#well. not acutely hurting my ears but like. definitely not good for my hearing. just not like. actively painful.

[chaotic-super]

Joining The Superfriends - 7

The resounding swoosh of a familiar red cape has Lena’s head turning to the sound in an instant, ready to greet Kara and comment on how she hasn’t been gone for long but she’s caught off guard when she sees that she’s not alone.

It’s not a good sight, Supergirl is carrying a struggling Dreamer over her shoulder in a fireman’s lift and is easily holding the squirming hero in place with a firm grip.

“Kara, what’s going on?” J’onn beats Lena to the punch, equally as confused about what’s happening as she is.

Kara makes her way down the stairs into the main room of The Tower. “Well, it seems like Dreamer has whatever it is that’s making people go crazy, I was just flying over the fields the Troruans planted to see whatever there is to see when I got a good earful of screams because it appears that Nia here decided to start terrorizing people by smashing the windows of stores.”

“Oh my god, was anyone hurt?” Lena questions, raising to her feet. She is just about to step forward but she takes another good look at Nia’s kicking feet and thinks better of it, at least it won’t hurt Kara.

Kara repositions her grip on Nia, barely letting her move an inch other than her flailing arms and legs that aren’t getting her anywhere. “Not that I could tell, I actually think that I caught her in the early stages of it but since I have her here, I’ll take her to the med bay and we can check to see if she has any bug bites. I’ll also check myself since I’ve been so close to her although, J’onn, it might be best you get the K-protocol ready, if I go nuts, you’ll have to contain me.”

J’onn nods resolutely. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

A strange look overcomes Kara’s face, like she’s lost in thought but also somehow acutely aware of everything going on around her, aware of each little squirm that Nia makes over her shoulder, and her fingers make minute movements to compensate for each of Nia’s.

“I’ll follow you down to the med bay and we can get her checked over. Do we have suitable restraints? I don’t want to get kicked or punched.”

“Yep, we have it all down there and we have a power dampener too so there will be no dream energy flying across the room.” Kara’s voice is flat, a blinding contradiction to her toothy smile that would almost definitely have Lena fooled if she didn’t hear the sad undertones to her words.

She doesn’t call her out on it though, figuring that she doesn’t know Kara well enough yet that she can do so in a healthy way. That doesn’t mean she can’t check in on her though, which she is planning on doing as soon as she finds the opportune moment.

Kara grabbles Nia onto the bed and holds her down with a single hand to her sternum. “Lena, if you go into the cupboard over on the right you’ll find a black box with a pointy ariel thing on the top, that’s the power dampener, it turns on with the little switches on the side. You’ll have to put it in the centre of the room for it to affect us the best.”

“What do you mean by ‘us’? Lena does as she’s told, turning it on and moving it so it’s placed in what she judges to be the centre of the room.

Kara has to grab Nia with a lot more strength to keep her down now that their powers are out and she has to hold her hands down and pin her with a knee on her chest to keep her in place. “It affects me too. Grab the restraints from the drawer to the left of the sink, please.”

Lena rushes to get them, attaching the strong brown leather cuffs to the rails of the bed and then to each wrist when Kara forces each one over in to the open straps to be closed by Lena’s meticulous fingers.

Once her wrists are in place, they each take a leg, being mindful not to get kicked. When they are done they are left standing either side of a thrashing Nia, her teeth audibly grinding and her muscles straining relentlessly against her bindings.

“Do you think we should let her calm down before we try to check for bites?” Lena asks.

Kara keeps staring at Nia’s angry form for a few more seconds before she replies. “We’ll draw the curtain around her for a few minutes, the alone time might help, if it doesn’t then we’ll have to wait for Alex to come and sedate her.”

Alex had left just fifteen minutes earlier to run some errands but J’onn has probably already called her to get her to come back.

Kara draws the curtain around Nia, leaving her in her own little cubicle but doesn’t leave the med bay, instead she pulls up a chair across the room from Nia, listening to her thrash and keeping her eyes trained on the curtain, ready to pounce if somehow she gets out.

“Shall we go see if there’s any more news on what’s going on? Maybe see if there is anything about Dreamer to see when she started acting strangely?”

Kara leans back in her chair, her back still stiff, “you go ahead, Lena. I’m going to stay in here for now, in the dampeners, just in case.”

Lena frowns. “Kara, you’re acting kind of weird. Are you alright? What’s K-protocol?”

Kara bites down on her lips awkwardly, trying to figure out the most tactful way to answer those questions, the least painful way.

Lena sees the conflict on her face, it’s clear to see that she’s trying her best but the words just aren’t coming to her so she eases off. “I’ll go see what’s happening and then I’ll be back, there’s no pressure, Kara.”

Kara gives her a tight smile, appreciative but awkward.

J’onn is still in the main room but is now sat at one of the computers, typing away and researching something, a crease firmly seated in her brow.

“Hey, we have Nia restrained in the med bay and Kara is refusing to come out of there because that’s where the power dampener is. Are we really that worried that she has passed it on that Kara has to do that?”

“No, we’re not.” J’onn answers. “But Kara has felt the consequences of something like this before, when she was infected with red kryptonite by someone wishing to harm her. She put thousands of civilians at risk because of choices she couldn’t control and she’s has never forgiven herself for it. She will do anything to prevent it, including using K-protocol, which will release kryptonite into the tower to stop her from leaving. It might be best you go and stay with her, she could do with the company.”

Lena bundles up her laptop and charger under her arm. “I’ll keep an eye on her then. We are just waiting to see if Nia will calm down enough for us to check her over but if she’s still acting how she was when I left then we will have to sedate her.”

J’onn hums his understanding. “I already called Alex, she’ll be back soon and I will send her your way as soon as she gets here.”

“Thanks J’onn.”

Lena slows her stride back to the med bay, out of her depth for this kind of thing. She’s good at computers and building things and science experiments, not helping people with complex feelings, she can’t even keep her own feelings straight, let alone straighten out somebody else’s. This is going to be the hardest part of the job for her.

Kara looks up at her with surprise when she wanders back in. “I thought you were going to see how it’s all going topside.”

“I can do that from my laptop anywhere, besides, you’d get lonely down here.” Lena drags a chair next to Kara’s and balances her laptop on her crossed legs, her charger dropped onto the floor beside her. Kara looks at her strangely and Lena can’t quite tell what she’s thinking. “Is that ok?”

Kara just about nods, not saying anything and turning her attention back to the curtain. Nia is still struggling, they can hear her and it actually hurts their hearts to hear the young woman doing so, knowing what a loving, kind, bubbly person she is and how she has been demeaned and reduced to this.

“K-protocol is to stop me from hurting anyone if I can’t control myself.” Kara mutters, not looking over at her. “There is kryptonite in lead boxes in the walls, it can be released with a special remote that is coded. J’onn has it. There is also Kryptonite cuffs in storage and a sedative with a kryptonite needle. I asked J’onn to get it all out so nothing bad happens, the safety of the city is the top priority.”

Lena isn’t quite sure what to say to that. She understands why those protocols are necessary but it isn’t a nice thing to think about.

“I just don’t want to hurt anyone.” Kara whispers, barely audible.

Lena clears her throat, responding the only way she knows how. “Then I will make sure that we do everything to stop that from happening. This is actually giving me a great idea for magnetic wrist cuffs so they can snap together and come apart with the flick of a button. They would be great in situations like these.”

Kara lets out a wet laugh and it makes Lena notice that she’s actually crying, not a lot, but there’s a good few tears leaking from her eyes. She doesn’t wipe them away though, unashamed in a way that Lena doubts she will ever be. “That sounds awesome, you should do that.”

“I will once all of this is over.”

“Good. You do really good work here.”

Lena blushes at the unexpected compliment, her insecurities not letting her believe it but she wishes she did. “That’s really nice of you to say.”

“I’m not saying it to be nice. I’m saying it because it’s true. You haven’t been here long and yet you’re already coming up with things to help us out and you care so much, I can tell you do, you have a huge heart. You’re meant to be here, I just wish you would believe that.”

“I wish I did too, but I don’t. I do know that I’m doing more meaningful work here than I ever did before and that makes me feel really good about myself. I’m in the healthiest headspace I’ve been in since, well, ever.”

Kara’s shoulders relax, appreciating that the conversation has been directed away from herself now. “And if we can help it, you’ll stay in that healthy headspace, we are all here to support you.”

Lena pitches her with a grateful look, her eyes crinkling and her lips curling upwards. “And I will do the best I can to do the same for you guys too.”

“Are you two being all soppy again?” Alex strolls in, ignoring the grunting coming from in the curtained off area.

“You betcha.” Kara laughs, finally swiping her cheeks of the tears that have now dried.

Alex manoeuvres her way around the med bay, at home in her space and at ease doing what she does best. Lena hasn’t had a real chance to see her working with medicine before so seeing her fiddling with different medications and medical instruments is an odd sight but it doesn’t feel at all out of place.

“Alrighty then, let’s get this Dreamer out like a light and we can see what we have on our hands. Ladies, if you would like to assist me?” Alex nods to the curtain, a needle with a sedative ready to go, in hand.”

They both get up to help, Lena having not even turned her laptop on to try and see what has been occurring on the streets of National City.

Rounding the bed with Nia glaring around the room, never settling on one person for too long, they each take up their posts. Lena stands away from Kara and Alex and speaks to Nia, trying to get her to look over at her, getting her attention with soft words of comfort that are quickly ignored and discarded.

To be honest, Nia doesn’t hear them at all, or doesn’t react to them, but she does keep staring at Lena, eyes full of hate. It reminds her so much of the way Lex used to look at her that she almost breaks the eye contact but the distraction lets Kara hold Nia’s arm down for the sedative to be injected by Alex.

Nia’s eyes droop shut right before her and Lena lets out a sigh of relief as the body on the bed finally relaxes.

They wait for a minute, checking that she really is out before Alex gets her little light to check Nia’s eyes just to be doubly sure before she releases the restraints. “Alright, I’ll check her over. Will you give us some privacy please? I’ll have to take her suit off.”

“No problem, sis. Lena can you go grab her spare clothes from downstairs?” Kara guides her out and closes the curtain behind them.

Lena agrees right away. “Yeah, I’ll be right back.”

It’s a quick trip downstairs to one of the lower levels of The Tower to grab Nia’s spare clothes, some sweatpants and a plain t-shirt, but when she gets back Alex is huddled over of the counter looking at something and Kara is peering over her shoulder, trying to get a good look herself.

“I feel like I’ve missed something.” Lena declares, wandering over.

“We found our bug, but it’s not the kind we we’re expecting. I guess you were half right in your theory, Lena.” Alex steps back so she can take a look.

Laid out on a metal tray is a little robotic bug with a tiny needle protruding from one end of it. “I’m going to hazard a guess and say that this is connected to her temporary insanity.”

“I’d bet my life on it.” Kara says.

Alex grabs the clothes out of Lena’s hand. “I’ll get her dressed and then we can all take it in turns checking ourselves over for these. We don’t know how long it takes to kick in so this could have been on her for longer than she knew, it was on the back of her neck so be sure to check there thoroughly.”

Lena keeps looking at the little bug, her eyes probing it and mentally dismantling it so she can try and find a way to shut them down and possibly reverse the effects of them, although that isn’t the biggest worry since the effects are only temporary anyway so they can just wait it out.

“Interesting.”

“What is?” Kara leans in next to her.

“You can see that it has a little store of fluid underneath it, it must inject the host with whatever it’s carrying. Whatever they are getting injected with is very potent though because if this came off of Nia and got her this bad and still has more left in the stores, it’s bad. She can’t have been given more than one drop.”

Kara’s hair tickles her arm where it just about rests on her skin but she doesn’t dare to move it, barely breathing so she doesn’t disturb Kara’s curious gaze at the bug because she doesn’t want her to move away from her.

She doesn’t move a muscle the entire time Kara is in her space and is happy to stay holding her breath forever if that’s what it takes but Alex is here to ruin the moment yet again. “Lena, breathe. I know Kara smells bad but I think you’re being dramatic.”

Kara whips her head up to look at her.

“I didn’t want to breathe in your face.”

“Whatever, Nia is dressed so I’ll wheel her out here and one of you can take the cubicle. Please go separately, don’t do anything disgusting in my safe space.” Alex doesn’t let them get into it.

Kara goes first, giving Lena a cute little smile on her way and waving before sliding the curtain shut behind her, leaving her standing with Alex and a passed out Dreamer.

“I don’t want a word from you.” She warns Alex.

Alex holds her hands up defensively. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“Like hell you weren’t.”

A casual shrug from her tells Lena that she was right. “So, you had your little chat with Kara yet about the whole smoochy-smoochy you guys shared?”

“Not yet, this all happened so there hasn’t been a good time and Kara’s been on edge. I don’t want to push her.”

Alex agrees with a relenting head tilt but still has to get a jab in there. “You didn’t mind ushing your lung capacity though.”

Kara slides the curtain open with a smile. “I’m all clear. Lena, you’re up.”

She’s glad to be away from Alex. She likes her and admires her take no shit attitude but god, she’s annoying when she wants to be, exactly how she always imagined siblings should be. It’s just another reminder of how awful Lex is.

Shaking her head to clear her mind, she gets right to it, stripping off her shirt to start checking her skin, her torso is clear, and so are her arms, nothing in her belly button. She runs her fingertips over her neck, checking to see if she can feel any unwanted visitors. Nothing there.

Her shoulders are next, nothing again, nothing to be scared of. From what she can feel of her back, that’s clear too.

She slides her shirt back on, now are of how quickly her heart is racing. She wasn’t nervous about finding something on herself until she came in here.

Her pants are the next to go, she slides them down her legs and her eyes find it right away, one tiny little silver bug attached to the top of her thigh.

“Guys?” She calls out through the curtain. “I’ve got one.”

Kara and Alex barrel through into the cubicle, eyes finding the little bug on her skin and widening at the sight.

Alex turns and jogs out to get tweezers and something to contain it in then rushes right back, handing the tweezers to Kara and holding open the little jar so it can be thrown into it.

Kara reaches the tweezers towards it, and just as she is bringing the two sides of the metal together it moves, jumps actually, landing right on her wrist where it promptly jabs its needle into her flesh.

Read Joining The Superfriends on Ao3 here!

Read up to chapter 15 on Patreon here!

#cw supergirl #supercorp endgame #supergirl #supercorp #kara leaned in #kara x lena #kara danvers #kara zor el #lena luthor #supercorp fanfic #fanfiction #fluff #fanfic #scientist lena luthor #wlw #chaoticsuper

[sidespromptblog]

What to Do?: Chapter 2

One, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten

Summary: Logan realizing that his first mistake was seeing the other sides as anything other than coworkers. They weren't a family. They didn't even like each other. How had he not realized sooner?

Warnings: General anxiety, hurt/comfort, angst, and hurt feelings. 

Word Count:  1,803

Logan could feel the tug in his gut of the others clearly trying to summon him into the centerpiece of the mindspace. For a split second he felt a jab of fear racing through him as he pondered whether or not he should actually go to them, they wouldn’t be happy about the decision he had decided to make for himself. If anything they’d probably be most cross with him about it, or… or perhaps they’d laugh at him. Say that it was ridiculous that he was trying to appear so professional with all the things that they knew about each other. 

Yeah… they would most definitely try to laugh it off to clear the air, and to make him go back on his decision. To undermine his boundaries, and make him second guess himself when it came to this. 

But he wouldn’t… he couldn’t.

Not about this, and most certainly not now. He had already talked himself into doing this, and he wasn’t going to let his imagination run away with him about it either. 

He had made up his mind. 

“Logan…” He could hear Patton referring to him. 

“Logan.” He could hear Roman talking. 

“Logan..” He could hear Virgil mumbling. 

Logan’s fingers curled into his hands, and he could feel his temper flaring up before he even attempted to stamp it back down. “Shut up!” He snarled to himself, raising his hands to his ears as to block out the sounds of his name that came from inside his head. A part of him felt like sobbing, like curling up in a corner and just admitting defeat so that it would just make it all stop. But he couldn’t do that, and he knew that he couldn’t do that. There was too much work to be done… “Just stop!” 

Logan. Logan. Logan…

Logan!

This could not wait another day, no matter what Logan tried to tell himself it just couldn’t. He needed to set things straight, and get it down with the others so they at least understood where he was on the matter, no matter how much it hurt their feelings. In the end, it would at least make him feel better, and hopefully… hopefully things would at least change then and he’d be listened to. 

Even if it was only a little bit. 

Straightening his back, and forcing his hands back down to his sides Logan rose up in the living room biting his tongue the entire time. He would only have to endure his name in their mouths for just a little bit longer, they might not listen, but at least they would know. And that’s literally all that he needed from them, it didn’t matter if they got upset or refused. 

Because this was for him, not for them. 

“Logan!” Virgil’s head whipped away from Patton and Roman, and to where Logan was standing. “Are you okay?” The anxious side tried to ask it cooly, but everyone could see his hands fidgeting with the loose threading strands of his sleeves. The anxiety he had felt coming off of Logan in waves had all but vanished the moment that he had arrived, and it had done very little to lessen Virgil’s own anxieties about the subject. His gaze seemed to look everywhere but Logan for an instance, before he finally willed himself to look at the logical side.  “You seemed kind of anxious, and we were…” The words that were right on Virgil’s tongue died in an instant upon seeing the look on Logan’s face. 

None of them had exactly gotten a chance to talk to Logan after his whole run in with Remus, but right then and there… Virgil wished that he had been there from the very start. To help Logan, and to help the logical side come to terms with the fact that his schedule hadn’t exactly been followed. 

He wished… he wished that he had done something. 

Because…

Logan didn’t look cold, he didn’t even appear to be disinterested in them like he had in the past when it came to discussing Roman’s daydreams or plans. He just looked…

Well it was weird, but he looked oddly polite. 

Like a stranger waiting for someone to stop talking, so that he could speak his business. 

Virgil swallowed thickly, “Deceit?” He merely asked, looking Logan up and down as if trying to spot any inconsistencies of the other side’s attire. 

There was nothing.

And Logan slowly shook his head, his eyes remaining trained on Virgil steadily. He looked calm, the farthest thing from the side who used to scream falsehood at him and anyone who tried to lie to his face. His hair was a windswept mess, and his clothes even messier. With his tie loosened and the collar to his shirt unbuttoned by a single button. And it was that alone that sent alarm bells off in Virgil’s head, because despite all of that… Logan was here. He was calm, he was collected, and there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with him. 

He looked fine. 

But something was wrong, maybe it was just him but.. there had to be something wrong with Logan. He couldn’t be okay, not by any kind of standards. He knew Logan too well to know that the logical side would never show up to any kind of meeting with them dressed as he was. Logan was far too prideful for that, and he also knew that Roman would most certainly never let him live it down. So… something.. Something had to be wrong here. He couldn’t be okay.

Not after what happened. 

“Logan,” Patton inched forward, a look of clear worry on his face. “You okay bucko? Are you feeling oka-” 

“Logic.”

Patton blinked, hoping that he had misheard what Logan had just said to him. His voice chilly in the kind of way that made his back shiver, even if there wasn’t a single draft to be felt. “What?” He attempted a happy playful smile that wouldn’t betray how he was feeling, when the stoney look on Logan’s face didn’t even  budge for a second he felt it slip right off into a puzzled frown. He was acutely aware of Roman and Virgil watching their interaction with the eyes of a hawk, their eyes were burning the back of his head. He could feel something inside of him tremble with that one word that Logan had spoken to him, and he hoped with everything that he was… that he’d only misheard Logan. With Logan’s firm unbreaking stare,  and the obvious stares from the other two sides… he had to actively avoid squirming in place just from how uncomfortable he was starting to get from the change in atmosphere. 

All it had taken was one word… and it felt like everything had just turned on its head.

Logan crossed his arms smoothly over his chest, “Given the state of our relationship, it is Logic.. Not Logan.” There wasn’t a single hint of joking or exaggeration in his voice, there was just that air of polite honesty that somehow managed to rub Patton the wrong way. 

“What?” He asked again, his throat choking out the word. This time he was absolutely sure that he was about to cry, was this.. was this Logan ending their friendship? Was he really that tired of them and their jokes? Did he… 

Did he hate them? 

“What are you talking about?!” This time it was Roman who spoke up, the creative side had been lounging on the couch for a majority of the time. Only now rising once it was apparent how upset Patton was getting with Logan’s selective words, and to top it off… he was getting rather upset himself at it. Did this name change just go to Patton, or was it all of them combined? “Listen,” Roman tried to say patiently. “If you’re upset and angry about your schedule not being followed this is not the way to act about it, tell us and we’ll work something out. Don’t just pull this shit and expect us to not know what to do with it!”

Roman’s breath came out in hot angry puffs, he honestly hadn’t expected himself to get so worked up over this.

Logan’s eyes shifted over to him, clearly waiting a moment to see if Roman was done talking. “Creativity.” Roman’s lungs seized, and his breathing stopped right then and there with that one little word. Logan was… Logan was serious. “I am not angry.” He said patiently. “I understand that sometimes things come up that can get in the way of a preplanned schedule. It is okay, and I understand that nothing could be done that specific day.” Logan linked his fingers together. “However, I am merely stating that I wish to not be referred to so casually.” 

Their mouths gaped openly, a mixture of concern, fear, and puzzlement written over each of their faces. For a moment Roman had no idea what to say, after everything involving Patton and Janus this just felt like one more thing that he didn’t understand. He was fairly certain that none of them understood this though, judging by the looks on each of their faces. None of them knew why Logan was choosing to pursue this, and honestly… he was kind of scared to know exactly why. 

Because that meant in some kind of way… they had all fucked up. 

Roman hated himself for the words that came out of him next, “Are we not close? I thought that knowing your name, and using it meant that.. that you trusted us with it.”  

For a split second, Logan looked up to the ceiling and Roman fought the urge to bristle indignantly at the implications. The hurt in his heart steadily being replaced by a new feeling that he couldn’t yet put his finger on, but once he did…

“No,” Logan merely said, and didn’t elaborate. “I am going to go back to my room should you need to call on me again, I will be drafting up a new schedule that we can all hopefully agree upon, in the meantime... Have a good day.” 

There wasn’t the tiniest hint of resignation or resentment, throughout everything that he’d told them Logan had remained polite to the very end. Even when he ducked out, there weren’t any side eyes, or upset looks from him. Just an air of civil courtesy, that felt so.. so unlike him. Logan got excited about his projects, and he got upset when they didn’t play out to how he wanted them exactly to go. He should have been upset, he should have been spitting barbs and being salty about his failed schedule, he should have reassured Virgil’s anxieties, and he should have…

He should trust them…

Shouldn’t he? 

#logan sanders #ts logan #ts logan sanders #patton sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #mentions of janus #mentions of remus #sanders sides #ts sides #ts sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #ts sanders sides fanfiction #ts sides fanfiction

[imagining-in-the-margins]

Here to Misbehave (Pt. 22 | S.R.)

Series Masterlist | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Finale |

Summary: Things are changing for the better. Couple: Spencer Reid/Fem!Reader Content Warning: Adults w/ Age Difference, Sub Drop, vague mentions of trauma/dissociation, PTSD (mostly comfort) Word Count: 7.25k

MASTERLIST

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The dulcet, bustling sounds of the Dulles International Airport were more soothing than I expected. Normally, the massive crowds and constant barrage of information would make my brain go into overdrive, but there was something about Spencer being there that made it all turn to white noise. If I had to guess, I would say it was the feeling of trusting someone to take care of you.

I still hadn’t gotten used to it.

“Hey, I got you something.”

Even then, when he’d approached me from behind and gingerly placed the bag on my lap, I barely even flinched. I smelled the contents of the bag before I noticed the logo or managed to open it, but once I confirmed it was what I thought it was, my eyes immediately teared up.

“Oh my god,” I keened, pulling out the familiar blue cup holding a much too sweet, much too large cinnamon bun. Although my mind was running with a million things to say to express just how appreciative I was, I took a bite out of it before I said anything else.

“I love you so much,” I mumbled around a mouth full of pastry.

Spencer tried to respond, but after one glance at me, fingers and face already covered in frosting after only a few seconds, he burst out laughing. 

“You’re a complete mess,” he chastised, trying to cluck his tongue but failing in his laughter.

I just smiled back, not even bothering with the plastic utensils and enjoying the indulgence with absolutely childlike joy. It wasn’t even just the sugar or my fingers pressing into the warm, sticky dough that made the morning seem so much better; it was the way Spencer watched me.

With one arm leaned against the chair, his whole body was turned towards me. It was clear from the slightly glassy look in his exhausted eyes that he was also stuck trying to find the right words to say to express just how grateful he was that we could still have moments like that.

Those same eyes roamed over my figure with such an overtly intimate gleam that it almost made me blush. If he’d touched me, I definitely would have. But he kept his hands to himself, and eventually, buried them into his carry-on bag. I didn’t even look at what he was doing, too lost in the sweetness of being cared for.

That foolhardy trust was a mistake. Because, it turned out, Spencer Reid was a monster.

Without any warning at all, a cold wet wipe was dragged over my cheeks. I flinched back, only to find Spencer’s hand holding onto my head and stopping me from turning away. The madman even had the audacity to smile as he gingerly wiped the frosting from my cheeks and chin. Of course, considering the fact I was thrashing wildly away from him, it ended up mostly on my lips.

“Pfftbtb! Spencer!” I spit and whined, earning confused looks from basically everyone in the vicinity. What they would find when they looked over was him in a fit of laughter, continuing to try and clean my face, which was still covered in sugary frosting despite his best efforts to remove it.

“I thought you enjoyed the taste of alcohol,” he teased.

“First of all, no one does, and second—” I started, only to be cut off with a kiss over my much too clean mouth. I smiled, but only because it used to be my move. I wondered when exactly the tables had turned, and it became his job to shut me up with a kiss.

“I know,” he whispered, licking his lips just to cringe at the taste he’d forced on me, “I’m just joking.”

I decided then that the sight and shared disgust for ethyl alcohol were enough for me to forgive him for the time being. I let him clean the rest of the evidence of my greed from my face but decided to clean my fingers myself. I popped each one into my mouth in what I’d imagined was a very non-sexual manner, but Spencer still seemed to enjoy watching me as each digit was cleaned. Granted, he handed me another wipe seconds later. Damn germaphobe. Like he didn’t shove his tongue in my mouth on a daily basis.

The rest of the treat was shared between us, with utensils this time, in a relative quiet. Brief giggles or sighs were all there was to be said. Once there was nothing left to fixate on, I was left only with my thoughts and Spencer’s eyes that still watched me like a horribly affectionate hawk.

“I’m really sorry,” I mumbled without realizing. I’d almost hoped he wouldn’t even hear it, or let it go without a conversation, but of course, he couldn’t do that.

“For what?”

“For making you do all of this,” I explained with a heavy sigh, “I feel like a big baby.”

Spencer’s hands came to brush away the stray strands of hairs from my face. They weren’t actually in the way of anything; I think he just wanted to make a better view. That alone was enough to make me smile, but that only seemed to make him feel guilty.

“Don’t apologize for this. This is my fault,” he said just as quietly. I mirrored his motion, running my fingers through his hair and watching as his mouth dropped open in a pleased smile.

“No, it’s not. You’re wonderful,” I said through my own. It was only a little bit sadder than his, but wasn’t that usually the case? I could only imagine what would happen the day we were both overflowing with nothing but joy. Before, that thought might lead me back to the bank, the place that ended our last purely happy encounter, but…

I looked at Spencer, with his mouth still slightly open and his head lolling back and forth with the little weight of my hand, and I couldn’t bring myself to think of anything bad. So I just thought of the picnic, instead. I thought of him licking my hand as we rolled in grass, and of his own hands working through my hair to make it into something besides a mess on my head.

I looked at Spencer, and I saw beautiful things. And the longer I played with his hair, the more relaxed and content he became. Of course, I would never be satisfied. His smile was the most beautiful thing to see, and I needed it to deal with the guilt still sitting like rocks in my stomach.

“Besides, it’ll be so much easier putting down my work and actually getting sleep when you’re waiting for me,” Spencer slurred, his neck relaxing to drop the weight of his head against my palm.

“I hope not too easy. The world needs you, Dr. Reid,” I kindly reminded.

His eyes fluttered open, trapping me in dark honey irises filled with pure adoration. “You need me, too,” he whispered.

“Arrogant bastard.”

Naturally, he took it as a compliment, his smile growing into a smirk as he answered, “A little bit.”

He should have known better than to give me that look, though, because within seconds my hands fell from his hair. A small whimper came from the pitiful man at the loss. It was quickly followed by a sharp inhale when my hand grabbed his thigh.

“You think I’ll actually let you sleep?” I whispered.

Aside from the obviously tense quadriceps beneath my palms, Spencer showed very little response to my suggestion. Well, rather, he showed little arousal to it. There was a reaction— just not the one I expected.

He looked... nervous.

“I actually wanted to talk to you about that...”

“What?” I shot back immediately, my hands withdrawing and tugging on my shirt while I instinctively tried to hide from him. I was trying to look less guilty, but I was acutely aware that my actions screamed the opposite. So, I tried to combat my obvious anxiety with a voice that was far louder than it needed to be. “I swear I’m on all my medications. I haven’t missed a single therapy appointment, either!”

Spencer’s hands were gentle and cautious when they came to my wrists, gently pulling them away from my chest. “I know. I trust you,” he said with a sad but still genuine smile, “I just wanted to ask you how you wanted to handle this.”

“What do you mean? I’m fine.” The words tumbled out of me in the least convincing manner. Spencer was too smart to fall for them, although I could see a playfulness bloom through his features.

“No offense, but you just cried over a cinnamon bun,” he said, unable to stop a few chuckles from mixing with the words.

“It was just really good, okay?” I scoffed, tearing my hands away from him and feigning offense despite his little disclaimer. From there, I sank down in the shitty airport chair and refused to look up at him. I could still feel his cheeky, arrogant little grin watching me.

Eventually, after I thought we’d suffered enough and I could already feel my legs going numb, I weakly conceded, “Fine. What are my options?”

“Well, basically anything. But the main thing to consider is...”

He paused. It was one of the sure signs that he was taking the situation very seriously. Usually, he would just spout out whatever came to mind and sort out the details later. But this time, he spoke slowly and purposefully. “Majority of our relationship has been based on physicality. Whether it was sex or healing or hurting and I... I want to give you the option to not do that. At least, not for a little while.”

A feeling of dread filled my blood that I could suddenly hear rushing through my ears. I didn’t tell my heart to beat faster, but it did. My hands that had once again crossed over my chest suddenly itched to hold him.

“Why would I not want to?” I asked, fiddling with the buttons on my shirt and occasionally glancing up at him only to realize that he wasn’t looking at me, either. I tried not to read into it. After all, he was the profiler— not me.

“It’s not a matter of avoiding it. I just need you to know it’s not expected of you.”

Without shifting my body at all, my eyes were glued to him. The strain of the angle and the sound of those words caused them to burn, but I refused to let tears fall again. He wasn’t rejecting me, right? He was telling me that he loved me. There was no reason to be scared.

I wasn’t used to that yet, either. But I wanted to be. And judging by the way his hand cupped my face and guided it back to his, I think Spencer felt those anxieties. He tried to will them away by pressing his forehead against mine and letting his thumb ghost over flushed cheeks.

“Don’t be scared. I just need you to know that we don’t have to have sex for you to be worth my time and attention.”

The tears grew bigger under his scrutiny, but they didn’t fall until he closed his eyes. I think that was why he did.

“I love you,” he assured me with a whisper, “I’m not going to deny you affection or intimacy if that’s what you want. I just need you to know that it is always an option.”

Normally when Spencer pulled away, the air felt cold in his absence. For so long, my body had felt lonelier and less than without him. But in that busy, bustling airport, I felt just as loved even when his hands fell away and he sat back up in his chair.

For those who might’ve been watching, they would just see two lovesick idiots whispering sweet nothings in a flagrantly public display of affection. They wouldn’t have heard the weight of the words or felt the way my perception of the whole world shifted from them.

Spencer smiled again, still nervous, but also clear and authentic.

“I’m sorry,” he told me with his eyes fixated on my hands in my lap. He made no move to hold it, although I could tell he wanted to. I suspect he wanted me to focus on the words, so I tried my hardest. I almost asked him what he was sorry for, but he answered first, “I don’t think I’ve ever told you that before.”

A lump quickly formed in my throat that I tried to swallow. When that failed, and I felt the telltale signs of tears filling the sides of my eyes, I did the only thing I could think of to hide. I threw my arms around the only thing that never failed to make them better. I buried my face in Spencer’s neck and laughed along with him as my eyelashes and breath tickled the soft skin.

After a brief second of listening to our hearts settle into a matching rhythm and letting our body heat sink into the clothes between us, Spencer groaned, “How are you still sticky?”

—————————————————

A couple weeks prior, the thought of being alone in a hotel room waiting on Spencer to finish work for the day would have instilled the fear of God in me. I would have done just about anything to avoid the exact situation I found myself in now.

But honestly? It wasn’t all that bad. It was the perfect opportunity for me to force myself to slow down. Granted, that mostly just meant that I would watch bad TV in a bathrobe with overpriced food, but... like they say, change is as good as a rest.

The hardest part about it was actually just convincing myself that I deserved the rest. While I was taking naps and trying to do anything to unwind, I knew what Spencer was doing.

Well, I had some idea of what he was doing. Reality was probably worse than my imagination— it usually was with his job. At first, I had let that guilt get in the way, but at some point over the nine hours, I realized that I would have to find a way to cheer myself up. Because as soon as I heard that small beep of the keycard, I would have to find a way to remind him of all the beautiful things in the world.

No pressure, right?

The sun had already started to set, and I hadn’t heard from him in hours. We’d started the day out with a constant line of contact, but over time he became too busy. Which, again, just meant that I would have to work even harder when he finally arrived.

Luckily for me, by the time Spencer had arrived, there was no need for a pep talk or acting of any kind. My heart immediately started to race the second I heard his voice down the hall. I had already bolted from the bed and positioned myself just far enough from the door that I could jump forward the second it opened far enough to fit me.

And when it did, I pounced.  

“Spencer!” I cheered, throwing myself into his arms that had fully been expecting me. Still, the two of us crashed back against the frame and I heard the breath be knocked out of him from the impact.

“Hey, little girl,” he managed to laugh with empty lungs that made it impossible to forget how tired he was. His arm eventually settled at my lower back, lifting me slightly so he could move us from the door’s path. But when we were out of harm’s way and the latch clicked softly in place, Spencer didn’t let me go. In fact, he tossed his bag into the chair at the desk and wrapped his other arm around me, too.

“How was work?” I asked, afraid I already knew the answer.

“You know...” he muttered with a crackling voice, “awful.”

If that hadn’t given it away, the way he buried his face in my neck certainly did. His hands were even more insistent, pressing into my back as he led us both to the bed.

I had to laugh, though, as the realization dawned on him that he’d have to let go of me if he didn’t want to track filthy shoes in our bed. A heavy sigh fell from his lips when he finally released me, practically throwing me onto the terrible mattress before taking his seat next to me.

“I missed you,” I announced in the ambient noise of the cheapest hotel that the government could justify using.  

Spencer looked up at me, but the words took a little longer to register. I could only imagine how busy his mind must’ve been, and the guilt quickly came creeping back.

“I missed you, too,” he returned, albeit with a tint of sadness in his tone. But the longer we stayed there, the calmer he seemed. It was such a powerful effect of our proximity that by the time he did lay down next to me, he seemed like the man that had wiped frosting from my face in the middle of a busy airport.

Spencer must have noticed the shift, too, because no sooner had his head hit the pillow than he had flipped over, throwing his leg over me to pin me down against the bed.

My initial reaction was to keep laughing, but the noises were muffled by the persistent kisses he gave. They started at my cheeks and over the bridge of my nose but landed on my lips. I felt the tension leave his shoulders as he lowered more of his body weight against me, and I reveled in the feeling of his presence.

“God, I needed this,” he growled just before his tongue slipped into my mouth.

Everything we’d talked about at the airport felt a lifetime away, and as soon as I felt his erection pressing hard against my thigh, I only had one goal in mind. I forced my hands between us, trying to remove his tie with the hope that it would shed some of the thoughts he’d brought back from work.

But then it all stopped. Spencer had pulled away, grabbing onto my wrist and pinning it to the bed beside me once more.

“No, we don’t need to do that. I just wanted to kiss you,” he panted through heavy breath and swollen lips. I couldn’t stop staring at them long enough to answer, but it was clear from the look on his face that any plea I gave would be for naught, anyway. “I’m honestly way too exhausted to give you the attention you deserve.”

I believed him. Even when he hadn’t slept for nearly two days, he still looked livelier then. I had a sneaking suspicion that it had less to do with sleep and more to do with emotions. I wanted to help him with that, too, like he did for me, but I didn’t know how. So, I did the only thing I did know how to do well, which was to place a soft peck against his lips until they turned up into another smile.

“Get some rest, old man,” I murmured, “I’ll be here to kiss again when you wake up.”

“Let me hold you,” he answered immediately, nuzzling his face against my neck like a puppy seeking any shred of attention. I couldn’t tell if I was laughing because of the way his hair tickled or because it was so strange to see him so vulnerable while still in dominant, albeit disheveled, work clothes.

“Fine. Only because you asked nicely.”

Continuing the trend of being remarkably adorable, Spencer giggled as he rolled onto his side. I was almost tempted to turn towards him, but he had already wrapped his arms around me before I could decide. He pulled me as close as he could before his lips once again settled against the column of my throat.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” he stated absently. It was so quiet that I’m not sure he’d actually planned on me hearing it. But when I reached a hand up to run through his hair, he spoke with a shaky, relieved whine, “I can’t believe you’re here.”

A gentle, warm exhale breezed over my skin as he continued, “I love you so much.”

From that point, any words he might’ve whispered were muffled through sloppy, sleepy kisses over my neck and shoulder. His hands, though slow, were still rough and purposeful as they pawed at me in a way that was only vaguely sexual. It was more like he was trying to prove to himself that he was actually here with me, and my breasts just happened to be the first thing he could grab.

That still didn’t stop my mind from running wild. The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention as I focused on the way his breath felt against areas still wet from his kisses. And when I arched my back, I felt his hips press harder.

Eventually, when I could trust myself to speak without whimpering, I asked, “Are you sure you don’t want to...”

I peeked back at him before continuing, having noticed a lull in his kisses. Sure enough, Spencer was fast asleep, his lips still attached to my shoulder. I had to chuckle at the sight, but my heart did hurt for him. I couldn’t imagine how tired he must have been to fall asleep then, and still in his clothes, much less.

The guilt over being the main cause of his tiredness was enough to keep me still for at least two hours. I spent that time slowly inching to a more comfortable position, only to be squished seconds later by Spencer. Even in his sleep, it seemed he was terrified of the prospect of me slipping from his arms. He was just being dramatic, though. It’s not like I had anywhere to go.

Wait, that sounded wrong. Truthfully, there were many places I could go, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay with Spencer, tangled in his long limbs and tickled by his hair that had grown long enough to gracelessly flop onto my face regardless of position.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to leave at all.

But I did. Inch by inch, I carefully slipped from Spencer’s arms. Against all odds, I managed to maneuver through the death grip he had on me and plop down on the ground beside the bed. My mind found that to be the perfect time to recall the lecture he’d given me about how suitcases, and more specifically, their wheels, were the most dangerous bacteria-laden aspects of traveling, but I dismissed the thought shortly after I stood again.

I didn’t want to leave Spencer’s embrace. I’m not really sure why I did. There wasn’t even really a particularly angsty reasoning for it. I just had this feeling, this tingling on my skin and a weight in my stomach that told me I was meant to be doing something different.

The only problem was that I had literally no idea what the fuck that something different was.

So, naturally, I did what every young child does when their parents had grown tired of their restless children jumping on the hotel bed. I grabbed the keycard and the ice bucket and set out on a very thrilling journey to find the vending room. The first part was the hardest. It was shutting the door to return the room to darkness, knowing that Spencer was alone in bed.

It was hard, but it wasn’t impossible. I slipped from the room into the horrible yellow lighting of the halls with the dizzying wallpaper and patterned carpet without another thought. I’d hoped that the walk might bring me answers to the mood I was currently wrestling with, but I was wrong. Because it basically only took me three doors to find the room that I was looking for.

Great.

I threw the door open haphazardly, actually contemplating grabbing the ice and returning to bed no wiser than I had left it. But when the door swung shut behind me, the humming from the machines bled into my brain and started to cover all the other thoughts. It was warmer than my room, as well as smaller and quieter. Of course, it was also remarkably less private, but it was also like 2am. If someone came in to find a strange girl sitting on the floor next to the ice machine, that was their own fault.

In a strange way, it was the most peaceful I’d been in a long time. As much as I loved being with Spencer, these circumstances made it hard for me to not feel like I didn’t belong. Probably because I didn’t. He was here on work, a life that he’d tried very hard to keep away from me. I didn’t blame him for that, either. I was sure he’d gotten a number of questions from Morgan and Garcia about my presence, but he hadn’t shared them with me. I’d even asked him, just so I could concoct my own retaliatory questions for the nosiest of them, but he just laughed the question away.

Maybe that was it. Maybe it was just the realization that Spencer had a life of his own and I was just starting to see it for the first time. I was learning so much about him and honestly… None of it was bad. Most of it was just downright silly. Things like prank wars and physics magic and careful, chemistry-based improvements to shitty coffee. I was just too busy realizing that I was falling even more in love with Spencer to notice anything else.

Including, apparently, the sound of the door to the room opening. Trust me when I say that was saying a lot; the presence of Aaron Hotchner was not easy to miss.

“Can I join you?” His voice filled the room despite its low volume, and I followed the sound with a small smile that grew at the sight of him in casual clothing. It wasn’t something that happened often, but it sure did make him less intimidating than our previous encounters.

“Sure,” I said as I pulled the still-empty ice bucket into my lap. Once he took his seat beside me, I rolled my head toward him to try and figure out what exactly he had planned. But after another few seconds of silence, I realized that he was doing the same thing I was.

Improvising.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” I asked, insistent that it wasn’t my job in this scenario to come up with the advice.

Hotch seemed equally lost, and with a slight shake of his head, he explained, “I only heard the door open once. Figured it was worth a trip to get some ice to check.”

He held up his matching ice bucket, to which I lifted mine to knock together like the worst kind of toast. It at least succeeded in making him laugh, although the sound was short-lived. We both recognized the shoddy attempt at humor was just masking the things I didn’t want to talk about.

“Why can’t you sleep?”

He had never really been a beat-around-the-bush sort of guy.

“Freakin’ profilers,” I affectionately muttered back, which only earned me a playful warning glance that I, for once, didn’t choose to ignore. “I don’t know. I’m guessing it’s probably the 3-hour nap I took when we got here.”

Then, deciding that still didn’t describe the situation well enough, I tagged on, “You know, while you all were working and saving the world and what not.”

Unfortunately, I’d forgotten the cardinal rule of the BAU: Do not ever speak poorly about yourself. Not even an implication.

“Rest is important. No reason for you to suffer for us,” he returned without pause.

“You sound like Spencer,” I said through a half-hearted laugh.  

Hotch shared my laughter, causing them both to grow in volume as he snarkily replied, “And who do you think taught him?”

“Right. Sorry.” I held my hands up in surrender, but we both knew it would be harder than that.

But that was okay. He came prepared.

“So, what else is wrong?”

“So persistent, you lot,” I chuckled. I half expected him to let it go, but he just turned to stare at me with that usually stoic face contorted with an obvious reprimand. I swear, I didn’t even realize his eyebrows could move that far. But there were, raised up his forehead as his cheeks dimpled from his little, knowing smirk.

“I don’t know,” I sighed, “Just thinking about things and I was scared I would wake up Spencer. Like he would feel my anxiety in his sleep.”

“What’s making you anxious?”

I paused. For a moment, I thought about lying. Not the kind of transparent lie that you do when you say that everything is fine. The kind of lie that also contained the truth. There were many things that had happened lately that would explain my anxiety, and they would be believable enough because I did still feel them.

“Everything. You know. The usual,” I said softly, attempting to stall.

Because that wasn’t what the problem was that day. The problems that day were… complicated in a different way than the usual angst. So, I let the thoughts marinate for a moment, considering the different outcomes and deciding which I really wanted.

I hadn’t let myself want things in a while. Maybe that realization was why I decided to just tell him the truth, despite how embarrassing it felt.

“It’s not bad anxiety, necessarily. It’s just this realization that… I don’t know.”

“Take a guess,” he pressed, feeling the hesitance as I stood at the brink of what I really wanted to say. The real answer to why I was sitting on the floor of an ice machine vending room with my boyfriend’s boss, who also happened to be our shared adoptive father figure.

I took a deep breath, clutching onto the ice bucket so tightly that my knuckles blanched and the edges imprinted on my hand until I blurted out, “That I think I’m ready for something else. Something more.”

We both stopped then, enjoying the noises of machinery and the barely-there echo of my words.

“Something more, huh?” he repeated more clearly.

I didn’t appreciate the way the words were practically sung through a clever grin, and before he could take that train of thought any further, I stopped him with an answer too loud to not be deemed defensive.

“Not like that! Not like, let’s run off and elope and have lots of babies tomorrow!“ He didn’t look convinced, so I continued with a much more believable promise. “Don’t worry, I’m not sniping your genius.”

“Thank goodness,” he replied sarcastically. I appreciated his ability to keep things lighthearted, and for a second I did have to laugh at the fact he was such a different person when he wasn’t at work. He must’ve taught Spencer more than I realized. And, in turn, Spencer was teaching me. I just wasn’t sure when the lesson would be over, or if it had already ended.

“I’ve just held onto my independence and this… heavy bullshit for so long, and I’m a little worried about what that means,” I thought aloud.

Again, Hotch had read my mind, or at least, my body language, and demanded the answer he saw written across my features. “What do you think it means?”

“Do you always give fatherly advice like this to whiny girls in ice machine rooms?” I shot back with my first attempt at a glare. It only lasted until he flashed me a toothy smile and his own clever retort.

“No. Now answer the question.”

“I had to try,” I grumbled, only to be shut down again in an instant.

“I’ll forgive you when you answer.”

With a begrudging sigh, I tried to do what he asked. But I only barely got through one word before they turned to a lump in my throat. I choked on the words strongly enough that tears I hadn’t anticipated began pooling on my eyelashes. The power of a profiler, I guess, to know I was on the verge of an emotional catharsis before I did.

“I know we all change. I know that no one stays the same. We all go through things and they change who we are. And that can be good, right? But…”

Once the words started, they wouldn’t stop, turning and tumbling from clumsy lips still chapped from incessant biting. But teeth and willpower couldn’t stop the feelings that caused them, and if Spencer had taught me anything, he’d taught me that speaking a feeling into existence was half of the battle to let it go.

“But sometimes it’s gotta just be bad, right? Like, we’ve got to acknowledge that sometimes we change in an irreparable way that’s just bad for no reason.”

“Right,” he very eloquently returned. Normally, I would have bullied him for giving such a simple response to such a complex question, but at that moment I was just grateful that I could continue. Heaven knows Spencer wouldn’t have let me.

“So, what if that happened to me? What if one day I wake up and finally find out the answer to the question I’ve been asking myself?”

When I turned to the man then, I saw a genuine confusion for the first time that night. I couldn’t tell you where I’d lost him, but it was clear that he heard something in me that alerted him that some deeper rooted issues were just now finding the light of day.

Of course, in this situation, it was really just a flickering fluorescent bulb.

“What question is that?” he whispered, like his voice would intrude in the thoughts.

But the truth was they didn’t feel like they belonged to me, either. That was the problem. I’d spent so long with memories that felt like a dream. I saw them playback when I closed my eyes, just to open them and find the same images reflecting in Spencer’s. I knew they were real because they were written into my skin, yet my mind rioted against them so hard that instead, I just started to think that this body wasn’t mine, either.

“How much of me died that day?”

The question sat with us, taking form in the reflection on the metallic surface that hummed a somehow somber tune. And even though I knew I was looking at myself, it didn’t feel that way. When I saw Hotch move in the background, I turned to him just in time to feel his hand resting over mine on the metal pail in my hands.

“Can I tell you what I think?” he offered.

“I’d like that.”

I felt the warmth flow through him, bringing life back into a hand that suddenly started to feel like me again. His voice shared the same rejuvenating quality as he quietly but confidently answered, “I think… it’s much less than you think.”

As tears slid down my face, they felt less like the beginning of a downpour and more like the drizzle that follows the storm. I let them fall without wiping them away, hoping that as they fell away, they would take the fear with them.

After they did drip from my jaw, I laughed. I couldn’t hold it in because it seemed so silly how much lighter I felt after losing just a few droplets of saline. But, realistically, I knew it had more to do with his hand still holding mine.

I dropped my head to his shoulder, selfishly stealing his body warmth as I croaked, “Thanks for talking to me. I know I must sound like a stupid kid to you sometimes.”

“Not at all,” he said with that tone that was difficult to discount, “You sound just like you should.”

“Can I tell you something now?” I asked between sniffles.

“I’d like that,” he mirrored.

“You’re like… a really good dad.”

It was his turn to shed tears, then, which he did. They were much manlier and less silly than mine, but they were there. I almost accused him of creating them just to make me feel less embarrassed, but before I could, he’d enveloped me in a hug that was way too genuine to question it.

As I hugged him back, I realized just how badly I’d missed moments like this. I’d fooled myself into really believing that loneliness and independence were the same things for so long that when I was granted the support all human beings need, I didn’t know how to respond.

But that was the beauty of family, right? You don’t have to try to earn their love. They already thought you were worthy.

So I hugged him harder, ignoring the clanking of the machines and the sounds of crowds of people stumbling back from bars in the hall that could walk in any moment. I wasn’t embarrassed to be sad anymore. I was just a person. It happens sometimes.

“Speaking of, it’s well past your bedtime,” Hotch said finally, gracelessly shattering the moment in a very dad-like fashion.

“I walked into that one.”

Following that trend, he continued with a gentle bump of his shoulder against me, “If you don’t want to go yet, you can talk to me about that something more.”

I practically shoved him off me, huffing between chuckles and shaking my head in the hope that he wouldn’t notice how it flushed.

“Please. Spencer talks about that stuff, but he’s all talk.”

At first, Hotch just nodded. But after a few wayward glances, he confessed, “I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”

That time the warmth I felt came from within, carried by butterflies that had burst in my stomach at the thought. I almost asked him what he meant, but then felt the familiar, creeping embarrassment that came along with loving someone a little too much.

“Yeah, right,” I scoffed.

I knew he was reading my expressions, but I couldn’t hide the smile, no matter how hard I tried. He still had the decency to ignore my blatant displays of excitement, instead asking the question we both knew the answer to already.

“Is that something you’d want?”

“I…” Such a simple syllable still seemed like too much, and I stuttered it a few more times before I landed on an answer that wasn’t too humiliating. “I guess he’ll have to ask and find out.”

“I hope it turns out well when he does,” he said, pausing to correct with a sarcastic, “Sorry. If he does.”

“Yeah, me too,” I sighed heavily. It was a last ditch effort to hide the way my cheeks were still stuck in a full-faced smile. I turned to see him with a very similar expression.

I knew just how to change that. When he stood up and offered me a hand, I took it and let him do half the work for me. But once we were on equal footing, I placed my hand on his shoulder with a complacent pat.

“You know, if it doesn’t turn out well, you’ll have to figure out how to comfort the both of us.”

“The horror,” he jokingly cringed with a shake of his head.

I almost left then, but thankfully he’d remembered the actual purpose for the room we’d had our impromptu surrogate-father-daughter moment in. He grabbed my ice pail from my hand and dropped it under the dispenser without saying anything else, letting the chaotic crunching signal the real end of the moment.

Once it was over, I looked down at the now freezing bucket in my hands that suddenly felt warm. Then I looked back up at him and saw a pride that I wasn’t expecting.

“Goodnight, Aaron,” I said as the last remaining bit of tension fell from my shoulders.

“Goodnight,” he answered, opening the door and watching as I padded down the hall. He waited until I slipped back into my room before his door clicked shut, and mine quickly followed.

That tiny sound was just enough to wake the man in the bed, and when I turned to him, the sight took my breath away. Because there was Spencer, the man I loved, reaching his arms out into the darkness and grabbing the empty air as he whined, begging me to come to him faster.

And I did. Tossing the bucket onto the table, I rushed over to him and threw myself into the bed beside him without any grace. With a similar restlessness, Spencer wound his arms around me as soon as I was within his reach, pulling me as close as he could without sacrificing all the air in my lungs.

“I missed you,” he mumbled against my hair.

“Don’t worry. I’m back,” I whispered back. The words were lost in his shirt, but he somehow heard them well enough to ask, “Where did you go?”

I didn’t know how exactly to describe what had happened, so I told one of those lies I’d contemplated earlier. “To get ice,” I said. It wasn’t exactly a lie. It was just a very inefficient summary.

Spencer didn’t care, either. In fact, he giggled at the thought, nuzzling his face down into my neck and tickling me with his lips as he mumbled, “Let me warm you up.”

It did succeed in warming me up, but only because it turned into a fit of giggles and more intense tickling. His fingers danced along my sides and his whispers turned back to the same kisses that we’d started the night with.

But it couldn’t last forever. The poor guy still had only had a couple hours of sleep, and I felt the excitement wear off all at once, leaving him only half-awake on the pillow beside me. He still found the energy to look at me like there were stars in my eyes.

“Where did you really go?” he asked again, dragging his hand over my cheek like he could see the tears I’d shed just a few moments before.

“Just ice. I promise,” I answered, ending the thought with a quick kiss on his palm. When I could tell that he didn’t believe that, I brought my hands up to his face as I snickered, “See? Cold hands.”

Surprisingly, he didn’t flinch. Instead, he just leaned forward, letting our noses touch and pulling me in to him again. His eyes fluttered shut, and I could almost see the way his body started to return to sleep as he barely muttered, “No cold feet, though?”

It took me a moment to register the words, and once I did, I still couldn’t believe them.

“Cold feet for what?” I whispered back.

Spencer’s answer only came in the form of a dreamy laugh. He didn’t open his eyes again, instead choosing to drop his face back into my shoulder just like he had before. This time there were even fewer kisses against my neck before he went still again.

Once again, I was left with my thoughts. Only this time they weren’t scary. Because marrying Spencer Reid was not the worst thing to imagine by far. In fact, there were very few things I’d ever wanted more.

—————————————————

| Part 23 |

#spencer reid #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid imagine #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds self insert #spencer reid series #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x you #dr spencer reid #spence reid #spencer reid request #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds fanfiction

[whythinktoomuch]

(pt. i)  (pt. ii) 

She keeps to the darkness, keeps quiet, and keeps her distance, just the way she’s been trained to. She watches Lena, and she does it quite well. The difficult part is settling on the one thing that she should be learning from these endeavors.

Lena does a great many things throughout her day—often up before the sun, and only homeward bound long after it’s set. But after three long days of research, there’s one feature in particular that seems to warrant the most attention: a dark fleck, nestled in the pale expanse of her vulnerable throat.

When she tries to encapsulate the entirety of that observation into words at her disposal, however, all she can manage is, “Lena, not ugly.”

Lex doesn’t reply for a long while, which isn’t typical of him. But his tone isn’t unkind when he finally asks, “Is that it?”

“Yes.” She frowns, because why couldn’t that be it?

But Lex sighs, and that soft sound uproots her peace at its very core. “I wanted you to bring me a fact,” he says. “Not develop an opinion.”

“Different how?” she demands.

“Well, I need evidence.” Lex takes her hand, turning it over to reveal her palm, forever marked and marred from her most recent encounter with Kryptonite. “I need you to show me something. Something real. Otherwise, it doesn’t count. Do you understand?”

And yes, that much is definitely understandable. Even to her.

//

With much repurposed effort, she watches and waits while Lena does her work. Then she watches Lena take her leave, then waits some more.

It’s only when the top floor of the building is emptied of all people that she flies over, slipping into Lena’s office through the balcony door that’s never locked. From there, it doesn’t take long to secure what she’s looking for.

The next time Lex pays her a visit, she drops an armful of her spoils right at his feet.

“Lena likes coffee,” she announces boldly.

Lex is clearly taken aback at first, blinking and still. But then he grabs one of the many empty coffee cups now littered across the floor, and a slow smile dawns on his face. “All right then. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

She grins so wide that it strains the corners of her lips.

--

“Lena is cold,” she says the next time they meet, presenting a delicate black glove for his amusement and perusal.

“Yes, well, most people are when it snows,” Lex says.

“Not me.”

“Well, you’re not exactly most people now, are you?” Lex’s pride in her is absolutely infectious, so she grins. “Of course not. You’re… exquisite.”

“Good thing?” she asks. It’s usually the first question that wells up inside of her upon hearing new words.

“A very good thing,” Lex says with a playful wink.

Over the last two weeks, Lex’s visits have dropped from often to somewhat often enough, his precious attention now divided between her and another project of his. It’s been a near impossible change for her to weather, but moments like this make it a little easier.

That is, until Lex slips the glove on.  

She watches him flex his fingers one by one, forcing the taut leather to crackle loudly in her ears, and retreats somewhere deep inside herself. She fights determinedly against the frown threatening to twist her features into something uglier.

The glove isn’t hers. It isn’t Lex’s either, but his hand fits so perfectly that it could very well be his if he wanted.

“Not actually all that warm,” Lex comments, snorting when he peeks inside the glove. “And yet, pricier than your average first class ticket to Paris… Tsk, a little superficial, if you ask me.”

She nods as appropriate, but most of her concern is still with the glove and how Lex stuffs it into his back pocket like it doesn’t mean a thing.

//

“Yes, her hair is indeed very long,” Lex says, accepting the offering of Lena’s hairbrush, complete with stray strands of dark hair still caught in its teeth as ample proof for this careful observation. “This, Bizarrogirl, is absolutely perfect.”

And it is. Because this isn’t just a handful of coffee cups tossed in the trash or a lone glove left behind in the snow during a hasty commute. No, this is something she actually had to break into Lena’s apartment for, in the middle of a workday, undetected even in broad daylight.

But even all that and more couldn’t outweigh the very simple fact that Lex has the means to kill her now.

Evidently, a big part of his new project has been synthesizing a strain of Kryptonite that would only be lethal to her, and he must have succeeded because today, he’s armed with blue-tipped syringes that can pierce her skin.

It’s for research purposes. It’s the only way that Lex can collect blood samples so as to better study her molecular makeup, which will only help her in the long run. Lex, of course, would never hurt her.

Except it does hurt. Each needle sinks into her arm in an acute twinge, and she can feel the aftereffects of the breach crawling inside her head. It’s worse than the green light. It makes her stomach dry out like a rock, and tugs cool drops of sweat onto the surface of her skin.

But Lex must notice this sudden unrest living inside her because he lets her keep the hairbrush.

“Mine?” she asks, cradling the brush in her hands. It’s been relieved of all traces of Lena, but that doesn’t matter. She’s seen Lena use it enough times that it’s still rightly precious.

“No, it’s still Lena’s,” Lex corrects her with a gentle smile. “But you can keep it,” which is the best possible answer he could have given her.

//

She’s watching Lena unwind at home from her favorite spot in the sky, drawing from her x-ray vision and super-hearing with an ease that is now very practiced.

Everything is pleasantly routine until Kara knocks on Lena’s door, which is still very routine until they start raising their voices at each other. They exchange some words that she doesn’t quite understand with many implications that perhaps she will never understand. Then Supergirl is leaving through the balcony, flying off into the night in a blur of boastful blues and reds, while Lena is left behind to yell at herself and cry in unpredictable bursts.

Eventually, Lena settles in the kitchen, pouring herself a glass of something that makes the air taste bitter. She’s halfway through her third glass when she slumps forward, her head dropped into her folded arms, breath gradually slowing and deepening.

She watches Lena sleep, waiting until the waiting is unbearable. There are all sorts of reasons why she shouldn’t, but she touches down onto the balcony, sidling into the apartment like a fleeting shadow, and finds herself in Lena’s presence for the very first time.  

The bitter taste is stronger in her nose now, but so is everything else to be perceived about Lena. Everything from her soft snores to the slight warmth her body gives off once within reach.

And she risks that everything for a single touch, brushing her fingertips right where Lena’s long hair starts to end. It’s light, yet stirs something pure, frenzied, and fluttering in her chest. Then Lena sniffles and mumbles into her own arm, “… Kara?” and the moment spills into reality.

Teeth bared, she plucks the glass from Lena’s fragile grip with just enough care that it doesn’t shatter and leaves the same way Supergirl had barely an hour before.

//

She sets the glass before Lex with a firm clack! that calls his attention away from his tablet.

“Oh hello…” Lex sits up with a small chuckle. “And what’s this? Are we celebrating?”

“Lena is sad.”

Lex is out of his chair, his stare wild as he promptly demands, “What happened? What did you see?”

“Kara came. They talked… Supergirl left.” She squeezes her right fist, digging her nails into her palm the way she’s supposed to when things overwhelm her. “And… Lena is sad.”

Lex bursts into laughter. He doesn’t stop laughing for the rest of the night.

//

She doesn’t want to learn things about Lena anymore.

Things are so different now. Lena is quieter, often alone. She spends most of her time at work and not nearly enough time maintaining habits that are meant to keep her alive.

But Lex still insists that she keep watch, so she does, and she still does it so well. She works at it even harder, in fact, now that his visits have become even fewer and farther in between as of late. Lex’s other project is supposedly not as important as she is, but it siphons off his time like it must be.

Lena’s new routine is polished, heavily sanitized, and well-established until the night she breaks it in favor of tasting the nighttime air. She steps onto her balcony in clothes made for sleep and with a glass filled with something more sweet than bitter. Her eyes narrow up at the darkened sky. She stares, as if expectant.

“Hello…? Is somebody out there?” Lena rests her elbows precariously against the railing,  sighing between intermittent sips of her drink. Then, in a softened voice, “… Who are you?” And all of a sudden, Lena’s become tangible and more than just another person waiting for Supergirl to save her.  

Bizarrogirl glides from shadow to shadow, trailing the darkness all the way down to the far corner of the balcony, where she settles in, secluded and silent. Lena doesn’t turn around, but her heartbeat is readily transparent enough for the both of them that it doesn’t matter. “Hello, Lena,” she says.

Lena sighs into her glass. “So, are you the one stealing my things then?”

“Yes.”

“You know… I really thought I was just going crazy. That I was just conjuring up senseless conspiracies because god forbid I ever misplace something like a normal person.” Lena pauses to take a small sip of her drink and chuckle. “But then, you went ahead and took my favorite glass right out of my hand, so…”

She smiles, even though she knows no one can see it. “You are smart.”

“Allegedly,” Lena says, shrugging. She looks over her shoulder, blinks blearily right into the darkness. “You’re really not going to show yourself, huh?”

“No. Never.” She holds her breath, but the follow-up question never comes.

Instead, Lena just turns back around with a small nod. “Believe me, I’d be doing the same thing if I could,” she says quietly, and leaves it at that.

“Not… scared?” she finally has to ask.

“Should I be?”

She shakes her head after some hesitation. “No.”

“Well, there we go then,” Lena says, rubbing at her eyes with a resigned sigh. “Listen… I’m just… so tired right now, and frankly, I just don’t have it in me to address whatever it is you’re trying to do. But to be honest—” she tosses back the last of her drink in a single swallow—“I have enough things. So… consider this a freebie.”

“… Freebie?”

Lena pushes off the railing, exhaling half-hearted laughter. “Yes, freebie. I’m leaving this for you right here, okay? No need to resort to petty theft or breaking and entering.” She sets the empty wineglass right outside her door, but pauses before stepping through. “… So, what’s your name anyway?”

The most obvious answer—so carefully practiced, her clumsy mouth sounding out the word over and over again for her own sake—feels wrong in the moment. A lie, somehow, in the face of Lena’s undeserved generosity.

“You do have a name, don’t you?” Lena glances over, head tilted curiously, and their eyes almost meet despite all the darkness cast between them.

“No,” she manages to say, her fingernails biting fiercely into her own palm.

Lena gives a hum, one so thoughtful and reminiscent of her brother. “Well… that’s something you’ll have to steal from someone else, I’m afraid.”

She watches Lena slide the door shut behind her, but waits until all the lights disappear before reaching for the glass.

//

It takes two more days for Lex to pay her another visit, and he walks into her room to find her turning the wineglass over and over in her hands. He frowns when she doesn’t immediately offer it up to him.

“So, did you learn anything?” Lex asks, and she just nods. “… And…?”

She rolls her right hand into a fist so tight that her entire hand feels like a bruise. “Not. Scared.”

“Lena’s… not scared.” Lex studies the wineglass carefully before directing his sharp gaze back at her face. “I see.”

He doesn’t ask for further clarification, or any other question, or anything at all, for that matter. He just leaves, and she feels nothing about it.

#i started writing this for one (1) specific scene #and that scene's... apparently just never coming #anyway this is exactly 2150 words because hashtag kicksngigglestm #my words.

[sparring-hyena]

Ok i got a request . Remember how Chris Kait and James got those special 1 chapter episodes where they go on special dates. It would be cool to see Beccas. So its set after Book 3. Instead of going to the festival with the gang Mc decides to visit Becca first at her lakehouse and then they go to the festival just her and Becca. They ll share lots of sweet moments at the pool more fun at the concert and later on at home things can get a bit heated.

Becca reaches for her phone with the intent to scroll through her social feeds. really, she does. opening her messaging app is a reflex. opening the short text thread she has with Alex is just an accident. and typing out a hey, what’re you up to? is… a mistake? some kind of predetermined notion written into the fabric of reality?

whatever. it doesn’t matter what it is. no, what matters is that she does, send a text to Alex that is, and that she tosses her phone to the other side of couch as soon as she hits send, almost like it burns her hands.

she stares at her phone, waits for it to react to what she just did—maybe it’ll implode. she’s almost surprised when her phone buzzes a few minutes later. and she’ll never admit to just how fast she jumps forward to snatch it up.

it’s Alex. Alex responded. okay. cool cool cool.

my friends and i are on a road trip. we’ve just passed into California. you?

the you? twists itself into Becca’s mind. slips into every nook and cranny until it’s she can think and feel, and her heart is going ba-dum ba-dum and she definitely can’t just say oh, not much. just by myself at my dad’s lake house because he’s trying to buy my love now that my parents are getting divorced. except she does say that. word for word. it tumbles from her mind onto her phone and then she hits send and holds her breath in her throat as she waits for Alex’s response.

want some company then?

and what really surprised Becca is that she answers with yes.

-

in the days leading up to Alex’s arrival she cleans. not that there’s much to clean—the house is big, and she’s kept to one small part of it. she also rifles through her closet and decides, an hour before Alex is due to arrive, that she doesn’t have anything to wear. the clothes laying forgotten on her bed disagree, but she ignores that and feels the anxiety twist itself around her.

and then her phone buzzes and there’s a knock at the door. Alex is here. Alex is early.

shit.

she tosses on the first thing she can grab and runs her hands through her hair before darting down to the front door.

when Becca opens the door, Alex greets her with a warm smile that simultaneously calms and frightens. frightens, because how does her smile have such an effect on me. they stand awkwardly in the doorway until Alex clears her throat and asks, “did you wanna invite me in?”

“right.” Becca steps aside and motions Alex in.

Alex whistles as she looks around, still holding her bag in front of her. “nice place.”

Becca shrugs, because it is nice, stunning really, but the house doesn’t feel quite right—it never really has. it’s big and empty and somehow always manages to be cold even during summer.

“come on, i’ll show you around.”

-

it’s as they walk through the house that Becca realises she’s not quite sure what they are. they aren’t enemies, and now she wonders if they ever actually were. and they definitely aren’t dating. dating implies some level of commitment that Becca doubts she could ever really give. and then there would be intimacy and comfort and little inside jokes that they’d share quiet smiles over.

but that doesn’t matter anyway because she would never want to date Alex—never ever. dating Alex would be complicated and messy and she has a reputation and expectations that Alex doesn’t fit and—

“you doin’ alright there?”

“huh?” Becca shakes the thoughts away.

Alex tilts her head to the side and offers a small curious smile that manages to worm its way into Becca’s heart and find a place for itself amidst all the dark twisty tendrils that have been growing with each passing day.

“why are you looking at me like that?” Becca asks, her tone both defensive and amused.

“like what?”

“like you’re trying to read my mind.”

“i’m not, i just—” Alex sighs and Becca suddenly wonders what she’d been about to say. “you mentioned swimming?”

“swimming, right.” Becca knows a digression when she hears one, but she points to a room Alex can get changed in and says she’ll meet her downstairs.

-

Becca doesn’t actually swim. she sits on the edge of the dock beneath the dying afternoon sun and traces the water with her toes. Alex swims though, splashes around for a short while and tries to gently prod Becca in too. but Becca holds firm and insists that she’s more than happy on the dock.

Alex climbs out later, dripping water onto the dock and creating a small puddle that manages to spread and reach Becca’s leg. she pretends Alex dripping water on her irritates her and pretends to hate it when she flicks water at her.

Alex sits down beside her, and Becca thinks she’s waiting for her to break the silence that’s comfortably settled between them.

“do you wanna talk about it?” Alex finally asks.

Becca wonders which it they’re talking about—her parents’ divorce or the fact that some fundamental piece of their relationship or friendship or whatever they are, is changing. maybe it’s both. maybe it’s neither.

“thank you for visiting me,” she says instead. “i’m sure it pales in comparison to a road trip with your friends.”

“hardly.” Alex smiles and nudges Becca’s shoulder with her own. “we were all cramped in a van that doesn’t have working a/c. besides, i like hanging out with you, it’s…”

Becca raises her eyebrows, curious and nudging Alex on.

“easy.”

Becca laughs, like, full body laughs. never in her life has she been described as easy to be around.

“what’s so funny?”

“nothing, nothing.” Becca tries to suppress her laughter, but it doesn’t work.

“i was trying to be nice.” Alex makes a show of being hurt, even makes to leave, but the smile on her face tells a very different story.

“no, sorry.” Becca places her hand gently on Alex’s arm; wants her to believe the sincerity behind her words. “it was nice and i didn’t mean to laugh. i’ve just never been described as easy before, and with everything going on, i guess it’s been a while since something’s made me laugh.”

“oh.” Alex settles on the dock again and Becca’s hand remains on her arm. “are you talking with your parents much?”

Becca shrugs. “mom’s trying. i think we’re both just having a hard time adjusting to speaking to each other. it’s been good but strange.”

“and your dad?”

Becca barks out a laugh. “i think he’s just as clueless. only difference is he’s not making much of an effort. my sister and i were supposed to spend some time with him here over the summer. look how that turned out.”

“i’m sorry.”

“i don’t need pity—”

“i wasn’t pitying you.”

“i know, but it’s just…”

“just…?”

and Alex’s arm is suddenly very warm beneath Becca’s hand. warm and solid and grounding and— they’ve done this before. played this game where they share their insecurities and offer something dangerously close to companionship.

it won’t end well, she thinks, but her heart thumps along and tells her to indulge just this once. what’s one more time anyway?

“we shouldn’t,” Becca breathes, because one of them needs to say it.

“probably,” Alex agrees, but neither of them move to put some space between them.

“but we could.”

“definitely.”

“it would be” —amazing is the word she thinks— “fun,” is the word she says with a playful lilt to her voice that she hopes distracts from the longing want she can feel in her bones.

they’re closer now, faces no more than a couple inches apart, and the air around them feels stiff somehow, like the world around them took one massive breath and is now waiting for them to do something about the balloon of tension that’s been slowly inflating for months.

and then the balloon bursts, and there’s kissing and moaning and wandering hands and— oh god, Becca suddenly remembers why she wanted to do this again. it feels like electricity zapping up and down her body. it hurts and it heals, and she wonders if they’ll ever do this again—silently hopes that they will.

she pulls Alex closer, decides that it’s still not enough—some tiny part of her heart hums and says that it never will be—and moves to straddle her lap and thread her fingers through her hair.

“here?” Alex asks between frantic and hurried kisses.

Becca hums and urges Alex’s hands further down her body.

it happens quickly after that. the coil inside Becca tightens each time Alex moves her fingers and moans her name and nips at her neck and— it snaps. the coil snaps and its wonderful and horrible and Becca is suddenly acutely aware of the place Alex holds in her heart.

and that— it terrifies her, because for the first time in her life she has no idea how it will go.

-

they head back up to the house not long later, stumbling through the first floor and upstairs as they share laughs and kisses. and when they reach the foot of the bed, Becca pushes Alex back and is quick to return the favour.

-

Becca wakes early in the morning on her side and facing Alex who’s fast asleep and completely dead to the world. she takes this moment, this brief interlude, to consider her next move.

the last time they did this, she left as soon as she woke up. though leaving isn’t exactly an option right now, and Becca finds that even if it were, leaving is the last thing she wants to do.

she brings her hand to Alex’s face and brushes a loose piece of hair behind her ear. the gesture, though small, is enough to cause Alex to stir.

“hi,” Alex says, her voice heavy with sleep and eyes barely open.

“hi.”

“you were right,” she says, sporting a tired grin, “it was fun.”

Becca hums and shifts closer to Alex, tracing lazy patterns on her shoulder. “how long can you stay?”

“how long do you want me to stay?”

“i asked you first.”

“so?”

“humour me.”

their back-and-forth is light, airy. it’s how they usually talk. but there’s insecurity that hides beneath it all. insecurity that itches to be breathed into the world and soothed away.

“well, my friends and i were going to the aurora music festival tomorrow.”

“oh.”

“but maybe, if you wanted to, you could come with?”

“are you asking me to go with you?”

“i asked you first.”

Becca smacks Alex’s shoulder but can’t stop the smile on her face. “yes, i want to go.”

“good” —Alex leans in then, stops only when their lips are just about to touch— “because i really want you to come with me.”

“is that so?”

Alex hums and brings their lips together in a slow and easy kiss that Becca’s all too happy to get lost in.

“wait, hang on.” Alex pulls away, a suddenly serious expression on her face. “you didn’t tell me how long you wanted me to stay.”

forever is the word she thinks, but she just smiles and brings their lips together again, and she thinks that Alex might just understand.

#my writing #request #anon #becca davenport #becca x mc #the freshman #the sophomore #the junior #the senior #playchoices

[whumpmatsus]

E1 for Karamatsu? All the brothers having to help keep him calm 'cause I can't imagine he would be able to handle not hearing well (also I just love everything you write)

Ultimate Whump Writing Meme! / ACCEPTING!

1. Acute infectious diseases

E: Otitis media/middle ear infection

aaaa my poor boy!! he definitely would NOT handle that well, it makes him really anxious to have any one of his senses taken away tbh

have some Coldmatsu cuz I couldn’t decide between Iro or Suiriku, so you get both! XD

(and aaaaaaa you're so sweet I'mma cry!!)

-

All things being equal, most of the Matsuno sextuplets are more than happy to be done with the ear infections they got as children.

Because the reality is, those things suck. All any of them ever did when they had an ear infection was cry and cry and cry. Even now, just the mention of those things makes them all wince and grab their heads as if a phantom pain is back to haunt them. They can all count on one hand the number of ear infections they’ve had since adulthood, thankfully.

Then there’s Karamatsu. The good news is that every time he goes to the doctor with an ear infection, she says they’re not quite frequent enough to be concerned; the worry would start if he had, say, four or more in a year or three or more within six months. Ear infections normal develop after a cold, which they all catch like clockwork at least once a year, and it seems like he’s just a little more prone to getting the ear infections than his brothers.

The bad news is that when he does get one, typically once a year or once every couple years, it seems to completely knock him out. Every bit of ‘coolness’ drains out and leaves him almost a shell of his usual persona.

It makes him completely unbearable to be around, as usual, but… for a different reason.

After all, it’s not like any of them are heartless. Seeing Karamatsu in so much pain is something none of them can stand for very long. Having an ear infection means he’s constantly anxious, particularly when it flares up badly enough that he can’t hear well, he cries a lot because he’s uncomfortable, and that kicked-puppy face of his just can’t be said no to.

Thankfully, even though he panics a lot and even though he’s hurting, he’s not a terrible patient. He takes medicine when it’s time for it without much fuss, and tries his best to sleep as much as he can.

Although everyone has been taking turns sitting in the spare room trying to comfort him as much as possible, it seems that today, Choromatsu and Ichimatsu have been the ones who’ve stuck. It just happens like that sometimes. It’s strange given that Ichimatsu would often choose others’ company than these two, and yet, nobody is really complaining.

For the most part, the two of them try to keep things quiet so their older brother can rest. The situation gives Choromatsu and Ichimatsu something to focus on so things don’t get awkward between them, just attempting to keep Karamatsu as comfortable as they can. Choromatsu has kept closer to the sofa, sitting on the floor and reading a book, so that Karamatsu can just tap him on the shoulder if he needs something. Ichimatsu is farther away near the window, with one of the cats in his lap, though he’s keeping an eye out as well just in case.

Sadly, Karamatsu has spent most of the day tossing and turning. His tendency to get fevers when ill means he’s running a temperature, which makes him restless and miserable. Combined with the pain in his ear, the lingering cough from his cold, and the fact that he’s having trouble hearing, the day is just terrible.

He even feels in a shitty mood, the kind where literally everything bothers him. That he hasn’t gotten much sleep doesn’t help matters. Every so often Choromatsu will pause in his reading and ask if there’s anything he needs. There’s no logical reason for that to upset him; in fact, on any other day, it would make him feel loved. Today, it’s aggravating the fuck out of him.

That’s more disheartening than anything, he thinks. For once his brothers are paying attention and trying to take care of him. Why should that make him angry? He loves his brothers with his entire being and enjoys their company. His true self is happy that Choromatsu is trying to look after him. The part of him that’s irritable from the ear infection wishes his little brother wouldn’t ask him if he’s okay every five minutes. (Even though he knows that’s exaggerating.)

He’s not okay. What he needs is for this ear infection to be gone, and he knows that’s not anything feasible that any of his brothers can do for him, so being asked when all he really wants is something impossible is frustrating.

He squeezes his eyes shut in a feeble attempt to get some damn sleep. Sometimes being rested helps when one is sick, although it’s certainly not coming easily. As soon as his eyes are closed, he feels dizzy. Like the whole world is swaying. It’s not horrible enough to make him think the problem has spread deeper ― in the past, some of these middle ear infections have turned into infections of the inner ear, which make him excruciatingly dizzy and nauseous, so he knows what that feels like. It’s not that bad, but it’s there a little bit, particularly when his eyes are closed.

Put together with everything else, it tips the scales into making him start to cry.

He’s not sure how long he’s been crying when suddenly there’s a hand on his shoulder and a muffled shouting, like someone is trying to talk to him while he’s underwater. His whole being jumps, turning to look toward his brothers.

Choromatsu is the one with the hand on him, though both he and Ichimatsu are looking at Karamatsu with concern. When Choromatsu opens his mouth to speak, it sounds the same as a moment before despite the fact that he’s clearly raising his voice quite a bit. At least this time he can tell that his younger brother is saying his name, followed by, “Can you hear me??”, he thinks.

A jolt of pain in his ear makes it obvious what’s causing this. The infection is flaring up and affecting his hearing, enough that he’s straining to hear his brother yelling.

His hands immediately fly up to his ears, and a strangled yelp leaves him when he touches them, an agonizing reminder that even the skin around them is sore. He can’t help but curl in on himself, whimpering. More tears drip down, and he shakes his head, managing a quiet, “B-barely,” in response.

Choromatsu frowns, gently squeezing Karamatsu’s shoulder. Although Karamatsu can’t really hear the conversation, he turns toward Ichimatsu with a sympathetic wince and sighs, “Okay, let’s try something else.”

“Ow, ow, ow…” Karamatsu mumbles for a moment, doing his best to avoid grabbing at his head. It just hurts so bad, and he’s pissed at Choromatsu for trying to talk to him right now, but he’s too tired to be actually pissed. It’s like when you have a drink with ice, then the ice melts after you’re done, and you’re left with some water that tastes vaguely like whatever you were drinking. That’s how his anger feels, weak and watered-down.

Before he knows it, his shoulder is being patted, and a notepad is pushed into his lap. On the page is Choromatsu’s neat handwriting.

Hey, both Ichimatsu and I were calling you for a few minutes. No worries, I just wanted to let you know it’s time for more Calonal and ear drops if you need either of those.

How come you’re crying? What’s wrong?

Karamatsu wishes he could scrape up the energy to be mad. Shouldn’t Choromatsu know what’s wrong? Is he really that dense? Doesn’t he remember how fucking awful it is to have an ear infection, to not be able to hear things properly, to have that sharp pain in your ears, to be emotional from a fever, to not be able to sleep, to feel like your head is so full it’s going to explode?

However, he does his best not to snap at his brother. A deep breath calms his nerves a little, and he reminds himself that Choromatsu probably just doesn’t want to be presumptuous, acting like he knows what’s wrong or what Karamatsu wants or needs. Most likely Choromatsu is trying to confirm what’s going on so he knows what to offer.

It’s also a bit of a relief that it’s time for medicine. The Calonal and prescription ear drops take the edge off all his pain enough that he can relax a little. Maybe shortly after all that is in his system, he can get some sleep; sleep is the best thing when he feels like crap.

He gets the feeling that his voice sounds terrible right now, so he grasps he notebook and reaches for the pen, which Choromatsu mercifully hands over. His own handwriting is a little messier than usual and his words are simpler, though he’s sure it can be forgiven.

I hate this. My ears hurt so badly, and it’s like I’m trying to hear you through a pillow over my head. I didn’t hear you until you shook me and were shouting. I keep feeling hot and cold and switching back and forth. I’m so uncomfortable.

I think I need Calonal and the ear drops.

Choromatsu takes the notepad back for a moment, then nods. The smile he gives Karamatsu is sort of anxious, but he’s undoubtedly trying to give his big brother some comfort in any way he can.

Within a moment the pad is displayed back to him. That’s no problem. I’ll go get them. Do you want one Calonal or two?

Two, if I’m allowed.

Yep, two is good if you’re really in pain. You need a drink to take them, do you want water or tea or something else?

Tea, please.

You got it. I’ll be back in a few minutes, and I’ll leave this here so you can let Ichimatsu know if you need anything, okay?

Okay. Thank you.

It’s no problem. I’ll be back soon.

With that, Choromatsu gets to his feet and gestures for Ichimatsu. “Hey, Ichi. I’m gonna go get Kara’s medicine. He’s not hearing that well right now, and it doesn’t seem like he really wants to speak… so if you need to say anything to him or want him to talk to you, it looks like the notepad is the best thing. I should only be like ten minutes, though.”

“Oh… uh. Okay.” Ichimatsu stands up as well, setting his cat down near the window so she can bask in the sun. Probably better that he doesn’t have the cats near Karamatsu when he isn’t feeling good. “I’ll move over here for a little bit till you get back.”

“Great. Thanks for keeping an eye on him.” Choromatsu gives Ichimatsu a brief hug, kisses Karamatsu’s head, and then scurries out of the room to get everything together.

Everything is quiet for a long minute. If Ichimatsu is awkward with Choromatsu, it’s even worse with Karamatsu. He’s bad at connecting with Karamatsu on good days, they don’t always get along, but… it’s worse when Karamatsu feels poorly, because seeing him like this reminds Ichimatsu that he really does love his brother. He wants to help, and just doesn’t know what to do.

Karamatsu, on the other hand, is only able to whine softly and curl in on himself, frustrated by everything. Being so sick means he can’t do any of the things he loves, and even worse, it’s difficult to accept his brothers’ comfort. He feels reassured by hearing things, being able to listen to someone telling him they love him and they’re here and they’re going to take care of him.

Reading it, though still a solace, feels so bland. He can’t hear or feel someone’s personality through that. In most other ways he’s a visual person, and yet for this, it’s different.

After a moment, the notepad is poked into his arm, drawing his eyes down to the page.

Hey. I’m sorry you feel so shitty. Ear infections are the fucking worst.

He sniffles a bit, rubbing his tears away as best he can. It feels like he’s such a baby, crying over this… at least the others understand how miserable it is, trying to make him feel like he’s not being dramatic. If nothing else, Ichimatsu isn’t judging him for weeping over it.

It’s not your fault. You don’t need to be sorry. But thank you.

Yeah. Hopefully the ear drops and Calonal will help. Ichimatsu taps the pen against the pad for a few seconds; if he were speaking, it would probably signify an ‘uh’ or ‘um’. Is there anything I can do to help while Choro is getting that stuff?

It’s Karamatsu’s turn to hesitate with the pen. Aside from wanting the whole illness to be over, there’s one thing that might soothe him. He’s a little afraid to ask for it, just because he doesn’t know if Ichimatsu would be annoyed with him for it. If Ichimatsu is offering, though…

Could I have a hug? Maybe a long one?

It looks like his little brother is kind of startled by the request. Ichimatsu’s eyes go wide, and he blinks a few times. “Uh.” Karamatsu more sees the sound than hears it. To his ears, it’s like a hum.

Yeah… I guess if you want.

Karamatsu doesn’t even waste time with the notepad. He simply nods, and reaches his arms out.

Ichimatsu feels a little embarrassed as he leans forward into the hug. Not really because he doesn’t like hugging Karamatsu ― although he doesn’t let himself do it often, he does enjoy being close to his brother. It just feels awkward trying to comfort one of his older brothers, having one of them seeking that kind of thing from him, of all people. Usually it’s either him running to his older brothers for comfort when he lets himself be that vulnerable, or him comforting one of his younger brothers. (Jyushimatsu and Totty aren’t usually shy about that kind of thing.)

It’s heaven for Karamatsu, though. He presses himself readily into the embrace, nuzzling his face against Ichimatsu’s shoulder. He’s careful to ensure he avoids making any contact with his ears, and everything still hurts…

But. It feels nice to be cuddled up with his little brother, having Ichimatsu hold him as close as he can without hurting him. Even though Ichimatsu is a bit clumsy with this, it makes Karamatsu feel more secure. That part doesn’t matter so much as it matters that Ichimatsu is willing to do this.

He’s sitting up now, with Ichimatsu’s arms around his shoulders and his own around Ichimatsu’s waist. He’s got his chin propped up on Ichimatsu’s shoulder, feeling weak and exhausted and wishing he could just fall asleep right here.

Another thing is that being so close, he can hear Ichimatsu slightly better since Ichimatsu’s speaking so near his ear. “Is, uh… is this okay?” Still a little muffled, but he doesn’t have to scream his voice raw for Karamatsu to hear.

Karamatsu nods, tightening his arms just a bit. “It’s good.” He can barely hear himself, of course, though he knows he’s making the right sounds and words thanks to how it feels in his throat and lips. “I like this.”

What Ichimatsu offers next is a low chuckle, only signified by an exhale of breath hitting his neck. “Yeah, I kinda like it too. Just… let me know when you want me to stop.”

“Never,” Karamatsu mumbles, nestling into Ichimatsu’s shoulder. It earns him another laugh, and despite feeling so horrible, he manages to smile in reply.

After staying this way for a minute, he feels Ichimatsu shift a hand around to rub his back. He almost starts crying again. “I gotcha,” Ichimatsu says softly. “You’ll be feeling better soon, I bet. Once you choke down the Calonal and Choro puts those ear drops in. Then you can sleep.”

“Mhm. Will you stay on the couch with me for a little bit?”

“Uh. Well. Maybe… maybe for a little bit, yeah. It’s hard to fit two of us here, though… if you really wanna stay like this for a while, after you take your medicine, I can unroll the futon and we can move there.”

“Huh… that sounds like a nice idea.”

“Yeah, right? Just, uh… try to rest for now. I won’t let go till you tell me to.”

“Mmh… okay…”

When Choromatsu slips back into the room carrying everything, he finds them in this position; with Ichimatsu almost cradling his older brother, rubbing his back, and Karamatsu half drifted off, still clearly in pain but less anxious than he was before.

He silently sets everything down, then gives both of them a careful hug and a small laugh. “Ah, don’t tell me, Kara… you want me to set up the futon so you two can cuddle after medicine?”

“… Please?”

Well, there’s no denying that tone. As Choromatsu untangles both of them long enough to get the Calonal down Karamatsu’s throat and put the drops in his ears, he’s mentally crossing his fingers that this means his big brother will feel a lot better come tomorrow.

After all, without Karamatsu’s usual brand of shenanigans, it’s far too quiet in the house.

#Osomatsu san #whump #Coldmatsu #Suirikumatsu #Iromatsu #Karamatsu #illness #ear infection #fever #reduced hearing #caretaking #hurt/comfort #comfort #LOOK AT ALL MY GOOD BOYS THEY'RE TRYING SO HARD #poor Kara ;-; #at least he's got good brothers to take care of him!!

[roscgcld]

THE LOVE OF AN OLDER BROTHER || INUMAKI TOGE

request: Okay if you accept sibling fluff can I request inumaki toge little sister reader(in elementary school) ,where she's deaf and gets bullied for it but doesn't tell him because she thinks it's to much of a burden(like silent voice)

note: hello love! thank you so much for your request! tbh, i’ve never watched the movie A Silent Voice before, so I had to do some Youtubing to find some clips - and I blame you for making me ugly cry at 2 am in the morning lmao. It’s so sweet and such a coming of age story in a way, so I tried to channel that into my writing >< I definitely enjoyed this one a lot!

anime: jujutsu kaisen

characters: inumaki toge

pronouns: she/her

trigger warning: bullying/physical assault mentioned, along with self depreciating and suicidal thoughts. read with caution. 

proof read: N/A

Being from a clan like the Inumaki clan, many from the Jujutsu world would just automatically assume that you’d inherate the powerful Cursed Speech Curse Ability from your family. However, there is always that few exceptions when it came to things like this; and this time, you were that one exception.

You were born deaf, and because of this, you were looked down upon by the elders of your clan for being a ‘waste of an heir’. Your father, a loving man, had always shield you from there vile words; and from example your older brother, a gifted user, became overprotective of you. He would willingly take a bullet for you, constantly showering you in love and affection, and even going so far as learning how to use sign language at a young age so he can communicate with you.

Because he just wants you to grow up in a loving and somewhat normal life. That’s all he wants for you. 

Hence why, instead of following the normal route of a jujutsu student, your parents decided to sign you up in a nearby elementary school with the hopes that you get to bond with normal children. So that’s how you found yourself dressed in a cute floral dress, your white frilly socks with simple Mary Janes, your white hair pulled back into a delicate braid; all excited with your backpack filled with things you picked up at the stationery store and a bento prepared by your mother.

Since it was his day off, Toge took up the responsibility of sending you off on your first day, making sure that the entire process will be smooth sailing for you. Walking down the street of your town, he lets you swing your hands between each other, smiling behind his black mask at how excited you were to start your first day of school. It warmed his heart that you get to experience normal things like this, and without knowing it, you motivated him to push himself harder to become a stronger shaman, to protect the world that brings you so much joy. 

Soon you both found your way into the school grounds and quietly, Toge brought you aside so that he can pull his mask down, revealing his tattooed mouth and tongue. But you just smile at your older brother, who smiles back before he reaches over to ruffle your hair between his fingers. Quietly he signed to you, mouthing the worlds he wanted to say silently instead of wording them out in the open; he was a Cursed Speech user, after all. The safest way for him to communicate for you is for him to use onigiri ingredients. or to word out the words silently whilst doing the signs with his hands. 

‘You ready for school, pipsqueak?’

“Uf huf!” You said happily, your speech clearly slurred and not so clear since you had never been corrected on how to say words properly - but with how you excitedly nod your head with a wide smile, Toge can pretty much interpret what you were saying. Smiling warmly at your excitement, he leans over to kiss you on the forehead on last time before pulling his mask back on. With that he got back up and, after taking your outstretched hand, you two joined the rest of the crowd once more.

After a lot of paperwork and awkward one sided conversations, since Toge went with the excuse that he had a sore throat, you soon found yourself being led to stand behind your new classmates, who were focused on saying goodbye to their parents. Toge squatted down before you and you can immediately tell he was smiling behind his mask, causing you to smile back as well. Quietly he leans forward to rub his masked nose with yours, something that you two always do when the other is about to leave.

With a giggle you happily rubbed your nose against his as well, and with another parting pat to your head, he got up and followed the other parents that were ushered out of the crowded hallway. Soon a few of the more confident students started to introduce themselves to one another, and one of those children came running towards you with a grin. “Good morning! My name is Taku, nice to meet you!” He greeted loudly as he bowed at you and the girls around you, who all gave him an uninterested glance before turning their attention away from him. 

But you did give him an excited smile before you started to sign back a greeting, trying to vocalise your name at the same time. This cause everyone in the hallway to pause and stare at you in confusion, since they had not expected for someone who looks so sweet and soft spoken to have spoken in such a loud and odd way. However before anyone can make a comment about it, the teacher finally arrived with a warm smile on his face, gesturing for the students to entire their new class.

This moment of excitement managed to distract the students and soon everyone flooded into the room, waiting for their seat arrangements to be settled by the teacher before they start their first real day as students. Of course, like any first day of school, you had to do the ice breaker activities to introduce your name and greeting the rest of the class. Everyone had to do it, regardless if they were ready to do it or not - and you were no exception.

You stood up excitedly before you started to say what sounds like your name, signing along the way to try and express yourself better. Once again, everyone was staring at you in confusion, having never heard someone speak like you before. Your teacher just smiles and nods, introducing you to the rest of the students simply. “Inumaki here is actually deaf, meaning she can’t hear you all. So you have to be more creative when you want to talk to her. However, just because she is different, doesn’t mean she is any different from you all. So I expect to treat her like everyone else.” 

The simple explanation caused the rest of the students to nod softly, giving you more curious looks since they’ve never been around someone like you before. But on the outside, you were pretty much the same like the rest of them; so it was easy to forget that you were any different from them in the beginning. 

It was actually really fun for you - for your entire life, you had always been around sorceress, feeling like an outcast in such a well gifted family. Even though you had a disadvantage, you had always been acutely aware of where curses were, being able to locate them quite accurately even without former training. But you were still a child, so you were given a chance to try out the life as a normal child. You were ecstatic, since you had always dreamed what it would be like to start school and live a normal life. 

But, as if the world wanted to spite you, things never tend to go your way.

You remember how things first started out for you - people were shocked at how loud and different you were, but made a real effort to try and talk to you to try and get to know you; since that was what their teachers told them to. However, after awhile, people started to talk behind your back; about how you made no real effort to try and join the conversation, even though the hearing aids you donned on seemed to help you understand them just a little better. At first you ignored the comments of just a few people, having been able to ignore all the backhanded comments that the elders have made for almost your entire life. 

However, the first ever boy who introduce himself to you, Taku, seemed to have deemed you to be the odd one out - and for some reason, had decided that you were going to be the subject of his new taunts and teases. At first it was small things like playful off handed comments about you that made your mood fall, but didn’t do much. You have been subjected to worse treatement from others. However, as the weeks go by, it was getting harder and harder to ignore. 

Toge had noticed that as the weeks go on, the enthusiasm that you once held for school started to dwindle. Every time he asks you about it though, you would just quickly wave him off, saying that you were just tired with how much work it takes to with people who weren’t necessarily used to using sign language and understanding you. Technically you weren’t lying, since you were mentally drained trying to communicate with so many different types of people. But at the same time, all the off-handed comments were getting to you. 

Your answer definitely has him concerned, since he was used to having his baby sister basically talking his ear off on a normal bases; but he didn’t push you too much. It was something he had learnt to do when it comes to you - that when you really need him, you’d come and tell him no matter what. And it was true; even if it was a small trivial matter, you always come whining to him for attention and a listening ear. So he doesn’t necessarily push you to tell him, but he did remind you that if you needed him, he would be there.

And you knew that, but the same time, somehow there were seeds of doubts planted in your mind. 

“Don’t you think you’re annoying people all the time?”

“God, you’re so noisy! Can’t you talk quieter?! No wonder people don’t like talking to you~”

“Can you stop trying so hard? You just sound weird.”

It hurt you, and with how busy he can get with his own school life and rarely get to see you, these words started to fill your head and make you feel like you aren’t worth all the effort that people put into trying to communicate with you. It made you start to become closed off and stop making the effort to talk to people, because in your eyes, you didn’t want to be a bigger bother then you already are for people.

Your sudden silence definitely had your parents getting concerned about you, since they were weren’t sure as to why you were suddenly so quiet and secluded from your family when you all used to be such a close family unit. Toge was the most concerned one out of everyone, so after he finally got home from his classes for the week, he had brought some some of the fruit tarts he knows you love from a nearby bakery.

Quietly he made his way to his baby sister’s room, knocking on the wooden frame of the shoji doors to let her know he was coming in. “Salmon?” He calls out curiously as he carefully pushes open the door to your room open, peeking his head in side. The sight of you curled up on your side on your bed, not even acknowledging that your brother had entered your room. Your lack of response does concern him; so he quietly set the box of tarts down on your bedside table before carefully setting down on the bed beside you. 

Quietly he reaches over to run his fingers through your soft hair, wordlessly giving you the comfort you didn’t know you were needing. Just a simple touch from someone who you have been trying to hide for so long definitely have your eyes watering. Wordlessly you turned to face your older brother, who just gave you an encouraging smile before he opens his arms for you. 

You launched yourself into his arms, and if he hadn’t been waiting for it to happen, he would have fallen back from the sheer force of the hug. Any normal person would have asked you hundreds of questions that will frankly make you feel worse, but Toge was just a pro at understanding you without you needing to say a word.

He might not know just what is it that got you so upset in the first place, and just how much seeing him in your room made you feel a little less lonely; but he wordlessly just wraps his arms around you, pressing soft kisses on the top of your head wordlessly as you soaked his shirt with your tears. It breaks his heart that you were going through the pains of having to live with something that you didn’t choose to have.

But if all you need was someone to lean on, he just wants wants you know that he’s here no matter what.

© roscgcld — all rights reserved to me, rose, the author and creator of these works. do not repost/translate/claim my work as yours on any platform

#inumaki imagines #jjk x reader #jjk #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen imagines #jujutsu kaisen x reader #inumaki x reader #inumaki x you #inumaki fluff #inumaki

[zevlors-tail]

Febuwhump Day 8 - “Hey, hey, this is no time to sleep!”

A/N: I can’t believe I just wrote this in one sitting. I know I’m super behind on Febuwhump, yikes...but I think this turned out pretty well! This got longer than I meant it to be, but then, so did most of the prompts in my drafts that I have for this month. This is actually my first time purposefully writing whump so I hope this was okay! Unedited btw, i’ll read it over in the morning.

TW: Burning building, explosions, second degree burns, mentions/descriptions of burn wounds, life or death situation, building collapse, concussed reader.

***

The first thing Hawks notices when he comes to is the foul taste in his mouth. It causes him to gag and cough with his eyes still closed, though that doesn’t help his situation much if at all. The smell of something burning sears the inside of his nostrils and clogs his lungs, and he finds it incredibly hard to breathe as he rolls over onto his side, eyes finally fluttering open.

The second thing he becomes acutely aware of is how hot he is. No...how hot the floor is. Speaking of which, he couldn’t seem to recall what he was doing down there anyways. If only that incessantly annoying ringing in his ears would stop-

Wait. Wait a minute...

An image of you flashes behind his eyelids as he blinks them shut harshly to block out the billowing cloud of smoke filling the room, and it all comes back to him in a whirlwind.

There were villains. High class villains. Not your every day run of the mill villains, but villains who could really pack a punch when fighting back. They had been occupying a small skyscraper at the time as their headquarters, and you and Hawks had partnered up to take them down after months of steak outs and observation. But something had gone wrong...very wrong. Those details were still a bit blurry, but Hawks remembers something akin to an explosion- a loud noise, the building shaking, and a blast that knocked him unconscious.

All of the sudden he’s hyper aware of what’s going on- and he realizes he needs to move fast if he’s going to get out of here alive. He’s at least twenty stories up in the air on unstable structures, his feathers and hair are singed, and his head is foggy after inhaling too much smoke. Luckily he can still move, and it doesn’t look like he’s been burned too severely, at least not yet. But the flames licking at the bottom of the closed door in front of him cause alarm bells to scream out in his head, and he knows he doesn’t have much time to think. He needs to find you so he can grab you and-

Ohhh, shit.

As he rolls over onto his other side, he can make out the outline of a figure lying on the floor, and he’s almost certain it’s you. None of the villains stuck around after blowing the place up anyways, and he can just barely see the dulled colors of your hero suit behind the thick screen of smoke.

“Fuck! Oh god, Y/N.”

You’re lying too still for your own good, and Hawks thinks he can see the beginning of what he can only assume to be fire slowly eating at the wall next to you. He wastes no time and flattens himself on his stomach, army crawling in your general direction to avoid the worst of the putrid air. It doesn’t help much, but it’s better than nothing. He ignores the uncomfortable heat of his body and pushes onward, his movements still a little sluggish from getting knocked out cold. He’s not entirely sure if he can even use his feathers right now while they’re this singed, and furthermore, he hopes his wings aren’t completely out of commission; he’s going to need those if the both of you are going to make it out of this alive.

“Y/N!” he tries to shout, though it ends in a horrible sounding cough that comes from deep in his chest. As he draws nearer, he hears what sounds like creaking coming from above the two of you, and to his utter horror, the support beams under floor above you have burnt to a crisp and look like they’re ready to collapse any second. It had to have been a sheer miracle that the two of you weren’t already engulfed in flames yourselves. “Y/N! Come on, kid, you gotta get up! Move!”

Even as he tries to urgently get your attention his body seems to move on it’s own accord, and before he can stop himself, he sends a few feathers your way out of habit and concern that you might be crushed any second if he doesn’t move you somehow. It hurts like hell, and he’s pretty sure he’s bleeding. This is by far the worst he’s felt when using his feathers, but it does pay off, and you’re lucky that he made the split decision to move you- no sooner had he scrambled back with you had the ceiling collapsed into the floor.

He turns to you while staying low to the ground, shaking you desperately and firmly smacking the side of your face with his hand in hopes of interrupting your forced slumber. It works but just barely, and Hawks watches as you try to take a deep breath but end up choking just as he had. He gives you a once-over while you struggle to breathe, eyes flitting over your form to assess any damage you may have taken- and to his dismay, there seems to be a good amount of it. The entire left side of your hero outfit is singed, bits of the fabric even burnt into your skin in certain places where the heat must have been too strong. You hadn’t been able to move away or protect yourself in your sleep, and the burns on your arm and leg can definitely attest to that. They’re second degree, at least; some of the fire must have actually made contact with your skin.

“Oh, fuck- Hey, look at me. Y/N, focus here!”

He leans over you to look at your eyes, and he doesn’t have to shine a light in them or have you follow his finger to know that you hit your head a little too hard. They’re glossy and unfocused, and you can’t find a single place on his face to fixate on. You just keep looking all over, and Hawks can clearly tell your concussed. 

Fucking great. He’s got to get you both out, and now.

“Hey, kid. Can you hear me?” He nervously awaits an answer with eyes trained on you, and the second you start to talk he lets out a small breath of short-lived relief.

“Hawks...? Wha...” You look so out of it and dazed.

“So that’s a yes, thank god...” Before you try to ask anything else, he stops you in your tracks and shakes his head at you. “Whoa, whoa, whoa- take it easy, alright? No questions, I just need you to listen and keep talking to me. Doesn’t matter what it’s about, I just need to know you’re awake and alive-” He pauses briefly to look around for something, anything he can do to escape.

There’s the door you both came from, the one that’s barely holding back the raging heat behind it- that’s a no-go. No way in hell is he trying to brave that. His wings won’t last five seconds in that, and you don’t have the means to protect yourself while you’re concussed. Another option is to try and escape through the hole in the floor that the ceiling caused...but that’s way too risky for the both of you as is, and it looks like flames are starting to creep in from that way, too. If he is going to take that route, he needs to do it soon. Maybe he can get to a staircase, or find a-

The sound of you moaning in pain cuts through his thoughts and his head whips back in your direction to find you grimacing and trying to move. “Ah ah- Don’t do that. Just keep talking, come on. I know it hurts, but you gotta keep talkin’ to me. I’m gonna get us out of this mess, somehow...”

Panic starts to set in as he realizes his options are limited. Terror grips him in it’s icy stone-cold jaws as he comes to the conclusion that his odds of survival are even worse.

“Hawks...it hur’s...” All you can do is roll your head back and forth and try to move, but your body just won’t cooperate with your mind.

“Fuck. Fuck! I know, I know...” His teeth grit together as he thinks, his thoughts racing a mile a minute. Adrenaline is starting to kick in, and he’s desperate for anything at this point.

He still has no plan in mind when he makes another split second decision to move you from where you’re currently laying. The fire is only spreading up onto the carpeted floor the two of you are on, and the smoke is getting worse by the second; this room is a hot box with no ventilation at this point. He carefully picks you up and cradles you to his chest, his wings wrapping around the both of you to both support your frame and shield you from the onslaught of unbearable heat. It forces him to take a few steps back, and he does his best to navigate through a screen of black without bumping into any furniture. He almost trips several times, but eventually he hits the opposite wall. Or, rather...

A window. Bingo.

“S’ tired...” you mumble. Your eyes are already fluttering, rolling to the back of your head as your limbs grow heavy in his arms.

“Hey, hey, this is no time to sleep! Y/N!? Come on, stay awake!”

“C’n we go...home now?”

He doesn’t like how ragged your breathing sounds.

He almost chuckles at the absurdity of the situation, but his lungs are already full of tainted air to laugh, let alone breathe properly, so he scoffs instead- and instantly regrets it. Between fits of coughs, he presses his shoulder to the glass behind you both to test the temperature, and it’s much hotter than it should be. Part of the glass is already blown out to his right, but there’s not enough space to crawl out without the jagged edges of it tearing up his flesh and wings. But if he could somehow break it...

His feathers. He’ll have to use up more of them, but if he uses the bare minimum necessary to break the glass and saves the majority, he may be able to make it out the window and fly you both to safety. 

“We can’t go home yet,” he chokes out in response to you, finally. “I’m gonna get you out of here, and then you’re on your way to the hospital, yeah? You’re gonna be fine.” 

He knows that to be true, so long as he can actually manage this. He backs up as far as he can go without subjecting either of you to the hot flames now openly invading the room, the entryway having burnt to a crisp already. From where he stands now, he hopes there’s enough distance to create the amount of force needed to shatter that damn glass. After a quick estimate of how many feathers he can get away with using, he readies them, and it all boils down this moment. If he can’t do this, you’ll both die. Both of your lives are at stake, resting on his weary shoulders. He can do this.

He has to.

“Wanna go home...wanna go...” You’re just murmuring to yourself, and it really puts Hawks on edge.

He hears the glass shatter before he sees it. He stumbles forward, wings still securely wrapped around you, and all but falls out of the edge of the window right before the rest of the floor collapses in on itself. He hears the devastation behind him, feels sparks on his back where the holes of his shirt meet the beginnings of his wings. He knows if he had hesitated or stayed any longer, neither of you would be alive right now.

Replacing his hold on you with his arms, he lets his wings drift open and prays he didn’t overdo it with the feathers, begs whatever gods may be listening that the two of you can at least slow the fall somehow. And to his pure joy and bliss, his wings, though bleeding and burnt and painful, are still very much holding up and allowing him to fly.

Now if he can manage to get you to a hospital...you’ll be just fine.

#febuwhump #febuwhumpday8 #febuwhump2021 #hawks x reader #keigo x reader #whump #bnha x reader #mha x reader #hawks #keigo takami #keigo

[ianthe-is-a-bitch-and-i-love-her]

Common Myths

An excerpt from Memoirs of a Flesh Eater, never published.

Next Excerpt

Everyone knows about ghouls, right? Everyone grows up hearing scary stories about us, from parents telling you to brush your teeth or the ghouls will get you, to your friends on the playground lying about how they saw one with their own two eyes and it was so scary no really even scarier than that, to - eventually, as you get older - news stories about mass murders and human slaughterhouses and graverobbers digging up your grandma and biting open her bones to get what’s left of her marrow.

The stories are terrifying and vivid and mostly sensationalist garbage. It’s kind of a shame, honestly - a lot of them are really well-written. With the best ones, it’s hard to tell sometimes if they were written by a human with an overactive imagination, or by one of us.

Weird, right? You wouldn’t think we’d want to spread stories that make us look even worse to the rest of humanity than they already think we are, but as far as I can tell, we’ve been making up horror stories about ourselves forever. Our records are spotty at best - oral histories don’t always get passed on before the person carrying them dies, and there are none of us who can trace our family line more than a few generations before it gets too muddled by death to trace any farther. And as for physical records, those are even more vulnerable. Those can’t just be lost - they can be stolen. Used against us. As far as I know, there has never been a written record of ghoul lore circulated. Not until this one.

{Editing Note: Too dramatic? Maybe. But I like it. I’ll think about it}

That being said, though, I think we used to tell these stories to enhance our reputation. To keep humans too scared of us to mount a serious resistance when we came hunting. If they believed we couldn’t be beaten, they wouldn’t try as hard. I think we lived more openly back then, back before automatic firearms and high explosives and kevlar body armor and chemical weapons leveled the playing field. Back when those of us who chose to could hunt humans with near impunity.

{Editing Note: I don’t like ending the paragraph there. We weren’t all killers then any more than we are now. But we did kill. We did hunt them, and I think we hunted them more. I need to make them understand us, but how can they understand us if telling them the truth just makes them hate us more? It needs another pass}

Even then, there were a lot more humans than there were of us. That’s basic ecology - there have to be more prey than predators {Editing Note: I need to find a better way to say that. There are gentle ways to be truthful, and there are hard ways. Do better}. Working together, humans could threaten our existence even then. The stories helped, I think. If they were too scared to work together against us, then we had a better chance of surviving another day, another month, another year.

Times are different now. Fear is no longer a tool that helps us. Human fear threatens our existence. But we still make up these stories and spread them. I spread my share on the elementary school playground. Whenever any of the other kids told a scary ghoul story, I could always come up with a better one. Scarlet’s were even better. He’s always been able to make words dance.

He was my best friend growing up. We were the only ghouls in our grade, maybe even in the whole school. I couldn’t tell for sure - we didn’t see the other grades as much. But he was enough. He was someone I could be myself with. I didn’t have to pick all of my words carefully, or make sure that the thing I was telling him was a normal human experience. It was such a relief to truly be me, even if it was only outside of school hours and well out of earshot of anyone nearby. It didn’t hurt that we actually had some common interests, you know, like friends do. We used to play imagination games together. He’d conjure dragons into existence with his words, and he’d help me use mine to slay them.

{Editing Note: My academic advisor would rip this into shreds, but this isn’t a research paper. This can’t be dry. This needs to be full of heart, not just information. They need to understand. But I might have gone overboard a little}

Scarlet’s an aspiring author now. I’ve read a few of his short stories. Horror and romance, always hand in hand {Editing Note: That’s too identifying. Make that less specific}. I asked him why he thought we still told these stories about ourselves, why we still want them to think of us as more terrifying than we are, why we make ourselves seem larger than life.

He told me that it’s because they hate us. Because there is nothing we can do to make them stop hating us, so why not give them something more worthy of their hatred? Why not give them a comically exaggerated monster - one that bears only a passing resemblance to us - to hate instead? This way, we can laugh at them for their foolishness amongst ourselves, laugh at how little they understand us. If what they hated was closer to our truth, we wouldn’t find it as easy to laugh at. It isn’t always easy as it is, to look at the world around you and know that 98% of the people you see burn with hatred at the mere thought of you, and to meet that with laughter. How much harder would it be if what they hated was who we really were, complex and vulnerable and as human as them? How would we ever endure it if they beheld us for all that we were and still called for our annihilation?

Scarlet’s always been good at giving words to truth. I hope that I’m as good at using words to make a new truth. I want to make him wrong. So here is some truth for you. Here is the truth beneath the myths about who and what we are.

Ghouls eat people

This is true, at least in part; we eat human flesh. That isn’t always the same thing. I’ll go deeper on our dietary needs later, but for now, know that we don’t have to kill to eat, most of the time. I’ve never killed a human, and I hope I neve have to.

Ghouls like hurting people

Not as a rule. There are ghouls that like hurting people. There are humans who like hurting people too.

Ghouls don’t feel pain and can heal from anything

Ghouls have two foot long prehensile tongues

I can tell you from experience that this one isn’t true. We feel pain as acutely as any human, I think, though it does take a little more to hurt us. Our skin and bones are tougher, harder to break. Our muscles are a little stronger too. Not enough that the weakest ghoul is stronger than the strongest human, but it’s not an insignificant advantage. I was always one of the best performers in PE, and I’ve never worked out in my life. So we’re harder to injure, and our strength lets us push through some injuries that would incapacitate a human. But we don’t heal any faster than humans do, or any cleaner. 

Contrary to what the politicians said when they passed the Chemical Exterminants Act.

… I think this one started with a human fetish artist, actually. No. We do not.

Ghouls have two sets of teeth

This one is true, although most of the time you’d never know unless you did an autopsy on one of us. Fetish artists, go nuts with this one.

{Editing Note: Do I really want to directly address ghoul fetishists in the book that will redefine the relationship between ghouls and humans that has existed for as long as anyone can remember? Maybe. At least they have a vested interest in keeping us from being wiped out?}

Ghouls can’t eat human food

False, at least in the most literal sense. If we physically couldn’t eat human food, we’d have all been found and killed a long time ago. We can consume things other than human flesh, but they don’t do anything for us nutritionally, and they don’t taste good to us either. That doesn’t always mean they taste bad, though. If we eat too much it will make us sick, however, and some things will make us sicker faster, or make us more sick than other things. Some of us even have allergies. For example, grapes give me hives. A single chicken nugget will trap me in the bathroom for the rest of the day. French fries, on the other hand... I almost manage to enjoy french fries sometimes.

Ghouls have better senses than humans do

This one’s a mixed bag. Our sense of smell is definitely better. That’s how Scarlet and I found each other; we could smell the flesh on each other’s breath. But as for the rest… Some people say our hearing is worse, but I’ve never come across anything conclusive one way or the other. I might just have bad ears. Our sense of taste is definitely different, but I don’t think it’s necessarily better or worse. We’re just adapted to taste different things. I’m pretty positive our sense of touch is the same. As for sight, our night vision is better, but only sometimes. I’ll get to that in a minute.

Ghouls true forms are terrifying and inhuman

Definitely false, but there’s a tiny kernel of truth a little to the left of this one. Most of the time, we look indistinguishable from humans, which is definitely an evolutionary advantage. But we have three traits that help us when we hunt. They mark us as distinctly inhuman, so it’s a good thing that they only come out when we want them to. First, our nails are a lot harder than human nails, and we can cause them to extend, like claws. They can rip through flesh and most cloth without breaking. Second, that second set of teeth I mentioned earlier. They’re sharper, better for tearing flesh. Our mouths have to distend a bit to make room for them, so that’s a dead giveaway when they’re out. Third, our eyes. We can dilate them a lot wider than humans, and we can control their dilation consciously. That’s what I meant about better night vision.

Last one.

Ghouls are monsters. They must be exterminated

Keep reading. Maybe by the end of this book, you can answer that for me.

#my writing #original fiction #not tlt #memoirs of a flesh eater

[sonnetthebard]

for one shots maybe a Princess Bride AU of Spies Are Forever? "Life is pain, Mega. Anyone who says differently is saying something" (maybe a Westley!Owen? there was an ask about it and it is now stuck in my head)

Oh yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. You have no clue how happy I am. I had a whole Westley phase, now I'm having a whole Owen phase. Perfection.

Genre: Angst/ Fluff/ Romance

Words: 2055

TL;DR: Curt's encounter with Dread Pirate Roberts does *not* end in the way he expected it to.

TW: Mentions of death and grieving, violent thoughts

Yes Curt is Buttercup, no I will not be taking questions. Also a lot of this dialogue was borrowed from the movie.

___________________________________________________________

How Curt had let himself get here was beyond him. He was exhausted. Truly. He'd had quite the past few days. Why anyone had decided to kidnap one of the kingdom's most valliant knights was beyond him. Why him? Of what importance was he? But even worse (and really more embarrassingly), he hadn't actually been able to overcome his captors. To be fair, as tiny as the man who had kidnapped him was... his two henchmen were more than capable of keeping him right where they needed him. One was very large, and another (a girl no less) was very good with a sword. Better than he was. God, he wished he was home. He wished he hadn't been alone that night, vulnerable to any kidnappers. And that's when all the thoughts he had been trying to push away made their way into his head.

Owen. That's what would have made this all better. Owen. Owen could fix just about anything.

But Owen was gone. Owen had sailed away on a ship, and... that ship was overthrown by the Dread Pirate Roberts and his crew. He was dead. Never to return. In a way, it almost paralleled how Curt was never to return to his days on the farm. Especially not now that the Prince had taken a fancy to him. He didn't exactly fancy the Prince. But hey... it wasn't like Owen was going to come back. At least the Prince was someone to take care of him. Not that he was taking very good care of him in the moment.

No. Curt had gotten a bit distracted in the recounting of his situation. He was not, in fact, captive at all anymore- well... depends on your definition of captive. He suposed he technically still was. Just not by little Von Nazi of Germania and his henchmen. Now, he was being dragged by the arm by a man in all black. His feet were sore, and he could barely keep up the man was walking so fast. He's stumbling, and honestly he could fall any second now. He wouldn't be surprised at all if he simply collapsed. He was hungry. He was barely getting the chance to breathe. His head hurt. Curt was done. Just at the moment Curt feels like he could crash, the grip on his arm is released, and the gravelly voice of his captor pulls him from his thoughts.

"Catch your breath." The man almost seemed to spit it out, as if ever word was bitter to him.

"Please..." Curt panted. "If you stop this... if you let me go... the Prince will pay my ransom. I'm sure of it."

"You're sure, are you?" The man laughed spitefully.

"Yes!" Curt nodded, desperate. In his exhaustion, he almost thought the man might be talking genuinely.

"You're certain?" The man continued on his spiteful tangent. Curt nodded. "Who are you to be certain of anything, good sir?"

"Pardon?" Curt blinked, confused.

"I said who are you to be certain? Are you a god? Or a scholar? Are you, in fact, the prince in disguise?" The man asked coarsely. Curt shook his head, still a bit dazed. "I thought not. I would advise you, good sir, not to make promises you cannot keep."

"I was just giving you the chance to release me willingly." Curt told him bitterly. "You think you're going to be able to escape the Prince? Oh no. He and his men could track a falcon on a cloudy day. He'll find you. And when he does, 'good sir', you are a dead man."

"You think your dearest love will save you?" The man in black seemed to taunt.

"He is not my 'dearest love'!" Curt protested, still trying to catch his breathe. "He's not even my 'love'! He's just my Prince. But yes, he will save me. And, I will add- before you say another word- that he would do the same for any of his knights. We are his family."

"You admit to me that you do not love your liege, then?" The man smirked menacingly.

"He knows that I don't love him." Curt nodded defensively.

"You mean that he knows you are incapable of love." The man in black sighed. Why did everything that came out of this man's mouth sound so bitter?

"I am more than capable of love!" Curt protested. "I have loved more deeply than a wretch like yourself could ever dream!"

"Wretch... that's a good one." The man laughed softly, still bitterly. He grabbed Curt's wrist with an iron grip, and Curt hissed in pain. "Let that be a warning to you, fair sir. I have no tolerance for liars."

And so they were walking again. And walking, and walking, and walking. Far away. Until Curt's feet were so sore that he couldn't feel anything but the pain. The pain consumed his thoughts. Pain, and how odd this man was. He had figured out precisely who this was. With that wit, and that cruelty... It had to be the Dread Pirate Roberts. The man who had killed Owen. A man who Curt had wished dead for years. A man who Curt was going to kill the first chance he got. All of a sudden, that was the thought that consumed Curt's mind. With every step he took it got stronger. And the stronger it got... the happier it made him. God, he knew that was sick, but... revenge would be so sweet. Suddenly, Curt felt himself dropped.

"Rest, sir knight." The man sighed. Curt fell to the ground, propping himself up, unable to move.

"I know who you are." Curt blurted out, filled to the brim with anger. That seemed to amuse the man. "Your cruelty... it gives you away."

"Oh? And who am I?" The man smirked.

"You are the Dread Pirate Roberts." Curt stated plainly. "Admit it."

"Proudly." The man bowed grandiosely. "What can I do for you, sir knight?"

"Die." Curt spat. Dread Pirate Roberts' brows raised in amusement.

"A bit harsh, don't you think?" Dread Pirate Roberts mused playfully.

"Not nearly harsh enough." Curt glared at him. "If it were up to me, you would be torn limb from limb."

"Hardly complimentary, sir knight." Dread Pirate Roberts chuckled. "Why loose your venom on me?"

Curt took a moment, sighing. He didn't want to talk to this man, but he supposed he had been the one to initiate the conversation. And to admit his same-sex attraction to his captor... he could die. Though he had already seemed to guess it, implying that he loved his Prince. Perhaps things were different for pirates. He took a shaky breath.

"You killed my love." Curt croaked quietly. Curt wasn't sure whether the pirate looked more or less amused, but the look on his face had certainly shifted- as had the mood. There was silence for a moment before Roberts responded.

"Perhaps." He admitted. "I kill a lot of people. Who was your love? Another Prince? Pompous, poised, and cold?"

"No... he was a farm boy. Poor." Curt admitted. "Poor, and perfect. With eyes like melted chocolate, and hair to match. Your ship attacked his, and... everyone knows that you take no prisoners."

"Well, I can't, can I?" Roberts reasoned. "People will think I've gone soft! And then any respect they may have had for me goes right out the window."

"You mock my pain!" Curt fumed, sadly and frustratedly.

"Life is pain, sir knight. Anyone who says differently is selling something." Roberts stated. "I remember your lover. Was it not four years ago that he perished?"

"It was." Curt sighed.

"He died with his dignity intact, if that's any consolation to you." Roberts sat next to Curt. "No blubbering, no tears. Only a simple plea: 'Please, I need to live'. I asked him why. And do you know what his answer was?"

"True love." Curt sniffed, looking to the ground.

"True love indeed... I can only assume he meant you, sir knight." Roberts sighed. "He talked of a man of boundless beauty, undying heart and unsurpassable faithfulness. Consider yourself lucky I killed him before he could see you for what you truly are."

"What I am?" Curt blinked in shock.

"Well, good sir... he talked of your unsurpassable faithfulness, if you will remember." Roberts almost seemed to scowl. "Did you run stright to your prince when you heard of his death? Or did you wait a few hours out of respect?"

In that moment, Curt snapped. He was unsure of when he had even registered his surroundings or if he had even fully taken it in. He was on the edge of a hill. He barely remembered thinking about a single thing other than the fact that this man had insulted both him and Owen in one single bound. He stood up, pulling the pirate ith him. Where he found the strength he did not know. Perhaps it was Owen, from beyond the grave. Or maybe it was simply the fortitude of his heart. But there was a fire in his eyes as he looked directly into those of the Dread Pirate Roberts, who stared back in total and utter shock.

"You don't get to insult me or my lover, for on that day I died with him!" Curt growled. "You can die too, for all I care!"

And with that, he let go of Roberts, shoving him over the edge of the ravine. He watched as Roberts tumbled down, a pit growing in his stomach. Why did he feel so terrible? He had just saved his own life and killed Owen's killer. He should feel relieved. The wind seemed to ring in his ears, his hearing acute. So naturally, he heard it more than clearly when Roberts said the words that made his heart stop.

"Curt Mega... you're going to be the death of me!" Roberts called up.

Curt's blood seemed to stop flowing, and he lost any colour he had.

"Owen? Oh, god!" Curt breathed, not thinking twice before throwing himself over the edge of the ravine. Before long, he too was tumbling to what could be his death.

About ten minutes later, Curt regained his consciousness, groaning. It seemed he wasn't too far behind Owen- who was grimacing, starting to stir. Owen crawled slowly, painfully, towards Curt. Curt did his part, trying to prop himself up on his side. Owen got closer to Curt, doing the same and running a hand through his lover’s hair. Curt reached an arm out, wincing, pulling Owen's mask off and taking a look at his lover's face for the first time in four years. It may have been the exhaustion, but Curt started to cry tears of joy.

"Darling... hey, love..." Owen cooed gently, soothing him. "It's okay. It's okay, love."

"You're here..." Curt sniffed, a bit embarassed.

"Can you move at all?" Owen asked.

"Move? You're alive!" Curt started to laugh happily. "I could fly!"

"Why did you move on so quickly from me?" Owen asked him tenderly. "I told you I would come back to you."

"I never moved on, Owen. Never." Curt assured him, still beaming. "I never will."

"Then you really don't have anything going on with the Prince?" Owen asked. "There are rumours, you know."

"Never." Curt shook his head. "He's so far from being my type..."

"Good." Owen sighed in relief.

"You were dead..." Curt sighed, still in shock.

"I'll explain later." Owen chuckled. "Well... I suppose there's a lesson to take from this, 'sir knight'."

"And what would that be?" Curt smirked playfully.

"Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for awhile." Owen smirked back.

"I will never doubt you again." Curt promised him.

"There will never be a need." Owen promised him in return.

And with that, they sealed their agreement with a kiss. It was tender, loving , and gentle- a representation of all of the wonderful things about love. It had been a long time coming... But oh, was it ever sweet. Both tangled their hands in each other's hair, taking in every moment they could to its fullest. And with that kiss, they knew that their love was stronger than anything that any prince, king, or fireswamp could throw their way.

#spies are forever #saf #tin can brothers #tcb #curt mega #agent curt mega #owen carvour #agent owen carvour #joey richter #oneshot #curtwen #tw: mentions of death #tw: violent thoughts #fanfic #the princess bride au #aaaaaa #this was so cute! #thank you!

[cartasmojadas]

Another scene from the childhood friends dirkjohn AU I’ve been messing around with. Takes place after this and before this. 

John pierces Dirk’s ears.

John is already in his pajamas when he hears the rhythmic tapping on his window. He lets out a short yelp before remembering that Dirk had already told him he was on his way.

“Aren’t you grounded?” John pushes the window open and yawns. 

Dirk shushes him and uses John’s shoulders as leverage as he goes through the familiar motions of crawling through the second-story window into John’s bedroom.

“I am grounded, Egbert, so keep it down unless you want to rat me out.” 

John rolls his eyes but braces himself for Dirk’s weight as he finally finds his footing. Dirk lands gracefully and quietly. 

His Dad and sister are already asleep, he thinks but even if they weren’t, Dirk always moves so quietly John doesn’t think they would even be able to notice. 

“You still down to help?” Dirk asks as he closes the window behind him before making himself comfortable on John’s bed. 

John turns on the classical music station the old radio is stuck on and hopes that it adds a quiet buffer to their voices. 

“Help with what? You should be helping me with my geometry homework. I think I might actually fail next week’s test.”

Dirk waves him off, “I’ll help with that later, or better yet, you should come to tutoring with the guys from the engineering club.” He digs through his backpack. 

An uncomfortable tightness spreads over John’s chest. A feeling he’s becoming a little more familiar with. 

John frowns and joins Dirk on the bed, their sides pressed against each other until Dirk freezes for a moment and scoots away, and ends up dangerously close to the edge of the bed. 

“Why can’t we just do one-on-one?” 

Dirk stops rummaging for his supplies and looks at John through the reflection on the dressing mirror hanging on the wall. Dirk watches John’s expression sour as he stares at his empty hands like he sees something Dirk can’t.

They look like an unlikely pair, with John dressed in mismatched socks, an oversized t-shirt, and his hair already sticking up in all sorts of directions like he was already sleeping; while Dirk looks like he is ready to head out to a rave with his meticulous hair and carefully planned black outfit.

“Do you not like the guys from the club?” Dirk asks. It’s a question he’s been meaning to ask for a while. As much as Dirk craves spending time alone with John, he’s doing his best to avoid the awkwardness that has seeped into their relationship. But he worries that their interests are just a little too different. 

They just don’t seem to click the same way ever since Dirk came out.

John’s frown deepens, “No, they’re fine,” he swallows. He’s not sure how to tell Dirk that the reason he doesn’t like hanging out with the engineering club because he feels left out whenever he’s with them. John loves to see his friend in his element, it means that Dirk shines brighter, drawing everyone in. But John always gets stuck watching on the sidelines as Dirk’s friends monopolize his attention. And it makes John, by his own private admission, irrationally jealous. 

He doesn’t like the way that makes him feel.

“Then why not? I think there are a few dudes who are better at explaining math, compared to me.” Dirk hands John a small pink plastic tray with a cheery depiction of a happy sun and clouds.

“I just can’t focus the same way,” John says with enough definitiveness that Dirk simply nods. 

“For sure, okay.” He drops a couple of sandwich bags on the tray. When they make a dull clacking sound John stares down at the contents. 

Dirk smirks, “You ready to pierce my ears?”

John’s jaw and stomach drop in tandem. “What?” He squawks. “Are you nuts?”

“C’mon, Egbert,” Dirk doesn’t beg but his voice is dripping with nervous adrenaline in a way John hasn’t heard in a while. 

It’s contagious.

“I can’t ask anyone else. I wouldn’t trust Rose or Roxy to not fuck up my earlobes.”

And that eases the tension in John’s chest. 

“Why can’t you go to a parlor or something? Tell Roxy to take you to Claire's.” John is already moving to face Dirk, inspecting his earlobes from afar.

More of the tension dissipates when a single choked laugh escapes Dirk. 

“They require parental consent and we both know my dad would never agree.”

“He’s gonna kill you when he sees your ears tomorrow. And if he finds out  I helped he will never let me see you again,” John sighs knowing full well that wouldn’t stop him from seeing Dirk. He begins inspecting Dirk’s tools. 

“He won’t find out,” Dirk’s voice drops to a low whisper, “It’ll just be a secret between us bros. Right?” 

Dirk means to sound teasing, recalling the way they used to share secrets and promises as kids, but instead, he flinches when he catches John looking away, his ears bright red. The sight triggers the plume of something hot that rises from his gut whenever he’s reminded of how bad he’s crushing on John and how much it probably inconveniences his friend.

John is not embarrassed. 

Or he is but not for the reasons Dirk suspects. 

There’s something in Dirk’s tone that forces some of John’s suppressed dream memories to resurface and John knows he needs to collect himself before he tries to make eye contact again. 

“So,” Dirk clears his throat, “Go wash your hands? I’ll look up some youtube videos?” he says quietly.

Grateful for the excuse, John jumps out of the bed wordlessly and scrambles out the door. 

John returns a few minutes later with clean hands and a wet face. 

Dirk smirks, “I said wash your hands not take a shower.” 

John shrugs, “Hey, you have a ten-step face routine, I wash my face with soap and call it good.”

John sticks his tongue out when Dirk grimaces, “We will fix that later,” Dirk mutters and pats the empty spot on the bed. 

Carefully, John climbs back in the bed and takes in the faintest scent of menthol and nicotine that comes off Dirk when he leans closer to show him the video on his phone. It’s probably the reason why he’s grounded in the first place. A small act of rebellion toward his strict parents.

Both boys shift uncomfortably and do their best to focus on the instructions on the video and not on each other’s proximity. 

They have to watch the video multiple times and after the sixth time, John tells Dirk he thinks he’s ready. 

He puts on the latex gloves Dirk brought with him and preps the tools on the plastic tray that Dirk holds over his lap. He’s shaking as he straddles (hovering, neither could handle it if John just took a seat on Dirk’s thigh) and starts massaging Dirk’s earlobe the way the woman on the video instructed.

Dirk’s breathing is staggered and John wonders if Dirk is more nervous than he originally let on.

“I-Icepack?” Dirk chokes out. 

“R-right,” John breathes out and reaches for it. He holds it to Dirk’s ear and quietly counts to 30 and then reaches for the safety pin. 

Dirk’s head is spinning unable to focus on a single thing and instead finds himself on sensory overload. John’s the closest he’s ever been to Dirk since they used to wrestle in elementary school, and Dirk desperately pleads to whatever benevolent power might have mercy on his hormonal teenage ass that they keep his body in check.

He’s also acutely aware that the icepack wasn’t very cold and that piercing his ear is probably going to hurt a lot.

“Okay, ready?” John’s voice shakes.

“Just do it, man, do it. Fucking stab me. Pop my goddamn ear cherry. Do it, dude.” Dirk’s voice also shakes.

John takes a sharp breath in and pushes. 

Dirk hisses and curses. He reaches for a fist full of John’s shirt. It might have made John self-conscious of their position if he wasn’t also shivering with adrenaline. 

He follows the next steps of the video and makes a move to get off Dirk. 

“Wait, what about the other one?” 

John groans, “Bro, no. I can’t. My legs are freakin’ jelly. That was terrifying!”

Dirk tightens his grip on the shirt, “John, you can’t leave me with one pierced ear.”

John chews on his lip. “Fine,” He groans again, “But don’t you ever forget I’m your best friend.”

He doesn’t mean for it to sound so bitter but the words roll out of John’s mouth with enough edge to make Dirk look at him with a puzzled expression. 

John a lot less gentle and Dirk, knowing what’s coming, can’t hold back a garbled sob. 

Glad that the worst is finally done, John gently wipes away a runaway tear from Dirk’s face and softly shushes him. 

“And now we wait,” He carefully moves off Dirk. 

Dirk nods and balls his to keep from reaching up to touch his pulsing ears. 

There’s the loud artificial sound of a phone shutter. 

“Sorry,” John mumbles. “I wanted a picture to commemorate the occasion,” he says with a sheepish smile. 

What Dirk means to sound like an annoyed huff comes out as a stumbling suspire. 

“C’mere, let’s take a selfie.”

John beams, his nerves finally calming and a deep sense of peace washing over him. The bed is loud as he crawls back over and lets Dirk put an arm over his shoulders to pull him in carefully. 

Dirk takes the picture and frowns down at the exhausted faces on screen. 

They take another one once Dirk has the studs in. 

That one becomes John’s home screen.

#DirkJohn #Childhood friends #my writing #I've been thinking about this trope for a while and then ectobaby posted about it and i took it as a sign from the universe lmao #it was going to be ear piercing or shot gunning #I'm straight up not writing anything in order and this probably full of typos because #~*~I can't sleep~*~ #One day i won't be physically and emotionally exhausted #and i'll do all the things again

[angst-fairygodmother]

Cliche prompt 48 or grumpy-affection 13 for Barba x reader? Plz. I need him.

A/N: Thank you so much for the prompts Nonny. I hope you enjoy the result! Word Count: 1785 Content Warnings: Panic attack/anxiety attack described in detail

Your hands trembled as you fumbled for your phone, tears blurring your vision and making it difficult to find his number. You felt like an elephant was sitting on your chest as you finally managed to make it to the right place in your contact list and click to dial. You pressed the cool glass of the screen to the side of your face and listened to it ring once, twice, three times.

“Come on, pick up,” you whispered desperately. “Please, please pick up.”

“Y/N?” he asked, voice distorted as it passed over the speakers but still undeniably, comfortingly him. “I did pick up.”

He sounded sleepy and with a glance over at the clock on your nightstand, you realized why. It was two in the morning, and he worked such late nights and long hours that he was probably just able to fall asleep before you disrupted him. Guilt twisted your aching stomach.

“Rafi!” you gasped, the thudding of your heart slowing minutely just hearing him. “Oh thank god.”

“What’s wrong?” there was a spike of panic in his voice and you could picture him as he sat up swiftly, sheets tossed aside and boxer-clad legs swinging down over the side of the mattress.

“I...I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called. I shouldn’t have woken you up. It’s just...I didn’t know who else to call.”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Just talk to me.”

“I have no right to ask, but could you...would you come over? I just really need somebody right now.” You shook your head, even though he couldn’t see it. “No, not somebody. I need you.”

There was a long pause. The world seemed to be spinning and you could hear the rush of your blood in your ears, crashing like the ocean but louder. The muscles in your neck clenched, practically screaming under their own tension. 

“Rafael?”

“I’m on my way,” he assured. “It’ll take time for me to get there, though. Will you be okay until then? Do you need me to stay on the phone?”

“No, I’ll be alright. Just focusing on getting here, okay?”

“Of course.”

~

About half an hour later, there was a knock on your apartment door and you forced yourself to stand on legs like over-cooked pasta to answer it.

“I got here as fast as I could. I even offered to use the tip feature to bribe the driver to ignore the one-way signs so I could get here faster, but he wouldn’t do it. Are you okay? Are you hurt? What happened? What’s wrong? What can I do?” he asked.

His statements and questions were more rapid-fire even than the worst grilling you’d ever seen him give the team, all of it spilling from his lips barely as soon as he had passed the door, a door which you clung to for support. He carefully hung his coat and scarf on the hook, knowing how particular you were about such things and turned to face you. 

“Y/N? Please talk to me.” His hands reached out, hovering, waiting for you to speak, to consent, to tell him something before he dared to actually touch you. “Whatever it is, whatever happened, we’ll get through it. I’ll do whatever you need.”

“You’re talking too much,” you sighed, biting your lip. “Just shut up and hold me.”

Taken aback, he gaped momentarily at you before doing as you asked. Still a little hesitant, he placed his hands on your shoulders before rethinking it and sliding his arms further around you, pulling you close against his chest. You breathed in his sharp, clean scent and let it break down the last of your walls. Like cutting strings of a tangled marionette, all of the tension leached out of you and you all but collapsed, his strong arms and firm grip the only things keeping you off the floor. A soft sob wrenched from your lips and you clung to the soft fabric of his sweater, balling the no-doubt expensive fabric in your fingers tight enough to leave an impression.

Moving awkwardly, he guided you to your couch, never letting the space between you grow wider than an inch. You shifted to sit beside him and felt him tsk with a shake of his head, the only warning you had before you were pulled into his lap and your head was tucked beneath his chin. You felt yourself being gently rocked as he hummed a simple melody, running soothing strokes up and down your spine and for the first time in hours, you felt like the blackness might leave and things might be okay. 

There was a click, somewhere in the background, and it startled you, making you jump.

“Oh! I forgot,” you said, pulling away slightly to look toward the kitchen. “I made a pot of coffee, since you were coming over and it’s so late...early…” 

You moved to stand and go make him a cup when he stopped you with a hand on your arm. His eyes were crinkled with barely restrained laughter. 

“You know me too well. But you stay here, I’ll get it myself. Do you want a cup?”

You nodded. Now that the panic part of your night was over, you were feeling completely drained and the little jolt of warmth and caffeine sounded perfect, just to keep you human until you could sleep. He shifted you gently off his lap and stood, leaning back over to place a kiss to your forehead and then headed into your kitchen. 

You twisted, leaning your chin on the back of your couch to watch him as he expertly navigated your apartment, smiling at the implication held in his familiarity and comfort there. He was wearing jeans and a soft fleece pull-over. His hair was uncombed and stuck up at amusing angles, tales of his own restless sleeping before you called and his rush to come to your side. It took a rare person to be allowed to see Rafael Barba anything less than put together, and yet here he was, letting you see it all in high definition. 

“At least you’re smiling now,” he observed as he set two large mugs on your coffee table and resumed his seat beside you. “Smiling is a lot better than crying.”

You felt a blush heat your cheeks and you bit your lip as you turned back to him, tucking your knees up to your chest as you faced him. You hadn’t realized you were staring, or smiling, until he pointed it out, but of course you were. Rafael was your rock, your anchor, your life raft, whatever metaphor you needed at any given time to say that he was the best thing in your life and the thing that made you feel grounded and whole and okay no matter what, and you loved him.

“Now that you’re feeling a little better,” he said, hesitating, taking a sip and then a second of his coffee to stall and work up the courage to ask. “Do you want to talk about it?”

You sighed, sipping your own drink — perfectly made to your preferences of course — while you gathered your thoughts, and then cradling the mug in your hands.

“It was just...I get anxiety attacks sometimes,” you explained hesitantly. “Especially when the cases are really hard. But it’s never been this bad before. I felt like I was actually dying and I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You thought you were dying and your first thought was to call me?” he asked, softly tilting his head and looking at you, with that gentle, comforting warmth in his green eyes that you knew he only reserved for you. 

“Well...yeah. I lo...I mean you’re you. It just made sense in my head.”

You wanted to tell him the real reason you had thought first to call him. You wanted so badly to say those words that were poised on the tip of your tongue every time you looked into his eyes or saw his face or heard his voice. Instead, they died on your lips and you made do with what you could get out.

“I’ve never had them, so you’ll have to walk me through what I need to do,” he offered, “but I’ll help however I can. This time and any other time they come up.”

“They come and go so irregularly, and each one is a little different. I don’t know if I can teach you or explain it right.”

“Then start with right now. How are you feeling?”

“Okay. Better now. A little nauseous, and exhausted, but that happens a lot. I think the worst of it is behind me.” You felt guilty again and frowned. “It might have been ending on its own before you got here. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dragged you out of bed.”

You didn’t admit that it was the knowledge he was coming that helped you calm down. You had already come too close tonight to saying something that it wasn’t the right moment for, you didn’t need to risk it again. 

“Y/N, shh,” he soothed, plucking the mug from your hands and setting both aside to hug you tightly again. “There is nothing to apologize for. I don’t care what time it is, or what I’m doing. I want you to call me when you need me. For anything.”

“Rafi, I...thank you.”

“So, the acute attack is over. What do you need? What happens next?”

“I should set up a heat pack for my neck, since I tend to get stiff muscles after and don’t want to be sore in the morning. Then I should try to sleep.”

He nodded, committing the information to memory for the future. “Where do you keep the heat pack? I’ll get it for you and then leave you to rest.”

“It’s in the bottom drawer of my night stand. But...you don’t have to go.”

He paused, halfway out of his seat and nearly fell back to the couch cushions. 

“I mean, you came all this way, and it’s late. We both have to get up in the morning. I don’t know if I’ll have a second wave. It’ll be better for everyone if you just stay, right?” you smiled sheepishly and he answered with a soft grin of his own.

“If that’s what you want, I would be happy to spend the night.”

“Good,” you smiled, standing and taking his hand. “I could use a cuddle after that. And Rafael?”

He hummed in question, prompting you wordlessly.

“Really. Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For coming. For being here. For being you.”

#the two prompts worked perfectly together #good choices #panic attack tw #anxiety attack tw #Rafael Barba x Reader #Law and Order: SVU fic #I hope this is in character. I really really tried

[lostbbygorl]

AN UNLIKELY VILLAIN (LEVI X F!READER):

AU: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE BY JANE AUSTEN

~~~~~~

Lady Katrina was careful not to make a sound as she stalked her niece and nephew to the piano room. Isabel had dragged

Mr. Ackerman by the hand to the piano room, and the duo had shared countless looks and whispers throughout the ball which took place on that very night at the De Lancey mansion. As nosy as ever, Lady Katrina intended to discover the subject of her niece and nephew’s hushed yet frantic discussions.

“ A union between you and Amanda will be disastrous, brother! You cannot lie to our aunt, Amanda, and yourself forever! You’re a grown man, have a spine! It’s Y/N who gives you a purpose to live in this world, and it is Y/N you must chase and marry”, Isabel scolded Levi.

“ You are a child, Isabel, don’t tell me what to do. Besides, you know of our aunt’s stubbornness. Do you really think she’d happily accept a marriage between me and someone of Y/N’s standing after I’ve been engaged to Amanda my whole life?”, Levi reasoned.

“ I wouldn’t be meddling with your life if you acted like the grown up you are and defied our aunt! If Y/N can do it, so can you! I will not sit around and watch my older brother spend the rest of his days in acute misery”, Isabel said, decidedly.

“ I know of the letters you and Ms. Y/N exchange frequently, and I know for sure, as a young woman, that she loves you back now. It’s what you’ve been waiting for her to do all this time, Levi, why are you suddenly so obedient? Where’s the headstrong, independent Levi I know? Things must change around here, and you’ll be starting it”, Isabel finished definitely. The fire in her eyes made Levi know that Isabel wouldn’t back down till he was united with the woman he loved, and moreover, her words had motivated Levi to live by his own rules, which he had always done until Lady Katrina started discussing his engagement with Amanda more seriously. After learning of Levi’s feelings for Y/N and confronting him about them, she decided to have them married in 2 months instead of next summer, thinking that this change of plans would squash all hope in Levi. Lady Katrina angrily stomped back to the ballroom. To her displeasure, Amanda was deep in conversation with a blonde boy with blue eyes who she vaguely remembered as Armin Arlert- and she was smiling! An extremely rare occurrence indeed. This was an absolute nightmare for Lady Katrina! The world was turning upside down! Lady Katrina was determined to put a damper on this! So, the very next morning, she boarded her carriage for a journey to Trost.

Y/N’s household was much quieter than usual, now that Sasha was gone. Papa and Mama were bickering as old married couples usually do, and Mikasa was helping Ella with a sewing project. The eldest sisters were in the chicken house discussing Mr. Smith and Mr. Ackerman whilst petting baby chicks.

“ Mr. Ackerman’s been writing to me more regularly nowadays. It’s so refreshing to see him come out of his shell and open up”, Y/N said.

“ Mr. Smith says he’ll come visit Trost as soon as he has some urgent business seen too”, Christa squealed enthusiastically to a wide eyed, gasping Y/N.

“ And you tell me this only now? Christa, I can guarantee he’s coming to see you”, Y/N promised. Suddenly, the entrance to the chicken house burst open, and a heavily breathing Ella stood in front of them. Ella looked like she had some important news.

“ Ella, are you alright?”, Christa asked to which Ella nodded.

“ Christa, come to the living room immediately! You have a special visitor”, Ella said, catching her breath. The three sisters ran back to the house. When Christa entered the living room, she was shocked to see a beaming Mr. Smith sitting on the sofa talking to Mrs. L/N. Mr. L/N came back from the kitchen with a pot of tea and some muffins. Mr. Smith’s attention shifted to Christa as soon as she entered the room, and everyone intensely stared at the pair, who had hearts in their eyes when they made eye contact.

“ Ms. Christa, it has been too long”, Mr. Smith bowed.

“ Mr. Erwin, it truly is lovely to see you in flesh again. It’s been ages since we last met at Stohess”, Christa replied.

“ I agree. I notified you in my letters that I’d be visiting Trost after some urgent business was seen to. Well, all matters have been fixed much earlier than I predicted, so I thought I might surprise you”, he explained. His tone and his posture were confident, but if you noticed the way his hands clenched and unclenched on repeat, you’d notice he was nervous and obviously had something important to spill.

“ And I am surprised!”Christa laughed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

“ Then I am successful. Ms. Christa, I have come here to speak with you about a matter most serious. Everybody, may we have some privacy for a short while”, Mr. Smith politely requested as he looked around at all the faces staring at him. At once, everybody scurried out of the living room. But they didn’t leave Christa and Mr. Smith alone, oh no! Mrs. L/N and Ella pressed their ears to the door as soon as they closed it. Mr. L/N and Y/N whispered amongst themselves about what the motive behind Mr. Smith’s sudden visit could be.

“ Do you think he’ll propose to Christa?”, Mr. L/N asked Y/N.

“ I’m not entirely certain, but something tells me that is his motivation”, Y/N said, heart beating in anticipation.

Meanwhile inside the room, Christa was crying tears of pure joy, and Mr. Smith smiled the widest he ever had in his life. Twinkling in the sunlight that shone through the windows of the living room was a gorgeous pear shaped diamond on Christa’s ring finger! Mr. Smith had apologized to Christa for abandoning her so suddenly, and came back to ask for her hand in marriage. With their arms linked, Mr. Smith and Christa exited the room, smiling at the faces of their eavesdroppers.

“ Everyone, me and Mr. Smith are hereby engaged to each other”, Christa squealed, and all at once, chaos commenced inside the house! Mr. L/N wrapped his arms around Mr. Smith and congratulated him before making him swear he’ll keep his beloved daughter happy. Mrs. L/N was glad that she’d have yet another one of her children married off, and this time to a filthy rich gentleman! Ella, Mikasa, and Y/N tackled Christa with a bear hug and Y/N loudly exclaimed praises and jokes at Christa. Mr. Smith stayed over for lunch, and he took Christa on a ride with him to Dauper village afterwards for some bonding time as an officially affianced couple.

The rest of the day went rather peacefully. Mr. L/N and Y/N relaxed in the library. Mr. L/N was reading a novel, while Y/N wrote to Sasha and Nifa about the engagement. Christa returned to the house just in time for dinner, just as Lady Katrina had reached Trost!

Y/N lay in bed, not even a tiny fraction of sleepiness in her. Her head still buzzed with joy and excitement after Christa’s engagement. Could Mr. Ackerman really be behind all this? Was he really mending his ways after Y/N had criticised him, and solving everybody’s problems? For the umpteenth time, Y/N lay awake at an ungodly hour thinking of Mr. Ackerman, and letting her insecurities eat away at her. Mr. Ackerman loved her, no doubt about it, but it was Amanda who was getting in her way! Now, a good natured person like Y/N could never hate an innocent young lady who had no intention of hurting her, but god, it really would be blissful if Amanda didn’t exist! She was plain and dull, but she had all the wealth and connections. Y/N was losing all hope of ever reuniting with Mr. Ackerman, or of giving her hand to him. But she was rudely jerked out of her thoughts when it began raining unexpectedly, and heavily too accompanied by a boisterous thunderstorm! But it wasn’t only the loud rain that bothered her, it was the sound of wood being knocked on. It took Y/N a few seconds to realize that somebody was knocking on her door- and very roughly too!

Y/N flocked downstairs to see her family surrounding a short, plump woman in expensive, elegant clothes with her gray hair tied in a tight bun. It was Lady Katrina! But what was she doing here at Trost, in her home, at 3.00 in the morning?

“ Where is Ms. Y/N L/N?”, Lady Katrina demanded, her striking grey eyes shining angrily by the flames of the fireplace as she searched for Y/N. Y/N was taken aback! For a brief moment she locked eyes with Christa, who pointed her chin at Lady Katrina’s direction with a confused expression, silently asking Y/N who this lady was and why she barged into their home at such a late hour.

“ I am here, your ladyship”, Y/N answered.

“ May I ask why you’ve woken me and my family at 3.00 AM in the middle of severe rain to seek me out?”, she asked.

“ Now, Y/N, that’s no way to treat a guest. Would your ladyship like a cup of tea?”, Mr. L/N butted in.

“ Not at all. All I would like here is to talk privately with Y/N. Where might I sit and talk with her alone?”, she asked with a serious tone.

“ Let me lead you to the library, my lady”, Y/N answered, guiding Lady Katrina there. Once inside, Lady Katrina circled Y/N, giving her no scope to seat herself.

“ Ms. Y/N, I am here because a most alarming report has been made to me two days ago, and you are to debunk it”, Lady Katrina said in a matter of fact voice. Y/N was curious.

“ I have no idea as to how I could ever be in the middle of your problems, madam, so please provide me with a backstory so I may understand”, Y/N requested.

“ Ms. Y/N, I must warn you that I am not to be trifled with. The report made to me states that you intend to marry my nephew, Levi”, Lady Katrina clarified.

“ I know this to be a scandalous falsehood, and I came here as soon as possible to confirm my sentiments on the matter to you”.

“ If you believed a marriage between me and him to be impossible, why did you take the trouble of coming so far to confront me about it?”, Y/N queried.

“ To hear it from your own mouth. Why do you pretend to be ignorant of it? Have these statements not been industriously circulated by yourself?”, Lady Katrina challenged.

“ They haven’t, and I deny all accusations of them having been spread by me”, Y/N replied confidently, though her heart was cracking the more Lady Katrina spoke. All her insecurities about her relationship with Levi were seeping out.

“ So you declare that there isn’t any foundation for it?”, Lady Katrina asked.

“ I declare nothing, as I’ve just been informed of these rumors now”, Y/N said.

“ Then let me ask a clearer question which to my knowledge has no answer excluding yes or no. Has my nephew made you an offer of marriage?”, Lady Katrina interrogated.

“ Your ladyship has declared it impossible”

“ Let me be understood! Mr. Ackerman is affianced to my daughter. What do you have to say now?”

“ Only this: that if your words are kosher, he wouldn’t have a reason to ask for my hand”, Y/N said, riling the woman up! Why wouldn’t Y/N just give her straight answers?

“ Ms. Y/N, do you know who I am?”Lady Katrina loudly quizzed her.

“ I am his closest relative, so therefore I am entitled to know all of Levi’s most important concerns”, Lady Katrina stated.

“ But you aren’t entitled to know mine”, Y/N countered her, making Lady Katrina put a hand on her chest in offence. She took ragged breaths in an attempt to calm herself. She closed her eyes, and once she was more clear headed, she opened them again.

“ The engagement between them is of a peculiar kind”, Lady Katrina started again, her tone softer.

“ Their marriage was decided during their infancy, and it is the favorite wish of my Amanda’s late father and Levi’s”, she explained.

“ A matter as delicate and final as this shall not be hindered by the hands of a woman of inferior birth who possesses no fortune or connections, and worse: no sense of propriety! You have influenced my nephew and lured him in, and I will not stand it!”, her ladyship cried.

Y/N was offended and hurt beyond comprehension! How dare this busybody barge into her house at midnight, and insult her very being? Though tears welled in her eyes, she stood her ground, and unflinching, she faced Lady Katrina.

“ I’ve come this far, and my journey was tiresome. I won’t leave until I am satisfied. Now, Ms. Y/N, tell me that you promise to refuse Levi your hand should he ask for it”, Lady Katrina ordered.

“ I empathize with the exhaustion you face due to your long journey, and I’ve been compelled to admit clearly that I am not engaged to Levi Ackerman. But I will not make any promise to you, madam, and especially not a promise of the respective nature”, Y/N deadpanned to the thunderstruck Lady Katrina!

“ Insufferable, headstrong, selfish girl!”, Lady Katrina furiously hissed.

“ You have insulted not me, but my beloved kin as well, and that is an offence I can never forgive you for. It was wrong of you to force yourself inside my abode, uninvited and unannounced, to confront me about baseless rumors and personal matters. It is now 4.00 in the morning, and the rain has stopped. Your escort must be waiting, your ladyship. I will not be disturbed any further! Goodnight and goodbye”, Y/N said the final words.

Lady Katrina exited the house angry and displeased, cursing the situation and Y/N’s character as she stormed out. Finally, Y/N began crying. She ran out of the library to make her way upstairs.

“ Darling, what happened? Is everything okay?”, Mrs. L/N asked, concerned.

“ It was a simple misunderstanding. I’m off to bed, and you all should be too”, Y/N sniffled, trying to escape them.

“ Darling, talk to us-", Mr. L/N started only to get interrupted.

“ I have no desire to. For once in your life just leave me be!”she shouted before locking herself in her room to cry.

Lady Katrina had reached Shiganshina after hours of travel, and she seeked her nephew out immediately.

“ Levi, come here at once!”, she called. Levi curiously walked downstairs, Isabel following him suit.

Lady Katrina explained everything that had happened between herself and Y/N to Levi, thinking he’d be appalled by her behaviour. What the poor lady didn’t realize was that her recount had only made Levi exceedingly proud of Y/N, and deepened his feelings towards her. Isabel gaped at Levi the entirety of her aunt’s heated speech, knowing what her brother would do next. She smirked, an action which went unnoticed by Lady Katrina.

“ Oh my, auntie, what horrible offences you’ve had laid against you”, she said, feigning astonishment. Isabel entertained Lady Katrina and pretended to sympathize with her while Levi sat on his horse for a long ride to Trost- all in his nightwear! Levi silently thanks the lord for the fact that he had another chance with Y/N, and the closer he got to Trost, the gladder his heart became.

Lady Katrina on the other hand was much dismayed! Amanda had broken off the engagement from her part, and revealed that she was now affianced to Armin Arlert, a friend she fell for after meeting at the never ending balls.

“ I’m sorry to have disappointed you, mother, but I can’t allow myself to be under your control any longer. I’ve done everything you instructed me to these past 23 years, but all that ends now, for I do not love Levi Ackerman, I love Armin Arlert”, she sternly broke the news to Lady Katrina.

And before walking out the door one last time, she turned around and said:

“ Before I go, I will instill upon you some heartfelt, priceless advice that I believe will be most helpful in the future: don’t arrange marriages between two individuals while they’re still in their cradles. It encourages zero admiration or affection, and plans of this kind always find a way of souring”.

#captain levi fanfiction #aot fanfiction #aot levi ackerman #levi ackerman x reader #captain levi x reader

[kittybellestark]

Back To The Beginning

This one shot literally took so long to write but I’m glad it’s finally finished. I didn’t think I’d ever get it done i stg. Basically Peter starts to remember his parents. 

TW: Panic Attack, Blood, speaking about experimentation/torture.

“Tony, I need your help!!”

It’s 11:00pm on a non-patrol night. Peter is supposed to be in his apartment, it’s not the weekend so he definitely isn’t supposed to be here at night. Tony felt the anxiety build inside of him. hearing Peter ask for help was nearly unheard of, and for him to make an appearance at the lab this late at night was only something he did when injured too badly. This was unusual.

Looking up at Peter, Tony see’s he looks relatively not injured. Though Peter’s look is a cause for concern. He’s wearing pajamas and his face is red. Peter’s still wearing slippers and it’s obvious that he doesn’t have a wallet on him, only his phone. Which means Peter walked to the tower from Queens -as his webshooters are not on his wrists- but he most likely ran, judging by his red face and the beads of sweat on his forehead.

“What’s wrong?”

Tony was quick to move, getting Peter to sit down and drink water. The boys eyes were wide and frightened.

“Okay you’re going to think I’m insane because I think I’m insane but I promise this is real and I need help. Something is suspicious about May. And me. And my parents. Something is wrong Tony. I don’t think I’m unsafe but there’s something wrong here.”

“Start from the beginning kiddo. Keep your breathing easy. I can’t help you if I don’t know what the problem is.”

Peter nodded. He looked ready to cry. He was obviously exhausted and Tony was trying to keep his cool from Peter bringing up May and how he’s suspicious of her. Peter was his kid and Tony would do anything to keep him safe.

“Right, yeah. So remember our talk last week, the one where I sorta told you I perceive you in a father figure way and then you saying you kinda think of me as a son? Well I talked to May about it because I felt guilty. Like I had a dad and an uncle who raised me and it just feels selfish and I just needed extra reassurance okay. And May was upset. And she said that it wasn’t fair to my father especially considering he died recently.” Peter paused. “My dad died when I was 6, Ben died just over a year ago and I know she didn’t get them confused.”

Tony went to talk, to reassure Peter or to comfort him but Peter kept going.

“I thought she was just confused. But then I found some pictures of when my parents were alive. And May and Ben were never there. I can find pictures of places they said I was with them and only them, but then the pictures are with my parents. So I did had Ned hack into my grandparents old medical files. Richard and Mary were both only children. Ben is not related to Richard. There’s no adoption forms or anything. So technically May and Ben aren’t my aunt and uncle right?”

“Pete-“

“No Tony, listen. There’s more. May and Ben always pushed for me to work at Oscorp right? That’s where my parents worked so it makes sense. But May had pushed it more since the spider bite which doesn’t make sense, even pushing it even though you’re a Stark and obviously I’m going to work at SI when I’m older. It doesn’t make sense. But I was thinking it’s a legacy thing. But no.

“It doesn’t make sense that I don’t remember anything before my parents died. Doctor’s said it was the trauma of my parents dying. But I was six I couldn’t have really understood that. Unless something also happened to me, which brings me to my next big woah moment. MJ has been having me meditate recently because it’s good for my mental health and whatnot. And I remember being on an airplane with my parents. There’s no evidence that I was ever on an airplane, except before I was six years old. But there’s a ticket under my name for the same day my parents died. And if I go into the airport security cameras on that day I am there. You can see me boarding the plane. So how could I live through a plane crash and not my parents. That doesn’t make sense, especially seeing as my whole life I was told I was staying with May and Ben when my parents died.

“Tony, none of this adds up. And let’s just circle back to the spider bite. That should have killed me. It would have killed any other human. To have lived through the bite I would have had to had been altered or experimented on to work genetically with the spiders they were using. That’s the only way I wouldn’t have died. Which means Oscorp knows about me being Spider-Man, which makes sense because they’ve approached me multiple times since gaining my powers to intern there, even before I met you.

“Something is really wrong, Tony. And I need help.”

Tony agreed to help Peter. Of course he did. The duo researches Mary and Richard Parker and then they research May and Ben Parker. May and Ben never existed before they took custody of Peter. Everything Peter said was backed up. There was evidence for everything.

Peter’s life no longer made sense and Tony feared for his sons safety.

“I’m not comfortable with you going home, kid. None of this adds up.”

Peter leaned forward resting against the work table nodding along to what Tony said. He wasn’t very comfortable either. How could he go home knowing his whole life has been a lie.

“I’ll stay tonight, but I have to go back. We need more proof. Maybe we can get a DNA sample from May.”

Huffing in frustration, Tony pinches the bridge of his nose feeling at a loss.

“When you go back home I’m going to give you some stuff to set up around your room. It’ll activate every time May walks in there, record what she’s doing and saying. It’ll alert me if she does anything to you. I’ll also talk to my lawyers.”

The next day Tony unwillingly brought Peter back home. With a bag full of bugs and cameras, all directly linked to FRIDAY who will tell Tony as soon as anything remotely suspicious were to happen. Peter was well aware of exactly where to put each microphone and camera and that they would only be activated with May’s presence. 

Leaving Peter alone with May, felt impossible. Tony’s chest felt tight with anxiety, worried that this would be a bad idea, that his kid would wind up hurt in the end. Peter being left to May when the facts didn’t add up. Everything was a little too off yet so well put together with their small family that it seemed like a gust of wind could bring it all toppling to the ground. 

From there is took a few hours before May got back to her apartment, then a little while later before she started talking about Peter’s future with Oscorp. At the end of the week Peter finally told Tony that he had a DNA sample from May. 

As Peter entered the lab, toothbrush in hand, Tony had everything set up, FRIDAY ready to go through every person who has ever given DNA ever to find out who May is.

“What if I was kidnapped as a child?” 

“Then the two of us figure it out. We do whatever you’re comfortable with.”

Tony wraps his arms around Peter, letting the teen rest his head on Tony’s shoulder. 

“Boss, I found a match, would you two like to hear?” FRIDAY finally said after an agonizing fifteen minutes.

Tony looked towards Peter, waiting for confirmation before answering. Peter stared at Tony, mouth open clearly hesitating about what to do. After a beat Peter finally nodded, and Tony gave FRIDAY the go-ahead. 

“May Parker has a 100% DNA match to Mary Parker. I do apologize Peter, but it seems May is actually your mother.” 

Everything went silent at that for Peter. His ears were ringing and the world went all fuzzy. He blinked back tears before taking a deep breath and nodding. Tony held both of Peter’s shoulders, keeping him grounded. 

“Oh god, oh man, she lied to me. She lied a lot. She can’t be- she can’t. Tony, Tony, my whole life. She faked her death. And then got custody as me, and told me she’s my aunt. Oh no, that means Ben was probably- that I watched, Tony she said my Dad died recently, Tony I watched him get murdered. They lied to me. They lied.”

Tony pulled Peter into his arms, bringing the two of them to the ground. Peter ended up in Tony’s lap, head in the crook of his mentors shoulders. Tony started to rock the two of them, hoping to bring the sobbing boy some comfort.

~~~~~~

A week after finding out May was technically his biological mother, the nightmares set in for Peter. Well, more like repressed memories coming to him when he sleeps, but nightmares nonetheless. It was already a battle to get Tony to agree to let Peter go home, with promises that he would soon talk to May. Going to Tony about this now would only lead to Peter never going home. 

Sleeping was hard though. Memories of being moved from facility to facility with Mary and Richard strapping him down and taking needles to his skin, injecting him with things that burned, that were so hot but also so cold. Watching Richard take a scalpel to his body, seeing Mary break his bones. Having his parents shock him until he tasted blood.

It wasn’t right. Peter knew it wasn’t right. He stops other parents from doing this to their kids. And now he’s here. He know’s he went through it, the abuse. But that was Mary and Richard. Not May and Ben. They may be the same, but the abuse, it hasn’t been since they started lying to him. Not since they pretended that Peter wasn’t their son. They’ve not hurt him like that since they faked their own death.

And yet Oscorp has been up his ass since Spider-Man. Doubled down since May found out. He’s been followed by people who may have put it together. Who may know his actual identity. 

Peter know’s he should go to Tony. He know’s he should talk to May. Peter is acutely aware that he is an abused child. That his parents abused him. experimented on him. He shouldn’t have lived through the spider bite, not without previous experimentation. He’d be dead if it wasn’t for Mary and Richard or May and Ben, whoever they were. They saved his life with what they did.  

But what if this was Ned’s life? Or MJ’s? OR Betty’s? Or even Flash? If this was literally anyone else’s life Peter wouldn’t stand for it. He wouldn’t let them think that everything was okay in their life. He would talk them out of it. He would support them and help them find other options. But this is his life. And now it’s different. And it shouldn’t be. Spider-Man stops this from happening to other children. Stops the abuse, helps get them into good homes. Yet Peter Parker isn’t doing anything for himself because as far as he’s aware it’s in the past. 

Now Peter is sitting inside a restaurant with May. They’re supposed to be having dinner together. But he needs to know. He has questions and he wants the answers. His phone is on his lap recording, and he that Tony has Happy tailing him, which means he’s right outside if anything happens. 

“So, uh, you know that MJ and I have been meditating together right? She says it’s good for people’s mental health and can help then deal with some personal stuff.” Peter starts saying once the food has arrived. May nods. “Well, I think it’s working. Which is great but I’m remembering some weird things from when Mary and Richard were alive.”

May raised her eyebrow, taking a think before she answers, the fork she was hold with chicken on the end twirling in the air. 

“Are you sure about that Pete? I mean not to say I don’t believe you but the doctors have said it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll ever regain your memories from when your parents were alive. Are you sure you’re actually remember and not just creating these stories in your head about them again?”

“Wait what? Creating stories- again? May, I have no clue what you’re talking about.” 

“Oh, honey. Please don’t tell me you repressed this. When you were you younger you created this whole story about how Mary and Richard would hurt you and take your blood and it was horrible. You worked yourself up into such a frenzy about it that Ben and I had to put you in a hospital to help you. You were in the hospital for months. Do you not remember that?” Peter shook his head. “Honey, if what you remember of your parents is them experimenting on you or whatever convoluted thing you made up then we need to get you some more help.”

Peter was confused. He didn’t remember May and Ben shipping him away. There’s no memory of going to a hospital or saying that his parents hurt him. Peter was sure that never happened. It couldn’t have. And for May to know what Peter was going to his what his memories were. That’s wrong. She knows. She knows.

“I ran a DNA test. I know you’re actually Mary.”

May or Mary whoever she is dropped her fork, her face showing her surprise. 

“Peter, baby, I don’t know where you got that idea from but I’m not Mary, I’m not your mother. I don’t know how you made up this story now but you’re wrong. Get up Peter. We’re going to go get you some help.”

Heartbreaking, Peter felt his family shatter. For the first time in Peter’s life he looked at May and saw a stranger. To tell him he’s making this all up, that he needs help. She’s never done this before. May- Mary- May, she’d never make him feel like he was a liar. Peter had always felt validated by her. May didn’t even do this when Peter went to her about Skip. 

May got up from the table grabbing Peter by his arm and trying to pull him up with her. Peter continued to stay seated, refusing to go with her. Wanted to finish this conversation before this family ended. 

“Sit the fuck down, Mary. I’m not done yet.” Peter heard himself spit out, voice feeling detached. 

Mary sat down across from her son, a scowl set on her face. Food forgotten, her foot tapping. 

“I was on that plane too. I remember being there. There was never a May and Ben Parker before then. Don’t play dumb with me either, Mom, I go to the best school in New York that works in conjunction with the best colleges in the country. I have an internship with a certified genius and have helped develop products at SI, and regularly work with the top three smartest people in the world, and they don’t dumb things down so I can understand. I can keep up with them and I make them see things they didn’t before. I’ve corrected Tony Stark and Bruce Banner. Don’t tell me I’m crazy.”

The two stayed silent staring at each other. The server came around to check in and they only nodded. After ten minutes Mary finally broke the silence. 

“What do you want to know?” 

“Why did you fake your death, create identities that are literally related to me, but not fake my death? You told me you were dead for years. Why?” 

“It was the only way to protect you without ruining your life. I did what I had to do.” Mary’s voice was cold in a way that Peter hasn’t heard since he was young, and strapped to a table.

“How could you ever protect me when you were to the one to hurt me. You and Richard. You strapped me to a table, poked me with needles, injected me with experimental drugs, broke my bones and cut me open and shocked me when I didn’t do what you wanted me too. I was a child and you tortured me.”

“You think I wanted to? You’re my baby. I didn’t want to do those things, but I had too.”

“Why?”

“Peter, we’re done, we’re going.”

“Not until you answer me.”

“We’re leaving.”

“Answer me, Mary.”

“Oscorp. Norman Osborn. That’s why.”

Peter nodded. It was what he was expecting. Of course he was. He just wanted it to be different. He wanted Mary to say anything else. But it was her job. She got paid to do those things to him. Mary could have said no, could have quit her job. Richard too. They could have done something. Anything. 

It was a choice. They chose their jobs over him. They valued Peter as a lab rat, and their job as their child. Peter wasn’t important. Not to Mary, not to Richard. Not in the way he should have been.

“Alright.” Peter said. “I can’t go home with you. I can’t trust you anymore. I’m sorry Mary, but this just isn’t working with us anymore. Someone will be in contact.”

They made eye contact again. And Peter finally stood up. He tapped a button on the watch he was given from Tony, only tapped it once, to let Happy know he needs a ride, to let Tony know he needs him. His phone went into his pocket.

Just as his back turned to Mary, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. There was the sound of gun being cocked behind him. The people in the restaurant as gasped and screamed, chairs moving and people trying to shuffle away. Peter turned back around seeing May holding a gun, aiming it right at him.

“You’re not going to Tony. Tony motherfucking Stark doesn’t get to lay claim to you. You are mine Peter. You are my child, you are my responsibility, you are mine and you are coming home with me. Now put your hands up baby, I can’t have you calling him. We need to go. You need help. We have to go see the doctor.”

She was shaking, tears running down her face. All Peter could see was his aunt. He could only see May. He couldn’t see Mary and that made it hurt more. He raised his hands, putting them behind his head. He found the his watch easily, clicking the buttons in rapid succession, as many times necessary to get help as soon as possible.

“May, May, please. You can’t- please. You hurt me. Over and over again. It was your choice. Please don’t hurt me anymore. Put the gun down, please. You know I won’t go willingly. I won’t, I will let you shoot me. Kill me, May, do to me what was done to Ben-Richard. Make sure no one can ever have me if you can’t. It’s the only way you can keep me safe right? By making sure I’m dead?” Peter sobbed, moving slowly onto his knees, trying to not be a threat to Mary. “You are scaring me. I used to feel safe with you May. You made me feel safe. But Mary, I don’t feel safe with you. I’d rather be dead then go to whatever place you want me too. You either need to kill me, or let me go to Tony. Either way he’ll make sure you go to jail. But I’ll try and get him to lighten up the sentence if you let me walk out of here tonight.” 

Peter was crying. And near incoherent, he wanted things to be normal. He wanted his Aunt May and he wanted to be at home watching a bad hallmark movie throwing popcorn at the tv. He wanted them to order cheap takeout food when May inevitably burnt dinner.

He could see the people trapped in the restaurant in them taking videos of them. He knew this was probably live on Facebook or Instagram or Tiktok or wherever they post live videos now. Tony was without a doubt watching when FRIDAY picked up his face online. Everyone at school would probably see this, him begging Mary to kill him instead of kidnapping him. 

Peter could hear the sound of repulsors, both of the suit and of the quinjet. He knew Mary only had limited time before Tony got here, and only a little bit more time before whatever available Avengers show up. Happy was probably busy securing the perimeter for the police. Or maybe he was working to get some of the hostages out.

“I don’t want to kill you Pete. I don’t want to kill you, it’s the last thing I want to do. So you need to come with me. You cannot go to Tony Stark. He can’t solve your problems. Let’s go. We can be together, forever. We can finally be the family I always wanted us to be. The family you always wanted to have. Mother and Son. We wouldn’t be Aunt and Nephew now that you know.”

Mary was shaking, her face red, finger on the trigger, safety turned off. She was ready to shoot her son, her child, her baby. She was fighting a losing battle. She said all the wrong things and she’s acting the wrong way. 

Iron Man touched down outside. 

“You have a minute Mary, let me leave, Tony is outside. It’ll be better if you let me go.” It was a final plea, he knew it probably wouldn’t do anything but it was worth the shot.

There was a beat of silence. 

“If I can’t have you then no one can.” Her voice was cold.

A repulsor charged. Mary was out of time. They both knew it. 

A shot rung out.

The window shattered.

Mary flew to the side.

Peter fell backwards.

Tony charged in.

Mary lost her grip on the gun, it skidded across the restaurant floor. Far out of her reach. She pushed herself away, trying to escape Iron Man. The attempt was in vain. Tony stood over her, face plate on the suit flicked up.

“You’re done Mary. You don’t get to hurt him anymore.” 

The Avengers swarmed in detaining Mary, working on getting the hostages out, having them checked by medical. 

“She shot me.” Peter cried out, trying to suck in air.

Tony turned to Peter, seeing the boy lying down. Pool of blood around him. A gun shot wound to the stomach. Peter was smiling teeth stained red. Tony broke out of his suit, skidding to his knees beside him. Tony put pressure on the wound trying to smile at Peter, to try and comfort his kid.

“Peter, kid, I’m right here. I’m right here bambino, it’s okay. She’s not going to hurt you anymore. You’re gonna move in with me, I’ve already got all the paperwork sort out. I promise you kid, you’ve got a home with me. I love you kid, it’s okay, we’ll be okay eventually.”

Peter nodded, tears streaming down his face. He didn’t hurt anymore, nothing hurt.

“I’m sorry Tony. I’m sorry. That was stupid of me. I shouldn’t’ve confronted her. She tried to kill me.” He coughed up blood. “I thought she’d tell me it was a lie. Mary never loved me.”

“It’ll be okay bambi, I’ve got you now.”

~~~~~

Peter woke up in the medbay. The lights were dimmed, Tony was asleep with his head on the Peter bed, Tony’s hand resting on Peter’s. The window’s were tinted so he couldn’t see out, and the door was closed most of the way closed. Peter grabbed a cup of water sitting on the nightstand, taking a sip and putting it back down.

“Tony?” Peter whispered, waking the man up.

“Hey Pete,” Tony smiled once he woke up, voice still sleepy, eyes willed with worry. “You comfortable? Can I get you anything? Whatever you need kid, I’ll get it for you.”

“She tried to kill me, Tony. She’d rather me dead, then alive with you. She’s the reason I’m like this. She made me a freak. Because of her I’m some mutant. She never loved me.”

“Oh Peter.” Tony sighed as Peter started sobbing.

Tony got up, crawling into the bed with Peter careful not to irritate the wound. He wrapped his arms around the boy, pulling him into his chest. Peter sobbed harder, clinging to Tony.

“You’re no freak Peter. You’re not just some mutant either. You are my kid though, my son, even if not biologically. You are so important to me Peter. I’m so sorry I couldn’t take care of you. I’m so sorry that Mary lied to you you’re whole life, but you’re my kid okay? You are Peter Parker or whoever you want to be. I’m proud of you. You deserved to be loved, bambino.”

“I don’t even want to be a Parker anymore. I don’t want to be related to my parents anymore.” 

Tony wiped the tears off his son’s face. They made eye contact, Peter’s red glassy eyes and Tony’s watery eyes. 

“Then be a Stark. Or a Carbonell. Or a Potts. Or whatever other last name there is that isn’t mine or Peppers. Right. Be a Hogan or a Rhodes. You can have whatever last name you could possibly want. Rogers. Barton. Romanoff. Banner. Odinson. Maximoff. Barnes. Wilson. You don’t have to be a Parker if you don’t want to be. But personally I like the sound of you being Peter Stark, though Peter Potts has a nice ring to it too. We could hyphenate too.”

Peter laughed. “Peter Stark-Potts-Rogers-Barton-Romanoff-Banner-Odinson-Maximoff-Barnes-Wilson? Is that what you want my name to be.”

“No you silly goose. Maybe Peter Stark-Potts. Or Peter Potts-Stark. Whatever you’re comfortable with. I won’t judge. Basically I wanted to say that Pepper and I want to keep custody of you. We currently have temporary custody, because it’s up to you. We didn’t want you left out. And eventually we’d like to adopt you too.” Tony paused for a beat. “But, I feel like we’re having this conversation entirely too soon and I should let you grieve first. Mary’s not dead, that was the wrong word. She’s alive. But I figured you’d be grieving the family you lost. So we can talk about this down the line. When you’re comfortable. But Pep and I will need to know the custody thing soon at least. Gotta keep CPS off our asses at some point.”

“Tony?”

Tony hummed in response.

“Thank you.”

#peter parker #peterparker #spiderman #spiderson #spider-man #spider man #Iron Man #irondad #ironman #iron dad #tony stark #tony stark has a heart #tonystark #tony and peter #TONY STARK AND PETER PARKER #Irondad and Spiderson #hurt peter #hurt peter parker #tony cares about peter #avengers #MCU #marvel #Spoderman #marvel cinematic universe #mary and richard parker suck #mary and richard parker

[hallowxiu]

Hook, Line and Sinker

pairing: simeon & gn!mc

word count: 1.8k

summary: You try to hit on Simeon while the two of you attempt to put together a desk he bought from the Devildom’s version of an IKEA.

a/n: part 8 of the mc isn’t good at pick up lines series

part four | part five | part six | part seven

“Why?” You ask with a sigh, standing in front of Simeon who’s a heap on the floor surrounded by dozens of tiny screws, as well as an opened box with a picture of a white desk on the front. “Why did you think this would be a good idea?” Describing Simeon as stressed would be an understatement; the man looked absolutely beside himself. “Did you even read the instructions?”

“Of course I did!” He’s quick to defend himself and you can even see his hair puff up slightly at the accusation. “But… this is confusing.” 

“Why didn’t you call Solomon to help you?” You planned on giving in to Simeon’s vague request, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t have a little fun with him beforehand. “Why did you have to send me the most vague text you could think of?” 

The angel pauses slightly before a whine leaves him. Was he about to throw a tantrum? Cute, your lips curl upwards at the thought of a bratty Simeon before he starts to speak again. “Solomon had plans today. He didn’t tell me what, just that he wouldn’t be back until later tonight.” You roll your eyes to yourself as you sit on the carpeted ground across from him. It was hard to believe Solomon was a human at times with as shady as he was. “And Luke wouldn’t be any help with this. I bought this because I thought it could be beneficial for his studies, but he wouldn’t understand how to put it together.” He gingerly picks at the parts around him. “And I didn’t think my message was that vague. I only asked for your help.”

“You literally only sent me ‘help, SOS’. I thought Solomon finally snapped and killed Luke.” You lean forward and pick up the pamphlet of instructions. You weren’t surprised that Simeon bought this with Luke in mind, if anything it was cute. “Simeon, will you be honest with me?” The blue eyed angel looks at you expectantly. 

“Of course.”

“Is Luke your secret love child?” 

Simeon seems to be caught off guard by your question, the man seemingly choking on nothing but air. He stares at you with wide eyes as his brain wrecks havoc as he tries to answer your question. “I mean, I was only asking because you act like such a dad around him.” You can’t keep the grin off your face, and you end up laughing into the back of your hand. “I’m only playing with you. Unless…?” 

“I’m not his father!” Simeon stutters out, a blush creeping up his face. 

“Okay, okay.” You say with your hands raised slightly. “Just asking a question. I didn’t know, maybe angels could have kids or something.” You decide to drop the topic when Simeon actually looks like he might lecture you. Your eyes scan the pages of the instruction manual and you can feel your eyebrow twitch from the amount of information. If you thought IKEAs were confusing, then the Devildom took it to the next level. The two of you were definitely out of your elements. “You couldn’t just… buy him a desk that was already put together?”

“He’s particular when it comes to study areas.”

“You should have just forced him to build it.” You mumble under your breath, but you pick up a piece of wood anyway. You stare down at the wood in your lap blankly, before your gaze shifts back up to Simeon. “Why didn’t you ask Lucifer to help? He’s more capable than I am, and unlike us, he’d probably be familiar with the store you purchased this from.” 

“Well,” there’s an almost bashful look on his face, “that’s quite simple. I like spending time with you.” This time it’s your turn to choke on air. You feel your cheeks heat up as you quickly hide behind your hands. Goodness, it was like the Levi situation all over again. Was it really this easy to get you flustered? 

You snort to yourself as you grab a screwdriver. If Simeon thought he’d be the only one being smooth tonight, then you’d have to prove him wrong. “Oh? Well, are you religious? Because you have the answers to all my prayers.” You smile smugly to yourself; yeah- that was good. You pause briefly. Wait. 

“Um… is that a trick question?” The angel asks with a tilt of his head. “I thought it was obvious that I was religious. However, it’s not my job to answer your prayers.” You close your eyes and inhale deeply, nodding to yourself as you accept your defeat and grab the instructions yet again, skipping to the page that has the complete picture printed. It was getting just a little old that your pick up lines never worked. You sit there brewing to yourself for a minute, grabbing at screws and trying to figure out what goes where, but you eventually get the gist of it. “Do you want to try again?” You look up to see a mischievous smile on Simeon’s lips, one that tells you he knew what you were up to from the start. You feel your face heat up once again, though this time from embarrassment. 

“No.” You answer much to his surprise. You were tired of giving the others warnings about your pick up lines. No, if you wanted a genuine reaction, you’d have to toss them out randomly. It’s like fishing, you think to yourself. If you throw the bait out enough times, the fish will come to you. Or… something like that. Probably. 

“Ah, little lamb, you aren’t upset with me, are you?” There was concern about his expression, and you felt guilty for a brief second. 

“Of course not, Simeon!” Though your heart does skip a beat from the nickname he gave you. To ease his concerns, you show him a soft smile before looking back down at the work in front of you. Damn, if Luke wasn’t one spoiled angel. “Hey, Simeon?” You glance over to see the brown-haired angel also working on a section of the desk. “Are you any good at math?” 

“Math? I get the general concept of it, yeah.” He answers after a few seconds of silent deliberating.

“Mm. Great.” You try to keep back the smirk from spreading on your lips. You needed to act cool, which was a difficult feat for you. “What do you know about forty-five degree angles?” 

“Eh? Why? Are you going over angles in your math class?” 

“Because you’re acute-y.” Hook, line and sinker. Not to toot your own horn, but you were feeling pretty confident in yourself.

“Wow.” 

“I know. You’re speechless, though I don’t blame you.” You pull at your imaginary collar. “And there’s more where that came from.” You send a wink his way and the angel can’t help but to laugh.

“Color me impressed.” Simeon hums while you pass him the screwdriver. He stills when he notices you staring at him with an unwavering gaze. “What is it?” You lean forward, eyes narrowing as you keep your focus on him. Perplexed, he leans back slightly. “What--”

“If I had a star for every time you brightened my day, I would be holding a galaxy.” 

The angel looks genuinely flustered, red dusting his cheeks as he stares at you with wide eyes. “B-Back to work!” He finds himself tripping over his words when he can’t think of anything else to say in response. 

This was a victory for you. The first of what would hopefully be many. 

☼☼☼

You and Simeon stare at the white desk that’s occupying the corner of his dorm room, the two of you feeling a sense of pride at the accomplishment. It didn’t matter that the desk was uneven and slanted slightly to the left. It also didn’t matter that it looked like it might fall apart the second anything was placed on it; it was your child with the amount of sweat and tears the two of you poured into it. If Luke didn’t like it, then, well-- whatever. Honestly, it wasn’t really your problem anymore after today.

“Simeon?” 

The blue eyed angel turns to look at you, a soft smile gracing his features and for a brief moment you felt as if the wind was knocked out of you. Sometimes you forgot just how beautiful the man was up close. “Yes, my little lamb?” You feel your eye twitch at just how fast you were losing control of the situation. You needed to work on not letting yourself get so flustered. Yeah right, you still couldn’t even face Levi.

“I have another question for you.” 

“Oh? Ask away, my shooting star.” You feel your eyes widen as you furiously stare at the ground with a red face. Did this man know what he was doing to you? Probably. 

“Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?” Yeah, okay, maybe you were taking a gamble with asking an actual angel this, but what was the worst that could happen? You’re pretty confident in the fact that he won’t lecture you on the history of fallen angels like Lucifer had. Unlike the eldest brother, Simeon was pretty good at knowing when you were joking around. You look over when you don’t get an answer, only to see a horrified look on the angel’s face. “What--”

“My little lamb,” he leans in dangerously close and you find yourself backing away, worry etched into his face, “where did you hear that? Who told you I fell?” 

“Wait, Simeon, what are you talking about?” You feel a cold sweat break out on your forehead as you attempt to avoid eye contact with him. “No one told me you fell.”

“Then how did you know?”

You completely still, feeling like you just opened some kind of Pandora's box. “W-What do you mean?” You feel gentle hands come down on your shoulders, spinning you around and nudging you out the front door of the dorm. 

“Keep this secret between us, my love!” You couldn’t see the grin on his lips when he shut the door before you could get another word in. Simeon chuckles to himself, tucking a strand of brown hair behind his ear. His eyebrows raise when the door unlocks and opens, an unimpressed Solomon stepping inside. “You’re back early.” Simeon states, taking a few steps back so that the other could get inside.

“You’re wrong for that and you know it.” 

“Whatever do you mean by that?” Simeon feigns innocence, a sweet smile on his lips as he makes his way back to his room. 

“You think I didn’t hear that? You’re going to have them paranoid for the rest of their stay now. I think they actually thought you were being serious!” Solomon snorts as he slips out of his shoes, leaving them by the door. “You forget how literal they tend to take things.” 

“That’s the fun part; they make it too easy.” He calls out from the other room.

Solomon just shakes his head and lets out a sigh. He’d probably have to be the one to clean the mess up. 

#shall we date #obey me #shall we date obey me #simeon #simeon obey me #obey me simeon #simeon x mc #simeon x reader #simeon one shot #simeon drabble #simeon imagine #obey me one shot #shall we date one shot #obey me imagine #shall we date imagine #obey me x mc #drabbles #drabble #god the tags are my least favorite part lmao

[not-close-to-straight]

Hexes and Honeysuckle (Four)

We dive into a little bit of Bucky related angst in this chapter but don’t worry, Tony comes riding to his rescue like everyone’s favorite feline Prince Charming. 

MASTERLIST 

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

“So you can’t in fact do an invisibility spell.” Bucky re-lathered up the washcloth and continued scrubbing at the stains on his arm. “Or did you confuse invisibility with ‘blueberry flavored soul staining ink’?” 

“To be fair, I didn’t take into account the different ways a spell would affect a feline form versus a human form.” Tony sank further into his giant bowl of soapy water, nothing but his little face above the bubbles and massive amounts of hair floating around him in a halo. “I didn’t expect the explosion, neither did I expect the ridiculous color.” 

“Clearly.” Bucky dunked his head back into the bathtub and soaped up his hair. “How long is this gonna stay on us?” 

“Do you remember the witch Wonka?” A bubble landed on Tony’s nose and the feline went cross eyed trying to stare at it. “Had that weird house and got in trouble for being careless with his spells?” 

“No.” Bucky shook his head. “Don’t pay much attention to other witches, Tony. What does Wonka have to do with me being blueberry blue?” 

“Uh…. nothing. Nevermind.” the bubble popped and Tony went back to splashing idly, watching soapy lines of blue fade out of his fur and turn the water almost purple. “You shouldn’t be complaining by the way, you look great in blue. You should be thanking me.” 

“I should be shaving you.” 

“Eh.” the familiar gave a kitty approximation of a shrug. “Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.” 

It was easier after that, after one good spell and one acutely horrible spell and a wonderful camaraderie bloomed from shared blue skin, hair and fingernails. 

Tony would be sassy to the day he died but at least now his comments were layered with something almost close to affection, the bite missing from his sarcasm and literal bite missing from any moments of annoyance that inevitably sprang up. 

Bucky took peas out of the dinner rotation entirely and bought chicken at the market to shred and prepare the way Tony demanded requested, read his spells out loud so Tony could correct any mispronunciations and at night he even put a pillow over at Tony’s side of the bed so the cat would stop poofing it away. 

When the day to day things worked without devolving into chaos, non magic related moments started inching towards domestic and maybe even friendly and as the days rolled into weeks, the heart to heart bond that was so essential to witch-familiar relationships finally began to spark between the pair. 

“Peggy told me I needed to learn some humility.” Tony offered one day as he shredded dandelion blooms for their next attempt at a potion. “She told me I was too young to be half so confident and when one of my spells got out of control and nearly hurt someone, she got mad.” 

“Spells get outta control all the time.” Bucky paused in his mixing and re-read the incantation for the third time so he wouldn’t screw it up when it came time to recite. “I’m still scrubbing blue outta my scalp from the invisibility thing. Sometimes people get hurt. Why was she so mad?” 

“She said it should scare me that someone was almost hurt. But I said that they weren’t actually hurt, so why did it matter.” the familiar tipped over his bowl and pawed the dandelion out onto the table. “So she hexed me into this form till I learned some empathy and humility.” 

“Uh huh.” Bucky scooped up the dandelion and added it to the mix. “So how’s that going?” 

“Well, I’ve been a cat for about a billion years now so you tell me.” Tony batted at Bucky’s hand when the witch tried to add too much liquid. “Stop that, you’re doing it wrong.” 

“You’re rude.” Bucky batted the cat right back. “Billion years, huh? Is that why your hair’s gone gray?” 

“WHAT?!” Tony puffed up instantly, eyes wide and ears laid back and aforementioned gray fur fuzzed out. “I am not gray! I am not old enough to be gray!” 

“Sure you are.” Bucky countered with a sly smirk. “How old are you in human years, anyway?” 

“It’s rude to ask a cat their age.” Tony sniffed primly, settling his fur back down and going back to his spell. “If I was a lady, I’d slap you for being pertinent.” 

“You not being a lady hasn’t stopped you from slapping me.” the witch stated, and checked off the last ingredient on their list to make sure the potion was ready. “You slapped me earlier today cos your eggs were runny.” 

“I struck you lovingly with the soft side of my paw cos you cracked a raw egg on my plate and told me to quit yowling for food.” Tony corrected, and scooped up just a tiny bit more of dandelion leaf to add to the bowl. “And for the record, I’m still young for a witch. Just over two hundred.” 

“Twice my age, huh?” 

“Yeah, you’re a baby witch.” Satisfied Bucky wasn’t going to blow the roof off the cottage with a mismatched spell, Tony decided his work was done for the day and rolled over into the patch of sunshine on the table to sun his belly. “Thank goodness you have someone powerful and wise like me to show you the way.” 

“Is that what you’re claiming these days?” Bucky hesitated, then hesitated again and then finally reached out to give scritches on the familiar’s soft belly. “That you’re powerful and wise instead of hairy and spiteful?” 

Tony cracked an eye at the witch, then wriggled a little closer and closed his eyes again. “Who says I can’t be all of the above?” 

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

“Can you hear me?” Tony tapped on the wall a few times and watched closely to see if the witch huddled inside the glass cage reacted at all. “Bucky? I know I said your dreams were boring but I’d take it back if you’d just acknowledge how absolutely cool I am for being able to dream walk out of my familiar form.” 

The witch didn’t answer just like he hadn’t answered the past several times Tony had let himself into Bucky’s psyche and wandered around the empty surface. 

“Why do you do this?” Tony slid down onto the floor and crossed his legs, propped his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. “Most witches practice for decades before learning how to physically control their dreams but you can actively choose where your consciousness goes when you sleep despite having set the table on fire this morning. So why do you choose to lock yourself up in nothing?” 

The silence was almost painful against Tony’s ears and he wondered idly if being stuck as a cat for so long had translated into his human form having weird catlike issues like enhanced hearing.

“Are you worried about nightmares?” he asked through the barrier. “About your magic flexing and hurting someone?” 

No answer. 

“We should plant honeysuckle.” he told dream-Bucky. “It keeps evil spirits away and maybe if we keep them away in your waking hours, you’ll be able to dream instead of hiding away in here. You look lonely and I don’t really like that. 

No answer. 

“...Bucky?” Tony swallowed uncomfortably. “I’m getting worried about you.” 

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

“We should plant honeysuckle.” Tony told the witch the next morning. “We should plant an ash tree too, and at least some sunflowers but also definitely honeysuckle.” 

“Why’s that?” Bucky looked exhausted today, dark rings under his eyes and hair rumpled from tossing and turning all night. He hadn’t slept well the last several nights, his usual dream meditation interrupted by the feeling that someone was watching, lurking, that something was hovering just out of range of his safe space inside his own head. It hadn’t felt malicious, hadn’t felt dangerous, but the presence had disrupted his calm anyway and after several days of hardly any sleep, Bucky was miserable and faltering. 

...and scared, because when he was overly tired the nightmares were always worse and he didn’t want one tonight or any time soon. “Why uh-- why honeysuckle, Tony?” 

“Cos it’s pretty.” Tony kept his eyes trained on the toaster, watching carefully, closely so when the toast popped it wouldn’t scare him off the counter like it had done yesterday. “And it keeps the evil spirits away.” 

“But then you wouldn’t be allowed in the house anymore.” the witch said tiredly.

“Oh har-dee-har-har.” The familiar’s ears flattened warily when the smell of nearly finished toast reached his nose and he tensed in preparation for the noise. “Fine, don’t plant it. I’m allergic anyway and would just sneeze the whole time.” 

“That sounds exactly like something an evil spirit would say. What are you hiding beneath those whiskers, cat?” The toaster pop!-ed and Tony yowled and fell off the counter right into Bucky’s outstretched palm, because the witch remembered the familiar splatting onto the floor the last time this happened. “Were you scared of toasters when you were human?” 

“I’m not scared of toasters!” 

“Say’s the pussy cat with his claws digging into my wrist.” Bucky hefted the cat onto the counter and went to wash his hand before going back to cooking. “You okay?” 

“Yeah.” Tony glared at the offending appliance. “My magic is linked to iron which is the base of everything steel and I think cat-me has taken that link and magnified it to the point of--” 

Bucky just looked at him, and Tony sighed. “Basically my magic is so compressed in this form that it comes out in weird ways, and the longer a timer ticks down on anything remotely mechanical, the harder everything vibrates through me. It’s annoying.” 

“You got a headache?” Bucky was exhausted but he still took the time to scratch at Tony’s ears gently. “Would honeysuckle help with that? Drive the evil spirit of technology from your body by way of allergies?” 

“Keep talking and I’m gonna--” 

Tony shut up when the witch unplugged the toaster and the hum buzzing down the familiar’s spine finally eased. “Oh. Thank you.” 

“Yeah, kitty.” Bucky gave up on breakfast and stumbled back towards the bed. “I’m gonna sleep some more, okay? You okay out here alone?” 

“I’m an apex predator, Bucky. I can handle being alone in a countryside cottage for a few hours.” 

“You’re forty pounds of irritation and claws.” 

“I am sixteen pounds at the most” 

Whatever Bucky mumbled in response was lost in his pillow as he fell face first onto the mattress, and after a quick nibble at not quite cooked bacon and eggs, Tony jumped from counter to table to floor and trotted over to the bed. 

“Can I come up, too?” 

The witch mumbled something that might have been, “When have you ever asked before doing anything?” and Tony took that as permission to leap onto the blankets and pick his way towards the pillows. Bucky rolled over a little bit and hugged one of his pillows tighter, hiding his face beneath his long hair and groaning quietly when Tony booped at him. “Leave me alone!” 

“Tell me about your magic.” Without the buzz of plugged in appliances running through his veins, Tony felt like he could finally breathe and he nudged in close and booped at Bucky’s nose again in appreciation. “Do you know anything about it at all?” 

“Think it’s linked to nature.” the witch pushed the feline away again and rolled onto the other side so he didn’t get a face full of fur. “Maybe winter. Dunno what it feels like to be powerful, but I always feel better when it’s cold, when it snows.” 

“Okay, Elsa.” Tony wibbled and wobbled as he crossed the pillow so he could see Bucky’s face again. “When winter comes we’ll try some outdoor spells. Get you grounded to nature and see what happens.” 

“When winter comes.” Bucky repeated. “You think you’ll still be here when it snows?” 

“Bucky bear, at the rate I’m going I’ll be here till the world ends.” Tony turned in a few circles and burrowed down into the blanket to sleep next to Bucky. “Lucky you, huh?” 

Bucky finally smiled a tiny bit and rested his hand on the big cat’s rear, petting lightly until Tony’s tail lashed out to smack him in the face as a warning to stop. 

“Sheesh. Sorry.” 

“I’m trying to sleep and touching my butt just makes me horny.” Tony reprimanded and Bucky grimaced, “Yikes that’s weird, don’t say that. You’re a cat, Tony.” 

“I might be furry and feline, but I’m still a man.” the familiar snipped. “In my human form, my butt would put you on the floor. You’d actually drool over the roundness of my rear.” 

“Annnnd on that note, I’m gonna face the other way.” Bucky turned back to the other side of the bed and Tony grinned to himself and settled in for a mid morning nap. 

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

Everything was white and still until it wasn’t, and then Tony was running as fast as he could across the endless space to get to Bucky, to get to the screaming and the noise and the horror that had forced its way through the walls of the witch’s mind. 

The thing had tentacles, had multiple heads and rows and rows of teeth. It was blood red one moment and then vile black the next, a Hydra monster and a nightmare, a cursed creature set loose by another witch’s wrath, and the demon from Bucky’s past. 

Bucky was screaming, the Hydra monster screeching, the witch scrambling back against the walls of his self made cage and covering his face with his arm, the creature shoving through the cracks in the glass and reaching-- reaching--

“Bucky!” Tony slammed both hands onto his side of the wall and shouted for his witch. “Bucky! Let me in so I can save you! Let me in so I can save you!” 

The far wall shattered beneath the weight of terror, teeth and tentacles and stench roiling over the shards to rush towards the stranded witch and Tony dug both hands into his hair and cursed his helpless, cursed his Auntie for taking so much of his magic, cursed himself for being so foolish and cocky to end up in the position when he couldn’t even help someone who mattered. 

Tony screamed his frustration to the white nothing outside the box of horrors, then set his teeth and straightened his shoulders, called every bit of dormant magic from his bones and pulsed it out through his hands in a bolt of bright blue. 

The glass melted beneath his magic and Tony burned his legs as he climbed over the molten edges but he didn’t let it stop him as he raced to Bucky’s side. “I’ve got you!” He cried over the noise of the monster, over the sound of Bucky’s screams and the way they landed physical and awful on his soul. “Bucky, I’ve got you! Hold on!”  

Another blast of power towards the monster and the thing recoiled with a shriek, Tony kept one hand over Bucky’s eyes and kept the other palm out towards the Hydra, shoving the mass back through the cracks of the walls, pushing it far enough that he could move the atoms of the glass and weld them back together. It was an ugly scar across a previously pristine wall, a disfigured slash across what had once been protecting the witch and there was a lesson there, a metaphor about Bucky’s past and the scars cat-Tony didn’t have but human Tony kept hidden beneath his clothes. 

But now wasn’t the time for personal reflection or whatever lesson Tony needed to learn. Right now Tony needed to rescue his witch and this was a dream which meant he had no trouble scooping Bucky’s bulk up into his arms and running towards the melted wall and away from the thud-thud-thud of the Hydra throwing itself against the other side and the moment Tony set foot over the barrier of the room--

--Bucky woke up screaming, crying, thrashing around in the bed and Tony just curled as close as he could, meowing and trying to purr and trying not to cry in shared pain as his witch sobbed into the pillows. 

“It’s okay.” he whispered and Bucky bit out a frustrated curse. “Bucky it’s-- it’s okay. We’re gonna be okay. I promise.” 

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

The afternoon sun was warm and golden through the windows of their cottage when Tony finally got up the courage to go and sit next to Bucky. The big brunette had been wrapped up in a quilt and staring out at the empty garden for hours now, and when Tony jumped up onto the arm of the easy chair, Bucky only shifted a little and sighed. 

“You uh--” the familiar cleared his throat. “You’ve spent decades working on a spell to keep yourself from dreaming, haven’t you? Cos when you dream it’s only nightmares?” 

“...yeah.” Bucky’s voice was hoarse from screaming and Tony nudged a cup of tea closer to the witch. “Must not be a real good spell though, or you wouldn’t have gotten through.” 

“You knew that was me?” 

“Your voice is the same.” Bucky muttered. “Voice and your hair, human you and kitty you have got sorta a dumb amount of hair.” 

It should be a joke but Bucky was so tired and miserable that Tony couldn’t even smile. Instead he hooked his claws in the quilt and tugged it down past Bucky’s left shoulder so he could see the red star, then down a little further to see the mess of scars and pushed his forehead onto the ruined skin in a moment of deep sympathy. “I’m sorry about what happened to your coven.” 

And after another minute, “And I’m sorry I was so callous about you not knowing any magic when we first met. How old-- uh, how old were you when it-- when the Hydra--” 

“I was twenty five.” Bucky’s pale eyes closed when a soft soft paw patted at his mark. “Not even old enough to have started any training. The old covens like Lehigh, they raise witches meant to be connected to nature so the first thirty, forty years are all spent getting to know the Earth Goddess. They figure if we know the name of every plant, every seed and sapling and the way the water talks then when it comes time to use it with magic, we’re a step ahead.” 

“Not a bad theory.” Tony loafed out next to the witch, tucking his paws under his body and his tail in close to his side. “So you weren’t only young, you barely knew anything at all.” 

“I didn’t know nothin’.” A flash of anger in Bucky’s voice, there and gone before it amounted to much of anything. “Sure didn’t know enough to help when that thing came outta the water and killed everyone I knew. Didn’t know enough to figure out why Alexander hated us enough to kill us. Dunno why--” 

Softer, “Dunno why I survived.” 

“Bucky--” 

“Should’ve been swept into the sea right along with my home.” the witch finished in a broken whisper. “Stead’a wandering around for seventy years fuckin’ useless.” 

“You’re not useless, you feed me, don’t you?” Tony twitched his whiskers and tried to make his witch smile. “In your dreams, why glass?” 

“Sometimes it’s easier to see what’s out there than to close my eyes and pretend I can’t hear it coming to get me.” Bucky finally shifted over towards Tony and the cat immediately met him halfway, leaning in so he was tucked to the witch’s side. “Cos I already know, you know? I already know what’s coming, and it scares me every time but it’d be worse if I didn’t look.”  

Tony was quiet for a few beats. “You think you’re saving yourself by walling out the nightmares but really you’re just walling yourself in.” 

“Huh?”

“Your dream box.” Tony said softly. “It keeps the bad things out until it doesn’t, but then in the scary moments it keeps you trapped. You need a door.”

“If there’s a door then all the scary things can get in too.” Bucky sounded like he might cry again, hopeless and angry and Tony meow-ed at him comfortingly. 

“Make it an escape hatch. A secret tunnel. A bat cave.” Bucky’s brow scrunched down and Tony clarified, “I forget you don’t know the same people I do. The familiar Bruce is a bat in animal form, and he’s freaky as hell but he’s got the coolest house I’ve ever seen.” 

“Tony--” 

“We call it the bat cave, cos the guy is batty.” the familiar explained, and waggled kitty-brows at the witch. “Get it?” 

“You tell bad jokes.” Bucky reached over with his right hand to scratch behind Tony’s ears. “An escape hatch, huh?” 

“Just one that you know about.” Tony promised. “You and um-- maybe me. Just in case.” 

“Just in case.” the witch finally smiled a little bit and the familiar climbed into his lap, then stood on hind legs to boop their noses. “What was that for?” 

“I’m glad you didn’t get swept away with everything else in Lehigh.” Tony said slowly, carefully, the act of being honest about his feelings something he wasn’t particularly used to. “Cos you know, cats hate water. It ruins my hair.” 

“Of course it does.” Bucky scooped Tony up in his arm and pressed his face into all that fur. “Thank you for saving me, Tony.” 

...and as they sat there in the sunshine, a little piece of Tony felt saved too.

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

SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE CHAPTER

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

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