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bistevethor · 3 years

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Steve Rogers Fanfiction Recommendations

Happy birthday, Steve!

I know that there are some (a lot?) of steve fans who sometimes struggle to find fics focused on him, so I am here now putting a list of Steve fics. I was going to fics that I haven't seen recommended a lot and most of the ones on this post have less than 200 kudos only, but I end up putting everything (it's probably easier to put my bookmarks as public but well...). It's a massive list (over 100 fics?), so it's will be separated into several posts/reblogs.

Not all of them are from Steve's POV or even have him as the main 'main' character, but rest assured he played an important role and is featured heavily. Lots of these are friendship-focused but I categorized them. The shippy ones are mostly samsteve, thundershield, and some rare pairings because I don't venture to other ships a lot and when I did it's to the rare ones instead lol. Hopefully, any of you can find some gems from this list and these are as enjoyable or as good as I remembered. I'll continue to update it, hopefully, every time I find new ones.

Fics are under read more.

General

The Rocket's Red Glare

Steve was born on the Fourth of July (no joke), so a party is in order! Unfortunately, PTSD decides to rear its ugly head. Fortunately, Steve's got an entire team at his back to help him through it. And screaming goats.

an entry in the scrapbook of absurdity

In which Steve turns into a baby and bites people.

Baby Steve Adventures

Captain America gets hit by a spell during a battle. The rest of the Avengers look after him.

Do You Remember Being Happy? ('Cause I Sure Don't)

"Dragr," Thor called them. "Demons" Clint had said. "Thieves" is what Steve labels them as. AKA, the one where Steve is captured by creatures that feed off of happy memories, and the team is left to pick up the pieces. Post-Avengers.

In Search of (Bucky, Family, Home)

Pairings: Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov & Sam Wilson

A week following the events of CATWS, Steve recruits Natasha and Sam to help find Bucky.

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Do we need to recap again? You were shot three times, beaten near to death by an enhanced super soldier with a metal arm and then almost drowned. Yeah, your ass is going to need a few more days of healing time.”

The Truth When Captains Meet

Steve Rogers wakes up on an alien’s space ship being carried bridal style by Carol Danvers. As far as first meetings go, it’s memorable.

Irish Coffee

Pairings: Jessica Jones & Steve Rogers

Jessica runs into an incognito Cap at a cafe. They form an unlikely friendship of sorts.

The Lifetimes of Steve Rogers (Series)

What happens when Steve Rogers steps onto the quantum platform to return the Stones? Where does he go? What challenges does he find? Who does he meet? How many lifetimes can one man have?

Fifty-Two Pickup

Less than a week after the fall of the Triskelion, Steve Rogers is released from the hospital. Although his physical wounds are almost fully healed, other injuries need a bit more time, and some help from friends.

little kids get big so fast

Steve ends up having to take care of the deaged Defenders.

Grampa Steve's Bedtime Stories

If Mommy was away for work, then Morgan’s Grampa Steve came over to stay with her. He’d tuck her in, let her give Mommy a kiss on video chat, then hand her the picture of Daddy for his kiss. Once Daddy’s picture was back on the bookshelf, Grampa Steve would turn off the bedside lamp so that Miss Friday could cover the ceiling with stars, and ask Morgan what story she wanted to hear.

“Captain Steve, Grampa! Tell me Captain Steve!”

Grampa Steve sometimes read to her from books and other times watched a movie with her, but her favorite by far was when he told her Captain Steve’s Adventures Through the Multiverse.

On Camping Trips

Sam is more Hermione than Natasha is, and Steve doesn't want to be Harry.

Powerful

Steve loses the advantages of the super-soldier serum. This is not a tragedy.

His Dream

Pairings: Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson

As if on cue, Steve cut him off with a loud sneeze.

"Yeah. Like that." Sam nodded. "And please sneeze into your elbow next time, dude. You could've just started an epidemic."

"Sorry. Allergies." Steve excused, and Sam raised an eyebrow.

"How do you know it's allergies?" Sam asked, and Steve sighed, putting the ingredients together and solving the mystery of what the gas had actually done.

The answer wasn't ideal. "It feels like the seasonal allergies I had before. Before the serum- and I haven't had them since the serum."

Realization clicked in Sam's head.

"The gas de-serumed you."

Steve swallowed and nodded reluctantly.

OR: Steve gets temporarily de-serumed, with his height and stature staying the same but his immune system being as bad as it was before, and has to stay in the hospital to prevent a severe allergic reaction or illness. Sam stays with him the whole time, making sure he's not alone.

A Strange Encounter

Things have gone awry and Strange is injured. With no other options, he's called for assistance from Captain America and his team.

even if we're apart, i'll always be with you

Steve finds a dirty toy bear at an abandoned gas station, on the way back from a school trip. He brings him home.

As Long as You’re Not Tired Yet of Talking

Pairings: Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov

When Steve Rogers tells her, “Don’t be a stranger,” as they’re all going their own ways after New York, it makes her want to laugh.

Draw/Breath

Pairings: Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov

Natasha like knowing what makes people tick. She likes knowing things, about her teammates and her coworkers and herself. Oddly enough, sometimes other people like knowing her too.

AKA: Natasha wants to know why Steve isn’t drawing anymore, and takes the long way round to get her answer. Because why not.

With Magic We Do Fly

Pairings: Wanda Maximoff & Steve Rogers

In Civil War we see Wanda fling Steve into the air with her magic. They must have practiced that, right?

Que Wanda throwing Steve against a wall. Many times.

Just Like We Practiced

Pairings: Wanda Maximoff & Steve Rogers

Steve had said, in the movie when he asked Wanda to lift him into the building, "Just like we practiced." But just how did they come up with the idea of her lifting people with her powers, and putting them up somewhere like an escalator? Perhaps it was because Wanda accidentally sent a certain tall, blond Avenger face-first into the floor once and he decided he would help her learn to utilize this as a confidence building exercise. Natasha keeps an eye, Thor and Sam help build the training grounds, and Wanda has found her new home. Takes place between AGE OF ULTRON and CIVIL WAR.

Black and White but Red and Blue

They're watching black and white film reels, but Steve sees them in colour.

"My shield may be black and white but it was red and blue. Just like the blue sky under which red blood was spilled. Like Bucky's blue eyes and Peggy's red lips..."

The Road Warriors

Characters: Sam Wilson (Marvel), Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Wanda Maximoff

It wasn't pretty, but somehow the four of them managed to make it through two years on the run.

We'll Fix It

Pairings: Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov

Steve has a hard time after his battle with The Winter Soldier and isn't sure what to do with himself. After not seeing him for a week, Natasha finally shows up to his apartment unannounced to figure out how they can get back to work. There is some crying involved.

From Here On Out

Pairings: Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov

The Accords, the search for Bucky, the fight at the airport ... In a world where nothing will ever be the same, sometimes the road to rebuilding trust and friendship is a little rockier than it should be.

AKA, the story of Steve & Natasha and how they got to where they are.

Set post-Civil War but pre-Infinity War.

I have this breath and I hold it tight

Parings: Wanda Maximoff & Steve Rogers, Clint Barton & Wanda Maximoff, Wanda Maximoff & Vision

Steve finally goes to Wanda’s tiny room and taps on the doorframe, although it’s hardly necessary, with the slightly warped floorboards creaking under his feet. “Hey,” he says. “Got a minute?”

Wanda's been a little withdrawn since Steve broke everyone out of the Raft. She's had a lot to think about.

to you.

Pairings: Pietro Maximoff & Wanda Maximoff, Clint Barton & Wanda Maximoff, Wanda Maximoff & Natasha Romanov, Wanda Maximoff & Steve Rogers, Wanda Maximoff & Sam Wilson, Wanda Maximoff & Tony Stark

It's Wanda's birthday today. She's not sure how to feel.

New Love

Pairings: Diana (Wonder Woman) & Steve Rogers

Near the end of World War II, Diana Prince finds herself attempting to reconnect to her long-gone, beloved Steve Trevor. However, she comes across Steve Rogers instead.

Sharing Life (And Canned Green Beans)

Pairings: Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov

It’s Thanksgiving, and Steve is hiding in the second living room on the 8th floor of the penthouse apartments with a can of green beans.

I'm Fine

Steve slowly began to realize that the problem with being a national icon, a hero, and a role model, is that somehow, he became more than human. He become a symbol, not a person. So when he becomes increasingly unhappy, deeply depressed, and utterly adrift in a world where he doesn't belong, the loneliness and isolation are unbearable. How could anyone believe that an iconic hero like himself was really just an ordinary kid from Brooklyn, dying inside because everything he'd gained still wasn't enough to replace everything he'd lost? How could he possibly bring himself to bleed on the ones he loves? So he tells himself the same lie over and over, hoping one day, he'll believe it.

dogpile

"My dog ate my mission report" An injured Steve remembers something he has to do. Unabashed Steve and dogs fluff. "Didn't peg you for a pet guy." "Allergies."

Alone In This World (Together)

Pairings: Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov & Sam Wilson

“We’re fugitives,” Steve said finally. “It might never get better.”

“The world’s always going to need saving," Sam replied. "We’re still Avengers. No one can take that away from us.” Then, like they hadn't been having an entire conversation before, “So when do we leave?”

“Once night falls.”

Do we have any idea where she is?”

“No.” Steve took a sip of his coffee. “But I know where she’ll be.”

it gets the worst at night

Pairings: Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov

Here's how it goes: Natasha sometimes shares a bed with Steve. It's not what it sounds like.

(In which there are Colombian drug lords, awkward boners, cuddly super-soldiers and the Avengers are all giant dorks.)

Shelter

Pairings: Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson

Sam and Steve, right after the fall of SHIELD.

Princely Bickering

Pairings: Jane Foster/Thor, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers & Jane Foster, Steve Rogers & Thor

Steve allows Sam to lean up and inspect his head for bruises and blood. He then checks out Steve’s eyes. ‘Do you know where you are?’ Steve rolls his eyes. ‘Don’t be an ass, Cap, apparently you can break.’ ‘London, England, chasing apparently useless Hydra intel despite having about five hundred international arrest warrants out for us because we’re just that stupid,’ says Steve. Sam pats him - gently - on the shoulder. Life on the run isn't easy, especially not after an injury. Fortunately Steve still has a few allies left.

And The Seconds Tick Down

AU of Civil War. How the world ended in twenty steps when Steve died.

"Grant" and "Francis" Go Shopping

Pairings: Clint Barton & Steve Rogers

Steve and Clint both have holiday shopping to do for their family of choice, so they make a day trip to an outlet mall, have a few heart to hearts, use some coupons, buy a bunch of presents, and eventually get through their shopping lists.

A Tune Without Words

Pairings: Jane Foster/Thor, Steve Rogers & Thor, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson

As he and Sam prepare to begin searching for Bucky, Steve gets various offers of help—some more unexpected than others.

Purpose

Tony Stark wins the fight in Siberia completely by accident.

Steve Rogers does not resist his arrest as he is taken to the Raft.

Sam Wilson, T'Challa, and Pepper Potts pick up the pieces.

Full of Wounds and Still Standing on my Feet

Pairings: Steve Rogers & Wanda Maximoff

The five times Steve looked out for Wanda, and one time Wanda decided someone needed to look out for Steve.

Three Awakenings

The first three times that Steve Rogers woke up during his first twenty-four hours in the twenty-first century.

Making Your Own Future

Characters: Steve Rogers, Diana Prince, Steve Trevor Five times -- plus one -- that Diana Prince and Steve Rogers encountered one another.

Better Living Through Pizza

Pairings: Clint Barton & Steve Rogers

Steve takes some time off from soldiering and Avengering to get his head on straight, and Clint is assigned to keep an eye on him, because apparently SHIELD believes in the blind leading the blind. Steve really needs a hobby, since modern television shows baffle him, but Clint keeps bringing him DVDs and pizza.

Five Times Clint Barton Spoke with Steve Rogers about Growing Old and the One Time He Didn't.

Pairings: Clint Barton & Steve Rogers

When Steve Rogers reappeared from the past as an old man, there was a lot of catching up to do. Clint Barton made sure nobody got left behind.

Hammer's Totally Heavy-Handed and Incompetent Revenge

"So, at the end of IM2, Justin Hammer swears revenge on Pepper. He waits until Tony and Rhodey are halfway across the world to launch his attack.

Unfortunately for him, thanks to SHIELD, Iron Man and War Machine aren't the only superheroes in Pepper's rolladex. Steve thinks Pepper's just swell and doesn't take too kindly to somebody trying to hurt her."

Cue badass!Steve and competent!Pepper

Fan Mail

Steve starts getting his fan mail and receives an invitation to the prom. Written for a prompt at the Avengers kink meme. It was a great prompt, and so much fun to write and get feedback for!

Prom. Steve 'Grandpa Iceberg' Rogers at a 21st-century high school prom. "This isn't happening. This whole conversation is just an elaborate practical joke. Bruce really just has orders for widgets or something."

Bruce waved the printouts at him. "Fraid not. I don't really do practical jokes. Messing with other people's moods just seems. I don't know. Karmically unwise."

Mascot

Steve runs. People see Steve run. Steve gets adopted by the neighbourhood he runs through every week day morning. He finds this confusing. Tony finds it amusing.

Locks Not Replaced

Tony angsts back at Avengers' HQ, Ross is a bully and Steve makes sure he doesn't get away with it. In other words, there is much regret, a bit on the philosophy of locks, adventure and far too many Robin Hood metaphors.

woof

For a prompt on the avengers kinkmeme: "...something different happens when Steve gets Dr Erskine's serum plus the Vita ray treatment... Steve does get taller and stronger, but when the first full moon hits, he turns into a big friendly looking dog. Yes, he's a weredog, not a werewolf."

Mission: Baby

Pairings: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers

The Asset finds himself in charge of the care of a small baby, but somehow he knows—he has to protect the baby from all harm, whatever the cost.

14 Tracks

Pairings: Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Avengers Team 14 tracks from Steve's iPod and how they got on there.

Life Will Rattle Your Bones

Pairings: Erik Lehnsherr & Steve Rogers

Captain America and the Howling Commandos find Schmidt sooner than they thought... wait, what do you mean this is a *different* Schmidt?

In war-torn Germany, the paths of Steve Rogers and Erik Lehnsherr cross, part, and cross again.

come build me up

Pairings: Sharon Carter & Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers

“Do you ever feel like -- like you joined up because you wanted to do good. You wanted to do the right thing but somewhere along the way, you just lost the whole fucking plot.”

“All of the time.”

Or: the one where Captain America and Agent 13 give long distance friendship a whirl.

Down in the Worn Out Place Again

Pairings: Wanda Maximoff & Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers & Wanda Maximoff

“You don't look a day over 85, Captain,” Wanda says.

Natasha smiles, just barely, and nudges Steve with her elbow. “She makes jokes now.”

(Post AoU, stories about friendship.)

Satellites

Characters: Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Tony Stark, Clint Barton, Nick Fury Pairings: Natasha Romanov & Steve Rogers, Minor Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson, Minor Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov

In the immediate aftermath of SHIELD's collapse and Steve's plunge into the Potomac, Natasha considers her place in the world. Also the fact that Steve is depressing.

Timeless Classics

Pairings: Steve Rogers & Avengers Team Five An undetermined number of times (six, apparently) Steve unexpectedly got the reference (sort of), and one time everyone discovered something new together.

you just wait and see

Pairings: Rocket Raccoon & Steve Rogers

“Thor said you’re the captain.” Rogers says, his voice distant, sad smile growing into a sadder grin. “Tough job.”

The Small Hours

Pairings: Steve Rogers & T'Challa, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers

"I'm not getting him back, am I." The words were flatly delivered – not a question so much as fatigued resignation. "We will do everything we can to help him," T'Challa quietly replied, but he wouldn't lie, not about this. Not to a fellow warrior he respected on and off the field of battle. "The possibility does exist, however, that the triggers are permanent."

The Man We All Remember From the Newsreels

Still getting used to the twenty-first century, Steve comforts himself with memories of long-gone friends. But Howard Stark, the man Steve remembers, is nothing like the man he sees in the newsreels.

we're all choir boys at best

Characters: Steve Rogers, Johnny Storm

You are totally getting laid tonight. "Please stop talking." You hijacked my brain first, this is totally not my fault.

Epistaxis

Steve doesn't worry the first time he gets a bloody nose that won't quit. But when it happens a second, third, fourth... He, and his teammates, start to get concerned.

You Close Your Eyes and the Glory Fades

His body isn’t his own, he knows that, knew before the procedure that everything would change. That was the easiest thing to wrap his head around, actually, the physical changes. He’s used to his body betraying him, so this is just another thing to learn his way around. But the colors of everything, even the sliver of blue sky he could see, craning his head at the tiny window, look different.

Looking For Answers (From The Great Beyond)

After the Battle of New York is over, and Loki and the tesseract are returned to Asgard, Steve takes a road trip across the country, and tries to figure out what he wants to do next.

Mourning the Future

Steve's ties to the past and the future are pretty tenuous, and the serum ensures he lives in an eternal present state of ever-youthful vigour. When an old war buddy gets handed his last marching orders, Steve has to wonder if everyone will eventually leave.

Riviera Life

Sam and Steve have been traversing Europe looking for Bucky. Not everyone is convinced it isn’t an open invitation road trip.

Voluntary Bros.

Characters: Steve Rogers, Johnny Storm

"Dude, you could be twins, they tested you before they defrosted you to see if you were a clone or something, or if he was a clone," Clint said.

"I want to talk to him, I think. I mean, a girl threw her latte at me last week for not calling her back and this dude felt me up at an art gallery yesterday," Steve said.

Two Brooklynites and One Big Apple

Pairings: Miles Morales & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers

“You did good out there today,” Captain America said, brushing a layer of detritus from his unfathomably broad shoulder. “I’ll see you around.”

“Not if I see you first,” replied Miles, fingergunning with one hand as he sent a web rope fwipping off into the distance with the other, catapulting himself away at tremendous speed.

... in which two superheroes battle with bad guys, embark on community art lessons, and a friendship forms along the way.

Battle Fatigue

Steve thought he was doing okay. Things weren't going great, but they were fine, manageable even, and then suddenly they weren't.

We Become New Yorkers (or: Five Times Steve Rogers Looked For Home, and One Time Home Found Him)

New York is a million cities at the same time. This is how Steve found his.

A beautiful day in the neighborhood

In which Steve and Peter learn that the best way to get through a bad situation is together. And to avoid collapsing buildings. And that concussions are terrible, terrible things.

Leviticus 25

"You want to save Bucky Barnes? You are going to have to put your own house in order first because he is going to need a rock to cling to. You are not ready to be that rock for him. You owe it to him -- and more importantly, you owe it to yourself -- to figure things out, figure out how you can be happy in this time and place, whether or not Barnes is with you."

Strike

Sometimes the road to recovery involves bowling. Conveniently, so does the one to the Grand Canyon.

Conversation in Wakanda

“I have been told that you had the privilege to share a training session with some of our Dora Milaje,” T’Challa says. “May I ask how it went?”

“Well,” the Captain huffs. “There’s no polite way to say it: I had my ass handed to me. Repeatedly.”

He sounds and looks utterly delighted.

Contact Light

Everyone thought computers would be the thing that really blew Steve's mind about the 21st century. They were wrong. When he finds out that he missed the moon landing, it's the start of an ongoing obsession with space that maybe involves Neil deGrasse Tyson, Twitter, and Star Trek marathons.

Twenty-Two

“This is Lucky,” Clint said when a dog got between him and Natasha. Lucky’s vest was bright, like desert mornings and night explosions.

“Does he help?” Natasha asked.

Clint pressed his hands flat on the counter behind him. “He saved my life.”

Natasha looked at Steve, her expression fierce. Steve resisted the urge to yank down his sleeves. Instead, he dug his nails into the puckered skin on his forearms.

AKA An AU in which Steve is a veteran just trying to survive (or not).

Gray

Peter doesn't expect Steve to show up at his house one night when he gets home from school. He also doesn't expect to have a long conversation with him, and choose to be on his side instead.

We're Happy, Free, Confused, and Lonely at the Same Time.

"Tony isn't sure, but he *thinks* Steve Rogers is going to try and argue with him about not being a kid, while wrapped up in a fluffy blanket and plaid pyjama pants watching a Disney movie. Tony really hopes that is the case. The Captain America voice looses all affect when wrapped up in that blanket and Tony can't wait to inform him as such." - The one where Tony realises that Captain America and Steve Rogers are not the same person, and Steve is so much younger then he thought.

This Isn't A Love Song, This Isn't A Fable

Steve's not OK with people's perception of Captain America, no matter what he says or how much he pretends otherwise. It's like no one in this time period realizes that there's more to him than a spangly outfit. And yes, he's including the Avengers in that. ... or, the one where everything's all right, until it's not.

it's safe here in our new world

Post TWS. In which Natasha and Steve go shopping, have Thursday night movie nights, and learn that Natasha loves to platonically kiss Steve. Which is good, because Steve loves being platonically kissed by Natasha.

Shadowboxing

Pairings: Matt Murdock & Steve Rogers

It doesn’t matter how many times you fall – what matters most is how many times you get back up. Steve Rogers knew this lesson far too well and it was one Matt Murdock had endured all his life. With both men at their lowest, could a chance friendship bring each of them to their feet again?

Everybody Eats When They Come to My House

Pairings: Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers

“You’ll ruin your dinner,” Sam says, gesturing with Steve with his spatula.

i fear for the calendar; its days are numbered

Pairings: Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson

Before she goes off the grid, Natasha gives Steve her phone number. He’s honored that he’s the only one to be trusted with it, but quickly learns that she spends most of her free time texting him Dad jokes.

Status Quo Ante

Pairings: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers

A tale in which Sam suspects he should be used to this by now, for values of 'this' that involve certain folks he hangs out with and situations he finds himself in, Team Cap becomes Team Ex-Cap becomes TBD, and nobody but Clint really wants to know what happened to Scott Lang's GI Joes. (Sam Wilson from the final scene to the mid-credits scene.)

The Glass Parade

Pairings: Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov

Steve thinks that he’s seen Natasha be at least three different people in the short time he’s known her, and he isn’t sure which one is real.

In which the most confusing part of the future is how much Steve has in common with Natasha, and the fact that she seems dead-set on being his friend.

Still Life

Steve Rogers and a very modern form of art therapy. (The one where Steve draws himself out of despair and into some notoriety when his cartoons hit the internet, but he's still not allowed to look at Tumblr without an okay from Pepper.)

Selective Service

The serum's given Steve a lot, but it hasn't taken anything away from him. Not even the things he never wanted in the first place.

I'm a Hustler, Baby

Steve Rogers has a talent for pool--and for making others believe he's terrible at it.

The Healing Properties of Felt-Tip Pens

Rapid healing has worked wonders on Steve Rogers' body, but occasionally it really screws with his head. In the aftermath of torture, Bruce Banner helps Steve to reconcile mind and body.

If I Die Before I Wake

It's his job, as their leader, to endure the sadistic focus of their captor, and that is the one thought that carries Steve through.

Even Gods Do

Captain America doesn't have a good relationship with sleep anymore. Also, he's not a toy.

Under My Skin

Written for a prompt on avengerkink: I want to see something where, for whatever reason, Steve's accelerated healing turns out to be a bad thing. Something where the faster healing is making things worse. I would prefer something other than the standard, super-healing allows for more torture without death. “He's lucky – to have the serum, to have you all.” Tony wasn't sure about that first part. When one faced death and destruction every day on the job, there were many advantages to having a healing factor...and a great many disadvantages as well.

A Glossary of the 21st Century

Pairings: pre-Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov

Steve's sick of not understanding what's going on, and the team are not all that helpful, so he starts keeping an illustrated notebook for further research. With the help of wiki, google and Logan he starts to settle in and find his place in the twenty-first century.

Blanket Gift Policy

“You didn’t,” Bucky said, with no real hope of being contradicted. Clint shrugged helplessly and passed him the large, soft bundle wrapped in shiny purple foil.

“Sorry.” Tony covered his eyes with one hand.

“I’m getting a migraine.”

“So,” Bruce said wearily, “counting Clint, me, Bucky, Tony, and Sam, that brings it up to five.”

“Excuse you, mine’s not a blanket,” Sam said. “Mine’s a slanket. Big difference.”

Bucky resisted the urge to throw the whole heap of parcels at Sam’s head. “Because it has sleeves? It’s still a blanket, Wilson. They’re all blankets. Even Thor’s direct-from-Asgard raven gift delivery was a cloak, which just means it’s a blanket with a strap. We all got Steve a goddamn blanket.”

One Tin Soldier

Written for a prompt at avengerkink: Because really, under any other circumstances, why would they follow him when he's some guy who's younger than the rest of them (time as a Capsicle aside), who goes around wearing that spangly outfit, who's not even used to the modern world? Why Steve Rogers, rather than a Norse god or the CEO of Stark Industries or anyone else?

“Love is for children,” she'd said, but respect knew no such bounds. The five times the Avengers accepted Steve as their leader, and the one time they followed without question.

and if there's life we'll see it

Steve is instantly taken with this idea of having the picture of the person calling you flash on your screen when they ring your cell.

Secure Your Own Oxygen Mask (Before Assisting Others)

Steve keeps going, because they need him. Being Captain America - having the serum - is a responsibility and a privilege he takes seriously, and he won't waste it by sitting around resting in the middle of a crisis. But then the work is over, and the original victims of the crisis aren't the only ones needing looking after.

Way of the Eagle

Clint introduces Steve to kung-fu movies. Things escalate quickly.

Walking Wounded

In the aftermath of the battle against the Chitauri, Steve's doing just fine. Until he's not. Fortunately, Thor is a perfect mother-hen, Tony makes decent back-up, JARVIS is a genius, and Soap Operas are life-changing. (Or, Post-Shawarma Feels.)

#steve rogers #fic rec #pro steve rogers #i guess i'll tag the ships #samsteve #thundershield

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julemmaes · 3 years

Text

Payback

Rowaelin Month, Day Five

A/N: Yall I'm dying. I didn't even wanna write today and I kinda forced myself to and I'm not proud of myself for this but I just wanted you to have something so yep. Tomorrow's will be a lot angstier and sadder than this one, so soak up the very light fluff I'm giving you till you can

Signing off, goodnight yall

Word count: 3,614

Aelin hated the underground car park reserved for the residents of her building. It was dark, so narrow that you had to do at least a hundred swerves to avoid taking any corner and scratching off half your car, and it was impossible to find a spot when everyone came home in the evening after hours and hours in the office and parked as they saw fit while still thinking about the thousands of pieces of paperwork that would be waiting for them at their desks only nine hours later, sometimes taking up more than two spots at once.

The only reason she still tried to park down there was that there was a flock of pigeons in the trees just outside their block of flats, on the main road, which had made a nasty habit of shitting on anything - or anyone, on some unpleasant occasion - that stopped for more than five minutes under the thick branches. A perfect hiding place for birds, that no one had thought to warn her about when she had moved in only a few months earlier.

She had deemed herself lucky the night before, when she had returned before anyone else and found the lot completely empty. She'd been so happy that she'd driven around a bit down there just for the hell of it. She'd pulled up next to the exit, thinking it would be easier to get out the next morning.

She hadn't anticipated the three assholes who had parked so as to block her path in every conceivable way.

She grunted, banging her fist against the steering wheel when she realised she still wasn't clear, and put the car into reverse for the twelfth time, before changing gear and driving three inches forward. And so on, and on, and on, until she managed to steer the face of the car towards the exit and let out a satisfied howl.

She started up the slope towards the road, taking her eyes off the driveway and distracting herself for a moment to choose which radio to listen to, when the car hit something and the dull sound of the bang echoed throughout her body, propelling her forward.

Aelin squealed, hitting the brakes hard enough to cause a high-pitched squeal, and soon the smell of burnt plastic filled her nostrils.

The car shut off and she pulled the handbrake vehemently, getting out of the car and trying to figure out which wall she had hit, already cursing every deity that had ever existed. She didn't have enough money to afford a repair, and she knew perfectly well that the dent would be there for months before she let any of her friends help her.

She wrinkled her brow, noticing how no side of the car was touching walls or columns.

"What the..."

And then she heard it, a grunt of pain.

She opened her eyes wide, running around the car and finding a man on the ground.

To the view of a head full of stark white hair, the fear she’d just ran over one of the oldies that lived on her floor stuck her. But then the person got up on their elbows and she let go of a sigh of relief.

But still, she had just runapartment someone over. She hurried his way.

"Oh, fuck." said Aelin, approaching the stranger. The man pulled himself up to sit, bringing a hand to his face, on his cheek, where a cut was bleeding profusely on his shirt.

"Holy shit." muttered the guy, looking up at her, "That hurt."

Aelin was frozen in time, her hands to her gaping mouth, looking for the right words.

When he tried to stand, swaying a little, she pushed through the fog in her mind and truly looked at him, searching other injuries, but not failing to notice his sheer handsomeness.

The man looked like he’d been made in heaven.

She shook her head, mentally reprimanding herself – now was not the time – and started talking.

“I’m so so so sorry. I didn’t see you there and- oh god, you’re bleeding. You need me to rush you to the hospital? Fuck, you think you broke something?” the words just kept flowing and flowing. “Where were you even going? Why didn’t you just got out of the main entrance? This fucking parking lot. I swear we have to call the landlord and have him put some lights down here. Your shirt,” she grimaced, eyeing the blood standing out on the white fabric. Aelin looked him in the eye, “I have a very similar one upstairs? You want me to go fetch it for you, I could-”

“Jesus Christ!” he yelled, putting his hands in between them, forcing her to step back, “Shut the fuck up!”

Aelin’s mouth closed shut and her eyebrows raised so high she felt her skin pull on her temples. She crossed her arms over her chest. Her eyes popping out.

This man. Sure, she’d just ran him over, but no one had ever talked to her like that.

“I’m fine.” he grumbled, “And I live in this building, I’ll go take my own shirt, thank you.” He took a deep breath, brushing off his trousers and bending to gather his stuff that had scattered around during his fall. When he lifted his head again, he gave her a tight smile and his piercing green eyes stared at her with an intensity that had Aelin’s toes curling in her shoes.

“Have a nice day.”

He then proceeded to walk away, leaving Aelin alone in the darkish driveway.

She looked around, hoping to see someone who could confirm that it had just been a figment of her imagination, but there was no one.

Getting back in her car, Aelin started the engine and drove up to the street, chewing on her lips, “What the fuck just happened?”

***

Aelin had thought all day about the mysterious man. She hadn’t been able to focus during her meetings and hadn’t even finished one of her projects. Something that she sure as fuck knew her boss would make her notice and work her ass off to make up for once word got to him.

Her day had started off so bad she knew it couldn’t get any worse, but she’d been wrong.

Her assistant had spilled coffee over her only finished drawing and herself. One of her coworkers had decided today was the perfect day to quit her job and pile her projects on Aelin’s desk. Then she’d gone out for lunch with some of her friends and it had started raining so heavily she’d been forced to stay in the office, only eye-eating the mouth-watering dishes her friends had posted on their instagram stories. They’d made it to the diner just before the sky cracked open.

And, the cherry on top, someone had keyed her car.

She’d been on the verge of tears when she’d spotted the red stains of her neighbor’s blood on the parking lot floor when she got back home, but she didn’t let any fall.

She had a date.

And she wouldn’t let all these little things get to her and ruin what could possibly be the best night of her life.

One of her life-long best friends had set her up on a blind date with one of her boyfriend’s best friends. She’d promised the man was the perfect match, someone Elide thought would keep her on her toes and match her overflowing personality.

Aelin had been hesitant at first when Elide hadn’t wanted to give her a name, or show her a picture, claiming she’d go all FBI style on him and ruin their first meeting, but she’d also promised Aelin she’d met the guy a few times and he’d been nothing but a gentleman.

And she had heard so much of him she felt like she’d known him her whole life.

Some of the things Elide had told her, she’d liked better if she’d found directly from him, but Aelin was a picky woman and she wasn’t risking another date with a creeper.

She pulled up in the restaurant’s parking lot where Elide had reserved the four of them a table and turned off her car, clutching the wheel. She took a deep breath. And another.

She was still a little worked up and all the pent-up emotions of the day were threatening to spill over the surface any minute, but she could make it past dinner and then have her little monthly breakdown in the peace and quiet of her apartment.

She fixed her lipstick, tightened up her ponytail and let two strands of hair cascade on the side of her face. She blew herself a kiss in the mirror, “You can do it.” she whispered as a short pet talk.

She got off the car, pulled out her phone to check if Elide was already inside and she was so focused on the screen she failed to notice someone backing up right in front of her until it was too late.

The car only bumped into her hip, but it was enough to make her lose her balance.

Aelin merely had time to register what was happening that she found herself lying in a puddle of rain and mud. She closed her eyes at the dull pain on the back of her head, but she knew for a fact the hit hadn’t been that bad.

She lifted her arms up, looking down at the wet spots on her dress, darkening by the second. Her seventy euros purse soaking up the water all around her.

The tension behind her eyes just increased when she heard the driver’s door open and someone step out of the car. She couldn’t have stopped the sobs even if she wanted to.

“Miss? Oh god, I’m so sorry. Are you alright?”

Strong arms circled her waist and pulled her up in a standing position. She brought her hands to her face, her body now racked by her crying as she tried to get a handle of herself.

“Miss?” the voice called again, now nearer. “Are you hurt? I didn’t-” the man talking stopped suddenly and Aelin looked up, not seeing anything through the tears. “You.”

And then it hit her.

That voice.

She knew that voice.

She ran her hand over her face, rubbing her eyes and staring right back at the man she had ran over that same morning.

Her mouth fell open.

He was looking at her with an amused expression and Aelin couldn’t find the words once again.

What was it with this man and his ability to take her ability to talk by just showing up?

He had a transparent band-aid on his cheek, his cut far less severe than she had thought, and his eyes were glistening with mirth. He was wearing a simple black pair of jeans and a dark green t-shirt, but he was even more handsome than in his work clothes.

Aelin was taking rushed, trembling breaths, and she was about to kill this man with her bare hands. Shred his skin off his bones and have him beg-

“I guess we’re even now, uh?”

His attempt of a joke flew over her head and she charged at him, a scream lodged in her throat.

His eyes widened and he took a step back when she flung her arm at him, trying to hit him. His hands closed around her wrists, blocking her from causing him more harm that she’d already done.

“You asshole!” she was screaming at the top of her lungs. “You ruined my dress!”

Aelin lifted a leg, more than convinced to kneel his balls, but he managed to block her blow again, infuriating her even more.

“I was about to meet the love of my life and ruined my fucking dress!”

He tried to push her away from him, still squeezing her wrists, and his brow furrowed.

“He’s everything I’ve ever dreamed of. He’s a pediatrician! He loves children! And he has a cute fucking dog my friend said I would love and cuddle the shit out of! Her name is Fleetfoot and she’s a golden retriever and Elide knows I fucking love goldens. And he’s from Orynth, just. Like. Me!” she got louder and louder with every word she spit out. “And he’s tall, and handsome and he’s the perfect match! And I deserved this one night!”

The man was now looking at her with a dumbfounded expression, his hold slightly loosening.

“I’m so done with this dating thing and I’d finally found him and you!” she shoved a finger in his chest, making him retreat a few steps. “You wanted your payback so bad you ran me over with your car!

“And now he’s gonna take one look at me and think I’m a fucking psycho! I bet my hair are the most disgusting thing he’s ever seen and my make up. Oh fuck, I must look like a panda.” Aelin started crying harder, laying her hands flat on the man’s torso, pushing her head to his chest. “I look like a fucking panda.”

She tried to speak again but her mind just couldn’t form any coherent thought, until she felt the man’s arms closing around her shoulders. He stepped closer, running his hand up and down her back, whispering something she couldn’t really hear over her crying.

Aelin didn’t know how much time she spent in the stranger’s embrace, but when the gravity of the scene she’d just made in front of him downed on her, she felt her body flare up in embarrassment.

That was her life now?

Having mental breakdowns in a dark parking lot after someone she’d ran over with her car had returned the gesture and then making them console her?

She detached herself from the man and for a second she thought she’d felt him hesitate before he took a step back. And another, leaving her standing her in her soaking wet dress and her puffy, surely-red eyes. He bent down, picking up her purse and handing it to her.

She lowered her gaze, not even daring looking at his shoes and closed her eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

The man made a sound of surprise, “Why would you be sorry?”

Aelin wished she could die on the spot. Evaporate out of existence.

“For hitting you. Or at least trying. And crying all over you.” she said and then grimaced. She ran a hand over her face. “I just had a very hard day and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to come, but this guy seriously seems like he could be the missing piece to whatever the fuck my puzzle-life is. I didn’t want to take a raincheck and have him thinking I’m not serious about this.”

A beat of silence, “I’m sure he would have understood.”

She shook her head, keeping on talking as if he hadn’t even been there, “And now I can’t go in like this.” she passed her hands on her dress, the tears building up again in her eyes. “Plus, Elide didn’t tell me what he looks like, cause she thinks he’s a real snack and wanted to see my face when I saw him for the first time.” she was bordering on pouting, “That means he’s gotta be smoking hot or I’ll be so pissed at her.”

The man snorted loudly, “A snack.” he hummed, “Maybe I should meet your friend and thank her.”

Aelin’s head snapped up, “Oh no, she’s taken.” she shook her head vehemently, “Like so freaking taken. I swear she and her boyfriend have been together for a whole of three months and they already act like a married couple.”

He nodded, a lopsided smile on his face, “I know the kind.”

She’d been so absorbed by her talking that she hadn’t noticed she’d stopped crying.

She breathed through her nose and clasped her hands together, before reaching one out towards him, “I think introductions are needed. I’m Aelin.” she offered a tentative smile.

His hand engulfed hers, shaking it with impressive gentleness. His smile grew even larger if possible and Aelin was starting to think she was about to het murdered.

But then he said his name and the world ceased existing around them.

Their hands still moving up and down between them.

She tilted her head forward, “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

He licked his lower lip, “I’m Rowan.”

Aelin closed her eyes, holding her breath.

She squeezed his hand before releasing it. She took a step back, wishing for the ground beneath her feet to crack open and just eat her whole.

“I’m gonna go kill myself now, if you’ll excuse me.”

His laugh reached her ears with painful speed.

Rowan.

She couldn’t believe it.

Well, she could. The man laughing his heart out at her expense was probably the most handsome person she’d ever seen in her entire life.

At least Elide hadn’t lied about that.

“A tad dramatic, if you ask me,” he said as his laugh died down. He pointed at the restaurant behind him, “You want me to go fetch the married couple so we can go back at the appartment and you can change? I’m not against you walking in there with this outfit at all,” he gave a pointed look, matched by a shit-eating grin that seemed to be etched in his lips, “I’m not gonna think you’re a psycho, not for this at least, and I’m ready to fight everyone who looks at you the wrong way. But you look like you could use the comfort of a warm house.”

Aelin looked up at him with a questioning look, trying to understand if this man she’d just tried to maul was seriously offering her options, letting her choose after everything that had gone down so far between the two of them. As if still giving her a chance.

Rowan arched a brow, looking around and glancing back at her, “Aelin?”

Oh, fuck.

She had been oh so not ready o hear her name from his lips.

She nodded and he smiled, leaning down a bit.

She could smell his cologne from here.

“Yes to what? Me calling Lorcan and Elide or getting inside even if you dripping wet?”

Holy fucking shit, this man shouldn’t have been allowed to say the words dripping wet.

She stilled herself.

What the hell was she thinking? She brought her hands to her face, “Please call them and let’s head home. I’m so fucking tired.” a yawn broke her sentence, as to prove her words, “And I’m freezing in this skimpy dress.”

Rowan rushed to her side, “Oh, god, sorry for not offering sooner, here,” he opened the trunk of his car and pulled out a huge blue sweater. Without even waiting for an answer he snatched her purse from her hands and shoved her head in his sweater.

Aelin felt better right away and gave him a big smile.

Rowan answered with one of his own and of course he had to be this perfect and more.

“I’m sorry for ruining your dress, I’ll make sure they wash it carefully when I take it to the laundry. If you’d let me.”

She nodded faintly, exhaling the panty-dropping smell of his sweater.

“And I’m hoping to see you wear it again once we finally get to go on a proper date.” he smirked, “I bet you looked amazing before I went and ran you over.”

Aelin chuckled, shaking her head, “You truly are a gentleman. Elide wasn’t exaggerating.”

Rowan’s demeanor changed completely and Aelin feared she’d said something wrong, but he averted his gaze as if he was embarassed.

“I’m sorry for this morning,” he said. Aelin almost tripped on her feet. He was sorry? “I shouldn’t have talked to you like that but I was just coming back from the hospital and Elide was right saying I work with kids, but I’m not a pediatrician, I’m a pediatric surgeon.”

His gaze grew dark as he looked over her shoulder, avoiding meeting her eyes at all costs.

“Yesterday night we lost a eight years old and I wasn’t really there when you hit me with your car. I didn’t mean to yell at you like I did, it was just-”

Rowan couldn’t finish his sentence that Aelin lunged for him, hugging him as tight as he’d held her a few minutes before, hoping she could relieve some of the pain that was surely clutching his heart. She felt him sag in her arms and hold her in turn.

She was glad she could offer some kind of support.

“It must be hard.” she whispered against his chest.

Rowan nodded, hitting her head with his chin, “It is, but it’s part of the job. The only way you can live with something like that in your baggage is knowing you did everything you could to save them.”

Aelin could feel the emotion lacing his every word and tightened her arms for a moment before freeing him of her embrace. He silently thanked her and told her he’d be right back with their friends.

The second he was gone she realized she couldn’t wait for when he’d be back and they could keep talking.

She’d never felt this way before. Not this fast at least.

Sure, she had loved all her exes, but this. This was different.

There was something there, a connection.

And while he walked back to her, Lorcan and Elide in tow, a bright smile on his handsome face, she couldn’t help but think she was ready to find out all about it.

tog tag list (if you wanna be added or removed just dm me or send me an ask)

@maastrash @ireallyshouldsleeprn @sleeping-and-books @hellasblessed @thegoddessofyou @ghostlyrose2 @claralady @sayosdreams @perseusannabeth @letstakethedawn @terrible-and-proud @post-it-notes33 @booksstorm @nalgenewhore @queen-of-demons-and-hell @lanyjoy-13 @vasudharaghavan @cupcakey00 @bri-loves-sunflowers @queen-of-glass @thewayshedreamed @the-regal-warrior @fangirlprincess09 @januarystears @rowaelinismyotp @starbornsinger @bookstantrash @thegreyj @feysand-loml @autumnbabylon @a-court-of-milkandhoney @highqueenofelfhame @story-scribbler @mariamuses

#rowaelinmonth #rowaelin #rowan whitethorn #aelin galathynius #rowaelin month day five #tog #throne of glass #rowaelin fic

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disgruntledspacedad · 3 years

Text

Aftershocks (2/5)

The Better Love Series

pairing: Javier Peña x Fem!Reader (Ears). Part of the Better Love ‘verse.

summary: That bomb fucked you up a little more than you thought. h/c, fluff.

words: 2.5k

warnings: 18+ - canon typical violence, lots of medical stuff in this one.

a/n: unbeta’d. I had a surprise day off, so enjoy the second installment of Aftershocks much sooner than I had anticipated. More notes to follow!

part one | part two | part three | part four | part five

MASTERLIST

You’re escorted beyond the heavy double doors of the emergency department in a hurry. It probably has a lot to do with Javi busting into the waiting area with you in his arms, flashing his DEA badge and barking out orders in irate Spanish.

Honestly, you wish he wouldn’t make such a scene. Sitting still in the car had allowed you to catch your breath a little. You feel like shit, sure, but you’re pretty sure you aren’t actively dying.

Try telling him that, though.

The triage room is little more than a curtain masking a dimly lit corner. You’re answering what questions you can in halting Spanish, but Javi can see that you’re overwhelmed.

“Ella habla ingles.” His tone earns him a dirty look, but the nurse nods, placing an oxygen probe on your finger and frowning up at the monitor. Both of you follow her gaze, noticing that the number reads 87.

“The doctor will see you soon,” she says carefully. Her English is heavily accented, and suddenly, you’re grateful beyond words that you have Javi here to translate. “Here. You’ll wear this.” She winds the oxygen tubing beneath your chin and around your ears. The oxygen is dry, burning your nose and making your face twitch in annoyance, but you can’t deny that you feel better with it on.

The nurse leaves you then, pulling the curtain closed behind her. Javi continues to stare at the monitor with his arms folded across his chest as the number on the screen climbs to 89, then to 92, the soft tone of the blips rising in pitch with each subtle improvement.

He’s thinking again, you can tell.

“Javi?” You reach for his hand, tugging at his fingers. Instinctively, you know that leaving him alone to stew right now cannot be a good thing.

He glances down at you, all dark, glittering eyes and terse expression, and worry clinches in your gut. “You okay?”

Javi snorts. “Really, Ears.” You can just see him fighting the urge to roll his eyes. “That’s a hell of a question, coming from you.”

You decide to shoot for levity. “I’m great, thanks for asking.”

That earns you a pathetic, lopsided lip twitch. You count it as a win anyway.

The doctor never shows. Javi grumbles and broods. A little while later, somebody comes with a wheelchair to whisk you away for an x-ray, and no matter how much blustering and badge-flashing and protesting he does, Javi is told firmly to stay put.

He’s pacing agitatedly in the hallway when return. Apparently, it had felt like an eternity for him.

In reality, you’d been gone less than twenty minutes.

It seems that your x-ray has earned you some attention, because things start happening a little faster now. People are in and out, one nurse bustling in to wordlessly draw an entire fistful of little color coded tubes of your blood, another working on IV access in your opposite arm. You take it all stoically, caught between watching in fascination as the nurse tapes the catheter in place with practiced efficiency and wondering why all of this can’t just happen in one stick.

A little while later, the same nurse returns with a bag of fluid. “Seca,” she informs you as she stretches to hang it on the hook in the wall.

“She says you’re dehydrated,” Javi translates. His face is a stone wall, the subtle clench of his jaw the only hint of the emotion that churns beneath. You can just imagine him kicking himself for not making you eat or drink.

You bite back a shiver. The saline is cold in your arm.

They move you to a real room not long after that. It’s only marginally bigger than your corner in the emergency department, crammed with two rickey, uncomfortable beds separated by another dingy curtain. Thankfully, you don’t have a roommate for the moment.

You let Javi handle the paperwork as you change out of his sweats and into the itchy, open-backed gown that you’ve been provided with. Even with the oxygen, moving around still requires that you pause to catch your breath, and you’re grateful for the opportunity to sit when you’re done, even if the hospital bed you’re on is squeaky and uncomfortable.

Once the documents are signed and the nurses are gone, silence settles thickly between you. Javi is standing with his fingers fisted into his hips, glaring daggers at the clock on the wall. He hasn’t spoken in a long time.

Again, you feel that burning need to pull him out of his head. “Not really set up for visitors, is it?” you ask wryly. It’s a stupid, pointless thing to say, but you’re just trying to fill the void.

Javi glances around the room, raising his brows at what he observes. There’s no chair and no free space, nowhere for him to sit. Sighing deeply, he yanks back the curtain that divides the room and eases carefully onto the bed opposite of you, leaning forward with his arms folded on his knees.

You grit your teeth. Really, you wouldn’t have minded him settling down on your bed, but the more time you spend with Javi, the more you’re starting to realize that he withdraws when he’s feeling wrong-footed. As annoying as it is, the distance he’s putting between you is just par for the course, and it’s just not worth addressing right now.

“How are you feeling?” he asks softly, pinning you with a sharp, assessing stare.

“Better,” you answer automatically, forcing some cheerfulness into your tone. Honestly, you’re far more worried about him than you are about you.

Javi raises a skeptical brow, clearly doubting you.

“No, really!”

Your protest makes him shake his head in dark amusement. “What am I gonna do with you, Ears?” he wonders aloud.

You’re ready to supply several very detailed answers to that question, all of them interrupted as your doctor finally breezes into the room.

“About fucking time,” Javi mutters under his breath as he rises to his feet.

“Hola, hola. I’m Dr. Perez.” Dr. Perez says, actually managing to sound a tiny bit apologetic. “Forgive the delay, por favor. I know it must seem that emergencies are the most non-emergent situation in the hospital, but, I promise you, we are working hard behind the scenes.”

You decide immediately that you like Dr. Perez. He’s not a big man, compact and clean cut, with just the faintest dusting of silver at his temples and a warm, genuine smile.

Javi must be thinking along similar lines, because he comes to stand just at the edge of your shoulder, looming dark and foreboding at your side as Dr. Perez approaches your bedside.

Oh, now you’ll stick close, you think fondly, trying to find a little amusement in Javi’s behavior. Everything about this situation is entirely new, totally incongruous with the cool, suave Javier Peña that you thought you’d known, and a malicious, possessive part of your brain is just eating up the implications.

“I understand you were involved in the bombing in downtown Bogotá, correct?” Dr. Perez’s grip is firm and cool as he shakes your hand.

“Yes, that’s correct.” You’re acutely aware of Javi standing stiffly beside you, watching your every move.

“Most unfortunate,” Perez shakes his head in a show of sympathy, and you manage to believe him. “And the breathing problems, they began later, no?”

“Yes,” you answer, surprised that he would guess with such accuracy. “I was okay afterward. Maybe a little bit sore. But not hurt.”

“Ella ha estado tosiendo sangre,” Javi interjects quickly. You’re not sure what he’s saying, but Dr. Perez’s eyes flicker in his direction, a swift, meaningful look passing between them.

“Veo.” Dr. Perez says smoothly. He frowns down at you. “And how for were you from the blast zone?”

You think back, willing yourself to relive the memory of the morning in clinical detail. “I was crossing the street,” you say slowly. “Headed home.” You do some quick mental math in your head, analyzing the width of Circular against the image of Emilio, waving. You’d been close enough to shout a greeting. “Forty feet. Maybe a little less.”

Beside you, Javi sucks in a sharp breath.

Perez purses his lips. “Sí, eso lo haría.” He crosses the room, flicking a switch to illuminate a bright white panel built into the wall that you hadn’t noticed before. He shuffles through your chart, pulling out a dark film and pinning it to the light.

It’s your chest x-ray. You can clearly see the curve of your ribs, stark white against the darker background of your lungs. In the middle of the film lies the dusky outline of what you assume is your heart. To the lower left, a patch of hazy, white blur mars the image.

“This is the problem.” Perez points to the blur. “Pulmones magullados. Your lungs are bruised, see? This is common in blast zone survivors. The change in air pressure when the bomb ignites causes an injury to the lung tissue. You are bleeding just a little bit internally.”

You can damn near feel Javi gritting his teeth at that.

“But I felt fine,” you protest weakly, looking assentingly at the blob on the x-ray. It’s a pretty good size.

“Sí, you were fine.” Perez is nodding along with you, like he’d expected the argument. “That’s normal with this type of injury. You felt good immediately afterward because the bruise was new, the bleeding slight. But the bruise has gotten bigger, and you have gotten worse.” He indicates the oxygen that you are wearing with a grim nod. “You are a very lucky, mi amiga, to have walked away from that. Muy afortunada. Had you been closer…” Perez trails off, shaking his head somberly. “It does not bear thinking.”

He claps his hands, startling you away from the grisly images stirring in your mind. “There is good news, though!” Perez gestures toward the x-ray as a whole, circling over it with his index finger. “I see no rib fractures, nothing collapsed. Your breathing might get worse before it gets better, but it will get better. We will keep you under close watch until then.”

“Keep me?”

“Sí, you will be here.” Perez pins you with a no-nonsense stare, as if to curtail any protests before they come. “There’s another matter. You have a small concussion as well. To this area, here.” He taps the back of his own head with his hand. “From falling down, yes?”

You nod. The area he’s pointing to is right where your head hurts most, where you’d fallen backward after the blast. “Yes. It did knock me off my feet.” Apparently a with a little more force than you’d initially assumed.

Perez hums. “We will monitor that as well. You do not take blood thinners?”

“No, sir. No medications.”

“Bueno.” Dr. Perez seems genuinely pleased by this. “You’ve made my job very easy.” He gathers the film and shuffles it back into your chart, flopping it shut with a flourish. “Rest for you, Orejas. Time and sleep will do the best healing.”

“Orejas?” you can’t help but ask. It’s the name that Emilio had used for you, but you’re shocked that Perez knows it.

Perez smiles. “I listen to my nurses. That is what they call you.”

“How much time?” Javi interrupts before you can respond. You’d nearly forgotten about him, as quiet as he’s been.

Perez turns to address him for the first time. “It depends largely on her body. The concussion is small, and won’t require anything in the way of treatment. Her lungs, though…” Perez frowns down at the closed chart with a furrowed brow. “The contusion is still developing. A few days, a week, perhaps? I can say more tomorrow.” He turns back to you, sighing in sympathy. “I’m afraid you’re in for a stay, mi amiga.”

Well, fuck.

With that, Perez disappears just as quickly as he’d arrived, soft, quick footsteps echoing down the hallway, and silence falls once again over the room.

Javi doesn’t move, doesn’t speak. He’s standing very still, arms folded tightly across his chest with his thumbs digging into his armpits. The expression on his face is downright chilling.

Your blood turns to ice.

“What the fuck, Ears?” he says very slowly, enunciating each syllable with deadly precision.

You glance up, suddenly hesitant to speak. The little movement must be enough to spur him on, though, because Javi fucking explodes.

“Forty fucking feet!” he bites out, clawing angrily at his hair. He paces the tiny room, whirling as he runs out of space and pointing an accusing finger at you. “You told me you were across the street, Ears, not crossing it. There’s a big fucking difference.”

You blink at him, recalling the conversation you’d had in the embassy parking lot.

Shit, he’s right.

“Why the hell did you lie to me?” There’s a subtle warble in his tone, a flicker of devastation in his eyes that’s quickly masked.

Discomfort that has nothing to do with your injured lungs twinges in your chest. “I don’t know,” you answer miserably. You hadn’t thought of it as lying. At the time, you’d been overwhelmed by the situation and thoroughly confused by Javi’s erratic behavior, just desperate to get home and sleep off the worst morning of your life. “I didn’t want to upset you, I guess.”

Javi laughs sarcastically. “Well, you’ve done a fucking fantastic job of that, haven’t you?” He throws his hands in the air, like he’s had it up to here with your shit. “Coughing up blood all over my kitchen floor. Christ, I should have known.”

Okay, now he’s being a little dramatic - the only blood you’d coughed up had been into your fingers, after all, but the protest is lost on you as you look him in the face. Javi’s eyes are deeply shadowed, his expression pained, his hair standing wildly from where he’s run his fingers through it.

He looks thoroughly exhausted.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, dropping your gaze to the floor.

Javi huffs and looks away, clearly not ready to accept any apologies from you.

You don’t blame him. Throughout this entire screwed up relationship, you’ve done an absolutely piss poor job of putting yourself in Javi’s shoes, and it’s coming back to bite you in the ass.

You deserve his irritation, and more.

Javi’s pager beeps, the shrill sound of it slicing through the tension. He snatches it roughly off of his belt, frowning down at the display with squinted eyes.

You glance up at the clock on the wall. It’s pretty late, but given the day Javi’s had, it’s not outrageous to assume that somebody would need to be in touch with him at this hour.

“I’ve got to take this,” Javi says tonelessly, hardly glancing up at you. If there’s any regret there, it’s buried very deeply. “I’ll see you later, Ears.”

He’s gone before you can get a word in edgewise.

♠

confessions/notes:

I speak one language poorly, and I’ve never extensively written a character who is not a primary English speaker (I’m not counting Javi here). Any critiques or corrections to my Spanish are very welcomed!

Up next: a look at things from Javi’s POV.

Spanish translations:

She speaks English.

Dry

She’s been coughing up blood.

I see.

Yeah, that’ll do it.

ears

tags:@jedi-mando, @perropascal, @aerolanya, @pikemoreno, @bitchin-beskar, @mostly-megan, @huliabitch, @starsandmando, @starlight-starwrites, @thirstworldproblemss, @knittingqueen13, @yespolkadotkitty

Javier Peña tags: @magpie-to-the-morning, @tiffdawg, @danniburgh, @1800-fight-me

To my taglist peeps, I’m sorry for tagging you guys three times in 24 hours. Again, chaotic jay cannot plan anything, like ever.

#Javier Peña x reader #Javier Peña #narcos #pedro pascal #Javier Peña x you #Javier Peña fanfiction #Javier Peña fanfic #reader insert #hurt/comfort #fluff #narcos netflix #narcos fanficiton #narcos fanfic #better love #aftershocks

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tiredb0igivemesugars · 3 years

Text

Peter is never wrong

Summary: Tony Stark's party goes very wrong

📝Words📝: 2.2k

⚠️Warnings⚠️: blood, injury, near death, angst

💙Pairing💙: Peter Parker x g!n reader (Tony Stark x Steve Rogers mentioned)

📎Note📎: No proofread

Peter desperately tried to get the bowtie right, had been trying for almost ten minutes. ”Peter, are you ready to leave soon?” Your voice asked from behind the door. ”In a minute!” Peter yelled back. He tied the bow messily in frustration and walked out. Stark and his charity balls. Peter had a bad feeling about today if he was completely honest. However, he couldn’t pinpoint why.

You stood by the door, waiting for Peter. You knew he was struggling to tie the damn bowtie but wouldn’t ask you for help. Always insisting on being fine on his own.

He opened the door shortly after, the bowtie all wrong.

You chuckled as you stepped in front of him to fix the monstrosity of a knot he had mustered up. ”You’re supposed to fold the longer end over the shorter.” You said as you untied it. Leaving one end longer than the other. ”Pinch and through the hole.” You muttered to yourself as you tied the piece of clothing properly for your boyfriend.

Peter smiled as he wrapped his arms around you. ”Where would I be without you?” He asked as he placed a kiss on your lips. A chaste kiss, a sweet thank you.

”You’d use those clip in bows and drink instant coffee.”

”Haha. Very funny.” Peter said, trying to sound mad as he let you go.

You gave a little laugh as you let Peter separate himself from you. ”Shall we go?”

The car pulled up in front of the venue. Cameras flashing and reporters swarming around. Peter’s hand crept up to hold yours. You squeezed his hand as you walked through the sea of people.

”Peter! Y/n! So glad you could join us!” Tony called out once the two of you had made it inside. ”He doesn’t screw around with parties, does he?” You stated more than asked. Peter only hummed. ”Are you alright?” You asked him as you kept walking in Tony’s direction, he was already immersed in another conversation but Peter still led the two of you that way. ”I have a bad feeling about tonight. Something bad is going to happen.” Peter stated calmly, trying not to draw attention to himself.

Peter was usually never wrong about these things. ”Is this your anxiety talking or the spider sense?” You asked, wary. ”Latter.”

Peter hadn’t let go of your hand the entire time the two of you had been there, which was almost two hours. He didn’t tell Tony about his feeling either, which confused you. ”If you tell him he’ll call the whole thing off. It’ll be dealt with.” You had tried to reason. ”But I don’t actually know what’s going to happen. It might only happen if I tell him.”

”You two seem gloomy.” Tony suddenly said from behind the two of you. This was your chance. ”Peter here thinks that-”

”The ball is very nicely organised.” He finished for you, giving you the side-eye. ”Peter, you shouldn’t talk over your date.” Tony scolded the boy. Peter slowly felt your gaze leaving him, focusing on something entirely other. ”I didn’t see Mister Rogers anywhere, is he coming?” Peter asked, making conversation. ”He better,” Tony sighed. ”We got into a bit of an argument. He said that the party was unnecessary and was going to mess with his routine.”

”God you two sound like an old married couple,” Peter chuckled lightly. ”Don’t spoilt it,” Tony said as he jokingly hit Peter. You tuned out the rest of the conversation as your attention latched onto a waiter who was glancing around nervously before pouring a substance into some of the champagne glasses he was balancing on a tray. A wave of nausea rolled over you. This was bad. So, so incredibly bad.

He lifted his gaze suddenly, eyes meeting with yours. He instantly set the tray down and began walking away. ”I’ll go to the bathroom really quick.” You said suddenly, eyes not leaving the guy at any point. You could hear Peter protest, but you couldn’t stop.

You tried your best to slide between the sea of people, trying not to lose the guy from your sight. You followed him to the back end of the building, the space reserved for staff. The fluorescent lights lit up a long staircase towards the roof. You could hear the guy’s quick steps a floor above. And without a second thought, you followed him.

You followed the footsteps to the fifth floor. An empty office space with the same fluorescent lights. The man you had followed all the way up there was nowhere to be seen. ”I saw you come in here. Come out, wherever you are!” You called out without a second thought.

”Y/n It’s not very wise to yell like that into an empty room.” A man’s voice suddenly said. The voice was followed by calm and sharp footsteps, revealing a man standing there in a suit. ”Oh fucking hell. I was led here, wasn’t I?” You said to yourself. You should've known. You silently cursed yourself and your stupidity.

”That you were indeed.” The man said, walking around in lazy circles in front of you, arms crossed behind his back. Suddenly a force pulled you down on your knees, causing the rock hard floor to be almost rammed against your knees. You groaned in pain, feeling something break. ”Tell me y/n, how does one get Tony Stark’s attention these days.” The man asked, not even glancing in your direction. The force kept you on your knees, keeping you from moving.

”I think an email would do the trick. Have you tried that?” You asked, trying to mask your fear. You had been pulled down by pure force and the man hadn't even touched you. What else could he do? ”Y/n I can smell your fear.”

”You’re lucky that I had an actual reason to bring you in, otherwise I would hurt you very, very bad.” The man sounded almost angry, although it could just be that the tone was just a normal one for him. ”What’s the reason you have for kidnapping me?” You asked, your fear lessening somehow.

”You’re Peter Parker’s weakness. And Peter Parker is Tony Stark’s weakness. So say that something awful were to happen to you, Tony would automatically be affected and thus, vulnerable.” The man explained his master plan, a shitty one you might add. ”Rule number one of being a criminal, never explain your in motion plan to someone who is alive and well capable of stopping the plan.” You retorted back.

”Who said you were going to be alive?” The man asked, letting you digest his words before ripping a hole in your abdomen with the force he had used to make sure you’d stay in place. Burning, blinding pain invaded your body. You screamed in agony. Could Peter hear you if you screamed loud enough?

The crimson colour from inside of you expanded out, forming a pool under you as you screamed loudly. The warm substance coated your lower stomach and legs, trailing down those parts to reach the floor. Your hands trembled as you tried to cover the wound. You didn’t want to bleed out there. Your hands came in contact with the big laceration, you gasped in surprise at the size of the wound. In the shape of a crescent moon on your lower stomach, from hipbone to hipbone. Blood rushed to your head, at least that’s what it felt like. A hum invaded your head. Causing most of the other sounds around you to fade. The burn from your lower stomach spread through your entire body, travelling by your blood vessels.

”Now, my plan isn’t to bleed you out here-”

”Well what is it then? I suggest that you get on with it quick because you’re running out of time.” Tony’s voice spoke up from behind you, by the door you had come through before.

You sighed in relief, eyes closing momentarily, yet, finding much comfort in that darkness. The sounds around you became even more muffled, you could feel yourself swaying from side to side before you felt something wet against your cheek. Possibly your own blood. There was a huge crash, causing your eyes to fly open just for a minute to see Peter looking down at you. His lips moved, his voice was muffled. You were able to make out your name but nothing much after that. The side of your cheek wasn't wet anymore, your head laid against something soft. Possibly Peter's lap.

His rough hands felt nice against your cheeks, you felt yourself be pulled into a deep slumber. Finding comfort in his mere presence. You could feel yourself mumble something before your mind did the final loop, sending you into a deep slumber.

”Hey there, you gave us all a pretty big scare there,” Peter’s voice said, resonating in your head somehow being louder than the buzzing in your head. You groaned slightly, trying to open your eyes. There was a steady beeping on your right and the sounds of living people talking and walking around on your left. Finally, your eyes were able to focus, Tony sat on your right, asleep on a rather uncomfortable chair.

You rubbed your eyes, trying to adjust. ”What happened?” You were able to finally rasp out. "Shh, it doesn't matter right now. What matters is that you're alright," he said. His voice sounded somehow, weighed, with a sadness of some kind. His eyes were red and swollen, his nose still runny. "Have you been crying?" You rasped out, feeling more concerned for Peter's mental wellbeing than your own physical wellbeing.

He gave an awkward chuckle before answering, "I was just scared, that's all." He said. He stood slightly over you, holding onto your hand while reaching over your head to press the call button for a nurse. You sighed. "I'm sorry for worrying you," you said, feeling like it was something appropriate to say at a moment like this.

Peter remained silent. He sat back down on his chair, still holding onto your hand.

You heard some nurses chatter in the corridor, talking about another patient. The small TV in a far corner in your room spoke, a game show re-run. Peter let out little huffs in his sleep, his nose just barely scrunched up. The machine hooked up to you let out steady beeps, in synch with your heartbeat. The big round clock on the wall was able to inform you that it was twenty past four in the morning.

Soon, a nurse came in. They asked you the usual questions like, how you were feeling and what you remembered. After that, they did some simple tests to see how you were functioning. "I'll come back in a few hours with a doctor. We'll then do more in-detail tests," the nurse explained before leaving the room.

Tony had awoken during the nurse's visit and left the room to call Steve. He was now coming back. "Steve and the others are on their way," Tony said as he came back into the room. "It's four in the morning, let them sleep," you told Tony, feeling like you were burdening them. "I don't think that the others have slept very well in the waiting room. I hear the chairs are pretty uncomfortable," Tony explained. You just huffed.

Peter remained silent, his eyes glossed over, not really focusing on anything. "Peter, talk to me," you suddenly said. This was a moment when you felt like you needed him. Needed to talk to him. Say things like "I'm sorry for scaring you" and "I'll be more careful in the future". Hold his hands and listen to him as his voice would waver, explaining how he had felt in that moment. Tell him how sorry you were for causing him so much heartbreak. And for him to just remain silent, not saying anything, making minimal contact with you, it was just so baffling.

He sighed, bringing your hand to his face and caressing it with your hand. You could feel the dampness of his cheeks. He had been crying. "I just, I watched you. I watched your eyes turn over. I felt how, momentarily, your heart stopped beating." He almost whispered. The heart monitor you were hooked onto increased in its beeping, informing everyone in the room of how your pulse was quickening. "I, I tried to stop the bleeding. I put so much web on the wound. I tried to stop it with my bare hands. There's still some of your blood under my nails." He showed you the dark red that laid under his nails and the small space between the nail and the cuticle.

He looked up from your hand, the one he had been clutching onto like his life depended on it, and met your eyes. Tears streamed down his face, snot covering his upper lip as the lower one quivered. "I've, I've seen death. I've had front row seats, reserved for a family but I sat alone. I've lived through it, but that, I wasn't ready for that." You remained silent, seeing how distraught he was. How much he needed to get this off of his chest. "I haven't given much thought to God, not in many years— I thought I didn't believe in him— but when you laid there, blood gushing out of your body, I prayed. I prayed for the first time in years."

Despite the many protests your body gave, you leaned forward. You gently grabbed Peter's face and kissed him. "I love you," you whispered against his lips before indulging in them again. He tasted salty, most likely due to the tears, but he still felt like Peter. His lips moved the way they always had. His face felt like it always had. This was Peter, your Peter. The man who you loved and who loved you.

#marvel #the avengers #peter parker x reader #spiderman #tony stark #iron man #avengers imagine #oneshot #angst #steve rogers #x gender neutral reader

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mightymorphingayagenda · 3 years

Note

cant wait for lethal combination chapter 5! and loved the holiday nessian fic you wrote!

then you shan’t have to wait! and thank you so much, nonnie. the fic they’re talking about and all previous chapters of lethal combo can be found here, x

“Forgive me, father, for I have sinned.”

Nesta kept her gaze on the wall of oak opposite her.

“Is this the part where I tell you to get on your knees for me?” She asked.

Humourless.

And she could practically feel the feral rage radiating from him. Bleeding through the grate to her left like he were trying to smoke her out.

“This is the part where you-“

“Shhh.”

A lean shadow, a head of auburn hair, muted in the darkness like the decayed verdure of autumn, barely distinguishable through the latticed window no bigger than her hand.

She’d made Eris wait almost a day.

In Nesta’s experience teenage girls understood psychological warfare better than any CIA types she’d met. And rule one in the handbook was never call him back right away.

Eris might as well have been a cute boy from home room, the advice stood fast.

She’d also chosen the time and place for their meeting, giving no concessions in authority. Picking the church as unlike her he’d inherited both the egregious wealth of his family and their faith. Irish Catholic. Meaning he’d find himself here every Sunday evening regardless, and providing not only the guise of normality, but the cosy anonymity of a confessional.

The only people who did secrecy better than assassins, were the Catholics.

It was perfect really, the perfect plan. Undistracted Nesta had been able to work it out pretty quickly after Cassian had left. Leaving her all those hours between four in the morning and her meeting the following evening with nothing to do but hate him.

Avoiding returning to the bed he’d screwed her in. Glaring at his jacket which still hung beside her front door over a bottle of vodka.

It was a blow to her pride to be sure. The closest thing to rejection she’d ever received from a man. Whatsmore, some gooey part of her she’d pushed down had been upset.

Too worked up to sleep she’d spent hours tucked into her armchair and entertaining plucking his teeth from his mouth like the petals of a rose. He loves me, he loves me not. Because worse than revealing himself to be a complete ass as most men did, Cassian had done so subsequent to fucking her better than she could have dreamed. And she’d had that dream. Multiple times.

Wet dreams that couldn’t hold a candle to the way he’d had her dripping down to her knees, begging for his cock, trembling on legs he’d thrown over his shoulder to lick out her cunt like it was the reason he got out of bed in the morning. The man had spoilt her rotten.

Nesta knew she probably shouldn’t have been thinking about sex in a church. Her mother was likely burning with a fury hotter than the flames that surrounded her down below, but she couldn’t help it. Because while she hated the sinner- ever bronze buffed, tattooed inch of him - god did she love the sin.

“The adult is going to talk,” she said quietly. “If you want to throw a tantrum you can do it on your own time because as of this moment, I’m officially off the clock.”

Eris’ silence said he knew better than to interrupt her. Perhaps he was smarter than she was about to give him credit for.

“In fact I stopped working for you as of the moment you chose to question my methods and profess concerns that I may have jeopardised our venture because I lack the professionalism to keep my legs shut,” she said.

“So if you want Helion Day neutralised, you’re going to have to find someone else to do the job. Though I seriously doubt you’ll be able to.”

Cue phase two of the plan.

Because she may have hated Cassian, but she wanted the monopoly on causing him emotional anguish.

Like hell some other pro was going to put a bullet between Helion’s eyes and devastate his bodyguard. Making that man cry was Nesta’s prerogative.

“I have made it clear to anyone in my field you might attempt to solicit that you are a impertinent, trust fund brat, who insists on micromanaging the work of other’s despite your incompetence in an attempt to feel important beyond the breeding mummy lied and told you made you special.”

“I wasn’t aware you also specialised in character assassination.”

Eris’ voice was charred with a sweetness like wealth; earthy and rich it reminded Nesta of muscovado sugar.

He was right. She was being unprofessional. But she was tired and hungover and out of a gorgeous lay so fuck him.

“My specialities are no longer any of your business, Mr Vanserra,” she replied. “My displeasure however, should be of great concern to you.”

“Is that a threat?”

“I wouldn’t do you the courtesy of warning you if I intended to kill you.”

Eris said nothing.

“You can consider it incentive if it helps you sleep at night though,” Nesta continued. “To do as you’re told.”

She gave him strict instructions. Wait five minutes then leave. Never contact me. Forget we were ever in correspondence in the first place.

“Murder is cheap, Mr Vanserra. You don’t want to learn the cost of disobeying me. It’s not the kind of thing daddy’s wallet can cover.”

She emerged from the confessional, slim shades obscuring her eyes and the deep bruises beneath. Her heels clipping against the stone floor as she made her way toward the station of votive candles at the back of the church.

Each glowing stick a prayer for a lost loved one. Matches and and a few unlit offerings still available.

She lit herself a cigarette on a flame.

And Nesta couldn’t have missed the fresco above those colossal doors of oak and rustic gold flake even through the plumes of smoke that curled upwards as she stalked lazily down the isle: a depiction of the Heavenly Father himself.

She didn’t bother flicking a glance behind her to the confessional.

Who’s your daddy, now?

She’d collapsed face down into already rumpled sheets.

They’d smelled like sex and heaven and she’d smelt like cigarettes and a church and that was all she knew before the exhaustion caught up with her, the world went black, and she was waking up in exactly the same position . Vex’s fluffy tail swishing against her ear. The tickling sensation plucking her from the bliss of pure nothingness.

Nesta groaned a little as she rolled over and pulled herself to sit up. Pleased to find she’d had the energy to take off her clothes. Unlike her makeup.

“Damn it,” she hissed as she saw the smudged mascara on the pillow.

Not that the sheets didn’t need washing anyway…

“Ugh,” she huffed, dropping flat onto her back again.

She’d been awake less then seven seconds and a man had already ruined her day. Just thinking about him…

“Ugh,” she said again, louder. Like she was angry with the ceiling for not acknowledging her the first time.

Vex meowed, his little head nudging at her bare arm. As though he were trying to coax her bra strap back up to a respectable position on her shoulder.

“Hi, baby,” she grumbled, picking him up for a cuddle. “You hungry?”

He meowed again.

Padding down to the kitchen she’d made them both breakfast (technically lunch, she’d slept in till almost one) and carrying her plate of fruit back upstairs to draw a bubble bath he winded between her ankles, catching her attention as he hissed at something in the living room.

“What?” she inquired, looking down at him before tilting her head to follow his own.

Cassian’s jacket.

Uhg.

Now she was thinking about him again.

Childish, dumb, insecure little prick. How he’d had the fucking nerve to call her a coward was truly a mystery.

He was so crippled by that fear of not being good enough he’d immediately presumed she wanted rid of him. Lashing out defensively- God he was infuriating.

She looked back to Vex who was now staring up at her. “If that thing somehow ends up on the floor,” she said, “you have permission to piss on it”.

He purred.

Vex truly was the only boy worth his salt. Something he proved yet again in hopping atop her bathroom counter and guarding her like a fluffy little gargoyle as she sank into the bath. Opening m the window to let out the smoke of her cigarette so as not to bother him. The sound of rain slipping something comforting through the January chill, twirls of smoke and steam visible in fatigued plumes.

Another lethal habit she’d picked up from Aunt Ripleigh.

The thought gave her an unpleasant feeling in her heart. Like a worm writhing in the rotted meat of an apple.

Ripleigh wasn’t actually her aunt. But Nesta avoided her much like she did the rest of her family and that was what really counted. Besides, spilling blood together arguably made for a closer bond than just sharing it.

Like Nesta said, not really her aunt.

Aunt Ripleigh – initials AR, an homage to the assassin’s preferred weapon the AR-47, American hybrid of the Russian Автома́т Кала́шников, A.K.A the AK-47.

Some mothers left their little girls pearls, or scrapbooks packed with baby pictures and the lingering scent of their perfume. Angelina Archeron had left her’s a Mafia assassin’s cell number.

Of course Nesta hadn’t known that.

Not until she’d found herself with her hands caked in something dark and sticky, her boyfriend’s skin stuffed beneath the lip of her nails and a taste in her mouth like hot rust.

She’d been seventeen the first time she’d killed a man.

Not a man. A boy.

A few months her senior, Thomas been a child just like her.

Her first crush. Her first boyfriend, her first love, and her first.

Nesta had known Thomas was using her for sex. Just as she’d been using him for his money, and wasn’t that what love was? Finding the gratification of your needs in someone else? In Thomas’s case he’d needed to get his dick wet. In Nesta’s…it was more than embarrassing but half the time all she’d needed was a hot meal.

She couldn’t count the number of times she’d called him in the dead of the night to hook up in his Porsche so she could sleep there instead of at home, where the windows screamed freezing air from their shattered mouths and the electricity bill was rarely paid.

But one night Nesta hadn’t felt like earning his kindness. And so he hadn’t offered it.

Instead he’d held her wrists, ripped at her shirt, forced his hands into her jeans. Pushed up against the bonnet of that Porsche by a lake in woods she’d torn through his face, her nails splitting through the waterline beneath his eyes as she’d kicked and screamed, blood pouring, his hand on her neck, throwing her head against the wing mirror. Heat spilling heavy down her jaw and neck from somewhere which had smelt like lose change.

She remembers blood in her eyes and the taste of soft, smooth skin and a kind of rubbery strength between her teeth as she’d bit down hard until something had popped or burst or split with a squirt or a tear. She remembers spitting out whatever of Thomas’s ear she’d torn off between her teeth and something swinging into her lower ribs so hard one broke. She remembers the sounds that had been both of them and then at some point just her.

Her screaming.

Her sticky, disgusting face, stinging with every horribly wet sob and shriek. The shrieks that hadn’t choked to shaky breaths until she’d pulled herself to sit back against the wheel of the car. Clutching at her ribs which had only hurt so much worse when she’d thrown up right next to her boyfriend’s body. What looked like a pint of blood glowing in the dust. His face…his head.

It’d looked like a Halloween prop. Like dark jam. Like a brutalised seventeen year old dead in the dirt.

And sometime after noticing one of his teeth in the dust, Nesta had realised how fucked she was.

It wasn’t much of an achievement when you considered Grafton, Vermont had a population short of seven-hundred: but the Mandrays had been quite possibly the most well connected and well off people in its less than seven-hundred square miles. And despite keeping Nesta’s name out of their sneering mouths through referring to her almost exclusively as “that white-trash bitch”, that population short of seven hundred didn’t give a shit about her.

Didn’t give a shit she’d been top of her class with a place at Georgetown. Because Nesta could never have afforded to accept it.

And it certainly didn’t matter she was a pageant queen when everyone knew the petty cash prizes were the only thing that paid the rent on their shitty one bedroom. Especially with things barely breaking even. In spite of Feyre’s making use of their father’s rifle and sourcing for the butcher any chance she could.

A too skinny child in the woods with a gun and blood in her braids.

Nesta’s efforts to keep food on the table had always seemed to pale in comparison to that. But she’d never felt bad about it. Wouldn’t bother hating herself when everybody else was already doing that for her.

Nesta Archeron was the cheap fuck that nice Mandray boy was messing around with. The gold digger with the dead commie mom and daddy issues.

No one would have ever believed he’d tried to rape her.

And she’d had no money for a decent lawyer- she hadn’t even had anyone to call. Not her dad, not a fourteen-year old Feyre nor Elain, sixteen and the last person she’d ever want wrapped up in something like this.

Nesta had been desperate and vulnerable and jaded for as long as she could remember but she’d never felt as terrified and broken as she had in that moment. Crying alone and hugging herself tightly, she’d just wanted her mom. As cold and neglectful and dead as the woman was.

“три три два пять семь девять пять шесть три восемь”

Her mother’s last words.

Ten numbers.

Nesta had somehow gotten to her feet, only realising Thomas had broken a few of her fingers when she’d tried opening the car door. All but collapsing inside once she’d managed as she’d fumbled for her phone.

“три три два пять семь девять пять шесть три восемь” she’d repeated to herself, voice hoarse and wet and cracking as she’d dialled.

Ten numbers. Ten numbers. Ten numbers.

Like a phone number.

No doubt concussed Nesta had deemed it logical enough. Her mother’s dying breath a kind of atonement for leaving her children with nothing in the whole word but a father that could watch his girls starve and go into the woods with his hunting rifle and whore themselves out like they meant nothing.

A life-line in the deep waters opaque with clouds of blood.

“Здравствуйте.”

Those three syllables had been like a punch to the gut.

Nesta had made a noise that might have sounded like “mom?” or the creaking of a damn as it ached under duress. She’d obviously known it wasn’t her mother, but she hadn’t heard a woman speak Russia since- hadn’t heard Russian at all in years.

“Who is this?”

Trying to pull herself together Nesta had taken a breath that had rattled, dripping wet and slightly wheezing. Everything was going to be okay. She’d been right. It couldn’t have been a coincidence. Of all the phone numbers in the world what was the likelihood that the voice on the end of this one spoke her mother’s native tongue?

“I’m- I’m Angelina Archeron daughter. She gave me this number I don’t know what to do I-”

The specifics aren’t as clear after that. Like a jigsaw left out in the rain or soaked in fresh hot blood, the pieces, the details, they’d melted to mush.

A mess she’d held in her hands and wondered what the fuck to do with.

What do you do with a dead body and the knew found knowledge your mother was a boyevik for the Russian Mafia? What do you do with her retirement package which contained nothing but the contact for an assassin working for the New York arm.

Nesta had only known what she wasn’t going to do.

Go down for murder.

Aunt Ripleigh had told her what to do over the phone, instructing her on how to deal with her injuries and Thomas’ pulp of a body. How to explain the state of her face and ribs and fingers and head. What to do with his car and how to speak and sit and and react when then police came asking questions about Thomas’ disappearance. How to get away with it.

Nesta had followed each direction flawlessly. Consoled in finally having a definitive plan. Even a plan that started with “buy meat cleaver, trash bag, battery powered blender and bucket, with cash from dead boyfriend’s wallet.” Even a plan that got progressively worse from that point on.

Filleting chunks of a body that had once been inside her. Hauling a trash bag of boyfriend smoothie to the river with broken fingers. The thick slop sinking almost immediately just as Aunt Ripleigh had said it would. Before she’d told Nesta to burn the bones and roast marshmallows over them.

“If it had not been you it would have been next girl,” Ripleigh had said. “And she might not have had your fight.”

“You mean she might not have been disturbed enough to kill her boyfriend?”

“Killer instincts, Anastasia. Is not disturbed, is talent,” Aunt Ripleigh had said. “Cannot be taught but what can be taught you learn quick. No whining. Like very good puppy with very sharp teeth.”

“Woof,” Nesta had said dryly.

“Stray puppy though, no? Is why you have no manners.”

“You offering to adopt me?”

“I have pet already. And my husband is funnier than you.”

Nesta’s compromised rib had punished her for finding that funny.

“But you ever want job, you call me.”

Needless to say that was not the last time she’d called Aunt Ripleigh.

Three weeks later and four months shy of getting her high school diploma Nesta had turned eighteen and moved to New York in order to “pursue modelling”.

In reality she was doing coffee runs with a dash more arsenic than normal and luring prosecutors to hotel rooms they’d never leave. A personal assistant of sorts to Aunt Ripleigh.

She had kept the mafia, the Bratva, at an arms length whenever she’d been able. Paying off the shitty house she’d left her sisters in with one less mouth to feed and not wanting their address in any files accessible to people with skill sets like her’s.

And while working with Ripleigh had been a mortiferous riot, two gals shattering the glass ceiling in their industry and slitting throats with the shards; Nesta had developed expensive taste from the fringes of high criminal society. She’d cared less about the art of killing than she had about the art she could hang up in a penthouse apartment if she were in private practice. Her lust for comfort winning out after two years or so at which point she’d gone freelance. Assisting in a few heists before getting in with a crowd of Nazi hunters for a bit, all the while keeping in touch with her mentor.

Until Feyre had moved to the city.

Then she’d given up on the more dangerous antics, selling out for safer and even more lucrative bets like CEOs and cutting ties with Aunt Ripleigh. Terrified if not a little paranoid of something happening to her sister. Which had been shit. Because Nesta hadn’t had any other friends. Like, at all.

At eighteen Feyre was still as bitter and proud as she’d been when Nesta had left. As Nesta herself still was.

Elain had tried bridging her sisters’ relationship once she’d moved to New York but she’d had better success career-wise. Working at a florists before eventually graduating to a self employed wedding planner.

Nesta had kept her thoughts on the psychological tells of a girl jilted at the alter becoming a wedding planner to herself. Mostly because Elain was always brining her cake samples she’d stolen and Nesta wasn’t going to sabotage her supply of free cake.

Feyre on the other hand had gone about far less conventional means of making a living. The child was a force to be reckoned with if for nothing but her resourcefulness and almost objectionable will to survive. Fiercely independent and clumsily capable she’d taken a crack at everything while selling her art on the side. It was a piece she’d modelled for that had delivered her to true economic grandeur however.

Well, “modelled” maybe wasn’t the word. Her sister had essentially been used as a human stamp. Her naked body detailed with intricately painted swirls then pressed to canvas.

The work had been showcased somewhere high brow and had caught the eye of one Mr Rhysand Velaris, thirty-one and the sole inheritor of his late father’s worldly possessions. Among which were several millions of dollars.

Half of which now belonged to her sister thanks to a very reckless prenup on his part.

Though Nesta had briefly wondered if he’d spent at least that on the engagement ring. A glittering iceberg that seemed to only glare brighter next to the stark black band tattooed just beneath it, a matching tattoo on Rhysand’s own ring finger. Because of course they’d eloped in Paris and gotten tattoos instead of wedding rings.

If Nesta had been closer to her baby sister she imagined she might have felt betrayed on some level. But as things were, Nesta wasn’t entirely sure she would have received an invite even if they’d had a traditional wedding, planned to perfection by Elain.

It was probably the worst part of her job. The distance she had to put between herself and everyone she had the potential to care about. A distance she could never close even if she decided to retire right this minute because the damage had already been done. Nesta had become a liability to their safety the minute she’d moved here and started in this line of work.

She took another chocolate from the box she’d snatched from downstairs on second thought. Her supply already dwindling thanks to the rather depression freight train of thought she’d embarked on.

That and the fact they were really very good.

Cassian may have been a prick, but she couldn’t deny he had great taste.

In chocolate, and women, she thought smugly. Sinking deeper into the basin.

A heat flushed up her neck that had nothing to do with the bath as she unwillingly remembered how he’d softly coaxed one of these lovely little parcels between her full lips. The drunk hunger in his deep brown eyes and what he’d done next, snapping her lace thong between his teeth-

Her music stopped. Only to be replaced by a buzzing thrum of her phone.

Leaning forward Nesta checked the caller ID before swiping across the screen to accept the call and sinking back to her earlier position.

“I’m not in the mood,” she hummed dismissively, head tipped back against the lip of the tub and eyes closing. She’d known this was coming, better to get it over with.

“When I supply you with handsome, rich, and eligible men, I do not expect you to break them!” Feyre castigated through the phone, and anyone might guess she were the elder sibling.

Feyre indeed thought herself wiser and more worldly than both Nesta and Elain, and getting married hadn’t helped diminish her false sense of maturity. Thrusting her character into some weird sarcastic seriousness that mirrored her husband’s demeanour perfectly. It made Nesta cringe so thoroughly she was mildly concerned about getting wrinkles.

“And I thought we’d grown out of sharing toys, but it seems both our expectations were thwarted.”

“Humans aren’t toys!” Feyre reminded her. Not that Nesta didn’t already know that. No vibrator had never made her cum as hard as Cassian had.

“And if you resented me setting you up with Cassian then why did you fuck him ?” Feyre asked. And she said fuck as though it were synonymous to stab or poison.

“Was it to punish me? Because if so you did a spectacular job. He’s crazier about you than ever and won’t stop moping. The second-hand embarrassment is painful enough without the added agony of how annoying it is.”

If he likes me so much why was he so eager to assume the worst of me? Nesta thought spitefully.

It didn’t matter that she technically was lying to him. He didn’t know that.

“You told me to give him a chance.”

“And you couldn’t have decided you didn’t like him before having sex with him?”

Nesta wasn’t surprised Feyre had taken Cassian’s version of things at face value.

Her husband’s family were unimpeachably wonderful in her eyes. Meanwhile Nesta remained just another reminder of a time Feyre couldn’t have afforded the plane ticket to get to New York, let alone a town house on the upper east side. A cold bitch who hadn’t begged to join the weird cult that was the Velaris family and their innermost circle when Feyre had married Rhysand last year.

“Oh I’d already worked out he was an ass by that point but I thought he could at least make up for putting me through the date. Not much going on in that head but he quite clearly had it all going on-

“Ew ew ew!” Feyre interrupted. “One, I need this conversation to steer clear of anything anatomical, and two, do you have to be so horrible?”

“You’re the one pimping out your friends, I just took you up on the offer.”

“Ever heard of the third date rule?”

“Didn’t you marry Rhysand on the third date?”

Feyre sighed.

“Cassian’s a good guy, Nes. It takes a lot to come out the other side of what he’s been through a good man and he deserves the world so-”

“So why did you send him my way?”

Nesta knew what Feyre thought of her. And if she hadn’t then this conversation would have made it very clear.

“Because Nesta! You’re twenty-four and already a crazy cat lady! I’m sorry I tried to save you from dying alone and having Vex eat your corpse.”

Nesta rolled her eyes.

“Have you ever considered I choose to be alone because I like it?” She asked.

Feyre sighed again, but it was softer this time, sad more than exasperated.

“You’re not alone, Nesta,” she said. “You’re lonely.”

It was annoying enough that she was right, she didn’t have to be so pretentious about it aswell.

“I’m fine,” Nesta said.

“You sound just like Cassian,” Feyre grumbled.

“Well I’ve been smoking.”

“I’ll be sure to put how funny you were on your headstone when those things kill you.”

“I’m racing Rhysand to the grave, he has more cigars than I do shoes.”

“He only smokes them on special occasions.”

“And how do you know this isn’t a celebratory cigarette on account of you calling me?”

“Because instead of saying hi you said I’m not in the mood.”

“Oh so you did hear me?”

“I hear you, Nesta,” Feyre conceded, disappointment weighing on her words. “Loud and clear. Have a good week.”

She hung up.

“You too,” Nesta said into the silence.

When the silence replied she sank beneath the water. As though she hoped it might act as the cushioned walls of a padded cell meant to protect those who posed a danger to themselves.

It didn’t. And that unpleasant ache didn’t go away. It never did.

Worse than the dull pounding in her ears and tightness in her chest as she held her breath.

But it would be nothing compared to the devastation of seeing Feyre or Elain hurt. The tender ache of keeping them at arms length, knowing they were at least there to brush her fingers against, was worth avoiding spending the rest of her life reaching for someone taken from her.

Perhaps that was also why she’d wanted so fiercely to dislike Cassian.

Nesta re-emerged with a gasp, her chest on fire.

What an unpleasant notion, she thought, running her fingers through her wet hair and sinking back as she took a slower breath. That she’d been looking for a reason to dislike him even after overcoming the minor detail she was going to kill his friend and client. An excuse to throw in the towel as soon as she could. Because it was just easier.

Easier than accepting she was fundamentally terrified of keeping him around.

Easier than keeping him around and seeing him get hurt.

Fuck.

Her being mad at him had been a cop out.

Because yes he’d been a petty, insecure idiot; but hadn’t she told him she was going to fuck and chuck him? Hadn’t she been at typically fast to get in a fight with him? Substantiating his insecurities.

Nesta might have been furious at his calling her a coward, but he hadn’t actually been wrong.

She’d let some subliminal fear convince her to sabotage things.

A subliminal and blissfully irrational fear she realised because, Cassian, a monument of pure muscle, could definitely look after himself. He’d been marine corps for Christ’s sake. Not to mention she’d seen him take down Helion enough times in the ring while still working for Eris and the fact the man literally specialised in keeping people safe for a living!

Nesta felt a weird and almost unfamiliar lightness in her shoulders. It felt a little like hope. Which was also terrifying.

But she wasn’t going to the let the fear control her this time.

—

Cassian had ignored her calls.

All three.

Which was fine because she’d been stalking him for the past month. She knew exactly where he’d be that evening and doing things in person meant she could kill him if he kept up the asshole routine.

Nesta’s platform stiletto boots clipped against the laminate flooring as she emerged from the elevator. Stalking lazily through the top floor of the Illyria building.

Even if she killed Cassian he was going to die happy. She looked good enough to eat. Thick hair fastened back into a high ponytail, the details of her face were subject to full attention. Her eyes appearing almost wider and lashes lavished with a black like her jet thigh-highs and tied coat. Plump lips softly lined and shaded, she looked drop dead fucking gorgeous.

Though it was what she was wearing under her fastened coat that was the real killer.

Nesta didn’t uncross her ankles from where they’d flicked over one another as she let herself lean against the doorframe of Cassian’s office.

It was wide open. No privacy needed when everyone else had gone home around four hours ago. The night detail on Helion allowing Cassian time to catch up on work as he had every night and well into the morning for the past month.

“All work and no play?”

Cassian looked up from his desk.

“I can fix that,” she said.

He’d never looked more handsome.

Hair bundled into a dark band, his shirt cuffed at his forearms and a bit of scruff marring his chiselled jaw. A pair of slim reading glasses were pushed up his slightly imperfect nose and it was such a turn on Nesta was glad she was leaning against something.

He looked a little exhausted in a kind of brooding and adorable way.

It gave her this awful pining to massage those sculpted shoulders as he let loose a deep, tired sigh, arms folding across that powerful chest causing his white shirt to hiss as he leaned back into his chair. It was a fucking massive bit of furniture. But then it had to be to accommodate him.

“What are you doing here?”

Rude.

Nesta pushed off the doorframe and into his office.

“You ignored my calls,” she said by way of explanation. Making her way to the bookcase and running her fingers across a row of spines. It was mostly files, but she noticed a few novels as well.

“You kicked me out of your bed at three in the morning.”

She turned to find him watching her.

His words were dismissive and effortlessly confrontational as usual. But there was an edge to his voice. And it wasn’t arousal. Even if his gaze caught on her boots and lingering there for longer than he’d probably care to admit.

Nesta leaned back against the bookshelf, inspecting her manicure with an eye roll.

“You’re still upset about that?”

“Not at all,” he said with a smirk. Reclining back against the chair a little further, hips rolling and arms casually folding. Too casually. The dangerous grace of it speaking to the emotion that no doubt roiled beneath his bronze skin. Belied by that bullshit cockiness which grated her to the bone. “It seems I dodged a bullet.”

“Oh really?”

“The whole hot but mean cliché is one thing, but crazy hookup who stalks me-“

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she sneered.

She’d seen hints of this before. The rugged and crude act meant to cover up the insecurity she’d also been treated to.

“Oh I’m sorry. I forgot you can’t ever admit what it is you want.”

“You don’t have a clue what I want.”

“I have several, Nesta.” He looked her up and down pointedly.

The way he said her name. Even like this it made her weak in the knees while her fingers itched to choke him.

It was all very conflicting.

“Oddly confident in your last performance for someone so insecure,” she quipped lazily.

Cassian rose his brows with a mean a laugh.

“What do I have to be insecure about?” He said. “I didn’t hide behind a half-ass lie to throw someone out of my bed. And I’m pretty sure even your neighbours can attest to how good of a time I gave you,” he smirked again. “You’re not a good enough liar for the way you moaned my name to have been an act.”

The white hot fist in her stomach folded in on itself as it melted to a stickiness despite the misguided insult. She certainly hadn’t been putting it on Saturday. Every sound he’d drawn from her dripping with sincerity. Every moan and whimper well deserved.

“You’re right,” she said.

Cassian blinked.

Nesta prowled toward him and hummed, “those, four, orgasms, were about as fake as my emergency.”

The sultry softness to her voice thickened to something less affected at those last words.

Cassian scoffed. Though there was something withdrawn and careful to him that hadn’t been there a second ago. Like a snake recoiling in case it needed to strike. “Your emergency, of course. Which was?”

“Nothing to do with you.”

He shook his head, laughing bitterly.

“Seriously, Nesta? You’ve had two days to come up with something now.”

“You’re not listening to me,” Nesta slipped atop the corner of the desk, perching there with her long legs crossed over one another. The blade of a stiletto heel close enough to brush up his calf if she wanted to make him shiver.

But she didn’t. She just wanted him to listen. To understand what she was saying so she didn’t have to say anything more because for fucks sake he was the one who’d acted up and yet she was here putting her pride on the line again.

“It had nothing, to do with you,” she said slowly.

A weighted silence settled like snow between them.

Until Cassian took a blow torch to it.

“Shit.”

His head fell into those large hands.

“Shiiiiiiiit,” he cursed again. “Oh god, how badly have I fucked up?” He groaned, looking up. So humbled and distraught it was almost comical.

“Irredeemably.” Her eyes flirted with the notion of a little smile even if her mouth remained unquirked as she propped her hands against the desk behind her and leaned into them to more comfortably watch him suffer.

“I’d beg you not to tease me but honestly I think it’s the least I deserve- fuck.”

“Like me teasing you isn’t the highlight of your day.” She rolled her eyes.

Cassian laughed, pained and almost sheepish, which shouldn’t have been hot but god it made her blush.

Keep your cool goddamn it. She wanted a little more bang for her buck where grovelling was concerned before she let on how eager she was for things to get back on track.

“Want to flat out abuse me and make it the highlight of my year?”

She was struggling to keep the smile off her face even as she said, “I’m not in the habit of rewarding bad behaviour. You’re a man, you get enough of that already.”

“Nesta,” he took his glasses off, setting them down on the desk beside her thigh. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking her in the eyes. “I’m, really, really fucking sorry I’m an idiot.”

Nesta slid of the desk.

“Go on,” she instructed.

“A moron a fool a stupid, stupid son of a bitch.”

Taking a step forward she was stood between his thighs. Picking up his glasses and pushing them back on his nose. Missing the sight of this hulking, powerhouse of a man in spectacles.

“I’m sorry.” Cassian was looking up at her with those big brown eyes, and the bastard actually leaned into her palm.

“Oh for fucks sake how did anyone discipline you as a child with those damn puppy-dog eyes?” She growled softly, furious.

“They didn’t to be honest,” he admitted with a breathy laugh.

“I can tell.”

She slid her hands to his shoulders, fingers curling soft and possessive over the stacked muscle and palms pressed to his upper chest, stepping tighter into him.

“I guess I’ll just have to do it.”

Cassian swallowed.

“Don’t threaten me with a good time, sweetheart,” he tried. Intoxicatingly deep, trying to maintain that arrogant and playful edge in a way that made his words all the hotter. The simmering ache he attempted to push down all but throbbing in his voice.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she returned, brows arched. Battling a smirk off her face.

“Can I ask you to do something for me, then?”

“If you say please.”

“Please don’t screw around with me.”

Nesta faltered.

Those warm hands came to rest on her lower back, long fingers curling slightly into the fabric and coaxing her that last bit closer so that her thighs brushed against the edge of his chair and her stomach was brushing up against his.

“I’m really into you,” he admitted. “You’re smart and you’re beautiful, and at first I thought the whole hard to get thing was an act but woman you are genuinely hard to get and it is, so sexy. But whatever it is that’s holding you back, that made you wait a week to call me, that made you claim all you wanted was a hook up; I’m clearly not cut out to compete,” he confessed. “It got in my head, and that’s on me and me lashing out at you the other night that’s on me too and I’m so, so sorry Nesta. I need to know where I stand with you though. I need to know if you’re actually interested in me. Because I like you. But I’m too old for games.”

The silence was so thick she could have cut through it with a knife.

Nesta’s hands fell from his chest slowly.

“That’s good,” she assured him at last. “Because I’m not a toy.”

She brought her fingers to the belt of her coat and pulled slow and deliberate.

Black glazed her figure with a gorgeous intimacy. The dress hugging at what little it concealed with perfection enough to make up for its lake of mercy. Long legs sheathed in those thigh-high boots, the item was short enough that a decent length of her thighs could be seen. Interrupted at the last possible moment by sleek jet as though she’d been dipped in oil of purest night.

Cassian’s eyes blew out to sticky treacle behind those glasses.

“I’m human, Cass,” she hummed, tossing her coat onto the desk behind her as she spoke. “Which means I make mistakes.” He swallowed as she sighed softly, her cleavage swelling a little with the motion. “And that I have needs. Needs you can be the one to fulfill or not.”

She slipped into his lap, straddling him, knees bent either side of his thighs. The corded strength of which pressed painfully and exhilaratingly apparent against the soft seam of her inner thighs and she was genuinely suffering from some kind of contact high. Every inch of him seizing up subtly, deliciously taught at her touch in an effort not to respond and yet it only revealed just how much she affected him.

“Nesta-“

“Shhhhhh,” she interrupted. Hands cupping that ruggedly handsome face and titling it back to tuck her’s against him slowly. “But I want it to be you,” she purred against his jaw, tracing her nose up the stubbled curve. “Let me show you how bad.”

“Someone could come back-“

“I don’t care,” Nesta murmured against his mouth. “I want you.”

His eyes fluttered shut. And she felt his cock stir in those immaculately tailored slacks.

“Nesta-”

She could feel every muscle that licked up his stomach tremble with a drawn out contraction as she said it again, her hands slipping down to his broad shoulders.

“I want you,” she purred again.

He might have tried to breath. And it might have rubbed up something uncomfortably nice in her lower tummy.

“Say it,” she whispered, tilting her face so that the tip of her nose brushed up the side of his. Her breath hot on his stubbled Cupid’s bow and hands running down the solid power of his upper body, burning up through his shirt. “Say it, Cassian.”

His brown eyes like cognac and magnolia were hooded behind his glasses as he conceded.

“You want me,” he breathed.

She grazed her mouth against his. Lips parted suggestively and an almost silent, utterly cruel noise escaping her.

The length of his thick cock pressed up against the seam of her plush sex as he grew to full, hard attention in his slacks. Warm and thrilling even through her panties and their open mouths melted into one another hot and heavy, tongues caressing as his large hands came to her knees and smoothed up her bare thighs covetously.

“Fuck,” he groaned lazily as her hips began rolling deeply into him, and her hands slid under his shirt. Fingers splayed, she snaked up the cobbled muscle of his stomach, the flesh burnished and warm beneath her touch. His shirt riding up to reveal the gutter of his hips, gruesomely toned and dusted with hair.

“This is…such a…” he breathed, between the perfect and yearning motions of their jaws, a hand smoothing up her waist in a way that made her shiver.

“Dream come true?” She hummed, kissing him wanton and unhurried. Dangerously close to becoming a brainless mess with the way his cock rubbed up her core.

His groan melted to a laugh or maybe it was the other way round.

“Yes,” he admitted breathlessly. “And a bad, bad…idea.”

“Well you’ve been a bad, bad boy, Cassian,” she whispered filthily against his ear, before capturing the lobe between her teeth softly.

She sucked and nibbled oh so gently and he expelled a breath so gravelly and masculine it twisted the hungry knot in her core tighter.

“Nesta…we-fuck you’re good at that…” he groaned lethargically . “Sweetheart, we can’t…”

“Why not,” she coed quietly, the sound airy and affectedly filthy.

“We’re…” he choked as he took in the sight of her cleavage, pushed intimately to his chest and escaping the neckline of her dress like a plume of toothpaste squeezed from the tube. “Fucking hell Nesta we’re in my office.”

“And I’m saying you could be in me.”

She rocked her hips against him with a particularly cruel slant.

The groan that escaped him made something flip in her stomach, tossing about whatever sweet, impossible to describe feeling rushed there at the same time at the way his head fell back against the chair as she worked him over. The hot friction that rubbed against her sensitive core the cherry on top of the sweet, creamy, decadent sundae.

“Besides,” she moaned, breathless and sultry. Teeth plunging softly into her plump bottom lip as she continued rolling her hips. Hands rubbing over his shoulders and providing her leverage. “You’re the boss.”

“I think we both know…that I’m not the boss…right now…” he groaned. Almost pained.

“Your cock a little much for those slacks?” She hummed, faux sympathy dripping through her mocking pout.

“I thought you liked a tight fit,” she teased, still pouting but eyes smokey. Her toes curling in her boots as her fingers began work on pulling his shirt apart.

The buttons popped undone with a sensual and pining tempo and she was moaning quietly into his mouth as she explored the panes and ripples of that powerful upper body. More than thorough in her hands-on assessment.

Cassian’s own hands were keeping just as busy, massaging and kneading her ass indulgently before smoothing over her rolling hips and eventually coming to her lower back. His thumbs pressing to the small of her back either side of her spine and it made something tight inside her swoon. The touch so hot and the memory it conjured so good. His big hands on her as he fucked her from behind.

“Nesta,” Cassian groaned deeply, as she began rocking into him tighter, hotter. The impression of his cock lined up just right with her aching core.

“Hey, baby,” She purred, drunk on the friction that made her whole body throb and hum with pleasure and the tip of her nose brushing the side of his. Hands snaking from his exposed chest to either side of his face and capturing his bruised mouth with her own. Chewing on his bottom lip obscenely, the friction beginning to push her over edge.

“Fuck you’re incredible,” he groaned huskily once she let up. Kissing back decadently. “I’m so sorry,” he breathed almost mindlessly. “I’m so fucking sorry, Nesta.”

“You wanna show me how sorry you are?” she purred, sultry and low, mouth parting, forehead still pressed to his and eyes fluttering open to hold his own.

Cassian nodded, dumb and silent and eager and Jesus it turned her on.

“Yeah? You wanna make me cum?” She hummed.

“Yes, yes, please.”

“Touch me, Cassian,” she whispered against his open mouth. “Make it up to me, make me feel good.”

Cassian’s hands slid back to her ass and she moaned into the kiss he captured her lips in as he lifted her with a sensual squeeze, wrapping her long legs tightly round the tapered cut of his waist as he stood.

The surface of the desk was beneath her before she could work out which way was up and his touch smoothed down her legs to her knees before she could take a a breath in reprieve from kissing him. Her legs splitting either side of his broad hips and his erection, tucked to the side in his slacks and thick and heavy and hard, pushed against the inner seam of her thigh as he pulled that band from her hair.

“I’m gonna make these gorgeous legs tremble for me,” he pledged against the her jaw, kissing and nipping his way down to where her pulse throbbed for him as he a hand through the loose locks.

And he began suckling at that sensitive spot just as a calloused hand slipped between her thighs.

“Mmmmm,” Nesta moaned smugly, gripping at his biceps still sheathed in the sleeves of his shirt as Cassian’s thumb ran up the seam of her dripping cunt through her panties. The lace a flimsy veil between her swollen clit and his hot touch.

“Fuck I’ve missed you,” he moaned into her neck, her head rolling back as he snapped her panties and began stroking his fingers through her soft folds possessively. “Missed those little sounds and your mouth and this pretty neck and perfect pussy.”

“Then cut out the all bark no bite bullshit and prove it,” she breathed.

“Yes ma’am,” he murmured thickly, the pad of his thumb coming to her clit and she moaned as he circled the sensitive bundle of nerves expertly. Her nails pressing into his shoulders, a few through the hiss of his shirt but the others carving crescents into the bronze muscle and tattoos like the meat of an apple.

His forefinger began teasing at her tight entrance and Nesta’s breath caught.

“Tease me and you’ll fucking regret it,” she warned thickly, and he pushed the digit inside.

The intrusion was far from the thick, eight inches she craved, but when he curled his finger against a sensitive, swollen spot deep inside her Nesta keened aloud.

“You look so fucking good like this,” Cassian breathed, husky and bestial as he crooked his finger inside her over and over.

“More,” she demanded.

It probably wasn’t clear if she was demanding more dirty praise or physical attention but Cassian was a good boy and covered all his bases. A second finger pushing inside her that second.

She gasped as the snug walls of her cunt stretched to accommodate the two of them as he waxed lyrical about how hard her moaning got him. Their foreheads level and those deep brown eyes lathering her with his earnest attention.

“You’re dripping down my knuckles like a fucking peach,” Cassian told her as he thrust inside her over and over, the only thing more obscene than her facial expression and the breathless sounds she was making being the quite, wet noises his fingers illicited.

He hadn’t let up on her clit, and at the exact moment he decided to start curling those two fingers together, he increased the speed and pressure with which he rubbed at her most responsive spot with his thumb.

“Cassian,” Nesta moaned, her fingers running up the nape of his neck and delving into his hair, still pulled into that bun.

“That’s it, that’s so fucking hot, baby, I want your cum dripping down my wrist,” he growled softly. Her nails sliding down his scalp.

“You’re so fucking needy,” she got out, which only served to utterly delight him. His thumb working at her from an oh so subtly more intense angle that had a familiar buzzing low inside her threatening to pluck her apart at the seams.

“Oh my god fuck,” she moaned. “Uhhu, that’s it, just like that oh my god.”

“You gonna cum, Nesta? You gonna cum on my desk- Jesus I’m gonna be thinking about you moaning, long legs spread for me while you moan so fucking dirty for my fingers every time I’m sat at this fucking desk now, you know that?”

His words sent her over the edge.

Silently she threw her head back as her orgasm licked up every frayed nerve in her body. It was hard. And Cassian kept on working those thick fingers inside her and over her sensitive clit throughout.

Fucking her dirty and skilled. Prolonging her twitching and bone melting pleasure.

Until she was snaking her hands from where they’d wound through his fastened hair, and pushing him off her at the shoulders. Falling back on her forearms with a shaky exhale, thighs still trembling subtly.

Cassian smirked. And brought his fingers to his mouth. Licking up the length of the calloused, sticky digits. Eyes on her’s from behind those obnoxiously sexy reading glasses she had half a mind to slap off his face.

“You taste even better than I remember,” he purred.

“Then get on your knees.”

Her voice was shaky but he didn’t even throw her another of those antagonistic and gorgeous smirks, just sank down. All six foot whatever, two hundred and something ridiculous pounds of muscle. Knelt on the floor between her legs.

“Is initiative encouraged of am I to be strictly obedient?” There was that smirk.

“You can use your brain,” she permitted. Still out of it. But still dying for him to touch her again. “If only because I need to be convinced you have one.”

His chuckle felt like fucking heaven between her thighs. His stubbled jaw rubbing up against her aching cunt as he kissed her like he meant it. Open mouthed and his tongue then slipping out to lavish her dripping slit before he began playing with her clit with the tip.

Nesta moaned, chewing down on her lip once she located the dignity to quieten down so she could keep it that way.

Her previous orgasm should have taken the edge off, but it had only reminded her already whetted appetite what there was to gorge on. Leaving her pining for more and disastrously sensitive.

“Mmmm,” Cassian moaned deeply- though honestly it was closer to a growl which was hot- and brought those large hands to her thighs. Holding her open for him stoking the bruise-blue flame that writhed in her core and allowing him better access to her pussy.

“Oh god right there,” Nesta keened. His nose brushing up against her clit as he licked up her snug entrance, teasing his tongue inside.

He threw her legs over his stacked shoulders and obeyed, working his tongue inside her with shameful enthusiasm only emphasised by the noises he was making. Seriously he was putting her to shame.

In fact if she hadn’t been rapidly approaching another orgasm she might have thought he was have more fun than her.

Hands no longer occupied with gripping her black-clad thighs they came to her hips and waist. Coaxing her to slant forward at an angle that granted him an even more advantageous angle from which to eat her out.

She moaned, manicured nails almost clawing into his desk behind her. “Mhmm mhmm uh,” she gasped sharply at the sudden relocation of his tongue. Cassian capturing her clit in his mouth and sucking on the sensitive bud as he flicked his tongue up and down.

“Fuck, yes yes yes yes,” she was utterly breathless. “Oh god, oh fuck, I’m gonna cum, I’m gonna cum,” she whined.

Cassian fucking groaned and it was like he’d pulled at the knot in her stomach with his teeth.

The muscles in her lower stomach twitching as she came, the cushiony walls of her cunt pulsing tight and the only thing grounding her to reality.

Though she was just lucid enough to know Cassian was lapping up the nectar between her legs with audible and pleased snarls of pure, masculine satisfaction.

Nesta couldn’t say how long it took her to stop seizing, just that she was completely drunk on pleasure by the time her body allowed her to at least try and think. She failed completely. Wasted on her orgasm, on Cassian.

“Come ‘ere,” she said, breathless and doped up. Eyes barely fluttering open, heavy lidded and probably glazing over with unabashed appreciation as Cassian did as he was told. Rising to stand before her, thick arms winding round her waist snuggly and pulling her to him tight.

His sheathed erection pushed to her sticky inner thigh and his powerful upper body, chiselled and broad and comforting, warm and hard and dusted with dark hair, pushed to her’s.

His sharp jaw, like her thighs, was slightly sticky, and his mouth looked even more abused than it from the attention of her teeth. But the best part- better than his mid-sex blush or the way he was breathing all deep and powerful and hungry for her, were his glasses. They were slightly fogged up at the edges.

“Apology accepted?” He asked huskily, like he was already sure of the answer. Like he didn’t care because no matter what she said he was going to have her screaming for him till they were both sick of each other.

“Apology accepted,” Nesta confirmed. Splayed hands smoothing up his broad chest as she captured his lips in a wanton kiss.

“That still leaves your punishment though,” she whispered.

Cassian’s dark brows had barely risen before she’d pushed him back and he was falling into the chair again. Breathing deep and thrumming with a desire that destabilised him as he watched her slip a stiletto heel beneath her panties on the floor and flick them up into her hand. Prowling toward him and climbing into his lap. Hoping it wasn’t obvious that her legs felt like liquid.

“Hold these,” she demanded, feeding the bundle of lace into his mouth, his groan muffled by the fabric and her hands making quick and embarrassingly eager work of removing his unfastened shirt. All but tearing it off his sculpted arms that must have been as thick as her thighs- his body was ridiculous.

She griped his wrists before he could start doing something like feeling her up and brought them behind his head. Elbows out and biceps flexed, his hands meeting in the middle at the nape of his neck.

Cassian kissed and nipped at her fingers as she plucked her panties from his mouth with one hand, holding his wrists with the other.

He licked at his lips as though chasing the taste of her lingerie, eyes on her’s from behind his glasses.

She wasn’t gentle knotting the lace round his wrists.

“Oh,” he grinned, trying to move his arms.

He couldn’t of course, the physics working against him and rendering it so his only way out would be pulling until the lace snapped for a second time this evening. Still, it was a fucking gorgeous sight watching him try. Biceps and broad chest flexing.

Tied up and at her mercy she was dripping wet for him and slipped her tongue into his mouth as a little reward for how fucking hot he looked like this. Kissing him obscene and wet.

“Safe word?” She murmured into his mouth.

“Harder,” Cassian grinned. No doubt referencing her answer to the very same question the other night.

Nesta bit his bottom lip, puncturing the bruised cushion subtly and she tasted blood on her teeth and his tongue.

“Safe word,” she insisted once more against his lips, fingers winding through his hair with a drawn out and yearning pull.

“Amren,” he groaned`. Then added, “don’t ask.”

“Yeah we’re done talking,” she informed him dismissively. Unbuckling his belt and pulling it through the loops of his slacks with a swift tug.

Cassian’s hips jumped beneath her and she unfastened the button slung low on his hips, pulling the zip of his fly down. Parted lips close to brushing.

“Down boy,” she purred.

“Bit late for that,” he breathed raggedly, jaw feathering as she slid her hand into his boxers.

“God you’re adorable,” Nesta pouted, freeing his thick cock. Obnoxiously engorged and a dribble of pearlescence spilling from the uncut tip.

“Now be a good boy and don’t you dare cum until I say,” she warned.

And sank down on thick inch after inch of his hot, rigid shaft.

Nesta couldn’t help the arch that slipped through her spine as he filled her up, the stretch so acute it had her eyes rolling back with a flutter of her thick lashes.

“Oh my god,” she moaned breathlessly, hands splayed against his powerful chest. Thighs straddling his, her walls hugged him vice like and- Jesus, he rubbed up that deep spot inside her perfectly.

“Nesta,” Cassian groaned beneath her. “You’re so… fucking tight.”

Nesta rolled her head to the side in tandem with her hips, growing accustomed to the sheer size of him and eliciting a raw sound from the man before she removed his reading glasses. Fitting them over the bridge of her own petite nose.

“No backseat driving now, sweetheart,” she purred a little shakily.

She rose onto her knees only to sink back down again with a filthy twist of her hips. Repeating the motion again and again. Gliding up and down his cock with a tight and slippery friction that had her stomach flexing and his gaze heavy lidded. Encouraging, low noises escaping from deep in his chest that she wanted to bottle up and get drunk on.

“Uhh,” she keened, dirty and blissful, hands on his stacked shoulders. “Uhhu.”

“Oh fuck,” Cassian breathed huskily. “Mmhhm…that’s it…fucking ride me baby”

Nesta felt a familiar heat fan at her core as she drank him up. Every perfect, delicious inch there for her to use.

“Cassian,” she moaned. The sound tasting like sex in her mouth.

She fluttered around him again on an upwards twist of her hips, his cock pushing in and out of her snug cherry with a delicious wet sound. Just audible above her filthy moans.

Riding him was like sucking on a hard candy, that intense sweetness at the centre burning ever closer. And he kept running that damn mouth. Gravelly and deep, lavishing her body with sickly sweet and dirty compliments.

“Fuck that’s it gorgeous, just like that sweet thing fucking hell you’re fucking perfect.”

Powerful and dripping with raw fucking desire his body rolled upwards into her, slick with sweat and chiselled sinew. His cock burying deeper inside her. The sounds he was making just to top it off causing a tight fuzziness to tremble in her upper thighs.

“Oh my god,” Nesta moaned, hands coming to his face and lips brushing his as so she moaned a hot, “I’m gonna cum,” into his mouth.

Cassian groaned. Kissing her hard and deep.

“Cassian,” she keened.

She began bouncing deeper in his lap. Up and down up and down. His cock thrusting inside her hard and rubbing at her g spot just right while her clit grazed the coarse hair at his rugged hips. There was a bead of sweat gliding down the chiselled muscle that carved his broad torso, washboard abs flexing as he resisted release and Nesta felt the pressure between her thighs reach a fever pitch.

Grunting he bucked violently beneath her once, twice, and she was undone.

Nesta might have made a noise this time. Airy and hot and open mouthed against his neck as she buried her hands into his hair.

He was so tense beneath her, like pure marble soaked in the heat of the sun. Trying not spill inside her as her walls flexed with every hot wave of pleasure.

And once it passed his breathing was as ragged as her own.

“You did so good,” Nesta whispered at last against his ear. Voice wrecked like she were experiencing a sugar crash. Nibbling at the lobe. Tasting salt on her lips and eyes fluttering shut at the heady scent of his aftershave.

“Does that mean I get a reward?” he managed.

“Something like that,” she hummed, repositioning herself so that her back was to his chest.

“Nesta please. Just untie me, sweetheart,” Cassian whispered against her ear. Voice trembling like he’d shot up something good.

Nesta only chuckled, head knocked back so she could hold his eyes as she rolled her hips. Teasing, tormenting.

“The second you get your hands on these,” she brought her hands to her tits, giving them a soft squeeze and biting her lip, “you’ll be cumming and out of commission.”

Cassian growled, watching her feel herself up as she rolled her hips in leisurely circles. Sensual and dirty. The length of his hard shaft, thick and velvet smooth beneath her.

“Fuck,” he moaned huskily. Nose buried at her throat and lips working against her pulse point with the assistance of his tongue and teeth. Just as slow and through as her hips.

She gasped softly, grinding deeper.

“You know how good I can make it for you,” he purred.

“Mmmm,” she moaned quietly in agreement.

“Let me take care of you.”

“Cassian.”

“You make my name sound so sexy,” he grazed his stubbled jaw against the bruise he’d worked into her throat, the sensitive skin blushing warm at the contact as he moved his mouth to another location and started kissing and nibbling there. “Untie me, baby, and I’ll give you everything you want.”

Nesta smiled.

“Or I could keep you tied up and just take it.”

Cassian growled against her neck as she tilted her hips forward allowing his cock to spring up, and sank down on him again.

She moaned, loud and keening. Hands snaking through his hair behind her as she rocked herself up and down slowly. There wasn’t a lot of friction, but for now it was enough just to revel in how good Cassian’s cock felt. That last orgasm having finally takes the edge off.

“Fuck that’s it grind for me,” he moaned. His breath was hot against her neck and she could feel his heart beat. Feel every deep sound reverberate through his chest as she moved.

His cock rubbed up against her g spot, colours and stars bleeding behind her eyes like fireworks.

“Cassian,” she whimpered lowly.

It was so good.

Hands fumbling distractedly she brought her fingers to untie him. And he deemed it all the permission he needed. Tearing himself free with a growl. Capturing her mouth in a slow and wanton kiss as those big hands came to rove her body, taking his time to pull her apart.

His touch hot and calloused, Nesta moaned into his mouth as he ran up her stomach, her hips, her thighs, her tits. Massaging and glazing every inch of her with a rough heat that made her feel like she was going to explode. Her body a champagne flute dangerously close to shattering at the frequency of his hot groans and growls.

“Right there, oh right fucking there baby,” She moaned quietly against his lips, one of his hands rubbing her hip and guiding her motions while the other palmed at her breast.

“Yeah? You like that?” He dipped his head to pull down the straps of her bra and dress down with his teeth until her cleavage spilt from the cups. Pebbled nipples tight and rosy in the dim light, peaking over the balcony of her bra.

“Mmmmm,” he murmured against her throat, exploiting the sensitive spot as he made his way back up to her face and watched her plump tits sway. A hand running from her hip down her thigh and back up again to slip between her legs to stroke her clit.

Nesta whined softly.

“Cassian…more…”

She kissed him sluggish and distracted. The two of them humming and moaning every so often until he started caressing her clit tighter and her sounds grew more frantic.

“Fuck uhhu, uhhu just like that,” she panted quietly into his mouth. “Oh god uhh, uhhh more…more…more more Cassian fuck me.”

She was on her feet before she could complain that his hands were no longer between her thighs. Pushed up against the edge of his desk, hands falling splayed against the surface to stop herself falling across the wood and legs split apart.

“Oh!”

“Good girl,” he grunted deeply. “Moan for me.”

His calloused fingers came to her clit, coaxing her closer to the edge as the other gripped her hip.

“That’s it, that’s my girl such a good girl baby.”

Mouth caught open as though on a fish hook Nesta started seeing black splodges, the puddles flaring in her vision on every one of his thrusts. Deep and dirty and filling her till she was so impossibly full she spilt over.

“Fuck fuck just like that oh my god you’re so fucking tight, cum on my cock, cum on my cock, uh, uh, uh.”

Cassian finished inside her with a guttural sound as she came. Pumping her full one last time with a brutal snap of his hips.

She was vaguely aware of his ragged breathing against her ear. Somewhat sure her forearms had fallen flat against his desk and her head hung forward. Hair falling over her face and back arched as her tight sex twitched and fluttered around him.

Coming back to her senses took longer than she’d ever admit.

“Is that cctv?” Nesta asked eventually, head tipped back and resting on his shoulder. Eyes flicking in gesture to the tiny little camera in the opposite corner of the ceiling.

“Don’t worry,” Cassian breathed. “It’s switched off.”

She turned her gaze to him.

“Shame.”

He let out an exhausted and reverent sound that might have been a laugh. And just as exhausted, once he’d pulled out, he fell back into the chair behind him. Trousers pulled back up but unbuttoned.

Nesta followed in fatigued suit, working her dress back down over her hips and sinking to the floor, back against the desk. She probably shouldn’t have worn black… but the impending bill and judgement from her dry cleaner would be worth it.

“Friday night. Pick me up at eight,” she breathed.

Cassian grinned.

“You like Italian?”

Nesta rolled her eyes from behind the reading glasses askew on her nose, but nodded none the less. She was sort of screwed if she didn’t. Cassian’s adopted family were Italian on his father’s side. The cuisine was going to be pretty commonplace if they kept seeing each other she imagined.

“What are you thinking about?” He hummed, watching her.

Nesta smiled. Then crawled toward him across the floor. “How I still have that table cloth you call a dinner jacket at my place.”

“Was that plan b?” He laughed, snaking an arm round her waist as she climbed into his lap. “Hold my jacket hostage till I agreed to go out with you again?”

“No,” she glared at him softly, nestling into the crease of his shoulder. “Though I had thought about wearing it tonight. Just your jacket and a pair of heels.”

Cassian licked his lips as though contemplating the sight and liking what he imagined very much. “Next time,” he hummed distractedly. Less promise more pleading. “This was…,” his free hand roved down her side, the black fabric glued to her figure. “And these…,” his touch made her melt as he ran down her thigh and platform boot, her legs flicked over one another.

“Lethal,” he whispered.

Nesta scoffed. “You’re telling me. My toes are killing me.”

Cassian hummed sympathetically, fitting a heel in his hand and guiding the shoe off her foot. Nesta groaned softly and he did the same with the other boot.

“That bad?” He chuckled, starting to massage her.

“Worth it though,” she sighed, nuzzling into his shoulder.

Cassian held the door open for Nesta to emerge out onto the street first. The cool night air whipping lazily at her hair.

Their second date had been incredible.

He’d taken her to Gnocco in the East Village. Proper Italian food, fairy lights, and intimate little corners perfect for flirting over too many glasses of wine and playing footsie beneath the table. Not to mention casual enough to see Nesta Archeron fitted out in heels, a snug black top, and a jaw dropping pair of jeans.

Tactically quiet and effortlessly biting as ever, she’d been armed with passionate reviews on the podcasts she’d listened to or books she’d read that week. Asking him about his own week and listening thoughtfully in a way that had probably made him blush.

If it hadn’t, then the way she’d licked at the creamy vanilla gelato on her dessert spoon definitely had.

Cassian was far too tempted to slip his hand into the back pocket of her dark skinny jeans as he emerged after her, but he felt Nesta probably wasn’t one for PDA. Or more accurately, public groping. And he was determined to be on his best behaviour this evening. Determined to make her forget all about how shit-awfully he’d handled last Saturday.

Not that he hadn’t given her a thorough apology.

Consistency was key however, and there would be no lapse in his conduct any time soon when it came to Nesta. He’d lucked out so fucking hard in getting a second chance when he hadn’t even deserved the first with a woman like her. Clever and beautiful and passionate and god he had it bad.

Had been thinking about her all week. Their date the only thing getting him through the late nights that were pretty much killing him at this point and the days spent arguing with Helion.

Cassian had worked out who’d put a hit on his friend. And why.

The contracts Helion was in the midst of signing were of a more personal nature that he’d originally let on. His will to be precise. In which it was detailed that upon his death, the pharmaceutical powerhouse that was Day Inc. should be handed over to Saoirse Vanserra.

The married woman Helion had gone and fallen in love with twenty odd years ago. The mother of his child.

Not that Helion had been aware of the that little detail until recently. Terminally ill, Saoirse hadn’t wanted the secret buried with her, and had gotten in touch with her old flame to tell him her youngest was his.

Despite being well into his fifties, Helion behaved like a twenty-something at the best of times. But learning he had a son that actually was twenty-something had thrust him into a panicked play at accountability. Saoirse was going to die, and soon, but Helion would still have a piece of her, a piece of the both of them despite the estrangement that had haunted their relationship since the start. A piece he’d do every and anything in his power to do right by.

Which meant Lucien would inherit his father’s company when the time came.

But removing Saoirse from his will…it felt like signing her death warrant. At least that’s what he’d told Cassian. That it it felt like he was giving up on her.

Cassian wished Helion could process everything in as much time as it took him. But time was a luxury not even the multi-millionaire could afford. Not with Saoirse’s eldest, Eris, trying to take him out before the will could be changed.

As things stood, Eris was set to inherit anything of his mother’s- a compromise reached between Saoirse and her cunt of a husband who’d wanted everything in his name. The Vanserra court its own savage little patriarchy of snakes and vipers, meaning as long as Beron was around, what belonged to his sons, belonged to him.

Still, Eris was the undisputed second in command and Beron wasn’t getting any younger. If he could take Helion out before any changes were made to the CEOs will, and if Saoirse’s doctors were to be believed, Day would practically be his by the end of the year.

Maybe sooner. If Beron beat his cancer ridden wife to death upon learning she’d been left Helion Day’s company and why.

He doubted anyone would put it past the bastard.

“Hey,” Nesta’s voice tugged at his attention as they turned off tenth. “Where’d you go?”

Cassian snaked his arm around her small waist, pulling her against him. “Just thinking,” he said. And as hard as he tried to push those thoughts away, something of them lingered in his voice.

She raised a neat eyebrow. That little beauty spot above the arch lifting with it and the one beneath the corner of her plump bottom lip quirking just barely.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do that before.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. Tucking her tighter to his side as he looked down at her. “That’s because the only thing I ever think about is you. And when I’m with you, I don’t have to do that, do I?”

Her blush was so utterly adorable it made him want to kiss her senseless.

“How do you do that?” Those eyes like the smoke of ice narrowed in sincere curiosity. It was a little terrifying. Which off course only made him like her more.

“What? Make you blush like a-”

“No,” she interrupted him with an embarrassed and chiding laugh, pushing at his chest slightly. “Say things, just say them- like the only thing that matters is that you mean them?”

Cassian smiled. “Not everything has to be done strategically, Nesta.”

“Says the military man.”

“And wouldn’t you say that makes me qualified to- okay fine, roll your eyes at me. Jokes on you because it’s actually very sexy when you do that so.”

Nesta laughed, her head falling to rest below his chest as they walked.

“Fortunate you say something to make me roll my eyes every five seconds then,” she hummed.

“And that I know just how to make those eyes roll back,” he purred lowly in response with a roguish grin, rubbing his thumb against where her coat lay over her stomach.

“Oh and you’re telling me this whole conversation wasn’t strategically constructed so you could use that line?” Nesta looked up at him.

“Sweetheart, when are you going to accept that I’m just incredibly smooth?” He grinned. “Besides, that wasn’t a line.”

“That was so a line!”

“You’d know if I was giving you a line.”

“Go on then. Give me your best line,” she challenged. Stopping dead and turning on him with her arms folded. Cassian didn’t let his arm slip from around her waist though. Kept it right where it was as he brought his free hand to tuck a lock of chocolatey hair behind her ear. Inspiration striking him.

“Are you a box of chocolates?” he asked, gravelly and suggestive. “Because I’d love to take your top off.”

Nesta really had the loveliest laugh in the world.

“That’s awful!” She put her hands firm against his chest. “How did you ever get laid before I took pity on you?”

“Um I’m gorgeous and rich,” he reminded her, both arms now caging her in.

“What a coincidence,” Nesta purred, their noses tucked against one another just barely thanks to his date’s shoes. No doubt expensive as they were tall.

“No coincidences here, sweetheart. This is all fate.”

“I’m deliberately not rolling my eyes just to spite you for saying something so cliché and dumb,” she murmured.

“Fine then. Fate and your meddling sister,” he admitted.

“Let’s not talk about my little sister right now,” Nesta’s hands snaked up to toy with the lapels of his coat.

“What would you rather we talk about?”

“I don’t want to talk at all,” she whispered. And pulled him down lazily to meet her mouth.

Cassian moulded his lips to the perfect pressure of her own. Hard and soft, her mouth like velvet and her body pressing into his tight and loose in all the right places.

Kissing Nesta was like brushing you fingers against the glacial softness of snow like flakes of glass. Irresistible and inevitable. Burning so soft at first before the sensation grew unbearably tender and acute. It reminded you that you were alive.

The movements of their mouths grew hotter, no less lethargic, but simply heavier. Like they had all the time in the world and planned to exploit every second.

So much for not into PDA, Cassian thought, as she coaxed his mouth open further with her tongue, his own slowly swiping to meet it. And he did slip his hand into her back pocket then, giving her a fond and pining squeeze which pulled her tighter into him.

The pads of her thumbs brushed at either side of his jaw as she arched a little, those perfect tits pushed against his upper body and he dug his fingers a little more possessively into the fabric of her coat. Bunching at her waist beneath his calloused touch.

Nesta sighed sweetly into him-

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Cassian swore. Tame Impala playing from his pocket.

“Looks like I’m not the only one who likes your attention,” Nesta laughed quietly, hands smoothing back to her sides politely. The little menace. Her effortless composure all the more devastating with her mouth kissed cherry-red and pupils blown wide as saucers.

He fished out his phone, and declined the call.

“Well you’re the only one getting it.”

She rose her brows as though she were impressed, winding her arms back around his neck.

“For a man who hates games you have game, Velaris.”

“Would you feel less wooed if I told it you was just Rhysand?” He admitted. Rejecting his busybody brother’s phone call a far less bold gesture than if it had been work.

Nesta’s little smile was like molten satin.

“That makes it even better,” she kissed him again.

Cassian kissed her back through his laugh, dipping her back slightly for a more indulgent angle, her arms lacing tighter around him to hold herself up. Like he’d let her fall.

Nesta was the one laughing now and it tasted like gelato and champagne and sunrises. He nipped at her lip as he pulled her back up with him snuggly, and she brought her hand to cup the side of his face, the other at his tapered waist.

“I should get going,” she hummed distractedly, hand gliding up his body like she didn’t even realise.

Her tongue caressed his slowly before he was muttering against her, “probably”, chasing the plush heat of her mouth.

They didn’t stop. Not even as Nesta was murmuring a disjointed, “heighten the…suspense…keep you…wanting and all that.”

“I’m already losing interest,” he purred gruffly, their jaws knocking intimately as the kiss became hotter and fitful, short breaths and hungry mouths. Her nails scraping softly up the nape of his neck and through his hair.

“And you’re looking for it in my back pocket, is that it?” She whispered, and Cassian gave her ass a firm squeeze as either confirmation or reprimand.

She bit his bottom lip, the nip of her pearly teeth giving way to a sensual sort of chewing that made his eyes roll back behind closed lids and his large hands wound through her hair to guid her head back so he could take charge. Kissing her slow once again but dirtier, thorough and wanton and Nesta keened almost silently.

“Found it,” Cassian said thickly into her mouth.

“Want your prize?” She whispered breathlessly.

“Yes please.”

Nesta slid her hand between them. Fingers brushing his belt, then lower-

Cassian couldn’t tell if he was relieved or devastated when she slipped her way inside his pocket and plucked free his phone.

She withdrew just barely from the kiss, switched it on and turned the screen to him. The device unlocked as both his hands tucked into her pockets and her manicured thumbs were tapping away.

Cassian brushed at the curved beam of her high cheekbone with his nose, trying to see what she was up to.

“What are you doing?”

“Callander says you’re free Friday. Or it did. Now it says you have a date.” She nestled herself back into him tightly, tucking the device back into his pocket, exploiting that teasing proximity to something else entirely and driving him crazy as she grazed his mouth with her own.

“Congratulations.”

Cassian grinned.

“Tha- wait just to be clear the date is with you, right?”

“Yes, Cassian, the date is with me,” she chuckled. “And I can’t wait,” her humming melted to something wordless and heavy as he kissed her again.

Slow and explicit he stroked his tongue inside and he swore he felt the flutter of her lashes against his cheek.

“Cassian,” she breathed almost silently and it burnt his lungs like freezing air.

“Can I take you home?” Cassian whispered.

“May I take you home,” Nesta corrected between the sinful caress of their lips.

“Please do.”

She was kissing the smirk off his face like she could taste how snug he was and wanted a piece of it for herself. Like she were working at a marshmallow or strawberry lathered with thick chocolate from a hot fountain of the stuff.

“Maybe you are smooth,” she whispered and it only inflated Cassian’s self satisfaction. “But we both know I like it rough.” Ouch. “Just like we both know you’re way too exhausted to have your way with me.”

He pulled back abruptly.

But his mouth had barely opened to argue when she gave him a definitive “don’t”. It was little bit arousing. “You said yourself how late you’ve been working. Have you slept at all this week?”

For all her icy glares and hellish attitude, at her core, Nesta was kind. She cared despite her pretences to the contrary and it meant she noticed things. Like how despite his lively grins, Cassian was out for the fucking count.

“That’s what I thought. You can screw me when I know you won’t pass out before making it to third base.”

“The only one who’d be passing out is you once I’m through fu-”

“Save that thought for a night you have the energy to see it through,” she said.

“But I-”

A quirk of her neat brows shut him up.

He growled a bitter but accepting sound. She was right, of course she was right, because she was Nesta and a Nesta was always right.

“Friday,” he promised. “I’m gonna cook for you, something fucking romantic.”

“More romantic than that sentence?”

“Look I may not be Keats but I know my way round a stove, so hold all sarcastic comments until I’ve fed you.”

“I’ll try, but I know for a fact you’re going to make that very hard.”

“How have you already failed?”

“Shut up,” Nesta laughed.

“You have the sexiest fucking laugh.”

“So you’ve said,” she blushed.

“And I’ll keep saying it if every time I do you blush like that.”

“Like I’m embarrassed for you?” she countered with an arched brow and a cruel twitch at the corner of her mouth.

“You’re so mean,” he grinned.

They made their way to the curb and hailed down a car on twelf.

“Want me to ride with you back to your apartment?” he said, opening the back door of a yellow cab that had pulled up for her.

“That’s sweet, but trust me, I can take care of myself,” she promised.

“Text me when you get home safe and sound just to spite me then,” he said from the opposite side of the door.

“I will. But you better not be awake to read it,” She gave him a lingering kiss before gracefully tucking herself inside.

“Night, gorgeous,” he winked, and shut the door.

Her ride had just turned onto fourteenth when Cassian decided against hailing his own despite the cold. It was only fifteen or so minutes on foot, and he could probably do with cooling down.

Though even if he had to trek through tundra to get home he suspected he’d still find himself burning up under a cold shower in an attempt not to jack off to the thought of Nesta like a fourteen year old.

Stuffing his already slightly numb hands into his pockets he began walking, his fingers brushing against his phone. He should probably call Rhys back.

The phone rang for a moment before his brother picked up.

“Did you decline my call?”

“Yup.”

“Bastard.”

“I’m sure Feyre will kiss your bruised ego better,” Cassian grinned as he walked. “Along with something else so long as she doesn’t hear you’ve been calling me names,” he added slyly.

“Are you threatening to tell on me to my wife?” Rhysand asked, a little wound up by the allusion to Feyre’s kissing certain places even if he hid it behind an unimpressed drawl.

“Are you pretending the thought doesn’t have you quaking in your givenchy loafers?”

“On the topic of not upsetting Feyre, she’s demanding a family dinner.”

He laughed deeply at Rhysand’s avoiding the question.

“That why you’re calling?”

“Partly,” Rhys said. “Work’s been…She wants to be around family right now,” he said with an all too familiar casualness. “You free?”

“For Feyre?” Cassian said without hesitation. “Yeah, I’m free.”

He would just have to pull an all nighter on the Monday.

“Thank you. And also fuck you for implying if it was for me you wouldn’t be,” his brother said.

“Well you called me just as Nesta was about to slip her tongue down my throat so-”

“Nesta?” Rhys interrupted. “I thought that was over?”

Shit.

In all the carnage that had been the last week he hadn’t bothered letting his family know he and Nesta were back on. The woman was a touchy subject and he hadn’t had the energy or balls to get into it.

While Rhys had been able to excuse Elain’s inactivity when the Archerons had been at their financial lowest, he’d never managed to extend that same courtesy to Nesta. Maybe it was because the first time they’d met she’d called him a cradle snatching whore. Regardless, Rhysand pretty much hated the woman’s guts, meanwhile his wife was desperately trying to lure her into the inner circle of the Velaris family.

Cassian may have been able to bench a number higher than his IQ but he wasn’t dumb. He’d clocked on to the fact his sister-in-law was using him as Nesta bait. In all honesty he was loving it. Nothing made him happier than helping out his family, and if that meant taking out an intelligent, passionate, stunning young woman, then really it was a double-win.

Taking a second to grind his jaw softly he was reminded to tread carefully. Not something he generally excelled at, but for the sake of his brother he could try.

“I know you’re not her biggest fan,” he said. “But Feyre forgave her years ago for bailing-”

“Well Feyre’s a better person than I am.”

“I’ll say. She set me up with a smoking hot model, meanwhile you’re trynna cock block me,” he tried.

“You can put your dick wherever you want, doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“I guess not,” he ground out. Itching to hit something at the implication Nesta was just “somewhere to put his dick”.

“Cassian if you want to date a biblical plague in human form knock yourself out, seriously, god knows Feyre will be thrilled. And Azriel, your moping-”

“I don’t mope,” Cassian interjected.

“Fine, your stropping-”

“Fuck off.”

Rhys’ laugh was about smug as the bastard’s crooning voice.

“Mor’s gonna kill you by the way. You put a two grand dent in her wine collection over a woman you took back the next week.”

Cassian groaned, wiping a hand over his face. The only thing worse than the hangover he’d had Monday morning would be Morrigan’s laying into him on this.

“Don’t you dare tell her,” he warned.

“Fine but you’ll have to do it before next Sunday, you’re bringing Nesta.”

“Hang on a minute-”

“Feyre wants a family dinner and if you and Nesta are back on that means she’s coming,” Rhys said.

“Boy you are asking a lot of me here,” Cassian sighed dramatically. “I mean I can think of a few ways to persuade her but most of them are illegal in a lot of countries,” he grinned.

“I don’t care if you have to roofie her and strap her to the hood of your car, just make sure she’s there.”

“Alright, alright Don.”

“Don’t call me that,” Rhys growled irritably to Cassian’s delight.

“What else were you calling about then?” He smirked. “You said dinner was only part of it.”

“I wanted to ask how things were going with Helion,” his brother said. “Any update?”

Cassian sighed heavily.

“This a secure line?”

“Always”.

“The hit’s Eris,” he said. “Apparently Saoirse does pretty well for herself if Helion kicks it and it’s looking like she won’t last the year. When she goes Eris takes the lot so he’s trying to take Helion out before he can change his will.”

“That little bitch,” Rhys interrupted.

“I’m not done. Guess who Helion might be transferring that inheritance to?”

“Is Azriel going to finally have the funds to build that sex dungeon?”

“Not quite,” Cassian said. “The money’s going to Lucien.”

“Lucien?”

“Turns out the kid’s his.”

“Fucking hell.”

“Seems obvious in hindsight to be honest.”

Rhys was silent on the other end for a moment as he evidently thought through matter.

“You said might, is he waiting on a paternity test or something?”

Cassian winced. “No. No he’s dragging his feet about changing the will altogether.”

“Why the fuck is he doing that there’s a bullet with his name on it!”

“You think I don’t know that?” Cassian hissed, trying to keep his voice down. “I’m the one whose gonna have to jump in front of that bullet if he doesn’t get his ass in gear. But he…he’s losing the love of his life, Rhys. I’m trynna cut him a little slack-”

“Slack Eris is going to have someone strangle him with.”

“I’m handling it,” Cassian promised.

Rhys went silent again.

“We could always just kill Eris.”

Cassian would have laughed at the unrestrained glee in his brother’s voice if the suggestion hadn’t been so tempting.

“No you can’t,” he reminded him, ascending the steps to his front door.

“Sorry, sorry, you probably want plausible deniability and all that- which is a shitty reason to leave a family business-”

“What are you talking about? I left because I don’t like any of you.”

“Dick.”

“See it’s that kind of thing that made for a hostile work environment I really couldn’t foresee a future working under,” he grinned, unlocking the door.

“You taught me words far more creative than that growing up, monte de merda-”

“Desenmerda-te, and don’t cuss at me in Portuguese carcamano.”

“I’m fucking Persian!”

“Tell that to your pale ass like unbaked garlic bread, minchia,” Cassian retorted in Italian as he tossed his keys onto the skirting board and shrugged off his coat.

“A fanabla!”

“Love you too, tell Feyre I said hi.”

“See you and Nesta on Sunday, I’ll text you timings.”

“No shop talk okay, she still doesn’t know anything about-”

“I know, I know, it’s not me you have to worry about. Feyre keeps asking me to hire her.”

“As what? Has Cosa Nostra began dabbling in the modelling industry under your direction, baby brother?”

“If I said yes would you come back to us?”

“I’m a one woman man, Rhys.”

“Jesus, it’s been less than a month.”

“At which point you and Feyre were engaged.”

“Nesta’s no Feyre.”

Yeah, Nesta has enough wit about her to know you can’t go round offering Mafia jobs like candy, he thought to himself.

“Whatever man, I’ll see you then.”

“See you then.”

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nerdyfangirl67 · 3 years

Text

A Piece of You - Criminal Minds Reader Insert

Pairing: Spencer x fem!reader

Warning: Spencer in prison, angst!, language, post prison!Spencer, PTSD symptoms, fluff ending

Word count: 5951

Short summary: Reader finds she is pregnant just as Spencer is sent to prison.

A/N: Y/F/N means your first name. Y/L/N means your last name. Y/N means your name. And Y/C/M means your comfort movie. I chose for the baby in the fic to be a girl, but feel free to change it when you read it. I found a blog post on the internet that stated Reid was in jail for about 84 days, so I added some to accommodate time for travel, etc and am going with it. I also changed a few things, like Spencer coming home without the reader knowing and I didn’t include his mother as much either, to add to the storyline. And I added/made up a few details with the whole prison call/visit things so it may not ring true. Link here: click

A warm pair of lips placing feather-lite kisses on your face pulls you away from the comforting arms of sleep. You sluggishly open your eyes, blinking the blurry figure leaning over you in the darkness of the bedroom into focus.

“Spence?” You drawl out, reaching a hand up to weave into his curly hair. “Don’t go.” He lets out a small laugh as he gently unthreads your hand from his hair. “I’ve got to go Y/N.” He says reluctantly, moving to rest his forehead against yours for a moment. You close your eyes, reveling in the intimacy of the moment.

“I love you.” You murmur, your breath fanning across Spencer’s face. You reach up enough to press your lips against Spencer’s in a tender kiss. “Come home safe.”

“I love you too Y/N. Go back to sleep.” He says as he brings the comforter back up over your shoulders. “I’ll be home before you know it.”

If you had known that the kiss you’d given Spencer before he left for his trip to Mexico would have been the last you’d be able give him for the next 89 days (you had been counting), you would’ve made it more than a sleepy, wet kiss as you yearned for your bed. You would have hugged him tight, pressing your face into his chest, deeply breathing his musk in as you listen to his heartbeat. You would have pulled him in for two, three, four more kisses, murmuring words of love between each.

Most importantly, you would have told him what you had found out only the night before when he had been at work, that you were pregnant. If only you had known what was to happen, you could have saved yourself from the hell to come.

---

No matter the case, Spencer always made sure to call, or at the very least text, you once a day. But after two days of radio silence, you were starting to worry. You had called him twice, leaving him a message each time asking him to call you when he could. You sent him quite a few text messages as well, becoming more and more concerned as time passed but you receive no call back from him.

By the fifth day, despite having sent a number of additional text messages and leaving enough voicemails to fill Spencer’s inbox, you still hadn’t heard from him. You are so worried that you can hardly focus at work. In fact, you are so distracted by thoughts of Spencer being kidnapped or him being shot and bleeding out in an alley that you got pulled into your boss’s office and reprimanded for your “airhead behavior”, as your boss had put it. When you arrive home, you are gripped with such anxiety and fear that you can only grab one of Spencer’s large sweaters and curl up in bed with it. You can’t even bring yourself to take off your shoes.

The ringing of your phone early the next morning pulls you from the trance you had been in all night. You frantically start looking for your phone and quickly find it on Spencer’s side of the bed, answering it without looking at the number.

“Spencer? Is that you? Are you okay?” You blurt out, not allowing the other person to talk before you are firing questions at them.

“Is this Y/F/N Y/L/N?” The voice on the other side asks quickly, stopping you. You immediately know it isn’t Spencer, just as much as you know that it isn’t someone you know.

“Yes. May I ask who this is and what it is regarding?” You ask nervously, your heart quickening as you wait what feels like an eternity for them to answer.

“I’m Penelope Garcia and I work with Spencer at the FBI.” She pauses for a moment, as if trying to find the right words to continue. “You were the most called number in the call log on Spencer’s phone and I felt like this is something you should know, as he seems to be someone very important to you, and vice versa.” The brokenness of her voice causes the worry in your chest to bubble up again. “Spencer is in jail...in Mexico.”

“Wh-what?” You struggle to wrap your mind around what she is saying as you climb out of bed, rushing to find your discarded jacket and set of keys from the night before. You aren’t entirely sure why you’re rushing, or even where you’d be going, but that doesn’t slow you down. “Was there a case in Mexico? What happened?”

“There wasn’t a case. He took some personal days and went to Mexico for some experimental medication for his mother. He...um..he was arrested for murder, but he doesn’t remember anything.”

You take a deep breath, forcing yourself to sit in one of the living room chairs as you try to fight off the sobs rising in your chest. “Is he, is he going to stay in Mexico? I mean, is he, no, when will...he didn’t do it.” You stammer out, as you try to slow your racing thoughts, stop the inevitable tears from falling, and make your word coherent.

“Miss Y/L/N, I don’t have the answers to those questions yet. But, I can keep you updated if you’d like. The team left a few hours for Mexico to help Reid. They want to get him transferred to a prison in the states.” Her voice is comforting, but does nothing to tamp down the feeling of impending disaster that is rising in you. You manage to get out a shaky goodbye to Penelope before you lose grip on your emotions.

You struggle to get a proper breath through the onslaught of tears as the reality of the situation hits you. Your phone clatters to the floor as you bury your face in your arms, drawing your legs up to yourself as you try to push it all away. Eventually the tears slow and stop. You gradually unfurl from the cramped up position you had been in. You numbly make your way to the kitchen and somehow manage to make yourself breakfast. The rest of the day passes in a hazy blur, with you almost forgetting that you were supposed to be at work (you called in sick once you remembered, but your boss wasn’t happy the call was coming in three hours late). You spend the night, clutching Spencer’s pillow and wishing that this were all a dream. You don’t fall asleep until the early hours of the morning, when the exhaustion of the last few days finally overtakes you.

The ringing of your phone wakes you later that morning, serving as a reminder that you have to face the day ahead, as much as you don’t want to.

“Y/F/N? This is Penelope with the FBI. I called you yesterday about Spencer.” Her greeting has you sitting up, trying to clear the foggy cloud from your brain so you could think.

“Penelope, have you found anything else out? How is Spencer?” You plow over any possible pleasantries as you ask the question that had been on your mind for the last day.

“The team was able to get him extradited to the United States.” She starts, her words helping to ease some of the anxiety that had built up since you had learned about Spencer’s imprisonment. “He isn’t out yet, but the team is working on his case. In the meantime, I’m setting up a visitor schedule. If you’d want to come down to Quantico, I can help you fill out the necessary paperwork and get on the schedule to see him, if you’d like.” You quickly voiced your agreement and after getting directions and setting a time, you hung up with Penelope, your mood considerably elevated for the first time in days.

A glance at the clock has you scrambling out of the bed and to your closet. You had completely forgotten about the doctor’s appointment you had scheduled days ago, before your world had been flipped upside down. You manage to get dressed and ready to go in less than ten minutes, arriving at your appointment only a few minutes late.

Your appointment is short as the doctor just does a routine exam, confirming your pregnancy and letting you know that the baby was healthy so far. You receive a list of different things to avoid (such as caffeine and smoking) and a few different things that are beneficial to your, and the baby’s, health (such as prenatal vitamins). After your appointment, you quickly stop at the store to pick up a few things suggested by the doctor, before heading back to Spencer’s apartment, where you had been staying. Although he had never officially asked you to move in, you had been staying at his apartment most nights for the past few months and had your own drawer and spot in his closet. And with the events of the past few days, it had just felt right to stay, almost as if you had one small part of him still with you.

You go to bed early that night, really early, in hopes of getting the time to pass quicker. The prospect of seeing Spencer has you anxious and excited at the same time, making sleep nearly impossible. After a few hours of tossing and turning, with no sleep, you climb out of bed and get dressed. You grab your purse and keys before leaving the apartment. You walk the short distance to your car and start it. Despite knowing that you would be hours early to your meeting with Penelope, you still start the drive to Quantico and the FBI building.

After almost an hour in the car, and twenty minutes with security (in which they had to confirm your meeting with Penelope before they gave you a visitor credential), you finally made your way to the floor where the BAU team worked. Your eyes scan the bullpen and immediately you recognize Spencer’s desk, even though you had never seen it before. You recognize the pattern in which the items are placed and the semi-clearness of his desk space; it is identical to the desk he uses for work at home. You make your way towards it, tracing a finger along the fake wood edge as you take a seat in his desk chair. Sitting here, you can almost feel his presence behind you, his voice speaking up, sharing an idea he had or some crazy fact, his fingers tapping along the edge of his desk. You take comfort in the feeling as you rest your head in your arms on his desktop. It isn’t long before you are closing your eyes and falling into a light sleep.

A tap on your shoulder jerks you awake, causing you to fly up in a sitting position and blink at the harsh light of the bullpen. “You must be Y/F/N Y/L/N. I’m Penelope Garcia.” A cheery blonde, wearing a bright orange dress and matching hair accessory, as well as holding a bright pink pom topped pen.

You stand, smoothing out any wrinkles in your outfit before offering a hand out to her. “Yes, that’s me.” She takes your hand but instead of shaking it, pulls you into a hug. You are taken back by her forwardness, but give her a squeeze in return.

“Let’s go see what we can do to get you on the visitor list.” She says softly, leading the way to what you could only describe as her office, although it more resembled a cave, filled with more types of technology than you would know what to do with.

Penelope gestures to a black swivel desk chair set next to the wall. “Here, take a seat. I’m going to pull up Spencer’s information and see if we can get you some visitor paperwork.” She says as you take a seat in the chair. The longer you sit there, the more nervous you feel. Unconsciously, you rest your hand on your lower stomach, right over the small bump that was starting to form.

You don’t realize that you are zoned out until Penelope clears her throat. “Are you okay?” She nods at your hand resting on your stomach. You quickly pull it away, straightening up in your seat. “Yes, I’m fine.”

She gives you a long stare before speaking. “I have some good news and some bad news Y/N.” You nod, waiting for her to speak with bated breath. “The good news - you can call Spencer.”

You wait for her to continue, but she doesn’t. “And the bad news?”

“I can’t add you to the visitor list. It seems that Spencer doesn’t want you to come see him as a visitor.” She can’t look you in the eye as she says that.

You are quiet after that, not entirely sure what to say. The thought that he doesn’t want to see you hurts. But you also know Spencer, and whatever the reason, you know he has one.

“He can take a call in about five minutes if you want to get on the call list.” She says, looking up from one of her monitors at you. You nod quickly, before voicing your agreement. The five minutes of waiting seemed to go on forever, but finally, she is patching through to a prison phone. “Here you go, he should be on the other line now.” The fact that she immediately gave the phone to you, instead of taking some of the time to talk to him, had you smiling gratefully at her. ‘Thank you’, you mouth as you take the phone.

“Spencer? Is that you?” You ask, your heart in your throat as you wait to hear his voice.

“Y/N, it’s so good to hear your voice.” He speaks quietly, the low quality of the phone call causing his voice to crackle.

“I know you didn’t do it Spencer. Whatever they are saying, it isn’t true.” You whisper, clutching the handset close to your ear, as if that would bring him closer to you.

“Y/N...I don’t know-” He starts but you cut him off, knowing he was going to tell you he wasn’t sure what had happened.

“I know Spencer, but I also know you. And that isn’t who you are.” You say thickly, as you fight back the coming tears. “I want to see you Spencer. Why don’t you have me on your visitor list?”

“I don’t want you to see me like this. I don’t want you to see me here.” You start to argue that it doesn’t matter, but some yelling in the background cuts you off, after which Spencer says, “I’ve got less than a minute Y/N before I’ve got to hang up.” He says solemnly, the sorrow in his voice echoing the sorrow you felt.

You push aside the topic of seeing him, not wanting to waste what little time you had left talking to him by arguing. “I love you Spencer. Don’t forget that okay? I don’t care how long it takes, we-I will be here when you come home. You have a lot of people here in your corner Spencer. They will get you out.” You push back the tears as you talk, not wanting him to hear you cry.

“Gosh, I love you and I miss you. I wish I was th-” His voice is cut off, followed shortly by a dial tone.

You grip at the handset, calling “Spencer? Spencer?!”, wishing for him to respond.

“I’m sorry Y/N. The call ended.” Penelope says quietly. You hand over the handset, moving to sit back in the swivel chair against the wall, roughly wiping away the evidence of your tears as you do.

“What do we do now?” You ask through the tears.

“We wait. The team is working on his case and I will keep you updated on everything that happens. Do you need anything?” She asks, giving you a good look.

You are telling her before you consciously realize what you are doing. “I-I’m pregnant. I just found out and I haven’t had the chance to tell Spencer. I don’t know what to do. I want to tell him when I can see him face to face, when he can enjoy it for what it is, a blessing. But I hate hiding things from him.”

Penelope gives out a little squeal, bouncing up from her chair to hug you tight. “Oh, you are gonna have a baby Reid!” She says loudly, taking a step back from you. The look on your face must have given away the shock on your face because she is quickly apologizing. “Oh my goodness, I am so sorry. What can I do to help Y/N?”

“I just, I need someone to talk to. I miss him, a lot. It’s hard to be going through this alone.” You whisper, looking down at your hands in your lap.

“Girl, you don’t have to ask. I’d love to be your friend.” She says excitedly, giving you a soft shoulder bump. “And I’m going to do everything I can to get the boy wonder home to you.” She gives you a small smile. “And your little one.”

---

The days follow a routine after that. Work, talking to Penelope, and the occasional doctor’s appointment. Penelope comes to some of the appointments as support, which you appreciate, and when you find out the gender, she insists on going shopping for baby items with you. You are able to talk to Spencer a few more times, although each phone call is shorter than the last, and leaves you missing him even more.

Each doctor’s appointment is harder than the last. All you could think of when you hear the baby’s heartbeat is that Spencer wasn’t there. All you could think of when you feel the baby move for the first time is that Spencer might never be able to feel your baby move like that. He might never get the chance to feel your baby kick. All you can think of when you hear the gender of your baby is that Spencer might never get to experience that excitement, that joy, of imagining all the future things that might be in store for the baby.

---

Late one evening in early May, after a long day at work (which you had spent almost entirely on your feet) and a feeling of nausea that had lasted all day, you dig through Spencer’s side of the closet and grab one of his cardigans. You pull it on, wrapping around you as well as you can with your growing belly getting in the way.

You grab one of the many books resting on Spencer’s side table, taking it with you as you head to the living room. You pull the afghan blanket off of the back of the leather wingback, carrying it with you as you move to the dark leather couch. You get comfortable, wrapping the blanket around your legs and waist before opening the random book you had grabbed.

It isn’t long before the story has your eyelids drooping and your muscles relaxing, giving into the cloud of exhaustion that hung over you. The book, forgotten and half-open, falling to the floor doesn’t wake you, and neither does your cell phone, distant and tinny, as it rings from the bedroom. You don’t wake at the jingling of a key in the lock or the opening of the apartment door. However, the heavy thud that follows the apartment door falling shut has you jerking awake, one hand coming to rest on the swell of your abdomen, the other on the back of the couch. You struggle a bit to sit up, but when you do, after taking a moment to study the intruder, you realize it’s Spencer.

“Spencer?” You whisper, moving slowly from the couch, not entirely sure if he was real or a figment of your imagination. Either way, you didn’t want to scare him away. You stop when you are a foot from him. You search his light brown, almost hazel eyes, the pain and darkness within them, swirling around and hardening his expression. You tentatively reach out with your hand to caress his face. Your fingers slowly graze his stubble covered jaw before you move to rest it against his cheek.

He leans into your touch, bringing his large, rough hand up to cover yours. Your eyes fill with tears, causing your view of him to become blurry and before you can stop yourself, you are throwing your arms around his neck, pulling him as close as you can get.

He is quick to return the hug, but after a brief moment, he becomes stiff, his arms sliding loosely down your back. You step back, feeling hurt and confused at his sudden rejection of your affection.

“What’s wrong?” You murmur as you roughly wipe a hand across your face, trying to get rid of the tears that were running down your face.

“You’re pregnant.” He states, his eyes no longer looking at your face, but instead, your belly.

Your heart beats faster, a rush of excitement going through you. This was it, the moment you’d been waiting for. You’d finally get to tell Spencer that he was going to be a father.

“Spencer, it’s ours.” You answer softly, gently taking his hand in yours and placing right above where the baby typically kicked. “You’re going to be a father.”

“I-I am?” He questions in disbelief. His hand, which had been rigidly resting on your belly, slowly relaxes just as the baby kicks. He jerks his hand away, stepping back and bumping into the door. He brings his hands up, pushing them into his hair. His fingers grip onto the long, curly locks as uses his palms to cover his eyes.

“No, this isn’t happening, it’s a dream. I don’t deserve this.” He is rambling now as he slowly slides down the door, landing in a sitting position. His face is still covered with his hands as he continues to ramble. “This isn’t real. I don’t deserve this.”

“Spencer?” You murmur, keeping your voice low, but audible as you kneel down beside him. You place a gentle hand on his arm, afraid that your touch might startle him. He doesn’t move as he continues to talk to himself. You bring your other hand up to cradle his still covered face. You stay this way for a long time, holding him as much as he’ll allow in his closed off position. Eventually, he stops muttering to himself and is quiet. You shift then, until you're sitting next to him against the door.

“Lie down, Spencer.” You whisper softly, brushing a lock of his hair back away from his face when he turned to face you. You slide your hand from his hair and over his shoulder, gently pulling him down towards you. He didn’t resist, placing his head in your lap and allowing you to run your fingers through his hair.

The two of you stay that way until your butt goes numb from sitting in the same place for so long. You squeeze Spencer’s shoulder with your hand to get his attention. “Let’s go to bed, Spence.” You say. He slowly gets up, offering you a hand as he does, avoiding any accidental brushing of your stomach as he did. You keep his hand in yours as he leads the way to the bedroom, only letting go when you move to your side of the bed and get in. He is gone for a few minutes, coming back with a low-slung pair of gray sweatpants and an old college T-shirt on. He gets in bed, but instead of wrapping an arm around your waist and pulling you close as he usually did, he simply laces his fingers through yours.

Weeks pass this way, with you and Spencer going back to life as it was, or at least as much as the two of you could with Spencer’s new work schedule and the fact that you were getting closer and closer to your due date. The fact that things remained the same though, as they had been when Spencer arrived home for the first time, was what worried you.

Never once did Spencer engage in the conversations you started about the baby or the nursery you wanted in the small spare room across from the bedroom you and Spencer shared. Whenever you commented that the baby was kicking, he found some excuse to leave the room. He still only ever held your hand at night, completely avoiding your ever-growing belly both in bed and anywhere else. It was almost as if he was trying to pretend as if you weren’t actually pregnant, as if what was happening wasn’t reality. Not only were you constantly uncomfortable, tired and just all around ready for the baby to come, but you were frustrated that Spencer still acted as if you weren’t pregnant, as if anytime within the next few weeks you wouldn’t be handed a newborn, making the two of you parents. You had finally had enough when you had mentioned going shopping for baby supplies about two weeks prior to your due date and he ignored you, continuing to wash the dishes. At first you thought he hadn’t heard you, so you repeat yourself, but when he acted much the same way a second time, you slam your hand on the table.

“Spencer, you can’t ignore this pregnancy. It may not be something you want right now, or ever, but you can’t just ignore it.” You snap at him, the irritation you had been feeling at his callous behavior finally surfacing. He doesn’t answer as he continues to wash the dishes from dinner. You can tell he heard you though, by the unnecessary sheer force he was using to scrub the plate in his hand.

“Spencer,” you pause, waiting until he is looking at you before continuing. “You have to find a way to accept it. This baby is coming.” Your tone is softer now, but your words don’t hold any less bite.

“I can’t accept it Y/N. Accepting it means it’s reality.” He lets out a harsh, joyless laugh. “And the reality is that I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve a baby. And I definitely don’t deserve this life with you.” He is no longer facing you, rather his back is to you, his shoulders tensed and hunched.

You place a tender hand on his elbow, wanting him to turn so you could see his face. Instead he roughly pulls his elbow out of your hold, flinging soapy water through the air before returning to the plate. “Spencer, look at me.” You try to speak clearly, steadily, but your voice cracks, betraying the emotion behind your words.

He does as you ask, but his face is twisted and dark in a way you had never seen before. “Damnit Y/N. You have no idea what I’ve done or who I am.” He is yelling at you now, waving a half washed dish to emphasize his point, causing you to take a step backwards. “You think I should be the father of that child,” he gestures wildly at your belly, “when you don’t even know who I am, what I am.” He drops the plate and the sponge, letting them clatter loudly against the metal basin of the sink, as he walks towards the front door of the apartment, his hands still dripping wet.

“Where are you going?” Your words are barely audible as you try to force them past the growing lump in your throat.

He ignores your question as he grabs his jacket from the coat rack by the door and leaves the apartment. The loud thud of the door closings clangs against your ears, the tears you had been trying to hold back freely falling now. You were beyond angry at him, despite knowing you shouldn’t be because he had gone through hell the past few months. You couldn’t bring yourself to wait for him to come back. You were tired of the constant bickering and the numerous different times he had chosen to ignore any mention of your pregnancy or the baby.

You quickly fill your duffle bag with the things you’d need for a few days as you called Penelope. The phone rings three times before she answers with a bright, cheery “hello, Garcia.”

“Penelope, hey. It’s Y/N. Can I stay at your place for a few nights?” You ask as you zip your bag closed. “I need some space from Spencer.”

“Of course girl. You’re welcome anytime.” She says warmly. “I’ll get the couch made up and Y/C/M queued up on the TV.”

“Thanks Penelope. I’ll see you soon.” You end the call and upon reaching the kitchen, you find a piece of paper and a pen.

Spencer,

I am going to stay with Penelope for a few days. I just need some space.

I’ll be back in a few days.

I love you.

Y/N

You magnet the note to the fridge, where Spencer will be able to find it. You then grab your bag and make your way out of the apartment and down to your car. The drive to Penelope’s doesn’t take long, and when you knock on her door, she is there, holding a pint of your favorite ice cream and the TV remote. “Come here girl.” She proclaimed, pulling you into a side hug.

The two of you watched feel-good movies well into the night. It is really hard for you to get comfortable, despite being on Penelope’s comfortable sofa, but you chalk it up to being 38 weeks pregnant and partaking in a ‘girls’ sleepover’. When you finally become too tired to keep your eyes open, you rifle through your bag, finding your toothbrush and toothpaste. “I’m going to brush my teeth Penelope.” You say, standing up to go to the bathroom. A wet sensation washing all down your legs has your frozen in place. The pinching sensation in your back intensifies, causing you to sit back down. “Penelope..” You call through the pain.

“Huh? Y/N?” Penelope answers groggily, sitting up from her relaxed position on the oversized chair. If the situation weren’t so serious, you’d be laughing at the way her hair was standing up in random directions.

“Penelope, I think I need to go to the hospital.” You say, letting out a breath as the pain subsided. She is at your side within moments. “What’s wrong? Is it-oh.” Penelope stops as she sees the evidence of your leaking amniotic fluid on pants. “Let’s go Y/N. We’ve got a baby Reid on the way.” She says cheerily, helping you up. She grabs your bag, which was sitting by the door and helps you out to your car, opening the passenger door for you. The drive to the hospital goes much slower than you would like as a combination of traffic and increasing contractions makes the thirty minute drive feel twice as long.

Upon reaching the emergency room, you are wheeled into a private birthing room with Penelope following closely behind. She stays with you throughout the next six hours of labor, leaving only once near the end. The closer the birth of your child gets, the foggier you feel. At one point, someone else enters the room, hovering near the head of your bed, but you can’t focus enough to see who it is.

After six hours and twenty-eight minutes of labor, you give birth to a beautiful baby girl. Shortly after birth, she is placed on your chest, a bright pink and green striped blanket placed over her backside. You laugh through the tears as you look into her eyes for the first time, an overwhelming feeling of love overtaking you. The hustle and clatter of the doctors around you slowly fade away as you get lost looking at the face of your newborn daughter.

“Y/N, she’s…” Spencer’s voice startles you as he trails off, causing you to take in his lanky form, framed by the hospital room door. “I...I don’t know what to say.”

“This baby, she’s a piece of you and me and if all I’ll ever get is a piece of you, then I’ll be happy. I love you and I want this life with you, but I can’t force you to love us either Spencer.” You pause, wiping away the tears falling down your face in frustration. “No matter what you think Spencer, I won’t ever stop loving you, just as this little girl won’t ever go a day without knowing who her father truly is. A kind, compassionate man who gave himself wholly and completely for the people he loved, regardless of what that meant for him. That’s who her father is.” You are looking at the baby in your arms now, her bright wide-eyed look bringing a small smile to your face.

You aren’t paying enough attention to Spencer to realize that he had come closer, almost to your bed, and was now staring at the girl in your arms in amazement. “She’s so small.” His words are thick with emotion and cause you to lift your head to look at him. His hazel eyes are glistening with unshed tears as he stares at his daughter.

“Do you want to hold her?” You question, slowly moving her towards his hands, which were hanging awkwardly out in front of him, as if he had anticipated your question. He hesitates a moment before nodding so you place her in his arms.

He cradles her against his chest, holding her as if she was made of glass. His eyes never stray from her face as they study her features, almost as if he was memorizing what she looked like in case he never got to see her again. You lean back against the stiffly starched hospital pillows as you watch them, exhaustion pulling at you.

“You would never have to force me to love her, or you.” His words snap you from the light doze you had fallen into. He is no longer standing as he watches the baby in his arms, now he is sitting in the chair next to your bed, the baby sleeping soundly in his arms. His eyes bore into yours as if he is trying to tell you with his eyes what he was struggling to with his words.

“I have never stopped loving you.” He looks down at the baby girl in his arms, running a gentle finger over her small cheek. “I just don’t understand what I did to deserve this, to deserve you and her.”

His words break your heart and you place a hand on his knee. “Spencer, of all the people in the world, you deserve this. You deserve love and a family. You do. And I’ll be here, no, we’ll be here everyday to remind you, of who you are and what you do deserve.” You whisper, squeezing his knee as you look at him through teary eyes.

He leans forward to press a gentle kiss on your forehead. “Thank you.” Those two words, uttered softly near your ear, hold more meaning than the typical words of gratitude and they meant the world to you. They meant he would stay, even if it wasn’t always easy, even if it wasn’t always what he felt he deserved, he would stay.

Tagging: @twilightlover2007 @brandydel @thisiscalm-andits-doctor (I added a few more of you who liked the post I made about this fic. I hope that’s okay!) @aaronhotchnerr @emofairyprincessofarkansas @sunflowersandotherthings @impala1967dwinchester

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vividly-aflame · 3 years

Text

No use to have you around

@whumptober2021 Day 1 : All thrust up and still nowhere to go

@whumptober-archive

Fandom: BoBoiBoy Galaxy

cw: a little bleeding, torture, self loathing

Summary: Where Boboiboy felt stressed lately, resulting in his fire elemental to take over his body when he’s asleep and wreak havoc like the first time he came to be. Boboiboy tried to do something about it.

“Stop.” Blaze managed to groan out with a hoarse voice. “please.”

Recently, Boboiboy have been feeling more stressed than usual and the only solution he could think of is getting rid of one of his elemental, Blaze, who has been causing problems since the day he exists. Although he has been useful in some scenarios, Boboiboy don’t think it’s worth it to keep him.

So here they are, all of the seven elementals thinking of ways to get rid of the fire elemental. Blaze tied to a tree with Duri’s thorn vines. It prickles Blaze’s skin and draws a little bit of blood. Every movement that Blaze took is awfully painful that he given up on escaping hours ago. Burning it is no use since the other could quickly trap him again.

“I’m not even the cause of his stress.” All eyes snapped onto Blaze. “His stress is the cause of me.” He managed.

“Gempa, I don’t think this is a good idea.” Taufan commented.

“Well even if we can’t kill him, we could tie him up so he doesn’t go around doing his shenanigans. Or at the very least we can keep him weak enough.” Gempa replied. Taufan and Duri gave Gempa a surprised look. It isn’t like him to actively want to hurt others, only if it’s to protect his friends and family. Do Gempa not see Blaze as his family? For god’s sake, they’re literally the same person!

“Maybe that’s enough for today Gempa…” Duri quietly said as he began untying his thorns. Blaze began to feel relieved as he fell to the ground half conscious. Duri quickly helped him out by lifting him up. Taufan gave Gempa a sort of disappointed look before he goes to help Blaze too.

“Well it certainly helped with Boboiboy’s, and in turn, our problems, but only in a very short time. The problem will come back worse.” Solar stated.

“We will figure it out later, it’s getting late. We should reform before our friends find us like this.” Gempa said with an almost guilty look in his eyes. All of them except for Blaze (he was actually unconscious) nods and started to reform, leaving only an orange clothed boy in the middle of the woods.

Boboiboy heard the sound of rustling bush behind him and instantly turned around.

“Oh my god, Boboiboy, there you are! We were worried sick!” Cried Yaya. He could also see Ying behind her.

“Eheh sorry. Just trying to get somethings off of my mind.” Boboiboy had the decency to look sheepish. That something is Blaze actually he thought.

“Haiya, you literally went missing for almost three hours!” Ying said angrily but also seems a bit worried.

“I said I’m sorry-”

“It’s fine. Now let’s head back to our camping spot. Gopal has made dinner.”

When they finally arrived at their camping place, a plate of food is instantly shoved to him.

“I’ve made rice with fish curry! It’s my dad’s authentic recipe.” Gopal excitedly exclaimed. Boboiboy didn’t have the heart to not eat it with how proud Gopal actually look although he doesn’t have the appetite. With a small smile, he took the plate, sits on the ground and began eating.

After they all have eaten and Boboiboy and Yaya pray together, they goes to each of their tent to sleep except for Boboiboy. He’s sitting down by a tree. He’s afraid to sleep because of Blaze. What if Blaze takes over while he sleeps and burn down the tents and everyone inside? What if he burned down the whole forest? Even the whole planet!

Maybe he should tie himself on the ground or on this tree to avoid Blaze running loose. Wait no, he could just burn the ropes. Maybe use his earth powers to trap himself? Maybe he could just dig up his own grave. Have the ground literally swallow him. Huh. This is the second time he wants to dig his own grave. What’s with him with graves?

“Boboiboy?”

“Ah!” Boboiboy yelped. Actually yelped. He looks to the direction of the voice to see Fang.

“I thought you were sleeping?” Boboiboy said confused.

“I were.”

“So why are you not?”

“Don’t know but I should be asking you, why you’re not asleep.”

Boboiboy look at his hands which is currently fidgeting.

“It’s stupid.”

“If it keeps you up all night, I don’t think it’s stupid.”

“It’s about Blaze.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard.”

“Hey!” Boboiboy look at Fang, pretending to look betrayed.

Fang snickered. “I’m just messing with you.” He sat next to Boboiboy. “So want to tell me the problem? I’m all ears.”

“Blaze has been acting up again…”

“I’ve noticed. You’re stressed and if you keep thinking about it, it would make him more active.” Fang exclaimed. “But if you really don’t want your fire powers, you could just ask Ochobot to take it back.” Fang casually said as if that’s not the most hardest choice to make.

“But I don’t want it gone!” Boboiboy stared at Fang, surprisingly. “I’ll admit although it’s chaotic and sometimes hard to control, it is useful in some situations. I only want Blaze himself gone but not my fire power! And I don’t want you to think I like to hoard all of these powers but-” Boboiboy abruptly stoped. He didn’t actually know why he wants to keep his fire powers. He is perfectly fine with at most, three powers so why do he need four more? “I don’t actually know why I keep them…”

Fang stared at him with a blank expression. “You do need them. Each of them has their own unique trait for every situation. Yes it would be selfish to want all seven of the powers but you’re using them for good. It would be better to give all seven powers to you rather than giving them to seven bad people each.”

“Huh, never thought of that.”

“Yeah, and as for you stressing out and stuff, maybe you should ask admiral for a month long break. Maybe ask for your friends to get it too. And before you said we need to protect the station, you need to remember that we’re teens and we shouldn’t take responsibility of a whole space organisation and thousands of people’s life. We didn’t even finish high school!

“Touché.”

“Sometimes being selfish is a good thing.”

“…”

“Welp!” Fang suddenly got up with a loud clap. “Yaya brought you a weighted blanket. She said it may help with your anxiety and stress so I better see you actually sleep tonight.” With that, Fang began to walk inside of his tent and continue sleeping.

Boboiboy sat there for a minute before deciding to go to his tent. After all, he wouldn’t want to disappoint his friends. Maybe he could play a calming music or sound with his phone while he’s sleeping. He entered the tent and saw a galaxy themed blanket folded in the corner. That must be the weighted blanket Fang talked about. It was actually pretty comfortable and soothe his mind. He started to succumb to sleep.

The next morning when he woke up he doesn’t have any vivid memory about burning stuff and his friends are also safe. Huh guess worrying about his problems just make it worse.

#whumptober2021 #no.1 #bound #fandom #fic #blood #torture #self loathing #boboiboy #boboiboy galaxy #api’s fic

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lethargicsunlight · 3 years

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'Demon' Chapter 3 : For The Mission Bakugou x Fem!Reader (book 1)

Hello~

First of all, Thank you for reading!

You can also read this chapter and the previous ones here on my AO3.

Or, you can find the previous chapter here.

I will come up with a better linking system soon, but I gotta get back to work real quick :(

WARNINGS: Injury, bodily fluids, angst, SFW

Please enjoy!

👹🖤⛓🔪💣

You knew running was a losing game, as speedy as you could be. He was saving his energy by using his mutation quirk for movement.

You pull loose a throwing knife from the holster on your side, keeping the blade bared outward to defend yourself as you take in your blurring surroundings. You make a turn, decidedly veering away from the direction of the bar you'd just left; the last thing you needed was for your pursuer to call in reinforcements that could teleport.

Despite sliding through sharp turns, you couldn't manage to get far enough ahead to fake him out. With the tough exoskeleton they possessed, he was easily driving his extra limbs into the walls and using them as leverage to fling himself forward--closing in on you much faster than you wanted.

"What is it little Demon?" He screeches, mandibles scratching and gnawing together as his mouth stretches open. "I thought you would be a much more riveting opponent than this!"

...Sometimes, you gotta give them what they want.

Mid-run, you locate a window going into an abandoned office building. Throwing your knife, it punctures the glass and leaves hair-line fractures across the surface--you can see the reflection of Sting's eyes within the shards as you thrust your weight into the opening.

In a circular motion, you manage to unsheathe one of the longer blades at your back and parry his limbs in the air before you're tumbling over the broken glass. It hurts, but you don't allow yourself to slow down. You roll back up, unsheathing the second blade with your free-hand as you crouch, ready to strike.

Now you at least had one advantage over him. More cover.

"Heh," he seems to hesitate, finally setting his body back upon solid ground as he evaluates you. His gaze is filled with confidence after watching you run away from him. Like prey. In his pause, you have a few seconds to analyze his structure. The exoskeleton would to be too hard to cut, so your focus had to be the areas you could see flesh exposed. You were aware the legs could retreat into his back, which guaranteed a lack of access there. All you could see was his face and his hands--though peaking out from beneath a tucked scarf, was the smooth skin of a throat.

You had made an oath long ago that you would never kill again. But in defense of your mission... you could manage an exception. It would all be over soon anyway.

Instead of coming at you straight on, he throws another knife at you to get everything back into motion. It has you leaping backwards unto a filing cabinet--and he's charging at you finally with the ferocity of essentially four swords. Due to his extra limbs' reach, you realize you won't get a hit on him this way.

It becomes a tangle of blades as you parry and block and twist around his advances, kicking up papers and folders to distract him as you move up and down over obstacles. The venom in your arm begins to dance through your veins, tingling beneath the skin--you are running out of time.

You can see his face twist into a smile; he's sure he's going to win.

Good.

As he makes the mistake you were waiting for, drawing one of his limbs back for a final attack; his mouth is open to announce his triumph. As the air begins to leave his lungs and form syllables in his mouth, time slows down for you. Your blade held up to parry drops from your hand, sending his stinger forward to scrap across your shoulder; close but not too close to your neck. You grab the knife on his belt that you had been eyeing since his first advance in the alleyway, and slice through the joint.

It brings him to a halt, howling as he moves backwards. Green ichor sprays across your face and drips from his new amputation, his other three limbs curling around his body while his hands grope his shoulders.

You pocket his knife and retrieve your blade from the floor.

"Noo! Nonono..!" He's wailing--it sounds grief-stricken now. While there were questionable 'doctors' among villain society; no one has the ability to bring back a limb. Especially one like that. You had mired him, for the rest of his life.

You prepare for a death blow--but the flash of skin beneath the fabric of his shirt causes your hesitation.

You don't have to kill him. It's relief that floods through your tense and calculating mind; briefly before being replaced with pain. As you had expected, a minute in and his neurotoxic venom has seeped into the muscles of your arm. It feels like a chemical burn--acid turning flesh to sizzling nothing. The arm goes limp, but you force your grip on the blade--you had to appear stable.

"I'm going--I'm going to kill you!" He screeches, and there's a squeal behind it like the voice of the insect part of him was a separate entity.

"...You can't kill me." You say slowly, approaching with your good arm raised. You swallow, then let your voice drop an octave as fear seeps into his eyes. There's a button you managed to press a moment ago, that makes the eyes glow from your mask. A cerulean color--a color that was a remnant of your past. "I'm not human."

From the look on his face--he believes you. Your charade is working. You grit your teeth, forcing your shaking and screaming arm to lift and move to the back of your head. It's a movement that suggests you'll remove your mask.

"N-No, no!" He shifts back again, and unaware of his surroundings he trips and lands among the broken glass. His remaining extra limbs curl in close to his face, leaving his abdomen bare. "You're lying! You can't steal people's souls, you're just--you're like us!"

"Then why are you hiding your face?"

"Wh--" With the distraction of speech, he doesn't block when you throw the hidden blade from your hood down into his abdomen. It's a solemn thwack, and then the harsher crack of his skull when you flip the blade in your good hand and swing it between his stinging limbs to ram into his bare temple.

He's out. He's internally bleeding, and he'll never be the same... but he'll live. Maybe when he wakes, he'll have a different outlook on life. Or, most likely, he'll want to hunt you down.

You suppose that should scare you. But given the note you had received from the hero agency you worked with, your time was going to end anyway. He wouldn't have a chance.

"Hrk--" You crumple to the ground, clutching the arm that felt like it should be bare bone rather than flesh. It's like the nerves are exposed; the grip from your clothed hand sending shockwaves down your spine.

You couldn't help but brood--seeing as how moving was so difficult--at how opposite this situation had been compared to what it seemed.

While you had delivered a blow based on skill--you won the fight by lying. Like an illusion, you'd expertly hidden behind the smoke and mirrors to make him believe you were bigger than you actually were. Like you had won easily, rather than by the skin of your teeth.

You wheeze, tears pricking at your eyes while you force yourself to rise. You needed to get back to base. Especially before he did, and preferably before anyone decides to investigate the noises of your chase earlier.

You stumble out of the building through the window you had broken, and slowly creep through the alleys of Yokohama once again.

---

Every television in the base was alight with the bright colors of the Sports Festival.

You were pretty sure that H.H. kept cameras within those screens, ever watching the faces of his lackeys and agents--judging their actions and expressions. Another advantage to always wearing a mask.

You stood, back pressed to a wall in the shadow of a corner as you side-eye the screen. Watching the students filter out unto the field causes a bitter-sweet fluttering in your stomach.

You remembered the first time you had watched the event. You were much younger, sitting with your knees pressing into the floor and palms crushing a few stray sheets of paper. Really, you had never been all that interested in television, mostly because the other kids at the foster-care center were rambunctious when they sat in front of it.

But this time, the only two souls whose eyes were glued to the flat surface were yours and your new foster brother's, who had been the one to convince you to watch it in the first place.

"You gotta watch it--I'm gunna be on it one day!" He says, arm extending to offer his hand. You stare at it, bug-eyed.

"Oh," you meagerly utter, taking his hand and letting him lead you. He laughs and pulls you along until your both sitting in the living-room floor.

"Don't worry," he leans in towards you, "I'll keep the volume low. Trust me though, kay? You gotta watch it, it's really fun!"

You don't believe him, but before long you're both cheering with the crowd and talking avidly about your favorite contestants. He--

You draw yourself out of the memory as large letters appear in your peripheral. The first game had been announced. A race.

There was a sinking feeling in your chest to know that he should have been there amongst them, maybe a year ago. There wasn't a doubt in your mind that he would have won. Maybe even every challenge.

Even at that young of an age, he had always been so full of righteous fire.

He could have been a hero of heroes...

If not for you.

----

You catch pieces of the Sports festival as you move through the base in search of an old 'escape plan' map. Head Honcho had certainly made modifications since the water-treatment plant had been adopted as his new lair, but you could draw them out if only you had a layout of the place.

Chemical spills did happen, so you could only hope that the escape plans had been forgotten when everything was moving in. In a storage closet somewhere, on the door of an outlet box, above the water control panel--somewhere.

Moving through an old lounge, large screens portrayed the ongoing of the race that had long-since started above the heads of a few agents. They were newer, but they noticed you when you walked in.

The looks in the eyes of those whose faces were exposed was that of mixed admiration and loathing. But, fortunately for you--Head Honcho had made it very clear that you were to be left alone. Treated as exalted, as though separate from everyone else on a holy level. Not that they worshipped you--but that he wanted you to be considered the entity you played as. A demon.

The rumor was as much to his advantage as it was yours.

Their eyes follow you in the dark as you move around them, but something suddenly has their eyes whipping back to the screen as the closer viewers make noises of surprise. You decide to look too, selfishly; and you're rewarded with something familiar.

A freckled green-haired boy. He's flying through the air after a massive explosion, rivaling the two that had been effortlessly charging towards the finish from the beginning. The three of them are suddenly close together, faces etched in the effort to win--and you find yourself openly admiring them.

Beneath your mask, you're smiling. Your heart is pounding and you want to cheer like old times, throwing popcorn in the air and rejoicing--no matter who won. You could practically feel your foster brother's spirit next to you, tugging on your heart. You should be there, enjoying this. You hear him say.

Your breath catches in your throat as there's another explosion--Midoriya had managed to throw the bit of metal he'd carried with him all this way and use another surge of momentum to carry him forward. Everything stills as you wait, holding that breath until finally--finally--it is him that enters the arena in first place.

Adrenaline explodes and rockets around your ribs and your heart--but you're still. You mouth the word 'yes', but didn't dare utter a syllable. Controlling yourself, you make for the exit of the room, intent now more than ever to carry out your mission. To help ensure the safety of those three boys that fought so hard to be recognized as heroes.

For those three boys that reminded you so much of him.

#bakugou x reader #bakugou x you #bakugou x y/n #bakugo x reader #katsuki bakugou x reader #bakugou x f!reader #bakugou x female reader #bakugou x fem!reader #katsuki x you #bnha fanfic slowburn #deku

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letbenfuck2021 · 4 years

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be the thing that buries me (ao3)

For the last four years, Vanya finds herself both prison and prisoner. She doesn’t have super powers. She isn’t physically strong or a tactical genius. But ordinary and helpless as she is, Vanya is determined to find a way to save her brother. She doesn’t want her body to be a cage anymore.

sequel to “inside your head the sound of glass”

rating. explicit. warnings/tags. pseudo/sibling-incest, dub-con, dead dove: do not eat, obsessive behavior, possessive behavior, dark fic.

chapter 1:

It’s cold in the city. Winter came early this year, a brutal cold snap billowing in about a week or so after the Academy turned eighteen and it showed no signs of letting up. And it is this frigid autumn that finds Vanya nearly freezing at the kitchen table, attempting to cut carrots into somewhat bite-sized pieces. She is, so far, mostly failing.

“Vanya darling,” Grace calls from across the room where she is preparing cornish hens for roasting. “Why don’t you head to the drawing room? It’s much warmer up there.”

This was the third time Grace had made this exact suggestion in the past hour. Vanya’s clacking teeth and the precarious way her hands shake as she presses the blade of her knife down is agitating Grace’s programming. Each heavy thunk against the cutting board causes Grace to twitch, an electrical impulse in her software reacting to the quickly climbing probability of injury occurring.

“I’m okay, mom,” Vanya replies under her breath before lifting the butt of the knife once more and wrestling the carrot into place under the blade.

It’s a little past four in the afternoon and already dark, a cold blue light washes the room and leeches all the warmth from the air. A few moments, Grace will reach for the light switch on the far wall and plunge them into the dingy orange light of the fluorescents overhead. But for now, Vanya sits at the kitchen table, shivering under a large sweater, a hoodie and two thermals and narrowly fails to slice open her own hand as she cuts away another jagged, ugly piece of carrot.

“What the fuck? Watch what you’re doing, Al! You almost took my fucking head off!”

“Don’t be a bitch, Diego.”

The echo of Allison and Diego’s bickering wafts in through the open window above the kitchen sink from outside in the courtyard. They’re running drills practically in the dark and it is only growing darker, but her siblings still have another thirty minutes to go before they can venture indoors. When their father took Ben, Luther, and Five on mission three week ago, Reginald had given strict instructions for all of those left behind. Her own orders had been sparse but from what she could tell, her siblings’ regimen was rigorous and immensely detailed. When they aren’t training, they are out patrolling and running other smaller missions. in the last ten days much to her dismay. Vanya sees her siblings more in the paper than in person, but she’s been waiting, planning for her moment and now, it’s almost here. So, despite the cold, despite the blade that veers too close for comfort to her left hand and the damn carrot that rolls once again beneath her knife, Vanya is determined to wait.

“Yeah! Duuun’t be a beeotch, Deeeeee-yego!” Klaus calls from somewhere else in the courtyard before bursting into a shriek of laughter.

Even his laugh sounds slurred. His voice is quite a bit more muffled than either Allison or Diego’s, as though he’d tucked himself into the far corner of the yard and it was really a miracle that he was awake at all. The night before, Klaus had slipped out sometime around midnight and hadn’t returned until that afternoon. No one said a thing when he’d stumbled into the dining room in the middle of lunch and draped himself casually across his seat across from Diego. These days, no one saw virtue in commenting on Klaus’ perpetual lack of sobriety. In the same way that no one said anything about what was going on between her and Five or the horizontal scars littering Ben’s forearms. They’ve all quietly decided that it’s easier to turn a blind eye to all these things. They’ve all agreed that Klaus’ slurred speech sounds better than his screams in the middle of the night.

“Let’s go again, Diego,” Allison called out. “Start from the top.”

If Diego had any reservations about running through another set in the dark freezing cold, he made no audible dispute. Instead, the courtyard went silent again except for the occasional grunt or shout from either of her siblings. Though it didn’t always seem like it, Diego and Allison were a pretty dynamic duo in hand to hand, at least that’s what she’d heard from Five. When he ran missions, Five would often pair them together despite Allison’s protests. Keeping Allison and Luther apart was perhaps a petty move on Five’s part but it was also a strategic one. Five often talked about their siblings to Vanya, his dissatisfaction with them, his begrudging affection all tied up in his keen observation. It’s a little like listening to a story, a novel on audiobook about people in a far away land. After what happened to Five, the line in the sand that was between Vanya and her siblings was now drawn in concrete. Reginald had always done his best to keep her separated from the others. She wasn’t a complete fool. Having her hold blank clipboards, blow whistles, and stand beside him during training were all his not-so-subtle ways of indicating to them all that Vanya was not like them. And if that message wasn’t clear enough then the slow building resentment towards her would surely do the job. Though her mundanity had damned her, it had saved her as well from the brutal, violent reality that her siblings inhabited. They all begrudged her, her normal and therefore privileged existence. What happened to Five was just the final nail in the coffin. Not even Ben would acknowledge her these days.

“Ah!”

The knife slips in her grasp too far for her to recover in time before the blade cuts a line across her thumb, from the edge of her nail to the first knuckle. The wound looks, at first, completely innocuous. Bright red across her pale, clammy skin but thin and strangely static as though someone had drawn on her in red ink. Then, the wound unfolds. Her skin unfurling like a curtain as the blood begins to pour and the sting turns into intense pain.

“Oh dear,” Grace suddenly at Vanya’s side.

Before she bleeds all over the table, Grace reaches out and grips Vanya’s thumb with a kitchen towel. Her mother squeezes tightly, the pressure stopping the sharp pain but it’s replaced with a throbbing ache that is just as intense and leaves Vanya breathless.

“Sorry, mom,” Vanya murmurs, finding the words difficult to form.

Grace crouches down, her other hand deftly fishing a small tin box from the pocket of her apron. She releases Vanya’s wounded thumb for a second to open the little box. The aching pressure on her thumb releases for just a second before a sharp burning pain floods her senses. The world seems to shrink to her bleeding digit and Vanya blanches when she sees something white peeking out of the mess of blood and tissue. As soon as the box is opened and placed on the table, Grace’s hand moves to cover her thumb again, her steady fingers putting an uncomfortable amount of pressure over the wound.

"Is it bad?”

“It’s alright, sweetheart,“ she says though Grace has yet to actually inspect the injury.

They wait like that for a few moments. The pain in her hand is making Vanya’s head spin while Grace begins to hum. Vanya looks up from her finger and finds her mother’s face turned towards the open window over the sink.

"Your brothers and sister should be coming in soon. They’ve been playing all day. I hope they won’t be too tired for dinner.”

She still spoke about them all as though they were children. Breakfasts were still happy faces made of fried eggs and bacon, pancakes with shapes made of chocolate chips. What she must think of them all, her children. Though she made no comment on it, Grace left Vanya’s clean and folded clothes in Five’s room now and left her daily meds there as well. After another moment of looking out into the dark, Grace turns her attention back to Vanya’s thumb and uncovers it. Her face is a portrait of bland concern.

“Hm, we may need stitches,” she says, pinching at the wound and pushing the disparate edges together and letting them fall apart again. “Why don’t we just patch it up for now and we’ll see from there?”

Grace smiles and it’s beautiful. Of course it is, she’d been made to be that way. Vanya often wondered if her mother had once been a real woman, someone with real feelings, with thoughts and desires that existed beyond whatever Reginald had coded into her. Grace stands from her crouched position, easily keeping her balance despite her tasteful, four-inch pumps. She instructs Vanya to replace the towel and put pressure on the wound while she goes to wash her hands at the sink.

“Your brothers and sister should be coming in soon,” she says with her back turned to Vanya. “They’ve been playing all day. I hope they won’t be too tired for dinner.”

The old pipes groan as the faucet sputters, at first there’s barely a trickle but Grace’s hands are poised and moving as though through a steady stream.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine, mom.”

This earns Vanya another wide, blank-eyed smile when Grace turns around wiping her hands on her apron. It takes a few minutes for Grace to clean and bandage Vanya’s thumb. The sharpness of the initial pain has faded and is replaced by deeper ache that makes her head spin and stomach turn ever so slightly. Grace admires her handy work then lets out a small gasp as though she’s just realized something.

“Vanya darling,” she says standing to her full height. “Why don’t you head to the drawing room? It’s much warmer up there.”

Vanya shakes her head, eyes still glued to her injured thumb trying but failing to will the pain away.

“It’s okay,” Vanya implores.

Grace tilts her head to the side, the large curls in her blonde hair shift like water sloshing. She looks troubled, her programming stumped. The girl is clearly half-freezing and now injured as well. She should be someplace warmer, perhaps even in bed. Vanya is fragile, ordinary, and largely incapable of contributing to the household. This all information that has been coded into Grace as truths. Vanya should be out of the way as much as possible but heavily supervised. Quickly, her mechanics run through the options and settle on this.

A wide smile and “maybe some hot chocolate instead. Warm you up a little.”

Before Vanya can decline, Grace sets to work. First she covers the Cornish hens in foil, they’ll need to sit for another half an hour before they’ll be ready for roasting and the stove will need at least half that time to finish rising to temperature. The air in the kitchen is cold enough that she doesn’t need to put birds back in the refrigerator. Instead, she leaves them sitting on the counter when she goes to fetch milk and a saucepan.

“Why don’t you sit closer to the stove, dear? It’s much warmer there.”

Vanya glances out at the window over the sink. She thinks she can just make out the sounds of labored breathing but all she can see is darkness. They’ll be finished soon and she doesn’t want to miss her chance but Vanya is also freezing and the painful throbbing in her thumb is making her dizzy so she relents and slinks across the room to the stove. She bypasses the chair at the end of the table and opts instead to squat down beside the old rusting appliance. Grace had been right; it’s infinitely warmer in her new location, though Vanya already knew it would be. This isn’t the first winter evening that she’s spent crouched at Grace’s feet beside the stove waiting just to catch a glimpse of her siblings.

“Did you remember to take your vitamins today?” Grace says from above her.

Vanya nods, doing her best to balance on her heels and stay clear of the heated metal beside her. How could she ever forget? Her “vitamins” are actually a cocktail of different medications that she takes on a daily basis. Recently, she’d noticed the arrival of a new pill, round, pale and though she’d been given no explanation for its sudden appearance the timing of its addition suggests that it was some kind of contraceptive. It had been Five who offered that particular hypothesis about the new pill’s purpose. And despite being somewhat relieved that she had one less thing to worry about, Vanya had been downright scandalized and denied even the possibility. Instead she had insisted that there must have been a new development in her condition.

The smell of milk heating wafts through the air, cutting through the cold and making Vanya’s stomach churn. Her thumb still hurts, the pain seems to be growing as more time passes but she tries not to think about it. Instead, she focuses on Grace humming a song that sounds simultaneously familiar and alien as the warm smell of milk and chocolate hangs in the air.

Vanya considers asking Grace now about the new pill. It isn’t uncommon for pills to appear and disappear according to what her condition required. When she was four, Vanya had contracted a highly contagious illness and had to be quarantined away from the rest of her siblings for months. She’d undergone multiple treatments and a couple surgeries, and even now she required vigilance and a strict adherence to a daily chemical regimen prescribed by her father.

Vanya could remember practically nothing of her illness and the resulting treatments. Most of early childhood is a vague smudge for Vanya and what she knows of her condition is a patchwork of bits and pieces she’s overheard or been told. Nothing from that time of her life feels real, except for Five of course. He’s the only thing that she can remember with any sort of clarity from her childhood. There is of course the rejection, the loneliness, the utter desolation of being an ordinary child in a clutch of extraordinary ones, but those things are more like a murky lake of misery. Five stands out like a raging flame. She remembers him dogging her relentlessly, always seeking her company, rooting out her little hiding spots in the house. At first, it had been painfully awkward to be under the weight of his attention but it wasn’t long before painful awkwardness became desperate craving. Now, Vanya can’t imagine who she could possibly be without Five.

The stove steadily grows hotter and Grace’s humming begins to skew atonal. Five and the others are scheduled to return that night though. Reginald had called earlier in the day but, according to Pogo, he didn’t give a specific time. The thought of Five’s impending return sets Vanya’s teeth on edge, with both eagerness and apprehension. Pogo had been tight lipped about the progress of their mission and so she had no ability to tell what mood her brother would be in when he returned. Every mission took a toll on him, truthfully on all her siblings and Vanya worries what state Five will return to her in but she wants Five home, whatever state he’s in.

“Oh my dears! You’re practically popsicles!”

Grace’s exclamation jostles Vanya awake. At some point, she’d managed to drift off with her back pressed against the wall and balanced on her heels. She’s sweating beneath her layers, the stove’s oven is nearly to temperature.

“We’re fine, mom,“ Diego replies, his voice is labored and when Vanya peeks up over the table, she notices that he has Klaus on his back.

“Why don’t you all have a seat, you’re just in time for hot chocolate!”

There’s a shuffle of feet and the sound of a chair legs screeching across the floor. Vanya rises to her feet just in time to watch Diego dump Klaus unceremoniously into an empty chair.

”Ow, Didi,“ Klaus whines. "Try a little tenderness wouldya? I’m precious cargo.”

His speech is still slurred but there’s a clarity to his words that wasn’t quite there earlier when Vanya had overheard him in the courtyard. Besides his griping, the room falls silent as soon as Diego and Allison spot Vanya. They both tense up as though they’ve seen a wild animal.

“What the fuck is she doing here?” Diego snarls.

His animosity is nothing new but Vanya winces regardless and tries to focus her attention on her sister.

“She lives here, genius,” Allison retorts glibly but the tension doesn’t leave her body.

Grace, seemingly unaware of the uncomfortable strain between her children, moves throughout the kitchen gathering mugs and setting them out on the table.With a mechanical poise, she divides up the hot chocolate into four perfectly even portions. Klaus doesn’t seem to notice what’s happening either. He’s opted to bury his face into his crossed arms resting on the table in front of him and doze off.

“I need to talk to you,” Vanya says, trying her best not to look at her brother.

“Like hell you do,“ Diego barks.

Vanya almost loses her nerve. Of all her siblings, Diego despises her the most or it may just be that he has the hardest time hiding it.

“Relax, Two. Drink your cocoa.”

Despite being Number Three, Allison is the unquestionable superior. Diego could never quite convince himself that he was or could ever be better than his sister. Allison easily outdid all her brothers in almost all things and where she was found lacking, she found ways to make up the difference. Diego respected Allison and so he usually deferred to her and this time is no different. He doesn’t stop glaring at Vanya but he takes a seat beside Klaus.

“Let’s talk upstairs, Vanya,” Allison says evenly. “It’ll be warmer up there.”

Vanya nods in reply and follows her sister out of the kitchen. Diego watches her leave with a hostile glare and kicks Klaus’ chair so hard that it jostles him awake. Behind her, Vanya hears them bicker.

"Get up asshole and drink your cocoa.”

“It’s hot chocolate.”

“Same thing.”

“What? No it’s not!”

Their voices grow vague as Vanya and Allison ascend. Vanya’s heart is fluttering in her chest and her stomach, which has been in knots all day, only gets worse. Vanya is afraid of Allison. Not in the way she fears Luther. She still has nightmares of the sound of her own fingers snapping, joints popping out of place and searing pain of skin ripping. She isn’t scared of Allison like she’s scared of Diego who took every opportunity to verbally berate her. Vanya has no memory of Allison ever being especially cruel to her or physically harming her but she knows what Allison can do and that’s more than enough reason to fear her.

“H-how was training?” Vanya asks hesitantly.

As much as she fears her sister, Vanya admires her more. Allison was everything that Vanya wishes she could be. Beautiful, strong, confident and most importantly, Allison is special. She’s extraordinary. And even if she’s scared of her, Vanya wants so badly for Allison to like her.

“It was like negative twenty out there,” Allison replies without turning around. “It sucked.”

Vanya nods even though Allison can’t see her. She doesn’t know how to reply to that. It had been years since she’s been allowed to participate, even in a spectator position, in training.

Allison leads her to the main parlor where a fire’s been lit. It’s exponentially warmer here and Vanya finally feels as though she can think straight. She watches as Allison makes a beeline for one of the ornate couches and lays herself out with a huff. Vanya opts to stand off to the side, nearer to the fireplace.

“Um..thanks fo-

“Just tell me what you want.”

Vanya’s throat suddenly feels dry. She can’t see Allison’s face from where she’s standing but she can hear the cold annoyance in her voice. It makes her feel small but she shoves the feeling down.

“I…I want you to undo the rumor you used on Five.”

Allison sighs heavily from her lounging position.

“Vanya. Really? This shit again?”

“Please, Allison. If you could just try, I know yo-“”

“I’ve already told you. I’m not doing that,“ she says sitting up. "Why don’t you just accept that he’s obsessed with you and take the win?”

“It’s not a win!” Vanya shouts, her voice cracks.

Allison looks genuinely startled by the outburst and it emboldens Vanya. She takes a step closer and continues.

“It hurts him. He’s not even himself anymore and he’s trapped here because of it. Because of me .”

What Vanya isn’t saying is, because of you. Allison hears it anyway.

“You can do it,” Vanya implores. “If you would just try.”

“I can’t,“ Allison says, punctuating her assertion by standing.

Allison is fairly tall for a girl her age and she certainly dwarfs Vanya’s miniscule five feet. She’s an intimidating figure but Vanya won’t back down.

"Yes you can. You’re the only one who can help us.”

“This is getting old. And a little pathetic. Enough already.”

With that, Allison turns and makes for the door but Vanya rushes forward. Before she can stop herself, Vanya reaches out and grabs Allison by the wrist.

“I’m just trying to help our brother! Why won’t you help me?”

As soon as Vanya touches her skin, Allison recoils pulling her wrist from her sister’s grasp. The force causes Vanya to stumble and Allison feels sorry for it. In all honesty, she has nothing personal against her sister. She doesn’t particularly like Vanya but she doesn’t hate her the way Diego does and she isn’t scared of her like Klaus and Ben seem to be. Truthfully, Allison doesn’t know Vanya. They’d lived practically their entire lives under the same roof, grew up together, shared meals, slept in rooms barely twenty feet apart but Allison had never felt any closer to Vanya than she felt to any given stranger off the street.

“Stop, Vanya. Just stop. You’re not helping, you’re just trying to make me feel guilty.”

“I’m no-”

“Yes. You are. And you know what? I am guilty. I made the rumor. I agreed to say it. I’m guilty. But that hasn’t changed anything for the last four years. It isn’t gonna change anything now. If you really wanna help Five, maybe you should stop blaming everyone else and figure out how to do it on your own.“

"Well you let Dad treat Luther like a tool all he wants,” Vanya says and she knows she should stop but the bitter words spilling out of her like vomit. “I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that you won’t help us.”

Vanya knows she made a mistake. Allison watches as her sister’s expression changes from resentful anger to utter fear and she wants to laugh. Allison had always pitied Vanya for her weakness and they both knew it. But for the first time, Allison is beginning to realize that she doesn’t just pity Vanya, she resents her. She had never once in her life been allowed to even seem weak but her sister wallowed in her frailty, relied on it even. Some dark, nasty part of Allison wonders if that’s why Five was attracted to Vanya so much in the first place. Five like little else more than feeling superior.

“I-I’m sorry,” Vanya stuttered, her eyes wide with fear. “I didn’t mean…”

Her trembling lip, Vanya’s little body shrinking away with anticipation. Terror slinks off of her like a rotten stench. Allison takes it all in and she feels terribly powerful. This isn’t a new experience for her. Allison had often stood above opponents, criminals, vandals, sometimes even her own brothers, and she loved being above them. She liked to savor the intoxicating feeling of being the winner, the victor because that was the Hargreeves way. Do whatever it takes to get on top and stay there. Even if you have to cheat and Allison had no qualms about playing dirty and yet, for some reason, the sight of her sister, trembling before doesn’t make her feel triumphant, it makes her feel sick.

“I’m sorry, Allison. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Vanya barely manages to choke the words out, her teeth are nearly chattering with how sacred she is. Looking at her makes Allison feel sick. Her shoulders suddenly feel too heavy, they slump as she sighs. She’s so tired that it nearly brings her to tears. But she doesn’t cry. Allison doesn’t get to cry, no matter how much she wants to.

"You’re right. You shouldn’t say that. Even if I wanted to, I don’t know if I could undo the rumor. They just have to run their course.”

\\\\

She wakes into the dark with a crick in her neck. She’d fallen asleep with her head at the foot of Five’s bed again, staring out at the snow falling against the darkness. It’s a bad habit but she’d always liked Five’s windows. Vanya isn’t sure when she’d fallen asleep but after her encounter with Allison, she’d dragged herself up to Five’s room, buried herself under his comforter and tried to find some solace in the snowfall outside his window. She must have succeeded because when she wakes, it’s nearly midnight and there’s someone with her in the dark.

“When did you get back?” she murmurs apologetically.

It’s become an unspoken ritual that Vanya waits up for Five when he comes back from a longer mission. It wasn’t always possible, but Vanya tried her best to be there for him whenever he got back. She attempts to turn her head to see his face but the muscles in her neck spasm. She can hear the sound of her own groan entering into the cold silence, jostling the air and she thinks she also hears a laugh. Just a small huff of air really, beside her ear all warm and soft in a way that makes the hair on the back of her neck stand.

His thumb finds the tight muscle in her neck, massaging circles into her flesh. It hurts at first, the sudden pressure makes her gasp and the flush of blood back into the area makes her a little dizzy. He curls his fingers under her neck, arching it upward so that he can suck hickeys into the skin he’d just massaged. She’ll be peppered with purple marks, too high above her collar and plentiful to cover but even so, she cranes her neck and lifts her chin exposing more skin for him to mark. Ever since the Paris job, they had settled into a kind of uneasy armistice. There had been no explicit discussion, no bargaining or clear transaction but something of a conclusion had been reached.

"Fi-ah!”

His teeth find the sensitive spot where her neck curves into her shoulder. Five bites down, hard enough to make her jump but not enough to break the skin. It’s both agonizing and thrilling the way it hurts.

“I missed you,” he mumbles, it’s the first words he’s spoken to her in almost three weeks.

He, Ben, and Luther had been running some kind of reconnaissance mission where secrecy was of the utmost importance and there had been no chance for the odd phone call home. His mouth is hot and wet over her skin as he trails languid kisses along her collar bone then back up to where he’s no doubt left teeth marks in her skin. His breath is warm, ghosting over the sensitive skin.

“Did you miss me?” Five murmurs, hovering over her aching skin.

At first, Vanya can only manage a sigh. He feels good, there’s no denying it. As much effort she puts into keeping the lines drawn between what is real and what is the rumor, Vanya can’t lie about how he makes her feel. Five would have been a talented lover under any circumstance. Vanya is certain of that though she tries not to think of it much. Even if she believes that had he been given the vast wealth of opportunity that freedom would have afforded him, Five would never have chosen her, it still stings to think of him with others.

Before she manages to answer him in any sort of comprehensible way, Five laves his tongue, wide and flat, over his bite mark. Vanya lets loose a sound that is half whimper and half moan but entirely mortifying. But Five seems to appreciate it, an appreciative hum rumbles across her skin as she tries to catch her breath. It could feel humiliating sometimes, the level of intimacy he demands from her. Five is always struggling closer, ripping through the carefully constructed barriers she’s set between them for their own protection. He wants everything from her, every sound, every reaction and sensation. And had she been more of a fool, Vanya would give it to him freely but she knows that had it not been for the rumor, he would have never wanted it any of this. He may want every single bit of her now, but Vanya knows that when the rumor wears off, he’ll resent for every little inch she gives.

“Five, maybe we shouldn’t-” she begins to say, her nerves outweighing her desires.

But before she can finish her phrase, he bites down again. This time is harder than before, not enough to break the skin but enough to make Vanya yelps. Desperate to find anything to hang on to, she reaches for him, her fingers desperately scrambling across his face, over the shell of his ear, before settling and tangling into his hair. Though her nails are short and dull, there is no doubt that in her frenzy she left behind some damage but Five doesn’t seem to notice or care.

The pain only lasts a moment before he drags his tongue over the new bite dissolving the tension and rendering her a shivering mess. She lets out a low, guttural moan as he continues to mouth at her neck, sucking hickeys into her skin. Something stirs in her belly, a searing, aching need unfurls as his kisses shift downward. The comforter slides off of her body as he draws the middle line of her body. The frigid air is an assault on her body but it only makes her lean into him. Her shoulders rise from the mattress and the hand that had been at her neck trails down between her shoulder blades, propping her up.

She wants to put her arms around him, feel him closer. As terrified as Vanya is of the day when this all comes crashing down, it doesn’t change that she wants Five. Ever since they were kids, Vanya has ached and longed for him, even when he was right beside her. Wanting Five, wanting to be with him, wanting to love him in every way that has, does and will exist is not a new desire for Vanya. Sometimes, she thinks she was born that way. But despite all this, she hesitates as Vanya always does. So cautious, so careful, Vanya loves like a kicked dog. She flinches back before a fist is ever even raised, before he can even think of rejecting her, Vanya has already bowed out in repose.

Vanya is lost to herself, the torrent of desire and fear inside her when she feels the sudden shifting of weight as Five leans back. His hands are gone, the cold crowds in and she loses him in the dark. Turning on to her side, the weight of her raised torso resting on one elbow, Vanya squints into the darkness before her and finds her brother all cast in shadow. He’s not that far from her, his face still level with her own. There’s just enough distance, a few feet maybe, that the darkness leaves his face almost completely obscured. She can make out the curve of his ears, the corners of his jaw but his eyes are lost. He is just a shape, the suggestion of a man but not one entirely. He is some spectre made of stuff darker than the pitch darkness around them. For a second, she’s afraid. She doesn’t recognize him, even when she sits up on her knees, leans in closer. She can’t see him. Her blood pounds in her ears as the fear twists into something else, something more.

“Five?”

“I always forget,” he mumbles but she cannot see his mouth moving. “When I’m away, I always forget. Just how good this feels.”

His voice shakes as he says this, like he’s scared too. Five and Vanya had always shared so much, sweets, sweaters, kisses, why not share their fear as well? Vanya is aware of the phenomenon he’s referring to. It was Diego who had been so kind as to inform her that when Five is far enough away from her, the effects of the rumor lessen and what’s left in its place is a dull ache. A week, maybe a little more and Five starts to act like his old self again.

Hey, Seven. What do you think would happen if you just fucked off for good?

Though it hurt when Diego spit that particular possibility at her, she had to admit, it’s a fair question. Five always espoused how much he missed her while he was away, how desperately he craved her the whole time but she wonders how much of that was actually true. What if he’d been happy while he was away? What if he’d been free? Or at least close enough.

“Did you miss me, Vanya?” he asks once again, this time he sounds unsteady, unsure.

It breaks her heart to hear her brother so degraded, but she can’t answer him. The words just won’t come as she stares back at him across the darkness, his features bleeding into view as her eyes adjust. He looks young. In the dark, he looks like her brother. The brother that had held her fevered hand when they were all ten and a bout of the flu had ripped through the entire academy but had settled on Vanya for nearly a month. This was her brother, who had kissed her on the mouth with sugar glazed lips and fed her so many doughnuts that she thought she would puke.

This is her brother. And she can’t even bring herself to tell him that she misses him. So Vanya takes off her shirt instead. Five waits in the darkness, watching her strip down to her bra. Vanya can feel his eyes on her as she slides her sweater and shirt off together. Her skin is a shock of goosebumps as her hands, already shaking with the cold, reach back to undo the hooks.

“Let me,” she hears him murmur.

He shuffles forward, even on his knees, he’s still level with her eye line. His long arms reach up and close the distance between them as finds the center of the band. It will only take him a few seconds to undo the hooks. Embarrassingly, Five is better at undressing her than she is but for these scant seconds, Vanya allows herself to rest her cheek upon his chest. It’s a small sin, to give herself this bit of comfort but she still feels the weight of it when Five’s hands slowly trail down her arms, taking the straps of her bra with them. She hears Five take a breath, holds it for a few seconds as he drinks in her body.

“You have no idea, Vanya,” he murmurs. “You can’t even imagine what it’s like for me to miss you.”

It’s true and the guilt she feels because of that makes her want to disappear. He skates his hands up her sides, sighing with relief at just being able to touch her skin. He puts his face into the crook of her neck to breathe in deeply.

“You smell like home,” he says into her skin. “You’re everything to me, Vanya. You know that don’t you? I need you with me.”

She nods slowly. It’s true. It’s all true but none of it’s real. His hands drop down to the waistband of her jeans, undoing the button as he places kisses along her shoulder, then her clavicle. The click of her zipper coming undone is loud in the silent, dark room. Five pushes them over her hips and down to her knees. Vanya sinks down, laying herself out on her back so that he can free her from her pants completely. He moves quickly from there. His fingers are already curling at the elastic band of her underwear when she stops him.

“Wait,” Vanya says, her hands falling over his own to stop their movement.

Five flinches as though she’s burned him. Under her breath, she murmurs an apology. It’s easy to forget just how brittle the rumor has made him. Her brother has always been such a large, looming figure in her mind, confident, strong, intelligent. Even after four years, Vanya forgets just how easily he breaks. With one hand, she laces her fingers through his own, an act meant to reassure him though he doesn’t seem moved. His eyes are hard as he watches her rise from his bed.

“What are y-” he begins to ask when she detangles her hand from his.

But he falls silent as soon as she turns her back to him, falling to her elbows and knees on his mattress. Behind her, Five takes in a sharp breath.

Then she hears, “fuck.”

Her heart is a sharp staccato in her ears as she feels him lay his hands over her hips, slowly, with near reverence. His hands are cold on her skin, colder even than the air around them. And not for the first time, Vanya wonders where he’s been. Part of her wants to ask him, wants to ask him what he’s done and what he’s given up to be here with her again. He pulls her back, pressing his hips into her ass. Through the fabric of their clothes, she can feel the hardness of his cock and it sends a shiver down her spine. He moans as he rocks his hips and Vanya gasps as he squeezes her buttocks. He leans back just far enough to slide his thumb down and press up against her pussy, feeling her through the fabric. Embarrassingly she can feel the cool dampness that’s spread into the fabric.

“You’re so wet, sis. You must have missed me.”

He nudges into her further, the fabric feels almost coarse on the sensitive flesh but Vanya leans back. There’s no point in playing coy now. Five hums appreciatively, massaging slow circles into her through the fabric in a way that makes her head spin. She’s panting like a dog in heat by the time she feels him push her damp panties aside.

He pushes into her without preamble. It’s rough and Vanya lets out a low sob as the pleasure of him filling her flushes up her spine like a fever. He loops an arm under her belly to hold her in place as he shifts his hips back and thrusts into her again. Five grunts, the heat of his breath fans out across her frigid skin making her shiver. A few more slow, languid strokes before he begins to pick up his pace. Tears bud at the corners of her eyes. Her elbows slide out from under her. The sheets come up to meet her face but his arm is still around her waist, keeping her ass up as he pounds into her so hard that her knees nearly give out.

It’s too much. It’s always too much. She’s all but lost in a haze of pleasure, trying to meet each of his thrusts. It feels good just to be with him, to have him in her and yet, she can’t let go. In the back of her head, she can’t forget that this isn’t real. And the guilt roils in her gut. She suddenly feels sick, her throat tightening until she chokes.

"Fi-Five-ah!” she gasps out.

Her face is pressed into the mattress, fingers grasping at the cotton sheets. The wet slap of flesh against flesh becomes erratic and behind she hears Five groan. His fingers at her waist dig into her flesh. He’s close. Vanya knows it, with each swing of his hips, he grinds into her harder, deeper. Then with a guttural moan, he thrusts one last time and spills into her.

“Sorry,” he gasps. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

His hips are still pressed up against her ass, rocking slowly into her as he rides out his orgasm. It takes a few moments before his breathing evens out, his cock softening within her. He slides out of her gingerly, careful to keep his arm around her waist. Vanya can feel the warm dribble of his cum sliding down her thigh as he gently lowers her to the bed. Sluggishly, she turns over onto her back.

“Lemme finish you,” he mumbles, dropping to his knees and spreading her thighs.

“It’s okay, Five,” she says dazedly. “You’re tired.”

He laughs a little into her skin as he plants kisses up the length of her inner thigh. Five sometimes jokes that she’s a little too polite, especially considering the things they’d done together. It’s cute though, he’d usually say with that too-wide grin of his and she’d blush and try to remember how to breathe. But tonight Five seems unwilling to indulge her impulsive niceties.

It’s still a little uncomfortable for Vanya to let Five eat her out. It’s embarrassing, of course but it’s all a little embarrassing. Sex is a mortifying, uncomfortable ordeal but what isn’t for Vanya? She’s lived her life feeling like an exposed nerve, both acutely vivid and devastatingly deadening. Mostly, it’s the intensity that scares her when he climbs between her thighs with greedy mouth and fingers and extracts from her a feeling that goes beyond pleasure or pain. She can feel it building now as he slides two fingers into her cunt.

He lifts one of her thighs and rests it on his shoulder, the other he pushes back, opening her wider for him. His free arm wraps up under her thigh, looping around and across her hip bone. Sufficiently locking her in place, Five puts his mouth to the top of her pussy. His tongue finds the sensitive spot to the right of her clit, pressing into it, hesitant at first, and when she begins to squirm, he goes harder. He knows her too well, knows that he needs to build up to her clit. The little engorged nub is far too sensitive, so he works around it.

He’s set a languid pace inside her, straying so very close to that erogenous spot. When gets close, brushing just shy of her g spot, it sends a jolt through her and Vanya yelps. She’s so dazed, her body is so warm, unbearably warm but also freezing. The room seems to have gotten colder and it makes every sensation that much sharper. Her nipples are so tight now that it’s almost painful. Five suddenly wraps his lips around her clit and sucks, not hard but it earns him a grunt. Her pleasure crests so suddenly that it leaves her literally breathless. For a second, everything stops, she loses track of herself as she hangs in the balance.

Then, she comes crashing down. Distantly, she feels him inside her, his mouth still on her clit. It takes her a few moments to hear her own squealing, feel her own body scrambling against Five’s grip on her hips. There’s a wet pop and suddenly there’s Five, grinning up at her from between her own thighs. She realizes she’s still breathing as he draws a line of wet, sloppy kisses up her body, to place a sweet peck on the corner of her mouth.

“Sorry,” he says again, then stands.

Vanya dizzily notes that he is still mostly dressed while she lies a complete mess and naked as the day she was born. It somehow always comes to that and Vanya cannot quite make any heads or tails of it. She feels both wound up and completely undone as she watches him undress and toss his clothes on the floor.

“We can go again in a bit,” he maneuvers her body easily, ushering her further on to the bed.

There’s a kind of wired energy to his words but even through hooded, heavy eyes, Vanya can see the sluggishness in him. He climbs in besides her, pulling his comforter over them in one fluid motion. Under the covers, he entangles their bodies, nudging her knees apart and hooking his leg through. He wraps her up in a tight embrace, he’s so much larger than her and she feels completely enveloped, the cold melting away with the heat of his body. Vanya is still too dazed to try to put up any kind of fight. She lets the pleasure of his kisses, peppered erratically over her face, wash over her. His hands wander and grope at her body as he pulls her even closer. Five has a habit of becoming hyper just before he crashes, one last burst of energy before the sudden stop like he’s on a sugar rush.

“I just…I need so-ome shut eye…” he trails off.

His hands still, his mouth is at her hairline, murmuring what sounds like nonsense. As he’s pulled under by exhaustion, Vanya feels herself returning to the surface. She feels both comfortable and uneasy in his arms. Nothing ever feels as good as being with Five but nothing hurts as much either. She’s caught between memorizing this exact moment, locking it away in the deepest, most secret part of her mind and guarding herself against it. It isn’t real. No matter how good it feels, no matter how much she wants it, it isn’t real. She chants this in her head even as she presses her nose into his chest and breathes in deeply. The salt and musky of his damp skin mingles with the brand of mild soap they use at the Academy. She doesn’t know how long she lingers awake, listening to the twin sounds of his heart beating and his slow, even breathing.

None of it can ever be real, she reminds herself. It isn’t her, it isn’t love. It’s the rumor and she can’t ever let herself want more than that. And yet. She feels the words well up inside her, a truth too big to hide in her throat.

"I missed you,” she whispers hoarsely. “I miss you so much it’s killing me.”

#fiveya #fiveya fanfic #pls read the tags before reading

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