could all but fuck her without feeling bad about it? As if my being here is some kind of painful reminder of your real relationship?” I shot accusations at him. Not because I hoped something would stick, but because I wanted him to brush it all away. I wanted Chris to wrap me up in his arms and whisper that none of it was true, that I was the only one he wanted and the only one he really loved. Instead, he shook his head with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You know that’s not what I meant. You’re just being ridiculous.” Despite his contemptuous attitude, Chris kneaded his shoulder in an attempt to release his pent up stress. Stress I was responsible for.

In that moment, I wished I had a needle and thread in my pocket so I could sew my mouth shut. Or maybe a lock, so I could do that thing you do when you’re little where you fasten your mouth shut and pretend to throw away the key, but for real. Anything to keep what came out of my mouth next from doing so since my efforts alone were to no avail. “Am I really Chris? Because listening to her drool over my boyfriend wasn’t enough. You kept filming all of these romantic scenes with her, over and over. While I sat here with the mental image of you fucking her. Over and over.”

Chris’s eyes fell to the floor. “That isn’t fair,” he sneered lowly, almost in a growl. “I wanted to talk to you, but I can’t do that if you’re going to attack me for things out of my control. This is my job, nothing more than that.” His squinted eyes snapped up to reach mine. “I didn’t come after you because I was working, which I know you know,” Chris said, his jaw clenching between staccatoed sentences.

“Well,” I pouted, dropping my arms back to my side as I searched for another reason to argue for the sake of it. “You don’t have to be so dismissive of me,” I said with the hope that it came out with more conviction than I heard in my voice. Chris shook his head and responded, “I usually wouldn’t, but you don’t even believe you’re upset about it.” I hated that it was true and how I felt like I was watching Animal Planet, except I was the unsuspecting gazelle at the watering hole. Chris was the hungry one stalking toward me through the tall grass. I retreated until my back hit the wall. They say a lion’s roar could be heard from five miles away, but I think my nervous gulp was even louder than that.

“Like I’ve said, I didn’t want you to come because I knew you’d get jealous.” His passionate blue eyes, the kind you could drown in if you weren’t careful, dropped from mine to my lips before flickering back up again. “Which is what this is all rooted in, isn’t it? Unfounded envy?” Chris’s lips tugged into a smirk of self-satisfaction as my eyes avoided his, unwittingly confirming that he’d figured me out. I wanted to protest or at least put up more of a pointless fight, but I was barely able to catch my breath with Chris so close that I could feel his brushing against my cheeks. He trapped me against the wall with his hand as if I wasn’t already stuck in his rip current. “Want to know a secret?” He leaned toward me until his lips brushed my ear and his beard scratched my cheek, prickling goosebumps all over my skin. I tried to brace for the tidal wave to hit, but Chris made it hard to focus on anything other than him.

“I always think of you,” he whispered with a husky voice. “When I kiss her, I pretend it’s you.” His lips pressed a soft kiss against the patch of skin just below my ear, one of the only places I noticed his mouth didn’t meet her body. “When I touch her, I imagine it’s you.” He moved lower, sucking on my neck. I hoped he wouldn’t leave any marks, I didn’t think I could stand looking at something that was meant to claim me as his when I’d just seen them smattered across her collarbone. “And ever since I had to act like I fucked her, I’ve been craving you.”

He caressed my face for a moment while I searched his for any hint of the game he was trying to play with me. Part of me expected him to pull away and shout that he was just kidding or start yelling at me for all of the unkind, untrue things I’d said. Instead, his fingertips lazily traced down my shoulder before grazing the curve of my hip. When he reached my lower back, I involuntarily arched away from his touch. I couldn’t help remembering how he held her in the same way before laying her down on the bed, before I watched as he…

Chris sighed, pulling his hand away from me to tug on his hair. He took the hint that I wasn’t comfortable in stride as he turned and took a few steps in the opposite direction. “Look, you were right. I want to, I really do. But I just can’t stop playing that scene in my head,” I confessed, biting my bottom lip to keep it from trembling. My shoulders slumped against the wall, feeling defeated as the irrational fear of things never being the same between us crept into my mind. “I don’t know what I can do about that,” Chris said with a shake of his head, tossing his hand in the air as if to say he was giving up in all of his frustration.

“I do,” I said as an idea sparked in my mind. He turned to look at me with an eyebrow peaked in curiosity. I hoped he didn’t catch how I nervously wiped my palms on my jeans, not used to taking the lead on this sort of thing. “Give me something better to think about.” We stared at each other for a few moments, unsure of exactly where to go from there as the tension growing so big I worried the trailed might burst at its seams.

It felt simultaneous and unstoppable, how we fell into each other as if gravity was pulling us together the way it tugs people back to earth when they jump from planes. I wish there was a more graceful way to describe it, but Chris and I simply smashed together. Before I knew it, his fingers were tangled in my hair and my legs were wrapped around his waist and I couldn’t tell where one of us ended and the other began. Chris set me on top of the small counter the kitchenette offered before he unraveled the knot we’d become, taking a moment to catch his breath from a kiss like that before speaking.

“I don’t want you to feel like I’m just trying to shut you up,” he said, scratching his beard with uncertainty. I shook my head furiously and leaned back in for another whirlwind, but Chris pulled away again and took a step away so he was out of my arm’s reach. “Seriously, I know we were both kind of heated, but if you’re really upset we can talk about it,” he insisted. I laughed without meaning to. “I’m still pretty heated,” I joked, causing Chris to laugh and agree that he felt the same way. “And don’t you think actions speak louder than words?” I continued, causing Chris to think about it for a moment before nodding tentatively. “Then show me you’re mine,” I challenged.

Chris didn’t hesitate before he kissed me again, this time much more slowly at first. It was gentle and barely there as he tested the waters before completely me down with him, which happened much more quickly. Suddenly, we were back where we left off. I was fumbling with the buttons of his shirt while Chris rested his hands on my hips, just barely brushing the skin above my jean’s waistline. As my hands went down, his moved up until they reached the clasps of my bra which he undid with unprecedented speed. Chris stretched to take off his shirt once I was done with it and I took the opportunity to remove mine, giving us a moment of forced separation to just look at each other.

I took him in, the way the muscle of his peck curved under his white tank top and the dive the v-line of his hips took below his belt, made visible by the rising hemline that felt like it was trying to tease me. How I could see the ghost of his abs underneath it and the tattoos that peeked out from around its edges before disappearing below the thin fabric, which I realized with anxious anticipation was one of the few layers keeping us apart now. Once my eyes reached his, it struck me how dark his irises seemed. I liked knowing the way Chris looked when he was so full of lust, the ship-wrecking kind of stormy water his blue eyes became and the smirk that seemed to never leave his lips until they were on mine. More than anything, I selfishly liked being the one responsible for it, not anyone else he’d been with before.

Chris scooped me off the counter by the bottom of my thighs, resting his hands on my ass once I’d wrapped my legs around his waist again. I held him by his flexed biceps, brushing my thumb over his bull tattoo. We left a trail of discarded clothes to his trailer’s small bedroom where he dropped me on his mattress. Amidst the messy sheets and tangled blankets, Chris hovered above me, pressing light kisses up my torso until he reached my neck where his lips lingered a little longer before drifting back to mine. He hooked a finger around the waistline of my underwear and I complied to his unspoken request, lifting my hips to his to make his job a little easier. Chris smiled against my lips as he slid off the only thing keeping me from him before leaning back, allowing his hungry eyes to roam my body until they reached my gaze with a sincerity I hadn’t anticipated.

“I need you to know something,” Chris said with a lover’s sigh. I nodded, feeling more vulnerable than ever in front of him. “I love you more than I’ve loved anyone before. You’re the one I want to wake up next to and go to bed beside for the rest of my life. You’re all I want and everything I’ll ever want and then some, too,” he spoke softly but sternly without his eyes ever leaving mine. “You shouldn’t ever question that. I promise I’m yours,” Chris finished with so much certainty it left no room for doubt. Partly so he wouldn’t see the happy tears well up in my eyes and entirely since I didn’t have the words to express all the emotion that made my chest feel like it was about to burst, I grabbed Chris by his cheeks and leaned in for a kiss that was more passionate than any we’d shared before. When I pulled away to breathe, I stared at Chris who had a grin so big it squeezed his eyes shut and said, “I love you too and I’m yours for as long as you’ll have me.”

#Chris Evans #chris evans fanfiction #chris evans fanfic #chris evans fic #chris evans x reader #imagine chris evans #cevans #chris evans oneshot #chris evans request #Steve Rogers #steve rogers fanfic #steve rogers fic #steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers x reader #fanfiction #fanfiction requests

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