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totowlff · 1 year

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chapter four — worth the yearning for

➝ the meeting was arranged in a cafe in the old part of oxford. she had no idea how he would react to her answer.

➝ word count: 2,5k

➝ warnings: none

Cassie was nervous, even more nervous than she’d been when she visited the fertility clinic. She and Toto had agreed to meet in a coffee shop she liked in Cambridge to discuss Toto’s offer. She drove to the heart of the city, parking in the carpark at Gloucester Green. She sighed as she checked the time on her phone when she arrived — she was 20 minutes early, and it was less than a five minute walk.

She set off anyway, deciding it was better to be a little early to reserve a table. Hopefully, the coffee shop wouldn’t be too busy, and they could find a nice, quiet place to talk. The shop was small on its first floor, but had a downstairs that had plenty of space and some nice booths, so she wasn’t worried.

She stepped inside, and found it a little busier than an average weekday, but there was a free table tucked into a rear corner of the shop. She sat down and gazed at the menu boards behind the counter, eyeing up the various cakes and pastries in the display cases, but she couldn’t really concentrate on either, as nervous as she was about accepting Toto’s offer.

It was incredibly generous, and felt like an earnest, heartfelt offer. She wanted to accept immediately after seeing his baby pictures, but a more rational side of Cassie prevailed. There were downsides to consider, such as the fact that it would make a relationship that was purely professional into a personal one.

A child would inextricably bind her and Toto together for life, whether or not they worked together for the foreseeable future, and whether or not their personal relationship stayed as good as it was now. The logistics of shared custody, especially given the insanity of Toto’s travel schedule, would be tricky to navigate. They would have to have some legal documentation regarding parental rights and responsibilities drawn up, which meant getting a lawyer involved in some capacity.

He stressed that he wasn’t looking to start a relationship, at least in the traditional sense, with her, but if he wanted to be the father to her child, they would be inextricably linked, in some way, from then on.

However…

Toto was incredibly kind, funny, intelligent, well-read, spoke five languages, and was financially secure — more than, even. He didn’t have vices that she knew of. He drank socially, but responsibly. He took incredibly good care of himself. Cassie had eaten enough meals with him to know that he ate incredibly well, but not to the point of never indulging, as she knew he had a fondness for some sort of pink Austrian biscuits called Manner Schnitten and secretly kept some stashed in his office.

She knew that he also got plenty of exercise — he was frequently spotted in the onsite gym at the factory, and even occasionally cycled to work when the weather was favorable. She knew the only times he’d been hospitalized were from injuries and not from illnesses; a broken elbow and wrist from a bicycle accident in 2013, and a knee surgery to repair a torn ligament two years ago.

Cassie thought back to their conversation in his office, how he spoke about his desire to have a family of his own but never having the time or ability to meet someone — wasn’t that all part of why Cassie wanted to start on this journey in the first place? To give her own life meaning outside of her job? To have her own little family to love and nurture, instead of continuing to wonder what could have been if her family loved her for who she was, instead of resenting her and casting her out for her refusal to conform to pointless, archaic social mores?

The other big benefit that was working in Toto’s favor was that, with him as a donor, she wouldn’t have to wait for banked sperm. The fertility clinic had warned her that because the UK wasn’t legally able to pay sperm donors beyond a paltry sum for travel costs to and from the clinic, they didn’t have as ready of a supply as other countries, like the United States, did.

And sure enough, none of the donors the clinic had on file were really what she was looking for. All along, she’d envisioned someone tall, with dark hair, dark eyes, and a strong jawline, but the clinic didn’t currently have a donor in its banks that matched that description.

Toto certainly did, though.

As the time passed noon, Cassie started to worry. She knew Toto was almost always punctual, joking once that it was because he’d lose his Austrian passport if he wasn’t. She started to run through a list of awful possibilities, which she usually did when she was stressed — maybe he got into an accident, maybe he got scared and is backing out, maybe he’d gotten lost, or fallen down an open manhole, maybe…

— Ah, I’m so sorry I’m late! I forgot this place was in the old section of the city, and that I’d need to find a carpark, and then I forgot where the car park was — he said, appearing at the table. He looked flushed and breathless, his hair was sticking up in some places as he nervously ran his hand through it.

— No, it’s okay. No trouble — Cassie said, looking up at him and smiling.

She watched as Toto took off his jacket and hung it over the back of his chair. He glanced around as he sat down across from her.

— Have you ordered yet?

— No — Cassie said — I was waiting for you.

— Oh. Well, did you want to order for both of us? I’ve never been here. You know what I like, and I trust you — he said, with a kind smile.

Cassie was taken aback. Not in an unpleasant way, but the last time she went somewhere with a man, he didn’t trust her judgment or knowledge and ordered for both of them, without even asking.

“Another point in your favor, Wolff”, Cassie thought, easing herself out of her seat and heading to the counter.

She ordered herself a flat white with whole milk, and ordered Toto and a cup of the cafe’s house espresso with lactose-free milk, just like he typically ordered at the factory’s coffee shop. She was feeling a bit peckish, so she decided to get herself a raisin croissant. She decided to order a classic croissant for Toto. If he didn’t want it, she’d gladly take it home to eat later.

She sat back down. She was starting to get nervous, even about making small talk — it felt pointless with the proverbial elephant in the room seemingly dangling directly overhead, but their drinks were brought by the barista in short order.

— Oh, this looks delicious. I was a bit hungry, too — he said, taking a delicate bite of the croissant, smiling at her, delighted — This is wonderful. Thank you.

“Well”, Cassie thought. “It’s now or never”.

— So — she said — I guess we should discuss what I invited you here to discuss.

Toto nodded.

— Yes.

— Well, first, I just wanted to make sure that you haven’t changed your mind about your offer in the last two days. I will admit, I am a bit afraid that you made it in the heat of the moment, that it was more an impulse based on your feelings about your own history, rather than you fully realizing the implications of what you are agreeing to.

Toto’s face was inscrutable, but serious.

— I had considered that, after we talked, but I don’t believe that is the case. I have wanted a child for a long time, regardless.

— And you do know that the IVF process can be incredibly taxing, both physically and emotionally, especially for me? You will have to undergo some exams and tests as well. I know you’ll need a physical and some blood tests, and they’ll probably want to check and make sure you’re… Uh, viable, but if this is something you agree to go through, I need you to see it through, and then some.

He nodded.

— From what I’ve learned, some of the procedures can be painful, and tiring. One of the procedures is technically a surgery. Once we start in earnest, there is a two week period where I will be getting injections and blood tests nearly every day, until the pregnancy is confirmed. I can’t have you tell me you’re on board for all of this and then backing out halfway through.

— I’ve done my own reading since we talked — Toto answered — It doesn’t sound easy, especially for you, but I’m ready to support you unconditionally, in every way I can.

— Okay. Then, you also realize that your commitment to this is something that needs to be everlasting, correct? Not just until our child is old enough to leave the nest, so to speak?

— Yes, of course. My relationship with my mother, as terrible as it was at times, didn’t end the second I left home. I am in my forties and still talk to my mother.

— And you know that we will need to see a solicitor, before we even continue with the clinical aspects of this venture, to have a legal agreement drawn up for you to even have parental rights, because we will not have any sort of legal relationship otherwise? And that you will be responsible for monetary support and partial custody, even if our personal relationship sours at some point? I’m not saying I’m expecting that, but even people who start out being madly in love with each other, at least enough to get married, get divorced.

— Of course.

— So, do you want this as much as I do?

— Cassie, look — Toto said. He reached over the table, taking both of Cassie’s hands in his. He looked directly into her eyes, his expression stern — You’ve worked with me long enough that you know I don’t do anything by half-measures. I don’t take unnecessary risks, even though my career started in investing and finance. You don’t hear about many risk-averse investment bankers, but I was, and I did very well for myself. I don’t move forward with anything unless I am absolutely sure about it. You know that I also despise bullshit, and dishonesty. That’s why I like motor racing so much in the first place, you know. The stopwatch never lies. You know I will never lie to you, so when I say that I will support you and our child in any way I can, I mean that. Emotionally, physically, and materially.

Cassie studied his face for a long moment. His eyes were dark and serious, his face still stern, his jaw set. She’d seen that look before at work a few times, during difficult meetings with potential sponsors.

— I mean absolutely every word, and I can prove it, too — he said, letting go of Cassie’s hands and sitting back up. He fished around in his pocket for a moment before pulling out his phone — I am guessing you have not found a lawyer to handle the legal side of things quite yet.

— No, I haven’t. I didn’t know I’d need one until Thursday afternoon.

— Well, let me make a quick call, then, excuse me.

He found the contact he was looking for and tapped the screen, bringing the phone to his ear.

— Hi, Tom, it’s Toto — he said, after a few seconds. He was looking directly at Cassie as he talked — Listen, sorry to bother you on the weekend. It’s not an emergency, but is there someone at your firm that you trust that specializes in family law? Oh, no? Ah, another firm in Oxford? Wonderful. Claire Rodgers? Yes, if you can, that would be great. Thanks again.

Toto hung up his call, and put his phone back into his pocket.

— So, that was my lawyer. His firm doesn’t deal with family law at all, but an acquaintance of his does, and he said that she’s very good. He will send me her information, and then I will call to set up a consultation with her, so we can meet her and start talking about the details.

— Oh! Well… Okay, then — Cassie said. It was incredibly reassuring to her that he was at least serious enough about his offer to take a tangible step forward in the process — In that case… My answer is yes. I would like you to be the donor.

Toto’s face turned to a mixture of shock and relief.

— Are… Are you serious? — he asked.

Cassie nodded.

— Yes, Toto. I am. I would like you to be the father of my child. Well, our child.

Toto let out a breathy laugh as a wide smile spread over his space. A genuine smile, with the top of his nose scrunching. He grasped at Cassie’s hands on the tabletop again, holding them as he laughed, pressing a quick kiss to her knuckles.

— I’m going to be a dad — he said, as if he was trying to convince himself.

Cassie smiled at him, watching as his eyes started shining a bit.

— Please don’t start crying, Toto, or I might start crying — she said.

— I’m sorry, Cassie, I’m… I’m just so happy.

They finished up their drinks as they talked a little more. They got up to leave together, and when they stepped outside the door, Toto asked if he could walk Cassie to her car.

— You don’t have to — he said — It’s just at Gloucester Green, it’s not even five minutes from here.

— Well, that’s where I parked anyway, so that’s perfect.

— Oh, well, in that case…

They set off walking toward the parking lot, walking together mostly in silence. It was a companionable silence, though, and not an uncomfortable one. Cassie felt a lightness and warmth in her chest, and she wondered if Toto felt the same thing.

— I’m down this way — she said, pointing in the direction of one of the interior aisles — Thanks so much for meeting me. Please let me know when the solicitor gets back to you.

— Again, it’s my pleasure. And, before you go… This might sound strange, but… Can I give you a hug?

It was a strange request, but a simple one, and Cassie found herself oddly charmed by it.

— Oh… Yes, that would be lovely.

He smiled as he wrapped his arms around her. He had to bend down a little bit, but it was an earnest, warm, hug. It had been a while since anybody had hugged Cassie like that, aside from her aunt, and she found herself not wanting it to end.

She felt strangely safe there.

A few seconds later, she pulled away from him, smiling.

— Well, see you soon— Cassie said quietly.

— See you soon… Cassandra.

Turning her back, she walked to the car with a strange feeling taking over her body. It was as if she were weightless, about to float across the sky like a helium balloon aimlessly. Cassie just couldn't believe what had just happened.

Sitting down in the car seat, she took a few seconds to breathe and, more importantly, to absorb the entire conversation she had just had with Toto. She had accepted his offer. She was going to be the mother of his child. They would have a child.

— I'm going to have a baby — Cassie whispered, before letting out a squeal of delight.

#toto wolff #toto wolff x oc #formula 1 fanfic #formula 1 fic #formula 1 x oc #f1 x oc #f1 fic #f1 fanfic #collab #wlffog #etlwlff

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cardcaptorsakura96 · 7 months

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Unwitting Rescue-Chapter 2

Fandom: Supergirl

Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor

Characters: Kara Danvers, Lena Luthor, Rose Zen (Original Character), Marigold Zen (Original Character), Violet Zen (Original Character), J'onn J'onzz, Winn Schott, John Stewart

Summary: Kara Danvers finds a box of kittens on her way to work. Things don't go according to plan.

Chapter 2/?

“Darn it I am going to be late. Miss Grant is going to kill me if I don’t hurry” Kara said while wincing.

She looked at the time and tapped on the counter impatiently.

I already got Ms. Grant in a good mood with the article on the Luthor Children’s Hospital. I don’t want to get out of her good graces by being late again, thought Kara.

It took a little convincing to get Ms. Grant to want to do an article on the Luthor Children’s Hospital. Kara had to promise Ms. Grant that Lena would give her an exclusive on the new technology being used to help the children to sell her on the idea. Kara’s finger tapping at the counter nearly made an indent on it before the barista came back with her order. She quickly thanked the barista and exited the cafe.

She almost made it back to Catco in record time, but she noticed a box moving out of the corner of her eye. She stopped by it to peak inside and found three kittens. The two black kittens appeared to be asleep, but the slightly bigger orange one was awake and looking directly at her with its huge green round shaped eyes.

“Aww poor kitties. Who would abandon you like this?”

Kara kneeled down and petted the kitten which purred graciously. It was the first bright spot for her in days. Lena had been doing better since their talk, but she could tell that she was still feeling out of sorts about the adoption. Kara had to work on mellowing out her anger because she doesn’t understand why people can see Lena for who she really is. However, seeing the kittens made those emotions melt away a little bit. Then, she smiled at the idea forming in her mind.

“I’ll take you guys home with me, and you can meet my lovely wife. After we get you fed and cleaned up, we can see about finding you a home.”

Kara knew that this wouldn’t solve everything. However, she knew that Lena liked animals as much as her, especially cats. She was hoping that that they will at least bring a smile to her face.

Kara looked down at the kitten and said, “Does that sound like a plan?”

Kara smiled when the kitten licked her hand like it was in agreement of their arrangement. Kara picked up the box and carried it along with her belongings into the Catco building. She quickly went into the break room to get the kittens some food and then headed to her office grateful that Miss Grant didn’t notice she was late. She placed the bowl of milk in the middle of the box and then went to work on her story.

After a while, she heard a voice say, “Thank you so much for helping us.”

Kara looked up startled. However, when she looked around, all she saw were all three kittens were now on her desk staring directly at her.

Kara smiled and said, “Aww. You got out of the box. Let me put you back.”

“Actually, we would like to stay out of the box,” said the orange cat.

Kara eyes grew wide and asked, “You can talk?”

The orange cat smiled and said, “My name is Princess Rose Zen from the planet Nar. These are my siblings Marigold and Violet. My siblings and I have been kidnapped, and we need help getting back to our home. Can you help us?”

All the kittens were looking at her with sad round eyes.

Kara leaned back into her chair and sighed.

“What have I gotten myself into now?” thought Kara while rubbing the back of her neck.

All three kittens continued to stare at her with such intensity with their sad eyes. Kara chuckled to herself thinking of all the times she pouted to get her way.

Kara smiled and said, “I will help you get back home.”

“Thank you so much! I promise you that you will receive great compensation for your trouble,” said Rose smiling.

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about compensating me. I just want to make sure you guys get home safe and sound.”

“Great! Do you have a ship to take us home?”

“I will be able to get a ship, but I think a little investigating is in order before we go anywhere.”

Rose stared quizzically at Kara and asked, “What do you mean?”

Kara stood up and went behind her desk to the box the kittens were in. She used her x-ray vision to examine the box and was surprised at what she found.

“Out of curiosity, do you all remember how you got on Earth?”

All of the kittens looked at each other confused and shook their heads.

Rose stared back at Kara and said softly, “The last thing I remember was that my siblings and I were being read a bedtime story by our favorite nanny. We fell asleep and then woke up here.”

“Hmmm”… said Kara as she continued to look at the box.

Rose’s eyes started to tear up as Kara continued to stare at the box.

“Do you not believe our claim?”

Kara shook her head and said, “It is not that I don’t believe you have been taken from your home. However, I wonder if it was a kidnapping.”

“Isn’t being taken and kidnapped the same thing?” asked Rose sarcastically.

“Not necessarily. They are several tings that I wonder about all of this. Where is the kidnapper? Better yet, why did they leave you in a box where anyone can find you?”

“I didn’t say that the kidnapper was competent,” muttered Rose.

Kara chuckled as she removed the blanket the kittens were siting on it the box and saw an envelope that had written on it Instructions For Care.

She held up the envelope to the kittens who stared back at it dumbfounded.

“What is that supposed to mean?” asked Rose baffled.

Kara opened the letter and found only a usb flash drive inside. She groaned when she realized that it wouldn’t fit into her computer which only supported usb c.

“It means we have a mystery on our hands. This could be a simple kidnapping that went wrong or something else. However, we will find out soon enough.”

Rose cocked her head to the side and asked, “How?”

“We are going to see some friends that can help us. If you guys can get back into the box, and we will head off.”

The kittens hurried back into the box. Kara quickly grabbed her stuff and exited her office.

Read the rest on AO3

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sprolliescantjump · 2 years

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Adventures in Solitude

It feels like it's been an eternity since he stepped off the hospital grounds. In reality, it's only been a few days, but a pandemic and its aftermath ago. The sights are familiar, the feelings not so much.

He'd eventually been ordered to step in to this parallel world by Holden. Permission to go home being less granted than shoved upon him. There was nothing more they could do to help here anyway. The FBI's services are no longer required. The hospital staff could fly solo from here. Go home. Lord knows they could all do with a decent night's sleep on something more comfortable than a couple of office chairs.

Home. The sterile apartment that was nothing more than a place to store the few belongings he's picked up on the straight and narrow. It was more of a rest stop than a place where life was lived. Even before she showed up, he preferred the solitude of the workplace

He got to see her before he decided to follow orders. Finally awake after a surgery she had no business surviving. Not that she'll remember those few minutes before the painkillers and exhaustion got the better of her willpower.

You look exhausted, Little Guy, she'd said, voice raspy and strained from the tubes that kept her breathing when she couldn't on her own. You should get some sleep.

And that had been more persuasive than any order from HQ.

The weather is pleasant, calm. The type of day where the sun melts away all worries. Or at least, it might have done before. It's hard to imagine a picnic in the park, or sitting on a terrace with a latte. The old normal feels so alien, even if his own definition of 'old normal' isn't really that old.

"You're finally getting out of here, then?"

The question from Holden pulls him out of the buffer he didn't realise he was in.

"I guess so, sir."

"You need a ride?"

"No, thank you. I need to get some air."

"Suit yourself." The older agent steps away, and then pauses. "You did good work through this crisis. You should be proud of yourself."

"Thank you, sir."

He watches Holden cross the parking lot. The older agent gets in to his car, and assuming nobody's watching, tilts his head back and lets out that sigh he's obviously had trapped, a crack in his usual stoicism.

The city streets are eerie. Shops and cafes with the windows boarded over. People stepping out of their apartment blocks with that same baffled expression. Red cloths in windows. He wonders how many of them made it to the wards and corridors and courtyards of Resurgam.

He wonders how many of them didn't.

His route takes him through the park, the one with the fountain that supposedly grants good fortune at the cost of a nickel. Though now it's become a makeshift memorial, adorned with ribbons, flowers and teddy bears.

That last one sends a shiver down his spine.

Amongst the memorials, there are cards and handwritten posters and paintings of white pine cones accompanying messages of gratitude to the healthcare workers. Not that those people are going to see it. They're too busy tending to the sick, processing their own trauma, mourning the ones who fell before they could bring back an antiserum.

What level of batshit insanity went through her head before injecting a cocktail mixed up in discarded lab equipment into her own leg?

Then again.

It’s not the first time she’s thrown herself on the firing line for the sake of a patient. It’s just that this time she wasn’t the surgeon in charge.

And this time it worked out for her.

He’s stopped in this park a few times before. The first was when he’d just arrived in Portland, having rented the cheapest, shittiest apartment he could afford. Today he sits on a bench facing the fountain. People come and go, leaving their own tributes and gratitudes. Each one stands there, looking down. Reflecting. Thinking. Grieving. Trying to understand this turn of events, a modern-day plague more vicious than man could’ve designed.

He’s still not sure what made him turn the car around that night, why it was he listened to her. It went against everything he was supposed to do, every bit of training and indoctrination that was already unravelling. And in the choice between that and her, he chose her. He chose to risk everything with her, for her, because she just had to save the patient.

Hey, you weren’t half bad as an assistant.

Yeah, well, I don’t intend to make a habit of it.

Funny how things work out.

They were never meant to see each other again. She was supposed to take the samples and run, get as far away from that godforsaken place, wager the information he'd been leaving in sight for her freedom somewhere across the Atlantic. He was supposed to get the feds barging on his motel room in the asshole of nowhere, and at every other rest stop between there and Tallahassee. His application to the FBI was motivated by that fourth glass of cheap scotch and a desire to play chicken with the background checkers. He was never supposed to make it through selection. She was never supposed to put herself in the way of a calculated attack.

But he did, and she did, and somehow they ended up in the same office in Maine.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

His thoughts are interrupted by an older woman, maybe seventies, perching on the other end of the bench. She makes him think of Alma Parker. "I'm sorry."

"The whole community pulling together,” she says, then she frowns again. “Though I'm sure it won't last."

"I guess you're right."

"Did you lose anyone?"

The question supposes he had someone to lose. He didn't, but he did.

He knew she was living on borrowed time but when word got to him that she’d collapsed…he’d thought there’d be more time. More time to put it right. More time to fix his mistakes. More time to figure out what needed to be said. Just, more time.

She wasn’t supposed to make it through that surgery. Not logically. Who could’ve looked at those scans of her heart and thought yep, that’s survivable? There was talk of doing nothing, just loading her full of painkillers and letting her drift off towards the abyss peacefully. Even if by some miracle she made it out of the OR, it would just mean her last few weeks confined to a hospital bed. She was already fighting a losing battle.

Did you hear? I’m sticking around for a while yet.

Well, I guess then I should tell my next medical examiner I can't be their assistant for a while yet….

Are you sure? I won't be back for a long time.

I'll wait.

It had been a flicker of an idea, a memory of an off-hand comment from many years and a prison sentence ago that wheeled her into the operating room that night. If she hadn’t gone down to Mexico with them, if she hadn't thrown herself into the lion's den as always, then… Well, she'd still be terminal.

How uncomfortable he feels being thankful for something that has caused so much pain.

"No," he eventually replies. "She gave us quite a scare, but she's going to pull through."

"Your friend?"

"Colleague. And yes."

"You've worked together a long time?"

"Feels like forever."

"In a good way?"

"Absolutely. Though she may not agree."

"I hope your friend is back on her feet soon."

"I have no doubt she'll be back on her feet far too soon."

Friends. Colleagues. Neither word really fit them, but there's no word in the dictionary that could describe them. Friends too superficial, colleagues too cold. But it's all they have, and neither invites many questions.

But. Try as hard as he might to pretend it wasn't there, there was something more. Some embers of those moments where they forgot they were just agents of a terrorist cell and they could just be two people out for a nighttime drive.

He'd never have mentioned it. Her life, what was left of it, was more than complicated, and, well, he wasn't going to make it more complicated than he already had.

But, damn it, if there weren't moments when he thought she recognised those embers too. He saw it in the grip of his tie outside Alyssa’s room, in the pause before she went back to care for the kid, the moments before she got on that chopper to Mexico.

Ninety-seven minutes ago, when he chapped the door to her hospital room.

I was hoping you’d show up.

I’d have visited earlier but.. you were with Alyssa and I didn’t want to intrude.

You wouldn’t have been.

And there it was. Her life wasn’t going to be any less complicated now. She’s got one hell of a recovery ahead of her, and she was determined to make things right by Alyssa. He’d nearly been laughed out of HQ when he broached her request for custody. He would never tell her how vicious the reaction to a terminally ill woman with her criminal record asking for custody of the kid who’d got injured in the case she was investigating had been. How it would be too unfair to the kid when she inevitably passed away.

But that was before the virus, and the thousands of other kids thrown into a broken foster system, and the antiserum, and -

Funny how things work out.

Things will be different now. For him, for her, for everyone. It would be impossible for the city, the state scarred by this pandemic to fit into the same old mould. Them, too, with fresh scars. Surgery for her, burns from the airport bomb for him. It hadn’t been a conscious decision to tackle her to the ground the second the detonator fell from Liebermann’s hand. Adrenaline stopped him from feeling the pain across his upper arm and shoulder until most of the casualties had cleared, and he’d never heeded that paramedic’s advice to get the injuries properly checked out.

Still, he’d do it again in an instant. Over and over and over again if he had to.

He’d turn the car around on that mountain road over and over and over again.

She’ll never know that was the thing that broke him. That after years of questioning, it was during that hour in a dark tunnel holding a failing crappy flashlight that he knew he had to get out. That while she was driving and verbally debriefing after their makeshift operation, he was thinking about how the hell to get them both out of there. For a moment, seeing how happy she was to have saved the patient, made him happy.

She’s always had him wrapped around her little finger, after all.

They’ll get used to the new normal, he knows. They have for every other ‘normal’ that circumstance has tossed at them. Maybe for once, for both of them, it can actually be normal, not normal with an asterisk. God only knows it’s something neither of them has ever had. He only knew fragments of her past before they met, and he’d remained tightlipped about his, but it didn’t take a genius to figure it out.

You must’ve had a happy childhood, Little Guy.

Anything but.

Maybe one day he’ll tell her how he ended up there, how he went from a sheltered Baptist kid without a dime or a friend to his name to terrorist researcher. That, like her, all he wanted to do was save the world, despite the hundreds of wrong turns he took to do so.

Maybe she’s already figured that one out.

She had every reason to turn him in to the feds. She didn't.

The sun lowers in the sky some more. The older woman says her goodbyes and good lucks. He stays, and thinks.

I didn’t want to intrude.

You wouldn’t have been.

How are you feeling?

Like I’ve lost a fight with an 18-wheeler. What’s happening out there?

It’s hell. Every morgue drawer in the city is occupied.

Alyssa told me you were checking in on her. Thank you for doing that.

It was the least I could do. She missed you.

I know.

That was a hell of a scare you gave us. We…I really thought you were gone.

Hey. I’m going to be okay. We are going to be okay.

He believed her then, despite the marbled bruising from the cannula on the hand she stretched out towards him, the resuscitation equipment being kept nearby just in case, the evidence of quarantines all around the hospital, a multitude of things that were very much not okay.

And despite the memorials, the photos of people no longer on this earth, the red rags in windows, he believes her still.

Eventually, he finds the motivation, the courage, the sense of accomplishment, to stand from the bench and continue his journey towards the solitude of his apartment. His thoughts aren't exactly clear, but the tangle of webbing that once was there has been sorted into neater strands.

He was a terrorist. Now, he's not.

She was dying of a disease he helped to create. Now, she's not.

They were days away from succumbing to that godawful virus. Now, they're not.

They were keeping each other at arm's length. Now?

Well, the arm is a little bit shorter.

He collects the pile of mail from the box, the usual collection of junk that built up over a few weeks of procrastination. Takeout menus, shop flyers, and a note for the meeting of the residents' association. He trundles up two floors to his apartment.

With a sigh, he opens his apartment door and takes in the disarray he left in the mad scramble to grab some essentials when it became clear events were taking a turn for the apocalyptic. He washes the abandoned coffee mug, clears away the pile of clothes left on the couch, throws the expired food in the garbage.

And, when he sits on the couch to catch his breath, the phone beeps. He takes it from the inside pocket of his suit jacket, and smiles.

Visit tomorrow?

Of course.

Good. Get some sleep, little guy.

And so, he does.

#trauma team #fanfic #little guy #trauma center

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children-of-america-ff-blog · 1 year

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Children of America Fanfiction

Idea

I first had this idea watching Captain America: The Winter Soldier, when I sat there and wondered, "what if S.H.I.E.L.D. or some other agency preserved Steve's DNA (in the form of sperm) to create some sort of superhero super soldier children?" Like, said super soldier children were raised and trained to protect America in the absence of their father. And I thought about it even more.

Eight super soldier children from the original Captain America, born in separate states, raised and trained to protect their state from all that can do harm. Over time, the other forty-two states learned to protect themselves in the event of a superhuman catastrophe, not relying on the eight super-soldier-protected states to help.

The Children

All eight super soldier half-siblings know and have met each other - in battle and in parks, cafes, and libraries - but live separate lives from each other. Each and every one of the half-siblings is believed to have developed their ability through their super soldier blood and from their father. From eldest to youngest, there are;

Aaron "Moose" Rogers - Known as Sergeant Alaska to the United States of America, Aaron is the eldest of Steve's super children and the most like him personality-wise. His birth mother surrendered him to the American Government, which - in turn - decided it was best for Aaron to be raised in Alaska. Therefore, he grew up protecting Alaska and its citizens from potential dangers. He has an inhumane tolerance for intensely decreased temperatures, having been able to live in the Arctic for a year and a half at 12 years old. He gets his nickname from his massive size, like that of a moose.

Ilya Illinois Rogers - Best known as Lieutenant Illinois, Ilya is the second eldest of Steve's children and similar to his father in the sense of humanitarianism. He believes if humanity has the will to be something, there has to be a way for humanity to become that. He and his mother were never close, and she was heavily against him joining the Chicago Police Department alongside being Illinois' protector. Ilya has the superhuman sense of lie-detecting - making him one of Chicago's best detectives. While he finds it hard to tell if his brothers and sister lie to him, Ilya can take a few seconds to realise a stranger is lying.

Vincent "Vinnie" Rogers - Typically (and simply) called Virginia, Vincent is the third eldest, but one of the least known of Steve's children. As he is a politician rather than a superhero, Vincent spends most of his time in his office or at home with his wife and twin children - or scolding his brothers and sister for breaking federal conduct during battles. Of course, none of them listen to him, with the exception of his two elder brothers, Aaron and Ilya. Vincent's charismatic ability means he only fights in battles if he's desperately needed - otherwise he's using his charm to convince the public to donate to local charities. He gets his nickname from his sister being unable to pronounce his name when she was a toddler.

Dominic Christian and Karl Rogers - Nominated the Super Soldier Twins, Dominic is known as Lieutenant DC of Virginia and Karl is often referred to as Sergeant Kansas, and are Steve's fourth and fifth children. Even though residing in different states, Dominic and Karl are often caught by the media catching up in Washington DC, Virginia, or Topeka, Kansas. Dominic runs a men's fashion magazine in his free time, whilst it is unknown to everyone (including the other Rogers children) what Karl's favourite pastime is. The Rogers siblings will sometimes call Dominic by his hero name because it is a shortening of his name to them.

Connor Rogers - The smartest of the eight super soldier children, Connor ("Lieutenant Connecticut") is the third youngest of Steve's children. Like his older brother, Vincent, Connor doesn't use his ability for superheroism - but for the lab, and his patients at the State Veterans Hospital in his hometown. His incredible intelligence has saved plenty of lives, more lives than he would have outside of the hospital and lab (in Connor's opinion - his brothers would disagree). Much to his dismay, his younger brother loves calling him "Connie".

Neveah "Noah" Carson Rogers - Known in Las Vegas and the rest of his state as Sergeant Nevada, Neveah is the second youngest of Steve's children, and his youngest son. He is the only known openly gay superhero, and regardless of what anyone else says, he is proud of himself. It helps that his brothers and sister are constantly supportive of him. The one part of him that he isn't proud of is his name, therefore he always tells people he introduces himself to that his name is Noah. His ability isn't incredibly identifiable, but he makes a point that he's stronger than all of his siblings combined. While boasting his strength, Neveah hasn't managed to crack his eldest brother's "uncrackable" (Neveah quotations it, Aaron insists it) skull - yet. He owns an increasingly popular club in Las Vegas; legally, of course.

Missy Sarah Rogers - The only super sibling with "captain" before their state or capital (Captain Mississippi), Missy is Steve's youngest child and only daughter. Thus, her elder brothers are typically protective over her; some don't entirely care about their sister's romantic life (Connor, Ilya), believe she's old enough to take care of herself (Vincent), think she's capable enough to protect herself (Dominic, Karl) or just can't handle the pout she gives them to get her way (Aaron, Neveah). She has the super ability to hear, see, smell and feel things from a great distance - and her sense of taste isn't that bad either. Her only issue is, her brothers won't play blind taste tests with her anymore!

Stories, Incorrect Quotes and Galore!

Now that the Children of (Captain) America have been introduced, I figured that we could do a Q&A, I could make short stories about the Super Soldier Siblings (we can find a new name for them), post incorrect quotes that would exactly be them, and whatever you'd like to see of them!

If anyone would like to make fanart of them, I can give you references and describe their appearances for you to make said fanart. But I cannot draw or make anything artistic that doesn't involve words to save my life.

#marvel mcu #mcu #mcu ocs #avengers ocs #ocs #own characters #marvel cinematic universe #marvel cinematic universe ocs

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homedesignslove · 1 year

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How Many Houses Can a Window Cleaner Clean in a Day?

You could say that every business wants to have a professional look. It's important to have your windows cleaned by a professional if you work in an office, run a cafe or restaurant, manage a sports stadium, or work in a medical centre or school. This will give the right impression. After all, if your windows are dirty and not taken care of, you won't get many clients or customers. Commercial window cleaning should be part of your budget if you want your building or business to look its best. Several things will affect how often you need to have your windows washed or cleaned. But as a general rule, you can be sure that your windows will be clean and clear if you have them cleaned about every three to six months. Cleaning windows for high-rises and offices as part of a business Cleaning the windows of a commercial high-rise building will not only let in more light but also make the place feel better. Having your office windows cleaned regularly is a good use of money and a long-term investment in your business. Think about the weather and other buildings in the area to figure out how often your high-rise or office windows need to be cleaned. Most office windows in the city are constantly exposed to a number of things that make them dirty, stained, or even broken. Every day, windows get dirty and scratched by things like bird droppings and dirt. Windows can fall apart quickly if they aren't cleaned and cared for by a professional Both the glass and the frame can get very worn down over time. Cleaning a window is much cheaper than replacing it, so if you want your office windows to last longer, hire a commercial window cleaning service to come out regularly. Don't save money by taking short-cuts When comparing quotes, compare the price to the level of professionalism, knowledge, and reputation offered. Cheap window cleaners keep their prices low by using cheap products, water that hasn't been filtered, and sloppy methods. Always choose a good window cleaner with prices that are in line with the market and who understands that you want to get the most for your money. Window cleaning for cafes and restaurants as a business In the world of social media that we live in now, cafes and restaurants have never needed good lighting more than they do now. If you run a busy restaurant or own one, you probably already know how important it is to have clean windows, exteriors, and signs. You might need to set up a cleaning schedule for once a month, every two weeks, or even once a week. After all, first impressions last, and in the hospitality business, how you look is everything. How many customers you get through the door depends a lot on how good your windows look. How often you should have your cafe or restaurant's windows cleaned depends on where you live and what kind of business you run. The cooking grease that builds up on the windows of a pizza or burger restaurant may mean that it needs to be cleaned more often. Always look for professional window cleaners who offer customised cleaning services so you can set up a regular cleaning schedule that fits your needs. Make sure they are willing to clean up grease and dirt on glazed surfaces, like window frames and windowsills, before your business opens or after it closes. Professional window cleaners should be able to set up an appointment time that works for your business and causes the least amount of trouble for customers and service. They might even be able to clean both the inside and outside of your windows, which is a good way for small businesses on a tight budget to save money. Window cleaning for sports stadiums on a commercial scale You won't be able to get a lot of people to come to your stadium and make them cheer if the windows are dirty and smudged. Cleaning stadium windows is more than just scrubbing the glass. It also includes washing the window frames and sills and getting rid of grease and dirt from the glass. Depending on how often your stadium is used and how big it is, the windows may need to be fixed every three to six months. During a sport's busy season, it might happen more often. Just like with other types of commercial buildings, how often you clean your windows will depend on the weather and how crowded the area is. Most of the time, professional window cleaning teams will be happy to work around your schedule so that cleaning the windows of a stadium doesn't cause too much trouble for customers or service. Cleaning the windows of a stadium or other sports venue usually requires working at heights, so make sure you only hire professionals who are trained and qualified to do the job. Before starting work, they should give you a Safe Work Method Statement (SWMS) and be able to show you examples of how they have cleaned stadiums in the past. Cleaning windows for medical centres as a business Inside and out, medical centres need to be clean, and that includes the windows. Patients expect medical centres and practices to be very clean, so you should have your windows cleaned often if you want them to show how clean the inside is. Cleaning the windows in a medical centre is not only important for the health and safety of your patients, but also for their peace of mind. Mould and mildew won't grow on your windows if you clean them regularly to keep them spotless. As with most medical issues, it's better to avoid a problem than to try to fix it. People who run or work in a medical facility or other place where cleanliness is important should put cleaning at the top of their list of priorities. Understand that cleaning the windows should be a part of any cleaning plan, and hire a good window cleaning team to make sure the building looks clean and welcoming. School windows are cleaned by a business Dirty windows can make your school look bad and bring down the mood of the students who go there. It's important to keep your windows clean and bright, whether you're talking about a primary school where young minds are shaped and taught or a university campus where adult minds are stretched and enriched. Again, the type of school you run will affect how often you need to have your windows cleaned. For example, primary schools might need to be cleaned once a week or every two weeks because of all the sticky and paint-flecked handprints from younger children. However, windows in a grand old building at a university where classes are held might only need to be cleaned once every six months. Think about the weather, how the buildings with the windows are used, and the area where they are. If the windows face the street or are in a prominent place, you may want to spend more money on their maintenance than if they were, say, in the back of a gym. Why professional required for needed? Our team of professional window cleaners can clean windows in a wide range of buildings, like assembly halls and science labs, and can clean 10 to 20 houses per day. We can also schedule window cleaning services for schools to be done before or after classes to cause as little disruption as possible. Our cleaners always take the time to make a Safe Work Method Statement (SWMS) for your school buildings, so you can rest easy knowing that every school window cleaning job is fully licensed and insured. Read the full article

#Cleaningwindows #commercialwindowcleaning #windowcleaner

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viteducation · 2 years

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Diploma of Hospitality Management Australia courses in industry are among the most lucrative and popular in this regard

If we look at it from the labour market point of view, the accommodation sector will never lose its ulster; this is at least foreseeable in the coming decades. The simple reason is that people today are willing to spend more for the luxuries of life. Also, convenient travel and technology have given people new places to explore. There are many jobs in hospitality companies, restaurants, hotels and casinos.

Diverse jobs and attractive salaries have prompted many to consider a career in hospitality. Additionally, the diversity of professional roles within the industry allows them to embrace what they are most passionate about. Of course, Hotel Manager training will give you an edge and help you land your dream job with the Diploma of Hospitality Management Australia course.

The hospitality industry is full of opportunities. Those who decide to enter the field have many options in terms of hospitality courses. Management courses in industry are among the most lucrative and popular in this regard. If you are considering training, it is important to not only ensure you accept a good school or college but also ensure you choose the CRICOS recognized Advanced Diploma of Hospitality Australia course.

CRICOS is the official website of the Australian Government. Here is a list of all accredited educators offering accredited courses in the country. Students with visas must ensure they can take courses that are eligible for certificates and diplomas that will help them advance their careers.

Competence conveys the knowledge and ability to qualify as a manager in all functional areas of the hospitality industry. They have solid theoretical knowledge and can use specialized managerial and professional skills to conduct, plan and evaluate their own work and their teams. As part of this course, you can work in restaurants, hotels, cafés and pubs, among other things.

The course is one of the recognized courses in hospitality management. It provides the knowledge and skills to enable students to become skilled, qualified chefs. After the course you can work in the hospitality industry, where food is prepared and served. These include cafes, pubs, clubs, coffee shops, canteens, as well as hotels and restaurants. The qualifiers could also be in charge of the team and provide technical advice and team support.

Are you bored with the idea of sitting in an office for nine to five years? On the contrary, do you like to travel and meet new people? If the answer is yes, then the Diploma of Hospitality Management Sydney is definitely a great job option for you. The hospitality industry is one of the most demanding and interesting industries and offers a variety of employment opportunities. He provides customer service and guarantees customers the best experience of their lives. Tourism and hotel management are two important aspects of the hospitality industry. Today, with the rapid globalization, this industry is developing rapidly.

Learn the most demanding course of a variety employment opportunities with Diploma of Hospitality Management Australia

It provides knowledge and skills for the students to become expert chefs in Asian cuisine. After the course you can work in gastronomy, where Asian dishes are prepared and served. These include cafes, pubs, clubs, coffee shops, canteens, as well as hotels and restaurants. The qualifiers could also oversee the team and provide technical advice and team support.

It provides the knowledge and skills to be a competent manager in various functional areas of the hospitality industry. With the training you can analyse, design, and also evaluate with technical, ideological, creative and business skills.

It has grown into an impressive career and that is the main reason more and more students are graduating from the University of Melbourne with a Diploma in Hotel Management and Tourism. Given the current market conditions, Australia is a profitable destination for any hotel and restaurant chain looking for growth. There are several job opportunities for Hotel Management graduates in the domestic and international market.

There are universities that offer short-term certification courses, such as Advanced Hospitality Management Australia Food Safety Standards and Hygiene, Hotel Management Analysis of Quantitative Food Production and Marketing and Sales in the Hospitality Industry. These courses place more emphasis on practical than theoretical knowledge, giving students a competitive edge over others. Students are taught skills in food and beverage management, sales and marketing, lodging rights, environmental sustainability in hospitality, information technology in hospitality, and advanced wine education. After completing the Diploma of Hospitality Management Melbourne course, they can work as food or drink waiters in any restaurant or bar.

Here you will find several universities and institutions that offer Hotel Management courses at BS and Masters level. A degree in hospitality education in Australia can serve as an entry point into the hospitality industry. Students can also pursue a postgraduate degree in hospitality that trains them in various hospitality skills required for the job.

There are a range of hospitality courses that will prepare you for tourism and culture, cuisine, kitchen management, restaurant and restaurant management, accommodation, and event management. If you are looking for a course with a particular focus on kitchen management, office skills and food and beverage service, studying for a Diploma of Hospitality Management Melbourne is for you. It gives you a comprehensive knowledge of the hotel industry. You will enjoy the variety of the curriculum.

This is an industry that has something for everyone. Years of hospitality training can also help you find your way into the business world. Once you have extensive experience and clarity about what policy or sector you want to work in, you can always go back to school, improve your skills and get back into it. It offers numerous employment opportunities at all hierarchical levels. A fresh, creative individual or someone who works in any industry can thrive in that industry. Whoever comes in, it hugs everyone. Either way, there is a great need for a Diploma of Hospitality Management Melbourne certification, diploma or exam.

For getting more information visit here VIT – Victorian Institute of Technology

14/123 Queen St, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia

1300 17 17 55 (or) [email protected]

#Advanced Hospitality Management #Advanced Diploma of Hospitality Australia #Advanced Diploma of Hospitality Sydney #Advanced Diploma of Hospitality Melbourne #Diploma of Hospitality Management Australia #Diploma of Hospitality Management Sydney #Diploma of Hospitality Management Melbourne

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visionofhope04 · 3 years

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Hii I was lowkey wondering if you would do something maybe like a one shot of neglected where reader is older (18-20) and dipped out of the house and became a singer and one of her songs basically exposed them for how they treated reader and in like an interview she full on tells them how she doesn’t even talk to them and like only Jason

This is literally perfect. I love this idea! I was planning on making a singer batsis reader anyway so here you go! I'll be making this part 4 of the series instead of a one shot. There’s a bit of angst. Btw, thanks so much for your support everyone! I'm glad you enjoy this series! Feel free to request anything you'd like besides smut as well!

This is the longest thing I have ever written so there will be a part 5. I planned on this being the last part but it's just so much. It’s not proofread and neither are all of the other parts because I post at 1 am most of the time lol. Hope you like it!

f/n = friend name

Y/G/N = your group name

N/S = news station

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 (Current) Part 5

---

You were sick of it. Sick of how even after confronting them about how you felt and almost dying because of it, they still neglected you. You couldn't wait to move out at the age of 18, even if it proved to be a struggle. You had taken mini jobs since you turned 15 and saved up since then. You just couldn't see them anymore as it would remind you of how they treated you that day at that hospital. None of them apologized either. They just pretended it never happened and continued to ignore you. The media had a field day with speculation of what had happened but eventually stopped because Bruce had claimed it was “just a bad case of the flu” which they believed.

Jason was always the only one that would talk to you. He was the only one that actually cared enough to make sure you were taking proper care of yourself and that you wouldn't have a repeat of what happened. He took you places, spent time with you and gave you advice. You even had a tradition where you'd always meet up at the manor's library every week at the same time that same day every week and just have a mini book club together. He always made time for you and never bailed on you.

So on your 18th birthday, he helped you move out. You managed to rent a small apartment in Star City with the money you had saved up. It wasn’t that close to the manor which was a good thing. The neighborhood wasn’t good but it wasn’t as bad as Gotham’s neighborhoods so you would be fine. You could handle yourself with your assassin training if needed. You also managed to get hired at a cafe which was about a five minutes walking distance from your apartment.

It had taken a while but eventually, you had packed all of your belongings into color coded containers and moved them into Jason’s car with his help. You didn’t say goodbye to anyone as you had no friends to say bye to and you knew that your so called “family” couldn’t care less about what you did with your life. ‘This is it, hopefully the last time I’ll ever be near this place.’ You thought. You didn’t plan on stepping foot in Gotham ever again after you left. It would bring back too many memories you prefer to keep buried away deep inside your mind.

The car ride to Star City was entertaining. You and Jason conversed the whole time, telling jokes and listening to his funny tales with the radio playing softly in the background. Eventually, a song you both loved came on and you both started yell-singing along to the lyrics. You wished those moments could be permanent. You were both so carefree and nothing else mattered besides having fun and enjoying yourselves.

You now stood in the doorway of your new apartment, admiring your new home. Jason and yourself had just finished unpacking all of your belongings. You really liked how it looked and thought you both did an amazing job at designing the place perfectly according to your style. Jason, unfortunately, had to leave in order to avoid raising suspicions. Once you both said your byes, he left you to your apartment.

Jason drove back home in silence. He hated to admit it but he would miss you dearly. You were always there for him and helped him with anything. You tried your best to always comfort him and make him feel better on his darkest days and it would always work. Somehow you seemed to always have the right words to say or knew exactly what to do to help him. Out of everyone he was closest to you. He assumed it was because he could relate to you the most. More so how you felt. He’d felt like the black sheep of the family before you came, and he was. When you came, you took that role from him. It pained him to see how much their insults would affect you, even if you were good at hiding it. He could just tell.

Jason made it back to the manor after a while and went straight to the library. He didn't want to deal with the others. After the whole hospital situation, he'd never really bother interacting with them. He hated how they treated you as if you didn’t exist and hated how much pain they had caused you and that they didn’t even care. He guessed that they'd probably be doing something for Damian's birthday and forgot that you were his twin. They probably couldn’t even remember that Damian had a twin.

He made it to the library and pulled out one of his favorite books. He’d read it so many times you’d often joke that he could probably recite the whole book by heart at this point. Sitting down in a chair, he started to read. However, he couldn’t bring himself to stop thinking about what it would’ve been like if they treated you how they did Damian. The both of you were Bruce’s real children. You both even looked like clones of him! At first, Jason thought you would’ve been the favorite twin due to your personality. Even though you were twins, your personalities were polar opposites. You even refused to kill! You were trained by the League so why didn’t you kill as Damian did?

Jason knew you would benefit them greatly if you joined. You had self control, didn’t kill, could act perfectly, lie perfectly, do well under pressure, and not to mention your skills. Being raised by the League may have been torture, but you managed to gain incredible skills out of it. You could take on at least ten guys who doubled you in size and beat them within five minutes. You even bested Damian in spars and he was supposedly dubbed the “better twin” by Talia, so why hadn’t they let you join their nightly crusades like they had let Damian when the both of you first arrived?

Damian passed by your room but noticed something was off. He decided to take a look. He twisted the doorknob and pushed. The room which was once occupied by you now looked extremely plain and bare, stripped of all of its accessories. The only things left were the bed itself, multiple dressers, and a vanity. It looked as if it had been vacant the whole time. It might as well have been. Damian couldn’t really remember what it had looked like since he’s never paid much mind to it but he could tell there was a drastic difference. He knew that you disliked just leaving your room plain unlike himself and wanted at least something to make it look less boring.

He couldn’t help but wonder what had happened. Had you finally been kicked out by Bruce? Did you get shipped off to a boarding school like he had been suggesting to your father for years? He decided to go ask. He exited the room and closed the door behind him, taking off for Bruce’s office. Walking down the hall, he suddenly remembered that he had seen you leave with Jason. This meant that you were not at a boarding school like he had originally thought. But then why was your room vacant?

Instead of going to see Bruce, he decided to go see Jason and bring up the matter with him instead. He changed directions and headed to the library where he knew he’d find Jason. It was no secret that Jason was a book worm so Damian had a fifty percent chance of finding him there.

He entered the library and was immediately greeted with the sight of Jason sitting comfortably on a chair, legs crossed with a book opened in his hands. Jason didn’t bother to look up from his book as he spoke.

“What do you want Demon Spawn?”

“I’ve come to obtain the whereabouts of my sister.”

“You mean my sister?”

“She’s not your sister!” Damian exclaimed.

“Well I act more like a brother than you do.”

“Where is Y/N? Her whole room is bare.”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

“Just tell me, you imbecile!” Damian said, growing increasingly frustrated by Jason’s blunt answers.

“She’s not here.”

“Then where is she?”

“Not here.”

“Just tell me already Todd, I have no time for your foolish games!”

“She moved out.” Jason said, giving in.

“What?! Where.” Damian demanded.

“Why would I tell you?”

“Because I demand to know!”

“Okay and?”

“Tell me!”

“No.”

“Why not!”

“Because you don’t even care.”

“And you do?”

“Yes, I actually do Damian! I’m there for her when she needs me the most. I’m there for her while she’s watching you live the perfect life that she’s just a background character in! While you and the others ignore that she even exists! I’m there for her when she breaks down and has panic attacks! And what were you all doing to try and help her? Nothing! Absolutely nothing!” Jason snapped.

“Y/N’s fine, I know my twin!” Damian screamed.

“Do you even know what her favorite color is?” Jason questioned in a harsh tone.

“...” Was Damian’s reply.

“Exactly! You don’t! You and the others have never cared about her, so why all of a sudden do you care now? You don’t know anything about her so don’t act like you do!” Jason then stood up and walked out of the room in a fit of rage.

Damian stood there, shocked. Had Jason just refused to answer his question? He was about to follow him but decided against it. Why was Damian going to chase Jason down just for her? She was just an annoyance, a mistake, imperfect. He had been wanting to get rid of her for so long, so why doesn’t he feel relieved? Why does he feel guilty? He decided to stop dwelling on it and get on with life. He figured it would happen eventually if it hadn’t happened then.

---

It had been a year since that day. The day you left your old life behind and started a new life, a better one. One where you weren’t constantly ignored. One where you actually had more than one person care about you. Instead of seeing yourself as a failure and disappointment, you now saw yourself as an amazing person (which you always were). You had been going to a community college in Star City. You made many friends there and started up a music career with three of them.

Their names were f/n, f/n and f/n. You all started off by taking random gigs anywhere you could. You performed covers of songs and would receive standing ovations all the time. Seeing as your group was well liked, you decided to write and produce your own songs. At the age of 19, Y/G/N released their first album. It went viral within a day and everyone was talking about it. After a week, several articles were posted, praising your work. News Stations talked about all the records Y/G/N managed to break. People started to stream it like crazy, and you couldn’t be happier with all the positive feedback you were receiving.

You had been a Wayne once, meaning you had experience in dealing with the media. Since you had already been used to it, you knew you’d all eventually be invited to interviews. So, when you had received an email stating how N/S wanted a one on one interview with you, you weren’t sure how to feel. You weren’t looking forward to interviews with your whole group, let alone one where you would be alone. You knew how unfiltered interviewers could be and didn’t feel comfortable with it.

However, you decided it would be best to go. So here you were, sitting in front of the interviewer in an uncomfortable chair preparing for the interview to start. You had somehow managed to keep a smile plastered on your face the entire time while you were a nervous wreck on the inside. You hoped none of the questions would be sexist as they usually were towards women. However, you had no more time to think about that. You heard clicking, signaling that you were about to go live. Once you heard the last click, you knew you were live and the interview had begun.

“Hello everyone, welcome back to N/S. My name is Jerald Tangleberry and I’m here today with songwriter, singer, and celebrity, Y/N Wayne! How are you?”

You waved to the camera and then answered, “Hello everyone! I’m doing good, how about you?”

“I’m doing great, thanks for asking! So by now I’d assume everyone knows that you’ve released an album with your group. How does it feel to gain more fame?”

“It doesn’t feel any different. Fame wasn’t our goal when we released the album. It was to express ourselves.”

“Mhm, well Ms. Wayne, what inspired you to write songs?”

“Well we know people may be in a tough spot in their life right now and want them to know they aren’t alone.”

“That’s so true. Some fans have been speculating that every member has three songs that specifically relate to them since there are twelve songs in total and three of the songs have the same group member as the introduction part of the song. Is this true?”

“Yes, it is true.”

“So all three of your songs relate to family issues of some sort. Is that hinting that you have family issues?”

“Yes, actually. My family isn’t the best. They ignored me all the time, even when they weren't busy. The only person who didn’t was Jason.”

“You’re saying it in the past tense.”

“I moved out about a year ago. When I was around 14, I suffered from anorexia. My family would always ignore me since they were either busy doing work or hanging out with each other. The only family member that acknowledged me was Jason. I assumed it was because there was something wrong with me. I started to hate myself so much to the point of starvation. One day, I passed out right before a gala and my oldest brother Dick found me passed out on the floor. They took me to the hospital and when I woke up, Bruce, Dick, Tim, and Damian started fussing about how I’d ruin their image if the media knew what actually happened. They started to yell at me and told me how I was a useless burden. I started to have a panic attack so I kicked them out. Jason stayed behind with me and comforted me. Ever since then I made a planed to save enough money so I could move out when I turned 18, which I did.”

“Oh, wow. So Jason was the only one who interacted with you?”

“Yeah.”

“Looks like the Wayne family isn’t as perfect as they seem.”

“No family is actually perfect.”

“Did your family try contacting you at all after they found out about Y/G/N?”

“Not yet. They’re probably too busy or don’t care.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s alright, I got over it. What’s the next question.”

“Oh-” He cleared his throat and continued the interview. (So basically I don’t wanna bore you all lol)

---

Jason had woken up late into the afternoon that day. Patrol that morning had exhausted him. There was a huge breakout at Arkham they had assisted with. They successfully locked up every escapee, so today, Jason just wanted to relax until it would be time for patrol again. Even though he was exhausted, he knew he couldn’t take a break. The others wouldn’t and it would be unfair to them if he did.

He headed over to his couch with his phone and a bowl of popcorn in hand, ready to watch random movies the entirety of the day. He set down his phone on the coffee tables and grabbed the TV remote. When he turned on the TV, he almost dropped the popcorn and remote. You were sitting on a chair, giving an award winning smile while you politely answered the man’s questions. He was baffled. He didn’t know why you were being interviewed, let alone on TV at all! You made it clear you didn’t want to have any relations with your family any longer and you couldn’t stand publicity, so what were you doing?

He placed the bowl down and snatched his phone off the table. Unlocking his phone, he quickly dialed your phone number. However, he realized that the interview was live and that he would be interrupting it if he called you then. Deciding to wait, he placed his phone back down, picked up the bowl, and then got comfortable.

---

Tag list: @fake-id-69 @pepelachanel @loxbbg @what-0-life @yoongi-holland @omnivorousfangirl @cawcaw-pretty-thing @sexysamsungl @iceddonuts @buginetye @portrait-ninja @azazel-nyx @alculai

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i-cant-sing · 3 years

Note

I know requests are closed so this isn’t a request I just had an idea based off an ask you got about hawks and the Todoroki clan. What if the reader escaped from yandere Todoroki clan (Dabi scared the reader/took it too far with the threats, or because endeavor and the brothers had a fight and the reader got scared)and they ran into hawks, crying and panicked thinking that he would help. But hawks recognizes them from the pictures in endeavors desk and offers them a lift to somewhere safe. Only for hawks to fly the reader back to the Todoroki estate where the whole family is waiting for them.

The reader feels hurt and betrayed and everyone is angry, but hawks being hawks tries to diffuse the situation by saying,”stop scaring the poor kid. They came to me scared out of their mind, but being the outstanding godfather that I am, I made sure to bring them back safely.” (Or something like that)

And endeavor just accepts that hawks claimed himself as the readers godfather, and tells the reader to get inside and to clean up.

So now hawks takes it upon himself to hang around the estate more to fulfill his “godfather” duties, spoiling the reader as much as he can.

Yandere Godfather Hawks x Todoroki clan reader

I was going to write boyfriend Hawks, instead of Godfather Hawks but this was just too good. I kinda thought that the age gap between Hawks and reader would be too much so maybe Godfather would be a better role for him, but the chaos that would follow if they find him dating reader would be just *chef's kiss*. I think I just might write bf Hawks too. Let me know what you guys think.

Anyways, enjoy!

Check out my MASTERLIST here!

Yandere Hawks:

You didn't know how long you had been running for. You didn't know how far you had gotten away from their house. You didn't even know where you were going, to be honest. But you did know that you had to get away from there as far as you could.

Sure, you only had a few hours headstart. But for them, the most powerful family in Japan, this wasn’t enough time for you.

You had planned your escape with their schedule in mind.

Enji would come home from his office at 9pm; he used to return at 11, but ever since you were kidnapped adopted by them, he tries to come home early.

Natsuo had already visited you during the day. He habitually comes after his shift at the hospital. Once he would check you over for any injuries and be satisfied with your overall health, he would join you, Rei and Fuyumi for a quick lunch before leaving.

Usually, you would spend the day with Rei, Fuyumi and Shotou, then Enji would come by the time dinner was served. And once everyone went to sleep, Dabi would come to visit you around 2 am. He would tap on your window and disturb you from your sleep, but its not like you have any engagements in the morning anyways. Once you would let him in, he would talk to you and maybe watch a movie too. If he's pissed, he might "accidentally" leave a burn mark on your arm (and you've tried asking your family for help, but they wouldn't do anything. Natsuo would just bandage you up, while Shotou would comfort you. Besides, you've learned not to snitch on Dabi because he would even get angrier than before.)

That was your routine ever since they had took you, almost 7 months ago. Well, they had actually adopted you an year ago, and everything was going well. But then you started noticing their odd behaviour. You thought they were just being protective of you at first, but as time went on, their obsessive tendencies and no regard for your personal boundaries started weirding you out.

Then one day, they just stopped letting you out of the house. No matter how much you cried, begged or fought, they just wouldn't let you go outside, telling that you its for your own good.

At first, they would use cuffs to keep you bound since you fought so much. But then you started behaving, and they slowly started trusting you more and stopped putting on the restraints.

What they didn't know was that you were just biding your time, waiting for the perfect opportunity to escape. Like today.

Shotou had to go to his friend's house to work on a school project, so he wasn't able to join you at lunch today and would be coming home late.

After lunch, once Natsuo had left, you asked Fuyumi if she could go to the mall and buy you some books. You had been complaining to her about your boredom for quite sometime now, so she agreed and left to go shop for you.

So that only left you with Rei in the house. And while she had a weaker quirk than the rest of the family, your quirkless self was no match for her either.

But she was easier to fool. You told Rei that you were going to take a nap in your room and to call you when dinner was ready. Rei nodded before going to the kitchen to start preparing for dinner.

You went to your room and opened the window to get out. It used to be bolted shut but after months of working on it slowly but stealthily, you had managed to pop it open. It was 6, and you were sure Fuyumi and Shotou would be coming home by 7, so without having anytime to pack, you ran.

It was stupid. You should've at least gotten your coat and shoes on, but there was no guarantee a chance like this would appear again, so you left without them.

You kind of regret it now, as you winced in pain at all the rocks and twigs pressing into your bare feet. You shivered in the cold, which didn't bother you at first because of the adrenaline pumping through your veins, but now as you slid against a dumpster in an alley to give a break to your legs, you wished Rei could've given you some proper clothes, instead of the light, pastel pink dress. In her defence, the house was centrally heated during winters so you didn't really need warm clothes inside the house. But now, looking at the dark clouds forming in the sky, you wished she could've at least given you a sweater.

It had soon started raining, and the wind had picked up as well. Shivering, you decided to stay put by the dumpster and wait until it stopped. It would be easier for them to find you if you ran now because the streets will be empty because of the rain. And its not like you could go to a police station either. How will you explain to them that the no.1 hero had kidnapped you?

Sighing, you closed your eyes. You just have to vanish from their eyes until they give up on you, or at least find someone else to replace you.

Hawks was flying home when it had begun raining. Tutting, he flew back to the ground to walk his way home. It was dangerous to fly during the rain; his feathers would get heavy and weigh him down.

As he was walking, whistling to himself, he heard someone whimper in the alley to his left. He walked in the dark alley, bracing himself for any sudden movements. The little whimpers came from near the dumpster. The alley had no light, so he couldn't see much. He walked closer to the source of whimpers and he could make out a silhouette of a shivering girl, who was completely drenched. Her eyes were closed so she hadn't noticed Hawks yet.

He took a step closer. "Hey. You okay?" As soon Hawks voice reached her ears, she snapped her eyes open and backed away from him. Hawks backed up a bit, raising his hands in surrender. "Its okay. I'm a hero." He said, calmly.

Once she seemed recognise him, or at least realise he wasn't dangerous, she relaxed a bit. "What are you doing in the rain?"he asked. She paused for a bit, before replying in a tiny voice,"none of your business." Hawks smiled. "It kinda is. Now you can either tell me, or I can take you to the cops and you can tell them. What's it gonna be?"

Your breath hitched at his question. If he takes you to the cops, Enji will surely find you, and the punishment that will be waiting for you...you didn't even want to think about it. "I'm just...running." you mumbled, hoping he would leave you alone. "From who?" When you didn't reply, he sighed. "Okay. Can you tell me why you're running?"

You thought for a bit. Would he believe if you told him the truth? You knew he was close friends with Enji and you heard from Enji that he was very loyal to him, so you doubted that he would believe you if you told him the no. 1 hero had been holding you hostage for 7 months. But maybe he could help you. If you just tell him that someone's after you, then maybe he could drop you off somewhere safe?

Gulping, you answered. "I- I was kidnapped. And they've probably noticed that I'm missing now and- and I need to hide before they can find me. I can't, I can't go back there-" your voice broke down as you slowly started crying.

Hawks's eyes widened as he heard you confess. He hugged you, rubbing your back soothingly. "Shh, its okay. I'm here now. Tell me who it is." You shook your head no. "Don’t be afraid. I'll keep you safe. Just tell me who-" "No!"you cut him off, realising that you would be putting his life in danger if you told him the truth. The Todorokis have done it before, with your old family and friends; you have no doubt that they will do it again.

Hawks was taken aback by your outburst. Who were you so afraid of? Was it a crazy ex? Or a family member? Maybe you had gotten in trouble with the wrong crowd? Whoever it was, fear was evident in your voice. He had to help you.

"Okay. I'm sorry. How about we get out of the rain? Maybe to a cafe, where we can get a coffee to warm ourselves up?" He asked you again, trying to look at your face in the dark. You shook your head again, before speaking. "Could you- could you just get me out of this city? Or at least as far away from here as possible?"

Who were you so scared of that you wanted to leave the city? He could investigate that later, but first he needed to get you out of the rain.

He nodded. "Alright. It should stop raining anytime now, so I can't fly you out right now. How about we walk to my apartment and warm ourselves and then, I could take you anywhere you want?"

This was the best you were going to get. You know you need to leave the city right now, but he was your only chance of leaving. So you agreed. Hawks smiled at that. "Can you walk?"he asked you. You nodded, but as soon as you took a step, you yelped in pain, almost falling down. Thankfully, Hakws was near to catch you. He laughed. Noticing your chattering teeth, he gave you his jacket. "You're going to catch a cold." Once you had worn his big, warm jacket, he lifted you up into his arms and started walking out of the alley and towards his home.

As he got out of the alley, the street lights finally illuminated your face.

You looked familiar, like he'd seen you before, but he can't seem to remember where he saw you. His eyes scanned your face. Your brows were furrowed in worry, and you kept looking over his shoulder. You looked scared, almost like a child. Looking down, he noticed your pink dress was completely ruined. He moved his gaze to your feet. They were bleeding, due to the stones, twigs and broken glass that had pierced them. Your legs had tiny burns, some had faded, others looked still fresh.

Were you being abused? Is that why you're running? He wanted to ask you these questions but he knew he had to wait for you to open up.

"Thank you."your tiny voice brought him back to reality. Hawks gave his famous heroic smile. "No problem." You gave a tiny smile of your own. It was kind. "Why do you keep looking back?"he asked you. Your eyes widened slightly, looking like a kid who got caught stealing cookies. "Are you worried about them taking you away again?"he asked, not really sure who he was referring to. You started tearing up again. Your lips wobbled as you slowly nodded your head. He stopped walking, causing you to look up to him. "Its okay. I promise I'll never let anyone hurt you again. I promise." His voice held such sincerity, you started crying into his chest as you kept on thanking him.

Hawks meant every word. He's going to make sure nobody ever lays a finger on you. How could anyone harm such a sweet thing like you?

He rubbed your shoulder with one hand to calm you down. Once you had stopped crying, he spoke again. "Hey, look. It stopped raining." You looked up and he was right; the sky had cleared up. "Well, are you ready to fly?" You smiled slightly before nodding. He told you to hold on to him tightly, and you buried your face into his chest before he took off.

Once you guys were in the air, Hawks told you to open your eyes. You did and the view was breathtaking. Tall buildings and sky scrapers were all over the city, and tiny lights from cars and street lamps looked like stars. It looked like a scene from an anime. Really pretty.

"Wow."you finally said. Hawks chuckled at that. Your looked like you just saw Santa. So adorable.

"I'm glad you like it."he said, as he started flying towards his home. You smiled. "Hey! You never told me your name."he said, mocking fake surprise.

You giggled at that. "I'm Y/n."

And just like that, Hawks finally remembered where he had seen you.

A year ago Endeavour had asked him to find everything he can on this one particular girl. Hawks thought that maybe you were linked to some case, but your records were clean, so he thought that maybe Enji was just looking for someone for Shotou. Hawks thought it was weird when you suddenly disappeared from the public eye a month later. He tried to ask Enji about you but he would just brush him off, telling him he had mistook you for someone else. It was odd, but Hawks eventually let go of it.

Wait. Does that mean Enji had been hurting you? No, that can't be it. Enji had been working with him on a lot of missions abroad, and the burn marks on your legs were rather fresh.

"Whats wrong?"your soft voice brought him out of his thoughts. "Hmm? Oh nothing. Why do you ask?"Hawks faked a smile. You stared at him. Something was off. "Nothing. Its just you were lost in your thoughts, I guess."

Hawks laughed at that. "You’re really observant, aren't you?" Deciding to test out his theory, he continued. "Well, you're right. I was thinking about a work colleague. You might've heard of him. Endeavour, hm?"

At the sound of his name, you stiffened, confirming his suspicion. You were connected to him somehow. Hawks didn't know how, but he was going to figure it out. "Um, y-yeah. He's the no.1 h- hero, right?"the fear in your voice had returned, although you were trying hard to hide it.

Hawks nodded. "Yeah!" He had to find out how you were linked to Enji. Suddenly, he turned around and started flying back where you guys had started.

"W-what are you doing? Why are we going back?"you asked him. He looked down at you and replied, "we need to get bandages for your wounds. Otherwise your feet will get infected." You nodded. "Oh. Okay." With that you closed your eyes to prevent them from drying against the wind.

After maybe half an hour or so, you opened your eyes to look where you guys were flying to. You looked down and to your horror, saw a familiar house coming up. You looked at Hawks and he seemed to know what you were thinking. "We're going down there."he nodded his head towards the Todoroki estate. Your eyes grew wide, and your body started trembling. "No! No! We- we can't! We can't go there!" You started shaking your head. "And why not?"Hawks stopped flying towards the estate, simply flapping his wings to remain in the air. You just shook your head. "We can't. I can't. Just drop me off somewhere else. I'll be fine on my own." Hawks wanted to know the real reason. He frowned. "Tell me the truth right now or I'll take you down there this instant."

You gulped, his eyes were showing that he wasn't bluffing. Your eyes started to glisten with unshed tears as you finally told him the truth. You told him everything; about how Enji had kidnapped you, how he got rid of your real family, how he and Rei had tried to keep you a secret from everyone, how their kids found out about you but instead of helping you out, became attached to you just like their parents, about how the famous villian Dabi was Enji's son and how he would sometimes burn you. By the time you were done, tears were flowing down your cheeks as Hawks tried to process what you had just confessed to him.

"Do you trust me?"he suddenly asked you. You looked at him confused. "What?" He repeated again. "Do you trust me?" Did you? Honestly, not that much, but he was the only one who was going to help you so you slowly nodded. "Yes?" Not really sure of it yourself but Hawks accepted the answer anyways. "Good." As soon as he said that, he started flying again, towards the house. You started thrashing in his arms again. "No! You said you wouldn't take me back here! You said you wouldn't!"you were full on sobbing against him, trying to wring yourself free from his vice grip, but Hawks was neither listening nor relenting his tight hold on you.

You looked down and that's when you saw them. Enji, Rei, all of them, were standing in the garden looking at you and Hawks. Even Dabi was there. Rei must've panicked and called everyone. And from the look on his- everyone's face, you could tell you were in deep trouble.

You thrashed in Hawks arms, begging him to fly away, but he didn't listen to you at all.

Once you reached the ground, you didn't pull your head out of Hawk's chest. You don't want to see their rage or the punishments they have planned for you.

"Hey, Endeavour!" Hawks broke the silence first. "Mrs Todoroki. Kids." He nodded towards them. "Hawks. Who do you have there?"Enji asked, pretending as if he doesn't know you. Hawks laughed. "You don't have to pretend! I know everything." At this, Dabi activated his quirk, ready to cremate him but was stopped by Shotou.

Thinking that this was some sort of blackmail, Enji asked, "What do you want? Money?"

Hawks smirked. "Nope! Look, I know you kidnapped her and all but you are providing her a good life, right?" He paused to look at them. Everyone nodded. He continued. "And you're just keeping her home to protect her from harm?" Again, everyone nodded. "But she still managed to escape you all even though she's quirkless and you all are not."

"Get to the fucking point."Dabi said impatiently.

Hawks sighed. "Clearly, you need all the help you can get. You need me. I can help you help her keep safe and healthy!" He paused, before his eyes lit up. "I can't have my goddaughter getting hurt again." Everyone looked at him weirdly. Goddaughter?

"How about you hand her over and you'll still be able to fly." Dabi threatened, blue flames engulfing his hands. Hawks laughed again. He was right. It wasn't Enji who giving you those nasty burns, it was Dabi. "If something happens to me, I have enough evidence gathered against you" he pointed to Dabi, "and then cops will get involved and maybe take away Y/n away."

The threat of someone taking you away from them, made their heart drop. Rei, who had been previously sobbing, put a hand on Dabi's shoulder, telling him to calm down.

Hawks grinned at Enji, raising his eyebrows. "So what will it be, Endeavour?"

Enji understood the ultimatum Hawks was giving him. Either let him in the family or risk losing you to the authorities. And he knew Hawks wasn't one to make empty threats.

Enji's eyes snapped to you. You were trying to bury yourself into Hawks chest, trying to hide from them. He wasn't that mad at you for running, more worried if anything. Had his family really spooked you that much? He'll have to worry about that later. First he needs to get you back into his and Rei's arms.

Enji sighed, before nodding. "Fine. We'll do it your way."

Hawks beamed at that. "Great!" He was glad that Enji had accepted. "Now, you need to take Y/n in before she catches a cold; although I'm certain she already has. Oh and tend to her bloody feet too! Poor thing was just running around barefoot." He chuckled. Shotou moved forward to take you from Hawks but you clung tightly to Hawks shoulders.

"Please. Please. Just take me out of here. Please." You whispered to him, fresh tears pricking your eyes now.

You looked so scared. Your eyes were saucer wide, nose red from cold and cheeks flush. Fear. That was were you emitting. But the longer he looked at your face, he found something else too. Hope. Innocence. Naivety. And while fear was the predominant emotion, the latter were the ones that he wanted to protect. "Hawks." Enji's voice broke him out from his trance. Hawks smiled. Addressing you, he started rubbing soothing circles to your back. "Hey. Hey. Its okay, princess." You kept on crying, your eyes begging him to whisk you away anywhere but here. You looked so much like him when he was little. So afraid. "Listen, do you remember what I promised you?" You furrowed your eyebrows in confusion. You're so endearing. "I promised you that I'll never let anyone hurt you again, didn't I?" You nodded slowly. "I intent on keep that promise, dove. Infact I'll talk to your dad tonight! But you need to go in and take warm bath. I don't want you getting sick, okay?"

You had seemed to calm down as you slowly nodded and let him hand you over to Shotou, who quickly ushered you in, with Natsuo, Rei and Fuyumi quickly following behind, leaving Hawks with Dabi and Enji.

"Lets go to your office, Endeavour! I have to go over some details as Y/n's new godfather." Enji nodded and went inside to go to his home office. Hawks was about to follow but was stopped by Dabi. "What game are you playing, you freak?"

Hawks chuckled, before swiftly pulling out a very sharp feather and pressing it against Dabi's jugular. "I'm just here to make sure that no one hurts Y/n again. And if I see another scorch mark on her, I'll find you and carve your skin into ribbons."

I will be accepting requests and asks for godfather hawks and Todoroki clan!

Oh and don't worry, I'm working on part 2 of rei hurting the reader. It'll be done soon! :)

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reckoningss · 2 years

Text

Break & Burn

Summary: When another door shuts in your face, maybe it's time to burn it down

Pairing: Nanami Kento x Reader

Warnings: Violence, death, language, descriptions of blood and gore, body horror, disturbing imagery. READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED

Wordcount: 5k

A/N: I probably had too much fun writing this. Feedback is welcome

You check your phone for the time just as the voice over the intercom announces the station. You're going to be late. Despite having lived in Tokyo for two years, you still find yourself struggling with the city's intricate metro system, not to mention its many delays.

The train slows to a stop and you begin to move. You're already shouldering past an incoming tide of business-attired office workers and students in their uniforms before the doors have fully opened, ignoring returned elbows and words of protestation directed at you. You already know what you look like--tall, mean, foreign.

It's all nothing new.

You've always been able to...see things--dark, impossible things.

Too tall figures looming in the already crowded hallways of hospitals, ignored by patients and orderlies alike. Their gnarled hands pale and reaching. Red rimmed eyes peering out from between the wrought iron fencing of darkened cemeteries; yellow fingers curled around the fleur de lis; barbed tongues licking rust.

They'd called you crazy back home, and when you learned to ball your shaking hands into bruising fists, they'd whispered it behind your back.

You had never belonged there.

Another glance at your phone notes the time as 8:23. You could probably make it to your appointed meeting place in time if you run but in all of your 22 years of life and your last two years living in Japan, you've never met anyone whose opinion of you mattered that much, least of all a jujutsu sorcerer. You maintain an even stride, jamming your hands deep into the pockets of your trench coat and donning a familiar scowl.

You stroll up to the cafe at 8:36--six minutes later than the agreed-upon time--and spot him immediately. His tan suit is expertly pressed and probably tailored, as is the blue button-down beneath it. His tie is a dappled yellow and shouldn't compliment the ensemble, but somehow it does. Hair neatly parted, brown wingtip shoes, scuff-free.

Nanami Kento cuts an imposing figure, even sitting down to genteely sip a cafe au lait.

You almost want to reconsider your choice of a dingy windbreaker beneath an oversized trenchcoat, all tied together with a pair of dull lug sole boots. Almost.

He's reading from a little palm-sized book which he shuts and tucks into a pocket of his suit jacket as you approach. He nods to the chair across from him, "sit," and doesn't bother to look at you before taking another sip of his coffee.

After a moment, you begrudgingly comply. Nanami slides a cup and its corresponding saucer across the table toward you. "It's black. Might be cold now."

You're late, is what he means.

You ignore the coffee, leaning back to prop your feet up on another chair. He's the overserious type--unslouching, unflinching--and you can tell that the two of you are probably going to butt heads. You haven't taken anything very seriously in a long time.

"I don't want to start this partnership off on the wrong foot." There's no hedging in his deep, even voice, and when he lifts his gaze to meet your own, you fight the urge to look away. You're struck by the intensity there. The unfamiliar ripple of a shudder picks its way up your spine on centipedal legs.

You cross your arms. "Why would it?" You're annoyed at the defensive tone you've adopted, having aimed for one more disinterested.

"We both know I've been briefed on your situation."

There it is--the hammer's fall.

You already know how the world of jujutsu sorcery views you. An outsider. An adult learning the same techniques teenagers. It had only been three years since you'd received confirmation of the actuality of the spirits and monsters you'd always seen as if through a mirror darkly. Three years since you'd traveled to Tokyo for the first time. Three years since you met Yuki Tsukomo who opened the door of jujutsu sorcery to you.

Or so you thought.

In the only place where the world had ever seemed to make sense, you'd met only resistance. You were late to the game, having no grasp of cursed energy or your own innate cursed technique. The higher-ups' reluctance to let you attend Jujutsu Tech, everyone's seeming objection to your age, even your non-existent sub-4 ranking--none of it had phased you. You'd had to fight and thrash and flail for every scrap you'd gotten state-side, why would it be any different here? It had been a long two years of bloody, stumbling work to achieve a Grade 3 ranking, but here you stand, or rather sit, unimpressed as ever.

You chuckle and take down a mouthful of lukewarm coffee to match the bitterness rising in your stomach. Nanami Kento is just another locked, unyielding door. "Then I suppose you already know how this is going to go what with me being a problem child and all."

"Not at all." His brusque response gives you pause. "Jujutsu sorcerers are shit and as such, I put relatively little stock in their opinions."

You, much to your chagrin, are at a loss for words so he continues.

"I know the relevant facts." He retrieves a tiny notebook from another hidden pocket and flips to a page using his thumb. "Born in the southeastern region of America. Ability to see cursed spirits seemingly since birth. You started Muy Thai at 8. And two years of training at Tokyo Jujutsu Technical College where you currently hold a Grade 3 ranking, though you've been assessed by some to be capable of semi-Grade 2."

His litany of stats leaves your head spinning and in your silence, he neatly fits the notebook back into its pocket before leveling you with that gaze again.

"Those are the facts, but you will determine how this mission goes. As for your ability and skill level, those have yet to be seen and assessed by me. I'll form my own opinion. Understood?"

Nanami rises from the table and straightens his suit jacket without another glance in your direction. In one conversation he has cut straight to the heart of your insecurities, leaving you raw and exposed.

After a moment you rise from your chair too. "Understood."

They'd started finding them two weeks ago. Students from colleges and universities across Shinjuku dead inside their dorms and apartments. Their bodies turned to bloody messes, remnants of their lifeless faces bearing rictus expressions of horror untold. The police hadn't been able to determine a connection between them or a cause of death consistent with their injuries and logical sense. Something had butchered them in a way only curses can.

As a newly promoted Grade 3, you aren't permitted to go on missions alone. As the resident outsider, there are few full-fledged sorcerers willing to oversee you and even fewer you'd trust to watch your back. As such, your temporary pairing with Kento Nanami came as a hesitant surprise. Being under his watchful supervision, while not ideal, means a chance for you to stretch your legs outside of the campus and its wards. A chance to see more than the weak spirits you've been tasked with cleaning up thus far.

As you work, following Nanami across the ward, you're reluctant to find yourself impressed by him. Intelligent and capable, he meets people head-on where they are. His decision-making is decisive. He's your opposite, cool and circumspect where you are rash and angry. The quintessential adult, and for all of your defenses and nonchalance, he makes you feel every bit the child.

You can't help but wonder as you trail behind him down a busy street, what it would feel like to be respected by him. To stand on equal footing--not as student and teacher, not as superior and subordinate--but as peers. Counterparts.

You grit your teeth at the heat rising in your cheeks. A five-year age difference isn't the only thing that separates the two of you. When you nearly lose sight of him in the throng, you realize you'll always be chasing after those broad shoulders and the back of that blonde head.

You nearly jump at the sound of your name on Nanami's lips breaking you from your contemplation. Instead, you shoot him a scowl and sidle away. "What?"

"I was asking what you thought about that conversation."

You'd just finished questioning a victim's classmate about their final days with little of note resulting.

You shake your head. "They all attended different colleges, but don't you think all of the victims were kind of...gloomy?"

He raises a brow at your use of the word, but you press on. "The quiet unassuming type. Sits in the back of the class, doesn't draw a lot of attention. I mean most of them were found well after their actual deaths, like they didn't have anyone to look for them."

Nanami raises a hand to his chin, nodding. "Go on."

"In comparison, most of the peers we've been talking to have been popular and outgoing. Life of the party types. They've all but approached us. Why would any of them have an idea where these people overlapped? If we want answers, we've got to find someone who probably doesn't want to be talked to."

When you look up to gauge his response, you see the shadow of a smile flicker across his lips. Your heart very nearly hammers to a stop.

"I agree. Very astute observation."

Never in your 22 years of life have you ever begged anyone for anything, but at that moment, you almost ask Kento Nanami to praise you more.

Your new line of inquiry reluctantly leads you to an online chatroom where the so-called "gloomy types" gather in their own little corner of the web. Forums on topics like isolation and social anxiety allow users to commiserate and find companionship with like-minded individuals. After some searching, you’ve even identified some of the deceased amongst the site's many members. You sympathize with them; their feelings of loneliness never should have sentenced them to death.

One post, in particular, draws your attention--or rather, its absence does. Though already deleted, you deduce from various comments and sub-forums that an anonymous user has promoted the opening of some sort of "alternative" club. Somewhere far from the wildness and big personalities of Tokyo's traditional nightlife. Somewhere for outcasts and introverts to convene. Such a place must have sounded like a beacon in the dark.

This newfound information leads you back onto the metro, this time pressed into Nanami's side by an influx of passengers, and to the edge of the ward on the border between Shinjuku and Chiyoda.

At 6:23pm you find yourself standing on the curb in front of a large, darkened warehouse. The cursed energy emanating from the structure tells you that you're in the right place. A glance at a grim-faced Nanami off your left shoulder confirms it.

Great.

"Let's get this over with."

He takes a step forward. "Let's."

Once upon a time, this place had been a nightclub called DiSTort, just another facet of Tokyo’s prominent party scene. After a lavish grand opening, the place had only lasted a year with dwindling patronage before shutting its doors. Rumors regarded supposed haunting circulated soon after the closing but faded with time.

You push open half of a set of double doors and step inside. The interior still bears the appearance of a nightclub, though hopelessly derelict. A fractured DJ table presides over the cluttered depression of a dance pit, VIP booths wave tattered velvet from around the perimeter of the room, and a set of stairs winds up into the darkness of a second floor. You can't see them, but you feel eyes on you.

A deeper dive into the location’s history had revealed that it had originally been the site of a small factory specializing in the manufacture of liquid crystal polymers. After securing a contract with a big foreign buyer, the plant suffered a series of severe personnel accidents allegedly resulting from increased production speeds. Several workers were even believed to have died on the premises. The hearsay, no matter its veracity, had been all over the neighborhood, eventually leading to the company's dissolution. What was left behind, was prime real estate for the manifestation of curses.

"I've been going back and forth on whether or not to ask," Nanami begins, stepping over the husk of an overturned barstool, "you recall that I said some assessed you as possessing the proficiency of a semi-second grade sorcerer?"

You grunt your confirmation, kicking aside a shattered can light that must have plummetted from its scaffolding overhead.

"Why do you think it is you haven't been suggested for promotion?"

You only mull the question over for a moment. The two of you are approaching the peninsula of what used to be a cocktail bar. The mirrors behind it are all broken, littering the floor with shards of glass and powder.

"I'm not exactly anyone's ideal candidate. My skill level matches most of the high schoolers at best."

"No." Nanami outstretches a hand for you to stop. In the low light, shadow pools beneath the eaves of his high cheekbones. "I'd venture to say that your hand-to-hand capabilities are regarded rather highly, as are your skills with cursed weaponry." He turns to meet your gaze, the sparse light glinting off the tinted lenses of his sunglasses. "What's holding you back is a certain level of concern over your reluctance to wield your cursed technique."

He resumes his progress forward and you follow suit.

It has been a constant point of contention. Your innate technique--your biggest selling point and the only thing that might endear you to the jujutsu sorcerers who look down their noses at you--is the one thing you refuse to do, opting instead to batter your foes with unrefined cursed energy.

“I don’t really have time for another scoldi-“

“I find it rather commendable that you’ve progressed this far using only cursed energy manipulation. You’re obviously powerful.” Nanami raises a single finger, gesturing for you to move left while he skirts around the right side of the bar. “But I’m curious why you resist it.”

He wouldn’t be. Not if he knew.

Your innate cursed technique, Break & Burn, is a scorched earth attack. Lacking even the precision of your cursed energy manipulation, it’s brutal, merciless, and performing it feels like being burned alive. The first time you’d used it, you’d been bedridden for days, wracked with a severe fever and 2nd degree burns along your arms and chest.

Nanami glances along the bar and shakes his head. Nothing.

“It hurts.” You don’t remember opening your mouth and you’d never planned on offering him an explanation. “It feels like dying.”

The words hang in the air between you and you feel as though you’ve exposed your weakness to him, ripe for the exploitation. It makes you feel small. How must he be looking at you now, knowing the depths of your fear and the selfishness that motivates it?

At the flick of his wrist, the two of you split apart, each taking one end of the dance floor and heading toward the doors along the wall on either side of it.

“I’ve always thought that it’s the accumulation of little despairs that make up adulthood.” Nanami’s voice grows in timbre and depth, bouncing off the night ceilings as he talks. “I think that’s what differentiates a low-grade from a high-grade sorcerer as well."

As he approaches his doorway and the stairs leading up into unknown darkness, he unbuttons his jacket and reaches inside. In one fluid movement, he releases his blunt sword from its leather holster. It’s a functional action, without flourish or flare, but it’s impressive nonetheless.

“The willingness to take on one more despair for the sake of others.”

With that, he disappears up the stairs and you step into a narrow hallway that stretches into blackness.

You follow the corridor, hugging the wall as you creep along in the dark. You pass the bathrooms—strewn with all sorts of trash—and a kitchen in which several molded food items inspire more fear in you than any cursed spirit ever could.

Finally, the hall opens into a room with low ceilings. Approaching a towering structure in the center of the space, you recognize it as a row of lockers, each with its own broken combination dial and rusting hinges. You test one of the small square doors and when it squeals open, the smell hits you first. Then realization grabs you by the throat.

“Myyyy baaaaaack.” The voice that sounds behind you is two sheets of sandpaper rasped together. You turn to see a hand--its fingers disjointed and knuckles split open—gripping the doorframe. “My baaaaaaaaack.”

You shut the locker, resealing its stomach-churning contents, and retreat to the end of the row, heart racing as you realize the sheer number of lockers in the room, and the items, each hides inside. Fingers. Tongues. Eyes, Ears, and Hearts. Each sitting in a drying pool of its own blood and viscera.

Just how long has this been going on?

The sound of flesh dragging along the polished concrete draws your eyes to the door, where a creature pulls itself into view.

Ravaged. It’s the only word that comes to mind as you take in its six arms, each out of socket. One curls back in on itself, fractured bone protruding from its purpling skin. Its three bulbous, broken ankles sport sickly patterns of blue-green spider veins.

“W-wooorkers Accident…Compensationnnnn.” A purple tongue laves from its vertical mouth and drips spittle onto the floor.

You want to be sick.

The thing slumps its way to a wall of lockers one row over to deposit its latest harvest, all of its limbs and joints squelching and cracking in horrific symphony. As the spirit shuts the door on its latest trophy, you spot the telltale sparkle of a butterfly earring dangling from the still-flushed ear.

You step from your hiding place into the curse's line of sight. Fists clenched.

"Insurance?" The thing cocks its head at you, taking you in with a single bloodshot eye. "Accident Insurance."

"Shut the fuck up."

You're off at a dead sprint before it can respond, dodging and ducking as it extends all of its flailing arms out toward you. You pass under its broken embrace and feel the cursed energy surge inside you as you bend and lash out with a kick. One steel-toed boot catches it in the side of the head. The curse's hand-sized teeth clamp shut around its tongue and the organ drops to the floor, oozing black ichor before dissipating into nothingness.

The spirit releases a wet burble at you and reels back. "Workplathhhh Accide-."

"I said shut up!"

You rear back for a punch, gathering a ball of cursed energy in your fist when pain rips into your shoulder like a bolt of lightning. A cry escapes your lips and you wheel to lash out at your attacker.

A man, rather, a boy stands in front of you--no older than 17--pale hair falling about his shoulders. A grin crammed with too many teeth is the only feature you can discern beneath the overhang of a dark hood. He holds his right hand upward as if holding something. Your gaze is drawn behind him by the patter of liquid against the dirty floor. A curse. At least seven feet tall, one clean line cleaved from its right temple down to its left hip. The thing mirrors the boy's pose and in its single upturned hand, it holds a dripping chunk of flesh. Your flesh.

For a moment you peer behind the pair to see the doorway swarming with an army of low-grade cursed spirits. Only then does fear grip you.

You punch another curse in the chest with enough energy to burst it like a balloon and stumble out into the arena of the club's main room.

"Nanami!"

A smaller curse launches itself at you from the top of a booth. It's batted away with the back of your hand, chittering as it falls. Your stride never falters. You're losing blood fast and can't afford to waste energy exorcising small fries.

You want to kick yourself for not realizing sooner--the walls of gore-filled lockers, the sheer size of the warehouse itself and the length of its history. Lower-grade curses have been known to congregate on occasion, attacking in unison on instinct alone. What better playground for a curse user to breed new pets?

"Nanami, where are you?!"

A rumble sounds overhead and you almost lose your footing as dust rains down around you. You're off at a sprint again, leaving a trail of blood as you bound out of the dancefloor and bolt toward the stairs. The stairwell is packed with a horde of lesser spirits, but you don't slow down. You release a blast of cursed energy as you run, clearing a path as the spirits burst into nothingness before you. Any left lingering can't reach you as you blow past.

You collide with the wall at the top of the stairs and nearly collapse. The exertion of your last effort has exhausted you and you feel your reserves running dangerously low.

It had been all you could do to escape the locker room downstairs, firing off a flurry of cursed energy-filled kicks and punches, few of which landed, and taking several hits in return as you fought your way down the hall. A curse had sunk a hook-like talon into your left side, forcing you to tear yourself away from it. You can feel the sodden polyester of your windbreaker sticking to the wound.

An immense rush of cursed energy from down the hall threatens to flatten you. To your left, Nanami winds his necktie around his knuckles. Energy is rolling off of him in waves and the sheer volume of it is almost too much to stand. It's a binding vow, unleashed. How can you even stand in the same room as someone possessing so much power?

You stand there for only a handful of seconds that feel like hours, watching Nanami feint and slice and parry. He wields his blunt sword with more precision than you've ever thought possible, and the curses, try as they might, can't even seem to touch him. His 7:3 technique is beautiful in its exactitude and severity.

The sound of footsteps echoing up the stairway urges you to heave your tired body off of the wall and assume a defensive stance, adjusting to compensate your wounded striking arm.

It's the boy again, his head rising over the stairs like a grinning, blood-dappled sunrise. He hadn't seemed to be in much of a rush downstairs and he isn't now, sauntering toward you with that tall spindly curse on his heels in a way that's almost...leisurely. Your death, you realize, is a foregone conclusion to him. And if he's lucky, maybe your spirit will stick around and turn into another curse to add to his menagerie.

"I never expected a pair of jujutsu sorcerers to find this place."

You watch his hands as he speaks, careful to keep adequate distance between yourself and the curse. It peers at you from over his shoulder with an eyeless face.

"You must be an idiot." Thankfully, your voice doesn't betray just how winded and nervous you are. "This place reeks of cursed energy."

You don't need a very high ranking to see that you're face to face with a curse master--a sorcerer who uses curse manipulation to collect and control cursed spirits--and this one has found the perfect way to farm his own, luring then killing his unwitting victims to increase the negative energy surrounding the abandoned club. Capturing the spirits born out of fear and the vengeful souls of the dead. He's no Getou Suguru, but you're pretty sure he'd like to be.

Quietly, while the two of you circle one another, you curse the higher-ups for having their heads so far up their asses so as not to see this coming. How could a curse user with this much power just go unnoticed, allowed to quietly amass a small army?

When he lifts his hand, spawning a stormcloud of curses so thick and black that you can feel its darkness, your heart drops to the pit of your stomach. Down the hall, Nanami continues his onslaught, barely breaking a sweat. Completely unaware that you're about to be snuffed out like a birthday candle.

He would be expected to survive this, you realize, exorcising even a small legion of curses and tying off the case with an expertly tied bow. He was always supposed to get out of here alive.

You, not so much.

You've been assigned an execution--your own suicide mission.

The cloud descends and there's little more you can do than surrender. Even while you cloak yourself with cursed energy, you skin is rended by a thousand tiny claws. A cacophony of shrieks in your ears and the sensation of the flesh being pulled from your very bones. You flail impotently, punching holes in the fray for a second before it reforms to reenvelop you, thicker than before. You're choking on blackness.

You wonder, in between flashes of pain and terror, if Nanami will find your body. Broken and cold. Will it pain him? Will he feel guilty? Responsible for chaperoning you to your own demise? Will he mourn your lost potential?

No.

You don't want to die here, smothered in a blanket of curses. Unheard and unseen. You want to talk to him more. Walk with him. Prove yourself to him. You want to see that almost smile again and the thought of being deprived of it evokes one feeling in you.

Despair.

Higher-ups be damned. Being an outsider, low expectations, all of the doors slammed in your face--burn it all.

If you use Break & Burn right now, it'll level everything. Structure, garbage, curse, and curse user alike will all serve as kindling to your flame. Even Nanami might be caught up in the backdraft. And with your reserves of cursed energy as low as they are, it's likely you'll wither away too.

A thought sparks to life in your mind--a single word. You feel it beginning to smolder before you even fully conceptualize what it is. Instinctively, the extension technique takes hold of you. You're reaching out to grasp a low-grade curse, not caring as it rips and claws at your hand. It's not very powerful but you take it, using its minimal cursed energy to bolster your own.

You understand the taste of it now--its ebb and flow--so you understand all of them. Every curse in the building and its master. Every body part rotting in a rusted locker. They all share the same cursed energy and you lock in on it. For one glimmering moment, time stretches taut.

You release Flashover.

The curse in your hand combusts into red flame. The cloud around you catches fire next. You watch the curses alight in an explosive chain reaction that shakes the very walls. The curse user's screams are overtaken by the rumble of concrete and metal. He and everything he controls is just oxygen exposed to the hunger of your fire.

It overtakes you. The heat. The red. The pain.

The walls resound their monstrous canon. Your vision goes dark.

Something cold touches your burned face. Again and again like cool-lipped kisses pressed to your eyelids and cheeks. You open your eyes on a black sky showering you with ash and rain.

You hear your name.

Nanami hovers over you, blonde hair slick with rain, water sluicing off the high angles of his bone structure. He's beautiful with blood trickling from a cut over his brow and dripping from his chin. Beautiful with his stern expression fractured into one of open concern. Beautiful when he says your name.

The breath you inhale feels like the first one you've ever taken.

"Hey." You cough the word more than say it.

And Nanami, miracle that he is, smiles. It's a whisper of a thing, full of relief and devoid of the affection you’re loathe to admit you crave, but you're alive to see it. He adjusts his grip on your waist where he holds you. "Hey."

He has dragged you outside through a hole blown into the side of the building; chunks of cement and debris litter the alley. Tongues of flame sizzle and hiss at the rain.

"Can you stand?"

There's not much hope in his voice, but you grit and groan your way into a sitting position. The police will be here soon and the two of you have to be gone by then. There's no time to lick your wounds, however deep.

Nanami supports most of your weight as you push yourself to your feet, ignoring the way your vision swims with the effort.

"Let's get out of here."

Nanami doesn't budge, stopping you in your tracks. You won't make it more than a few steps without his support. His eyes are on your trench coat where crimson stains have bloomed around the holes in your shoulder and waist.

"Here." You watch the muscles of his shoulders and arms tense and pull as he removes his suit jacket and drapes it over your shoulders. Soaked blue cotton hugs the curves of his biceps.

You're enveloped in his smell--suede and the dark smokiness of wood--and hope he doesn't notice when you pull the garment tighter around you.

Nanami offers you the crook of his arm. You take it and he begins to lead you down the alley. "Ieiri already knows we're coming."

It's still raining. Your arm in Nanami's, his arm in yours, sharing strength and warmth. You almost feel like a part of him--equal. Whole. Almost.

"Are you going to suggest me for promotion to grade 2?"

His even breath is the only response for a moment. "I might." You strain to see if you hear that smile in his voice. "I have to say I'm impressed with your extension technique."

You breathe in his praise and the night air and the scent of rain and blood.

His voice comes again, this time lower but firm. "I knew you could do it."

In his words, you hear something you've always told yourself you've never wanted. Hope. Expectation. His words paint the picture of a future unimagined. One where you're respected. One where you aren't chasing Nanami anymore; you've reached him.

It's still raining. You amble on beside him into Tokyo's endless neon twilight.

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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 years

Note

Please please please can we see Joanne reacting to the Chris saves himself au???

The Chris Saves Himself AU: One | Two | Three

CW: Whumper POV, abusive family member, ableist, ableism, pet whump universe

Jo's sitting at an outdoor cafe, sipping a hot cup of fresh coffee while the ocean beats against the Hawaiian sand. She's waiting on her breakfast and has a book open in front of her she has yet to read.

The sky and the water are nearly the same blue. It's dazzling. She can't take her eyes off it.

She's here for work, helping with getting a newly-opened WRU Facility off the ground. There have been protests, of course - Hawaiians have protested WRU making inroads pretty viciously, and Jo is glad for the secret employee entrance she uses so that the residents of this place don't know who she works for. Still, WRU is paying for the extended-stay hotel and three meals a day, and her nephew's inheritance pays for the drinks.

She cuts the thought before his face can enter her mind.

She dreams about him slumped over, mumbling about how tired he was, sometimes. Once the sedatives kicked in, anyway. She'd been irritated the first round didn't seem to work, and then worried she'd accidentally overdosed him after the second.

But no. No, the Acquisitions team had assured her he would be considered in perfect condition. And her finder's fee and bonus had really emphasized that he was.

Whatever. That problem is solved.

Joanne sighs, wistful. There are already people in the water, even at dawn. She can hear laughter filtering up from the beach.

It's beautiful.

Ronnie would have loved Hawaii. They had always planned to go together, before their falling-out.

Too bad her fucking husband and stupid brat dragged her down with them. Too bad the husband was a shitheel Irish mob asshole, too bad Ronnie's son was a piece of fucking work, too bad the stupid bastard couldn't stay hidden the one time it counted...

Joanne sniffs and wipes at the corner of her eye. Grief is hard - it comes and goes. But at least Tristan isn't her problem any longer.

He's probably happy as a clam doing someone's fucking gardening somewhere. Joanne simply refuses to admit that isn't at all what he is likely to be used for. It doesn't matter.

What she doesn't know, she isn't legally responsible for.

Lost in her thoughts, Joanne doesn't notice the uniformed officers who enter the cafe behind her. She takes a photo of the morning sun as an officer holds up a photocopied piece of paper to the server behind the counter. She posts the phot to her Instagram with #islandliving is the life for me! as the server points her direction and the officer nods and thanks them for their help.

She has missed calls and texts on her phone, but she'll check those later. Jo never looks at her phone before 8 am anymore. It makes everything much more peaceful.

She sees the first couple likes trickle in as the officer speaks to his partner and the two of them head her direction.

"Joanne Botham?"

She's startled out of her thoughts by the officer's voice and looks up to blink at the woman, her straight black hair in a low ponytail and expression stern. Jo feels an instinctive beat of apprehension. "Yes, that's me. Can I help you, officer?"

The officer has an odd look to her. Not hostile, but... not friendly. "Joanne Botham, resides at 435 Janus Way, in Berras, California? Employed by WRU?"

Her heart beats faster and Jo sets her phone down. Then picks up her coffee. "Yes. Is something wrong with my house?"

"No. Do you recognize this individual?"

The officer holds up another printed out photo and Jo's stomach falls to her knees and firmly lodges there. She drops her coffee, mug shattering on the floor, ceramics and liquid everywhere. The officer doesn't even flinch.

It's her fucking nephew.

It's Tristan in a hospital bed, looks like, staring at the camera with wide uncomprehending eyes. His hair is shorter than it used to be, and there is a ring of bruising around his neck, more bruises littered over his collarbone and shoulders.

She has a sudden wild urge to say she's never seen him before. Instead, she swallows and repeats the story she's practiced over and over until she's sure she can pass any lie detector test. "Yes. That's my late sister's son, Tristan. He ran away after their deaths. I thought he was dead."

The officer doesn't argue, just nods. "I see. Well, Ms. Botham, what would you say if I told you that your nephew is alive?"

Jo looks carefully, believably surprised. "He is? Where did you find him? I looked everywhere I could think of!"

"Did you?" The way the officer asks the question tells Jo there is a piece of the puzzle she hasn't seen yet... and it won't be something she likes. "Well, you'll be relieved to hear he was found alive."

"Yes... yes, I am. Relieved."

She's furious.

That little shit is going to ruin her life all over again, isn't he? She'll set his inheritance on fire before she lets him see a dollar. WRU was supposed to make it so she never saw him again.

She should have kept him locked in his room and left him there.

"I'll fly back home right away to see him," She says, a distant ringing filling her mind. "Where is he?"

"Your nephew is receiving medical care. Let's head down to the station. I'll fill you in on the details when we get there."

"Well-... Of course, officer, but I need to call my workplace-"

"We are already in contact with WRU, Ms. Botham. They are aware that you will not be in to work today. A WRU representative will be at the station."

Joanne takes in a breath and slowly lets it out. "I... I need a lawyer, don't I?"

"That's up to you, ma'am. All we want to do is talk. Please come with me." The officer steps back and gestures. Joanne stands, and the beauty of the day is suddenly lost on her entirely.

"Am I being charged with something?" Her voice is faint, suddenly. She swallows hard. "Am I being-"

"The only charged so far are laid against Governor Oliver Branch, ma'am."

"Against who?"

"Ma'am. Please come with me." There's a hand on her elbow and Joanne stumbles along. At the counter, the server is taping this, streaming it live. Jo glances up at the television over in the corner ceiling to see a news anchor talking about a WRU-branded human pet falling out of a balcony at the California governor's mansion and the resulting scandal.

Joanne thinks of all those missed calls on her phone.

"They're blaming me, aren't they?" She asks, coming to a sudden stop on the sidewalk outside. "They're blaming me! I'm going to be the fall guy, right?"

"Get in the car, Ms. Botham," The officer says firmly. One hand moves to her hip. "We can discuss this at the station."

Joanne sees the server with their phone out, following. The stupid little ass is smiling. They think this is funny.

It occurs to Jo they knew who she worked for all along.

She turns and with wild eyes yells, "WRU knew! I did nothing wrong! They knew!"

She's going to need one hell of a lawyer.

She's going to need a miracle.

She suddenly wishes she hadn't spent so much of Tristan's money. She could've used it for her legal fees.

@burtlederp @finder-of-rings @endless-whump @astrobly @newandfiguringitout @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whump-tr0pes @what-a-whump @whumptywhumpdump @downriver914 @whumpiary @orchidscript @nonsensical-whump @outofangband @eatyourdamnpears @whumpfessional

#whump #pet whump #box boy #box boy universe #jesus joanne #chris saves himself au #whumper pov #ableism tw #abusive family member #whumper gets comeuppance #derogatory language #brief

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remmysbounty · 3 years

Note

First off I love your fics, they’re always *chefs kiss* <3

I have a request if you’re open to them, hear me out here: The times Torres shows up on your doorstep with the shit kicked out of him and one time where you show up on his? Maybe reader works nights in a shop that’s open late and Torres keeps finding his way there after encounters with flag smashers, etc. because he knows reader won’t send him to a hospital and will help him patch up? (Bonus points for mildly concussed flirting) I’m just a sucker for first aid with feelings :)

Omg I absolutely love this request!!!! Yes thank you so much for sending this 💛💛💛💛

side note: I’m back, sorry for taking so long boo!! And I hope you like this

joaquin torres x gn!reader

Knock #1:

He knew it was close by. The small cafe that you’d started working at ever since you started getting your masters just blocks away. But as his head continued to pound, and his eyes were strained from the shining light above him, he almost missed the entrance if it were not for you standing at the doorway looking out at the empty street.

“Joaquin?” Your soft voice prompted him to stop in his tracks and turn his head, trying and failing to hide the obvious injuries all over his face and body.

His words slurred, “Hola, bella.”

“Hey,” you stepped closer to him and set your hands on his upper arms softly, “Why don’t we get you inside, okay?”

Joaquin nodded his head, or at least he thought he did, he wasn’t entirely sure with how strongly his head pounded.

As you led him to the office, his hands intertwined themselves with yours, and once you settled him on the desk, you found yourself being pulled into his chest, where your hands rested.

“Joaquin?” His hold tightened on you even as his body screamed at him in pain, “Let me clean you up please?”

Joaquin could hear the begging in your voice and let go reluctantly, a pout growing on his face as he did so, “I just want to hold you.”

You cupped his face softly, your eyes tracing over his figure as you seemed to soften as you got a better view at his injuries, “I need to clean you up first, okay?”

This time Joaquin nodded for sure and when your hand pulled away, you heard a whimper escape his lips.

As you helped patch him up, you made sure to keep one of your hands in contact with Joaquin, usually on his thigh or his arm, and when you treated his face, on his cheek. His eyes drifted constantly, making you believe he was looking at your lips and when he started to lean forward you knew you were right... only instead of your lips touching it was your foreheads with a loud thump.

“Ow,” you whispered softly, as Joaquin brought his hands up to check your own injury even while you tried to do the same for him.

You wanted to kiss him, you really did, and from the way his eyes remained stuck on your lips you knew he wanted to as well, but now with all the blood and bruises cleaned away all you could see was the tiredness etched on his face. Your lips pressed against the crook of his neck, “Get some rest, please.”

Knock #2:

Joaquin had told you about how he got into a fight with members of the Flag Smashers so now as the cafe was empty and all your tasks completed, there you stood against the door waiting for Joaquin to pass by but also hoping that he wouldn’t come because it meant he wasn’t injured. You looked down at your phone to check the time, only to look up again and find Joaquin standing just in front of you with a sheepish smile on his face.

Your eyebrows raised at the new injuries littering his body, as if saying “Really?” but without a single spoken word you led him inside and towards the office where the first aid kit resided, open and ready for use.

Much like the previous night, his face and body were littered with blacks and purples and yellows, but this time you swallowed down your shock and merely let your hands run their way over each bruise. His eyes remained focused on your lips, no longer trying to hide his eagerness, and every time your hands were just within reach of his own he’d grab them, and hold on as tight as he could until you’d send a glare his way and he let you continue to work.

His voice broke the silence between the two of you, “You really are stunning.”

You wanted to laugh at his words, your body clearly showing the exhaustion it carried, your hands practically shaking as they cleaned another bruise in their path, but you merely smiled, a soft thank you filling the air as you finally had the courage to look him in the eye.

“You’re definitely the masterpiece though, especially with all these colors,” he grabbed your hand and you let him.

By now the only light that glared was a small golden lamp in the corner, half of your faces highlighted by its haze while the other half was covered by the darkness just outside.

You wanted to kiss him, and for a second you thought you could, only for Joaquin’s phone to go off. The dread grew on both of your faces.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, “They are waiting for me.”

Your hands broke away as you watched him start to walk towards the entrance. Then he felt you pull him back in, surprising the two of you with your strength to pull him back and in towards you, your lips finally touching as your chest met his. He almost didn’t feel your lips, couldn’t imagine that you’d done it until he felt the way your arms had wrapped themselves around his neck, “Stay safe, please.”

His lips flew back in. The phone sitting in his pocket continued to vibrate but Joaquin was sure Sam and Bucky would understand why he was a couple minutes late.

Knock #3:

You stumbled up the stairs, luckily catching yourself before your head made contact with the wood beneath you. The color of the walls, and the swinging lamp above you was so familiar. Somehow you had brought yourself to Joaquin’s place, and even as you tried to stop the blood that felt like it was coming from everywhere, you continued to trudge forward.

Each step felt so slow, as if you were walking in mud, and everything around you seemed to merge and separate as the world spinned, but you kept pushing around you.

Your hand knocked on his door, at least you imagined yourself doing that, now though as your head rested against his doorway you wondered if you’d even moved.

Then you heard your name, the worry glaringly obvious as he led you inside, “What happened?”

“They were attacking- I couldn’t- I couldn’t just,” your chest started to move faster and faster as you remembered the events that led you to the current moment.

He cupped your face, trying to avoid the open wound, forcing you to look into his eyes, “It’s okay now. You’re safe.” You nodded your head, “you’re safe.”

His fingers graced over every bruise and bloody wound on your body, even as you whimpered or squeezed the hell out of his knee. And where his fingers touched, his lips followed. Each soft touch acting like an extra band-aid to the one he’d already placed.

You didn’t want to move, not if it meant receiving his touch like this. With just the first one, he made you addicted for more, and much like he did, your eyes continued to make their way to his lips. Your hands made their way to his hair, treating them like an extra lifeline to Joaquin. Tethering your body to his, as his own movements came to a complete stop.

Nobody knew who made the first move, but there the two of you were, your lips slowly devouring one another even as your body screamed and burned. You’d treat it eventually that’s for sure, Joaquin wouldn’t let you leave without making sure, but for now you’d let yourself surrender to his touch just as he did the same to yours.

——

Joaquin Torres: @pascalpanic @cleversturmhond @booksmusicteaandanimals @cooluncleboba @autumnleaves1991-reads @marvelouss-marvel @mischiefmanaged71 @the-and-sign-anon @barzal-burakovsky @young-romanoff

#remmys bounty #remmys writings #remmys requests #joaquin torres request #joaquin torres x you #joaquin torres imagine #joaquin torres x gn!reader #joaquin torres x reader #joaquin torres

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jessicaowo1 · 3 years

Text

Third Year Catasphrope

Title: Third Year Catasphrope

Ship: Izuku x Reader (Shinsou’s sibling), Gender Neutral Reader

Warning: Angst

Word Count: 931

Author’s Note: Drink water. Also, prioritize yourself. Y/N quotes are bolded

What started as a simple argument over Izuku coming home late from hero patrol escalated quickly. You were sitting on the couch for an hour waiting for your boyfriend to come back. It was your third anniversary today and, you wanted to surprise him with a kitten. It was cliche, to say the least, but, he had hero work and, got irritated with the public eye. He especially didn’t like you being harassed by reporters about your private life.

An hour became two hours, and two hours became three. The long anticipation to surprise your boyfriend left a sour lump in your threat. Even the cat got fed up and left the room with its tail sticking up. Your patience has also run out, you didn’t want to be nosy so you didn’t call his hero agency. Instead, you grabbed your shoes and left a post-it note on the fridge saying you went on a run.

Leaving the apartment by yourself was a rare occurrence. Usually, Izuku would escort you outside in fear of villains attacking you. You always thought he overreacted about the entire situation, you went to the same school as him and, your quirk was quite powerful on its own.

As you strolled around the city, you spotted one of your favorite cafes. As you walked inside the warmth of the pastries and smells of hot chocolate filled the room with nostalgia. This was your first date location with Izuku which your brother, Shinsou set up. Both of you were pining for each other but, too oblivious to notice. Shinsou got fed up and set you guys on a date.

You took a seat near the window after ordering yourself a strawberry shortcake. While waiting, you began people watching, something you picked up during your high school career to pass time. You then notice a familiar green-haired boy walking on the sidewalk. Izuku was with a mutual friend. This mutual friend, however, was not a hero whatsoever, they were a nurse at the local hospital.

Your insecurities were getting the better of you. Was he blowing you off with another person? No, he wouldn’t. But, there was no evidence supporting he was doing something important. He told you in the morning, he would come after his patrol. As you ate your strawberry shortcake, there was a lingering question in the back of your head, why wasn’t being transparent.

You went back to your apartment with weight on your shoulders. You played with the cat waiting for Izuku to come home. He didn’t come back till 9, past diner. When he entered, he had that cheery eye looked on his face. You not wanting to deal with this facade or to put up your own you asked the question.

“Where were you?”

“Hey, I was on hero patrol remember?”

“Yeah but, what took you so long?”

“Why asking so many questions?”

“Didn’t patrol end five hours ago?”

“What are you accusing me of?”

“I am not accusing you of anything, I just want clarity.”

“You know that building up my career is the most important thing to me?”

“But, aren’t I also important.”

“Of course you are.”

“Then what’s today?”

“Huh?”

“What is today, Izuku?”

“Friday?”

“What the hell Midoriya, it’s our third anniversary?”

“F/N, I-”

“You are never here. Sometimes it feels likes I’m in a relationship with myself. What will it take for you to factor me into your life”

“Let me explain-”

“No, you don’t have to explain, you made it clear. ”

(He stays silent)

“You prioritize hero work over your mental wellbeing. When is the last time you took a day off? You even place hero work over your relationships. When was the last time you called or visited your mother? Have you hanged out with Katsuki or Shoto in the last few months?”

“Are you done?”

“Yeah, we are done. I am going to my brother’s house, don’t follow or call me. I will pick my things up later when you are on patrol.”

You left the apartment outraged, you were warned by Todoroki that you were never going to be prioritized. Being in any relationship with a pro-hero, they always wanted to further a career. They wouldn’t spend their Sunday evening at the dinner table but rather, at the office. To be by the side of a hero, you must sacrifice monogamy, his heart truly never being yours.

When you came to Shinsou’s apartment, you broke down in tears. As your brother wrapped his arms around you, you broke. You couldn’t tell if it was your patience, the feeling of happiness, or kindness. It was like being a kid all over again. You felt pain, once from your brother’s demons coming to you again. But this time, rather than fighting someone else’s demons you were fighting your own.

This wasn’t a one-time situation, everyone knew that. This fight was happening for multiple months. Unlike the other fights, this time Izuku participated. This time you were the hero, a hero is a person who dares to stand up for what is right. You put your foot down and said the unspoken truth overlooked.

Maybe, you would get a thank you card from Izuku for mending a relationship with his mom. Giving him a social life. Who were you kidding, he would forget about you as soon he becomes number one. To him, you were just a hurdle that he had to overcome.

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rapeculturerealities · 3 years

Link

Mona Lisa lay on a hospital bed in Mekelle, the main city in war-torn northern Ethiopia, her body devastated but her defiance on display.

Named for the iconic painting, the 18-year-old Ethiopian high school graduate had survived an attempted rape that left her with seven gunshot wounds and an amputated arm. She wanted it to be known that she had resisted.

“This is ethnic cleansing,” she said. “Soldiers are targeting Tigrayan women to stop them giving birth to more Tigrayans.”

Her account is one of hundreds detailing abuses in Tigray, the mountainous region in northern Ethiopia where a grinding civil war has been accompanied by a parallel wave of atrocities including widespread sexual assault targeting women.

A senior United Nations official told the Security Council last week that more than 500 Ethiopian women had formally reported sexual violence in Tigray, although the actual toll is likely far higher, she added. In the city of Mekelle, health workers say new cases emerge every day.

The assaults have become a focus of growing international outrage about a conflict where the fighting is largely happening out of sight, in the mountains and the countryside. But evidence of atrocities against civilians — mass shootings, looting, sexual assault — is everywhere.

In early December, Ms. Mona said, an Ethiopian soldier burst into the house she shares with her grandfather in Abiy Addi, a town in central Tigray, and ordered them to have sex.

“Please,” she recalled her grandfather, an Orthodox Christian, telling the soldier. “This is abnormal and against our religious beliefs.”

When her grandfather refused, the soldier shot him in the leg and locked him into the kitchen. Then he pinned Ms. Mona to a sofa and tried to rape her. She fought back, kicking the man in the crotch and briefly grabbing his gun, she said.

But he quickly overpowered her and, after shooting her in the hand and firing warning shots into the floor, issued another ultimatum. “He said he would count to three and if I did not take off my clothes he would kill me,” she said.

The soldier fired a volley of bullets that cut through Ms. Mona’s right arm and right leg. By the time she got transportation to the Mekelle General Hospital a day later, doctors were forced to amputate the arm.

She is still in the hospital, the bones in one leg still shattered. An uncle at her bedside corroborated her account of the assault on Dec. 4. Ms. Mona, who consented to be identified, called it a calculated act of war.

“My case is not unique,” she said. “I fought the soldier off. But there are so many women all over this region who were actually raped.”

After months of increasingly desperate pleas for international action on Ethiopia, led by senior United Nations and European Union officials, the pressure appears to be producing results. President Biden recently sent an envoy, Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, to Ethiopia for talks with Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, that lasted five hours.

On Tuesday, addressing Ethiopia’s Parliament, Mr. Abiy publicly acknowledged that sexual assault had become an integral part of a war that he once promised would be swift and bloodless.

“Anyone who raped our Tigrayan sisters, anybody who is involved in looting, will be held accountable in a court of law,” Mr. Abiy told lawmakers, appearing to implicate his own soldiers. “We sent them to destroy the junta, not our people.”

The “junta” is a reference to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, known as the T.P.L.F., which governed Tigray and now fights under the banner of a new group, the Tigray Defense Forces. The majority of sexual violence accusations in Tigray have been leveled against Ethiopian and allied Eritrean soldiers. But Tigrayan forces may also be guilty of war crimes, the top U.N. human rights official, Michelle Bachelet, said this month.

The war started in November after Mr. Abiy accused the T.P.L.F. of attacking a major military base in a bid to overthrow his government. The T.P.L.F. ruled Ethiopia for nearly three decades until Mr. Abiy came to power in 2018, then retreated to its stronghold in Tigray, where it began to openly defy the new prime minister’s authority.

In some ways, the bitter fight is driven by deeply rooted forces — longstanding land disputes, opposing visions over the future shape of Ethiopia, and a rivalry with Eritrea going back decades. But civilians, and particularly women, are bearing the brunt of the most disturbing violence.

Rocks, nails and other objects have been forced inside the bodies of women — and some men — during sexual assaults, according to health workers. Men have been forced to rape their own family members under threat of violence, Pramila Patten, the top U.N. official on sexual violence in conflict, said in January.

“Rape is being used as a weapon of war,” said Letay Tesfay of the Tigray Women’s Association, which runs a safe house for women in Mekelle. “What’s happening is unimaginable.”

The epidemic of sexual assault is exacerbated by a collapsing health system. Many victims have contracted sexually transmitted diseases, including H.I.V., doctors say. Demand for abortions and emergency contraceptives has risen.

But outside the main towns of Tigray, most health clinics are shut — some destroyed in fighting, others plundered by soldiers as part of what Doctors Without Borders recently called a concerted effort to destroy the region’s health care system. In his meeting with Mr. Abiy in March, Senator Coons said they discussed “directly and forcefully” the reports of widespread human rights violations including rape.

Whether Mr. Abiy delivers on his promise of bringing the perpetrators to justice, he added, “is going to be critical to any successful resolution of this conflict.”

The anguish of victims resonates quietly through the wards of the Ayder Referral Hospital in Mekelle, the region’s biggest medical facility.

A doctor specialized in sexual assault said he had received at least three new patients every day since Ethiopian troops marched into Mekelle on Nov. 28. Some said they had been raped by soldiers in the camps for displaced people on the edge of the city; others were abducted from their homes in rural areas and held for days as soldiers repeatedly raped them.

The doctor, who like several other medics spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the authorities, produced a list of 18 registered sexual violence patients at the hospital. The youngest was 14. Most said their attackers were soldiers, he said.

In one bed, a 29-year old woman who asked to be identified only by her first name, Helen, trembled as she recounted how Eritrean and Ethiopian troops had tied her to a tree near her home in Agula, 15 miles north of Mekelle, and assaulted her repeatedly over a 10-day period in late November.

“I lost count,” she said. “They took photos of me, poured alcohol on me and laughed.” Some of her assailants also shot dead her 12-year-old son, she added.

Selam Assefe, a police investigator working on rape cases at the Ayder Referral Hospital, corroborated Ms. Helen’s account.

Most sexual assault cases in Tigray, however, may not be recorded anywhere. Health workers said that officials are reluctant to register such violence, fearing that the military could target them for documenting the crime. Patients often remain anonymous for the same reason.

Filsan Abdullahi Ahmed, Ethiopia’s minister of women, children and youth, insisted that the federal government was taking seriously the reports of sexual violence in Tigray, and had sent a task force including social workers, police officers and prosecutors to investigate.

While her own mandate was limited to providing victims with psychological support, Ms. Filsan said she had pressured Ethiopia’s attorney general to deliver justice. But it is a difficult process, she insisted.

“I cannot 100 percent confirm whom this is being committed by,” Ms. Filsan said, referring to the perpetrators.

The sexual attacks are so common that even some Ethiopian soldiers have spoken out. At a public meeting in Mekelle in January, a man in military uniform made an outburst that was broadcast on state television.

“I was angry yesterday,” he said. “Why does a woman get raped in Mekelle city?” The soldier, who was not identified, questioned why the police weren’t stopping them. “It wouldn’t be shocking if it happened during fighting,” he said. “But women were raped yesterday and today when the local police and federal police are around.”

Haben, a waitress in Mekelle, was raped with two other women at the cafe where they work in December, she said. Her body is still covered in bruises from the assault.

“They told us not to resist,” she recalled. “‘Lie down. Don’t shout.’”

But even if they had shouted, she added, “there was nobody to listen.”

#politics and government #Ethiopia #rape as a tool of war #voices #survivors

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kisskissbanggang · 3 years

Text

Death Warmed Up

[<15Min Read/~4K Words - Coffee Shop Au - Felix x Neutral Death!Reader - Fluff, Minor Angst - Dogs, Death, Coffee]

[Originally slated for the skzwriternet Cozy Collab, but here it is! Hope you enjoy.]

Nets: @skzwriternet @kwritersworld

Masterlist | Feedback

You stared at the assignment you had found on your desk. This was late… by two years?

The notion was fully ludicrous. Even with a file like this, there was no way that it could reasonably have been delayed by two whole years. Then again, the idea of getting saddled with an interesting case intrigued you. It sort of felt fancy — important, even — to see this in your inbox when you sat at your desk. You flicked through the file again. Felix Lee, 21 years old: living on Borrowed Time since he was 19.

You hadn’t been an Arbiter very long, and you mulled over just how little Borrowed Time you’d really seen since your appointment. There was the tiny old grandmother — Jane, you thought her name was — a matriarch of her household and a staple of her community, but even then her Arbiter, Bill, could only find her a year from scraping together everything he could. He had told you all that when he did finally meet her at the end, he was in tears along with all her family, and she was the only one smiling. The fact that this kid could be afforded two years was a feat in and of itself, to a point that you were morbidly curious who the previous Arbiters were. The most recent was Jisung, a surprising name to find. Jisung was nice, he liked to maintain how he looked when he died in the mid-nineties, nose ring and flannel and all… and he currently worked as a first-level Arbiter, watching day-to-day activities between humans and the world around them. When you got transferred into the department you’d had no idea that he used to be up on this level. The previous Arbiter’s name was Chan: a name you didn’t recognize and had never heard around the office. Whatever had happened, you didn’t want to hear it. You didn’t want to get distracted by excuses. You needed to see for yourself.

◇─◇──◇──🍂──◇──◇─◇

It was a surprisingly balmy autumn afternoon when you finally found the cafe. Even with all the extra instincts and wherewithal you were afforded by your position, you still had to search around for the little coffee bar, a humble cubby hidden away in an alley off a side street in the bustling city. Some trees lined the sidewalk outside and the orange leaves managed to drift on by, and there was a young man sweeping them off the stoop of the cafe before he turned to go back inside. You opened your portfolio and pulled out your file again. You examined it closely. Could that have been him? The guy now cleaning up behind the bar? There was no way that was him. You stepped closer down the alley.

Thankfully, even if the young man in the window did look up, he wouldn’t see you in this plane you were currently occupying. Your body was only as real as your conscious willed it considering you were already dead, and right now you were perfectly content watching the barista bustling about behind the counter. A little old man with smart half-moon glasses waved from where he sat in his cracked leather armchair by a tall bookshelf, getting his attention.

“Felix, dear, could you top me off?”

Well, there, then. This was the guy.

He didn’t seem so special.

Felix didn’t look like his picture. That was your first hint. The photo was always a snapshot of the client at the time the referral was made to Arbitration, and he looked much worse for wear a couple years ago, laying in a hospital bed and hooked up to a spiderweb of tubes. Here, now, Felix stood tall and healthy, slim but fit under his apron, a modest but present definition in his arms showing through the rolled sleeves of his shirt as he set about making a new drink for the tottering old man. A spray of freckles adorned his dainty nose and rested among the golden glow of his cheeks, and he even had a little satisfied smile curling at his lip as he got the foam just right on the old man’s coffee.

You still didn’t see what all the fuss was about.

A dog ran up to Felix behind the counter, a panting golden retriever asking for pats, and your heart begrudgingly melted. In fact, there were even more dogs you hadn’t noticed. A small scotty rested at the feet of the old man. A tiny chihuahua slept in a basket on the counter that barely roused as Felix stepped over to add the drink to the man’s tab. A sleek sheepdog sat up from behind the counter to let him by, and a basset hound raised its head from where it sat in another chair when Felix set the warm cup on a small table by his elderly customer. Felix pet the dogs in a round and wiped up a string of drool from the basset with the corner of his apron before he returned to the counter and washed his hands.

Fine, so Felix was good with dogs.

But being good with dogs didn’t automatically mean you were entitled to Borrowed Time.

◇─◇──◇──🍂──◇──◇─◇

You returned with gusto the next day, ready to confront this supposedly difficult client. Your getup was simple, fully materialized now and dressed as a package courier. This form was common when working on this plane, even popular with other people in your department like Jisung, the previous Arbiter, who actually did use to deliver packages back before he died. It made sense in getting a feel for who a client really was. This was a blue collar worker that people were used to seeing and seeing through, and could really show who a person could be, given the right situation. And you really wanted to see who Felix could be.

You strolled into the cafe, large box in hand with a clipboard sitting on top and a pen tucked behind your ear. Felix perked up when you let it thunk onto the counter, the weight taking care of the poignancy.

“Delivery,” you boredly greeted. “Can you sign for this?”

“Er,” Felix stared — at you, the box, and back at you, “what is it? I wasn’t expecting anything.”

You laughed out loud as you held out your pen to him. “I don’t know, I’m just delivering it. Can you sign for this, please?”

Felix bit at his lip before he grabbed the proffered pen and signed, and you looked amused as you stood and watched him slice open the box with a pair of scissors from under the counter. What surprised you was that this old trick — this misdelivered box of assorted mugs and pens — only made Felix laugh.

“I didn’t order these!”

“That’s too bad,” you shrugged sympathetically. Admittedly, his smooth and deep voice was pleasantly unexpected, catching you off guard. “They’re addressed here and you signed for them.”

Felix’s eyes widened as he plucked out a piece of paper. “There’s an invoice?! With a balance on it?!”

But he still only laughed. You were a bit stumped.

“I guess I’ll pay this before I return it,” Felix shrugged. “I’d hate for someone to get a late bill on a mistake like this.”

You were puzzled, to say the least, as you turned to leave, but then Felix stopped you.

“Hey!” He called. “I feel bad that you had to come all the way here just for this to not be mine. Can’t I at least get you a drink on the house? Do you like dogs?”

The most astounding thing of all was you felt yourself heat up at his offer. This was well and truly bizarre, but you needed to check this out as well. There had to be fine print. You should’ve looked closer at the file.

You dumbly nodded as Felix gladly directed you over to a seat at the bar by his register. When he asked what you liked and you added a dumb shrug to your list of unintended responses, he shrugged in return and said he’d love to surprise you, then. Felix ground some beans down to a dense powder, pressed it into a puck, and pulled a couple espresso shots. You found yourself intrigued, having never seen or paid any attention to someone doing this by hand before. He steamed a small pitcher of milk until a modest head of creamy foam sat on top and carefully poured it in the center of the shots. He proudly slid the cup over to you on a saucer.

“A flat white,” he humbly presented. You silently nodded your gratitude and tried it. This was utterly confounding. The same misdelivery stunt got a shoe thrown at you by a client a few years back. You had to put the cup down as soon as you tried a sip.

“Is everything alright?” Felix worriedly asked. The fluffy lab originally sleeping on the rug in the center of the cafe got up to check on you, his wet nose leaving a slight print on your uniform pants.

“Er, yeah,” you gulped down the hot drink on your lips, “this is just really good. Are you sure I can’t pay you?”

Felix raised a hand to deny you. “Wouldn’t dream of accepting it. I’m sure you’ve been working hard all day anyway.”

“Sure have,” you stiffly lied. “Well, I can at least tip you.”

You conjured a wallet with a sizable bill inside, more than enough to cover the coffee as you quickly downed the modestly sized beverage. Felix beamed as you waved goodbye.

Fine.

So Felix was nice. So Felix was really nice. Felix was really nice, and kind, and he made good coffee.

But you’d have to try anyway. There was something in him that could convince you that he wasn’t 100% good, even though that shouldn’t have been a reason from the beginning.

◇─◇──◇──🍂──◇──◇─◇

You returned two nights later, but you didn’t enter the small side street. Instead, you paced in front of your parked bike out on the sidewalk, over and over again, working up the nerve. After a while, though, you knew it was time. You would goad Felix into dropping the act, into showing who he really was under all the sugar and sunshine. After making sure the sizeable package was sitting precariously on your handlebars to match the one on the back of your bike, you revved the little engine as Felix swept the stoop for the night. You barreled down the street, apparently unable to see much in front of you beyond the shoddy headlight. This was fine. This was easy. You’d done this before, and a saint of an old schoolteacher beat the snot out of you with their cane for it a while back. Felix noticed you at the last second, eyes widening comically as you reflexively honked.

You couldn’t do it.

Your finger barely squeezed the brake, but the front axle jackknifed and sent you ass over elbows onto the pavement.

Everything went white for a second and you definitely did not miss being alive in this moment, because this invariably sucked. And now Felix was there.

“It’s you!” Felix gasped and immediately offered you a hand up. “You scared the daylights out of me!”

“Uh,” you stammered and groaned, “I can say the same.” You could not wait to leave this plane and not feel the pain radiating in your hip and back. But right now, Felix was already pulling you into the cafe and fretting.

“Are you in a rush? You should at least sit down a moment.”

You sighed and let Felix seat you in a comfy chair by a heater in the small cafe, only lit by warm lamps at this time of night. The basset hound watching from a basket on the low windowsill came to sit at your feet as Felix hurriedly set about making you a hot cup of tea. He rushed over, light on his feet and pushing the warm mug into your hands. You nearly spat as you looked closer at the ceramic cup. “Is this—?”

“From that box you brought me the other day? Sure is.” Felix let the force of his belly laugh carry him into a chair beside you. “The funniest thing, really. I tried calling the phone number on that invoice and only got busy tones, and I tried looking up the business and only found dead websites. I figured I could always use pens and mugs, so now I have a supply and a funny story.”

You could crumple into dust, honestly. You set the mug on the little table by your chair, albeit a tad roughly. “I’m so sorry,” you shook your head, “but what is your deal? You’re literally the happiest person I ever met.”

Felix’s eyes pointed sharp into you. There it was.

But he wasn’t angry. He seemed embarrassed.

“Well,” he sighed, even still attempting to maintain his persistent smile, “it’s a long and tired story. I was really sick a couple years ago and I pulled through when no one thought I could.”

“I’m sorry—” you meekly interjected, but it was too late. The shine in Felix’s eye finally dulled, if only a little. You’d cracked him.

“It’s fine,” Felix reassured you. He gently patted your knee before he got back up to his feet. “You go ahead and enjoy your tea. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“Of course, yeah,” you babbled as you got up and followed him anyhow, “I’m just glad I didn’t hit you.” You set the mug on the bar and sat down as he walked behind the register. The chihuahua in his basket drowsily got up and walked into your hand for pets.

“I was going to say the same,” Felix nodded tiredly with a worn smile. “It’s happened before. I guess I should put some lights up outside. A cute delivery boy almost ran me over with his bike about a year ago, too.”

“Delivery boy?” You asked starkly. Felix caught your look before falling right back into stride. His grin seemed to get its warmth back.

“Yeah,” he nodded amusedly. “He had an adorable nose ring, I remember I was terrified I almost ripped it out when he helped me up.”

Felix looked confused at the very least as you choked on your tea.

“I’m sorry,” you sputtered out. “You know I — it’s weird that — I just remembered I need to be somewhere. Thank you again, for everything.” You dug out entirely too much money for the tea and clapped it down onto the counter before grabbing your things and sprinting out the door.

◇─◇──◇──🍂──◇──◇─◇

Jisung looked caught as you slapped Felix’s file on his desk. “Hi,” he squeaked as you towered over him.

“What happened when you tried to crack him?”

The young Arbiter let his head drop back with a hard sigh. “You got the file? I knew he couldn’t last long.”

“You only gave him another year, you had to know this was coming.”

“He was just so—? He’s so nice, and genuine, and warm?” Jisung blathered on as he sat back up and flipped through the file. “He was never the same since what Chan did. He was the most amazing turnaround I’d ever seen.”

“So you gave him a year—“

“I didn’t.” Jisung shook his head. “Look closer at the file. I put him back in the queue for Reassessment.”

“What do you mean you—“

“Look,” Jisung insisted. He grabbed your sleeve and dragged you down the hall. “I put him back in Reassessment and was lucky to only get demoted. After what Chan did, I couldn’t bring myself to do more.”

“What are you showing me?”

“Here.”

Jisung shook out his hands and you found yourself standing beside him in a graveyard. This was a pleasant enough place to end up. The grass was neatly trimmed and there were trees and benches to sit on. The orange and red leaves scattered around looked like confetti, a graceful celebration at the end of life. Jisung stood between two headstones.

“I made the mistake of looking at what Chan did, except Felix’s family wasn’t gone yet when he had the file. They were on their way out, though. He saw that they were leaving soon, and Felix would be alone with his grandfather at his cafe. His grandfather would be all alone after losing all of them, and that would be after everything Felix would go through, getting sick and getting better and learning to live again. Chan saw a horrible ending to an awful story and put a stop to it, and he got banished for it.”

“That’s not fair though,” you shook your head, “no matter how much you or he wanted it.”

“But look at him!” Jisung reeled. “That decision made one of the brightest humans I’ve ever seen. When I put him back to Reassessment, I just spent time around him before I was called back. I suggest you do the same, no matter what you choose. I hope this helped.”

Jisung haughtily folded his arms before he vanished. You finally looked more closely at the headstones. Those years were much too close together. Your heart hung low in your gut.

◇─◇──◇──🍂──◇──◇─◇

Felix grinned wide when you returned to the cafe. He immediately set about making you a drink.

“I was wondering when I’d see you again.”

“You were?”

This was feeling familiar, like you were home or at a friend’s house, while you sat yourself in an easy chair and let the panting sheepdog sit between your feet so you could scratch under her chin.

“Yeah!” Felix brightly called over. “Because you asked why I’m like this, I sort of only gave you half an answer.”

“I’m sorry again,” you lamented.

“It’s fine,” Felix said adamantly as he set a warm mug in your hands. He gestured grandly before sitting down. “A latte. Now, I only gave you half an answer. The fact of the matter is that I spent a good while tied to tubes and machines with nothing to do and no choice in the matter. Now, all this time later, I’m just happy to be here, because I know the day after could be any day now.”

“The day after?”

Felix nodded. “When you come away from something like that, later it just feels like a day. One big day, or week, or whatever is tangible, but it definitely wasn’t forever. It feels like one big day to me. This, in the grand scheme of things, is the day after that, but the day after this, when everything actually does end— I’m expecting it. And I’m not scared, but I’m going to be enjoy my time here as much as I can.”

“You’re not scared?”

“Not anymore,” Felix shook his head in determination. “I had to cope with my own loss like everyone else was getting ready to cope with losing me. I didn’t get to have that luxury of not expecting it anymore, because I know what it looks like and I know what’s coming. To do anything else would be a disservice, so I’d rather walk into it with a clear mind and a full life.”

You thought of Bill and Jane, how she was the only one not crying at the end. It was hard to place exactly how you felt, sipping your coffee made with loving hands in this small cafe full of an inordinate amount of golden afternoon sunlight for being so hidden away from the main road. Felix fit here — cosmically, almost, in the least dramatic way you could muster.

“I’m really glad you feel that way,” you said, hoping that the added sincerity hidden behind the sentiment was felt.

The shimmer in Felix’s eyes told you it was. “I am, too. And I’m especially glad you’re back, because I like seeing you around. I don’t think I’ve given away this many free drinks since that delivery boy last year.”

“I like seeing you, too, Felix.” You finally admitted it, and it was true, even more so as Felix’s shining smile grew even more. You did like seeing Felix, and you would continue to see Felix as much as you were able, all the way to the end.

#skzwriternet #kwritersworldnet #stray kids felix #lee felix #lee yongbok #I DID IT MORE FLUFF FOR THE FLUFF BOY #MORE SFW FLUFF FOR THE FLUFF BOY #pixie demon lee felix 😈💕

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howtosingit · 3 years

Text

Fic: i'll be there for you, ‘cause you’re there for me too

Following her accident, Carlos worries about Michelle. Luckily, he has TK at his side.

A missing moment from 1x05.

1.9K | Also on AO3

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“You okay over there?”

Carlos is pulled from his spiraling thoughts by the sudden, direct question. He shakes himself out of his haze, blinking quickly as he takes in the image on the TV before him - a frozen Lucy drunkenly spooning “Vitameatavegamin” into her mouth. He was so caught up in his own head that he didn’t even notice when TK paused his favorite show.

He turns to look at the other man, noticing how the off-duty firefighter is laid out at the far end of his couch. TK’s wearing his signature hoodie-and-sweatpants combo, one of Carlos’s blankets thrown over his long legs, and a bowl of popcorn resting in his lap. His torso is twisted towards the TV, his left arm propped up on the arm of the couch, but he’s still tall enough that he takes up the entire space between them. Now that he’s paying attention, Carlos can feel the way TK’s toes press against his hip, gently nudging him out of his daze.

“Carlos?” TK asks, and Carlos takes in the concerned expression on his face, the questioning arch of his brow.

“Sorry,” he says, trying to remember what he might’ve missed while he was off in his own little world. “What did you say?”

TK watches him for a moment, refusing to break eye contact, before he moves the popcorn bowl to the coffee table, pulling himself up into a sitting position. He leans forward slightly into Carlos’s space. “What’s up?” he asks, his voice soft but obviously concerned. Carlos bites down on his bottom lip, wondering if this is really a conversation that he wants to have right now.

He and TK are in a good place; they’ve known each other for a few months, and though it’s taken some time, they’ve managed to navigate towards some sort of a friendship together, getting past their complicated beginning. Now, they find time to hang out most weeks, often exploring Austin; Carlos has shown TK some of his favorite places in the city, helping the other man find his place in Texas. However, both of their jobs can be taxing, so when the hard days hit, they just spend time at his apartment, ordering food and introducing each other to their favorite TV shows.

Through all of that, though, they’re careful not to get too deep. They stick to safe conversations instead, wary of where winding roads might take them.

For Carlos, it’s a matter of not wanting to seem pushy. They agreed to be friends, and while he thinks that means they can talk about things that bother them, he still waits for TK to come to him. And, sometimes, TK does, the firefighter often telling him all about taking his dad to chemo treatments and the older guy that bothers them there. While Carlos can clearly see the anxiety and fear that sits right behind TK’s eyes after those visits, the other man tells him that things are fine, so Carlos doesn’t push.

Instead, he tries to distract TK from all of the uncertainty. He takes him dancing, they try what seems like every authentic Mexican place in the city, they walk through artsy neighborhoods. Austin is known for its music scene, so they frequent cafes and bars with open mic nights. It’s a nice, distracting friendship, and Carlos loves the time that he gets to spend with TK. They have a lot in common besides their jobs, and it’s nice to have a friend who understands what it’s like to be gay and living in Texas.

He just doesn’t want to rock the boat and make a mess of it.

Which is why he’s not sure that he should tell TK what he’s currently mulling over. Unlike TK, Carlos knows that he won’t be able to just say that everything’s fine and move on; he can’t hide his fear and anxiety behind his eyes like that. He’s always been that way: too much of an open book, all of his feelings right there on his face, for everyone to see.

He knows that TK is being nice by asking, but he’s not sure if the other man can handle the answer.

“Carlos, seriously, you can talk to me,” TK says when Carlos remains silent. He reaches out, gripping Carlos’s forearm and giving it a little shake. “You’ve been distracted ever since I got here, and I know you’re not really watching this,” he admits, gesturing towards the TV. “If you want to talk about what’s going on in that head of yours, I’m happy to listen.”

Carlos looks at him, his face so open and desperate to help, and decides that maybe they can handle something deeper. They’ll never know until they try.

“I, um, I visited Michelle in the hospital after my shift,” he starts, staring down at his fingers.

“She’s okay, right?” TK confirms, scooting closer. “My dad got a call that she was going to be fine, they were just keeping her overnight for observation.”

“Yeah, she’ll recover from the accident without any problems,” Carlos assures him, biting his lip again. “It’s just, we got to talking about this other thing and…” He trails off, his voice catching in the back of his throat. “I just can’t help but feel like I’ve let her down.”

TK makes a noise of disbelief next to him, and Carlos looks up to find a dubious expression on his face. He raises his brow, wondering what could’ve caused that reaction.

“Look, I’ve only known you for a few months, but I have an incredibly hard time believing that you could ever let anyone down, Carlos,” TK explains without him having to ask. “I mean, the way you’ve been there for me this entire time, no matter what? There’s no way the same isn’t true for Michelle and literally everyone else on this planet.”

Carlos feels a sudden heat on the back of his neck, TK’s words shooting straight through his chest and into his heart.

The thing is, TK’s not wrong. He tries so, so hard to be there for everyone, no matter what. Ever since his father died when he was in middle school, he’s felt like he needed to step into his shoes, to be there for his mother and sisters. When it comes to his friendships, he’s the same way. His friends are also a part of his family, so why wouldn’t he be there for them too? The only thing he’ll ever really have to give is his love and support and understanding, so he doesn’t waste any opportunity to share those with the people in his life.

“Michelle’s been through a lot the past few years,” Carlos says, his voice quiet as he tries to navigate through this conversation. “I can’t tell you anything about it, it’s not my place to share it. You work with her and she’s your boss, so I don’t want to overstep and cause any problems.”

TK nods, giving Carlos’s arm another squeeze to show that he understands.

“I just… after talking with her at the hospital, I realized that she’s kind of been on her own with everything for awhile now,” Carlos continues, a slight waver in his voice. “And I don’t think I’ve made that any easier for her. I don’t think I’ve supported her the way I should have, the way that maybe only I could have.”

“You mean as a friend, or as a police officer?” TK asks, and Carlos’s wide eyes lock onto him, surprised that TK followed him through that messy confession. The firefighter just shrugs, the movement bringing them even closer on the couch. “I’m not just a pretty face, Reyes. I can put things together,” he jokes, elbowing Carlos gently in the side.

“I guess both,” Carlos admits, looking down in shame.

“Well, I’m sure if there was anything else you could’ve done as an officer, you would have,” TK says, leaning into him. “You’re damn good at your job, and I think if you’d seen a way forward, any way forward, you would’ve pursued it without a second thought. Sometimes timing matters, right?”

“I guess,” Carlos says, twisting his thumbs together.

“As far as being there for her as a friend,” TK continues, his voice seeming to strengthen with conviction, “there is still no doubt in my mind that you were there for her every time she needed you. Maybe Michelle wasn’t just able to see it at the time, too wrapped up in whatever this thing is to notice. That, and I think your guilty conscience might be working too hard to place all the blame on yourself.

“You’re only one person, Carlos,” TK says, shifting to rest his head against his shoulder. “Try as you might, you can’t save the whole world. But, you do what you can with what you know and what you have, I know you do, and that’s a lot more than what most people are willing to give.”

Silence falls as TK finishes speaking. The only sound Carlos hears is his heart hammering in his ears. He feels torn open and laid bare, truly seen for what feels like the first time in his entire life, and he’s not really sure how to deal with it.

Over the past few months, he’s gotten the sense that he and TK were a lot alike; that maybe they chose their respective jobs for similar reasons. Carlos can’t help but wonder if TK reading him so easily is a sign that the other man faces this world in much the same way that he does. It’s heavy, solidifying, this feeling of familiarity that defines their relationship.

Ultimately, he knows that what TK’s saying is true. If he let Michelle down in the past, dismissing her feelings without truly considering them, that’s just something that he’s going to have to live with for the rest of his life. He knows he’s tried to be there for her in other ways, tried to get her to move on, for her own sake. He’s always stopped himself from really going down that road with her, worried that the inevitable ending would destroy her beyond repair.

But he knows now that she needs to see this through, and as her friend, he has to be there for her while she does it. Maybe, with his help, with his support and love and understanding, he can keep her from tearing herself apart completely.

They have a lead now, and he’s determined to follow it. It’s the least he can do to make up for not believing her after all this time.

He glances down to where TK’s short, messy brown hair rests against his shoulder, feeling the way the other man’s fingers drag slowly against his forearm. His heart pounds in his chest, threatening to burst open. He shifts, gently pressing a barely-there kiss against TK’s head.

“Thank you,” he finally whispers, trying to pack everything he’s feeling into those two simple words.

“You don’t have to thank me,” TK says, looking up at him, their faces only a few inches apart. “I know you’d do the same for me. That’s what friends are for, right?”

“Right,” Carlos says, giving him a smile.

So, when TK texts him a few days later, worrying over Paul’s heartbreak, Carlos is right there by his side with a welcome distraction.

Because that’s exactly what friends are for.

#tarlos #tarlos fic #911 lone star #tk strand #carlos reyes #I wrote a thing #tarlos missing moments collection

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