#she could be like 'i need you to buy one gallon of milk' and she wouldn't have confidence he'd manage that without fucking it up

[flatstarcarcosa]

hahahahahahahahahahahahhahahha a

lmaoooooooooooooooooooooooo

#comics.txt #what fucking. mirror world jokerverse shit is this #there is no situation ever where adeline will have any confidence in slade for a goddamn thing #she could be like 'i need you to buy one gallon of milk' and she wouldn't have confidence he'd manage that without fucking it up

[nvrsaidiwasinurcloset]

Requesting something where reader works as a barista and her boss/co-worker is flirting with her like non-stop. She finally reveals to her BF Ethan about it and of course he’s livid. Ethan/GF makes a visit to the cafe to show boss/co-worker to leave y/n alone for good. Later that night Ethan reminds y/n that she is ONLY his. Please include as much smut as you deem necessary. Btw absolutely adore your writing. 💕

Hiiii! I hope you like it💕

I Mean It - Ghostface!Ethan Landry x Fem!Reader

This contains SMUT - Minors DNI

Summary: Your creepy supervisor threatens to get you fired after you reject his advances, so Ethan takes care of the problem.

Contains: Suggestions to murder, workplace harassment(Nothing graphic), oral - f recieving, p in v, rough-ish sex

A/N: I was going to post this earlier today but life happened haha

Ethan was the sweetest boyfriend to you. He loved to randomly buy you flowers just to see you smile, plan date days for the two of you, and he was always doing something to make you laugh, especially if you were having a bad day. He was also very protective. Whenever he’d be out with you somewhere, if he noticed that another guy was staring at you, he made eye contact until the person took the hint. God forbid anyone said anything or catcalled you because Ethan didn’t mind confronting someone. He didn’t want anyone else to think they could have you, but he also thought it was disrespectful to you.

You knew how Ethan could be, so when your new supervisor at work, Logan, started to flirt with you, you didn’t want to tell him. The last thing you wanted was for Ethan to pop in one day and say something, and with his occasional hotheaded tendencies, you were sure you’d get fired. You needed your job, especially with Ethan talking about how he wanted you to move in with him.

“Hey cutie,” Logan said, as you’d just put your apron on. “What are you doing after work today?”

“You know I have a boyfriend,” you said, brushing him off as you checked to make sure the coffee that was already brewed was still fresh. “Plus, you’re my supervisor. Don’t you think it’s a little unprofessional for you to keep hitting on me?”

“No,” he said, leaning on the counter beside you. “I can’t believe you’re with that loser.”

“Don’t talk about him like that,” you warned, as you once again, walked away from him. You peaked in the fridge to see what milk you needed to grab from the back, but he stayed right beside you.

“He’s not going to do anything,” he said, as you sighed in frustration.

“Seriously, Logan. Let it go. It’s never going to happen,” you said, making a mental note of what you needed before going to grab the extra milk.

He was still behind you, and you were starting to get a little uncomfortable. He was always flirting, but him following you into the walk-in cooler where no one else could see the two of you was making you nervous. You tried to push any anxiety you had to the side so you could get what you needed and get out, but once you had two gallons of milk in your hands and he stood in front of the door so you couldn’t move past him, you were starting to get mad. You huffed as you sat the milk down on one of the shelves.

“What the fuck is your problem?” you asked, staring him down as he smiled.

“I could write you up for talking to me like that…but I won’t if you let me take you out. Just once,” he said, trying to manipulate you into giving him a chance.

“Yeah, I can only imagine how that night would end,” you scoffed, as he started to smirk.

“Hopefully with you naked in my bed.”

You didn’t have time to process what you were doing before your hand connected with his cheek, the sharp sound muffled by the hum of the cooler. Your hand was stinging as you pulled it away, a red mark appearing on the side of his face as he stared at you in disbelief.

“I’m getting you fired for that,” he said, stepping away from the door as he ran his hand over his cheek. “I’ll tell the manager about this in the morning.”

“I’ll tell him about you sexually harassing me,” you snapped, grabbing the milk off the shelf and walking out of the cooler.

Your other coworkers looked at you as you walked out, noticing that you were trying to hold your tears in. You put the milk in the fridge before Logan walked out, an angry look on his face as he made his way towards you.

“I think you should go home for the rest of the day,” he said, as you took your apron off.

“Fine. I didn’t want to be here with your creepy ass anyway.”

“Expect the manager to call you in the morning,” he said, as you made your way out of the coffee shop.

On your walk back home, you knew you needed to tell Ethan. If Logan was going to get you fired anyway, you knew you’d be happier with the situation if Ethan confronted him. You dried the stray tears on your cheeks before you pulled out your phone to text him.

You: Can you come over before your late class?

Ethan: Yeah

Ethan: Wait, why aren’t you at work?

You: I’ll tell you about it when you come over.

When you made it to your dorm, you noticed Ethan standing outside of the door, waiting for you.

“That was fast,” you said, as he took in your sad appearance.

“You know I live in the next building over,” he said, as you walked up to him and rested your head against his chest. His arms wrapped around you, his hand soothingly rubbing across your back. “What happened, baby?”

“Let’s go inside and I’ll tell you,” you said, pulling away to unlock your door.

As you explained the interaction with Logan, Ethan was starting to get angry. His leg was bouncing as he tried to keep calm in front of you, but he knew that Logan needed to pay for the way he’d treated you. Ethan wouldn’t tolerate him flirting with you in the first place, but the idea of anyone thinking they’d even have a chance with you had him fuming, because you were his.

“I don’t know if I can stop by the coffee shop tonight, but I’ll take care of it tomorrow,” he lied, already having a sinister plan floating around in his head. “Maybe if you tell your manager what happened, he’ll be the one that gets fired.”

“All that man does is kiss the higher-ups’ asses, and he cornered me where he knew there weren’t any cameras,” you sighed, as he took a deep breath.

“I promise you, you won’t have to deal with him anymore,” Ethan said, as he stood up. “I’ll take care of it. But I have to run right now or I’m going to be late for class.”

“Okay,” you said, as he grabbed your hands and pulled you close. He placed a sweet kiss on your lips before he pulled away. “Wait, my roommate had to go home for a family emergency. If you think you could sneak back in here tonight, I’d love to spend some alone time with you.”

“Hmm, I like the sound of that,” he said, smirking at you. “Leave your door unlocked. I might not get here until late, but I don’t want to get caught in the hallway.”

“I will. I hope your class isn’t too boring,” you said, as he mumbled “I know it won’t be.”

It wasn’t going to be because he wasn’t going. After seeing how upset you were, and the possibility of Logan getting you fired after he harassed you, he knew what needed to happen to him. He’d go to the ends of the earth to protect you, and he’d do anything to make sure you didn’t have to see Logan’s pathetic self again.

Ethan always paid close attention to his surroundings, even when he was visiting you at work for your breaks. He’d met you at the back entrance a couple of times when you had to close…the back entrance that was never locked until the supervisor left. He knew that was his way to get in, he just needed to plan it out perfectly.

He ran to his dorm to get the things he needed, hoping Chad wouldn’t come back as he put the robe, mask, and knife in his backpack. His roommate walked in just as he’d finished zipping his bag back up.

“Hey, wanna play Mortal Kombat when you get home later?” Chad asked, as he held up the game he’d just picked up.

“No, I won’t be coming home after class. I just stopped by to grab some extra clothes,” Ethan said, as Chad shook his head.

“Don’t get caught in her dorm again,” he said, as Ethan rolled his eyes and walked out.

Ethan found a little hiding spot outside of the view of the exterior cameras of the coffee shop as he waited for his opportunity to go in. His head snapped up from his phone once he heard your coworkers talking amongst themselves as they walked out the back door. He locked his phone and slid it in his pocket before unzipping his backpack and grabbing what he needed to not get caught.

He held the knife tightly in his hand as he walked up to the back entrance and opened the door, peaking around the hallway. He noticed that the coffee shop was dark, aside from the glow of the fluorescent lighting in the manager’s office. He quietly stepped towards it, and once he made it to the doorway, he tapped the blade of his knife against the metal door frame to get Logan’s attention.

As soon as Ethan finished what he went there to do, he wiped the blood off his knife before heading towards the back exit. He slowly opened the door to make sure no one was outside before he bolted to where he was hidden before. He took off the robe and the mask and shoved it, along with the knife, into his backpack.

You kept checking the time on your phone, wondering what was taking Ethan so long. You almost thought he got caught by your RA, but you knew he would’ve messaged you to tell you that. You jumped when your door quickly opened as Ethan ran inside.

“You scared the shit out of me,” you sighed, as he turned to smile at you.

“Sorry. I almost got caught,” he said, his breathing heavy from all the running he’d just done.

His adrenaline was still pumping through his veins as he took in your appearance. You had the cutest little pajama set on, and he was dying to get you out of it.

“You know you’re only mine, right?” he asked, as he stepped closer to you. You noticed the dark look in his eyes as you curiously looked at him.

“Are you okay?” you questioned, as he let out a light chuckle.

“You didn’t answer my question. Maybe I need to show you who you belong to,” he said, as your core started to throb at his words.

“Are you still mad about the Logan stuff? I’m sorry I didn’t tell you he was flirting with me until it got bad,” you said, as he shook his head.

“You do need to tell me when stuff like that happens, but…” he trailed off, once he noticed you laying there, clenching your thighs together. Your eyes were so needy, and you were struggling to sit still. “I think you want me to show you that your mine.”

“Mhm,” you said, as he sat his stuff down and pulled his shirt over his head.

He got on your bed and hovered over you before he leaned down to place his lips against yours. Your mouths were hungrily moving together, like you couldn’t get enough of each other. You felt Ethan start to tug at your pajama shorts as he pushed his tongue past your slightly parted lips. You lifted your hips so Ethan could slide the shorts down over the curve of your ass. As soon as he got you out of them, his fingertips gently moved up your thigh.

You whimpered into his mouth as he started to rub you over your panties. He slid them to the side to rub painfully slow circles against your needy bundle of nerves. He knew what he was doing, but he couldn’t help it. He loved teasing you until you were begging him to fuck you.

“Ethannn,” you whined once he pulled away to catch his breath. “Move your fingers faster.”

He smirked at the pouty look playing on your lips as he barely changed up his pace. It was almost unnoticeable, as you gave him a ‘Really?’ look.

“Oh, you want more?” he asked, his fingers quickly rubbing against your clit. “Is this what you need?”

“Yes,” you moaned, as he started to laugh and slow his fingers. You whined in protest as he almost came to a stop. You were starting to get a little frustrated, especially after you’d thought about Ethan taking care of you in the way you needed him to the entire evening. “I thought you were going to show me who I belong to?”

His smirk dropped and his eyes got so dark at your question. You weren’t trying to piss him off, but you felt like you did as he stared at you.

“Don’t be a brat,” he warned, “I do so much for you.”

“I’m sorry, babe. I know you do,” as he scooted down the bed and looked at you from in between your thighs.

“You don’t know the half of it,” he said, before he leaned forward, his tongue licking stripes up your clit.

Your hands went to his hair as his tongue skillfully moved against you, but you still needed more. He already knew that, but he wanted you to ask him for it. You stayed quiet, not wanting to make him mad like you did before. Your bottom lip was in between your teeth as you tried to hold your sounds in, because you didn’t want anyone to hear you. Ethan loved it when you were loud, but you didn’t want him to get caught in your dorm again.

He wasn’t satisfied with your silence, a low moan slipping past your lips once he sucked your clit into his mouth and started to move his head from side to side.

“Unf, fuck,” you whimpered, your hips lifting off the bed as he fought to hold them down. “Please use your fingers.”

He slid his middle and ring finger into your dripping pussy with ease as he kept sucking on your clit. He curved his fingers just right, your legs involuntarily twitching at the feeling. Once he sucked even harder, you felt your orgasm building.

“I’m close,” you whined, as his fingers pressed harder against that spongy spot inside of you.

His eyes connected with yours as your moans kept getting louder, the feeling in the pit of your stomach getting stronger and stronger as he brought you closer to the edge. Your hands were tugging on his hair as you started to move your hips with his fingers until your entire body started to shake. He watched you fall apart as that feeling finally washed over you, your breathing shaky as you whimpered his name.

He slowed his fingers as you started to come down from your high and switched from sucking your clit to gentle licks. Once you started to pull your hips away from the slight overstimulation, he removed his fingers and sat up to look at you.

“You’re mine, right?” he joked, as you stared at him through your post-orgasm haze.

“I think so…I need you to fuck me so I can be sure,” you said, teasing him as he glared at you.

“Be careful what you ask for,” he said, sliding off the side of your bed to take his jeans and boxers off. He walked over to your bedside table and grabbed a condom before he crawled back on the bed with you.

He grabbed one of the extra pillows from beside your head and placed it under you as you lifted your hips for him. Once he slid inside of you, he gave you time to adjust to his size as he leaned down to kiss you. His tongue glided across your bottom lip as you let him deepen the kiss, but you were starting to squirm underneath him.

He started off with slow, deep thrusts. The tip of his cock was brushing against your g-spot as he caught all your moans with his mouth. Your nails ran over his back as he fucked you at a slow pace, but you were craving more. Your legs wrapped around him so he could go even deeper, but he knew what you really needed.

He pulled away to look at you as he rested on his knees, still thrusting into your soaked core.

“Are you mine?” he growled, as you nodded. “You better fucking say it.”

“Mmm, shit. I’m all yours,” you said, as he quickly sped up. His cock was slamming into you so hard that the sounds of his skin slapping against yours, along with the loud moans flooding out of your mouth, were bouncing off the walls.

His brows were furrowed as he concentrated on keeping his pace, his cheeks a rosy pink as he tried to keep his breathing as steady as he could.

You snaked your hand down to your clit, before he swatted it away and replaced it with his thumb. He was rolling circles over it, the pressure making you whimper.

Grunts were slipping past his lips as he started to drill into your g-spot even harder, your shaky hands gripping the comforter to brace yourself for your orgasm.

He knew that if the sounds already coming from your room weren’t loud enough for anyone else to hear, the sounds you were about to make definitely would be. He placed his hand over your mouth, your eyes wide as your eyebrows knitted together.

Your pussy started to flutter as you let out a loud cry against the palm of his hand, your entire body bucking as he tried to fuck you through it.

Your chest was heaving as your body started to relax, but he still kept his hand in place just in case you couldn’t be quiet as he chased his own orgasm. It didn’t take long for his hips to stutter.

“Aahh fuck,” he moaned out as he pulled his hand away from your mouth, his head falling forward as he gave a few more week thrusts, his cum filling the tip of the condom. He slid out of you and flopped on his back as he tried to catch his breath.

“Holy shit,” you mumbled, as he turned his head to look at you. You looked like you could fall asleep in that moment, so he got up to take the condom off, and grabbed your panties and his boxers off the floor.

“Let me help you, baby,” he said, as he slid your panties back up your legs and over your hips. He slid his boxers back on before crawling in bed beside you and pulling you closer.

You moved your head to his chest, and he heard your breathing slow as he drew patterns on your back with his fingertips.

“I love you, babe,” he said, placing a kiss to the top of your head.

“Love you, too,” you said softly, as you started to drift off.

The next morning, you woke up to the sound of your phone vibrating against the nightstand. You lifted your head off Ethan’s chest as he started to wake up, a sweet smile on his lips as his eyes stayed closed.

“Oh shit,” you said, grabbing your phone. Ethan’s eyes opened as you glanced over to him, your phone still vibrating in your hands. “It’s work.”

You hesitantly answered it, a nervous “Hello?” slipping past your lips. Your eyes went wide as you listened to your manager speak, your hand covering your mouth as you tried to process everything you were being told. Ethan was trying so hard to hold in his smile over the horrible crime he committed, but he’d do anything for you. He had no shame in that.

Once you hung up with your manager, you turned to Ethan, your eyes still wide as you tried to put into words what you were told.

“So uh, the coffee shop is a crime scene right now,” you said, as Ethan looked at you, fake confusion painted on his face.

“What do you mean?” he questioned, as your words got stuck in your throat. “Talk to me, baby.”

“Logan was murdered last night after everyone left,” you said, the shock fully hitting you once the words left your mouth. “Oh my god. That’s fucking crazy.”

“Yeah…I’m just happy you weren’t there,” Ethan said, as you nodded.

“Me too…I wonder what happened,” you said, as he shrugged.

“We’ll probably know something soon,” he said, as he started to laugh a little. You didn’t think it was very funny, your questioning look letting him know he needed to explain himself. “It’s not funny, but I guess you aren’t getting fired, after all. He was a scummy person…now he can’t treat anyone else the way he treated you.”

“That’s true,” you sighed as you laid your head back on Ethan’s chest.

#ethan landry #ethan landry x reader #scream smut #ethan landry smut #smut

[bucknastysbabe]

5 + 1 Times Buck’s GF was the crybaby and the one time she wasn’t

Rating: Regular, smut only in one part

Word Count: 4,037

Tags: FLUFFY FLUFF, smut in one part, pnv!sex, soft tender luvin, Bucky is Vry Vry sweet, but he do be laughing at the reader, reader is oversensitive, and also a journalist for the Bugle aka How?, bucks haters get flamed, crying over spilt milk literally, some angst, TW: ptsd, J.Jonah Jameson is out there somewhere shaking his head at his employee

1. In the arms of the angels- FLY AWAYYYY

Bucky could safely say that his precious, precious girl could be somewhat oversensitive. He liked that about her, having someone around who was extremely caring and kind. The former Winter Soldier would be lying if he claimed that he knew how to handle her spells every time.

Although Bucky gotten better over the time they had been together.

They were cuddled on his new, much bigger couch on a lazy Sunday. His girlfriend wore one of Bucky’s t-shirts, the cloth hanging down to her soft thighs. She was spooned against the brunette, head padded on his flesh bicep. The random movie they had been watching went to a commercial. Bucky’s eyes widened when he realized what exactly kind of commercial it was.

The depressing ass ASPCA advertisement. His girlfriend donated to the local humane society and multiple non-profits but would lose her ever loving shit over the poor pets. Bucky instinctively curled his other arm around her waist when the sad song came on. His girl sniffled, “Oh god, I hate this!”

He murmured, “C’mon just look at your phone baby.”

Her sniffles turned into sobs, bemoaning, “I don’t understand how people could do that to the poor animals! It’s ah-ah-awful!” Bucky frowned, vibranium thumb rubbing circles into her hip. He reassured her, “Sweetheart, we about donate to the entirety of Brooklyn. You’re doing good.”

One of her fists banged on his thigh. She cried, “I need to donate to the entirety of the United States!” Bucky’s lips curled up in slight amusement. As much as he hated to see his best girl cry, it was entertaining to see her fit. He shushed her, “Okay we will, s’not like I’m a broke fugitive anymore.” The girl’s watery eyes flicked up to his smirk.

She poked him at an awkward angle, croaking, “Don’t say that about yourself!”

He tried to keep a calm face but ended up snickering. To which Bucky received another annoyed poke and a scoff. Thankfully the ad was done by the time she turned back to the TV. Bucky kissed her hairline and said, “Okay then, no more waterworks and I won’t trash my name. We’ll go buy another damn pound out later.” She seemed to relax, snuggling tight into Bucky’s larger frame.

2. On the floor

A shriek and a crash echoed from the kitchen. Bucky threw down his tattered book and hopped up. He hoped his girlfriend didn’t injure herself, again. The super soldier slid into the kitchen, blue eyes surveying the scene. He half-shouted, “You okay?“

“NO!,” came the distressed reply.

Bucky’s poor girl was half soaked and milk covered the floor, the gallon leaking onto the tile. His brows raised at the mess, hand rubbing at his neck. She threw her hands up and squalled, but made no move to escape the flood.

“I just wanted to make some cereal and the stupid damn jug slipped from my hands!,” she cried.

Bucky sighed and rolled his eyes. This would be the second time she had cried over spilt milk, literally. He strode across the kitchen and picked the sobbing woman up, her arms wrapping around his neck, assuming koala protocol. Or at least that’s what the loon called it.

The brunette rubbed her heaving back, cooing, “Oh poor baby, s’no big deal. I’ll go get another gallon from down the street, okay?” She looked up at him and began crying harder. The distraught woman whined, “No! I screwed it up being a klutz I’ll go get it!”

Bucky lowered them onto a dining room chair, wiping her tears away. He shook his head, eyeing her adorably blotchy cheeks. She pouted, tears lessening in time. The brunette hummed, “Jus’ let me go get the damn milk. You had an accident, I can’t have my pitiful girl crying over actual spilt milk.”

She laid her head in the crook of Bucky’s shoulder, grumbling, “It’s so damn sticky. This is gonna take forever to clean!” Bucky nuzzled her sweet smelling hair, smiling softly. She was too soft for her own good. But that’s why he was here, of course.

Her achingly wide eyes were back peering at Buck. He raised a thick brow, waiting for a response. Slim hands grabbed his stubbled cheeks, asking in a deadpan, “You don’t think I’m the most worthless girl ever right?” She averted her eyes as she continued, “Idiot who can’t make cereal.”

Bucky leaned into her sullen face to capture trembling lips into a kiss. It was chaste and sweet, Bucky murmuring into her lips, “I don’t care if you grew into a hulk monster and crashed the place. Why don’t we clean up and go grab the milk, make it a date huh?”

The brunette bit back a laugh as she hugged him tighter and sobbed out how much she loved him. Bucky tucked her hair back and grinned down at his pretty, crybaby, best girl.

3. Feline fail

Bucky and his girlfriend were cooking dinner together. They were laughing and sharing sweet pecks, bumping hips and slinging sauce. Bucky had remembered an old lasagna recipe and wanted to try it. She obliged with glee.

She changed the song to one of those strange ‘rap’ songs. Bucky was still getting accustomed to the 80’s power music so this was out of his league. She talked along to the lyrics, using a spoon as her microphone. Bucky leaned against the counter, helplessly grinning, hopelessly in love. She did a twist and some weird footwork.

MREOOOWWWW

“Alpine!,” they simultaneously shouted.

The poor cat had run off heavily limping. Bucky cursed, “Ah, shit.” The woman dropped the spatula and went after the fluffy white cat. She frantically apologized, “Alpine! Alpie! I’m so sorry baby! Oh god I didn’t mean to step on your paw babygirl!” Bucky wanted to point out the feline did not understand but held his tongue.

He followed his girlfriend into a back bedroom, then to the walk-in closet. Poor doll was in hysterics now. She wailed, “I’m the worst! What if I broke her paw? Just kill me n-n-nOWWWW!”

Bucky grabbed the sweet thing and hushed her, “Stop howling, Alpine is probably overwhelmed. Let’s be quiet and calmly approach.”

She nodded with a sniffle, mascara running down reddened cheeks. Bucky flicked the light on and softly called, “Alp, Alpine? Pspspsps c’mere baby.” He waggled his fingers at his shoe stand. Slowly the big blue eyes of Alpine came into view. The cat let out a sad ‘maaaoow’. She sucked in a wet sob behind Bucky, little hands fisted into his shirt.

Bucky crouched further down, keeping his palm extended. He cooed, “Over here psps Alpine.” Alpine unfurled from the shoe stand, limping over to the couple. Tears dripped down the young woman’s face as she let the sweet cat sniff her palm and nuzzle against it. She sniveled, “Ohhh- Alpine, m’so sorry,” Bucky was poked as she continued, “Buck? Can you check the paw out?”

Bucky grunted, “Yep. I’m sure she’ll be fine, just a smush and got startled. Bucky picked the white feline up, huge hands so tender with Alpine’s tiny paw. He gave it a few tentative presses and the cat squirmed in pain, making another sad noise. Bucky turned to look at his girlfriend and said, “Yeah I think she might be injured. We can take her to the vet in the morning. Probably just wants to lay down.”

After putting their pet back into the shoe stand, Bucky had stage three to do; console the distraught angel. She had already retreated to the bedroom, cocooning under her copious amounts of fluffy blankets. Bucky had bought them due to supersoldier heat and the ensuing thermostat on the coldest setting possible.

Bucky crawled onto the end of the bed, calling out, “Are you burrowing away from me?”

“Yes. I am the worst. Throw me into the snow already.”

Bucky crawled closer to the familiar lump and teased, “I don’t think paw stomping is equal to hypothermia.”

“It should be.”

His pink lips split into a grin as Buck yanked her blankets back and hopped on top. She squealed and batted at him, howling, “Not funny you jerk! Poor Alpine is hurt!” Bucky laughed, “Poor Alpine has been in shootouts, she’s a-okay.”

She stared up at his stupidly handsome face and pouted. Bucky’s big hands slid up her waist, commenting, “I’ll give you something to cry about if that’s what’cha want babydoll.” His dick never failed to throb at her cute little hitch in breath, pupils blowing wide.

“W-what about the lasagna?”

Bucky licked a hot stripe up her neck, promising, “Oh, this won’t be long. A little pick-me-up for my babydoll.” Her irritated huff quickly turned into a moan. Bucky grinned. So damn cute.

4. Never alone

Bucky had been having trouble sleeping recently, recurring nightmares plaguing any chance of shut eye. His girlfriend worried over him, offering any sort of help. He shook his head, eyes tired, explaining, “It comes in waves, certain times or seasons activate the trauma.”

“Okay, I just wish you didn’t have to sleep on the floor. But whatever will make you more comfortable.”

She wrung her hands nervously, pretty lips curled into a frown. Bucky sighed, patting his lap. He held her tightly and whispered, “I never wanna hurt you, so just for a little bit it’ll be like this okay? I promise, it hurts me too.” She wiped away runny tears, nodding resolutely. His precious baby warbled, “I’m being selfish, don’t mind me prattling and whining. I want what’s best for you. I love you so much,” she pinched Bucky’s thigh, “Go back to therapy tomorrow or I’ll drag you there.”

“I will,” he pecked her lips, “I will.”

They went to their separate beds, well their bed, and Bucky’s blanket and pillow on the floor. He managed to drift off before spinning cycling never ending loops of the Soldier killing and taking swamped his dreams. The asset shot upright with a painful howl, jerking his head around for the enemy.

He jumped up and grabbed a stashed knife, stalking across the floor. So confused on the lines between reality and fiction. He snarled at the sound of a high voice. It was his girl. Bucky was Bucky. Not the asset, soldier, fist of Hydra. He dropped the knife and apologized, “Oh Christ. Are you okay?” He was scared to come closer upon the fear etched into her looks. Fucking monster.

She ran to him and wrapped warm arms around his sweaty torso, crying softly. Bucky couldn’t find words to express his disgust and sorrow, holding her back tightly. His angel croaked, “I was worried about you! I’m s-sorry you had that awful nightmare. Oh Buck, let me sit with you for the rest of the night.”

Bucky peered down with resigned blue eyes. He was more exhausted now after that mind fuck. The brunette needed to get his poor baby to stop crying then maybe he could sleep. Even the cat nervously peered from behind a chair.

They migrated to the couch, her firm on top of him, gently scratching his scalp. Bucky pled, “Please know I would never hurt you. As soon as I heard your voice I knew where I was again.” She pressed her forehead to his and replied, “Then let’s just try this. You don’t have to go through this alone, ever.” She cried in little aborted huffs, trying to hold it together.

Bucky felt his heart swell at her sweet words. She was right, he didn’t have to be alone again. He had friends and his best girl who loved him, hell even the cat. Bucky squeezed her soft waist and gushed, “I love you, so, so, so much. Sweet girl.” He got a couple more tears but soon she became sleepy and winded down.

He managed to fall back into slumber, no dreams this time. Her scent and puffs of soft breath kept him grounded. Bucky hoped he deserved this, praying to whoever granted him this boon.

5. Honey I’m Home! - Smut

Sam hollered out of his big ass truck, “Get ready for the waterworks lover boy!” Bucky held up his middle finger and unlocked the front door. Sam drove away with that annoying guffaw of his. Bucky dropped his bags at the door, Alpine’s blue eyes peering up. He grinned and picked up the kitty, cooing and petting her white fluff. Bucky asked, “Hey, sweet Alp. Where’s mama hm? I know she’s all excited.”

“BABY!,” came the familiar cry. Bucky had to owe it to his supersoldier serum for managing to gently let down Alpine and pick up his girlfriend within 10 seconds. Bucky laughed and picked the woman up, happily swinging them around with a goofy grin. His heart felt so full. She spoke through hefty sobs, “I- Oh gah-ah-ah some pi-pizz-za!” Bucky chuckled and tapped her on the ass.

“The waterworks already angel? So soon?”

“YOU KNOW I MISS-SS-SED YOU!,” she caterwauled, loading Bucky’s face down with kisses. He used a big hand to stabilize her head, sealing his full lips over her shaky ones. She sighed into the lip lock, rambling about how much she missed Bucky between kisses.

Bucky pulled back and hummed, “I missed your pretty face, even the tears.” She nipped his lower lip at the jab, retorting, “Very fu-funny!”

The former assassin chuckled, “No really, I get to hug you.”

She narrowed her eyes, wiping her wet cheeks, “Uh-huh.”

Bucky lowered his lids and gave his best charming half smirk to her, purring, “Y’know what I really miss?” He groped at the globes of her ass gently, eating up her reaction. She gasped, minutely squirming, lashes fluttering. Bucky leant into her ear, humming, “Hm baby? Not gonna ask me?”

She murmured sulkily, “What is it Buck?”

He drew his words out, fanning hot breath across her ear, “I miss the way you cry and rake my back bloody when I’m between those damn thighs.”

“Mmfuck, oh, yeah?,” she squeaked, face heating up. Bucky nodded, long fingers massaging the giving flesh of her cheeks. He rumbled, “Yep sweet baby, couldn’t help myself. So pretty when you come on me. Pizza can wait, I want my girl.” The woman nodded profusely, babbling, “Pleaseplease yes wan’ it Bucky. Missed you!”

In a frenzy she lapped into his plump mouth, kissing like a madwoman. Bucky’s best kept secret is the needy little slut he only gets to have in bed. He stopped to push her against the wall, nosing around at her tits. Bucky’s Henley she wore had slipped down, displaying the soft skin. He lapped at a swollen bud and suckled on her tit, earning a high whine and fingers in his steadily growing hair.

Bucky rutted against her barely clothed pussy, feeling it already damp. He rumbled, “Must’ve been real needy dolly, so wet for me.” She shoved her breasts into his face, gasping out, “Not the same w’out you- ah!” Bucky’s eyes rolled back in his head, her words stoking the fires of that possessive place in his heart.

She pulled at his brown hair, urging Bucky along desperately, hips canting against his need. The super soldier panted, “Yeah, yeah, right m’bad.” He stomped to their bedroom, grinning and kissing her hotly. Bucky laid his girlfriend down and frantically began to untie his boots, throwing them against the wall. His eyes flickered up to her yanking off the shirt.

A punched out groan left his throat when her glistening pussy was revealed to him, panties tossed carelessly to the side. Bucky shucked down his briefs and climbed between her thighs, muttering, “Fuckin’ hell— thought about you every night. Pretty pussy,” he pressed his lips to her thighs, “Legs, all of you. Damn.”

Her wide eyes softened, the girl simpering, “Thought ‘bout you too babe, most handsome guy in the world.” Bucky snorted as he pressed himself flush to her smaller body, “I don’t know about that, I do know that I’m yours though.” She smiled against his cheek, wrapping arms around his wide shoulders. Bucky sighed at the feeling of his baby’s gentle kisses to his scruffy skin.

“You want to wear a condom, me stretch you out?,” Bucky asked, eyes searching her own.

She shook her head and whispered, “Got an IUD, I’ll explain later but we don’t have to wear any condoms,” lips grew wider, “So go on and fuck me Buck.” Bucky groaned in ecstasy, situating himself flush to giving flesh. He pumped his leaking cock a couple of times before rubbing the tip against her slick entrance.

She whined and scrabbled at his back, spreading open wider, pleading, “Yeah, yeah, please Bucky, James, baby.” He replied, strained from how adorable and sexy that was, “I gotcha, hold on, fuck.”

They both cried out softly when Bucky slid in to her warm core, the noise filling the room. The brunette braced a hand beside her head, cursing lowly, “God-fucking-damn you feel so good sweets.” She whined his name, face scrunching up adorably, pussy pulsing around him.

Bucky’s flesh hand curled under the back of one of her knees, pushing the girl wider open with a grunt. He pecked her lips and began to piston into her. His blues fell closed, the rapture of being joined with his love was intense. Even more so when some asshole jacked him with the serum. She cooed softly, “Feels- ah, so good, my sweet Buck.”

He didn’t speed up, as much as the soldier wanted to jackhammer into tomorrow. He would enjoy this reunion, savor every pull of her sweet pussy around his cock. Bucky leaned into her forehead, panting into her mouth, soaking up her cries and whimpers. She gave desperate little kisses, pulling at the hair on Bucky’s nape.

“Ah! Love you!,” she moaned.

Bucky panted back, “Love you, so damn much, fffuck.”

He nuzzled into her neck, listening to himself spread her open with a groan. Selfishly, Bucky sped his hips up some, got his knees under him. That way he could fuck his baby’s g-spot, make her (really) cry. His girlfriend responded quickly, arching her back and jerking back onto Bucky’s cock. A slew up goosebumps lit up her skin, mouth hanging wide open. She scrunched her eyes shut, yelling, “Oh- oh that’s it!”

Bucky crooned, licking up her sweaty throat, “Yeah sweetheart? That’s your spot?” She nodded and babbled hitched ‘yesses’. The girl tightened around him, making the drag impossibly hotter. Bucky whined deep in his chest, strokes stuttering. He brought his vision up to look at his love, whining again at her flushed face and hooded eyes.

She whimpered, “M’so close James, oh god!” Tears pricked pretty eyes, clumping the long lashes. Bucky picked up the pace, relishing in her nails ripping his back to shreds. He would lying if he said the pain didn’t exacerbate the pleasure. The brunette gently nipped at her jaw, begging for his girl to come, hand rubbing at her chest and shoulders tenderly.

Bucky’s eyes about crossed when she tightened and howled around his swollen cock. His hand tore at the mattress while her pussy convulsed around him. She sobbed now, tears leaking down her darkened cheeks, “F-fuck Bucky! S-so good!” Her slick coated him, making the glide ever so messier.

Bucky was close now, listening to her pants and whiny cries of ‘come in me please’ was throttling any sort of longevity. His balls drew painfully close, the vein on the underside of his cock throbbing. He cried her name out, muscles seizing with a twitch, emptying into her tight cunt. Bucky’s fingers seemed to lose their motor function, arm careening with a whine. She heaved, “That’s it! Yes! Yes!”

The soldier sucked in a rough breath, finishing his climax with a soft whimper. Bucky rolled them to the side, softening cock still seating inside her. She pressed kisses to his cheeks and nose, smiling and crying per usual. Bucky wrapped his big arms around her waist and kept her flush to him. He murmured, “Perfect baby, jus’ perfect.” She responded with another stolen kiss.

+1. Public Menace!

They sat together at a restaurant, sipping some drinks. Bucky eyed his beautiful girlfriend, effortlessly styled and flawless. He told her so, earning a bashful smile and roll of the eyes. She countered, “Not as flawless as you, Winter Smolder.” Bucky narrowed his eyes, laughing, “Hey, you wanted me to do that photoshoot!”

The waiter came up with their appetizer. Bucky could tell his girlfriend was not a fan of the other man, lips turned down. She was a good judge of character though. The young man had been staring Bucky down for awhile now, even pointing at him from afar. The brunette furrowed his brows and asked, “Can I help or anything?”

The waiter replied, assuming a defensive stance, “Are you the Winter Soldier?”

Bucky felt his girl’s glare threatening to kill the boy. He offered a sheepish smile and elaborated, “Uh- at one point I was. Not anymore.” The man pressed harder, “Yeah but he’s still in there right?,” they motioned at their skull, “Just a couple of words and you snap right?”

Bucky blanched, but the knife didn’t stop digging in his chest, twisting and hot.

“How were you allowed to be pardoned? I mean The Avengers already are at death’s door, why not let a mass murderer join?,” they hissed. Bucky tried to look around for help, stammering an apology. Panic began to lace at his chest, pulling his throat tight. Their mouth was moving angrily, but all Buck could hear was ringing.

A familiar hand gripped at his, her voice clearing through the attack. His girlfriend calmly replied, “I should report your manager for harassing customers, sir.” She leaned in with a snarl, “What would you do if you were captured by a secret agency embedded within the United States for 75 years huh? Beaten, brainwashed, tortured, and forced to hurt others with no say?”

The waiter attempted to retort but she cut him off with a hand.

“Luckily Bucky here,” she poked the man’s chest, “Has a name! His name has been cleared and has worked very hard on amends. If you got your head out of your ass and looked around maybe you’d see the good work him and Cap have done around the globe!” Bucky’s girlfriend jerked into her purse and threw a bill at the dumbfounded man.

“C’mon sweetheart, we’ll go somewhere else,” she stood up and loudly announced, “I’ll make sure to give my nicest review in the DAILY BUGLE!!!”

The young waiter gasped and stared in a fog.

Bucky shuffled along, still gathering his wits. He’d never seen his girl so pissed. Once outside the restaurant she hugged him tightly, cursing, “Fucking asshole. Sorry I went a little crazy. Jameson would be proud, ha.” Meanwhile the brunette was blinking away tears, grateful for her swift save. He blurted, more of a croak, “Thank you angel.” Suddenly his eyes were blurry with hot tears.

Bucky sobbed in her arms, the panic, shame, and embarrassment from earlier breaking down. The woman soothed him with a shush, rubbing his muscular back. She cooed, “That’s okay, let it out, about time for you to be the crier.” Bucky smiled slightly, eyeing her with red rims. She swiped away his tear, stating, “Don’t ever let an idiot like that make you feel less than, you are good.”

Bucky shook his head, murmuring, “Does everybody still think I’m about to snap?”

She raised a brow, “Buck. The amount of good press you got from the GRC debacle has shown you in a different light,” she laughed, “I can write puff pieces of you napping with the cat if that makes you feel better baby?” He swatted her ass with a roll of teary eyes, thanking his girlfriend again.

Bucky asked, “D’ya just wanna order in instead? I’ll rub your feet.”

“Free of charge, no foot rubs, let’s go home big guy,” she shrugged. Bucky would be a little weepy for the rest of the night, but she made it bearable.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes smut #bucky barnes fanfiction #fluff

[nancywheelersgirlfriend]

perhaps we should go to therapy

some steve n robin fluff as a treat (platonic with a capital P!)

(1,660 words)

Hawkins, Indiana was hardly a premiere destination. It wasn’t even a road stop. If America had that annoying zit that gets stuck in between your tits or right below your eyebrow you can’t seem to get rid of for good, no matter how many times you pop the fucker, that would be Hawkins. Because it just kept getting back up. 

And Steve would be lying if he said it didn’t impress him, at least a little. But it didn’t seem to fair to him that Hawkins was this undead, nine-lives-having creature, because he’d saved the world for a fourth (fifth?) time and couldn’t get out of bed anymore.

“You look like a corpse,” Robin said pleasantly when she came to weasel her way into his room for the fifth time that week. She poked him with her toes, Steve just a lump underneath his massive gray comforter despite the growing temperatures outside.

“I feel like one,” Steve groaned. He rolled his head to the side, coming to cheek-to-cheek contact with a puddle of drool from the night before. It was silent for a moment before he felt a weight increase on his back, Robin sprawling out on top of him through the sheets.

Her breathing was close by his ear. He closed his eyes. She was so warm.

Together they went to the grocery store. It was super bright in there and Steve almost wore his sunglasses in. He had a hangover but minus the fun of getting drunk. A hangover from saving the world. Robin pushed the cart for him, shoving it and then letting it roll to a stop by itself down every aisle. She hung by her ankles off the back, grinning as the slight breeze from the rush of the cart pushed her overgrown bangs away from her sweaty forehead.

They stood by the melons and pressed their thumbs into the skin, searching for bruises or other forms of mistake. Steve assumed everybody around them thought they were a couple and part of him enjoyed that - the fact that people in Hawkins still thought he could get a girl as great as Robin. It was easier, anyway. Robin held two of the melons in front of her chest and Steve couldn’t get her away from the fruit fast enough.

They stared down the half-stocked frozen aisle and contemplated what milk was best. 

“2 percent,” Steve argued. 

“Skim,” Robin retorted.

“Whole milk,” They said at the same time. And then laughed, because who buys whole milk?

They bought a gallon of each because Lucas, in fact, was a steady whole milk enjoyer. The jugs jiggled in the cart and Robin beat down on the lid tops rhythmically with long, spindly fingers.

The spot at the bottom of the cart, usually reserved for large boxes and bags of water bottles, became stocked up with Eggos. Judging by the amount they needed to buy it was easier to keep it all down there instead of crowding the top part of the cart - which was reserved for an overwhelming amount of Coke and Cheezits.

“You can’t wait five minutes?” Steve asked as he watched Robin rip apart the tip of a Tastycake package like a wild animal. 

“I’ll keep the bag,” Robin promised with a mouthful of the cake, little crumbs landing on her lips. 

Robin poked groups of bananas experimentally as if they held the secrets of the universe. She was very picky about the color they were supposed to be. Steve waited for her, the cart now in his hands, and leaned over the edge. He came close to tipping it over. Robin wasn’t paying attention.

“Steve?” A voice came from the empty shelves used to stock seasonal fruits. “Steve Harrington?” Carol Perkins.

“Hey, Carol,” Steve said. He got off the cart and attempted to appear put together and casual. Not like he was the only one of the two worse for wear - clearly the earthquake had hit Carol hard. Her red hair was pinned up and springing from her head like she’d gotten electrocuted.

“How are you, Steve?” Carol asked, eyes not-so-subtly flicking over to Robin. 

“Oh, fine,” Steve promised, breaking out into an easy grin. “Just fine. You?”

“I’ve been better,” Carol allowed. He noticed she had a knife attached to a loop on her high-rise jeans. 

“Sorry to hear that,” Steve said, because he wasn’t sure what else to say. Carol nodded, eyes far away.

“If you wanna come over for dinner or something,” Carol drifted off. She glanced back at the tiny grocery basket slung on her arm - strawberries, cereal, baby formula. Steve tried to not let his eyes widen too much at that last ingredient. “Um. Yeah. I’m sure you and Tommy have plenty to catch up on.”

“Thanks,” Steve said. He didn’t mean it.

“Yeah,” Carol replied. She didn’t mean it either.

After she’d walked off towards the butcher station at the back of the grocery store, Robin reappeared with two bunches of bananas. They looked perfect, so yellow. Like they’d just been taken off the tree. Steve imagined getting to lie beneath a banana tree, peeling one out for breakfast and falling asleep in the sun. His eyes crinkled at the thought.

“That was awkward,” Robin commented. She dropped the bananas without a second thought into the cart. They barely dodged getting bumped on the sharp corner of the Lucky Charms box.

“She has a baby,” Steve said absently. They started for the Campbell’s cans and Robin hung off the front of the cart while he pushed.

“How do you know?” Robin asked. As they crossed aisles, for a moment stepping back into the center of the store, Steve caught Carol checking out. She wiped a dirty hand down her face.

“She had baby formula in her basket,” Steve said. Robin hummed. “Jesus. She has a baby.”

“Is that more or less shocking than the monster from an alternate dimension?” Robin asked. She leaned into the cart to lift up her hands, trying to judge where he’d place them on the figurative list. Surprisingly, it was a difficult question to answer.

“You know,” Steve began, “I always knew they’d get stuck here together - Carol and Tommy, I mean. But. She’s my age. And she’s got a baby. They’ve got a baby.”

“Chicken noodle or Italian wedding?” Robin held up both cans. She dropped the chicken noodle in the cart without waiting for an answer. She knew what his pick would be instinctively.

“Can you imagine me with a baby?” Steve asked incredulously, careful to keep his voice down. “Worse, can you imagine having a baby now? With Hawkins like it is?”

“Earthquakes and apocalypses happen and life goes on,” Robin replied. Steve waited for her to hop on the front of the cart before he started pushing again. “Haven’t you read The Stand?”

“I can’t imagine having a baby,” Steve continued, completely ignoring her. Robin sighed and drummed the corner of the battered cart. 

“Technically, you kinda do,” Robin said. “You have seven, actually.”

“They’re not babies anymore,” Steve retorted, parroting something Nancy had said months before. “Should we pick up marshmallows?”

“Is that a question?” Robin scooped up a bag from the shelf without getting off the cart. It landed unceremoniously beside the bananas.

“I can’t imagine being at a point in a relationship right now where I’d decide to have a baby,” Steve said. Robin shot him a look.

“You think they decided to have a baby? Carol Perkins and Tommy Hagan just sat down and talked about it and thought ‘you know what? A baby right now is a good idea. Get on the bed, let’s go.’” 

“Can you imagine having a baby?” Steve repeated. Robin lunged forwards on her heels to grab at his cheeks, shaking his face in her hands.

“Steve, snap out of it,” She commanded. And he did. “Is this the official death of the six Harrington nuggets?” 

“I thought I was going to die,” Steve said, furiously blushing. “Why can nobody let that go?” Robin dropped his face and patted one of the hands on the cart handle comfortingly. 

“I’ll let it go,” She offered easily. She definitely wouldn’t. “Ooh - fruit snacks!”

Out in the parking lot Robin leaned on the car and watched Steve slug bags and bags of groceries into the back of his BMW. He heaved at the intense weight of the absurd amount of frozen pizzas they’d bought. She traced some scratches on the side from when Max had headbutted into it last Fall with her bitten-down nail. Her stomach twisted at the memory. Both of them had nearly ripped out their hair then, worried sick about Max and the barely-there cut on her arm. It was all so simple and dumb. 

Hawkins residents mulled like zombies. The cracks in the pavement were no longer from years of battered cars, speeding wheels - they all led like tiny riverbends from the massive oceans that were the opened portals. The faultlines. Steve watched a little girl cling to her mother’s hand and hop over them like cracks in the sidewalk. 

“Step on a crack, Vecna breaks your back,” Steve muttered. Robin said nothing but definitely thought he was losing it. Which he probably was. She clapped a comforting hand on his back and as she went to drop it he grabbed it with his own, squeezing their fingers together tightly. She smiled at him and it meant everything. He shut the backdoor and mindlessly sat in the driver’s seat.

When Robin scrambled her way into the passenger, she slapped the dash a good few times - searching for the best song. Some radio station was playing a hazy version of a Bananarama song. She turned it up. He rolled down the windows. They passed the entrance to his neighborhood if only to pretend a little bit longer that yes, they were normal teenagers out for a drive. Robin stuck her head out the window and shut her eyes. 

Steve wished the wind would pick up the car and fly away with it.

#stranger things #stranger things fanfic #robin buckley #steve and robin #steve harrington #steve #robin #robin stranger things #steve stranger things #steverobin #robinsteve #robin and steve #platonic stobin #platonic with a capital p #stranger things found family #stranger things fic #stranger things 4 #stranger things 5 #stranger things post canon

[bzedan]

Storytelling Collective does a yearly challenge for flash fic, with prompts and a nice community format. After completing 2022's run, I picked my ten favourites and collected them in a nice little volume you can pick up at Itch.io. As I'm (finally) editing the collection of my Flash Fiction February faves for 2023 I figured that I should share one or two from last year's bunch.

Storm

“I’m home!” Luz kicked off her shoes, arms akimbo to balance, a gallon of milk in a string bag in one hand and a dangerously worn cloth carrier bag in the other. Stepping up out of the entry she shuffled into her house slippers and as she walked to the kitchen. Her wife watched her with a raised eyebrow from the pass-through.

“You could have set those down.”

Luz kissed them on the temple as she thumped the bags onto the counter. “And you could have come taken them.”

“Fair.” Birch tilted their head in acknowledgement and returned to chopping shallots.

Luz put away the milk, then pulled each item out of the cloth bag with the flourish of a magician. “They had those weird cookies you like.” Birch grunted approval. “Ground goat.” Pointing with their chin at the sink, Birch stopped Luz from adding the meat to the icebox. “You’re right, I do want that now. Hmm. What else.” Luz dug into the bag, her hands emerging with fistfuls of carrots and scapes. “Soup tomorrow!” More rummaging, then, “a bag of tiny potatoes.” She stood on her tiptoes to put them away in the hanging baskets above the counter.

Feeling her eyes on their back, Birch sighed, smiling. “And it looks as though there is one more in the bag.”

“Why yes.” Luz leaned in a way that she felt was rakish, elbow on the counter. She fished in the collapsed bag with one hand and pulled out a tiny cardboard box covered in a pretty design and closed with a wax seal. “This week’s indulgence.”

Birch scraped the shallots from the cutting board into the hot pan, then took one of the carrots.

“Thief!”

“You do not need that many carrots for soup.” They gave it a thorough brush under water, then brought it back to the cutting board. They could still feel Luz looking at them as they chopped. “So, what is it?”

“Tea!”

“Tea?” The carrots joined the shallots in the pan, in a pool of fat.

Luz huffed and put away the bags. “Very exciting tea. From Javier’s shop.”

“Luz, did you buy drugs?” Birch turned to look at their wife. “Or, whatever it is he calls them.”

“Enhancements. And no this is not one of those. He does other things too.”

“Like the candles that put on a shadow play, but smelled like pepper so much we couldn’t stop sneezing.” Luz opened her mouth but Birch continued. “Or the bath bomb for sleep that dyed you green.”

“It did help with my insomnia.”

“So, you bought a food from him.”

Luz stuck her chin out. “A drink, technically.”

“What does it do?”

“It’s a surprise.” And Luz remained close-mouthed on the subject through the rest of dinner preparation, managing to steer the conversation well enough that Birch had nearly forgotten the tea by the time their bowls were empty.

As they were putting away the leftovers, Birch heard Luz turn the kettle on. They were surprised to see the tea wasn’t in bags, nor was it loose leaf. Little almond-shaped bricks sat at the bottom of their mugs. There was a tiny depression in the centre of each.

“They’re supposed to look like boats.” Luz sounded disappointed.

“They look a little like boats.” Birch squinted down at them. “Not good boats, but boat-like.”

The boats didn’t hold their shape well under boiling water and were quickly obscured by a swirl of deep indigo leaching out. Luz grabbed Birch’s arm in excitement.

“Okay!!” She was peering into her mug.

Eyebrows raised, Birch joined her, looking into their own.

The indigo was joined by a teal, then an unsettling off-white. The colours kept swirling, separate from each other but gaining momentum. Birch realized that Luz had only filled the mugs halfway, a precaution that made sense as the colours began to move fast enough to spin the water, creating a tiny whirlpool.

“It’s very pretty.” Birch was being honest, although they were also wondering about how safe it was to drink colours that saturated.

Luz was pouting. “It’s not impressive though.” The movement was already dying out, the colours finally blending to a sickly berry-purple.

“It actually kind of is.”

“But it wasn’t a tempest.” Luz held up the box, where a very fanciful illustration of a waterspout spun up out of a teacup. “I mean I know it isn’t going to match the picture but—”

“But you’d hoped it would.” Birch kissed their pouting wife, and picked up their mug, feeling brave. They took a cautious sip to test the temperature, then a larger drink.

“Oh, this is really delicious.”

Luz grabbed up her cup. “What does it taste like?”

“The sea?” Birch licked their lips, trying to pin it down. “Salt and ozone and—deepness?”

Luz was staring at them, a grin twitching at her lips.

“What?”

Luz grabbed a spoon and held it up to Birch. “He still hasn’t figured out colours.”

Birch stuck out their tongue and looked in the poor mirror of the spoon’s back. Their tongue was, vividly and inexplicably, orange.

Crossposted from my blog

#this is a pastoral post apoc world with soft magic I keep coming back to #anyway I love them #meche writes #stories #flash fiction #writers on tumblr

[burn-the-white-flag]

Feb '24 Taiwan

I spent most of February in Taiwan and this is my attempt to write a write-up for it. It is all over the place, which I feel like is only appropriate for this trip.

I got on a plane at JFK on the evening of Friday January 26 and landed in Taipei on the morning of Sunday January 28. This lengthy journey was in part because of the flight being around 15 hours long and the time zone in Taiwan being 13 hours ahead of EST. On the train ride into Taipei I finished knitting the beanie that I was planning on gifting to my grandfather on my dad's side.

The subway handholds were short enough for me to grab them without reaching too hard because most people's bodies are like mine.

I felt very alone for the first couple of weeks that I was in Taipei. People enter relationships and then suddenly it's like they're not individual people anymore. They come packaged together with some other person that I don't really know that well. I hate walking with a group and then having no one to talk to because everyone else is just talking to their partner. I hate how people assume that entering a relationship is an essential and inevitable progression in life.

The Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall is a great place to cry. And by cry I mean full out bent over sobbing for three hours. There was a buy one get one free sale on tissue packs at a nearby 7-11. I found out because as I approached the cashier clutching one pack of tissues, bleary eyed with tears and snot all over my face, they told me "you can get another one for free". I don't know how long that deal's going to be around, but you're going to need both if you want to cry for that many hours. There was a nice little garden with a bunch of stone walking paths snaking through it where you can listen to the wind blowing through the leaves and owls hooting into the night sky and the gentle murmuring of couples holding hands as they turn down a different path in order to avoid walking too close to that hysterical person on a bench.

The second place I cried was not a very good place to cry. It was at a Michelin star restaurant right as they were bringing out the Peking duck course.

The most unpleasant place I stayed at in Taiwan was my parents' apartment on the outskirts of Taipei. My parents say they fixed it up from its original state they had purchased it in. I argue that they fixed it in the "up" direction.

The most pleasant place I stayed at in Taiwan was a hotel near Ningxia Night Market. The hotel was clean and comfortable and had a working shower which at that point was all I could ask for. The feeling of being hungry at midnight and being able to walk ten minutes to a famous night market was unparalleled.

Food… Oyster omelettes. Egg + scallion pancake + tuna + cheese. Salty soy milk with fried cruller. Fried stinky tofu with pickled cabbage. Papaya milk. Gallons and gallons of milk tea. Lao pi tofu at a Hakka restaurant. Fresh dragon fruit at a night market. Guava at a fruit stand. Jujube at a flower market. Big chunks of tender beef in beef noodle soup. Really fatty Peking duck. Cod liver salad. Red prawn soup at a McDonalds. Hakka stir fry pizza from Dominoes. XLB at DTF. Every flavor of warm pineapple cakes from a bakery. Matcha latte. Warm pineapple bun with a big chunk of cold butter. Buddha jumps over the wall from a 7-11 when I had Covid.

Oh yeah I got Covid over Lunar New Years. It sucked. I finished the most complicated knitting project I've ever done while sick -- a pair of zig-zag patterned socks using the yarn that I spent a week untangling last September. As the clock approached midnight, I trudged towards 7-11 because it was the only store open. A stream of laughing young people came out of the store as fireworks went off in the warm night sky. A grandmother sat eating food by herself, alone. She advised me not to buy cleaning supplies at 7-11 because it is too pricey and then we wished each other happy new year.

It took me three weeks before I threw out trash for the first time in New Taipei City. Every 2-3 days a garbage truck drives through the neighborhood at a consistent time of day in order for the residents to throw out their trash. There's no way to know when other than asking the people who already live there. Furthermore you can't just put your garbage can on the side of the road. You have to look the garbage person in the eyes as you throw your specially labeled garbage bags into the trash chompers as dozens of octogenarian neighbors swarm around you. You develop a Pavlovian reaction to the Fur Elise blaring from the garbage truck speakers as it relentlessly approaches your neighborhood such that when the strains of Beethoven creep over the hills your legs start to itch to sprint down the stairs…

I think my favorite part of living in Taiwan (living in NYC, living…. period…) is random unexpected interactions. I should just walk around wearing a shirt that says "ASK ME FOR HELP ON RANDOM THINGS". I was sitting on a bench at a subway stop when this old lady came up to me and asked in a very timid voice if I could help her turn the brightness on her screen. I did so and she thanked me and walked away. After a minute, she came back and asked me if I could show her how I did that. At some point my uncle also had computer issues and posted in the family Line chat about it. My mom replied saying that the IT person was in Taiwan… I did end up helping him with his computer issue…

My mom told me to check out fresh jujubes because they're hard to find outside of winter-time Taiwan. I was at a flower market when someone at a fruit stall gave me a sample to try. I vaguely recognized it as jujube but asked to be sure. She looked very offended and said "Of course it's jujube! Can't you tell?" Later on I relayed the story to my mom and she laughed for a very long time. Finally she said, imagine you go to a grocery store in the US and you ask "is this a banana?" It's funny because I spent so much of my time unconsciously trying to "pass" in Taiwan by looking the part and speaking the part… but that doesn't make me the part.

There are a lot of Southeast Asian women in relatively wealthy Asian cities/countries such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore doing housework and taking care of the elderly. My grandparents had hired a woman from Indonesia to take care of them practically 24/7 and I was able to meet her. We called her Yani which is a shorthand for her full name Handayani. She said that she gets 3-year contracts and gets 2-3 months in between contracts to return to Indonesia to spend time with her husband and children. This is her third contract and she has lived in Taiwan for the last seven years.

On the Sunday that M, J and I were in Hong Kong, we saw a huge number of Southeast Asian women "helpers" hanging out around a couple public spaces because they get Sundays off. One of these spaces was a large overpass that we walked through in order to cross a very busy road. Inside of the overpass, hundreds and hundreds of women were sitting on blankets splayed over the bare concrete chatting and sharing food and playing cards. Some of them were also selling things. We came across a similar community at the open air ground floor of the HSBC tower in central Hong Kong.

J signed us up for a calligraphy lesson while we were in Taipei. I spent most of the two hour lesson practicing the five steps of writing "1"… I loved that the teacher was chatty and that there were other people there just practicing their strokes. The ambient music was great. There was some Rachmaninoff and Schubert. I was flabbergasted to hear a recording of Ravel's Jeux d'eau. I first heard this piece last time I was in Taiwan 6 years ago and I was so moved by it at the time that I made a video superimposing it with High Speed Rail footage that I took: https://www.tumblr.com/burn-the-white-flag/180059957896/a-video-i-made-while-taking-a-train?source=share. I have not heard that piece in the wild anywhere else!

States of people on this trip: lonely, sad, sick, bed-bound, depressed, unlucky, burdened with responsibility, pining for something they can't have, lost, hungry, weary, impoverished, confused, annoyed, reluctant to learn, homesick, trapped.

States of people on this trip: excited, thoughtful, touched, chatty, entertained, amused, victorious, stuffed, healthy, thankful, loving, kind, connected, gracious, attentive, lucky, generous, eager to teach, eager to learn, free.

Thank you.

[recklessheart92]

Everyone leaves.

Every single one. It may take a while sometimes, but in the end the results are the same.

I think that’s why I hide myself away so much. What’s the point in trying to get to know someone new, to branch out and “make friends” when it’s just a waste of time ultimately anyway?

I can’t remember the last time I was actually invited anywhere. It was always my idea, not anyone else’s. Am I too weird? Am I boring? Am I not smart enough?

I feel like I am just being used at this point. You know when I hear from “friends” here? When they need my camera to benefit them. Any other time, it’s left on read with no response. Sometimes even multiple messages. And this is all from people who are always on their phone. Maybe that’s why I cling to mine so tightly? Because if people are liking/commenting on my social media, then I don’t feel so alone. I wonder what would happen if I just deleted the entire thing… would anyone even notice? With the way everything else has been my life, my guess would be no.

Maybe that’s why I like drama online… I feel included. People agree with me most of the time, so that feeling of “they like me!” lasts for a few moments, then I remember they’re just all internet strangers who don’t actually give a fuck. They’re just upvoting like minded people, basically.

I feel like, aside from my camera, I have nothing to offer people. I used to think people liked me for me, but I have come to the conclusion that it was only for my body. Once I got married, my male friends basically fell of the face of the planet. The ones who didn’t don’t have any respect. They’re not people I want in my life. Just more of the same… users who don’t like me for me. The shitty thing is, now that I’ve gained a ton of weight, I feel like I have even fewer people in my corner.

The friends I have back home are more peers than anything. We can’t just hang out, it’s always talk about work.

Marc hasn’t talked to me much today. I feel like more of an inconvenience recently. I was gone for 5 hours for work earlier and just nothing. I know he was upset that I nagged about the things that hadn’t been done around the house. He quit everything he was doing to rage clean. Even after, for nearly 3 hours, no talking. He eventually said he loved me, but now he’s snoring away and I’m hiding in the bathroom crying quietly as to not wake him up. He already doesn’t sleep enough.

My mother and I are fighting. Again. It’s a monthly thing at this point. She’s always dismissing the pain and trauma I went through as a child. The constant gaslighting of, “you’re remembering it wrong”, and “that never happened” mixed with guilt trips of “If I’m such a terrible person, why the fuck do you even speak to me anymore?” It’s always about her image, never my pain. I don’t feel like she even sticks around for me… it’s for the kids. You know how shitty it feels for your own mother to betray you over and over and over again? You’d think I would be used to it by now… 5 fucking years of it. But no… it hurts more every time. I should see it coming, but it still manages to shock me every time. The most recent fight was about how I lost all this weight in high school because my parents paid tithing first before any other bills. We scraped by with what was left. I think she was in denial that we were poor… but I remember the way you could make a gallon of milk last longer if you added tap water to it; I remember the thick, manufactured taste of the instant potatoes because we couldn’t buy real ones; I remember the dinners that consisted of peanut butter & jelly with ramen noodles; I remember losing nearly 13 lbs in less than a year… and as a 5’0 tall female, it was a lot. I dropped to just above 90lbs. I hate looking back at myself then… I looked sickly. I hated my body and how frail I looked. But it didn’t happen, right?

I feel like my own sisters don’t even want me included. When I was going to commit suicide in December, they called the cops on me. Welfare check, they said. I’ve been screaming for help for a long time now. But they just thought I was crazy. They wanted the cops to take me away. The level of hurt was something I didn’t know I could feel, especially from them. I told them all the things that would help and when I asked the for it, they said no.

I feel so alone here. So alone.

I’m tired of crying in the dark. I’m tired of feeling so secluded.

I think the reason I like to hide in closets and small spaces when I’m hurting is that it feels like the room is hugging me. I’m safe in my own little space. I want to be in the closet right now, but it’s really cold in the room. So instead I will sit in this massive bed while my husband stays on his side snoring. The tears on my cheeks are drying up, but it’s because I can only give myself so long to grieve… then I just need to get over it.

Except tonight I am hurting really bad.

I am 3 edibles deep and don’t feel shit. I just wish I could be high out of my mind right now. It’s been 5 hours since the first two, about 2 hours for the second. Nothing.

I just want my brain to shut off the hurt.

[quicksilverownsmysoul]

Hey I was wondering if you could do a fic or some headcannons of any character with a Hispanic reader teaching them more about their culture and meeting their parents? Idk it’s something special for Hispanic heritage month<3 (ofc you don’t have to do it if you don’t wanna)

Okay but I would love to do that!!! Love this !!! thank you anon for sending this in. Buckle up y’all cause this is gonna be headcannons for the Evans and they are gonna be hella long!!! (Also feel free to send in more x Hispanic reader requests for any character ) I also have a Peter x Hispanic reader in the works

The Evans with a Hispanic/ Latinx Reader (GN)

Tate

- literally in love with you

- gets really into the telenovelas but won’t ever admit it to you

- would be so nervous to meet your parents for multiple reasons (one being cause he was a literal ghost)

- when you met him you like did the sign of the cross and tried all those old tricks to free his spirit

- he was very amused

- I feel like your parents wouldn’t like him too much, they don’t like his energy

- it’s crushes him but he acts like he doesn’t care

- you still date him and tell him he doesn’t need their approval

- would love to hear about your culture especially all the ghost stories and superstitions

Kit

- fascinated with the low rider community

- literally wants to learn about all of them so you take him to meet up so he can talk to the mechanics behind it

- they make a lot of jokes about him calling him gringo and asking why this white man is here but he just laughs with them

- they actually all take a liking to him and how accepting he is

- he gets invited to all future meetups and helps work on some of the cars

- loves to learn cumbias and dances with you

- always twirling you around the kitchen

- your parents liked him well enough, thought he was polite but worried about how he would support you

- but after seeing how much he loved and respected you they were sold on him

- if you speak Spanish he’ll try to learn a couple phrases for you

Kyle

- wants to learn everything about you and your culture if you wanna share it with him

- always willing to listen your opinions when it comes to Hispanic/Latinx representation in media

- loves to watch telenovelas and will get huffy if you watch them without him

- he’ll gasp at the perfect times too and get really invested

- likes it when you sing Spanish lullabies to him, cradling him in your arms as you play with his hair

- he was so nervous to meet your parents, practiced what he was going to say about a million times

- probably had his friends pose as mock parents and have them reject him so he’d be prepared for the worst

- but your parents love him. Literally think he’s so ambitious and a perfect gentleman.

- They immediately asked when you two were getting married

Jimmy

- loves all the music, literally always humming a Juan Gabriel song or a Richie Valens song

- obsessed with Selena, has a poster of her in his cavern

- he bought it after you introduced him to her. When he hears dreaming of you tho all he can think about is you. Especially when you aren’t there and all he wants to do is hold you in his arms

- Was scared of meeting your parents, put it off for as long as possible.

- he knew you’re parents didn’t think anybody was good enough for you and he was sure they’d hate him too

- wore his gloves when y’all went, trying his best to seem respectable

- your parents were still wary of him tho, making it clear that they didn’t like that he was in a freak show. Didn’t think that life was for their kid

- you stand up for him and yourself and jimmy has never been more proud in his life

- tells you how much he loves you the entire ride home

- Loves when you rub vapor rub on his chest after a long day

- Loves all the candies from the mercados, like the peanut patties

James

- charmed by absolute everything about you

- was a little of ignorant when your first met him, his era imposing a very stereotypical view of you and your culture

- you help to teach him about your culture and break him out of that mindset

- he wants to learn and change for you and as time passes he does. Kills anyone who even says anything remotely racist to you 

- Like kit he is very into dancing your traditional dances with you

-probably rehearses it to perfection and puts on a recital for the whole hotel to watch

- fascinated with the concept of death in your culture

- Loves the fashion of it all 

- You introduce him to Raul Julia movies and he’s just starring at the screen like why am I in this movie???

Colin

- Will try and cook your favorite dishes for you but it’s a pain to get him to try it

- He’s a little put off by all the flavors but for you he will try it all

- He cannot handle the heat, anything that has even a hint of spice he will be dying. He tires to play it cool and be like that was good but the minute you excuse yourself he’s gulping milk down by the gallon

- Loves pan dulce, always has one with his coffee

- Loves to go to the markets with you and shop around for local ingredients

- You give him a little cross to wear and he never takes it off, always around his neck

- Will go to church with you every Sunday if you want, like you did as a kid

- If you get married he will be all for that traditional wedding, wanting you to embrace your culture as much as you want

- The family makes fun of him in Spanish and you have to stop youtrself from laughing with them

- Your parents like him but they think he’s a little goofy

- He was so flustered when he met them but in the end it all worked out. 

Warren

- Loves all of your traditions, he has so much fun learning them with you

- Adores abuileta hot chocolate, it won’t even be cold and he’s drinking it all day long

- Unlike Colin he can handle the spice, will do challenges with your family to see who can eat the spiciest tamales or just straight up eat a jalapeno

- If anyone tries to make fun of you he will fight them, yelling about how ignorant they are and how he will kick their ass back to Europe if they keep talking like that. 

- He someone is best friends with your grandparents, always offering to help and charming them 

- You are amazed and how he had them wrapped around his finger, watching as they pinch his cheeks and call him handsome in English and Spanish

- Your parents aren't too fond of him and don’t like that his parents are divorced but your grandparents just shush them and say that he’s perfect

- Always so smug now that he has their approval

Peter 

- Eats everything and anything you or your family makes

- Loves it all and is  wiling to try anything once, even menudo 

- Your grandma is always trying to feed him, saying that he’s too skinny and needs to eat more

- He has to like disappear after the fifth plate because she won't stop feeding him

- Your Spanish speaking family members call him Pedro

- loves the big happy family vibes never had that growing up 

- always playing with the little cousins at parties and jumping with them in the bounce house

- fights them over the piñata candy 

- He was nervous to meet your parents, nearly passing out when your dad starred him down at the door

- They all love him though and like how respectful he is around you 

- The aunts and older cousins are always gushing over his hair and asking if they can style it 

Charles

- big sweetheart

- Next to Kyle he is the most beloved by the family

- They always say how sweet he is and how pretty he is. Loves that he always brings something for parties, and usually makes it himself

- But since they found out he’s into photography he becomes the designated photographer for all events. Your cousins all hiring him for weddings and birthdays 

- You buy him a big fluffy blanket with one of those giant animals one it and it’s his favorite thing

- Loves to cook with you, always rolling out tortillas as you guys sing in the kitchen

Taglist: @coffeeandteaintheevening @kitwalkerangel  @livingmybestfictionallife @amourtentiaa @shlutnutt @rottenstyx @mossybank 

#peter maximoff #tate langdon request #tate langdon headcanon #tate langdon x reader #Tate Langdon #tate langdon x you #jimmy darling x reader #jimmy darling #jimmy darling x you #kyle spencer headcanons #kyle spencer x reader #kyle spencer x you #kit walker fluff #kit walker x reader #kit walker x you #james march ahs #james march x you #james march x reader #james patrick march x you #james patrick march #evan peters #peter maximoff x reader #quicksilver #peter maximoff xmen #peter maximoff x you #peter maximoff x y/n #warren lipka x reader #charles decker x reader #evan peters characters #evan peters x reader

[fuyunoakegata]

I hate arguments within the fandom, but I also don't like when popular posts misrepresent things and it impacts people's perception of events or the characters. [I'll do it for any character if I have the time, but it happens most often about Dick Grayson just because I know him and his comics so much better than any other characters].

Now obviously since some of these characters have been around for so many years it's possible to find conflicting panels, but I'd honestly like to call BS on this for all the boys, at least.

I'll accept that Bruce doesn't know the cost of a banana at the local market, just because he's got more important things to focus on and he does have Lucius to do the accounting and Alfred to do the household shopping, and he trusts them enough to not need to read their reports with that level of detail. I love the idea that he does know the cost of random items in far off lands because he was undercover there and did have to buy them for himself, though 🤣 And I can accept Cass not caring to pay attention to prices. Damian doesn't seem like he cares, one way or the other. And he's young enough that he shouldn't have to know. My oldest granddaughter is 12 and runs in to get basic groceries for me especially in the winter when it's harder for me to move around, and I can guarantee she has no idea what a gallon of milk costs, despite buying 2 or 3 gallons a week 🤣 It isn't her money and she didn't work for it and that's fine.

Tim wasn't always rich; originally he was just upper middle class, and he very well could have known some costs of daily items (not everyone knows the price of a banana, anyway, but does know the cost of relevant items in their daily life; heck, no matter WHAT your economic class is, if you don't personally buy the bananas or don't eat them for whatever reason, you won't know their price, especially as a teenager).

Dick did the accounting for the Teen Titans and has always made a point of not living off of Bruce's money, as much as possible. He was gone before he was even 18 in some continuities and he's actually been shown working non white collar jobs and paying his own way in all the various reboots (he'll occasionally use money Bruce has set aside, but usually not for personal use). So he definitely knows the value of a dollar; he'd know the prices of various groceries and also know if rent was overpriced in a certain area, because HE'S HAD TO FROM FAIRLY EARLY ON, and without a Lucius or Alfred to do it for him all the time. Dick's been shown doing his own laundry and cooking his own meals, so it doesn't make sense that he'd expect bananas to be $10 apiece.

And if Jason was scrounging for the means to survive after Catherine died, then he'd definitely need to learn how to make things last or how to get the most out of what he had (even if he did steal sometimes, the fact that he was trying to steal the Batmobile tires means he was going to get money for them, and he'd use that money to buy things that he either didn't want to or had difficulty stealing; stealing to survive because you're hungry and on the streets doesn't mean you steal everything). Just because he's shown with money now sometimes and is shown throwing it around at times doesn't mean he hasn't planned it out or knows where every penny goes.

If Duke helped with any of his family's grocery shopping, then yes, he'd know the prices of some things as well, but... maybe he never had to.

All joking and shit posting aside, posts like these just make me shrug or shake my head because they just don't make sense to me from what I've seen with the characters. It's not always a socioeconomic indicator if you do or don't know these prices. It definitely doesn't have to be some morality thing.

#mini meta #dick grayson #jason todd #tim drake #duke thomas

[postwarlevi]

Farmers Market

Content: It's literally you and Levi at an outdoor market. Enjoy!

"Levi, look here!" You call to him from another stall.

It was your favorite time of year, fall, when the weather cooled down. The outdoor markets were starting back up and it was opening day at your favorite one.

"Look at the size of the peppers, only a dollar!" Somehow produce sales just got you excited.

"They look alright." He says, wondering why they're so cheap.

"We got a good crop right on time this year." The vendor says.

"Let's get some." You say, ready to pull some cash out.

"Gonna go any cheaper?" Levi asks the man behind the table.

"Levi! How much cheaper can they be?" You're a bit embarrassed that he's starting in already. But Levi knows that if it were near the end of the day and there's too much left they always give a better deal.

The vendor laughs though. "Maybe. You know what? You were such good customers last season, if you want to buy in bulk, how about half off? Anything you want today." There really was a lot and he remembered how much you always picked up.

"See?" Levi tells you, kissing your temple, looking at what else there is.

You were convinced Levi could talk anyone into anything, and were happy to use it to your advantage.

Soon your rolling fold up cart is already half full with bell peppers, cucumber, cauliflower, bags of kale and a huge butternut squash that Levi was sure you'd make him cut into, even though he showed you how last time.

He handed the vendor the cash as you thanked him and were already off to another stall. It really was a good deal, not that you needed ten peppers.

You were already haggling over dried fruit and nuts, coming away with eight bags for a decent percentage off, stuffing them in the tote you had.

"I got you hazelnuts and beets." You say, seeing a small smile from Levi. When you weren't looking he rolled his eyes a bit, knowing the vendors must love seeing you coming. But you always made sure to throw in his favorites, and since you didn't come as often as you would like, Levi never minded.

"I'm gonna go to the tea stall. You want the cart?" He asks and you nod.

"What kind of fruit do you want?" You indicate where you're headed next.

"Citrus." As if you didn't know. You kiss his cheek before parting for a little bit.

Levi heads to his favorite tea vendor and sees she has some new stuff this year.

"Hi there Mr Ackerman!" She always tries to remember her returning customers.

He gives a polite hello and soon has overspent on not only his favorites but some new assortments he doesn't remember her having last season. He makes sure to get cinnamon as well, one of your favorites.

Levi passes by someone selling hats, the wide brim straw sun hat with with a purple ribbon catching his eye.

He's pretty sure you've mentioned wanting one, especially on warm days. Picking one up along with some long stemmed sunflowers at the next vendor, he goes to find you.

You're no longer at the fruits, thank goodness, so he goes towards the back.

He stops dead in his tracks after he spots you. In the short time you've been away your hair has been done into one long braid and you're currently modeling a blue and yellow sun dress in another vendors mirror.

You're beautiful in anything, and Levi can hear his heart pounding. Truth be told you could probably wear rags and would still outshine everyone else.

"Levi! You like?" You say, bounding towards him and breaking this thoughts.

He can only nod, reaching to pick up your braid.

"Oh! Some young girls are learning about business and charging five dollars and I wanted to support them. Only took a few minutes. They did so good!"

Levi leans forward to give a quick kiss to your lips, place then hat on your head and holds out the sunflowers.

"This is so great! Thank you." You gush about the things he's gotten you.

You go back to the dress stall to pay and pick up the cart, leaving your other outfit in the tote. Levi takes both the cart and your tote bag, leaving you with the flowers and an extra paper bag you didn't put in the cart.

Levi sees you got the oranges he requested, along with apples, pomegranates, pears and a whole pineapple that, again, you'll probably make him deal with.

You both take a seat for a little while, enjoying warm pastries and agua frescas.

"What's in the bag?" He asks as you've not let go of it yet.

"Your favorite tea vendor? Well, her partner is running a second stall full of products." You pull out the things in the bag.

"It's a tea warming plate." You say as Levi examines it. "Charge it and it'll last for days. Now when you get busy with work it'll always be warm."

"Why don't I already have one of these?" He wonders.

You shrug and dive back into the bag. "Well, now you do. And also, Bath Brew Pockets, and socks."

Levi stares at what surely are gag gifts. "You mean, I can bathe in tea?"

"Or we, unless you want it all to yourself." You then hold up the socks. His black pair with pink writing reads 'If You Can Read This' on one and 'Bring Me Tea' on the other. Your pink pair with black writing reads 'If You Can Read This' and 'Get Your Own.'

Levi chuckles. "These are ridiculous."

You grin. "Well yeah. You gonna use everything?"

"Of course." He would always love everything you picked.

After finishing your snack it's on to grab multiple varieties of honey, apricot and also cherry jam, two loaves of fresh bread and some muffins from your favorite bakery stall, a focaccia and a dozen rolls from another one, and a two pound block of feta, which Levi says you don't need, but in the tote it goes.

You can't help but want the hummingbird mosaic wind chime, and Levi agrees if you promise to put it up, and not store it away. He then goes for yet another plush throw blanket for you to cozy up together under while you pretend there's room for coconut bowls with matching utensils in your cabinets.

It's soon clear that your tote, cart, and both yours and Levis hands are full.

"I think that's all we can manage, love." He tells you.

You know he's right but think there's something you're missing. You could pass on the chocolates this time, but there's something else.

"Oh, what about the orange juice? It's always so good!" You couldn't leave without that.

"Right." He sighs lightly. No use reminding you of all the actual oranges you just bought.

Balancing another bag on the carts handle he tells you to wait for him and is soon back with a gallon of fresh squeezed orange juice.

"Yay!" You are happy to see the new bag.

You start back with all your items and suddenly gasp, remembering one more thing.

"No, I'm sorry, there's no more hands." Levi says, trying to guide you forward with just his knee.

"But the soaps!"

"Yes and the candles and the olive oils and the pies and the goat milk." Levi lists off some random things you'll probably want next time you come. "I mean, we have to get through all this first."

"The pies." You frown at what you missed, but there really is a lot of food.

You get to the car and load everything in, settling into the passenger seat for the ride home.

"How about we bake our own pie with the stuff we have? We can always come next week." He says, taking your hand in his. You usually only came once a month during the season since you always bought so much, but there were exceptions. Besides, there were things he'd forgotten about, too.

You look at the sunflowers you're holding in front of you. It's been a lovely outdoor morning with the man who holds your heart. "What kind of pie?" Everyday with him was a good day.

He looks over and smiles, bringing your hand to his lips. "Anything you want, angel. But first, we nap."

You look back and return his smile, wondering if Levi knows how happy he makes you, and hoping you do the same for him.

Silently, he's thinking the same about you.

an- In honor of my favorite outdoor market that just opened for the season! I'll mention again that domestic fluff with Levi in everyday life is my favorite thing. And pairing him and reader with food haha.

#levi ackerman #captain levi ackerman #captain levi #aot #attack on titan #aot fluff #levi x reader #levi x y/n #levi ackerman fluff #levi fic #farmers market #levi fluff #levi fanfiction #levi

[study-coffee-chicago]

Seasons of Med: Season 2 and Seasons of PD: Season 4: Necessities, Love, & Care (A Halstead Brothers + Halstead Sister! Imagine)

Your age: 15

Jay's age: 29

Will's age: 31

You were currently sitting at the library, trying to figure out how you'd get food for dinner. It was January and you had run out of your Christmas money two weeks ago and you had burned through your money from helping with kettle corn at the beginning of December. Right now you were SOL: Shit outta luck.

Your mind wandered back to the last day you had helped working the kettle corn stand when it was a dreary late October day.

"We have kettle corn, caramel corn, cheddar, Chicago style, and a few other flavors," you explained to a customer. She picked up a medium bag of caramel corn. "That one?"

"Yes, dear. Me and my husband love this stuff," the old lady said.

"I'm sure. It's really good! It'll be six dollars." She pulled out a five and two ones. "I'll be right back with your change."

"Oh, no, keep the change, dear. Thank you for the popcorn."

"You're welcome. Have a nice day."

"Y/N," Emma said to you. "Can you grab me a lemonade from the cooler?"

"Just one?"

"Yup, just one."

You grabbed it from the cooler and were about to pass it to her when you saw who her customers were: Jay and Erin.

"Y/N?" Jay asked. "What are you doing here?"

"Working," you answered quickly. "Little bit of extra money never hurt anybody. The real question is, what are you doing here? I know Erin hates being outside when the weather is crappy."

"It's because he's annoying when he whines and begs to do something, so I figured it was just best to give in," Erin answered.

Jay rolled his eyes. "God, I can't win with either of you. Why do you always gang up on me?"

"Because, Halstead, us girls gotta stick together," Erin laughed.

"Okay, okay, fine. Y/N, what popcorn should I get?"

"First of all, it's kettle corn," you corrected. "And, I suggest the cheddar. Or, if you want a combination of both salty and sweet, then get the Chicago style. It's cheddar and caramel."

"Me and Erin like sweet, but I know you. You like cheddar. And you'll pick out the cheddar pieces when you're at my apartment, so I'll get the Chicago style."

"Or," Erin started as she picked up a large bag of caramel and a large bag of cheddar, "We could get this big bag of caramel, and then you could have this bag at your apartment for Y/N. That way the flavors aren't touching."

"Erin Lindsay and not liking her food touching. Fine, we'll take what Erin suggested and one lemonade."

"One or two straw holes?" Emma asked, picking up the lid-punching tool.

"One's fine," Jay answered.

"They swap enough spit as it is," you whispered to Emma, causing her to laugh.

"What'd she say?" Jay asked.

"I can't tell you. It's a secret."

He huffed. "Fine. Keeping secrets from your big brother? That's cold Y/N, that's cold."

"So you're saying you never kept secrets from Will?" Erin asked.

"I have the right to remain silent."

"Exactly," Erin said. "How much does he owe you?"

"Excuse me? I didn't know I'd be the one paying for all of this."

"You were the one who dragged me outside, so yes, you are paying, Halstead. Now, get your card ready."

Jay rolled his eyes and pulled out his wallet. "How much?"

You did the math in your head. "$23."

"Emma, can you check her math?" Jay asked and you rolled your eyes in his lack of faith in you.

"$10 for the cheddar and $8 for the caramel makes $18...plus $5 for the lemonade...yup $23."

You handed him the card reader. "And now it's just going to ask you a few questions," you told him after his card went through.

Without allowing him to read it all the way through, Erin hit the tip and no receipt buttons. "Hey!" Jay exclaimed.

"Don't blame me! You were the one who wanted me to come out here!" She turned to you and took the bag of kettle corn as Jay picked up the 32 oz lemonade. "Thanks, Y/N!"

"No problem! Just make sure he doesn't buy any more paintings of motorcycles!"

Man, how you wished you could work that job right now because it was only for a few hours on the weekends. But, it was winter now, so there were no street fairs, farmers markets, or festivals going on. Because of this, your money had run out. You'd have to do what you'd have to get yourself some food, even if it would leave you with a guilty conscience.

With that in mind, you got up and left the library.

***

"Pop's been complaining of chest pain and refuses to go to the hospital," Jay told his older brother as he walked through the front door and into the living room.

"Of course he did," Will grumbled. Then, he turned to his father. "This won't take long. Unless it's bad. Then you'll have to come with me and actually go to the hospital this time."

"You can't force me to do anything," he argued as he watched his oldest son open up his medical bag.

"Just let him do his job. He knows what he's doing," Jay agreed with Will. Then, he remembered something. "Where's Y/N?"

"At school."

"At school? At 5 pm?" Jay asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Sometimes she stays after school and does homework. She's always home before it gets too late so I don't ask."

It's not like Jay and Will could have known this, though. Yes, you would talk and they're obviously there for you because they're your brothers, but your dad's parenting skills--or lack thereof--hadn't ever come up. You'd get together with your brothers once a week, but it was usually at one of your brothers' places. They rarely came inside your and your dad's place.

"All units, we have reports of a robbery at 3020 East Main Street. Assistance requested," Jay's radio stated.

Jay looked to Will, silently asking if it was okay for him to take it. "I've got it from here."

"Thanks, man," Jay said, clapping Will on the back and leaving the house.

He drove to the small corner market that had made the call. It was only a block away from where you and your dad lived, but despite it usually being somewhat slow, today it was even slower. There was only one car parked in the lot, so Jay was confused as to who would even rob this place.

He put on his vest and walked into the store. "Got a call about a robbery," he said to the store manager as he entered.

"Yes, right over here."

He led Jay over to where a girl was sitting on a stool, tears rolling down her face. She held a box of pasta, a loaf of bread, and a small jar of peanut butter. Her coat was unzipped, revealing the tampons and pads she had stuffed inside her coat after she had ripped open the box.

"Y/N?" Jay asked in disbelief. "What are you doing? What were you even thinking?"

"I- I'm sorry," you sniffled.

Then he turned to the store manager. "You called the cops on a fifteen-year-old girl for grabbing what looks to me like necessities?"

"I've let her go the past two times when she needed things, but today she didn't have the money, so I couldn't let it slide."

Jay threw $30 in the man's hand. "There. Now it's all paid for." He turned to you and took the loaf of bread. "C'mon."

You followed him out of the store, waiting to be yelled at as you entered his truck, but it didn't come. He pinched the bridge of his nose as he handed you the bread. "Why? Why did you do this?"

"There- There's barely any food in the house. I was just hungry."

Jay looked you up and down. He hadn't been really looking for changes in weight like he told Natalie he would do six months ago. He kept it up for a few months and then winter came around and it was hard to tell because of bulky jackets and sweaters. But, now that he actually looked at your face and hands in an investigative manner, it was clear as day: You had lost even more weight.

"And the other stuff?" he asked.

"Dad won't buy them for me. Says that they're too expensive and to just use something else. He said that if he had had a son he wouldn't have to worry about it, like it's my fault. Usually, I take some from school, but I ran out and I needed them."

"And the food?" Jay asked as he started driving back to his childhood home.

"I get breakfast and lunch at school, but I have to eat dinner at home. And on weekends I just skip meals and eat breakfast and dinner."

"What? What about Dad?"

"He gets takeout or he goes to the bar and isn't home until late."

Jay sighed as he pulled into the driveway. "Go pack a bag, kid. You're staying at my place until further notice."

"Really? I thought you guys forgot about me?"

"We could never forget about you. It's just, work has been busy for both of us. So, sorry if these last few times we've all been together for dinner have seemed a little rushed. Now, go inside and grab your stuff while I have a chat with Will and Dad."

"Dad, Will," Jay said after you had run upstairs and they were sitting on the couch. "I need to talk to you. In the kitchen."

"Really, Jay. Why can't it be here?" your dad grumbled. "First he--" He pointed to Will. "Wants to take me to the hospital because he said I have a valve issue and now I can't even have a conversation with my sons while sitting down?"

"Just get up, dammit!"

The three entered the kitchen and sat down, but Jay stayed standing. "Jay, what's going on?" Will asked.

Instead of answering his older brother, Jay just opened the fridge. There was a half drank gallon of milk, a jar of grape jelly, and a can of pasta sauce, along with other condiments, and a lone egg sat on a shelf. "This? This is what you expect your daughter to eat? I caught her stealing from a store just so she could get food and tampons!"

"Well, I'm not gonna pay for it."

"Excuse you?" Will exclaimed, eyebrows raised in surprise. "What do you mean you're not paying for it? She's your daughter, isn't she? Then you have a legal responsibility to feed her, make sure she has shelter, clothes, and goes to school!"

"She can go get a job."

"She is fucking fifteen!" Jay yelled. "She doesn't need to be worrying about where her next meal is coming from! She's supposed to be worrying about getting a good grade on a math test or if that boy likes her or not, but not that!"

"She needs to learn to grow up someday. And she won't if you boys baby her like you always do whenever you see her."

"Baby her?" Will yelled, disgusted. "She's a kid. She needs to be babied sometimes. She needs fucking food and a nice home to come home to, not whatever the hell you think this is."

"It hasn't been a home since your mother died."

"Yeah, we gathered that," Jay scoffed. "But you don't have to take it out on her."

"Jay," your small voice said from the doorway into the kitchen. All three men looked over to you, your backpack on your back, a duffle bag slung over your shoulder, and your favorite blanket wadded up in your hands so that you could carry it without it dragging on the ground.

"Ready to go?" Jay asked, his voice immediately softening.

"Uh, yeah," you answered, unsure of how your dad would react.

"What do you mean ready to go?" Pat Halstead asked, standing up from where he had been previously sitting at the table. "She's not going anywhere!"

Will rushed over to you, placing a hand on your shoulder while Jay stalked over to be face to face with your dad. "She is coming with me until further notice. You're lucky I don't arrest your ass for child neglect!"

"You wouldn't do that to your own father!"

Jay pulled the cuffs out of his back pocket. "Oh yeah? Try me."

He sat back down and Jay turned to you. "Here, let me take that." You handed him your duffle bag and followed him and Will outside.

"Jay, I gotta go. I gotta get Dad to Med to get the valve fixed. And, I said one hour out of the hospital tops and it's been two."

Jay closed the truck door once you were safely inside with all your stuff. "Good luck trying to get Dad to go the hospital," he scoffed. "Get going. Don't give Goodwin another reason to fire your stupid ass."

"I'll call an ambulance if I have to." Then, Will smacked Jay upside the head.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"You know what it was for. And, I'm your older brother, it's my job."

"I'm your older brother, it's my job," Jay mocked. "But, in all seriousness, do me a favor and make sure Y/N's all caught up on her immune- immune--"

"Immunizations?" Will laughed.

"Yeah, those."

"I'll do that. And if she's not, I'll give them to her tonight when I come over to your place after my shift is done...which will be in like two hours...depending on how much of a pain in the ass he is to get in the hospital."

Jay nodded, and then got in the truck, both of you making your way to his place.

"I'm gonna go take a shower," Jay said after you had put your stuff down by the couch. "You have homework?"

"Yeah," you looked down, not wanting to even try and struggle through your homework...or have Jay sign the slip that said that you failed your last test.

Jay smiled. "I'll help you with it when I'm out of the shower, okay, kid?"

"How'd you know--"

"That is the universal facial expression of I need help, but I don't know how to ask for it. I'll be ten minutes tops."

And so, you tried to struggle through your homework for ten minutes. But, you ended up working and reworking the stupid algebra problem. Why did math need letters anyway?

"Okay, I'm back," Jay said as he pulled a chair out to sit next to you. "What are you workin' on?"

"Can you sign this first?" you asked, sliding the yellow paper over to him along with the pen. You hoped he'd just sign it blind, but as you saw his eyes skimming the page, you knew that wouldn't happen.

"Did you try your best?" he asked as he slid the piece of paper back to you after signing it.

"What? Yeah, of course, I did."

"Okay, then we'll figure something out. Now, how about we eat some dinner? I've got pizza in the freezer. That okay?"

"That's great," you answered.

Jay got the pizza in the oven while you went and changed into your pajamas. You decided it was in your best interest to have Will help you with your math homework.

***

"Ah! The man of the hour!" Jay exclaimed as he pulled out the pizza and Will entered the house.

You immediately noticed the red bag he was carrying over his shoulder and the two king-sized Twix bars.

"Why do you have your medical bag?" you asked.

"How did you know this was my medical bag?"

"I'm not stupid, Will."

"Okay, so you're all caught up on your shots, but I need to do a blood draw because I need to see if you're deficient in any vitamins and minerals. Have you been eating enough fruits and veggies?" he asked.

"Probably not as much as I should," you admitted. "They're too expensive unless I get the canned kind and I don't like those unless it's canned peaches. I'm sorry."

"It's okay, Short Stack. None of this is your fault. You hear me? None of it. I just need to take the blood and then get it sent to the lab to see if you need to get any specific pills to get your vitamin and mineral levels up."

"Okay. Does it hurt?" you asked. You knew what a shot felt like, but you'd never had your blood drawn before, so you didn't know what it felt like to have a needle in your arm for a long time, taking blood. You knew what it felt like to have an IV in from when you passed out at the movie theater, but you didn't know if this needle would be the same size or bigger.

"You just feel a slight pinch at the beginning."

"Like getting a shot?"

"Like getting a shot," he confirmed.

"Hey, I was thinking," Jay started as he reappeared from the kitchen area, "what if we have celery and carrots with ranch for dinner, too? You know, like when we eat chicken wings at restaurants and they bring you some veggies, except we'll have ours with pizza."

"Okay," you agreed. "I like ranch."

"So does everyone in the midwest," Will joked.

"What's the medical bag for?" Jay asked. "She needs shots? And, what's with the Twix bars?"

"No, I'm drawing her blood to see if she's deficient in anything. And, there's one Twix bar for her and one for you because we all know how you feel about needles, Jay."

Jay rolled his eyes. "We doing this before we eat?"

"Yes. And, I need you to answer some questions for me, Y/N. These are strictly doctor protocol questions, okay? You don't need to be embarrassed about any of the answers."

You nodded.

"Okay," Will started, "When did you last eat? Just need to write it down for fasting glucose levels."

"Um, lunch at school, so around noon."

"So, six-hour fast," Will scribbled down on a piece of paper. "Next one, are you sexually active?"

"Will!"

"It's just standard protocol, just in case I need to test for STDs."

"No, I am not. Next question."

"Okay, last one: When was your last period?"

"You've got to be kidding me. I'm not pregnant, I haven't had sex!"

Will chuckled. "It's not for that. Sometimes when people are deficient in vitamins and minerals, they can lose their period for months at a time, signaling that their body isn't healthy. The medical term is amenorrhea." But, what he wanted to say was that when girls are underweight, this can also happen. And, from seeing how baggy your sweatshirt and jeans were on you, he assumed that you'd lost ten pounds since last going to the doctor when you passed out in the movie theater parking lot, making your weight loss a grand total of 25 pounds, which would qualify you as being underweight.

"Oh. I started today."

"Okay, good to know. Any changes in length or heaviness of menstruation?"

"I swear, I'd rather have Natalie or April be asking me these questions," you grumbled. "But, yes, it's a lot lighter and it went from me having my periods for five days to two days. Can we please stop talking about this now?"

"Yeah, we're all done. Sorry about that, but it's protocol."

"Says the guy who's drawing my blood at Jay's apartment instead of in a hospital, where it should be done."

"Hey, I've worked in much worse conditions than this in Sudan. How much water did you drink today?"

"A lot."

"Okay, good." Will started to unzip his medical bag. He passed a Twix bar to Jay. "Here, eat this and focus on it so you don't focus on the needles and then freak out."

Jay rolled his eyes, but took the candy bar and unwrapped it.

"Do I get one?" you asked.

"Once I draw your blood, yes, the other one is for you. Now, right or left arm?"

You held out your left arm and Will moved to the other side of you so he had a better angle. He sanitized his hands and then snapped on a pair of gloves.

"So, what do you do?" you asked. "I've never had my blood drawn before."

"I just tie off your arm so that I can get the veins to show a bit better, wipe down the spot with an antiseptic wipe, stick the needle in, and then wait for the vial to fill up."

"That's it?"

"That's it. Can you make a fist with your left hand for me?"

You did as Will told you and then he tied a band around your bicep and started touching the inside of your elbow, trying to get some veins to show. He furrowed his eyebrows and moved down your arm, rubbing your forearm and then going back up to the crook of your elbow and gently pressing there.

"What's wrong?" you asked.

"You just have really small veins is all. I could take the blood from the big vein in your forearm, but I don't really want to do that one since it's so big. Can you squeeze your fist tighter for me?" You did as he said while he kept pressing on the crook of your elbow. "There we go. Got one. Now, turn and look at Jay while I get the needle ready."

You looked at Jay and tried not to laugh. "You okay?"

"Me? I should be asking you that," he replied. "You're the one who's about to get stabbed with a needle."

"It's just that you got some sweat on your forehead. You look nervous."

"They're needles. They're tiny little sharp metal objects and if one breaks off--"

"Jay, respectfully," Will started, cutting off his brother, "shut the hell up, so you don't scare my patient. You might just want to look away instead of watching me. Then you might feel fine." Then, he turned back to you. "Okay, Y/N, keep looking at Jay. Close your eyes if you want to. You're going to feel a small pinch."

You closed your eyes and took a deep breath. Then, you squeezed your eyes shut tightly and grit your teeth, trying not to yell out as the needle pierced your skin.

"Hard part's done," Will said. You nodded, still keeping your eyes closed.

"That was not a small pinch," you retorted about a minute later.

"Sorry."

You opened your eyes and watched as the blood flowed from your vein into the small tube that was hooked up to the needle.

"I thought you hated blood," Jay pointed out. "And here you are, watching the entire process."

"I'm fine when it's my blood if it's not a huge, deep cut," you explained. "It's other people's blood I don't like."

"Well, that takes any job in the medical field off your career choices," Will said.

You sat there for a few more minutes, waiting for the vial to fill up. Will pressed on your arm, close to the needle, to see if more would come out. "This vein is really small," he said.

You watched as the blood coming into the tube started becoming slower and slower, in what looked to be bubbles.

"Just a little more," Will muttered.

You started taking deeper breaths as you felt sweat start to bead on your forehead.

"Okay, let's see how much this gave me." He pressed his thumb above where the needle was and you turned back to Jay as he removed the needle.

Then, he got the blood into the vial. "Bad news," he started, "I might need to take more. Let's see how much extra there is." He put the extra into another, smaller vial. "Yeah, this one clotted too, so bad news, we need more."

You nodded and closed your eyes, feeling your face get hot and starting to feel lightheaded. You pinched the bridge of your nose, willing this uncomfortable feeling to go away.

"You doing okay?" Will asked.

"Yeah," you answered.

"Okay, I'm gonna do your right arm this time." You held your right arm out to him. "Make a fist for me." You did as he told you and he tied the blue band around your bicep.

But, you were getting even dizzier. "Actually, can I get some water? I feel dizzy."

"Course," Will said. "Jay, can you get her some water and juice if you have any?"

"Apple juice good?"

"That's fine," you answered.

Will untied the band from your bicep. "We're just going to wait a few minutes until you feel less dizzy before I take more blood, okay?"

You nodded and took the water from Jay when he came back.

"Let's have the juice after I finish," Will suggested after a few minutes had passed and you finished the water. "Feeling better, Short Stack?"

"Yeah, let's get this over with." Your forehead was still a bit sweaty, but you were a lot less dizzy.

Will repeated the same process as the last arm and it went a lot faster. Turns out he picked a bit bigger vein in the crook of your elbow of this arm than he did the other one.

"And, we're done," Will said as he capped the vial.

He handed you the juice. "Thanks," you said. "That was not fun."

"I bet. At least you didn't pass out. I've had a few patients do that when I went through my clinicals. That's why normally when someone gets their blood drawn, they sit in this chair where something is flipped down in front of them so they don't fall out of the chair just in case they pass out."

"Jay, do you pass out?" you asked.

He scoffed. "No. I don't even get dizzy. My body doesn't react like that."

"He just breaks out into a sweat whenever he sees needles," Will whispered, loud enough for Jay to hear.

"Hey! I heard that! Take one more jab at me and you won't be getting any pizza, Will. I mean it!"

Will held his hands up in a mock surrender while you finished up your juice. Then, Will started to pack up his medical stuff and Jay brought the pizza and veggies and ranch out, along with plates of course.

You ate your pizza while Will helped you with your math homework. Once you finished two slices of pizza and some celery and ranch, you said that you were done.

"You sure?" Jay asked. "You can have as much as you want."

"I'm good. Gotta save some for tomorrow." Your eyes widened as you realized what you had just said. "I'm gonna go take a shower. It's been a long day."

"Okay, clean towels are in the cabinet in the bathroom where they always are," Jay said, trying not to react to what you had just said even though he knew exactly what you were doing.

You were rationing food.

"Fuck," Jay said as he put his head in his hands when he knew you were in the bathroom and out of earshot.

"What? What did she mean by gotta save some for tomorrow?" Will asked.

"She's rationing it. I used to do it in Afghanistan. Save some of my MRE and put it in my pack to eat the next day if I was on a long trek and we knew we wouldn't get back to base. It would be cold and usually disgusting, but I'd choke it down because it was calories and I needed fuel to be sharp in case we came in contact with combatants."

"Poor kid. At least we had Mom."

Jay nodded. "What happened with Dad at the hospital?"

"Had to have a mitral valve replacement because his wasn't working properly. Told him over and over to get his checked regularly, but he didn't because he's stubborn. He went for the non-surgical option first, but then there were complications, so Rhodes performed surgery. He's fine."

"That's good... I guess." Jay glanced around and he saw your duffle bag sitting outside the bathroom door. You had grabbed your clothes to bring them into the bathroom and left your open duffle bag by the door.

Jay stood up and started walking towards it.

"What are you doing?" Will hissed.

"I need to see if she's got anything else in there that will help prove neglect. I'm assuming it needs to be proved...I only know criminal court cases, don't know much about family court cases."

"What do you mean family court? You're going to fight Dad to be able to take care of her?"

"Yeah, I'll fight to be her legal guardian. Unless you want to do it. My loan went through for a new apartment, which has two bedrooms, so I figured I might be better suited."

"Go ahead. You'd probably have a better chance anyway because you were around more when I was in New York."

Jay nodded and started to dig around your duffle bag. He chuckled and pulled out your Build-A-Bear. "She still sleeps with Beary," he said as he held up the stuffed bear. "Probably doesn't change his clothes anymore because she's too old for that, but he's in pajamas."

"Remember that military uniform you got for her bear? Mom said she barely took Beary out of that because she missed you so much."

"Yeah, and if she wouldn't have dropped him at the airport, I might not have met Mouse."

The two fell into a comfortable silence as he continued to dig through your bag. He got to a big zip-lock bag full of pieces of fabric that were stained light reds and browns.

"Will, c'mere," Jay said, waving him over. Will squatted down next to Jay. "You know what this is?"

Will sighed. "Unfortunately, yes. I saw a lot of this when I worked in Sudan."

"Well, what is it?"

"So, when girls don't have access or money to buy feminine hygiene products, they'll use scraps of fabric and wash them. Looks to me like she cut up some, um, she cut up some underwear and then used them as make-shift pads. If they aren't taken care of properly, she could end up with an infection. And, if she tried to use them as tampons instead of pads, it could lead to TSS, which stands for Toxic Shock Syndrome."

"We're gonna have to talk to her about this now, aren't we?"

"Unfortunately, yeah. She's not gonna be happy you dug through her stuff, so I'll let you explain why you were going through it. And, if she used them as tampons, I want her to get a pelvic exam, just to make sure she didn't get any infections. Much more likely to get an infection from tampons than pads."

Jay nodded. He hated having the current conversation and knew he was going to hate the next one even more, but he knew he had to do these things if he wanted to petition the court for legal guardianship.

Jay picked up your duffle bag and brought it to the living room and he set the zip-lock bag full of pieces of fabric on top.

"I can't believe we missed this," Will said. "I mean, we're both trained in how to spot abuse and we couldn't even spot it in our little sister."

"There weren't outright signs," Jay said. "No bruising, limping, cuts, burns, nothing like that. And, it's winter, it's easy to hide the weight loss. But, I still agree with you. If we would've spotted it earlier, we could've gotten her out of there."

"I'm pretty sure she's officially underweight now."

Jay ran a hand through his hair and then stood back up. "I'm gonna go put clean sheets on my bed. I'll let Y/N take it tonight so that we can keep talking out here when she goes to sleep."

"Good idea."

A few minutes later, Jay was back on the couch next to Will and you walked out of the bathroom, wearing a baggy t-shirt and some sweatpants that you had to keep pulling up because they were too big on you now, and a pair of fuzzy socks. You were cold all the time now and wanted your hoodie out of your duffle and wanted to put your dirty clothes in there, but when you looked down to the spot where you thought you had put it, it wasn't there.

"Guys?" you asked. "Have you seen my bag?"

You walked over to the kitchen table where your blanket was sitting on the chairs and wrapped that around yourself instead.

You furrowed your eyebrows as you saw your brothers on the couch, your duffle bag in front of them on the floor, and on top, your bag of ripped-up, old underwear that you used as pads when you didn't have any.

"You went through my stuff?" you asked, starting to become angry.

"Y/N," Jay started, "I know you're mad and it was me who went through it and not Will, so don't be mad at him, be mad at me. But, I went through it to see if anything was in there that could help me get you out of dad's house. Permanently."

"You- You want to have custody of me?" you asked.

A small smile appeared on Jay's lips and he nodded. "It wouldn't be considered custody because I'm not your biological parent, it would be considered guardianship, but yes, I want you to stay with me. And, my loan went through for a new apartment, so you'd have your own room and everything."

"Okay."

Jay looked at Will, not wanting to be the one to start this conversation. And, he figured Will would be the best one to start it because he was a doctor.

"Y/N, we need to ask you about these." Will motioned to the zip-lock bag on top of your stuff.

You sat in the loveseat across from them and looked down at your feet.

"It's okay, you're not in trouble," Will continued. "We just want to know how you used them in case you need to get a pelvic exam to check for infections in that area."

Your lip began to tremble as tears started to roll down your cheeks. "I used them as pads," you said quietly. "Dad wouldn't buy me any and I stopped getting them from school because I thought they'd suspect something was wrong if I- if I kept taking them."

"One more question," Will said softly. "I just need to know in case we need to take you in for this. I know you said you used them as pads, but did you ever try and use them as tampons?"

"No. I only used them as pads," you whispered. "I was scared to use them as tampons." You looked up at your brothers, who both had tears in their eyes. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," you rushed. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner I was just--" You let out a wail and Jay got up and knelt in front of you.

"Hey, hey, none of this is your fault. Do you hear me? Absolutely none of this is on you. It's all on Dad. Every single bit of it. You are not the one to blame."

You launched yourself into his arms, crying out every emotion you had felt these past few months: anger, frustration, fear, sadness, it was all coming out now.

And, Jay just held you and let you cry it out because that was what your guys' mom used to do for him. And, he knew it worked.

Twenty minutes later, your wails were just quiet whimpers and you pushed yourself back up onto the loveseat, where Will had moved to the spot next to you. He wrapped an arm around you and you leaned into him, craving the comfort that had been denied to you for so long.

"You still have that Twix bar?" you asked.

"All that crying made you hungry, didn't it, Short Stack?" Will asked as Jay got up to retrieve the candy bar from the table.

You nodded.

"Thank you," you said when Jay handed you the Twix bar. You unwrapped it and broke it into the two sticks. "You guys want any?" They both shook their heads: they knew you needed to get as many calories in you as possible.

Jay sighed, he might as well get this hard conversation over with you tonight as well. "Y/N, you can eat as much as you want. I won't say anything about you eating too much, okay?"

You looked up from your candy bar. "You won't call me a burden because I'm eating your food? Like Dad did?"

"He said that?" Will asked, giving Jay a look that read when I see him next, I can't be held accountable for my actions.

"Yeah. One time there were some leftovers he had gotten from a bar and I was so hungry and it was the middle of the night, so I took them out and heated them up. The microwave timer must've woken him up because he came out just as I was about to start eating and then he yelled at me for eating his food and called me a burden."

"Well, we don't think that. Neither Will nor me think that," Jay told you. "And you can eat as much as you want."

You yawned as you crumpled up your Twix wrapper.

"Tired?" Will asked.

"Yeah," you mumbled.

"It's been a long day," Jay said. "You can take my bed."

"Jay, it's your apartment, I can't--"

"Y/N, this isn't up for discussion. I already put clean sheets on the bed for you."

"Is- Is there a fan in your room? I can't sleep without white noise."

"There is. You want me and Will to tuck you in?"

"I'm too old for that." You stood up and Will did, too. "Jay, can you hand me Beary? He should be in my duffle."

"Here you go, kid."

You took your bear and held him loosely in your arm. Then, you enveloped Jay in a hug and did the same for Will.

"I love you guys."

"We love you, too," Will said.

"Now get to sleep. You've still got school in the morning. I'll be here when you wake up."

"Dad sometimes wouldn't be home when I woke up for school. He'd be at a friend's house sleeping off a hangover from the night before or just sleeping."

Jay furrowed his eyebrows. "Doesn't he have to work?"

"He does work, but only a few days a week. The other days, he stays out really late and then comes home either drunk or hungover."

"I see," Jay stated. "Well I won't be doing that, I can promise you that."

"I know. You aren't like Dad. Neither of you are." You yawned again. "I'm going to bed, goodnight."

A few minutes later, you were out like a light and Will was still at Jay's apartment.

"So, Abby called me the other day," Will started. "She's looking for you. Says she's in town for a few days and wants to meet up."

"Oh yeah? She say why?" Jay asked, wondering why his ex-wife--who was the result of a blackout drunk wedding in Vegas, a thing that lasted only 24 hours tops--was in Chicago and was looking for him of all people.

"She said you two are still married."

Jay threw his head back against the couch and closed his eyes. "You have got to be fucking kidding me."

***

"Morning," Jay said as he stood at the stove flipping some eggs. "Sleep good?"

"I slept really good. Didn't even hear you wake up."

"Fan did the trick then?"

You nodded and grabbed a mug from the cupboard and went to start pouring yourself a cup of coffee.

"Nuh-uh," Jay chirped, putting his hand on the handle of the coffee pot as well.

"Why not? I drank it at Dad's."

Jay raised an eyebrow. "You drank coffee at Dad's?"

"Yeah, on the weekends sometimes that would be my breakfast because it curbs my appetite and there wasn't a lot to eat."

Jay sighed. "Well, you'll have enough to eat here, I can promise you that. And, coffee stunts your growth."

"Jay," you groaned. "I haven't grown since sixth grade."

"Okay, well, then you don't want to become dependent on it at such an early age, then. Come talk to me when you're a legal adult or in college."

"Fine." You let go of the coffee pot and put the mug back in the cupboard.

"You can have juice though." The toast in the toaster popped up and Jay placed the toast on a plate and then put a slice of cheese on each piece and then an egg on top. He also put a small bowl of strawberries next to it. "I'm gonna go get dressed while you eat. And then, once you're ready, I'll take you to school."

"Okay, thanks, Jay."

"You're welcome, kiddo."

You rolled your eyes at the nickname and then went to the fridge to get the apple juice. When you opened the fridge, you saw a brown paper bag with your name on it. Curiosity got the best of you, so you took it out and looked at the contents while you ate your breakfast.

Inside was a ham and Colby jack cheese sandwich with lettuce, pickles, mustard, and mayonnaise, an apple, a coconut-flavored Greek yogurt, celery with peanut butter, and a chocolate chip granola bar. There were also two dollars at the bottom of the bag paperclipped together with a sticky note stuck to the top.

For chocolate milk. ~Jay was what the note read.

Tears sprung to your eyes as you continued to eat your breakfast. You don't remember the last time you brought a lunch to school; you'd always get your lunch for free at school. When you got the paper from school about the free/reduced lunch because teachers noticed you didn't have much to eat, you waited until your dad was hungover and it was early in the morning, and handed him a pen and he signed the paper blindly. And, that's how you got lunch and breakfast at school without any cost to you or your dad.

"Hey, I can just brush my teeth at the kitchen sink if you want the bathroom--" He cut himself off when he saw the tears in your eyes. "What's wrong?"

"You- You made me lunch?" you asked as you turned to face him.

He smiled. "Of course I did. I know how bad cafeteria food can be. And, if it tastes good, it's usually not very good for you."

"Thank you," you said as you wiped a tear away that had rolled down your cheek.

"Aww, hey, don't cry, don't cry. It's okay. You're safe now. You don't need to worry about where your next meal will come from. And, I'm going to petition a judge for legal guardianship in a few days. I just have to have a few conversations with some lawyers."

"Does this mean you have to move? I don't want to kick you out of your apartment."

Jay dismissed that with a wave. "I already put in a loan application for a new apartment. Two bedrooms. Really nice."

"Can you tell me about it? While I finish eating my strawberries."

Jay nodded and sat down in the chair across from you. "It's a two-bedroom, washer, dryer. But, I know you don't care about those things. There's underground parking. It's got a gym, a whole club level, with like a coffee lounge, and all this other stuff."

"That sounds really nice."

"Yeah, it is a pretty nice building. Coffee lounge would be perfect for you to get your homework done if you don't feel like staying in the apartment."

"I thought you said I couldn't drink coffee?" you asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I meant the caffeine in the coffee. Decaf coffee and lattes and tea lattes, that's a different story. I'm sure they have pastries there, too."

"Never pegged you for a coffee snob," you joked.

"You learn a lot about coffee and about a person when you have to get your entire unit coffee. I'll let you in on a little secret: Ruzek's coffee order is the most complicated."

"Really?"

"Really. Now, go finish getting ready. Don't want you being late for school."

***

"Hey, Er, can you meet me at the diner we usually go to?" Jay asked his girlfriend over the phone after he had dropped you off at school.

"Yeah, no problem. Give me fifteen minutes. We haven't caught a case yet, but we should keep our radios on just in case. Everything okay?"

"It's a long story. I'll explain everything in person, okay?"

"Okay," Erin answered skeptically. "I'll see you in a few."

Fifteen minutes later on the dot, Erin walked into the little diner and spotted Jay sitting in the corner booth.

"Alright, what's going on?" she asked after she had ordered her food and some coffee. "You sounded really stressed on the phone."

Jay sighed. "I'm going to fight for legal guardianship of Y/N."

"What? Why? What happened?" Erin asked as she widened her eyes.

"Our dad, he uh, he hasn't really been the greatest. Not keeping food in the house, calling her a burden when she tries to eat some of his food, not buying her products for you know...girl stuff. She's probably lost like 25 pounds since the end of last school year. And, I know that doesn't sound like a lot with the amount of time that's passed, but she's underweight. Will drew some of her blood last night to see if she's deficient in some vitamins or minerals."

"My God."

"Yeah, so, I know we were going to move into your place together, but I need another bedroom and my loan went through at that place I told you about, so I'm going to put an offer in there. You could always move in with me if you want, but I don't know if it would be a good idea for that to happen right away. I just want to get Y/N healthy again. I'm sorry."

"Jay, I get it. She's family. Do you know how you're going to go about this? Did you talk to Voight about taking any time off to sort this out?"

"Not yet. But, I think I'm going to call Antonio and see if he can help me out with getting a meeting with ASA Stone. I know he works criminal cases, but he's gotta know some stuff about family court cases. So, I figured he might be able to help me with this whole process."

"Good idea. If you need any help, just say the word and I'll be there."

Jay smiled. "Thanks, Er." He didn't want to have the conversation he was about to have, but he knew he had to tell her. "There's uh, there's one more thing I need to tell you."

"Okay, what is it?"

"About eight years ago, I was married."

"Excuse me, what? You were married and you didn't tell me?"

Jay knew this was a bad idea...which was why he hadn't wanted to tell Erin, but now that he wasn't officially divorced for whatever reason, he knew needed to tell her. "Just let me explain."

"Yes, please do," Erin sneered.

"Her name's Abby. She ran Cultural Support during my last tour in Kandahar. About a year after I came home, I saw her at a funeral in Vegas. Was... was a guy in our unit, he had redeployed, and, um, he didn't... Um, I was, like, blacking out most nights, and we were both pretty shook up. And, um, we got married." He chuckled at the thought of his twenty-one-year-old self thinking that marriage was a good idea. "It was, like, a 24-hour thing, it was a total joke, and it is long over."

Erin just stared at him, as he waited to be chewed out by her. "Jay, you married this girl. And you never told me, and you were never gonna tell me," was all she said.

"I know. And, I'm sorry. But, I'm meeting up with her in a few days to sign the documents that I thought I'd signed because she's getting married and we need to make the divorce official...even though, in my mind, it's been official for eight years.

"Er, please don't hate me, but with everything going on, with me trying to get guardianship of Y/N and me finding out that I'm somehow still married--"

"You want us to take a break?" Erin asked, finishing his sentence for him.

Jay nodded. "I'm sorry. I just don't think I can juggle a relationship with all this other stuff. And, it's not fair to you."

Erin swallowed. "Well, just tell me if you need any help with Y/N. I'll always be there for you. Relationship or partnership, I'll always have your six."

"And I'll always have yours."

Erin's phone buzzed on the table and she picked it up. "It's Voight. We caught a case."

Jay laid some bills on the table. "Then let's go."

***

"Got the results of Y/N's bloodwork back," Will told Jay over the phone while he had a quick break for lunch...even though it was four o'clock in the afternoon. But, that's the thing about the medical field: breaks are never regular.

"And? Any deficiencies?" Jay asked, walking into his bedroom as you were at the table doing homework and he didn't want to distract you.

"Yes, two actually. Iron and riboflavin. The low iron explains why her periods have become shorter and lighter, but that can also be attributed to how small she is now."

"How do we go about this then?"

"I'll send you a list of foods that have levels high iron and riboflavin. Oh, riboflavin's found in vitamin B by the way."

"Okay, care to tell me what iron and riboflavin do? I know iron helps with hemoglobin and red blood cells, but I have no idea what riboflavin does."

"You're right about iron. I'm shocked. Or, what do the kids say these days? I'm shook."

"I swear to God, please never use that phrase again. And, I know what iron does because I paid attention in high school nutrition class, thank you very much."

"If I remember correctly, I helped you with most of the homework in that class."

"Whatever, you helped me. Now, tell me about riboflavin."

"So, riboflavin just helps convert food into energy and is needed for healthy skin, hair, blood, and a healthy brain." Jay could hear a beeping in the background on Will's end. "Gotta go. I'll send you that list of foods right now, though."

"Thanks, man."

You looked up as Jay came back into the kitchen. "Everything okay?" you asked.

Jay pulled out a chair and sat across from you. "So, I just got off the phone with Will. He got the results from your bloodwork back."

"Is it bad? Am I dying?" You set your pencil down, bracing yourself for bad news.

"No," Jay chuckled, "you're not dying. You just don't have enough iron and riboflavin, which is a specific B vitamin. Will sent me a list of foods that have high levels of those in them. You up for some grocery shopping? We can also grab some multivitamins that have those in them, too, just to help your levels stabilize faster."

"Okay, we can go now. I'm due for a break."

***

"So, some foods that contain riboflavin include milk, eggs, cheese, yogurt, meats, green leafy vegetables, and riboflavin enriched grains and cereals," Jay read off his phone.

"I've had a lot of those today already," you pointed out. "Eggs and cheese with breakfast. I had that yogurt for a snack at school, and I had meat and cheese on my sandwich and I had chocolate milk with my lunch at school."

That was just standard, Jay thought. He wondered what you ate when you were at your Dad's. And, he knew that if he wanted to obtain guardianship of you, he'd need to know these things.

"What did you eat at Dad's?" Jay probed.

"I mean, I barely made it to school on time most mornings because I was trying to be quiet so I didn't wake Dad, which made me move slower when getting ready. So, I'd usually just grab a small thing of dry cereal when I got to school and eat it in my first class. I never checked to see if it was one of the enriched ones. I'm sorry."

"You don't have to apologize. There's no way you could've known. Now, what did you usually have for lunch at school?"

"I always tried to get veggies with my lunch, but most of the veggies were the gross canned ones, like canned corn or green beans. I don't like those. Sometimes, they'd have little salads as a side and I'd get those. Sometimes they'd have yogurt parfaits and I'd get those. But, I'd usually go for the pre-made subs, because at least those would have veggies on them...even if it was just lettuce and pickles. I'd usually try to get an apple or banana as my side, too." You paused. "If I was getting meat and cheese from the sub and milk from my chocolate milk, then how am I deficient in this?"

"It's probably because the meat and cheese schools use is so heavily processed that there are little to no vitamins left in it," Jay answered.

"And you know this how?"

"As you get older, you acquire a lot of knowledge and one of those things is that the more processed a food is, the fewer vitamins and minerals are preserved...and I watch a lot of The Food that Built America on the History channel."

"Oh, okay. What foods are on that show?"

"Usually it's about fast food. One episode I watched last week was about ice cream and popsicles and how they came to be in America. Pretty interesting."

"Can we watch an episode tonight? That show sounds good."

"Of course." He paused in front of the fresh produce. "Take your pick. But, just make sure you get some leafy greens for the riboflavin and some fruit and other green veggies for iron."

You picked up a few things such as more apples, a bag of Clementines, bananas, spinach, carrots, and celery, and then, you shocked your brother as you picked up a bag of kale.

"Kale?" he asked. "Didn't know you liked it."

You shrugged. "I heard it tastes kind of like spinach. And, I saw a recipe on Pinterest for a salad that has kale, lemon juice, and dates. Is it okay if we try that?"

"You know, I think that would be the perfect side for dinner tonight. I'll add lemon juice and dates to the list."

"I didn't grab too many fruits and veggies, right?" you asked, not wanting to waste food or your brother's hard-earned money. "I- I can put some back if you want me to."

"Nope, it's all good. We can always freeze the bananas if they go bad for smoothies or banana bread. And, we can always turn the apples into apple sauce. Spinach and kale freeze well, too and you can't even taste them if we put them in smoothies."

"How do you know this stuff?" you asked.

"I used to watch Mom cook a lot when I was little. And, when I moved out on my own, she gave me a copy of a cookbook she always used. Said the recipes at the beginning of the book were simple enough that I wouldn't burn my apartment down."

You laughed at the thought of your mom scolding Jay if his apartment got ruined from his cooking. "Do you still have it?" you asked. "The cookbook, I mean."

"I do."

"Can we make something out of it tonight?"

"You know, I think that's a great idea." He pursed his lips. "How about Mom's chicken pot pie? I think I have some frozen peas and corn in the freezer and we can use the carrots we just grabbed in it, too."

"That sounds really good. Thank you."

"You don't have to thank me." Jay paused. He figured now would be as good a time as any to tell you. "Uh, do you remember the day that we got ice cream and went and played soccer with Ben when you were little? The night that Mom went into the hospital?"

You nodded, swallowing the lump in your throat at the memory of that day.

"Well, she told me to take care of you. There's no way I would break a promise to Mom."

"She said that?"

"Mhmm."

"It's like she knew something was going to happen."

"Mom was a smart lady. Will had to have gotten it from somewhere and he sure didn't get it from Dad."

You laughed. "Hey, you're smart, too. Just not sciency smart. You're more puzzle smart because you put the pieces together of who committed a crime." Jay laughed at your description of his job. "Oh, is the recipe for Mom's garlic mashed potatoes in that cookbook?"

"It is. Want those as a side along with the salad you mentioned?"

"Yes, please...if it's not a problem."

"They're super simple and quick to make." He scribbled on a piece of notebook paper that he had written down a few groceries on, like the salad ingredients you had mentioned. "Alright, potatoes, a rotisserie chicken, and pastry dough have all been added to the list."

***

"I'll be back later tonight, no later than midnight," Jay told you two days later on Sunday night. "I know it's not ideal because you have school in the morning, but try and get some sleep while I'm gone, okay?"

"I'm used to being home alone at night, Jay." You shrugged. "I'll be fine."

"I know, it's just that not something I want you to get used to. Feel free to eat anything you want, cook anything you want. As long as you don't burn down the house, I don't care what you make. Oh, and remember to take your multivitamin before bed."

You rolled your eyes. "I'm fifteen, not five. Now, get going. Don't want you to be late to meet that lawyer."

"Love you. I'll be back by midnight. Lock the door behind me."

"I will. Love you, too."

With that, Jay left his apartment to go meet with ASA Stone and you locked the door behind him as he told you.

***

"So, Antonio told me you have some custody questions," Peter Stone said once he closed the door of his office.

"That's right," Jay replied as he took a seat in front of Stone's desk and turned his phone completely off and Stone took a seat in his chair behind his desk.

"Didn't know you had a kid, Halstead."

"No, I don't actually," Jay chuckled. "I have a kid sister. Name's Y/N and she's fifteen."

"Okay, and why do you want guardianship then?"

"When me and Will, my older brother, were kids, our dad kinda checked out on parenting us when we hit our mid-teens. But, we had our mom around, so it was okay. I went over there the other day because my dad was having some heart issues and I called Will. When I was there, I got a call of a robbery and it was Y/N. She was stealing food from a corner store because our dad wasn't feeding her," Jay explained.

"I see. So, other than her word and her stealing food, do you have any proof of this?"

"I know I should've called DCFS before letting her stay with me, but I couldn't let her stay there a minute longer, Peter. She's lost like 25 pounds in the past six months and she's deficient in both iron and vitamin B."

"Okay, what we have to do is petition for guardianship in front of a judge. I can help you with the documents and I can even represent you at the hearing if you want."

"Wow, yeah, that'd be great. Thank you."

"Anything else you want to tell me about your dad? Any physical or emotional abuse?"

"Not technically, but there is something else." And then Jay launched into all the information you had told him two days ago.

"Okay. And, you know your dad could theoretically press kidnapping charges against you because you took his kid without his permission?"

"I do. But he was basically starving her. No jury would find me guilty."

"I'm not going to argue with you about that one because I agree with you."

"So, do you think I have a chance of getting guardianship over Y/N?"

"In theory, yes. But, most judges like to keep the child with their biological parents. But, seeing as Y/N's fifteen, she does get some say in who she stays with," Stone explained. "When we have a custody or guardianship battle, we use the child's best interest standard. This means that you must prove that you are capable of providing food, clothing, housing, medical care, and a stable home life for Y/N. There will be one or two home visits before appearing before a judge, just to let you know."

"I'm aware of that. And, I just put an offer in on a new apartment with two bedrooms this morning and they're pretty quick in responding, so I should know in the next few days whether or not I got it."

"That's a good start. And you are financially stable to raise her until she turns eighteen, so three more years?"

"I am."

"Alright, let's start on those documents then. Unless you have any more questions for me?"

"I do actually. I, uh, I just found out that I'm technically still married. Something about me not signing the divorce papers even though I specifically remember signing them? And, before you ask, me and this girl served together, we were both twenty-one, going through rough patches and it was a Vegas wedding eight years ago. Lasted no more than twenty-four hours."

"It's really good that you told me this because any good lawyer would find that out when you file for guardianship. It's possible that she didn't co-sign the divorce papers. If that's the reason, I can help you draw up new divorce papers right now."

"Really? You'd help me with that?"

"Of course. A friend of Antonio's is a friend of mine," Stone said as he started typing on his computer. "So, what you can do is you can file for a no-fault divorce."

"You're gonna have to be specific, Stone. I know a bit of criminal law because I've had to testify in criminal cases, but like I said, I don't know family or civil law," Jay said.

"What a no-fault divorce is, Jay, is that you don't have to prove that either of you did anything wrong to get a divorce. All you have to do is state that your marriage is unsalvageable and continue filing for divorce."

"That's it? What if she doesn't sign it?"

"The divorce papers will be served to, uh...what's this girl's name again?" Stone asked.

"Abby."

"Abby. The divorce papers will be served to Abby and she has twenty days to file her response with the court. If she doesn't, then the court rules it as an uncontested divorce and then you're officially divorced."

"Me and Abby are meeting up to talk about all this tonight. But, can we just fill out paperwork for this no-fault divorce just in case things don't go as planned? I just really need to get guardianship of Y/N. The least amount of problems, the better."

"Of course. And if everything goes well with her tonight, then just give me a call and I'll shred the documents."

"Alright, just tell me where to sign."

***

"Wilson is running through the showers wearing nothing but a Kevlar vest, right?" Jay reminisced on the good parts of his Ranger days with Abby at a bar around 8:30 that night after his meeting with Peter Stone.

"Well, the lieutenant said, all outdoor activities to be conducted in body armor." Jay laughed at Abby's rendition of their lieutenant's voice. "Do you remember, he had his girlfriend's name tattooed on his ass?"

Jay set his empty drink down on the bar. "Did he tell you that was his girlfriend? That was his dog's name," Jay laughed.

"That actually makes more sense," Abby said. "I could go for another one of these."

"I, um, I shouldn't."

"Gotta get back to the barracks?"

"No, I uh gotta get back to my little sister, actually. I'm looking after her at the moment. It's a long story. Do you have the papers?"

"I, uh, I don't have them."

"Abby."

"It's just, I never told you. Even that crazy day we got married, I never told you that I loved you, Jay. It didn't feel right. But, I loved you, Jay. I do love you."

Jay sighed. "Abby, you deserve everything good. I'm just not the guy that's gonna give that to you." He brushed her hair to the side and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

After putting some money on the bar to pay for the drinks and tip the bartender, he left the bar. Guess he was going to need these no-fault divorce documents, anyway.

He was almost to his car when he heard someone calling his name. And, it was a voice he knew all too well.

"Erin?" he shouted as she came closer. "What are you doing here?"

"Would it kill you to turn on your phone? You need to get to the district. Now."

"What? Why? What's wrong?"

She got in his passenger seat. "Just drive. I'll explain on the way."

***

You were sitting on Jay's bed reading a book when you heard a knock on the door.

Slowly, you got off his bed and made your way out of his room. You took a knife out of the knife block, but you hoped you wouldn't need to use it. Jay would've told you if someone was planning on stopping over. And, if it was Will, he would've given you a heads-up.

The knocking got louder and more aggressive. "Jayson! Open this door! I have the right to see my daughter!"

Dad.

With the knife still in hand, you backed up and then, once on the carpet, ran back into Jay's room and quietly shut the door and locked it. You pulled out your phone and tried Jay. It went straight to voicemail. The pounding was getting louder. You tried Will. It went straight to voicemail because he was on shift. You thought you heard your dad starting to kick the door now instead of just pounding on it with his fists. You tried the last person you thought could help.

"Y/N?" Erin asked as she answered her phone and paused the tv show she was watching.

"Erin," you whispered. "I'm scared. I need help."

"You need help? Can you tell me why?"

"My dad, he's- he's here. He's looking for me." You heard a crash.

"Jay? Y/N? I know one of you is in here!"

"I- I think he just broke down the apartment door. Please help."

"Okay, okay, here's what you're going to do. I want you to hide somewhere and I'm going to call a patrol car over there right now. You're going to turn your phone on silent and I'm going to call you right back," she told you.

"Okay," you whispered as quietly as you could.

"I'll call you back in one minute tops."

You moved as quietly as you could with the knife and your phone still in your hands and opened Jay's closet door. You buried yourself behind the two garment bags that contained Jay's police blues and his military dress uniform, hoping against hope that your dad wouldn't find you.

Your phone lit up and it was Erin. You answered.

"Y/N, the officers will be there soon. I don't want you to talk. Just know that I'm on the phone with you."

At the same time, as she was talking to you over speakerphone, she was texting the team. She assumed you couldn't reach Jay or Will since you had called her. She told them what was happening and that a few of them needed to get to the district because they needed to find Jay's location. She also told Voight to get ahold of Sharon Goodwin so she could notify Will of what was currently happening.

"Chicago PD! Put your hands where we can see them!" you heard from your hiding place.

"See?" Erin said. "I told you that you'd be okay. I told them that you were hiding, so if someone opens the door, it's just an officer."

Just after she said that the closet door opened.

You squeaked.

"It's okay. You're safe," the officer said. "We're just going to take you down to the district. You're safe."

You peeked out from your hiding place and you saw the blues of the officers. You slowly made your way out and followed the officer out to the patrol car, the one that didn't house your dad for a breaking and entering charge at the moment.

***

"Where is she?" Jay yelled as he entered the district.

Platt just pointed to the bench next to one of the offices where you were sitting, staring at the floor, with a police jacket draped over your shoulders.

He sunk to his knees in front of you. "Are you hurt? Did Dad hurt you? Did he put his hands on you in any way?"

You shook your head.

"Oh thank God."

"I was so scared," you whispered. "When you and Will didn't answer, I thought he was gonna get me."

"I'm sorry. I turned off my phone when I talked to ASA Stone, and I forgot to turn it back on. I'm so sorry. C'mere."

You all but fell off the bench and into Jay's arms. "Is he going to jail? I don't want him going to jail."

"He was drunk out of his mind. I can ask not to press charges, though."

"Please. He needs help."

Although Jay didn't say it, he knew you were right. Jails and prisons didn't rehabilitate, they just taught criminals how to be better criminals. He knew that his dad needed rehab, a twelve-step program, anything.

"Okay, I won't press charges. But, I think we're gonna need to stay with Will for the night because our door's broken. What do you say we run home and grab some clothes to bring to Will's? And, since Dad will be here for a little longer, we can run to his house and get more of your stuff. Sound like a plan?"

"Can we get Dairy Queen on the way to Will's?"

"We sure can."

***

"I- I don't think any of these dresses will fit me anymore. They look way too big," you said to Jay as the two of you unpacked a bunch of your stuff in the guest room of Jay's new apartment. You wanted to think of it as the guest room for now instead of calling it your room just in case Jay wasn't awarded guardianship. You didn't want to get too attached.

Jay sighed. He figured you were right. He would see if Erin could take you, but their relationship was on the backburner right now. And, Erin had some stuff with Bunny she had to work out after she had brought her that pearl bracelet and said that she might be leaving Chicago. So, now wasn't really the right time for him to be bugging Erin about going shopping with you. And, he couldn't ask Kim because she was taking some furlough after finding her sister brutally sodomized after a night out.

He thought about asking Will if Nina could come, but he didn't think that those two were too happy with each other at the moment since Will hadn't told Nina about their dad being in the hospital and she had to find out from Natalie. Not Will's greatest moment.

He racked his brain for more women he knew.

Then it hit him: Gabby.

Yes, they had briefly dated, but that was five years ago. She was married now and his feelings for her were completely gone. They were civil with each other when they saw each other in the field and would chat when Gabby showed up at the district to pick up Eva or Diego.

"How about you try a few on after we finish unpacking, and then if none of them really fit, I can give Gabby a call and see if she'll take you shopping while I work on unpacking the rest of the house," Jay suggested.

"Okay. Will's gonna be over after his shift to help though, right?" you asked.

"He better be. He said he would. If he doesn't come, he better have a really good excuse."

"You can't unpack the kitchen without me," you told him.

"Why not?"

"I can't have you putting the glasses and other stuff on high shelves because I wanna reach them without having to climb on the counter."

"Okay, fine. I'll keep your short little height in mind while I unpack." He paused. "Do you want to get those fancy word stickers for your room for one of the walls?"

"Decals? And, it's not my room yet."

"Listen, after that stunt Dad pulled at my old apartment, Stone is 99.9% positive that I'll be granted guardianship. We just have to jump through all the hoops first."

"Like the home checks?"

"Like the home checks," he confirmed.

"What do I say in court?" you asked a few minutes later as you were putting the pillows on your freshly made bed.

"You just tell the truth," he answered.

"Will you be in there with me?"

"No, I won't. Stone said that usually in these cases you talk to the judge by yourself so that you can't be intimidated by either of the people who are fighting for custody or guardianship."

"So you won't be there? Will won't be there?"

"Will will be out in the hall and I will be in a different room. I'll be in like a witness room, where they make witnesses of a crime wait so that their testimony isn't swayed by what the other people are saying on the stand. But, me and Dad will be in the courtroom at the same time, just so I can see what he'll be saying."

"And, I'll be in there then, too?"

"Yes."

"What kind of questions do they ask me?"

"Stone said that since you're older, you get a say in who you stay with, so they'll ask you questions like who've you known the longest, who you feel safest with, who you want to live with, etc."

"Will they ask me questions about Dad? Like how he didn't give me food and how he broke into your apartment?" you asked.

"They will," Jay confirmed. "But, Stone will be in there for those questions just in case he needs to object to something."

"So the only time I'll be alone with the judge is when they're asking me the first few questions? Like who I feel safest with?"

"Exactly. Now, do you need help putting these books on the top shelf of your bookshelf?"

***

"Hey, how was your day?" Jay asked as he came home from work that afternoon. It was a shock that he was home by 5 pm, but you had a big day tomorrow. Not only was tomorrow Friday, it was the day you and Jay had to go to court to see if he would be awarded guardianship of you.

"We've got a problem," you stated.

"Um, I can try to help you with it, but let me go put my gun away first."

While he was doing that, you pulled out the slip of paper and the note that Gretchen Cunningham had written, saying that she wouldn't allow you to make up the test you would be missing because you had to go to court.

"Alright, what's the problem?" Jay asked as he walked into the kitchen.

"Cunningham. She's the problem...as always."

You handed him the papers and he read them over. "Yeah, this isn't going to fly. She doesn't need a judge's signature to allow you to take the test. I'll talk to the school tomorrow morning when I call to tell them you'll be absent."

"I hate her," you groaned. "She's so mean. And, I know what you're gonna say. You have to deal with people you don't like. But, she lost one of my assignments and told me I didn't turn it in and couldn't re-do it!"

"Well did you?" Jay asked. "Turn it in, I mean."

"Jay!"

He put his hands up in a sign of surrender. "I'm just saying, could be your fault."

"Yes, I turned in the stupid assignment. And, she paired me up with the stupidest kid in the class and told me to do well on this assignment because he needed a good grade to pass. It's not my fault he's failing! Don't put his grade on me, lady!"

"And she wouldn't let you re-do it?"

"Nope. But it's fine. I'm still getting an A. That might change if she doesn't let me take this test, though."

"It's like deja-vu from my freshman year all over again. Why doesn't she retire already? She's like 100."

"Or they could fire her," you quipped. "Or I could switch classes."

"I'll see what I can do. Who's the other history teacher?"

"Um, Miss Hedge."

"Hedge? As in Jayne Hedge?"

"Yeah, it's actually her. Why? Do you know her?"

"Yes he does," Will said as he entered Jay's apartment. "In fact, they went to freshman snowcoming together."

"How did you even get in here?" Jay asked, turning around to look at his older brother.

"For a cop, you're not that smart. You didn't lock the door behind you."

"I don't lock my door when I'm still awake. And, seriously? You just had to tell Y/N that, didn't you?"

"You guys can't just leave me hanging now. Tell me the story!"

"Fine," Jay grumbled and Will just laughed and sat down at the table, too. "I met her at school, obviously. She was on the freshman basketball team and I had winter weight training for the soccer team. I thought she was pretty and she was really smart, too. And, I knew that a bunch of the girls went to get Taco Bell after practice, so me and some of my friends decided to go, too."

"There used to be a Taco Bell close to school?" you asked. If there was, you'd never seen it before.

"It got torn down just after I graduated," Jay answered. "Anyway, we went to Taco Bell and I started talking to her and we talked a lot after practice. I'd walk her home sometimes. Then, I asked her to snowcoming and she said yes."

"So, why'd you guys break up? I know you dated Allie in high school."

"We realized we were better off as friends." Jay shrugged.

"And he realized he liked Allie more," Will added.

"Yeah, that too."

Will set a big bag of takeout on the table.

"Seriously?" Jay asked. "I thought we weren't going to do this that much anymore so we can get Y/N's vitamin and mineral levels stabilized."

"I'm sure she'd appreciate the break from your mundane meals," Will said. "And, I got us all side salads to go with the burgers instead of fries, so calm down." Jay gave him a look. "Fine, I got the side salads along with the fries. But, they're made out of potatoes, so they're technically a vegetable."

"For a doctor, you don't know much about nutrition, do you? And, my meals are not mundane."

"Dude, you'd have chicken, spaghetti, or grilled cheese every night."

"Not every night, just a lot of nights when I'd get home from the district late. I'll have you know me and Y/N have been making really good diners lately. Wanna tell Will what we made last night for dinner, Short Stack?"

"We made this really good pasta. We used Orzo, which looks like rice, but it's pasta. And we made a sauce out of tomatoes, onions, and orange juice. It was supposed to be lemon juice, but Jay didn't have any. We put chicken sausage in it for protein...and spices of course," you told Will.

"That actually sounds really good. Wow, Jay cooking every night, not something I expected."

"I like it," you said. "And, he lets me play whatever music I want when we cook."

Will rolled his eyes. You had Jay so wrapped around your finger that he'd do almost anything for you. Will didn't think he himself was that bad, but deep down, he knew he'd do anything for you, too...despite not being in Chicago as long as Jay had been.

***

"So I got a call from Stone this morning," Jay said around 11:30 that night when he and Will were sitting on the couch, each nursing a beer.

Will set his beer down on the coffee table in front of him. "And?"

"And, as of yesterday at midnight, I am officially divorced from Abby. Turns out, they served her the papers and, since she didn't sign them and it had been twenty days, it turned into an uncontested, no-fault divorce."

"Congrats, man. Might've been eight years too late, but you're a free man now."

"Amen to that. And it came at just the right time."

"Yeah," Will agreed. "You nervous for tomorrow?"

"Not really. More nervous for Y/N than anything. I've testified in criminal cases, so I kinda know how this goes, but she hasn't. And, before me and Dad go in to plead our cases, she has to talk to the judge all by herself. I just wish one of us could be in there with her."

Will nodded. "Know what they're going to ask you?"

"I know what Stone's going to ask me because we prepped, but I have no idea what Dad's lawyer is going to ask me. Pretty sure he's got just a public defender, though. Hopefully, that works in my favor."

"Not always, man," Will disagreed. "The public defenders who do these cases only do these cases. They've had a lot of practice."

"You really know how to make me feel better, thanks," Jay replied sarcastically.

"Rather have you hear it from me before the case than someone else after. Are you going to get cross-examined?"

"Probably. Don't know what they're going to ask me though because it's a cross. Stone set up some sample questions for me to answer with him to practice, but I'm going in blind. I'm used to it though because I've testified before. But, this feels like my biggest case."

"Because it probably is."

"Are you talking about tomorrow?" you asked as you quietly padded across the floor towards the living room.

"Y/N? What are you doing up? It's almost midnight," Jay pointed out.

"I- I know. But I couldn't sleep. I'm scared. What if I have to go back to Dad's? What if they find neither of you fit and I have to go into foster care?"

Jay patted the empty spot on the couch next to him and you sat down. "We just have to trust the system. That's all we can do."

"I know, but I can't sleep. And I'm so tired."

"I have an idea," Jay started and stood up, "stay here."

"I'm gonna go look for some melatonin," Will said after a few minutes of you two just sitting in silence. "I think Jay still has some for nights that he can't sleep."

Will was still rummaging around Jay's cabinets when Jay came back with a big black box with some cords and a cardboard box balanced against his hip.

"The hell is that?" You quickly covered your mouth when you realized you had sworn. "Sorry."

"It's okay. And, to answer your question, this is VCR. And, I have a bunch of videotapes in this box." He turned from you to face the kitchen, where Will was still opening and closing cabinets. "Will? What are you doing?"

"Looking for melatonin for Y/N. You got any?"

"First of all, it's so late that if you give it to her now, she'll sleep through her alarm and we can't be late for court tomorrow. And, second of all, I keep it in the medicine cabinet in my bathroom."

Will closed the cabinet and made his way back to the couch to sit next to you as Jay started to hook up the VCR to the tv. "Uh, Jay," Will began, "you know it's a little late for a movie right? And, I should get going in like half an hour?"

"We're not watching a movie. I recorded a bunch of the Blackhawks playoff games on one of these and I thought Y/N'd like to watch the 2010 Stanely Cup final series against the Flyers. Or, we could watch the final series against the Bruins when they won the cup last year."

"Let's watch the 2010 one," you said. "I don't think I watched it because I wasn't into watching hockey as much as I am now."

"And you have Jay to thank for that," Will pointed out.

"You can record things on there? Like an old-school DVR?" you asked.

"God, now I feel old," Will groaned. "Wait until she learns about floppy disks."

"Floppy what now?"

"Nevermind. Only 80s-90s kids would get it."

"We get it. You guys are millennials."

"Got it!" Jay exclaimed as he popped the videotape into the VCR and it started playing. "Now, shut up so we can relive this, Will."

You fell asleep before you even reached the end of the first period.

***

You rubbed your eyes and then looked around you to notice that you were still on the couch. You craned your neck to see the time on the oven on the other side of the open concept kitchen and living room and saw that it was 5:45 am. Jay was at the gym now. And, you knew you wouldn't be able to fall back asleep because you were already starting to worry about the rest of the day. You had to be in court at 8:30 and had to be talking to a judge at 9:00, the judge that would determine who you would be living with, which would inevitably determine your future.

God, you were thinking just like the teachers talked about the SATs, how if you didn't get a good grade on that standardized test that your future would be ruined.

You stood up and stretched and then went back to your room to grab the book you were currently reading. Then, you turned on a few lamps and grabbed a yogurt and fruit from the fridge, along with a glass of orange juice. After wrapping yourself in a blanket, you started to eat and read, hoping that that would keep your mind from wandering and worrying at least until Jay got back from the gym.

Half an hour later, Jay unlocked the apartment door and walked inside, confused as to why you were awake. It was only 6:15 and he had told you just to be up by 6:45.

"What are you doing awake, Short Stack?" he asked as he grabbed a banana from the bowl on the counter.

"I woke up at about 5:45 and I couldn't fall asleep. I'm sorry."

"Nothing to worry about. I just want you as well-rested for today as possible. You have your dress all ready? Know what shoes you're going to wear?"

"Jay," you whined. "I picked all of that out last night because you told me to."

"Just didn't want you to have to rush. I can turn the game back on for you so you can watch it until you have to start getting ready?"

You nodded and Jay came over and fiddled with the tv and the remote, going back to the middle of the first period where he thought you had fallen asleep.

"Okay, I'm gonna take a shower. Will said he'll be here around 7:45. Oh, and you can take that history test when you get back on Monday, in Miss Hedge's class."

You smiled. "Okay." Then, you turned your attention back to the hockey game.

***

You widened your eyes as you stood in the second bathroom getting ready. You had gotten dressed (into a navy blue, lacey dress that ended just above the knee that you had bought with Gabby a few days ago), washed your face, brushed your teeth, did your makeup, but now you were cursing yourself for being so stupid. You had no way of doing your hair. You didn't have a straightener here. And, your typical ponytail or bun wasn't going to cut it for court.

"Jay!" you yelled as you exited the bathroom and knocked on his bedroom door.

He opened it as he was tying his tie. "Yeah? Everything okay?"

"I don't have a straightener! I can't do my hair and if I wear my hair like I usually do then it will look bad on you and--"

"Hey, hey, calm down. We've still got over 45 minutes before we have to leave. I'll give Gabby a call and see if she's not on shift and can let you borrow hers."

You sighed the biggest sigh of relief. "Thank you."

Five minutes later, Jay knocked on the bathroom door as you were brushing your hair. "Gabby will be here in ten."

"Oh thank God."

***

"Thank you!" you exclaimed ten minutes later as you opened the door, revealing Gabby with her hair straightener. And, behind her, was Casey.

"No problem. Just tell me if you're not used to it and need help."

You took it from her. "No, I should be good. Thanks, though. C'mon in. I'm pretty sure Jay's around here somewhere."

They came into the apartment while you ran off to find Jay.

You knocked on his bedroom once more and he opened it, this time completely ready for the day. "Gabby and Casey are here," you told him.

"Casey's here?" he asked, furrowing his eyebrows.

"Yeah. I think he just came with Gabby."

"Okay. Go fix your hair. I'll go talk to them."

Twenty minutes later, you were finished and slipping your shoes on when you heard a knock on the apartment door. "I got it, Y/N!" Jay yelled.

Well, I hoped you would because you're closer to the door than me, you thought to yourself.

Jay opened the door, and since it was exactly 7:45, he was expecting to just see Will. But, what he saw both shocked him and made him want to cry from appreciation at the same time.

Standing next to Will was Natalie and behind them was all of Intelligence and Trudy Platt and Mouch, all of Squad 3 and Truck 81 (minus Casey because he was inside), Sylvie Brett, Chief Boden, April, Maggie, Dr. Rhodes, Dr. Charles, Reese, and Noah.

"You're all here for the court case?" Jay asked, stunned.

"Well, Natalie has to testify about Y/N's deficiencies and weight loss, but yeah. It's better if the court sees that the person trying to get guardianship has a ton of support. So, I figured I'd call in reinforcements...even though I'm pretty sure my big personality is enough."

Jay rolled his eyes. "Your big ego maybe." He paused, not knowing how he was going to fit everyone in his apartment even if it was bigger than his last one. "However many of you guys can fit inside, can come in. Um, some of you might just need to meet us at the courthouse--"

"Jay, they just came now so you could see how many people were behind you. They're just gonna meet you there. Except for me. I'm driving you two." Jay furrowed his eyebrows. They didn't talk about this. "I'll explain later."

"Gabby," you said as you walked out of the bathroom. "Can you--" you stopped as you saw everyone outside Jay's apartment.

"They're all here for you and Jay," Gabby explained as she stood up. "And, you can't cry because it'll smear your makeup, so hold back the tears."

You nodded as you held them back. "Can you, uh, check the back of my hair to make sure I got it all straight?" you asked.

"Two spots are still a bit wavy. Let's go fix it so you can get going."

A few minutes later, Gabby had fixed your hair and everyone besides Will and Jay had left and were on their way to the courthouse. You slipped on a pair of black ballet flats and your coat.

Will had explained that the reason he was driving was that if Jay didn't get guardianship, he didn't want him driving in such a distressed state. Will had worked on so many patients who were in car accidents due to their emotional state and he didn't want Jay to be one of them.

"Ready?" Jay asked you.

"As ready as I'll ever be," you said as you wiped your sweaty palms on your dress.

"All you have to do is tell the truth."

***

You thought you'd be comfortable inside a courtroom because of the crime dramas you'd seen. But, standing inside one was very different from watching a fictional tv show.

No one but you, the judge, the court reporter, Peter Stone, and your dad's lawyer could be in the room for this next part, so everyone was either in a witness room or waiting outside in the hallway for the go-ahead to be let in. You would be allowed to be in the courtroom while they were talking to Jay and your dad, but they wouldn't be able to be in the room when you talked to the judge...for obvious reasons, such as influencing what you would say.

"All rise."

You stood up next to Stone as the judge, who you now knew as Judge Callahan, entered the room.

Once you sat down, you were called to the stand. "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God?" you were asked as you placed your hand on the Bible.

"I do," you answered.

"Alright, please allow Miss Halstead on the witness stand," Judge Callahan said. "Now, I'm just going to ask you a few questions. All you have to do is answer them. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I understand."

"Okay, first question: Has your father, Pat Halstead, ever hit you or physically abused you in any way?"

"No," you answered.

"Has he ever neglected to give you necessities, such as food, water, clothing, or shelter?"

"Yes."

"Can you please elaborate?"

You did. You explained how your dad never had food in the house and would yell at you and call you a burden if you tried to eat his leftovers.

"Is it true that your father tried to break into your brother's house to get you?" Judge Callahan asked.

"Yes."

"Who do you feel safest with?"

"My brother, Jay Halstead."

"Who would you prefer to live with?"

"Jay Halstead."

***

Jay sat on the witness stand. He had answered all of Stone's questions, including all of the questions about him finding you stealing, what you had been using for pads, and what he had been told that you had been eating at your dad's house. Natalie had testified about your physical well-being, weight loss, and iron and riboflavin deficiencies. But now, it was time for Jay's cross-examination. And, he sure as hell didn't expect this next question to be asked.

"Mr. Halstead," your dad's lawyer began, "you previously said, and I quote, that your dad clocked out on parenting you and your older brother, Will, when you were in your teens, around when you started high school. Can you elaborate on that?"

"Objection!" Stone yelled. "Relevance?"

"Speaks to a pattern."

"I'll allow it," Judge Callahan said. "Please answer the question, Mr. Halstead."

Jay nodded. "He clocked out on parenting me and Will because he said that were essentially grown men at this point in our lives, we didn't need him cheering us on or him helping us. He didn't come to a single one of my soccer games in high school. And, if by some miracle we went out for ice cream or something just me, my brother, and my dad, he wouldn't pay for ours. Said we were old enough to pay for ourselves.

"But, we had our mom. She came to all our games and school events. She made us breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If she wasn't there, I don't know what would've happened to me and Will. My dad didn't even want me to go into the military and didn't want Will to go to medical school. He said a real man went right to work. The only time I felt loved by him in all my teenage years was when I left for the military. It was like because he knew I might die over there that he figured he'd say he loved me one last time."

"Redirect, your honor," Stone said. Judge Callahan nodded at Stone. "You said that your mom made you and your brother lunch. Are you doing that for Y/N?"

"Objection! Relevance?"

"Speaks to Mr. Halstead's abilities as a parent."

"I'll allow it. Please answer the question."

"I actually do," Jay answered. "I make her a packed lunch to bring to school every day and I'm sure to add foods high in iron and riboflavin to help those levels stabilize quicker. The first time I packed her a lunch, she actually cried because she hadn't gotten a lunch from home in so long."

"Thank you."

"Mr. Halstead," your dad's lawyer started, "you were previously deployed overseas in Afghanistan for two tours of duty. While I thank you for your service, is it possible that you could have PTSD and hurt Y/N in the middle of the night?"

"I would never hurt her!"

"While you are fully conscious, maybe. But, while you are in a sleep-addled state, isn't it possible that you might think that the person waking you up is an enemy soldier and not your little sister?"

Jay sighed. No one knew this about him, not you, not Will, not his dad. No one. And now all of his family and closest friends were going to know since they were in the courtroom watching this entire thing unfold.

"I am on Prazosin for nightmares caused by my PTSD," Jay answered.

"And how long have you been on this medication?"

"For about two years."

"And this has helped you manage your nightmares?"

"Yes, very much so."

"No further questions."

***

"Jesus, Jay," Will said after you had watched your dad's testimony on why he should get to keep you. It was the usual: how he was your father, so, therefore, he deserved to keep taking care of you and it's what your mother would've wanted...despite her telling Jay to keep you safe before she died. They already had the responding officers testify about the break-in, so he couldn't deny that and he was under oath, so if anyone found out he lied, then your dad would be held in contempt.

"I'm sorry I never told you, man," Jay said. "I just, I thought of it as weak that I couldn't deal with my own shit." He grimaced when he realized he had sworn around you. "Sorry, Y/N."

"It's okay. I hear that stuff at school."

"I'm just upset you didn't tell me they were getting that bad, Jay," Will lamented. "I know I wasn't there for you a lot after Mom died, but I'm here now."

Jay nodded, and Will knew he didn't want to talk about the topic anymore. You looked through the little window into the courtroom and saw that the judge was coming back from her chambers.

"Guys, I think she's made a decision," you said nervously.

"Whatever happens, me and Jay will be there for you," Will promised.

All you could do at this point was nod, as a lump was forming in your throat from all your nerves.

Jay led you back into the courtroom and you sat at the front, between Jay and Will. You wiped your sweaty palms on your dress and Jay gave your shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

Judge Callahan stood up.

"By using the child's best interest standard of who can provide food, clothing, housing, education, medical care, and a stable home life for Y/N Halstead, I declare Mr. Jay Halstead the legal guardian of Y/N Halstead."

You could've sworn that you stopped breathing the second she said Jay's first name. You were so overwhelmed that you just turned to him and started crying as he wrapped an arm around you while he listened to the judge state your dad's visitation rights.

But, you didn't hear any of that. The only phrase that kept repeating in your head was I declare Mr. Jay Halstead the legal guardian of Y/N Halstead over and over again.

Now, you knew that you'd always have the necessities when you lived with Jay. You wouldn't have to worry about where your next meal was going to come from or if your dad would be out until 3 am drinking. You wouldn't have to worry about having access to tampons or pads and not be embarrassed anymore to ask for some from school if you forgot to put any in your backpack that day. But most of all, you knew that you would be loved and cared for.

A/N: Thank you so much for reading! Did I make anyone cry with this one??? The blood draw scenario was actually based on when I had to go and get my blood drawn the other day and thought I was going to pass out, which is why that scene was so long. Anyway, thank you again for reading, and please reblog/like and comment and tell me what you think! As always, if you want to be added to my taglist, just tell me and I’ll add you!

taglist: @theambracer88 @virtualreader @kelelas-life @celyndavies @brookerz122493 @musicismyescape27 @anotherfan07 @thexplosivegirl @dreamingwithlens @xoxmariaxox @onechicago18 @iamasimpingh0e

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[pbandjesse]

It's my mom's birthday!! It has been a stressful day because dad was supposed to have surgery. So even though it got pushed off until tomorrow, we got to have all the stress today. Excellent. I hope mom still was able to find some joy in celebrating. I think we mostly did that on thanksgiving but still. I want her to feel happy, I love her so much.

I had a weird day again. I feel like I blinked and the day was over. I slept fine enough. I woke up and found James in the kitchen with very low energy. They didn't sleep great. I felt bad about that. But it was fine. I kissed on their head and tried my best to cheer them up.

I got washed and dressed. James has been leaving the little space heater in the bathroom on for me so its not so miserable getting dressed. I appreciate that so much.

I felt pretty cute today. I had sratched the mole on my chin and now I keep bumping it so i put a pimple patch on it just to stop it from getting bumped. But I still felt cute. We are at that time of the year when if I dot put powder on my face I look so shiney. I don't know why this happens in the winter but here we are.

I didn't want breakfast. I just felt. Tired. Which was probably part of not eating but I felt a little trapped in that cycle. I needed to get out of the house. I needed something to do. James had gone and taken the box springs to the dump and mailed the cards. The only thing that really needed to be done was to go get groceries. We were out of a lot of staples. So James made a list and off I went.

I had a nice time being out honestly. I felt very cute. My fluffy sweatshirt was all I needed so I didn't wear a coat. I went to giant. Looked at the chirstmas stuff at Walgreens next door before I went and attacked our list. James was very proud of all the deals I got. Lots of buy one get one free. I got things for breakfasts and stuff I could bring with me to work this week.

I brought the new ikea bag and it continues to be the best shopping bag. I fit everything in there except for the drinks I got. Turns out I can fit one and a half gallons of milk and apple cider into my leather backpack. So that's pretty cool.

I headed home. Ran into Nick. He said he was very impressed by me carrying that big bag and then piling my mail on top of it. It was nice to see him. He is moving back in upstairs while Kim goes south for a while. I shot her a text but I know she is busy figuring out the whole move.

James met me upstairs and helped me put everything away. I opened the mail. The other book I got came and the new matching bracelets I got for me and James. We went with sterling silver this time. And they are nice! All the jump rings are solder closed so you know its quality.

I made some food and did some styling. But then I was just. Cold and annoyed that I was cold. The heater had the living room so nice and warm yesterday but today it just would warm up the space. So I was just cold and tired and annoyed.

I went and laid in the studio and bundled up and was so comfy. I kept checking in with my parents about the surgery but it kept getting pushed back and back and back and now its going to be tomorrow. So that's annoying. Poor dad didn't get to eat all day. They even prepped him! But then canceled it. Annoying.

I ended up falling asleep. I don't know for how long. I didn't want to leave my warm little area. The world was cold. But I would get up for a bit. I had some food. I bothered James for a little. I mostly just wanted to be in my pod.

But I would work on a new print. I find birds so stupidly hard to make. But I am really happy with how its going so far. I needed a lot of references but I think it will be a good one. A little different from the others. I want to make more that don't have a solid rectangle boarder and try printing them on fabrics like I used to. We will see. But so far so good.

I just got a shower and I feel very nice. I have added a body oil into my routine and I think its helping my poor skin. I am wearing my robe and I feel very good. I am looking forward to work tomorrow. I hope it is a fun day. Sleep well everyone. Take care of yourselves! Goodnight!

[specterchasing-a]

Unjust Trophies || Dani & Eddie

TIMING: Current (Yesterday)

PARTIES: @surmamort​ & @specterchasing​

SUMMARY: Eddie has a weird way of showing gratitude after Dani saves his life.

CONTENT: Gore tw

Dani held onto her bag with one hand while she flipped through a magazine on the rack with the other. The customer in front of her was taking a little too long to get through their groceries. She let out a sigh and looked around, trying to see if there were any other lanes that were open. Dani noticed the green light turn on for one down the way and she hurriedly put the magazine away. All she needed to buy was almond milk and it was taking her nearly thirty minutes for something that should’ve only taken ten. Just as she was about to step inside the lane, somebody cut her. “Hey!” Dani whined, prodding at their shoulder. When they turned around, she was surprised to see Eddie. 

“Oh, hey!” She hadn’t seen him much since high school ended, but had kept up with his channel-- mostly out of curiosity, and to see exactly what the other unseen side of White Crest had to offer-- plus, she wanted to make sure that he wasn’t sticking out his neck too far. “Sorry, I was just stuck behind somebody and they were taking forever.” She rolled her eyes before she set the milk down between her feet, her hands beginning to go numb from how cold it was. “How’s the channel? And yes, I do watch.” Dani said matter-of-factly. She may have only been able to catch episodes while at the university’s computer lab, but she did keep up with each video released. 

Eddie ambled over to the check-out line, bag in hand. He made for an awful shopper, always forgetting what he needed to buy unless it was for Bucket. He gripped the dog food and, in his rush to return home, slipped past someone he didn’t see. Their prodding finger caused him to turn around in genuine confusion, but his expression immediately shifted to unfettered delight when he recognized who’d been poking him. “No, that’s totally my bad,” he confessed with a dismissive shake of his head. “I get major tunnel vision in places like this and forget how to be, y’know, considerate.” 

“You watch my channel? Dani Edwards watches my channel—color me flattered,” Eddie said in mild disbelief, a hint of pride shining in his eyes. “It’s going really well, actually. 1.5 million subscribers isn’t too shabby.” He realized he was edging too close to bragging territory for comfort and quickly switched gears. “What about you, how’s adult life going for White Crest’s resident mysterious loner?”

“Of course, dude.” Dani smiled at him. She looked past him to the cashier who was ringing up somebody’s pears. “That’s awesome. See, you don’t even need Crestians.” Though, she knew that he did, considering the content he explored was centered in the hot spot. She stuck her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and nodded at his dog food. “What kind of dog do you have?” Every day, she was closer to adopting one and just bringing it home. She was old enough to sign at the shelter-- and maybe she could argue that that one annoying French hunter had one he took with him on hunts, so why couldn’t she? 

The cashier coughed loudly and Dani looked past Eddie again, noticing that now she was free to take his groceries. “I think it’s your turn.” She smiled and leaned down to pick up her milk. She glanced to the side and saw the rack of gum lined up. She snagged a spearmint and held it between her thumb and index finger, flicking it against the half-gallon of milk as she waited for Eddie to be finished ringing up.

“Maybe not,” Eddie mused. “But I thrive off of hometown support.” Not that he received much. Despite how many subscribers he had, not many of them were from White Crest. The majority of Crestians preferred to pretend his content didn’t exist, so it gave him a nice boost of confidence when one occasionally acknowledged his work. “Oh! A Pomerianian—his name’s Bucket and he’s essentially the center of my universe,” Eddie said, partially speaking over his shoulder as he walked towards the cashier. It didn’t take long for her to ring up his one and only item, but he remained nearby to wait for Dani.

“Thanks for letting me go before you, by the way,” he said with a cordial smile. “Maybe, I could return the favor by walking you to your car? Safety in numbers, y’know? You never can be too careful in this town.”

“Bucket,” Dani mouthed as Eddie turned around to turn his attention to the cashier. She listened to the rhythmatic beeps of the scanner and smiled at Eddie when he offered to walk her to her car. Dani refrained from explaining that she’d be giving him safety. “Oh, sure.” Instead, she placed the almond milk down on the conveyor belt and waited for her turn. 

As she stood behind him, she glanced outside towards the parking lot-- visible enough. The sun hadn’t started to dip yet. Then again, the likelihood of being attacked in a supermarket parking lot… Dani didn’t finish the thought, hopeful that things would stay normal for once. She pulled her wallet out of her backpack and began to thumb out a five dollar bill. When it was her turn, she quickly paid for her milk and followed behind Eddie. “How old is Bucket by the way?” She asked innocently, always interested in other peoples’ dogs, seeing as she couldn’t have her own. The parking lot was mostly empty, save for the sense of existential dread that washed over her.

While Dani went through the motions of checking out, Eddie busied himself by rocking from heel-to-toe and carefully examining a rack of magazines. As soon as she joined him, his feet carried him to the door. “He’ll be…” Eddie paused to do some quick mental math. “5 in a few months. I got him as soon as I—”

Eddie’s sentence was interrupted when a snarling man with weathered and sallow skin took hold of his sweater. He threw Eddie to the ground, promptly descending upon him with ill-intent; the bag of dog food burst open as it hit the ground. Eddie struggled beneath his weight. “What the fuck? What the actual fu—” This time, he’d been interrupted by his own jaw clenching as the man’s teeth began closing in on his neck.

Dani cursed under her breath. Of course every time she hoped for something to go smoothly, it didn’t. The snarling wasn’t unfamiliar, but something she hadn’t heard in awhile. It was rare that there were starving zombies roaming White Crest, especially in town. Dani jumped into action as the zombie reached for Eddie. 

The humanoid figure slouched, half of its face rotted. The smell curled around her nose, enough to make her gag, but she repressed the urge. She immediately reached for the collar of the decaying zombie’s shirt, yanking him away from Eddie. “Get the fuck off of him!” The zombie stumble-walked backwards, knocking into a nearby car. It began to gargle, its arms outstretched towards her. Dani used all of the force she could and chucked the almond milk at its head. It exploded on impact, giving Dani enough time to turn back to Eddie. “You-- we-- We need to go. Now.” 

As Dani yanked the zombie off of Eddie, its nails raked against his forearm hard enough to draw blood. Almond milk sprayed the area while he stared at the wound in disbelief. He didn’t know much about zombies, least of all that zombieism could only be transmitted via bite. As far as Eddie was concerned, he’d been handed a shiny new species to look forward to once he wound up on the wrong side of the grass.

Dani shouted orders at him, bringing him out of his thoughts, and Eddie quickly scrambled to his feet. “My car’s right over there,” he pointed to the cherry red Mini Cooper S across the parking lot and took off after it, hoping Dani would follow. If she didn’t, he hoped she wasn’t done offering instructions. Eddie had questions he needed to ask her, they couldn’t part ways now.

“Car. Yes. Go.” She looked over at the red Mini Cooper S that he pointed to and nodded. It wasn’t her truck, but it’d do. Dani hadn’t ever mowed down a zombie with her truck before, and a part of her was disappointed that she wouldn’t get to try. She followed after Eddie closely, turning to look behind them as the zombie scrambled towards them. Gee, they were a lot faster than in the movies. Once they got to the car, Dani waited on the passenger side door, but the zombie had stumbled after them. She was shoved against the car, unhinged jaws snapping open and closed at her neck, just as it had to Eddie. Now, not only did it smell like rot, but it smelled like almond milk, too. Disgusting. It was strong, but she was stronger. She had noticed that it was missing large chunks of flesh from its arms and face, showing teeth, sinew, and abhorrent gore. 

“Dumbass, you can’t do shit to me.” Dani struggled once as she felt herself get pinned against the door. She lifted her forearm in defense as the starving zombie aimed for her neck. Even she wasn’t immune to a torn jugular. Instead, the creature caught her arm with its teeth. “Oh, fuck you,” She seethed. She twisted slightly from its weight and grabbed the back of its head. With all of her force, she slammed it against the top of the car. Brain splatter and fluids coated the roof and her shirt, but she didn’t care. It wasn’t dead, not yet. She heard the door click open and Dani took the opportunity she needed. She wrenched it open as the slobbering zombie bent towards her, aiming to take another bite. She swiftly pushed the zombie into the door and crushed its already rotted head off of its body. It rolled into the passenger seat with one final guttural groan and Dani looked at Eddie. “Sorry. Pop your trunk.” She couldn’t just leave it in the parking lot, not where somebody could find it. It was already bad enough that Eddie had seen her in action. She awkwardly dragged the zombie backwards, looking over her shoulder as she did so. It wasn’t until then that she noticed the blood coating the sleeve of her sweater. Whatever. She’d deal with that later.

While Dani struggled with the zombie, Eddie struggled with his keys. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he repeated in quick succession as they slipped out of his shaking hand, hitting the asphalt below with a pathetic jingle. Without hesitation, he dropped to his knees and collected the keyring, but the sound of Dani being pushed against the passenger side of the car nearly made him drop them again. He caught sight of her and the zombie through the windows, his heart beating wildly in his chest. At the store entrance, she somehow managed to pry the zombie off of him, but its jaws were closing in on her now. Eddie thought Dani was about to die, and he couldn’t move a single muscle in his body. He was useless.

Instead of succumbing to her undead assailant, Dani shouted something that made Eddie’s brow furrow. “Dumbass, you can’t do shit to me.” Her words echoed in his mind a few times before the pieces fell into place. Fear receded in pulsing waves as he rose to his feet and unlocked the door, opening it to give Dani access to the passenger seat with the click of a button. Before he could duck into his seat, he saw Dani grip the back of the zombie’s head. Eddie instinctively lifted his arm to cover his face. Gray matter painted the roof of his car on impact. A few errant chunks clung to Eddie’s jacket sleeve and hair. “Oh, what the fuck, Dani?” he shouted in disgust. He whipped his arm to try and persuade the rancid meat to make friends with the ground instead of his clothes.

“No! No, no, no,” he pleaded, pressing the heels of his palms against either side of his temple, as Dani played executioner with his only means of transportation. A zombie’s head was in his passenger seat. Eddie looked at her with incontestable annoyance. “Sorry?” he parroted with unfettered bewilderment. “Are you fucking kidding me right now? I drive this car everyday, Dani. Everyday. You’ve got super strength at your disposal, but you couldn’t give the car two feet away from us the honor of being anointed with rotted head guts instead of mine?” He exhaled sharply and fell into the driver’s seat. Chewing on the inside of his cheek, Eddie popped the trunk. He knew better than to say no to a hunter. She likely wouldn’t do him any harm considering he was only human (for now, anyway,), but the last thing he needed was a hunter who had a bone to pick with him. He knew too many supernatural beings to invite that particular brand of bullshit into his life.

“That smell is never going to come out,” he groaned, wiping his hands down his face. “This is my life now.” He slammed his door shut and turned in his seat to face Dani at the rear of the car. “Where are we taking this guy, anyway? Do you have a usual spot for this kind of thing, or is it time for a little improv?” Once she was inside the car, he would begin unleashing the more important questions.

Dani quickly (and efficiently) dumped the headless corpse into the trunk. She then retreated to the passenger side door, ignoring the look that Eddie sent her way. She had just saved his life and he wanted to cock an attitude? She let out an annoyed breath before she picked up the head, cradling it as if it were a small infant. She dropped it into the trunk with less care and slammed it shut. She hung outside of the door for a moment, assessing the damage that’d been done. She didn’t have a lot of money, but if she told Lauren she needed a chunk of change for something, she was sure to get it. She took off her sweater, revealing a tank top beneath. Her arm was smeared with blood and there was a small indentation there. Again, whatever. 

“It will, don’t worry.” She’d cleaned enough surfaces to know that the smell of zombie guts didn’t last forever. She quickly cleaned up the seat as best as she could before rolling her sweater in on itself, holding it in her lap as she climbed into the car. 

She looked over at Eddie once inside and pursed her lips. “So obviously since you know shit about ghosts, you can take a look and understand the pieces of what just happened without me having to explain it to you,” She held up a finger to keep him from talking over her, “I won’t answer your specific questions because you shouldn’t even fucking know this shit in the first place, but--” She reached over and took a look at the scratches on his skin, “doesn’t look too bad.” For somebody like Eddie, Dani didn’t think to correct him about his hopes that he’d become a zombie. Instead, she rolled a window down and looked out into the parking lot. It didn’t seem like anyone had seen them. If they did, they were probably too terrified to come forward. 

“I’d just…” She paused. “Appreciate it if you didn’t go telling anyone about this. Namely, your Youtube channel.” She gave him a cold look, “This isn’t shit to fuck around with. You could’ve been seriously killed back there.” 

So, she saved his life, big deal. Eddie didn’t ask for a savior of any kind, least of all one who talked to him like he was some burdensome child; out of his depth and exasperating the adults who knew better. He realized he had a long way to go and a lot to learn, but that would never happen if people kept doing their level best to keep him ignorant. “Yeah, I’m not a moron, Dani.” he said, his brows knitting together in frustration. A trace of despondency settled in his eyes. He hated this feeling, this imposed inadequacy. No matter what, he would never be allowed to do the one thing that made sense to him, and he couldn’t figure out why. No one had an answer for him beyond ‘it’s dangerous.’ That just wasn’t good enough. 

Eddie rolled his eyes at Dani’s assertion. She took his arm and examined the wound along his forearm before he could pull down his jacket sleeve. He didn’t know what her morals were as a hunter, she could very well nip a condition like his in the bud while she had the chance. “Doesn’t look too bad?” he repeated with sincere confusion, soon after realizing she must know something he didn’t. Maybe zombie scratches were only effective when Mercury was in retrograde, or maybe the zombie in question needed to have gotten a haircut the Tuesday before an attack for it to turn someone. Eddie didn’t know, how could he? To people like Dani, people who had answers, he was persona non grata. “Great.”

With a sigh, Eddie put the key into the ignition and started the car. An unexpected laugh broke free from his chest. “Yeah, I’m kind of aware of that since I experienced every second of him trying to eat me in brilliant Technicolor.” He shot a sideways glance her way, his smile already failing, before his gaze settled on where he was driving. “I’m gonna ask you to do me a favor, Dani. Should you come across me in a situation like that ever again, don’t be a hero.”

Dani did not, by any means, expect for Eddie to jump for joy and slobber over the fact that she had saved him. She preferred it when people kept it lowkey, but the irritation rolling off of him was hard to miss. Had a near death experience done that to him? Maybe it was the fact that she had splattered zombie guts over the top of his car, into his door, and onto his seat. She stared a beat of a second too long. She forced herself to breathe through her nose. Maybe a bad idea, because it was starting to smell. 

She slumped back in the seat, not sure what to say. She looked down at her hands, covered in gore. She wiped them again on her already ruined sweater and chewed the inside of her cheek. When he snapped at her, she froze momentarily. What the fuck was going on. She blinked a few times. Maybe it had been a bad idea, getting into his car. Maybe she should have just dragged the corpse to her truck. It wasn’t that far away anyways. Even if she wanted to leave now, she couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t speed off.

The Eddie that Dani had met in the grocery store was absent now. He had seemed more grateful that she subscribed to his Youtube channel than when she saved his life. People in this town had some fucked up priorities. “Mm, can’t do that for you.” She leveled with his gaze, her own skin growing hot with the altercation that was taking place. “It’s my damn job to keep people out of trouble. Do you not realize that?” She lifted her arm to show the zombie bite. “This could’ve been you. But it’s not. I don’t understand what your fucking deal is. Did you want to die?” She looked out the window and forced out a laugh. “What would have happened was you would’ve gotten your jugular torn out. Then what. You give it a couple hours, maybe overnight. You come back, like that,” She jutted her thumb towards the trunk where the corpse laid, “And life as you know it is over. You eat and kill innocent humans, just like that one tried to do to you.” She felt her voice begin to shake, “So I’d appreciate it if you chilled the fuck out. I don’t know if this is you upset because you nearly died, which, okay-- Understandable, but I don’t deserve this bullshit.” She slapped her hands to her knees and shook her head. “I don’t know what the fuck I did to piss you off so badly. Sorry I used your car as a fucking weapon, I guess? But it’s not like I’m not going to not pay for any damages caused, so if that’s your concern, then--” She took a deep breath. Another mistake. God, it smelled. “Then I’ve fucking got it, okay? I was just trying to protect you.” Why the fuck was she getting so worked up over this? 

Between Dani’s condescension, the rancid smell of rotted skin tissue giving him a formidable headache, surviving a near death experience, witnessing the death of something that used to be human, and discovering that the scratch was likely nothing more than a potential infection in the making, Eddie was having a pretty bad day. He liked to think of himself as a generally friendly and upbeat kind of guy, but this felt like too much for him to brush off. 

Eddie gripped the steering wheel firmly as his passenger retaliated. She raised her arm and he made it a point to keep his eyes on the parking lot. “Money? Is that what you think this is about?” he snapped at the end of her diatribe. “I don’t want your money. I don’t want anything from you.” His jaw clenched and his shoulders ached with tension. “You killed a zombie, congratulations! The guy was fucking starving. He used to be someone, now he’s a pile of putrid flesh in the back of my goddamn car.”

He thought about Morgan, how she resented the quip he made about her eating human brains. She took the subject seriously enough that jokes were off the table. To think, someone might do to her what Dani did to the zombie mere minutes ago, it was unforgivably unfair. For all he knew, Dani herself might run into his undead friend and put a brutal end to her. If she did, he knew who the real monster would be.

“And you’re so full of shit, not every zombie is a mindless husk hunting down innocent humans. Which, by the way, fat chance they’d ever find one even if they were.” Dani’s dogmatic viewpoints twisted Eddie’s already churning stomach into knots. “I don’t give a shit that I nearly died, it happens. I give a shit that someone I used to think was alright turned out to be one of the most reprehensible people I’ve ever known, and you proved it in less than an hour.”

Maybe it was her fault, Dani thought. To think that everyone would think the same way she would. She’d be immersed in a life that wrote BEWARE against every terrible creature that White Crest, or the world, had to offer. She felt her skin start to crawl. The way that Eddie was looking at her was the same way that Jeanette looked at her when she made a mistake, or when she asked a question that had an obvious answer. Her mouth tasted like iron. He was upset with her for saving his life, and for killing that zombie. It would have killed him, and then Dani would have had to watch somebody else succumb to becoming something monstrous-- something they truly didn’t understand. 

Everything she wanted to say before, it died on her tongue. If you show anger, they’ve won. Did that count with humans? Arguing the worth of something that, at the end of the day, wasn’t worth arguing about. At least, not in this regard. Eddie sounded like Bex, only angrier. “Eddie,” Dani warned. She ground her teeth and gripped the door. Why did these humans, these people with rose colored glasses, decide what was right and what was wrong? Why were they so hellbent on protecting, or showing mercy to these things that tried to kill them? Dani wanted to scream at him, to tell him to wake the fuck up. She wanted to show him the countless maulings she’d been forced to identify before she could stomach it. She wanted to guide him to the families who lost their loved ones to these creatures-- the ones who didn’t turn, the ones who were dismembered, the ones whose hearts were eaten, who had nothing left behind to reignite, to stand up on their own two feet. 

Dani hated the way that he looked at her. Who was he to pretend? He hunted ghosts on his stupid Youtube channel, big whoop! There would have been danger there, Dani realized, but at this moment it didn’t matter. She had been taught to kill before anything else. Before she had even been taught to love. She didn’t know what kind of life Eddie led, which was why she didn’t snap back. It’s why she kept her mouth shut as he berated her. She continued to ground her teeth, pulling the skin of her cheek between them. She could taste the blood now. It was hot and loud in her mouth. She sat there, stunned. Heart loud in her ears. The smell of the zombie curled around her nose and all she wanted to do was get out of there. 

She didn’t dare cry. She didn’t dare show weakness. Dani instead nodded. “If that’s what you think, but it’s still my job.” Her chest was tight. She wanted to scream, to pound her fists against the very thing she’d just killed. What could have been something simple turned into something outright disastrous. “My truck is on the other side of the parking lot.” She steeled herself further. She was no warden, but she felt herself made of iron; every insult, every disgusted sneer sent her way, pushed deep. Deep into the blood that ran through her veins. Killer, killer, killer. It was written all over Eddie’s face, what he thought of her. She couldn’t care. She wouldn’t care. He was some stupid kid with a camera who threw himself into things he didn’t understand. She wouldn’t cry. She couldn’t. 

Eddie nodded silently and guided the car into the parking spot next to Dani’s truck. He clenched his jaw to keep himself from going on another acidic tirade. As much as he wanted to be a voice of reason, he knew some people couldn’t be swayed. In a way, he felt bad for Dani, knowing she would never see the redeemable side of the supernatural and how worthwhile it could be. But his anger outweighed his pity. He put the car in park and popped the trunk. “Don’t forget your trophy,” he said.

#c: dani #wickedswriting #writing #unjust trophies #// i am ETERNALLY grateful to ci for letting me explore this side of eddie #even if it is not at all how i hoped he and dani would get along #unfortunately not everything goes according to keikaku #gore tw

[stereksecretsanta]

Merry Christmas, tabbytabbytabby!

For @tabbytabbytabby, who wanted alive Hale pack and anything alternative universe. MERRY CHRISTMAS AND I HOPE YOU ENJOY IT!!!! I decided to go with a rock band AU because let's face it, they're all stupid hot and would look so good doing it. My headcanon for alive Laura Hale is the incomparable Katie McGrath if you want a visual. Those eyes, man. They make my little bisexual heart very happy.

Also everyone here is somewhere in the Kinsey Scale :)))) There will be smut and idiocy. Idiots in love has become one of my favourite tags!

The underage occurs when Derek and Stiles are in high school. Derek is a senior and Stiles is a sophomore.

Band line up is as follows:

Laura - lead vocals Derek - lead guitar Boyd - bass Erica - acoustic guitar and backing vocals Isaac - keyboard and backing vocals Cora - drums and backing vocals

Read On AO3

*****

Edge Of Seventeen

Chapter 1 - Say What Now?

‘Do you want to?’

It took Stiles a few moments to focus on the words, electricity buzzing under his skin and his mouth bruised and still wet with Derek’s spit. Two warm broad hands settled either side of his face and gently redirected his attention. In the dark of the Camaro’s back seat, Derek’s pale eyes glittered.

‘We can.’ His voice was low and rough, his breathing out of kilter. ‘If you want to.’

Stiles looked at him, his heart racing a thousand miles a minute.

I want to.’ he said and fell into another kiss.

The alarm woke Stiles with a start. He swore and leaned over to slide a finger across the screen and turn it off. He’d forgotten when he’d arrived the night before, still a little jet lagged and not quite with everything when he’d collapsed into bed and been asleep in what was probably a record time.

He lay still, looking up at the ceiling and getting his breath back. He hadn’t had a dream about Derek Hale in a very long time and he was chalking it up to being back in his childhood bed. Independence Day had been the one holiday he’d won in the field office lottery, and so Stiles had packed up and gone home for the long weekend, four blissful days off. He’d known going into the FBI would be hard, but he’d had no idea just how hard it would be. Noah was delighted. The last time they’d seen each other had been Christmas and Stiles had been morose after yet another break up. He’d spent an afternoon wandering around the preserve, ending up staring at the Hale house, still closed up and looking a little worse for wear, with nary a Hale in sight.

This time it was summer, the heat already making his room uncomfortable. Stiles grimaced and plucked his damp t-shirt away from his skin, sitting up and dragging a hand over his face as he tried to wake up properly, manfully ignoring his dream-induced erection that made him feel like he was a teenager all over again.

‘Stiles?’ Noah yelled from downstairs. ‘You up, kiddo?’

‘I’m twenty-six, Dad,’ Stiles muttered, standing up and stretching. ‘Not a kid anymore.’

He was feeling it too, the crashing realisation that those carefree days were far behind him. He had a job and an apartment in Sacramento, cacti that he had managed not to kill. All the cool stuff. It wasn’t hard to feel like something was missing but Stiles would never admit that the string of failed relationships he had accumulated were anything to do with what Lydia referred to as ‘the one who got away���.

Noah was in the kitchen as he predicted, sleep rumpled and unshaven in sweat pants and an old BHPD t-shirt. He’d been taking it a bit easier, giving Parrish more and more responsibility. Stiles was pleased and Parrish was both smart and sensible, a combination that Lydia had found irresistible. Their senior year fling had evolved into a long term relationship until Lydia had come home to buy them a small clapboard Victorian near the preserve and commute to the research lab every day where she had her associate professorship. Parrish had presented her with a simple solitaire ring at Christmas and she was very happy.

‘Are you going to see Mom?’ he asked and Stiles nodded, grabbing the orange juice from the ridge and pouring himself a glass, sniffing hopefully at the eggs Noah was scrambling. He noticed Stiles’ meaningful look and grinned.

‘I thought I would go after breakfast,’ He beamed at his father when he was presented with a plate full of eggs and bacon.

‘It’s turkey before you get on your high horse,’ Noah told him. ‘Get your own coffee if you want some.’

‘Not yet.’ Stiles made space for him to sit down and they ate in comfortable silence. Once finished, he did get up to make two cups. Noah accepted his gratefully and smiled at his son, grey eyes twinkling.

‘So…,’ he started and Stiles held up a finger.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t care who it is you want to set me up with, it’s not happening.’ His parents had a terrible habit of matchmaking.

Noah held up both hands in supplication.

‘Not setting you up,’ he protested. ‘Just thought I’d mention that when your mother went into the shop yesterday, she saw a ghost from the past. Several, actually.’

Stiles cursed internally. His dad knew he couldn’t resist a good mystery.

‘Okay, I’ll bite,’ he replied, starting to get up.

‘The Hales.’ Noah replied with all the smugness of a man who knew he had the scoop of the year.

‘Oh fuck.’ Stiles blurted and tripped over his chair.

-

It was the sneezing that woke Derek up.

‘Jesus fuck!’ Laura roared a floor below him. ‘How much fucking shit is in this place?’

‘Oh good, she’s awake.’ Cora muttered and turned over. They were in what had been the twins’ bedroom, each of them crammed into a single that was a little on the small side. The top storey of the house was still a burned out wreck and the furniture had been largely taken away over the years and so the pickings had been slim, with their merry threesome taking the scorched master bedroom and Laura camping out on the sagging couch downstairs. As Alpha, she always preferred to be on watch as it were.

‘This was such a bad idea.’ Derek borrowed deeper into his comforter. ‘We should have brought the bus.’

‘That would have given the game away.’ Laura replied, hearing them both perfectly even though she was now in the kitchen. ‘Which part of low profile are you two having trouble with?’

‘We could have always stayed in a hotel. Sleeping int the burned out remains of our family home is precisely the opposite of low profile. Lo.’ Derek pointed out, sitting up. There was no way he’d be going back to sleep. Not with his alpha on a mission.

‘Discretion is our watchword, Derek.’ Laura hissed and started banging pots and pans around with a maximum of noise. Derek looked over at Cora. Her dark eyes were just visible under the pillow she had over her head.

‘You’re her second.’ She bared her teeth at him. ‘You go deal with her.’

‘I hate you.’ Derek said flatly, rolling out of bed and onto his feet. He stumbled a little on the stairs, still half asleep. Laura had her head buried in a blackened cupboard when he got to the kitchen. It hadn’t been as badly affected as the rest of the house but it was still a health hazard as far as he was concerned.

‘Where the hell is the waffle iron?’ she demanded. ‘Mom said she left it here.’

‘Who the fuck knows?’ Derek yawned and went to the fridge. There was nothing inside except for a gallon of milk and the leftover Chinese take out from the night before. He sniffed a carton of lemon chicken, grabbing some disposable chopsticks from the small pile on the kitchen table, and started eating. Laura eyed him, one fang just visible.

‘We need proper food.’ She glared at the ceiling. ‘Everybody up! We’re going grocery shopping!’

‘Christ.’ Derek grumbled. ‘You think that’s low profile too?’

‘Shut up.’ Laura swept past him, nose in the air. ‘I’m the Alpha now.’

Derek sniggered and let her go, enjoying his leftovers while he listened to her rouse the threesome. There was a lot of complaining, and he couldn’t really blame them. Their schedule had been hectic, even for wolves, and they were all tired and the house wasn’t exactly welcoming. Laura’s plans to come home and reclaim their territory now she was an Alpha in her own right had seen them finish the final leg of their international tour in New York, a quick catch up with their pack and then flying down to Sacramento and driving the three hours to Beacon Hills all in twenty-four hours. They had barely had time to stop in at the small coffee shop near the Sheriff's station before coming out to the house, which had been shut up for the past ten years. Peter had intended to join them, but had been delayed in New York. As their manager, he was the one who took care of all the dealings with their record company. If it was left to him and Laura, they probably would have eaten every executive by now. He was worth every penny they paid him, even if the meeting had probably been manufactured as a way to get out of cleaning up the house.

-

Stiles pulled up at the cemetery, parking the Jeep behind the old truck that had parked off centre and across two spaces. Grinning, he got out and made his way through the iron gates, remembering Isaac Lahey, who’d been a couple of years above him at school. His father had been the groundskeeper before there had been an incident at their house and Coach Lahey had been found dead. He remembered Isaac being taken in by social services and a whole sordid story of child abuse and alcoholicism coming out. Isaac had stayed off school for a week and then simply vanished off the face of the earth. There had been a lot of theories as to where he’d gone, but the truth was he wasn’t the first person to do that in 2011.

Stiles got lost in thought as he meandered between the headstones, finally coming to a stop in front of one made of white marble and embossed with angels.

‘That’s new.’ he remarked. ‘Not sure about the daffodils.’

‘They’re so gaudy.’ The dark haired woman kneeling at the grave grinned over her shoulder at him, her eyes the same warm whiskey brown as her son’s. ‘I’m glad to see you made it out of bed. I was starting to think you’d spend the whole weekend hibernating.’

‘Funny.’ Stiles helped Claudia up and gave her a long hug. When she let him go, she stepped back and looked him up and down.

‘You look good.’ she said. ‘Dare I say, professional.’

‘Mom.’ Stiles settled his hands on her shoulders. ‘Dad said you saw the Hales yesterday.’

‘Oh.’ Claudia’s look of faux innocence was belied by the mischievous twinkle in her eyes. ‘Is that why you came to see me. No ‘I’ve missed you terribly Mother’, but ‘You saw the fucking Hales’.’

‘Mom.’ Stiles narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Did you see him?’

‘Who?’ Claudia crinkled her nose in amusement. ‘The boy you’ve been literally pining for, for almost a decade?’

‘I’m sure he’s not a boy anymore.’ Stiles snorted. ‘And yes. Stop playing dumb.’

‘I might have.’ Claudia tilted her head. ‘What’s it worth?’

‘A double chocolate muffin and all the lattes you can drink.’ Stiles replied and she cackled and linked her arm through his.

‘Done.’ she declared. ‘And you’re right. He’s definitely not a boy anymore.’

-

Derek leaned heavily on the cart, eyelids at half mast and his senses muted. The store was fairly empty, the early hour on a Saturday meaning that most shoppers were yet to make an appearance. Next to him Boyd yawned and shifted on his feet, hands sunk deep in the pockets of his leather jacket.

They’d been best friends a long time, playing basketball and baseball and getting into shit when they were teenagers and when things had turned bad and they’d had to leave, Boyd had been dogged in his refusal to cut ties and turned up at the pack house in New York a week after graduation with Erica in tow. They had walked right in and asked Talia for the bite and she’d given it gladly. Derek knew she was going to do it for Erica even before they had had to flee their territory and they’d settled in like they’d always been pack. Isaac had, of course, already joined them earlier and his delight at having them back had turned into a deep and abiding love that saw them forming their triad and becoming mates.

Erica was leaning on Isaac, her blond curls dragged into a messy ponytail and Cora was trailing Laura a few feet ahead. It always grated that she had inherited their mother’s early rising nature while the rest of them would have happily slept in and threw her weight around to get them out of bed when they most definitely didn’t want to. Even the fact that Derek was her twin didn’t let him get out of doing what she wanted.

‘Toilet paper.’ Laura turned and they all tried to avoid her eyes. ‘Derek. Take Boyd and grab some.’

‘But I’m minding the cart,’ he whined, clinging to it like a drowning man to a life preserver.

‘Go!’ Laura’s eyes flared red for just a second and Derek had to resist the urge to snarl back at her like he’d always used to. The whole alpha thing was new, the result of an overambitious alpha that had come into their territory planning to challenge Talia and ending up facing her daughter instead when they tried to take Cora with the intention of forcibly mating her and claiming rights. Talia had always taught them to solve their problems with diplomacy but Laura was headstrong and fiercely protective of her siblings, ever since Kate Argent had tried to use her to get close enough to kill them all. She’d almost succeeded too, that night of the party to celebrate the basketball teams’ victory for nationals providing the perfect distraction for them to be off their guard. Kate had struck in the early hours of the morning and she’d had them trapped, the beginnings of an arson that would have killed them all if Derek hadn’t come back and caught her. He’d ripped her throat out with his teeth, calling Deaton in a panic to come and break the circle of mountain ash that kept them trapped and they’d all watched their family home burn until the police and emergency services had arrived.

Talia had decided that it was too dangerous to stay, knowing the Argents would come for Derek, getting them all packed in a matter of twenty-four hours and away from what was left of their home. They’d gone to their father’s pack in New York State, leaving no sign of them behind. It was the way with wolves, always having a back-up in case something went wrong. The Argents were a large and powerful hunting clan and there would be retribution for the death of Gerard’s golden child, but when they came for the Hales they would find the place empty. Deaton stayed, both to protect the territory and report back to Talia about hunters coming in and not a month after it had happened, they had come. Thankfully the wards on the Hale land had kept the territory claim in place and the hunters had left with no satisfaction.

The rest had been a long and bloody fight between their respective Councils. Gerard had wanted Derek’s head for killing Kate and Talia had countered with the evidence that Kate had planned to kill a pack of law-abiding wolves along with their children. The matter had finally been settled when Gerard died of cancer and his granddaughter, by all accounts a level headed and honourable young woman about the same age as Derek, had taken over.

The music had started as a way to keep them all sane while this was happening, Talia more or less forcing them into music therapy as a way to deal with what had happened. It had been a bit of a shock to realise they were actually very good at it and they’d formed the band. Some minor success saw them moving steadily up the indie charts until it became their lives. Laura had named them Hale Pack 2.0 and Talia had laughed so hard when they’d told her that she’d shifted and clawed right through the cushion she was holding, feathers flying around them like a small snowstorm.

Derek hadn’t minded at first. The music was what he loved, the fame and money secondary. The Hales were already rich, but Peter had jumped at the chance to do something different and he drove their commercial success. They were in that comfortable zone of being middle of the road, not so successful enough that they were household names but it became hard in New York to go anywhere without being recognised.

Derek didn’t enjoy that part much. He was solitary and quietly sarcastic by nature, but unfortunately that just seemed to translate into brooding and mysterious in interviews and so he was plagued by a long line of would-be groupies that tagged along after him like a cloud of midges. Laura found it hilarious and basked in her own popularity. As an out lesbian, she had her choice of pretty girls to shack up with. Cora kept her asexuality to herself, just as surly as Derek was. The other three were not exactly open about their polyamorous arrangegment, but they didn’t hide it either. They were lucky, having found each other and being able to keep each other.

He often thought about that night, the one where the reason he’d been able to save his family was because he’d been in the back seat of his father’s illicitly borrowed Camaro with the boy he’d loved pretty much forever and indulging in a bit of mutual deflowering. Then he’d had to pack up and leave said boy without even saying goodbye or telling him where he was going. It had hurt more than he’d thought possible and if part of why Derek was so keen to come back to Beacon Hills was to try and track down that boy, then who was to know. The only people who knew what he’d been up to were Boyd (because Derek told him everything) and Laura (because she’d sat on him and tickled him until he’d confessed and then had to hold her while she cried, guilt and shame coming off her in waves). Derek hadn’t had the heart to complain when their very survival had been at stake because he’d killed Kate Argent, no matter whose fault it had been. Talia had said to make a clean break with the town and while she’d made allowances for their friends who were already in the know, that was as far as she was willing to push her luck.

Derek and Laura had finished out their schooling at home, Cora had gone to boarding school in South America with her Argentinian grandmother’s pack and the twins were still too young to be a problem so that was, as they said, that. Then had come college, followed by the band and the success and the travelling and before Derek knew it, it had been almost ten years and he was twenty-eight and still hung up on Stiles fucking Stilinski.

‘Hey.’ Boyd bumped him with his shoulder. ‘You alive in there?’

‘Not really.’ Derek surveyed the toilet paper and grabbed a couple of twenty-four packs. ‘Just thinking.’

‘Yeah.’ Boyd grinned, lighting up his usually serious face. ‘I can guess what about too.’

‘Not a goddamned word.’ Derek growled and then froze, his nose twitching madly.

It wasn’t exactly the same, a little deeper and a little thicker but he’d recognise that scent anywhere with his nose stuffed up and people throwing peppermint oil in his face. He shoved the toilet paper at Boyd and charged through the aisle, needing to find the source and skidding to a halt in the aisle with the candy and stared at the Sheriff, who looked like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. In fact, as it was he had cookies in his hands which he quickly put back.

‘Derek?’ He looked pleasantly surprised. ‘Claudia said she’d seen you.’ He came over and Derek couldn’t help taking in a deep breath. The scent of Stiles was all over the Sheriff and it made his heart start thumping like a drum.

‘Sheriff Stilinski.’ He took the offered hand and shook it, gleeful when he could smell a little bit of Stiles on his own skin. ‘Yeah, we’re back. Laura said she was going to stop by and talk to you about the house. She’s actually around here somewhere.’ He couldn’t stop smiling. ‘I’m glad you’re still here.’

‘Where else would we be?’ The Sheriff raised an eyebrow at him. ‘To be honest, we never thought you’d come back. Any of you. The last we heard, you mom and dad had skipped town and taken you all with them after the fire and then five years later, you and your sisters pop up playing gigs in New York with the Lahey kid, Vernon Boyd’s son and Erica Reyes and since you hit the big times, you’ve been entirely responsible for provisioning this town with 90% of its salacious gossip.’

‘How did you know that? I mean, New York.’ Derek was completely bemused. They had started out small, playing tiny venues, still wary of being recognised. It had only been in the last couple of years that they’d made it big enough to be known internationally.

‘I kept track.’ The Sheriff replied. ‘The fact that you all pretty much disappeared overnight hit this town like a slap in the face. I called in a lot of favours.’ There was something in his voice though that had Derek frowning. ‘I had my reasons, son.’

Derek was about to ask him what those were exactly when Laura came barreling down the aisle.

‘There you are.’ She came up short when she saw who he was talking to. ‘Sheriff Stilinski?’

‘The one and only.’ The Sheriff tipped an invisible hat at her. ‘It’s good to see you, Laura. Derek and I were just catching up.’

‘Well, I have to steal him. Excuse us.’ Laura gave him a toothy grin that was not her usual smile and Derek wondered just what was happening. She caught his arm and practically dragged him away.

‘What the hell?’ he protested, trying to wriggle out of her iron grip.

‘Hunters.’ she hissed and Derek’s blood ran cold.

‘Are you sure?’ he asked and she nodded, her face grim.

‘The others are doing the check out.’ she said. ‘We need to go.’

-

Stiles parked on the kerb and got out. Claudia already had the front door open and was looking down the street.

‘Visitor.’ she announced and went inside, leaving him to stand and wait for the car to stop. He bounced in excitement, barely waiting for the driver to get out before grabbing her and squeezing her hard enough to make her squeak.

‘Lydia, my strawberry blonde goddess.’ He kissed her cheek soundly. ‘I was wondering when you’d show up.’

‘Stiles.’ Lydia had softened since high school, growing into her intellect and losing the hard veneer of extreme fashion that had been her armour in high school. She was still elegant, but the tan leather boots she wore under her long floral skirt were flat and her face was less determinedly made up, her hair a mass of loose fronds that framed her face. She was also as beautiful as she had always been but Stiles loved her for more than that. They had grown close in junior year when Jackson had moved to the UK and she’d been left bereft. Scott had been dating Kira that year and he’d had little time for Stiles so they’d drifted together and never really drifted apart, in spite of their physical distance. Now Scott and Kira were engaged, with Scott working for Deaton full time and Kira teaching martial arts with their first baby on the way and Stiles felt even more like he was lagging behind. Lydia kept him tied to Beacon Hills as much as his parents did.

‘So what are you doing here?’ He escorted her to the house. Lydia went in first, saying hello to Claudia as they went into the kitchen.

‘I have some news you might want to hear.’ she said, her eyes dancing.

‘’If it’s that the Hales are back, I already know.’ Stiles was smug when she pouted. He so seldom got one over on her so it was fun when he did.

‘Sorry.’ Claudia grinned at Lydia. ‘That was my fault.’

‘Dammit.’ Lydia folded her arms. ‘Well that may be, but I bet you don’t know that they’re going to be playing the Jungle tonight.’

‘No, that I did not know.’ Stiles was immediately hooked. He’d always wanted to go watch them, ever since they’d first popped back up on his radar after years of radio silence, courtesy of a discarded music magazine in the field office. He’d fantasised about meeting Derek’s eyes across a crowded venue but he knew that in reality, Derek probably didn’t even remember the boy he fucked in the back of his sister’s car and probably also had his pick of beautiful people to spend his time with. It hadn’t stopped him from following the band’s progress almost obsessively though.

He’d been distraught when Derek had gone, trying to find any trace of him online, but there had been nothing at all in the years just after the fire. Noah had been cagey about what he’d known and Stiles had been at a loose end, trying to fill in the gaps. When he’d rediscovered them, Stiles had followed them on every form of social media he could and tracked down every article about them. Derek still didn’t have any online presence apart from that and the music videos his band put out. Stiles had jealously hoarded every single tiny piece of information and downloaded every picture and video of him, seeing how handsome Derek had become, growing into himself in a way Stiles envied. He’d jerked off many a night, watching the stylised black and white videos that the Hale Pack 2.0 preferred. Derek was always dressed in black jeans and tight white t-shirts, the sleeves of his trademark leather jacket pushed up to his elbows and his broad hands drawing Stiles’ gaze in as he played his guitar, all precision and power that had Stiles breath coming short at the thought of them on him.

‘Danny told me this morning. He’s practically beside himself at getting them on his books at such short notice.’ Lydia smirked, knowing she had his full attention. Danny had made a ton of money in apps and bought his old stomping ground. It had had a makeover and was now a very stylish LGBTQ+ venue that he ruled along with Jackson as his partner in business and life, once he’d had his gay crisis while he was gone. Stiles knew from the Hales’ publicity that Laura was a lesbian and he was pretty sure Isaac, Erica and Boyd were involved in something that looked pretty polyamorous but Derek and Cora were notoriously private and there was never any suggestion as to who they might be seeing. It seemed the kind of place they would be playing.

‘Okay.’ He moved to the coffee maker, preparing for a long sit down. ‘Tell me everything.’

TBC on AO3!

#tabbytabbytabby #stereksanta20 #*fic20 #*gifts20

[theladyofdeath]

Alone in the Ashes {1}

A Court of Thorns and Roses fanfction, characters belong to Sarah J Maas. Revolves around Nesta x Cassian, Feyre x Rhysand, and Elain x Azriel. Other characters appear throughout. Based on multiple prompts sent in by anons tbr below.

Warning: Mature content. Alcohol abuse, verbal abuse, sex, language, eating disorders. 

For summary & chapter index, click >  Alone in the Ashes {Acotar}

Word Count: 3.6k

A/N: Yay to new, angsty fanfics full of hot mess scenarios, sexy men, and foul language. 

Comment to tell me what you think, or to be tagged! x

“I didn't want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that's really sad. It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare you're so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare.” ― Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

It had been two weeks of Feyre living with Rhysand, and although he had been her best friend since high school, she learned more about him than she had ever cared to know since she moved in. 

For one, the man was a complete mess. She blessed every woman that had ever had to step foot into a man’s bathroom, starting from the first night she walked in there to pee. After taking one look at the toilet seat up, the toothpaste all over the sink, the trash can full of Mother knew what,  and the shower curtain hanging halfway off the hooks, Feyre felt the need to put on a hazmat suit and go buy five bottles of bleach.

Secondly, he didn’t have enough food to make a complete meal. Not even close. She knew he wasn’t a fan of cooking, but they couldn’t live off of ten boxes of cereal and half a gallon of milk. 

And, lastly, he snored. Loudly. So loudly that, on multiple occasions, she was hurrying across the hall in the middle of the night and throwing him onto the floor with a string of curses. 

It was early on a Saturday morning when he awoke and rounded the corner to find her standing over the stove top, scrambling eggs.

He smiled, brightly, his hair a mess. “Good morning, Feyre, darling.”

Feyre rolled her eyes. “It would be if I got enough sleep last night. An obnoxious caveman inhabits the room across from mine.”

Rhysand’s smile widened. “Sounds like an asshole. You should get rid of him.”

Feyre laughed, taking a package of bacon out of the fridge. “Yes, but then I’d be lonely.”

Rhysand shook his head as he hopped onto the island in the middle of the kitchen. “Can’t have that.”

With a murmur of agreement, Feyre dropped slices of bacon onto the burning skillet. She always loved the sizzle food made when it hit a hot pan. It always reminded her of the little, family owned diner her mom used to take her and her sisters to when they were little, every Saturday morning. 

“Good thing you moved in,” Rhysand went on, opening a carton of orange juice and putting it to his lips. “I don’t know how I didn’t starve before.” 

Feyre turned to face him, scowling as she caught him drinking from the carton. “It’s scrambled eggs and bacon, Rhys, not a gourmet meal. You could easily-”

“No!”

“- cook them yourself!” Feyre finished with a laugh. “Lazy ass.” 

“I am not lazy,” he said, hopping off the counter and flicking her nose. “I worked fifty hours this week at a restaurant. The last thing I want to do is go home and cook for myself. I prefer endless take out and best friends that do it for me.”

It was true. Rhysand worked at a popular local bar, one that had to fire two employees the week before for getting high in the kitchen. Until they found someone else, Rhysand was taking up extra shifts. 

When Feyre didn’t say anything more, Rhysand stopped what he was doing and asked, with a quiet voice, “Bad morning?”

Feyre’s head swung his direction. “What? No. Well...I don’t know. Yet.”

He raised his brows.

“Tamlin texted me, wanted me to come get some stuff I left behind,” she mumbled.

Rhysand’s lips tightened. “I’ll come with you, then.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea-”

“No, I should come with you.”

“I’ll be fine,” Feyre snapped. “I dealt with him for years, I think I can go pick up some shit.”

Rhysand’s shoulders tensed, and Feyre instantly felt guilty.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, turning off the stove top burners. “I’m obviously not looking forward to it, but really, I’ll be fine. And if he sees that you’re with me, he’ll start a fight, and I really just want to go get my stuff and get it done with.” 

Rhysand nodded, although it was obvious by the way his eyes darkened that he didn’t like the idea, at all. “Just...call me if you need me.”

Feyre promised she would as he picked up a slice of bacon out of the skillet and took a massive bite.

Her eyebrows rose. “Is that not hot?”

“Fucking burning,” he mumbled, chewing. “I can’t feel my tongue.”

Feyre laughed, shaking her head. “Dumbass.”

He flicked her nose again, and she punched him in the arm. 

They ate together at the little, rickety table, just as the front door opened and Azriel appeared. He was wearing black sweatpants and a t-shirt that said Velaris High Basketball on it. Given that it was nearly ten years old, Feyre was impressed it was still keeping itself together. The tattoos on his arms stood out, especially the new one on his left forearm, still ringed in red and covered in ointment. 

“Good morning,” he mumbled.

Rhysand lifted an eyebrow as he chuckled, and Feyre was certain they were sharing the same thought.

“You look like shit,” Rhysand observed, as Azriel pulled a chair up to the table and laid his head against the tabletop. “Too much to drink last night?”

Azriel mumbled something unintelligible. 

“There was a girl, wasn’t there,” Feyre crooned. 

“Let’s just say that it took me a few minutes to remember her name when I woke up next to her this morning,” Azriel muttered.

Feyre gasped as Rhysand howled. “You’re better than that, Az. I am so, so disappointed.”

He looked up, glaring at his old friend. “Don’t worry, I feel shitty enough without punishment from you.”

Feyre stood, chuckling as she ruffled Azriel’s hair, and took her plate to the sink. “Good.”

“Ready for a run, then?” Rhysand asked, cheerily.

Azriel cursed before pushing himself up from the table. “Yeah. May as well. I have to get my shit together before one. I’m supposed to go into town for a job.”

“Ah, and what will you be building this time?” Feyre asked, intrigued, as she loaded their dishes into the dishwasher. 

“Turning a garage into a bonus room,” he said. “So, I’ll be there a few weeks, it seems. But, the garage is small so….”

He let his words trail off and Feyre nodded, impressed. “Well, aren’t you handy.”

Azriel snorted. “It pays the bills.”

He was being modest, as he always was. Azriel was a brilliant craftsman and made the most beautiful, wooden furniture. However, he couldn’t seem to make a living that way, so he did small renovations and handyman work when he could get it. 

Rhysand had finished tugging on his shoes just as Azriel took the Advil and Gatorade Feyre had handed him. 

“I’ll see you this afternoon, then? After I get back from helping Cassian?” Rhysand asked, eyeing Feyre. “And you’ll call me if you need me?”

Feyre nodded.

“Alright,” he said, hesitantly, before following Azriel out the door.

Once she was alone, Feyre let out a long, deep breath. She should go now, get it over with. The thought had her hands shaking as she reached to turn off the kitchen sink.

~~~~~

“She didn’t want you going with?” Azriel asked, as they slowed to a jog along the Sidra.

Rhysand shook his head. “Thinks he’ll start a fight.”

It was common knowledge - Rhysand and Tamlin did not get along. They never had, even in high school. He also knew that Tamlin thought Rhysand was the reason Feyre left him, which was complete bullshit. She left him because he was a controlling, manipulative dick.

“She’ll be alright,” Azriel said.

Rhysand didn’t reply. He knew she could stand up for herself, but he saw way too much in the years that Feyre was with Tamlin. He knew the things Tamlin used to say to her, knew the things he used to threaten her with. 

“It seems to be going good,” Azriel continued, after catching the gleam in Rhysand’s eyes. “Roommates.”

“Yeah,” Rhysand agreed, as they stopped to stretch. “It is.”

Azriel was watching him in the quiet, articulate way he typically watched people when he was thinking something he didn’t want to say out loud. 

Rhysand looked up at the early morning sky. “Yes?”

“Nothing,” Azriel mumbled, but when Rhysand looked back down, he was smiling. 

“Fuck off,” Rhysand muttered, lying back against the grass. “I wouldn’t try anything.”

“Not yet,” Azriel added, jumping to his feet, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the hem of his shirt. “Don’t say never.”

Rhysand didn’t comment. Yes, he loved her, but he would be an asshole to try anything. She just got out of a long, shitty relationship. Besides, she was his best friend, and trying anything more would be a betrayal of her trust. 

“Alright, get up,” Azriel grumbled. “If I beat you back to your apartment, drinks are on you tonight.” 

Rhysand looked up at Azriel from where he was in the grass. Azriel stared back. Before Rhysand jumped up, he kicked Azriel in the back of the knee, causing him to go down as Rhysand took off. 

~~~~~

Elain looked in the mirror.

The dark circles beneath her eyes grew heavier, she would definitely need to layer her concealer. She had pulled on a pair of jeans she had bought the month before, but they had grown baggy, so she settled on leggings and a tank top. 

Since she had to move back in with her father, after her breakup with Graysen, things were...interesting. Neither she nor her sisters had spoken too much to their dad in recent years, so having to call Isaac and ask if she could occupy her childhood bedroom was uncomfortable, to say the least. Asking him to take her to her appointments had been even stranger, but they say that she cannot take herself, in case she had a meltdown when she was there, she would always need a ride home.

However, she felt better the past few days than she had in some time. She thought it may have been the new medication Dr.Jones put her on, or the fact that spring had turned into summer. Everything was better in the summer, right?

Isaac was gone that morning, but Elain had to stay put. A contractor was coming, apparently, to give a quote on transforming their garage, which Isaac had been talking about doing for years but never went through with it.

Elain wondered why he had chosen now, perhaps as a way to bring a little change into Elain’s life. Either way, Elain was stuck until the contractor arrived, not that she had much else to do.

It was just after one when the doorbell rang, and Elain hurried from her spot on the couch, where she had been watching a ridiculous reality love competition, to the front door.

She opened it, and blinked. “Hello. Can I help you?”

He was tall, his lashes long and dark over his hazel eyes. He wore a hat, backwards, over his black hair. Elain could see the tattoos peeking out above the neckline of his t-shirt, as well as those that covered his arms.

“Is Isaac home?” he asked, voice low. “He called about your garage?”

“Ah, yeah,” Elain said, stepping aside, unable to break her eyes from his. She knew him from somewhere, although she couldn’t quite place it. “Come in, please.”

He nodded his thanks and entered.

They stood in the doorway, an awkward silence growing overwhelming. 

Elain, at last, cleared her throat. “Um, my dad’s not here, but, I’ll pass along the message.” She turned on her heels and, a second later, his heavy footsteps trailed after her. They went through the kitchen and out the door, down into the garage. 

It was a small garage, but an absolute mess. When Isaac had lived alone, this is where he seemed to have stored anything and everything. 

Elain couldn’t tell what the man was thinking as he looked around. She knew her father had talked to him on the phone about what he wanted done, so she didn’t bother with providing the contractor with any details. 

“I know you from somewhere,” Elain said, quietly, as he walked through the garage, avoiding the clutter. 

“Yeah?” he asked, glancing her way, shortly. “From where?”

Elain bit her bottom lip. “Where did you go to high school?”

“Here,” he said, walking back to the bottom of the stairs and looking up at her. “Velaris, in the city.”

His brows suddenly shot up and Elain suddenly realized she was alone with a man twice her size. “You’re an Archeron. Feyre’s sister, yeah?”

Elain froze. “Yes.”

He nodded, jaw clenched. “I’m friends with your sister, saw her just this morning actually. We graduated the same year, you and I. Elain, right?”

Elain nodded, slowly. His name was on the tip of her tongue, but she could not remember it for the life of her.

“Azriel,” he said, looking away, and Elain blushed, feeling guilty. “You were valedictorian, if I remember correctly. Cheerleader.”

Elain suddenly remembered. “Oh, you played basketball.”

Azriel nodded. “I did, yeah.”

And you smoked a lot of stuff and drank under the bleachers, Elain thought, but figured it best to keep that to herself. 

“Well, I suppose I’ll give you the estimate to give to your dad,” he said, scribbling a few things down on the notepad in his hand. “When he gets home, have him call me. I can come in Monday.”

Elain nodded, taking the sheet of paper from his hand before leading him back through the house. He didn’t say goodbye before he left. Elain watched him drive away.

She had to admit that he had aged nicely in the last decade.

The dark, dangerous boy that had a hazardous reputation at Velaris High.

Elain resumed her position on the couch, playing the next episode of her stupidly entertaining television show.

She pulled out her phone and opened instagram. The first image that popped up had her gasping for air.

Graysen was smiling, his arms around her. 

She didn’t read the caption. She couldn’t. Before she could go any further, Elain dropped her phone, covered herself with a blanket, and laid on the couch.

The show faded into background noise as Elain stared at the coffee table. 

~~~~~

Nesta was trying to sleep, but the noise going on outside of her apartment was unbearable. 

With a miserable groan, Nesta rose from her bed and stomped through the halls before reaching the front door and throwing it open. 

Two men stood there, carrying a kitchen table, one of whom Nesta recognized all too well.

She leaned against her door frame. “Rhysand, didn’t expect to see you standing out here...or, be anywhere on this side of town. How’s my sister?”

Rhysand, and his companion, set the table down on the concrete. “Nesta...Is this your apartment or the guy’s you fucked last night?”

“I’m assuming you two know each other,” Rhysand’s companion muttered.

Nesta shot him a glare. His dark, brown hair hung around his shoulders, tangled and a mess. He wore torn jeans, laced up leather boots with the laces undone, and a black t-shirt. His hazel eyes were taking Nesta in, from the top of her bedhead to her bare legs, hanging out beneath Tomas’ old, white t-shirt. 

“Feyre’s sister,” Rhysand said, eyes still on Nesta.

His friend lifted an eyebrow. “No shit? The oldest, I assume.”

Nesta tensed, wondering what all her youngest sister said about her to her friends, then deciding she did not care.

“This is Cassian,” Rhysand went on, gripping his side of the table, once more. “Your new neighbor, it seems.”

“I would say it’s a pleasure, but you kinda look like you want to shove a knife into my chest, so,” Cassian began, then trailed off.

They lifted the table once more, bringing it inside the apartment. Nesta hadn’t even turned around before they came back out to grab something else.

“Well, keep it down,” Nesta snapped. “I’m trying to sleep.”

Rhysand ignored her, but Cassian seemed to not catch the hint. “It’s three in the afternoon.”

“Yes, and I was up until five this morning,” she scowled.

She heard the bedroom door open up behind her and looked over her shoulder, to find a disheveled Tomas walking toward her, cigarette between his lips. 

“There a problem?” he asked, coming up behind her.

“Just meeting my new neighbor,” Nesta said. “I was just coming back inside.”

“Hmm,” he mumbled, then went back to the kitchen and out the sliding door to the balcony. 

Cassian didn’t take his eyes from hers as she took a few steps back and slammed her door.

They didn’t bother to keep it down, at all. 

~~~~~

Feyre was sitting on the couch, in silence, when Rhysand got home.

Careful not to startle her, he shut the door quietly behind him. 

She looked over her shoulder, tried to smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

She had been crying.

Rhysand didn’t say anything until he was sitting beside her, his feet kicked up. “You didn’t call me. I assume it went well?”

Her lip quivered, and his arm went around her shoulder as her face fell into his chest. “I hate him. I hate him, Rhys.”

“I know,” he whispered. He hated Tamlin, too. Hated the years he stole from her, hated the lies he fed her. “I know.”

She wiped her eyes across his shirt. “I’m making you wet.”

Rhysand opened his mouth, then it snapped shut, before laughter sputtered out of his mouth. 

Feyre couldn’t help but laugh herself as she hit him in the chest, not moving from her position. 

Rhysand’s arm tightened around her as she said, “Take your dirty mind somewhere else, I’m upset.”

“You’re right,” he said, smile fading. “I’m sorry. What happened?”

She shook her head.

She didn’t want to talk about it, not yet.

“Well, we all have the night off, so we’re going out,” he said, lifting her chin by his fingers to meet his eyes. “Come with.”

It was moments like this that made Rhysand have to focus on his breathing. In and out, don’t overthink, don’t think about how her face is only inches from yours, don’t think about how easy it would be to close the space, don’t think about the feeling of her lips on yours.

“Okay,” Feyre whispered.

Rhysand nodded, quietly clearing his throat. “Well, we should get ready, then.”

Feyre chuckled. “You may want to take a shower if you plan on impressing anyone tonight.”

Rhysand knew he wouldn’t be bringing anyone home, the only one he wanted to bring home was coming home with him, anyway.

But he nodded. He didn’t smell great. It was true. “Probably should.”

With a smile, Feyre pushed off his chest and started down the hall. She shut herself inside of her bedroom as Rhysand looked down, at the betrayal going on beneath his sweatpants.

He had to take a shower.

And it would be a cold one.

~~~~~

Nesta’s phone vibrated in her back pocket as she lit her cigarette. 

She fished it out to find Elain’s name, and once she opened it, she read, Meet for lunch tomorrow?

Elain had a lot of time on her hands since she broke up with Graysen, and Nesta was trying her best to meet her from time to time and help her pass the time, but it was difficult. Then again, she should be spending time with at least one of her sisters.

Sure, tell me when and where, I’ll be there, Nesta replied, taking a long drag.

She was waiting for Tomas outside, waiting to go out on a Saturday night, but he was taking forever. She hated waiting. She hated waiting for Tomas, in particular. She swore he made her wait just because he could, just because he knew that it bothered her. 

The door across from hers opened and Cassian stepped out.

He looked as if he’d just gotten out of the shower. His long hair was still wet, but tied at the back of his head. He still wore his boots, but his jeans were cleaner than the torn ones he had been wearing earlier, and his button down shirt was rolled up to his elbows, showing off the ink that decorated his tanned skin. He locked his front door behind him as he pulled his phone out of his pocket, and noticed Nesta leaning up against the wall. 

He didn’t have a chance to say a word before her own door opened and Tomas stepped out.

He saw Cassian looking at his girl, his eyes turning feral. Tomas met Cassian in height, but it was clear that Cassian was much broader, much stronger. 

“Ready, Nesta?” Tomas asked, eyes still on Cassian.

Nesta didn’t answer. She took her cigarette between her lips as she watched Cassian’s gaze sweep over her, just as he had done earlier that afternoon. He did it slowly, no doubt to piss off Tomas more. 

“May I help you?” Nesta asked, voice low. 

Cassian chuckled, lips parted. The gesture defined his jawline, defined his cheekbones, and Nesta couldn’t help but notice. He had a handsome face, sculpted from stone. It was difficult not to imagine the body that lied beneath his clothes. 

“Have a good night,” he said, at last, and shoved his hands into his pockets before walking away.

It took everything inside of Nesta not to watch him go.

“I don't like that guy,” Tomas muttered, closing the apartment door and resting his hand along Nesta’s lower back. “I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

Nesta rolled her eyes. “Cut the alpha male bullshit. I can take care of myself.”

With that, she walked away, Tomas close on her heels.

She needed to start drinking immediately if she was going to make it through another night, another morning, with him.

~~~~~

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 Prompts:

{ “I’m gonna fuck you so hard that you forget you ever met that asshole” - Feysand } -anonymous 

{ “How about Nessian needing to fake date when they go home for the holidays?!” } - anonymous

{ “could u pls do like an elriel fic where azriel is like this mysterious bad boy and elain is a goody two shoes lik aaaaa i cant get that image out of my head” } - anonymous

#tacmc AITA #nessian #feysand #elriel #nesta #cassian #feyre #rhysand #elain #azriel #fanfic #fanfiction #sjm #modern au #acotar #acomaf #acowar #acofas #and so it begins

[whereflowersbloom]

Hypermarket adventure

When Tim Drake woke up that morning he had no idea he would have to buy a new coffee maker because the one they had was unusually broken. Damian Wayne. A faint headache pounding behind his temples as Tim massaged them, exhaustion sinking deep in his bones, and wonders how long it's been since he had more than four hours of sleep. Damian was responsible for this, one of his secret schemes to make him stop consuming caffeine. Tim was sure it was his fault, so the broken coffee maker refused to give him the fluid of life and he had lost it...and maybe Tim destroyed it with vicious vengeance. In his defense, he had been up for more than twenty-four hours. Sleep later coffee first.

So naturally he announced to Alfred he would be making a quick trip to the store to get a new one, politely asked the British man if he required anything from the store. Alfred seemed to consider the offer for a solid minute before asking him if he could get some groceries and essentials on his way back home. Handing him a list. Before he walked out of the manor Dick volunteered affably to accompany him, convincing a grumpy Jason, who was comfortably sitting, reading a wrinkled newspaper, to tag along. Jason surprisingly agreed, with the condition he was the one driving. Alfred rapidly suggested to take the demon spawn with them, he could use some frest air. Now things could only go downhill from this point. This piqued Steph’s interest, who casually commented she had nothing better to do. Soon they were on their way to the closest hypermarket.

Dick was there to make sure Damian didn’t behead anyone and get enough boxes of cereal he could hide before Alfred looked at him with disappointed eyes. There’s nothing worse in this world than Alfred’s disappointed eyes. The old man claimed ‘It’s not a proper meal nor healthy if it contained high levels of sugar’, but the companies also tended to fill them with vitamins, calcium, iron and folic acid. Therefore it was a fortified food! It had everything he needed for a balanced meal in Dick’s opinion. The extra sugar was even good for him considering how many calories he burned.

“The sword stays in the car, Damian.” Dick commanded, taking away the blade from twelves earth-old before he sets a foot out of the automobile, which was responded by a ‘TT’.

“Did we really have to bring shortstack?” Jason complained, voice etched with irritation, index finger pointing at Damian.

“As if I would agree to lower my nutritional standards because you fools failed to purchase the provisions Pennyworth demanded which is why I have it in my power.” Damian logically explained, grinding his teeth and waving the list at Jason.

“Don’t stab anyone.” Dick ordered with authority.

“I make no promises, Grayson.” Damian muttered dryly crossing his arms over his chest.

Damian cannot comprehend why would Pennyworth think he was needed to carry out such a simple task, he supposed if his siblings lacked the basic function acquire the list of edibles Alfred gave them and simultaneously behave in public, then he could supervise them. He was already here with them. Nothing to do about it.

“Did anyone asked Cass if she needed anything?” Dick questioned them, clear blue eyes looking at them expectantly. Cass was probably still in her bedroom resting, after staying up with him analyzing some cases.

“Oh how thoutful of you. You weren’t that nice to me, not even after I died.” Jason commented, his voice dripping with sarcasm and bitterness.

“Jay, you gotta stop bringing it up.” Dick reasoned as he placed a hand upon Jason’s shoulder, offering a small apologetic smile.

For once, Damian was quiet, observing the older brothers bicker over such a insignificant matter. Stephanie stifled a snort at their immature antics. A muffled ‘crybaby’ escaped her mouth, but only Tim, standing next to her was able to hear it.

It took everything Tim had not to roll his eyes and simply walk away. Why was he here with these troublemakers? Right. Coffee. The thing she had to endure for a duo of black coffee.

“I texted Cass. She wants pop tarts.” Stephanie supplied, eye glued to the screen of her phone.

“If you get lost. I’m leaving you here, losers.” Jason threatened with narrowed eyes, a faint glow in his blue-green eyes. Five minutes after parking the car, the siblings marched inside the hypermarket. Tim sighed wearily, silent calculations running through his mind, how long it would take them to leave the store with the groceries. Dick promptly grabbed a shopping cart.

~~~

Jason Todd was ready to shoot Dick Grayson if only he had a gun between his hands. Why the fuck did he even agree to come with these lil shits? Clearly, he wasn’t in his right mind. He was doing this for Alfred and Jason could never say no to Alfred. It was an easy task: read the list of essentials Alfred wrote down, grab the items, deposit them inside the fucking cart and pay for them. Piece of cake. But here he was in the middle of dairy aisle, listening to Dick asking him all sort of stupid questions. His patience dangerously wearing thin.

“Why is milk five dollars a gallon?” Dick exclaimed with shock as he examined the dairy product’s label.

“Who cares? You’re rich, money shouldn’t be a problem, dickhead.” Jason replied annoyed, there goes ten minutes of his life, stuck in the dairy aisle with this enthusiastic fool. Where did Damian and Steph go? Dick had thrown several boxes of cereal inside the cart, including: Cheerios and Waffle crisps, the latter was Steph’s petition. Who in the bloody hell needed fifteen boxes of cereal? Wait a minute, is that coffee flakes? That one had to be Tim’s idea.

“How do you exactly milk an almond though?” Dick asked with furrowed Brows, concentrated on the product, as If he was trying to decipher a secret code.

The desperation and bewilderment in Dick’s voice made a Jason raise an eyebrow. He would kill for a quick smoke. Not like he was seriously considering smoking inside the store. He could wait a few more minutes.

“I’ll explain out to you when you finally become a functional adult.” Jason breathed. Around them, the store buzzed, bright lights shining above and people murmuring and talking, nobody had recognized them so far. Even Jason felt a twinge of irritation at being here, and he wanted to get this shopping trip over with so he could go home.

“Who wants bacon?” Stephanie came out of nowhere, asking with a juvenile glee in her eyes as she dumped ten packs of bacon. Damian wouldn’t be happy about this.

“Where is the gremlin? We should have put him inside the cart.” Jason tried to keep a calm voice, looking around for any sign of little D. Jason had a bad feeling about this, settling at the pit of his stomach. He let out a deep breath and decided it was the moment to have that cig. So two missing, Damian and Tim. There it was that nagging voice was a constant in the back of his mind, reminding him of his responsibility, look after adoptive relatives.

“Steph, make sure replacement didn’t fall asleep at the Kitchen appliances section.” Jason commanded. “Dick, it’s your turn to supervise the rascals.” Slowly making his way towards the alcohol section, he could use a drink right now. Now, find an unpacked corner where he can have a smoke.

“What?” Dick exclaimed, suddenly finding himself alone in the dairy section. Where did everyone go?

~~~

Dick was passing by the cereal aisle again, because you can never have enough cereal. Perhaps he should get more lucky charms? Cinnamon toast was a must. Nobody in this family understood the enjoyment of ingesting artificially colored cereal. He was about to grab another box of fruity pebbles, lost in the paradise of cocoa, cinnamon and colored cereals, when abruptly a feminine voice brought him back to earth. He turned to catch a glimpse, eyes focused on the petite woman: average height, brunette, mid-twenties, freckled-cheeks, small gray eyes widened in irritation. This looked like trouble. What did he do?

“Excuse me, sir. Is this kid your little brother? We caught him bothering other customers at the meat section.” The petite employee questioned him with raised eyebrows, hands on her hips. Dick blinked puzzled. What. He kept his eyes fixed on the woman.

“When I asked if he was here accompanied by an adult. He pointed a finger at you.” Dick spotted then Damian, standing next to the woman, lips pursed, arms folded against his chest, glancing away, fleetingly looking younger than he actually was. Like a small child who was severely reprimanded for inappropriate behavior. What the hell Damian...

“I merely reminded him the innocent chicken between his hands deserved a life free from torture and suffering. We have the moral responsibility to protect animals!” Damian spoke plainly as he corrected the woman who dared accuse him of harassment.

“Damian, sto-“ Richard chimed in when he was interrupted by Damian’s animals rights speech.

“Allowing an animal to suffer is unethical and cruel. It’s slaughter! You are causing them unnecessary distress. Their throats are slit mercilessly! All animals have the ability to suffer in the same way and to the same degree that humans do.” The young Wayne continued, grumpily making eye contact with the uninformed store employee. Blue eye flicked between the two, the brunette seemed to be about to explode, Damian’s body language tightened, there was a crackling in the air and Dick instantly knew it was not going to end well. Shit. He ruffled his hair nervously.

“Damian no.” He pleaded urgently. Beads of sweat running down his forehead and cheekbones.

“Sir, could you please take your younger brother? Customers are agitated and perturbed by his presence.” The employee politely asked him but Dick could tell she was utterly irked at this point. Dick nodded and draped an arm over his little brother’s shoulders. Yeah, he was definitely taking him far, far away from her. Praying Damian kept his mouth shut and didn’t screw up even more. Predictably, Damian didn’t leave it alone.

“Again, as I explained earlier. I was elaborating on the numerous health and environment benefits of adopting a vegetarian diet.” Damian corrected her with trembling lips, green eyes filled with anger. This woman didn’t comprehend the great importance of saving an innocent life. Tsk. Father said even if someone is being disrespectful or crude he should not sink to their level, but this lady was being rude.

“Aren’t you one of Bruce Wayne’s ward?” The woman spoke with narrowed gray eyes, taking a step closer to Richard, studying closely the features of the older man.

Oh fuck. Unfortunately, she recognized them. Dick held up both hands defensively.

“I am the blood s-“ Damian was about to clarify when Dick rapidly covered his mouth with a large hand. “We are leaving now, Damian. Thank you, lady. Have a nice day.” He muttered hurriedly before running off.

~~~

Finally, Tim was getting in line for the cashier, the precious coffee maker in his arms, he could make himself a decent cup of black coffee as soon as they got home. A satisfied smile almost curled on his lips when he recognized the familiar sound of his siblings yelling, if his ears didn’t fail him and they never did. Oh no. Tim held a stiff nervous expression as he slowly turned to face them. He quickly scanned the scene, eyes wide in alarm. Remain calm Tim. Stephanie being escorted by a security guard, clothes stained, next was Jason groaning at the guard that tried to touch his leather jacket, followed by an embarrassed Dick with flushed cheeks, lastly Damian being dragged against his will. “Let me go! I can walk out of this questionable establishment myself.” Damian protested with boiling anger, glaring daggers at the security guards. His sword was inside the car. Good. No opportunity to behead anyone and commit a crime. Jason and Stephanie were clearly pissed. Dick pressing his face against a wall, undoubtedly ashamed.

Tim momentarily contemplated leaving the store with the coffee maker, a few seconds later, he couldn’t find it in him to abandon them to their fate here. Sigh. With the heavy weigh of his burdens, Tim approached a female employee. “Excuse me, those are my siblings. Could you explain to me what exactly they did?”

“Sir, this young lady here organized a shopping cart race along with some children in the middle of the vegetable section.” The angry store employee began, detecting unfiltered rage in her tone, as she pointed a finger at the blonde teenager.

“I did nothing Jason wouldn’t have done.” Stephanie told him, briefly exchanging glances with Jason. Jason bit down on his lower lip to repress laughter, whispering an almost inaudible ‘amateur’. Stephanie shrugged it off as it was unimportant, instead of trying to come up with an excuse that contained any sense of logic.

“This man was deliberately smoking inside the store.” Tim studied Jason’s amused expression. Probably not the first time he was caught doing it. “I mean she isn’t wrong.” He pointed out calmly, Shrugging broad shoulders nonchalantly.

“I found the kid tormenting customers at the meat aisle, he fled with the man with cereal fixation.” Before Damian could utter a word in his defense. Dick shut his mouth. Richard’s eyes silently expressing a wordless ‘don’t ask’. Tim was way too exhausted to deal with this. His body shaking with small movements for a second, stay in control. No time to collapse, solutions not more problems.

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you and the rest of your relative to leave the store. And please do not come back.”

Tim fluttered his dark cerulean eyes close, feeling a very sharp pain in his temples. A recurrent migraine coming, cursing lowly for not stopping at the pharmacy to get aspirins. How is that he is the only rational and almost-functional person in this family. Coffee, coffee, coffee was the only thing he could think about. Less than fifty minutes and the Wayne’s discovered a way to get themselves banned from a Hypermarket. Likely setting a new world record.

Looks like they wouldn’t have the chance to go grocery shopping as a family any time soon. Not like it was a brilliant idea to begin with. They would have groceries delivered next time.

Here @sofiii 👀👀👀👀🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️

#batfamily #dick grayson #jason todd #tim drake #damian wayne #stephanie brown #cassandra cain #alfred pennyworth #bruce wayne #nightwing #red hood #red robin #batgirl #dc fandom #dc universe #dc comics #batsiblings #batkids #shenanigans #batman universe #spoiler