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sunraies · 1 year ago

Note

Rafe x Sleepy! Reader where he freaks out that she’s not answering her Phone and thinks The worst scenario that she’s sick of him, cheating etc. But It gets better when she calls him while he’s with The boys and she’s in her pj’s telling him she just woke up and asking what happened that made him call so many times 🥹

Sleepy baby

As requested above

Warnings - insecurities, toxic thoughts, drug use, drinking, and mentions of sex. Ending fluff.

*×*×*×*×*×*×*×*×*×*×*×*×*×*×*×*×*×*×*×*×*

16 hours ago, you posted to your insta story. 16 hours since you'd been laughing, smiling, singing, and dancing into the camera. Music pumping and disco lights blazing as you partied into the night.

You looked so happy, surrounded by your college friends. Some he knew, and some he didn't. He wished he could have been there with you. Long distance was slowly killing him, he was sure of it.

Although he'd been uneasy about you going so far away, things had been working out. He visited as often as he could, and you came home for the holidays. But it was moments like this when he started to doubt it all. His mind would spiral.

At first, he thought there was a reasonable explanation for you not texting him when you made it home and for not responding to his messages. You were probably to tired and drunk, simply forgotten.

But as the hours ticked by and multiple messages and phone calls later, his mind began to wander to darker places. You didn't need him anymore. You had finally realised it. You had found someone else. Someone else had found you.

You were a college student, you didn't need some hometown boyfriend dragging you down, you had finally decided to live your best life. Without him. Party, sex and drugs.

Well, two could play at that game. The moment Topper had told him about a party happening, he immediately said he would go. Fuck it, he was still the Kook King, he knew how to party, how to have any person he wanted.

The problem was that you were the only person he wanted. After a few drinks, he found himself where he normally ended up at parties. Sat with his boys, Topper, Kelce, and Barry, nursing a beer, smoking a blunt, doing a few lines, and glazing into the fire pit as the sky of endless stars shone above them.

"Bro, that's like the billionth time you checked your phone." Topper pointed out as Rafe pulled his phone out of his shorts pocket again.

"What's up, Little Miss Havard ghosting you?" Barry teased as he through arm an over Rafe's shoulders.

"Fuck off" Rafe tried to shake his arm off before sighing as looked at his phone again.

All that stared back at him was you as his lock screen and a couple of notifications, but none from you.

"Oh, shit. You really think she is?" Barry's smirk dropped, suddenly noticing his friend genuinely down about something.

"She's probably just busy," Kelce tried to reassure him. "You know with essays and shit. I mean, I have a shit ton, and that's just online"

Out of everyone in their little friend circle, you were the only one who moved the furthest away. Topper was on a gap year, Kelce was doing online courses, Barry was dealing, and Rafe had to follow in Ward's footsteps. A few of your friends did gap years.

Rafe nodded slowly. "What if, what if she's do -" He didn't finish his sentence as his phone screen suddenly lit up. 'FACETIME - Baby 😍 💍'

He nearly dropped his phone in the panic of answering it. For a spilt second, he thought about letting it ring out of spite. You'd not answered any of his. But he couldn't do it, for all the spiralling his mind had been doing. He needed to talk to you.

"Rafe, hey, you ok?" You looked so sleepy as you rubbed your eye. "I'm so sorry, I've been asleep all day"

If he could have jumped into the screen and kissed you in that moment, he would have. You looked so adorable, hair in a mess, no makeup, clearly sat in your dorm room bed as he recognised the bed sheets and the tapestry on the wall behind you.

What made his heart warm the most was that you were in one of his t-shirts. One of many you had borrowed/stolen.

He knew he was smiling at his screen like a complete goof. But he didn't care.

"Where are you?" You asked, trying to work out the noises around him and odd lighting of the fire pit. "Why did you call so much? Everything ok?" You asked, concerned.

"Everything's good, baby," He smiled. "Just at a party with the boys." He turned the phone around to show them

"God, Rafe, no don-" Too late, there you was in all you sleepiness. Proudly held up on his phone screen.

"Mrs Country Club!" Barry greeted as the others said "yo" and "hey"

You awkwardly waved and smiled as your cheeks burned before Rafe turned the phone back him.

"Well, I better not keep you from the party. As long as everything is ok?" You could tell something wasn't quite right, but didn't push it. He'd tell you in his own time. He always did.

"Everything is fine, my sleepy baby." He smiled, not giving a shit if the others heard.

"Alright, see you this weekend? Facetime tomorrow?" You smiled as he nodded before saying I love yous.

"Aww, my sleepy baby. Sleepy bab-" Barry teased before Rafe pushed him. Causing his chair to topple backwards onto the grass. Making everyone who witnessed laugh.

He glanced at his phone one last time, seeing you smiling face on his lock screen and new message 'Baby 😍💍 - I really do love you ❤️😘'

#rafe cameron #outer banks rafe #outerbanks #rafe cameron imagine #rafe cameron x reader #rafe x reader #rafe cameron fluff #rafe cameron fanfiction #outerbanks fic #rafe cameron fic

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3amfanfiction · 2 months ago

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You wrote this about Simon: “At this lieutenant, already chewed up and spit out by the world. More scars than skin at this point. You wonder how many people only see the scars and not the shivering body underneath it, waiting for a soft touch.”

I’d LOVE to read more of this - i wanna be the one to offer him the soft touch he wants so badly, maaaan! He’s just so big n’ strong but i want to let him curl up against me while i pet him until he stops shivering

This came through at the perfect time. I had the desire to write but I was picking at all my wips half heartedly bc none of the them were what I wanted.

But this? This I wanted.

So thank you again and please enjoy 1.5k words of acclimatizing Simon to soft touches.

<33

Ask referencing this post.

~~~~

He scared you, the first time you saw him.

Not because of how big he was (tall, thick, muscular) or the look in his eyes (cold, dismissive, too watchful), not even because of the scars themselves (numerous, expansive, tragic).

It was because you knew any interaction would come across as a threat. He had that look in his eyes that said he'd seen the worst of what the world had to offer and he persisted through luck and spite equally. Now he was sat in front of you, too disciplined to let his skin shiver but hating being seen. Hating that you were looking.

When you met him it was through a friend of a friend sort of thing. One of your friends was seeing a Scottish boy and invited you out for drinks with them. You had no reason to say no so you found yourself sitting at a high-top doing your best not to bother the man sitting quietly to your right.

His gruff, Simon, during introductions was the only thing he had said in the last hour, content to sit quietly and watch. Almost outside of the group even though he was sitting at the same table. You made sure to include him when you were speaking to the group, your eyes darting to each person as you spoke, not leaving anyone out. But you made sure to never direct a hard question at him that required an answer. It was all, I bet you never have a problem seeing over the crowd. or I'll grab everyone a drink while I'm up or Sorry, I'll be out of your space in a moment, my jacket was getting a little warm.

He would look at you. Every time you spoke to him he wouldn't shy away from eye contact but that was where his involvement ended. Never a head nod or shake, never a verbal answer.

By the end of the night you were positive he didn't like you. He didn't dis-like you but he didn't like you, you were pretty sure. That was okay though. You'd done your best not to infringe on his space, not wanting to step on his toes. You thought you had done a good job all around and put it out of your mind, the interaction over and done with and no longer needing to be reviewed.

What you never realized was Simon's shoulders lowered a whole inch throughout the course of the night.

\\\

You called your friend out on the number of times she invited you to hang out with Johnny and Simon, flat out asking if she and Johnny were trying to set you and Simon up through subtle double-dating.

"No!" She leaned forward grabbing your hand, her eyes looking earnestly into yours, "I promise it's not like that. Johnny told me he's pretty much all Simon has. Well, their team is. So they're always together when they're home. I don't want Simon to feel like a third wheel or left out or anything."

And you believed her. This was one of her strong suits, always looking out for others. That's probably why you two got along so well, a pair of givers, the both of you. And she had a point. The idea of Simon sitting awkwardly with the other two as his only companions made something twist in your stomach. You didn't want that for him.

So you kept seeing Simon and you kept doing your best to give him space but include him at the same time. You were shocked the first day he spoke to you but the fact that it was a bad joke made a sort of perfect sense.

"What's the best way to carve wood?"

You looked over at him in shock that this was what he chose to break the ice with. At the same time you were delighted and you couldn't help but feel giddy at the prospect of Simon telling you a joke. A bad one by the sound of it.

"How?"

"Whittle by whittle."

"That was absolutely terrible."

He smiled to himself if his eye crinkles had anything to say about it. That giddy feeling bubbling up inside you was getting unsettlingly big right about now. You looked at the ground and bit your lip to keep from a cheesy grin of your own breaking out.

Before you knew it he had no problem speaking to you. While never particularly verbose, he would respond to comments directed towards him, offer his opinion if options were offered, and kept telling awful jokes.

You were hopelessly charmed.

You broke your own rules and reached for him first.

You were sat next to him on a bench, the sun setting and the evening air cooling further. He had told you another one of his god-awful jokes when you unthinkingly swatted out with your hand, brushing his arm. His muscles jumped and his arm tensed right before you made contact as if bracing for a hit. An involuntary reaction to someone reaching for him. It was a horrifying realization.

You sobered quickly and your chuckle died off awkwardly. You turned to face forward, looking out at the street, watching for any sign of your friend or Johnny who had stepped into the store for a quick moment leaving you and Simon to find a bench while you waited. You hoped that if you didn't draw attention to it then your faux pas would pass unmentioned.

You let out a relieved sigh when Simon continued with another comment, not taking your overstepping to heart. By the time the other two had rejoined you the whole situation was forgotten, water under the bridge. You didn't think of it again until it was the end of the night with everyone about to go their separate ways.

When you said goodbye to Simon he said it back, reaching out to brush his hand down your arm in return in almost the exact same spot as where you'd touched him earlier.

Your heart skipped a beat before picking up a double pace. You couldn't help but beam at him, a wide grin splitting your face even as he grunted and turned away, likely embarrassed by your show of emotion.

Today had been a good day after all.

You thought you had ruined it for a moment there, thankful when Simon seemed to brush past it. You hadn't expected him to reciprocate in the same manner though.

Maybe he really did like hanging out with you. You never doubted it for a second.

\\\

It took time–a slow steady build to where you ended up, curled up on the couch together with Simon laying on top of you. You both had your tops off to bask in a little skin-to-skin time.

You'd been together for a few months at this point and it was like night and day to compare him to the Simon you met all that time ago. This one couldn't keep his hands off you to save his life. It was a slow warm-up to get past his walls in a way that wasn't upsetting to either of you. Soft touches that slowly built, leading to hand holding, to hugging, to kissing, to this.

You dragged your fingers slowly up his back, fingertips catching on raised scar tissue before continuing on, ever moving. He hummed into the crook of your neck where he had buried his face when you switched from fingertips to nails, gently scratching the skin.

You loved spending time like this, feeling Simon melt into you, eager for every touch he could get. If you were sitting still and Simon was in the vicinity you could bet that he would be pressed against your side before too much time had passed. Eager for the soft caresses you always had for him.

He was starved for touch and you wanted to feed him.

So you offered, again and again in the beginning–most times with no luck, to let him touch you. On the couch watching TV? Your arms would open, inviting a hug when he walked by. At the table? Your head was tilting up for a kiss if he wanted one. Passing each other in the hallway? You'd raise your hand and hold it in front of you, letting him press his big barrel chest into your palm if he wanted.

It was a slow acclimatization that brought you to today and the taste was all the sweeter for the time you had poured into it.

You lifted a hand to drag it through the spiky hairs at the back of his head, enjoying his groan of contentment. It sounded like he was already halfway asleep and you knew you wouldn't be leaving this spot for a while.

Might as well settle in and get comfortable. You familiarized him to gentle touches, now he was insatiable for them. He would be consuming them from you greedily for as long as you offered.

#simon riley x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley x you #i enjoyed writing this #asks #thank you nonnie for sending in this ask! i appreciate it more than you know #touch starved!simon riley #slow acclimatization #as it should be

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deansbeer · 1 month ago

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(sorta) long awaited PART 2 to this DEAN BLURB. 🍋‍🟩

i'm shit at writing a second part to any standalone FICS or BLURBS so i'm rlly sorry if this isn't the 'makeup sex' type blurb yall were lookin' for <3

the bar is loud, filled with the familiar hum of conversations, clinking glasses, and the occasional burst of laughter. you sit at a table near the back, surrounded by a few of your close friends—hunters like you, women who know the life, know the dangers, and are just as good at blowing off steam after a successful hunt. tonight, the drinks flow easily, and the laughter comes even easier. it's rare to get a reprieve like this, to have a night off where you can just relax and enjoy yourself. you deserve it. you know you do.

but even as your friends trade stories and jokes, your mind keeps drifting. keeps circling back to him. DEAN WINCHESTER. it's been weeks since you left him in that motel room, since you walked away without an explanation, with only a hastily written note. you haven't spoken to him since, haven't called, haven't reached out. not because you didn't want to. GOD, you wanted to. but fear held you back. fear of what he felt, of what you felt, of how everything had changed with those three words he'd let slip between gasps of pleasure.

i love you.

you still hear his voice in your head, still feel the way his body had tensed beneath you when he realized what he'd said. you'd thought about calling him a hundred times, a thousand times actually, to tell him you felt the same. that the reason you ran was because you were scared—scared of how much you loved him, how deeply you'd fallen without even realizing it. but every time you picked up the phone, you hesitated, and the moment passed.

now, sitting in this bar, surrounded by friends, you can't help but wonder if you made a mistake. if walking away from him was the worst decision you could've made. but before you can spiral any further, you hear it—a laugh. a deep, familiar laugh that sends a shock of recognition through your entire body.

you freeze, your drink halfway to your lips, as you turn your head and see him. DEAN WINCHESTER. standing at the entrance of the bar, his brother, sam, by his side. dean doesn't see you at first, too busy scanning the room, probably taking in the scene out of habit, always the hunter, always alert. but then his eyes snap to yours.

it feels like the air is sucked from the room. your heart stutters in your chest, and for a moment, you can't move, can't breathe. he looks just like you remember—broad shoulders, brown leather jacket, that chiseled jawline you've traced with your fingers more times than you can count. but there's something in his eyes, a flicker of something raw and unresolved, and you know he's thinking about that night, about the last time you saw each other.

he doesn't move. neither do you.

but his gaze lingers on you, even as a blonde woman sidles up to him, clearly trying to get his attention. she's pretty—tall, curvy, the kind of woman who turns heads in a place like this. but dean barely spares her a glance, his eyes locked on you like he can't tear himself away. you feel a surge of something hot and uncomfortable twist in your chest—jealousy, anger, desire. god, you miss him. you miss him so much it hurts.

and it's not just him. it's the way he made you feel, the way he looked at you like you were the only thing that mattered, the way his hands felt on your skin, rough and gentle all at once. the way he'd held you that night, the way he'd said he loved you, like it was the most natural thing in the world. like he couldn’t help it.

you tear your gaze away, pretending to focus on the conversation at your table, but your mind is spinning. your body is buzzing with the awareness of him, of how close he is, of how much you want him. but the thought of facing him, of having that conversation, of admitting how you feel... it terrifies you.

so you do the only thing you can think of. you excuse yourself, telling your friends you need to use the bathroom, and slip away from the table, weaving through the crowded bar until you reach the small, dingy restroom at the back. you close the door behind you, the fluorescent lights flickering overhead, and lean against the sink, staring at your reflection in the cracked mirror.

your heart is racing, your skin flushed, and all you can think about is dean. about the way his muscles flexed under that leather jacket, the way he looked at you like he was starving for you. heat pools low in your belly, and filthy thoughts flood your mind—thoughts of him pressing you against the mirror, fucking you from behind until you're a mess, just like he did that night in the motel.

you squeeze your eyes shut, trying to push the thoughts away, but it's no use. your body wants him. you want him.

and then the door creaks open.

your eyes snap open, and you see him—dean, standing in the doorway, his eyes dark with that same hunger you feel. he steps inside, closing the door behind him, locking it with a click. your heart pounds in your chest, and you can't move, can't speak, as he crosses the small space between you, his body heat radiating off him in waves.

he doesn't say a word. he doesn't have to.

his hands are on you in an instant, rough and desperate, pulling at your clothes, as you do the same to him. his leather jacket hits the floor, followed by your shirt, your jeans, his belt clinking as he yanks it free. his breath is hot against your neck, and he's whispering in your ear, his voice low and gravelly.

"you're such a bad girl for leaving me like that," he growls, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin of your throat. "but god, y'feel so fucking good... s'perfect."

his words send a shiver down your spine, and you can't stop the whimper that escapes your lips as he spins you around, pressing you against the mirror. your breath fogs the glass as his hands grip your hips, his body pressing against yours from behind. he wastes no time, thrusting into you with a force that makes your knees buckle, but his strong arms hold you steady, keep you grounded.

you're a mess beneath him, a blubbering, trembling mess as he fucks you hard and fast, his hips pistoning into yours with a desperation that matches your own. he's everywhere, all at once—his hands, his mouth, his body consuming you, and you can't think, can't breathe, can't do anything but feel.

"you're mine,” he growls, his voice rough and possessive in your ear. "you've always been mine."

and it's true. you know it's true. you've always been his.

you lose track of time, of how many times you come, his name spilling from your lips like a prayer, your body shaking with the force of it. by the time he finally pulls out of you, you're spent, your legs trembling, your breath ragged. but dean takes care of you, cleaning you up, pressing soft kisses to your skin as he helps you back into your clothes, his touch gentle and tender, so different from the roughness of moments ago.

when you're both dressed, you turn to him, your eyes meeting his, and without thinking, you pull him into a kiss. it's not like the others—it's not fueled by lust or desperation. this kiss is soft, slow, full of something deeper, something you've been too afraid to admit 'til now.

when you finally pull away, dean looks at you, his eyes searching yours. "what was that for?" he asks, his voice quiet, vulnerable.

you take a deep breath, your heart pounding in your chest. "i love you," you admit, the words catching in your throat. "and i'm sorry for leaving you like that. i was scared. but, fuck… i love you too, dean. i always have."

the smile that breaks across his face is like sunrise, brilliant and beautiful. he pulls you close again, pressing his body into yours. "yeah?"

"yeah," you whisper back. "turns out you're kind of hard to resist, winchester."

he laughs, the sound rumbling through his chest where you're pressed against him. "good thing i'm not trying to resist you anymore either, sweetheart."

when you eventually make your way back to the bar, sam takes one look at your slightly disheveled appearance and dean's stupid grin and rolls his eyes, but he's smiling. your friends are also giving you knowing looks, and the blonde from earlier has long since found another target.

none of that matters, because dean's hand finds yours again, and this time, neither of you are running anywhere. he also pulls you close to him again, his lips finding yours in a kiss that was both tender and passionate, a promise of something more.

something real.

꣑୧ UNOFFICIAL TAGLIST. @anqeliclust @aileenunfiltered @embarrasingmf @stereotypicalbarbie @ninii-winchester @suckitands33 @ohheyguyss @spxideyver @artyandink @titsout4nicholas 𓂃 ݁ 𖦹

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vieoeil-riae · 1 month ago

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Could u do Steb having a crush/pre-relationship? Headcannons or fic whichever is easiest for you! Your writing is so good omg

hey babycakes 😘 this one's for you 🫵🫵🫵 *shoots and misses*

anyways, I didn't know if you wanted it SFW or NSFW so I just made it SFW in case but if you want me to write something spicy all u have to do is come back and ask so dw

I see you more, more, and more

steb/gn!reader

warnings: SFW, zaunite!reader for the fic section, selectively mute! steb (HOWEVER he does speak once ☝ and it is treated with appropriate gravity), unintentionally gn!reader so if something isn't gn then gimme a shout and I'll reword, mix of hc and fic, fic is 3.6k words

synopsis: Steb, the romantic

read on ao3 | ao3 profile

this guy is like. old school, kinda. like fairly traditional in the sense he's very much into doing things for you and being someone you can depend on, just without any pressure on you to give him what he wants because of it

additionally, while respectful and not touchy when getting to know you, he tends to hover closer to you the more he comes to like you, he's called the silent guardian for a reason

keenly observant, notices if and when you fluster because of him

HOWEVER he does have insecurities that quietly float around the back of his mind when he's not actively fighting them, and because of that, tends to deny to himself the fact he almost definitely caused that heat on your cheeks

the insecurities aren't major per say, but as you get closer you notice how he tends to avoid your eyes when you're tracing the feature of his face

if you subtly tell him you think he's beautiful, he'll have a bit of an internal freak out, but the most you'll see on his face is a small, wobbly smile

quietly leaves you love letters, not as secretive as a secret admirer, but enough that it keeps a bit of doubt in the back of your mind - he likes the slight mind game as well as the suspicious gaze you give him if you ever read one in front of him, it's cute

will leave you flowers when he's deeper into the crush

that also means he sometimes has a small bouquet of them on his desk at work, waiting to be given to you, and his coworkers have teased him for it before

he doesn't have many friends, something he's honestly okay with, but pre-war he had introduced you to maddie whilst "stumbling across you" while working

he pays for things for you, but respects you so he'll let you split the cost of something if you really want, he just wants to help you

you rolled your ankle once and being medically trained, he wanted to take a look. that involved taking off your shoe and holding your ankle in a way that felt more intimate than he thought it would, all you could see was him worrying his lip, but inside he was having... a moment

if you wanted him to quit his job, you could convince him with a LOT of talking but he has a very strong sense of duty so he'd probably become a paramedic or something similar if you were successful/ post!war he'd likely be more critical of his occupation, he was hopeful policing could be a good thing but he becomes disillusioned after fighting alongside zaunites and seeing how poorly sevika was received by the council

he does have the balls to admit when he's wrong, he just has a stubborn streak that you wouldn't notice immediately because of how quiet he is

speaking of quitting being a cop, he's actually quite open-minded and likes listening to you talk - he's gotten very good at it (he likes the sound of your voice, okay? and definitely not in a weird way! deffffinitely not. totally.)

he likes it when he makes a face at something and you laugh

teaches you sign language, touching your hands so much is just a bonus to the already immense reward of you finally being able to understand all the compliments he gives you

you two end up keeping small notepads on you to talk with as well, you don't particularly need them to talk but you often find yourself writing your responses

steb likes your handwriting, he sees you in everything once he's fallen for you, so seeing something made by your own hand feels like seeing a part of you

You met while he was on duty, minding your own business as you busted dishes at the tiny cafe you worked at in the boundary markets, closer to Zaun's side.

Golden hour sank over the city, glinting off of the bronze trimmings and smooth glass of the market's highest buildings — shadow pooling where the high arches and packed structural webbing hid the flagstone from the sun.

It was just another day in the small cafe you found work in, a popular place for anybody worth anything (though the number was low, only a decent handful of well-known zaunites ever crossed the threshold, maybe a shifty looking piltie now and then but it was rare) to take a shopping break.

The outside seating was understandably unpopular, too many eager hands and too much industrial smog for a drink to really be enjoyed. Still, some thick piltie had managed to have a sit-down without getting shaken down on the table you were clearing.

You muttered under your breath, cussing them out for having left the table in such a mess - seriously, how much coffee could one person spill! They hadn't even tried to leave it orderly like most other people did. That meant you were stuck putting a hell of an amount of elbow grease into scrubbing a ring of dried coffee from the wood.

You never looked up, not even when you slapped the rag you were using down, digging one fist into your hip as your other swept over your hair in an attempt to tame it despite the humid nature of Zaun's air.

That meant you never caught the first time Steb ever saw you, missing the way he seemed to freeze in his tracks at seeing you — ears perked, eyes curious.

He would never be able to tell you what made him stop verbally, but that wasn't a problem. In fact, in hindsight you almost appreciated it since it meant many a carefully crafted love letter being slipped towards you with flushed cheeks and fluttering frills.

Steb had written it out once, for an important occasion you don't remember as well as the letter. He spoke of you, how the light caught on your hair, your skin, the way you looked so... human. Frazzled, pissed off, and alone was his first impression of you — a strike of something beyond reason drew him closer.

You noticed him the second time, however, when he broke up a brawl just starting to form outside of the cafe. It didn't go well per say, the people not taking well to an enforcer trying to get in their business, resulting in a swift punch to the jaw before they dispersed — apparently too pissed about Steb's interference to argue straight away.

You peeked out of your shop door, staring at the way he gently rubbed his jaw, paying attention to the way he traced the two slits just above his jawbone. For an enforcer, he was damn pretty, but you still didn't want anything to do with him. You shut the door.

Another letter detailed the first time he saw your eyes properly, you had blushed horribly, hiding your hot cheeks in the paper once you'd finished reading how, in explicit detail, how beautiful they were. Steb had tugged the paper down with a pleased grin, haloed by the mid afternoon sun soaking through the botanical garden's trees, quite happy with your reaction. A bouquet of carnations sat by your thigh, organised and carefully wrapped by hand.

He’d started coming into the shop during his patrols at some point, ignoring the sharp looks he got from most of your usual customers. At first, he had a ginger girl in tow — Maddie, you later learned — who ordered for the both of them, but eventually, after almost a month of ordering the same drink he started to come alone.

You’d get him the same thing every time, getting more and more used to finding his face through the market’s crowds. Familiarity begets fondness, you supposed, as you started to appreciate the way Steb managed to look so angular but so soft at the same time while trying not to feel like too much of a class traitor. Nothing wrong with a bit of window shopping, right?

He never talked, but as a service worker that was something you’d come to appreciate; no awkward small talk or verbal abuse, just a sweet smile and a cursory chin raise to the item board and you already knew what he wanted. Though while making his order, black coffee, you’d find yourself making small talk; eyes shifting back and forth from your work and his face as you looked for his expressions and head tilts. You were a service worker, you were meant to be friendly, nothing wrong there.

His handwriting, neat and sometimes swoopy, layed out how much he enjoyed watching you watch him. The way you managed to carry the conversation without his verbal feedback, the way you cared enough to look for what he was saying with his face — and eventually his hands — where most other people would opt to brush him off. It made his heart beat out of time when you’d laugh at your own jokes; all the furious blushes fought down when your fingers slid over his to give him his drink.

Steb had noticed you outside of work too, running errands. It was his duty, he rationalised, to help people and that totally justified swooping in to help you with your shopping. It was the friendly neighbourhood cop situation of all time, why wouldn’t he? It didn’t mean anything, drinking in your face as it went from confused to surprised when you realised you’d managed to catch him somewhere other than the markets, listening contently as you described your mundane day — surely.

But that was a lie, one he could justify getting closer to you with, and as much as he didn’t like lying, it was worth it. You were brighter than him, naturally, based on the mere fact you talked and he didn’t; it was no surprise that your alien nature drew him in. You were warm too, you gave a damn about things other than yourself.

A Zaunite, you talked, you lived in a completely different world to him; there was no reason for him to like you so much, in fact, by all accounts you should hate each other. That didn’t stop him from flustering immensely when the small talk over the counter started to include small flirts thrown his way.

Compliments, off-handed and usually one word, ‘hey, handsome’ thrown his way when he walked in the door. It caught him off guard the first time. Force policies on public relations clashing with this tumbling wave of lovesickness and pride that spiked his veins leaving his mouth open as he stared at you, faint blush dusting his cheeks.

His frills fluttered out of time, you noticed, enjoying the show as Steb came back to his senses. You’d given him a teasing apology, melodramatic through a smile, telling him that you were sorry about increasing his risk of arrhythmia more than you already were with the coffee.

More bashfully than he would’ve liked, he’d slid an envelope across the counter towards you with the payment. You gave him a weird look when you turned to it, flicking your eyes up at him in question before tucking it in your pocket and giving him his drink.

You turned to clean, and Steb slipped extra cash in the tip jar; more than necessary, but he’d seen you looking a little thin recently.

It was only a minute or two later when you hastily slid into the seat across from him with the envelope in your hands, open this time. Steb watched your mouth open and close as you tried to ask him what the hell he was thinking, amused by the fact he’d finally managed to render you speechless too.

“You… want to take me out on a… date?” You had asked with a deeply confused tone. He liked the way your eyebrows furrowed, a tinge of embarrassment laced in the mix. The way you seemed disbelieving would’ve been cuter if he wasn’t getting antsy himself.

He was in the minority in terms of appearance; fishy, a little amphibian, a lot greener than his peers. The city of progress was a real mix of people, but that didn’t stop a cloying feeling of insecurity following him from childhood to right now. He was odd, he knew that, but he chewed the inside of his cheek as he hoped you wouldn’t outright turn him down.

Steb looked the smallest you’d ever seen him, shoulders hunched and expression troubled in a far cry from his usual neutral expression. Have you said something wrong?

“It’s not a no!” You shot, straightening up from your casual, slumped position to lean towards him, elbows on the table. You rolled the words around in your head and he watched as your expression shifted. “It’s just… Why me?”

A zaunite, no one special, just a barista, what would a piltie want with you of all people?

Steb made the sign for a pen; you tossed him one quickly alongside your notepad. You watched as he scribbled out a page, and then another, and then another. At this point you were more shocked that he had so much to say.

The pad was promptly slid back to you, and Steb avoided looking at your eyes, forcing you to look at the writing.

It was one hell of an explanation, you could’ve mistaken him for a poet despite the rushed look of the whole thing. Heat prickled at your skin as you kept reading all the internal reasoning you hadn’t been privy to until now. He described almost everything about you in such a rosy way it left your jaw dropped, stumped on just how observant (and into you) one guy could be.

Still looking at the notepad, you began to nod, “yeah… yeah! Yeah! I’ll- yeah.”

You giggled, a hand running over your hair as you looked up at Steb again — who’d been quietly observing your expressions from the moment you started reading. There was a whole world to be found in your face, in his opinion, it felt like watching hundreds of great masterpieces of art work move in front of him in real time when he looked at you.

Senselessly, in a way he could never phrase right, you were beautiful the same way space was. A vast space full of bright lights that dazzled in a way that was nearly spiritual. Maybe it was a bit much for the crush he had on a barista from the boundary markets that he’d only known for a couple of months, but he was a romantic at heart.

“I’d like that.” You smiled, unable to look him in the eye until you noticed the way he perked up. That was one of the joys of knowing Steb, learning to read him and finally seeing what he wanted to say. Miniscule gestures suddenly carried the weight of the world.

His frills fluttered with a sense of pride and he stood from his seat. You watched him, almost perplexed but ultimately enamoured by the new lens you were seeing him in, as he hesitantly reached for your hand. You gave it to him, curiosity brimming.

Tenderly, gently, barely even a brush, Steb kissed your knuckles. Stooped over just for you, treating you like you were precious; it just about set your face on fire. He tipped his hat to you just before you left, a smuggish look that barely differed from his usual expression passed across his face. Raised eyebrows and a fond, teasing smile made you flush even worse. All that, and he quietly exited the shop, leaving you a mess in his wake.

You weren’t told until a long time after, but the second he was out of sight from the cafe, Steb was fighting a speed-walk all the way to Maddie’s station to tell her about you. The story was shared quietly, written out in a notepad while you were curled up in each other on the sofa. The mood was somber, but his heart was still out for you to see, that meant more than the way his ears were pinned to his skull and the way you could feel him sink just a little deeper into you.

Next Friday had rolled around and you were dressed up more than you ever had been, standing on your doorstep, peering down the street in search of the hot cop you absolutely had a crush on. God, some zaunite you were.

It was clumsy, you spent the night at a fancy (by your standards) restaurant flirting the best you could — feeling out of place unless you were looking at Steb. But by the time you left, you’d started to relax.

You strolled by a fountain at some point. You didn’t remember, but Steb did. A letter hidden under your pillow after a fight that told you about what it was like to see you start to bare your soul to him. He said he could’ve mistaken you for glowing, street lights painting you in gentle, warm hues as your eyes sparkled at him, telling him something about water pipes at home. The words didn’t matter so much as the joy in your voice.

It had made him feel like he was living life how he was meant to. Just you, Steb, and a night that felt nearly infinite and it made him wonder if love always felt so freeing. Billions before you had shared moments similar, and all of a sudden it felt like he knew every inch of adoration ever felt towards anything. He didn’t tell you then, it would’ve been too much, but he told you in the letter.

You sought him out the next day, not entirely forgiving him yet, but assuring you’d still be there when he got home.

Outings with Steb became more frequent, but importantly he had invited you over to his home more than once. You’d been so curious but so timid, not wanting to intrude too much, endearing in the contrast to your Zaun-built, confident demeanor.

The only problem was that seeing you eventually get comfortable in his home, around the places he went, was doing something to his heart; much worse than before, it squeezed at the thought of you in his life properly. Imagined mornings of waking up to see you in bed next to him almost did your arrhythmia comment justice.

More strikingly though, was the accompanying acknowledgement that in those fantasies, you tended to be… bereft of clothing. Padding around his room with every inch of your skin there for him to see, not provocatively, just comfortably. It made him needier than he’d ever want to admit (then, at least) and he didn’t invite you over again until you grew comfortable enough to be touchy with him.

Light brushes; hand holding; hugs that lasted too long to be just friendly, to him they meant he was allowed to imagine more with you. He invited you over for dinner the day after you slid your hands under the back of his uniform’s half-jacket while you hugged him.

There were flowers, dances, cute dates he absolutely insisted he paid for — everything gentlemanly he could do, he did. Treating you right was a reward in itself to Steb, loving you wasn’t housekeeping, it was a way of existing; a comfort; a lot of things he didn’t know how to say despite the fact you teased him for having the soul of a poet. It felt right and you smiled genuinely, that’s all that mattered.

The breaking point was a little date he took you on, having swept into the cafe and slipped a note asking (almost pleading) for you to take a trip inland to a large lake with sandy beaches. When you inevitably said yes, he grinned in a way you’d have never guessed was possible about a year ago.

His face was typically stoic, only small shifts and twitches you had to know him to pick up on really gave him away. Over months you’d not only learned them, but had been let in on his feelings too — a facet of himself gifted almost exclusively to you.

It was his own doom he was walking into, he knew that and felt rather guilty about it, but the image of you dripping wet — standing half-submerged in a still lake, maybe in the golden hour he first noticed you in, was enough temptation for him to bend to his own wants.

The actual journey was revealing enough, you hiked and stumbled, laughing the whole way; comfortable with him. It made him realise what he felt towards you wasn’t just a fragile thing to be stoked tenderly like a fire he was worried about going out. Watching you gasp for breath in between laughs as you beat him to a trail marker but fell over once you reached it, he realised what he felt for you was fully formed.

He did get his moment, watching the lake water pool over your skin, ultimately lost in you and the feeling he’d swim with you forever if you just asked. Your background didn’t matter, he was concerned only with the endless possibilities of a future with you, if you wanted that too.

Steb joined you, a feeling of relief flooding him like the water did, sending you a small, but intimate, smile before sinking beneath the surface.

The water wet his gills properly for the first time in a while, something that always felt satisfying, and he aimed for you. Your feet still touched the ground, semi-hesitant about going much deeper. He surfaced behind you, mindfully pulling you into a hug. You leaned back, enjoying the closeness for a moment before you turned around.

“Thank you for bringing me. It’s beautiful out here.” You spoke softly, tracing the paths of water droplets that slid down his skin in reverse. Your fingers skimmed the very edges of Steb’s gill slits and he shuddered all the way to the frills on his face.

Carefully, not looking away from your face for a second, he traced your lips with a delicate finger. You stayed quiet, questioning, but transfixed on the way he looked at you so reverently; there was a look in his eyes, warm in ways you’d never seen turned to you in full before.

His eyes darted down to your lips, then back to your eyes, a request swirling in his irises. He wanted you, and it was only a matter of if you wanted him back. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a hurt little feeling cooed worries at him. Unable to quash them, he settled into the uneasy feeling — letting the moment continue.

You leaned towards Steb, your nose skimming over his. The feeling quieted, like a held breath.

You met his lips with the same human-ness and soft edge he’d seen in you from the beginning, fireworks weren’t what he felt; he felt like melting wax, fluid and free with relief — wanting to sink into the shape you wanted him to be while also feeling more in control in some way he’d never felt so much before.

You gasped at his wet hand, cold from the air meeting the remaining water on it, that cradled your waist. The gentle tip of his tongue brushed your bottom lip, asking for permission you gave him almost instantly with a tilt of your head.

It was an electrifying taste, a fraction of the warmth you held that felt like it carried the weight of the world in the way you let him — even wanted him — to explore your mouth. Your hands slipped over his shoulders, trailing over his skin as if trying to memorise them in excruciating detail.

Your hand found his jaw again, swiping gently over the bone before running along his gill slits again. He made a choked sound you swallowed before pulling away, resting your forehead against his. He nuzzled his face into the side of your head soon after, you heard him breathe, catching the soft sound of every inhale. Steb inhaled sharply.

“May I be yours?” He whispered in your ear, his voice raspy with disuse. It was by no means a small act, talking was made difficult by his biology already; a lifelong fight that had at some point turned into an emotional discomfort with talking as well. For his job, his sense of duty could shove the deep-rooted pang of fear down enough, but in any other case his voice disappeared like steam in the wind.

But it was important here, with you, who had taken up residence in his heart — never once making or even asking him to talk, accepting him as he was. The fizzing of his nerves in this moment was down to anticipation, not fear; and with all his need for you, he could bare a whisper.

“Please.” You whispered back before the gravity of it all left you scrambling, “And let me be yours, too.”

Steb captured your lips in a wordless kiss, more passionate than gentle, his fingers digging into your waist like was afraid you’d disappear if he let go even for a moment. The initial shot of relief gave way to a feeling of satisfaction that purred in his chest, the press of your warm body against his made him feel full.

His hand twisted in your hair, dragging you into his lap as he sank into the water’s buoyancy.

A/N: SURPRISEEEEEE ITS NOT SMUT FOR ONCE!! did I getcha????? I'll be honest writing something that wasn't porn for him was harder than expected bc I've got NO practice for him

also perhaps I have outed myself as a league lore knower but that's fine I've been into worse I used to like hetalia

anyways hope u like this anon 💕💕

#steb arcane #arcane #steb x reader #arcane x reader #steb arcane x reader #steb #gn!reader

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alchemistc · 1 month ago

Text

Harry twirls a lock of dark curls between his fingers. Tips his chin against Tommy's head and stares up at the ceiling. He considers not asking, this time.

The sex is good, and Tommy's funny, and if he closes his eyes he could imagine there could be something - Tommy twitches and shifts his hand lower like he might be gearing up for another round, and it breaks the fantasy. That's new.

"Tell me about him," Harry says, and Tommy's eyes tip up to glare at Harry.

"Making an assumption, there," Tommy warns, but Harry just raises an eyebrow. Six years of this and Harry knows better than to expect Tommy would show up at his door for any reason other than to get his mind off of something - someone else.

"So we're both asses," Harry intones. He needs to call the super, see what they'll do about the water stain on his ceiling. "Tell me about him."

Tommy sighs. Twists, drifts away to the second pillow, and Harry's done this enough times not to mourn the loss, exactly. It's not like he's ever told Tommy -

"He's too young. Impulsive. New."

Harry fails to hold in his snort. "Okay."

Tommy at 34 had been a fucking hurricane. Newly out, no holds barred, he'd jumped right into the deep end and let the storm whirl him around. They'd been friends, for the first six months, Harry a watchful presence while Tommy made it his mission to be more than the guy in the dark corner getting a risky blowie fifteen minutes before last call. To be out - not loud, that wasn't Tommy's style - but to at least be himself.

He'd lasted two months in a real, actual relationship before he'd shown up at Harry's door with a six pack and a box of condoms.

"He looks at me and sees this - cool suave guy -" Harry shifts, nearly interrupts because that guy is exactly what Tommy projects, even if he doesn't mean to. Fucking Scorpios. "- and I was falling for him."

Yeah. Harry can extrapolate from that. Tommy fell ass over tea kettle and then got spooked.

"He's just so fucking open with himself. No brainworm goes untouched, and he can't hide his emotions for shit, and he's so goddamn stubborn and so goddamn ready to bulldoze through every hurdle ahead without looking back at the damage, and..." Tommy trails off. One hand shifts down to hitch the duvet up over his hips, and Harry adds the duvet cover to his list of laundry. "I gave him too many chances to slow down on his own."

"What, did the kid ask you to marry him or something?"

"He's the Himbo," Tommy retorts, and it takes Harry a moment to make the connection. He whistles through his teeth just to watch the scowl fall into place on Tommy's face. "And the connection freaked him out so much he asked me to move in. To his bachelor pad loft." Harry waits. "It has two balconies, Harry. Two."

"...he knows you have a mortgage, right?"

Tommy shoves at his shoulder. "It doesn't matter. We're just - the timing wasn't right."

"Did you want it to be?"

That's always the thing he ends up hung up on, in Harry's experience. Tommy's scared out of his mind to be the right person at the wrong time. Always has been. There's probably some mommy or daddy issues hidden in there somewhere he hasn't explored. Tommy's eyes drift up to the water stain. "Don't these apartments all have the same layout?"

This is the shove-off. This is his hint not to push. "Yes, and I really don't want to ask how the upstairs neighbor flooded their bedroom. Back to the guy." He's never been one for acknowledging unspoken cues.

"Buck," Tommy says, and the name sounds harsh in his mouth.

"Buck," Harry repeats, and pictures Tommy's usual type - tall, light-eyed, more smiles than common sense. There was always something distinctive, too - freckles, a scar, weird shaped ears.

"I miss him."

It doesn't hurt the way it had those first few years, when Harry was convinced that eventually Tommy would see him as more than a friend to blow off steam with. Still. There's a twinge there, beneath his rib cage.

"So stop missing him. That's an option, isn't it?"

And Tommy does that thing - that frustrating, enchanting thing, where his whole body seems to hold the emotion flickering across his face. "I walked out on him. I dug the damn knife in just to make sure he wouldn't try to convince me to stay."

"Would you have? Stayed?"

Tommy's quiet. The sweat has cooled on his skin, and the lights coming in through his window dance across the skin of his shoulder, his chest, that stupid thick neck of his.

The phone he left on the bedside table is dark, but that doesn't stop Tommy's gaze flicking to it.

"Cards on the table, Tommy?" Harry sucks in a breath. Blows it out through his nose. "Once upon a time, I convinced myself you were it for me. That I'd be satisfied with what you gave me, and I wouldn't ask for more. I cut you out of my life for eight months when I realized how fucking dumb that was."

Tommy frowns. Harry hadn't really ever expected him to notice.

"I've seen you through shitty relationships, and one sided ones. I've heard all the bullshit you and Greg put each other through. I've been there for every fucking heartache."

And he'd offered up his body like it was absolution for always being fucking thrilled when a relationship ended.

"You called me Evan," Harry murmurs, and Tommy's eyes go wide. That's never fucking happened before. This thing wouldn't have lasted nearly as long if he'd ever heard another man's name in his bed before. "You should shower. Go home. Take a day or two, if you need it. But I know for a fact you wait this shit out, justify coming to me with time and space from whatever guy has you strung out. I know it's been a minute already, and I know you've never sounded so unsure about cutting someone loose."

Tommy's gaze flicks to him.

"Whatever it is that's got you so scared of this guy, figure it the fuck out. Because it sounds to me like you fell fast and hard and hit a fucking wall before you ever thought to tap the brakes. That's not fair to you or him. Call him. Text him. Show up at his door with a bouquet or an industrial size bottle of lube and figure your shit out. Together."

Tommy stares at him for a long, long time in silence.

"Them's the brakes, huh?"

Harry hates that he knows exactly what Tommy means. Still, he clarifies. "This is your forever guy." Six years of watching him flail and learn and grow and hurt and love and fuck. He knows a thing or two about Tommy and his flights of romance. Knows this lonely man has never sounded quite so lonely before. "You don't need me, anymore."

He's quiet as his eyes drift back up to the stain. "I'm not his forever guy." Harry can't actually refute that, considering he's never met the guy. But he knows Tommy. Knows exactly how captivating he can be. Knows Tommy's a sucker for that starry-eyed look that so often has meant not love, as Tommy reads it, but idolization. "What if I'm not his forever guy?"

Harry digs toes into the spot in the duvet where Tommy's knees should be. He shifts Tommy about half a millimeter. "He has a nickname you don't call him except when you're punishing yourself. He dated Abby and that shared history didn't scare him off. You'd never let yourself fall for a guy that wasn't throwing clear signs that it was serious. I'd put my odds on him doing something weird and wholesome every time he thinks about you until his entire two balcony loft is filled with trinkets or treats and he still can't get you off his mind."

Harry's never seen Tommy's face do that before. Not in the throes of a honeymoon phase and not in the worst of a bad breakup. It's some awful mixture between unbridled hope and abject despair.

Harry thinks it's probably fair to hate him a little, for that face. He's earned the right.

"If he kicks you to the curb, I'll take you to one of those expensive wine tastings you pretend to hate, and I'll let you drink all my samples too." It's not an idle promise. Tommy may pretend to hate it but Harry fucking loves wine tastings. "If he doesn't..." Harry shoots him a fond look, "...knowing your type I'm not invited to the wedding anyway, so I guess then I'd been seeing you around."

Something shadows his gaze for a moment, but he's quick to hide it, to smack Harry on the chest like they've just had a good game, to shift out of bed and into his briefs before Harry can blink. He doesn't love Tommy. Not the way he'd have liked to, years and years ago. Still, when Tommy shoots him the dorkiest finger guns known to man and scoops up the rest of his clothes to take to the bathroom with him, Harry still wonders what it's like to have him enough to love him fully.

---

The name catches him off guard every time he hears it. 'Evan' isn't hard to filter - Evan had been a popular enough name to immediately write it off but Buck wasn't white noise of a name

Buck was a character in a movie, an old grizzled war vet, a dog. The name Buck wasn't popular enough not to hear it every time it was so much as whispered in his direction.

The coffee shop isn't crowded, but it's not dead either. When the girl at the counter calls out an order for Buck, sliding three cups down the counter, Harry can't help but look up.

A tall broad shouldered hulk of a man smiles a dimpled smile at the barista, and Harry watches him palm two cups and grab the third one in one practiced move. He's cute, Harry thinks. Maybe his grandpa ordered, Harry thinks, a little harder, and then caves, following his path through the three-tops littering the lobby.

Harry catches sight of him without being noticed. He's grinning, one of those rare earnest ones that make his ears rise and his face crinkle like a Shar Pei, hand spread out over something lying open on the table. The little girl on the seat to his right is a surprise, but Harry hasn't spoken to Tommy in two years. Maybe he's had enough time to get his mind around the idea that he's nothing like his father. The girl responds to something Tommy says by palming at as much of his face as she can reach and turning to the man now approaching their table.

"Uncle Buck!" he catches, another firm tug at the part of his brain that's been stuck on this for too long. The man barely gets all three drinks on the table before the girl is launching herself up into his arms, and it's too late for Harry to turn away without notice. Tommy's gaze shifts across the room and lands right on him.

He looks like he might wave Harry over, and Harry would rather die than know whether Tommy would introduce him as an old friend, or by name like Buck should know it. He tips a smile Tommy's way. Raises a brow at the man - Buck - and gets lips being sucked behind teeth in response, and then a slow, subtle head tilt.

Good. Good for him. Harry's never wanted anything for Tommy but to see him incandescently happy.

Witnessing it from a distance is better.

Buck twirls his - niece? - flops her back down on the bench seat next to Tommy and bends to say something that includes a pinky promise. He's got a wine-dark stain just above his brow, and Harry can't quite hide the tip of his smile.

Harry's name rings in his ears as he picks up his drink, and he's halfway to the door, feeling proud of himself for not turning back, when he hears the chorus of three laughs erupting from the corner where he'd taken his last good look.

He'd seen the ring on insta, a week and a half ago. Just an uncaptioned picture of two bands balanced one over the other on a rock, a killer sunset sky blurry behind them. No tags. 102 likes and counting.

Harry pushes through the doors and only glances through the window to watch Tommy tip his head back in laughter for a second, before he's cleared the coffee shop and rounded the corner back to his office.

#bucktommy #bucktommy fic #tevan fic #tommy + omc #outsider pov

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tradgedyinwaves · 3 months ago

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First Choice - Part 2

Part two of this Poly141! x fat!reader tw: social anxiety, self-doubt, drinking

A month. You didn't go back to the bar for a full month. Avoided the place like it was the birthplace of the plague. And it was to you. You didn't want to run the risk that they were there again, that the man in the mask would berate you for making eye contact with him that night despite knowing he'd probably forgotten about you 30 seconds after. Social anxiety was a bitch.

But they were there. EVERY. FUCKING. FRIDAY.

Ghost thought he was going to lose his mind. The others had started to think he'd imagined you or had a hallucination of you. So when they sat down on the fifth Friday, there wasn't a mention of you from them. Simon still kept his eye out for you.

Surely a month was long enough that they'd have moved on, gotten bored with the dark, dingy bar and the same crowd every Friday. Arriving with your friends, your heart was in your throat and there was a swirl of nausea in your stomach.

They're not here. They're not here. They're not here.

The mantra was on repeat, but you couldn't help checking the back table anyway. You froze where you were standing as your eyes landed on the four larger men, your friend bumping into your back and asking what was wrong. You shook your head and gave her a weak smile, claiming you thought you saw someone.

You took your usual seat at the bar, tucked into the far corner where you could see the table of men and watched as your own friends filtered out onto the floor again. It was so easy for them to just introduce themselves to men, flirt their way to free drinks and possibly a nice little one night stand.

Ghost clocked you the moment the bell above the door dinged pathetically against the wood door and you walked in with three of your friends including the little blonde that informed them that you would be there every Friday. His gloved hand reached out and smacked Soap center chest, incidentally grabbing everyone's attention at the table as well.

"That her, LT?" Soap asked, eyes darting between his lieutenant and you. Soap eyed you for a moment, taking in the open scoop neck long sleeve shirt and the swell of your breasts that weren't hidden very well.

"Tha's 'er. Pretty thing, hm?" Ghost replied before picking up his glass and knocking it back, mouth suddenly dry as the Sahara. You were as pretty as he remembered and the urge to have a picture of you with him at all times roared to life in his chest.

Gaz being on the end gave him the best view of you, taking in the jeans that hugged your plump hips and ass. He could also see the way you held your jacket over your stomach to hide your belly as best you could.

Price could tell you were uncomfortable, watching you watch your friends with a hint of resentment and disdain in your eyes. He hadn't missed that all of your friends were "conventionally beautiful" and he could see that it bothered you.

"Go get her," Price suggested to Gaz, nudging him a bit as he knew Gaz was the proper man to send. You'd never come over if any of the rest of them approached you. Ghost made a disgruntled noise, looking to his captain for a brief moment of silent communication before he nodded, conceding to his superior.

You ordered your whiskey, sipping on it as you flipped between checking on your friends and scrolling mindlessly through your phone. You couldn't help but to let your eyes flick up from the dim screen to check on the table in the corner every once in a while.

Which was where your eyes were now, but there was one missing, the pretty one. Oh, he wasn't missing. He was settling himself against the stool next to you, looking down at you with those molten eyes of his and a friendly smile. "Come join us for a drink. Promise we won't bite. Well, I make no promises about Johnny."

Yup. I did a part two. This is really speaking to me right now for some reason.

Hope you guys liked it!

<- Part One Part Three ->

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krypticcafe · 1 year ago

Note

Can please get fic where young reader almost gets r-word.. like! What happened to ellie on 'the last of us' like make it into that situation, reader kills the rapist and flees away and runs into the 141 team, and their like in this state of like panic, but they calm them down and they explain what happened they are beyond livid so they just reck hell on the people who was with the man who tried to r-word reader.

(this a platonic relationship between reader and the team)

Me and the Devil

rating: mature

pairing(s): platonic 141 x gn!reader

warning(s): no use of y/n, dead dove do not eat, non-explicit attempted r*pe, emotional and physical trauma, sexual physical and mental violence, canon-typical graphic violence, comfort

wordcount: ~3.8k

a/n: i'm not exactly sure what anon meant by young, but for context, reader is probably 20-22, I'm just not comfortable writing this kinda stuff for teen or child reader, I hope you don't mind. also, huge, HUGE emphasis on the warnings. though nothing is explicit and there are no sexual graphic terms, the descriptions and actions alone are still very disturbing and uncomfortable! and the violence is a little uncomfy for those not used to it, too. title is from 'Me and the Devil' - Soap&Skin

synopsis: You can see it. The devil. It laughs, and laughs, and laughs, mocks you for your childish stupidity and naivete. To think the angels would come marching in, that you'd make it out with any semblance of sanity. You can't fight it, you can't even hide from it. All you can do is lie in your grave.

Just hours ago, you were alongside the 141, cleaning up and wiping out an enemy base, a typical Tuesday on a summer afternoon. You should've known things would go downhill with how smoothly it was all going. Even Price commented on it with an air of wariness and suspicion. After all, it was a saying that if the fight starts getting too easy, then it's an ambush. And an ambush it was. You want to tell yourself that it was nothing, easy as pie compared to what you've been through. You wanted to say that it was a success and you turned the tables on your enemies. You wanted to say that it ended within a matter of minutes and that you were on your way back to base with your boys, ready for a night of banter at the pub. You'd join Ghost in watching Soap and Gaz try their hand at poker, taking a shot each time Soap's dogshit luck lost him another couple of euros while Price would pry Roach from having another cocktail and piss himself ('it was one time!' he slurs).

But instead, you're here. Locked in a room, bag over your head, tied to a chair, a stereotypical hostage situation but that didn't make it any less tolerable. Though having a potato sack over your head was nowhere near as embarrassing as the reason why you were captured. You tried your best to hold onto the jeep, honestly, you did. Until some ankle-biter decided to latch onto you and sink his teeth into your flesh, causing your grip to loosen and send you tumbling into the dirt. Your bodies slammed into the ground, kicking up dust and your opponent taking most of the fall damage for you. How thoughtful.

Seething at the audacity he had to chomp on your leg like some feral mutt, you gave him a piece of your mind and made sure he'd never bite another ankle again. His friends caught up the moment you were done. They dragged you back down to the coarse dirt and sand of the earth, making you taste and choke on dust. You looked at the lifeless figure in the sand, briefly wondering if you'd be wishing you were him before a bag was slipped over your head and tied like a collar. It didn't help that the sand on the roof of your mouth combined with your ineffective attempts to ration your breathing made for a burn worse than any hard liquor down your throat. Thrashing and shouting like a madman, you cursed them like some teenager who discovered swearing as they tossed you into the back of a truck, rolling you forth with the heels of their boots. Not your finest moment.

Once you were loaded and the rest of them climbed on, the truck shot forward without slowing down for a second, taking you to your own personal hell for the next few days. Knowing the 141, they were probably at the safehouse, planning their next move to retrieve you. In the time between interrogations and routine attempts to break you, you could imagine Soap and Roach pacing around the room, Ghost brandishing a knife with a dark look in his eyes, and Price looming over a map and pulling up contacts with Gaz at his side. While you hated to burden them with your own mistakes, thinking about them all gnawing their teeth in comical anger at your expense brought you momentary comfort, eliciting a small chuckle.

"Something funny?" Much to your ire, all your thoughts were interrupted by the sound of several people shuffling into the room. You could only expect so much privacy in a place like this. The man who spoke up seemed to carry himself like a leader, considering how he spoke above all others and you could hear him carrying out demands every now and then, checking up on you as if he actually gave a shit. And currently, he was on the top of your "to kill" list, along with every other cunt in this prison.

"What'll it be today, more screaming or more silence? You know, you can only stay quiet for so long." He sighed. Judging by the sound of metal screeching on concrete, he pulled up a front-row seat. With a single yank, you were again temporarily freed of the confines of the bag on your face, glaring at the man with a look of ferocity that seemed as if it were etched on your face permanently. His clothes were disturbingly clean-cut and polished despite the blood he spilled for the past few days. Your blood he spilled. "Come now... you know you'll only make things more difficult. Face it, kid, they're not coming, it's been days."

When you felt gloved fingers touch your jaw you snapped, pulling away like an animal restrained by a leash. Your captor let out a taunting "Oooh", and your skin crawled at how he heckled and laughed like some adolescent boy poking a rabid animal with a stick through its cage. "So it bites."

"Fuck you." You rasped.

"And it talks." The humiliation of their nonchalant attitudes made you seethe, you knew it was a tactic to get under your skin and you just wouldn't have it, turning your head away from the men.

"Uh-uh, eyes on me. How is such a fresh thing like you out fighting wars with men like them?" He hummed, gripping your jaw with a strength that took you by surprise and had you wincing. Even though his hands were gloved, it felt as if he were trying to dig into your skin. With no other choice, you were forced to look into his eyes, the pyres of unimaginable anger burning in yours.

However, it was then that you felt it. Something was off. Something was horribly off about him. The several times he'd come in here to either coax you with gentle words or have his men beat you within an inch of your life, he either had some faux kindness or gleeful malice painted across his face. But this time, his eyes were alight with slimy delight. You hated it, Hated how it made you feel small, cornered, pulling on your leash so that you couldn't be yanked from the one place that made you feel safe. You hated how it didn't feel like he was trying to get under your skin, or sink into your bones but instead your mind as if to violate it. You hated how it seemed like he had something more in mind, something that you couldn't predict like a kick to the ribs or a carefully worded reassurance that you'd be in "good hands". It was the one thing you felt like you had control over, knowing what was next, and now you didn't.

With a wave of his hand, his men all filed out of the room, leaving just him and you alone. One came back with a bowl in their hands and you felt yourself doubt your worries. Were you already beginning to lose it in here? "Hungry?" He smiled, taking the bowl and dismissing the soldier. It looked and smelled like a stew, potatoes, and beef, not scraps of stale bread or lukewarm, half-empty beer cans.

"I asked them to make something special today for you, isn't that nice? I suppose even someone like you has a taste for the finer things in life and wouldn't say yes to leftovers." No answer came but it was to be expected as he mixed the stew with a spoon. Your eyes were trained on his face instead, expecting some kind of strings attached. He entertained that expectation by—to your disgust—spitting into the stew, mixing it more, and bringing up a spoonful to your face. "Consider that the cost of being so picky. Open wide, soldier. Surely you won't make a fuss again, now will you?"

There was a pause, you leaned forward, lips ghosting the tip of the spoon before you roughly shoved his chair away from you with your boot. The bowl fell from his hands onto the ground, pooling between the two of you. He could go to hell with his stupid fucking soup.

He let out a scowl of disapproval, his self-satisfied smirk replaced with disgust and irritation like a parent to their troublemaking child. Fine with you, you didn't need that asshole's approval. He stood, grabbing a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiping his hands and the small splatters on his uniform. "Should've known better that the government's pets would act like such animals. I gave you a chance, I tried to make this easy for you." He snarled, tossing his handkerchief aside and grabbing you by the collar, "But no, you just had to be a fucking brat, huh? Fine, be one. I can work with that. Either way, you'll be put in your place soon enough."

Before you could comprehend what he was implying, he slashed the ropes that binded you to your chair with a combat knife and shoved you to the floor, your head throbbing as it hit concrete, along with the rest of your aching muscles. Vision blurred, you sat up and tried to make out what he was doing, falling back when he roughly grabbed your hair and shoved your head back down into the ground. Like an alarm, every single flight or fight response went off in your body and yet you couldn't figure out what he was trying, you just knew that this was something worse and that you were a fool to let your guard down for a single second.

A twisted smile broke across his lips, "You know, you have a very lovely voice. You sing the loveliest songs."

Your brows furrowed, confusion flashing across your face until you let out a yelp of pain when he pressed into your stomach, already bruised from previous matters. He let out a sigh that made you shudder and you felt bile creep up your throat, moving your face to the side in fear that you'd choke on it.

"Eyes. On. Me." He snapped, his voice sounding so much louder than it actually was, his hand twisting your jaw back to look up at him while his fingers proceeded to dig themselves into whatever spots got you hissing and squirming away. That's all it took for your resolve to break, the blaze in your eyes fizzling out and replace with genuine fear and utter shock as you watched him straddle you and stare with a piercing gaze that trapped you. It forced your attention to stay on him, daring you to look anywhere else but him when that was all you could focus on. Him.

You couldn't even scream, paralyzed when you heard the sound of metal clinking against metal and the brushing of fabric, raw horror setting itself alight in your bones at how he loomed over you. At that moment, you swore you could see the devil itself laughing, cackling, mocking you in his eyes.

It was like you were seven again.

Scared, cornered in your room because you swore, you swore and sobbed and cried that you saw it, a monster in your closet. A dark, shadowy figure that'd taunt you merely with its existence and prayed on your downfall, drinking the fat tears you spilled and listening to your high-pitched cries as if they were music, eyes that you couldn't see but they could see you.

Others tried to convince you that it wasn't real, opened the doors, and closed them again, showing that there was nothing but cleanly folded clothes and hung-up jackets lined neatly along a rack. Every time, you'd feel a little more silly about your fears but anxious that they'd come back for more.

At some point, you nearly forgot about the monster altogether. It ceased to exist in your closet, but never your mind.

"Damn it, what now?!"

Pulled back into the present, you heard muffled speech with loud, obtrusive noises and more screaming and cursing from the man above you. He was faced with the still-closed door, talking to a soldier behind it. Instead of trying to catch up with what happened, your mind raced to its defensive instincts. Finding the spoon dropped from earlier, you reached for it with a strained grunt which caught his attention. Yet with a swift grab and thrust of your hand, you jammed the blunt handle of the spoon into his throat and screamed at him, your vocal cords ripping in deliriously satisfying pain.

Barely giving him a second to let out a final gasp for air, you flipped him over underneath you and yanked the spoon out, blood erupting out of the gash. Fire ignited in your veins and you balled your fists, giving him a taste of the rage of a caged beast with nothing left to lose, just the desperation to survive for more. It was a symphony of grotesque crunches of bone and ligament, and you yelled, screamed, and cursed with each impact at him, at the entire organization, at a godless world for making you live through hell. A pitiful yet gruesomely satisfying attempt to reclaim what sanity and control you lost in that room.

Blood and flesh coated your fingers like warm syrup, and you were sure your knuckles were split. Crimson red was a good look on a sterile uniform, you thought to yourself. The sight of your work made you realize it wasn't the devil in his eyes was laughing at you, but rather its reflection from over your shoulder, still gleefully singing and squealing with delight as it watched you indulge in pure, unadulterated wrath. Its tail wrapped around your neck, strangling you with delirium and bloodthirst, guiding you in your ear as you beat an already dead man to a pulp.

Taking a stand, its whispers remained in your ear, praising you and yet you felt sick looking at what was left of what you had done, of what was left of the man's face. His blood pooled around his shoulders, mixing with the stew into an unholy concoction, evidence that was a testimony to your suffering and to your sin. Using his combat knife, you cut through the ropes around your wrists, skin scratched raw and bleeding. Without a second glance, you took his gun and left the room.

To this day, you tell yourself that you crawled out of hell that day.

"Any signs of the hostage?" Gaz shouted over comms, holding off a room of enemies alongside Price.

The moment they had all seen your fingers slip from the jeep and saw you tumble away that afternoon was the moment they knew they wouldn't be coming back to base for a long time. Roach had watched in despair as he was so damn close to grabbing your hand, swearing that had he'd been a little quicker, you wouldn't be here. Soap had yelled for Price to go back but Gaz and Ghost both knew his hand wasn't going to turn that wheel anytime soon. All of them knew. They couldn't turn back, and you wouldn't have wanted them to either, not unless the entire team and mission were to be jeopardized. However, that didn't stop them from doing whatever it takes to get you back safe again.

"Negative." Ghost answered over the line, standing with Soap in a hallway painted with the blood of the opposition, bodies scattered like lifeless bags of flesh with no greater purpose than to rot.

"I have eyes on them, they escaped from captivity. Currently pursuing them!" Roach responded. He'd seen your figure run down a hall at an alarming speed, and when he followed you, he had a glimpse of the room and the spectacle you left behind, "The leader is terminated, too. Jesus, can someone get over here?! They're gunning it for the west exit and I can barely keep up!"

You were in fact, bolting for the exits, panicking the more you got lost and running so fast that you probably could've broken a record on base. Distant gunfire and blasts snapped at your heels like a pack of dogs, reminding you that if you didn't keep running, you'd be dead, you'd be torn apart and beaten just like their leader and fed to the wolves. Boots trampled the ground behind you like drums of death, the yelling of men ringing in your ears, a requiem to the inevitable. Run, just run, it's all you could do in this frenzied state. If you didn't you'd be helpless, you'd be put down like a rabid fucking animal. Run, even if your bones shook from the pain, even if flames licked at your torn muscles, even if it meant dying of exhaustion because anything was better than dying at the hands of those animals.

At last, you found the light of an exit, finally an escape from this asylum. Your heart felt lighter when sunlight kissed your skin only to be weighed down by getting slammed into, grabbed into a relentless hold. You screeched, shrieked, snapped, and sneered while the voices seemed relieved, almost happy at your capture.

"Don't fucking touch me-!" You screamed with animosity, practically frothing at the mouth, "Don't fucking touch me I'll fucking kill you! I'll fucking—"

"Friendly, friendly!"

Still growling under your breath, confusion flickered over your eyes. Why did it sound like... like...

"Captain?"

"You're safe kid," Price panted, as if he'd been running to chase you. He was chasing you. In all your hysteria, you hadn't realized that the group had been running after you for past minute or so, trying to call for you, get you to slow down. The only thing that worked was to just grab to and hopefully knock some sense into you or knock you out. "It's just us, see?"

Your gaze softened, taking in the features of the man before you. Despite the crossfire and fighting, somehow he still had such a kind look on him, puppy eyes that pitied you and kept you grounded. Turning your head, you saw the rest of the men watching you in concern, all tired but overjoyed nonetheless that you were finally back.

You were safe.

It was like a weight finally lifted off your chest, a pile of restrained misery and relief washing over you, and you wept without a thought to pride. Price whispered your name in a way that felt so comfortingly familiar, tucking your head into his shoulder and letting you muffle your sobs into his uniform. It was painful to hear your wails, the relief and the instability shaking off of you in waves. A part of you expected to be scolded, to be teased for messing up so badly with a simple mistake as letting go of the jeep but they didn't.

"You're in good hands,"

"We've got them covered,"

"They can't hurt you anymore, love."

"Do you have any major injuries?" Gaz asked, but you couldn't say a thing, clinging onto Price's jacket and crying like you were four years old and found by your parents after getting lost. Slowly and gently, Price pulled you from him to examine you, and that's when he saw it. It didn't take long for the others to notice as well. Your clothes were torn and belt undone. While no physical harm was visible, knowing what happened was enough to make Price tick.

"Roach, get them to the car and give them some spares ASAP. Everyone else with me, we're cleaning out the place." Everyone else had the same dark look in their eyes, one that sent shivers down your spine but encouraged you once more you were secure now. While Roach escorted you away, you peeked back to see them disappear back into the building. After you changed in the car, you could hear the distant gunfire and screams, shutting your eyes closed tight, making an effort to drown out the thoughts.

"You okay?" Roach frowned. he had apologized to you a dozen times over on your way to the car and explained all that happened after you were taken, which you appreciated him for and insisted it wasn't his fault. But he was sweet and stubborn, bandaging your wounds and telling you he'd make it up by giving you his dessert for the next month, a gesture that made you smile for once in a while.

"Yeah, yeah just... hope they're safe." You breathed, sinking into your seat with the rest of your thoughts. Though you cried once more, quietly this time and on Roach's shoulder. He was cautious not to initiate too much physical contact, holding your hand only when you asked for it.

The building was silent, not a single soul left to be reaped by the 141. They all regrouped around a body that was beaten beyond belief, to the point where the face was unrecognizable. Regardless, they knew who it was.

Gaz broke the silence, "You think they did this?" They all looked at each other, not wanting to imagine what happened to lead to this point.

Ghost nodded, a confirmation of something they already knew but wanted to mutually agree on. "No one else could've made this much of a bloody mess. HQ's going to have a field day with this. Can't say that he didn't have it coming for him, though."

"And well deserved, too." Soap spat. Price continued to look down on the figure on the floor without any thought to it. Not anger, disappointment, or spite, just disregard. Headquarters would be interested to hear what happened, but he could care less about the report. All that mattered was that loose ends were tied.

Minutes later, the men all piled up in the car again, setting for the road back. You woke from your half-asleep state, rubbing your eyes. You were met with a soft smile from Soap, who ruffled your hair. "You alright there, sleepin' beauty?"

Humming in acknowledgment, you nodded and glanced out the window to see the road whizzing by, the building growing smaller and smaller in the distance. Some dingy warehouse. So that was the hellhole you were stuck in for a near week.

"Dinnae think 'bout it too much," He followed your gaze and nudged your boot with his, "When we said they can't hurt ye anymore, we meant it."

"Yeah," You quietly mumbled, leaning back on Roach, who had fallen asleep and leaned on Gaz for support. "Can smell it on you guys."

That got a rumbling laugh out of Soap and even a little headshake from Ghost who sat in the passenger seat. Looking at the rearview mirror, Price was looking right back at you, eyes flickering to the road occasionally, "Get some rest. It'll be a long ride home."

You nodded like a little kid with a mumbled "yessir" and drifted off once more. For the first time in forever, you feel like you can breathe and ground yourself, no punishment, no torture, nothing to haunt in this rare bit of calm. You didn't feel the pain of your sore muscles, you didn't feel that your body was filthy, you didn't feel small and scared, not anymore. Just surrounded by nothing but a familiar feeling of safety and lulled to sleep by the sound of the engine that took you home.

a/n pt.2: had a tough time writing this one but hey, I think I managed! to be honest, though, I'm not super confident about the ending and proofread this while half-asleep, but I'd love to hear some thoughts about it. shoutout to the people who noticed any reoccurring themes.

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sceletaflores · 4 months ago

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any nasty down bad breeding kink art musings love of my life?

viciously yanked me out of my mini challengers rut with this one because yes. yes i do have some thoughts on that.

for some reason the first thing that came to mind was virgin!art....in a universe where he somehow didn't get laid before stanford lol

like auurgggghhh virgin!art and his deep seated breeding kink. it's literally ingrained in him even before he has sex for the first time.

you're his first real girlfriend, met when you needed a tutor in accounting and art's professor suggested him.

the two of you have been dating for two months and he already knows that he loves you despite what patrick says about "playing the field a little man, you're not married to the chick."

but the thing is that art would marry you. he'd up and marry you tomorrow if that's what you wanted. he doesn’t care how crazy it sounds.

he loves you and he wants you to be his first.

maybe he wasn't entirely expecting it when you laid on your back on the mattress of his dorm, peering up at him through your lashes as you announced that you were "ready to take our relationship to the next level..."

he was hard before you finished talking.

art could barely think straight, his body reacting faster than his mind. he swallowed hard, trying to steady his hands, which had started trembling the moment you laid back on the navy blue comforter of his bed.

“are you...are you sure?" his voice came out more breathless than he intended, his brain scrambling to keep up despite all the blood rushing to his dick.

your gentle nod, paired with a soft smile that made his heart stutter in his chest was all it took for him to lose any lingering doubts.

he crawled up the mattress, leaning down to kiss you with more tenderness than urgency, his heart thudding against his ribcage like it was trying to escape his chest.

he fumbled his way through fingering you, his hands shaking with nerves even though you've done this part countless times.

it wasn't until the two of you shed all clothes, art settling himself between your legs before you were speaking, thighs twitching to close around his hips.

"you'll have to pull out, i'm off the pill."

fuck.

art's heard of that before, pulling out. usually the punchline of some jokes the guys like to tell in the locker room, or from patrick recapping his own hook-up stories.

the dirtiness of it makes his cheeks burn, and he hopes to god you can't see the embarrassing red blush he knows is there.

he takes a deep breath, steeling his resolve as he presses the leaking head of his dick to your slick hole.

"okay." his voice sounded pained, his hold on your hip probably a little too tight as he held his throbbing dick steady and nudged his hips forward until just the tip slipped inside your fluttering hole.

"oh fuck."

art’s brain short-circuits for a moment, his entire body freezing as the tight heat of you grips the head of his dick. he sucks in a shaky breath, trying to keep his cool, but every nerve in his body is screaming at him to move, to take more. to bury himself so deep he wouldn’t know where he ends and you begin.

he lets out a low groan, fingers digging into your skin, knuckles turning white with it. he wasn’t prepared for how overwhelming it would feel, like his entire life had been leading up to this exact moment.

"jesus...you're so—" he can’t even finish the sentence, his voice breaking.

"art," your hips shift beneath him, making him jolt forward, sinking just a little deeper inside you. his mind goes blank, a vast space of nothingness but the tight heat wrapped around his dick.

there's only you, your soft skin, your quiet gasps, the feeling of being wrapped in the most sinful warmth.

for a while art gets lost in the feeling. in the way you pant into his open mouth, too overwhelmed to kiss him properly. in the way your hands grip his shoulders harder with every inch he gives you. in the way your pussy shakes around him like it can hardly wait any longer.

art knows he's getting close, that he probably needs to pull out soon. but you're just so soft and you smell so good and your pussy is sucking his dick in so wet and warm like it never wants him to leave again.

"i can't," he grits out against your collarbone, shaking his head frantically. "i can't do it."

"don't stop," you whine, manicured nails digging into the toned muscle of his shoulders, "don't stop, baby. fuck, give it to me harder, harder please-ah!"

art screws his eyes shut as tightly as he can, brows pinched together as he presses his forehead against the sweaty skin of your shoulder to ground himself. his hips speed up to punch out more high whines of his name from your slick lips.

there's an odd feeling working it's way through his body as he ponders his options, a wrongness flashing in the back of his mind each time he reminds himself of pulling out to spill over your stomach.

despite the fact that he's never done this before, his gut tells him no.

you deserve his come inside you, painted along your insides as he claims you for the first time.

"i can't pull out," he whines through clenched teeth, big hands tightening their hold on your waist. his voice is pinched and high in a way it's never been before, desperation leaking through his tone.

your lips fall open on a gasp, your head shaking back and forth dazedly, but he feels the way you clench around him. the way your pussy tightens up like it's trying to milk the load directly out of his aching balls.

"fuck! please don't make me baby," he begs, self restraint snapping in two as he buries his face in your neck. "lemme come in you, it'll be okay. we'll be fine, nothing’s gonna happen if it's only this once."

"no..." you moan, "art don't, gotta pull out..." but your hips start rising of the bed to meet his thrusts, the dirty smack of skin on skin filling his tiny single. you're dripping around him, coating his dick with a slick layer of shiny wetness.

"i can't," art repeats breathlessly, dick twitching inside you warningly.

"i need it…need you, need to come in you so fucking bad," his voice is strained and cracking, hips trembling with the effort, but you’re so tight around him, every squeeze pulling him deeper.

it's too much and not enough all at once—the heat, the wetness, the overwhelming need. it has pure kerosene burning in his veins.

"art," your legs stay wrapped snug around his hips, ankles locked over his lower back. "m'close, gonna come, fuck! i'm coming—!"

so is art. the added squeeze of your pussy coming around him shattering the last of his resolve and sending him careening him over the edge.

"fuck," your name falls from his lips in a tight groan as he unloads inside of you. flooding your pussy with warm come as his hips keep up the punishing pace he set.

art doesn't stop thrusting even as he comes so hard his vision whites out. he can't stop, like you've got some sort of magnetic field that keeps pulling him in over and over and over.

your too-loud moans and cries dissolving into sharp keens and gasps as he fucks you into over-stimulation, his hips pumping in in in as the image of his come getting fucked deeper and deeper inside of you plays on a loop in his mind.

when his arms finally give out and he collapses on top of you in a sweaty heap of limbs, your arms immediately come up to wrap around his shoulders. a pleased hum rumbling through your chest as you scratch your nails along his scalp soothingly, smug smile hidden in the sweaty halo of his hair.

art's out like a light in five minutes, falls asleep right there with his head resting on your bare-chest and his dick kept safe inside you.

patrick buys a plan-b for art the next morning when he's too nervous to face the cashier at walgreens.

#— anons ♡#ᯓ★ 𝐧𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐝𝐬𝐨𝐧!#virgin!art my beloved #arf arf #I need him deep in me #all in there #like it's not a joke #it's needed!!!!#like air!#challengers x reader #challengers x you #challengers smut #art donaldson x reader #art donaldson x you #art donaldson smut

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moonchildstyles · 9 months ago

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gravity blurb where one day flower is sick and doesn’t show up to physics & she hadnt told harry she wouldn’t be coming to class and isnt answering her texts so he skips class to come make sure shes ok and take care of her ?? :,)

wordcount: 3.9k+

—————

Peeling her eyes open, (Y/N) winced at the stream of sunlight filtering into her room. She could feel a cold sweat on the back of her neck, her baby hairs sticking to her skin. Her bed was too hot but her body felt cold, the sun too bright in her eyes, and the quiet of the television on the other side of her wall entirely too loud.

The headache she'd fallen asleep with had definitely taken a turn, she figured.

Groaning—something that made her realize her throat was now sore as well—she tossed in her bed, reaching towards the offending curtain and attempting to tug it closed. Her limbs ached with every move, her bones seemingly creaking beneath the exhausted muscle. If not for how much she hated the light in her eyes and was already hot enough without the sun on her face, she would have given up on the mission just from how much her body ached.

In the back of her mind, as she flopped back onto her bed, she knew she had classes today. If she had the mind to do so, she would have checked the time, seeing just how long she had to get ready before she would have to be on her way, but there was no way she was going to force herself to open her eyes once more after the reprieve of closing them.

She should probably text Harry, she thought. If she remembered what day it was, she most likely had physics this afternoon, and there was no way she was going to make it in this state.

Despite how close her phone was, the idea of reaching for it on the side table was enough to have her exhausted again. She could sleep a little before texting him, she figured, turning in her bed with her eyes heavily shut. She'd wake up soon, and if she still feels this rough, she'll let him know she wouldn't make it to class today.

Just a couple more hours.

With that though, (Y/N) fell asleep once more.

—————

With an iced matcha in one hand and a hot black coffee in the other, Harry made it to Stanfill's class to be one of the first in the auditorium—right on schedule.

He nodded a small smile towards the professor, scaling the stairs up to his and (Y/N)'s unofficial-official spots. He had a feeling she would be traipsing in just before Stanfill locked the door for lecture. She hadn't texted him at all this morning—something she never did unless she was more than busy.

There was a high chance she'd spent the majority of last night working on an essay she had due tonight, and, if he knew his flower, she most likely skipped her morning classes in favor of sleeping off the late night. As long as she made it to physics, he'd make sure to make up the rest of the day for her.

Taking his time to set up his station, Harry periodically checked the double doors (Y/N) usually came through, waiting to see a familiar flash of her hair or one of the many sweaters she'd begun stealing from him through the last months. He pretended to fiddle with his highlighters and notebooks as if he wasn't disappointed when every swing of the doors revealed everyone but (Y/N).

It wasn't until Stanfill had wheeled out his projector and the auditorium was full of idle chatter and the shuffling of students that Harry became concerned. Though she cut it close at times, (Y/N) was never late for any of her courses—and she would let him know if something came up.

That worry only intensified when he saw Professor Stanfill crossed the room and spun the lock on the double doors while the seat beside Harry stayed empty.

Despite his professor whirring to life at the head of the room, speaking with his robotic dialect about today's concept, Harry pulled out his phone. He anticipated seeing a missed message from (Y/N), something to indicate that there was a reason she'd had to skip for the day. Instead, he saw nothing—only the Lock Screen of the pair of them together, tucked in a booth at Wanda's.

No missed calls or waiting messages.

Pulling open her text thread as quick as he could without attracting Stanfill's attention, Harry typed out a quick message before firing it off:

Hey, love. Class started and you're not here, I wanted to see if everything was alright. Stanfill locked the doors, but I can sneak you in if you need.

While he wasn't sure if he was expecting any kind of response when he hadn't heard from her today anyway, Harry's shoulders still fell when the read receipt was left on delivered.

Glancing up, he saw the slides at the front of the class beginning to shift, showing off decades old formatting from Stanfilll's archives. Harry felt antsy.

He wanted to focus on the lecture, continue formatting and adding to his pristine notes, but there was no way he could settle down at the moment.

(Y/N) never did this. While it wasn't odd that she was too busy with her morning courses to reach out to him, there was no way she wouldn't have let him know if she wasn't going to be in class.

Fitting his bottom lip between his teeth, Harry's worry grew.

There were plenty of reasons why she wouldn't be able to reach out, if he let his brain branch out that far. For all he knew, there were plenty of terrible reasons why she wasn't answering her phone or in class with him. It was enough to have him biting down hard on his lip and tapping his foot on the floor.

He could text her again, he decided. Just another to possibly grab her attention. Just from the amount of times he'd studied with her, she could have lost herself in an essay at the library.

Maybe.

Just as he began to type out a follow up message in his unanswered thread, a monotone voice echoed through the room, calling his name.

"Mr. Styles, is there something more important than today's lecture on your cell phone you would like to share with the class? I think we would all be interested."

Whipping his head up, glasses sliding down his nose, Harry spotted the eyes of his classmates and his professor trained on him. He wanted to be embarrassed, feeling all of that attention when he hadn't asked for it himself.

But, there were more important things on his mind.

"No thank you, sir," Harry mumbled, just loud enough for his professor to hear, "I actually have to leave for an emergency. Sorry to interrupt."

Shoveling all of his things into his bag, Harry didn't linger in the space, ignoring whatever Stanfill was saying in his monotone syllables. Stepping out into the main corridor, his phone was up to his ear in an instant.

"Hello?" Naomi, (Y/N)'s roommate, greeted.

"Hi, Ny," Harry muttered, heading towards the student lot he'd parked in, "Is (Y/N) home? Or with you?"

"Oh, yeah," Naomi chirped, "I stayed home with her after I checked on her this morning. She's been a little bit out of it, but did she ask you if you could bring home some notes for her?"

Harry stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, a pinch to his brow. "What?"

A beat passed.

"Have you talked to her today?" Ny asked, finally.

"No. I texted her this morning, but I figured she was busy. Our physics class jus' started, and she never came, so..."

"I'm sorry," she said, "She was out of it this morning, but she said she was going to call you later, so I didn't ask after she fell asleep again. But, she's sick—she fell asleep with a headache and woke up with a fever. She's been asleep most of the day, but I think she's got the flu or something."

Naomi's explanation tamped down one section of Harry's worries, only to raise another. His steps became paces, his free hand running through his hair.

"Is she okay?" he asked, already picturing her prone form alone in her bed, pale and withering.

"I think so," Ny shared, a drawling muse to her voice, "She hasn't left her room much, but I've checked on her when I can. She doesn't really have a voice, but as long as she keeps on top of her medicine, she's able to break her fever and sleep."

Curling his fingers around the roots of his curls, he looked to his feet. "Do—Is there—Does she need anything?"

Ny sighed through the receiver. "I've been trying to make her eat, but nothing sounds good or she just wants to sleep instead."

"Okay," he sounded, nodding his head despite Naomi being unable to see him, "Okay, I can do that. I-I don't have any of our notes, but I can bring her some food if that's okay. Do—Would she be alright with me coming by?"

This time, when she spoke, Harry could hear a smile in her voice, "I think she'd really like that, Harry. I don't know if she'll make any good conversation today, but I'm sure she'll be happy to see you anyway."

A plan was beginning to stitch together then, for Harry. He had some soup he could make at home and bring to her apartment—something warm and not too heavy if she needed something easy for the time being. Was there anything he needed to pick up before he headed over? He was sure there was an extra fluffy blanket she wouldn't mind adding to the collection on her bed.

"Okay," Harry repeated once more, "I've got to grab a couple of things, but I can be over in a few hours if that's alright."

"That's perfect," Naomi encouraged him, "Just text me when you're here and I can let you in. I'll let (Y/N) know to give you a call when she wakes up—if she can, anyway."

While he didn't enjoy hearing that his flower might feel too weak to even place a short call to him, Harry felt soothed knowing that while he was worried about her illness, she had Naomi there to take care of her.

Their goodbyes were quick, Harry already going through the recipe for the soup he had in mind for her, a list coming together for his quick stop at the shops.

Beelining to his car, he typed out a quick message before he was swept up in his plans.

Just called Naomi. She told me you're sick, and have been sleeping this morning. I'm coming by with some soup and medicine for you, flower. I'm sorry I didn't realize, but I'll see you soon.

Love you so much.

He didn't think twice before he pulled out of the student parking lot, Stanfill's lecture and his missed notes left behind.

—————

The apartment was quiet when Ny let him in, Harry suddenly cautious of the crinkling of his bag.

"Hi," he greeted, his voice low to match the volume of the television in the living room, "Thanks for letting me up."

"Oh, yeah, of course," Naomi smiled, locking the door behind him while he kicked off his shoes, "Do you need help with any of your stuff?"

Following her eyes to the bag in his hand, he held a swift debate in his head. While he didn't want to ask anything more of (Y/N)'s roommate after invading her home and pestering her about (Y/N), he also didn't really want to stay away for much longer.

"Actually," he started, taking out the Tupperware container of soup he'd tossed together back at his own place before heading over, "Would y'heat this up, please? Jus' on the stove, or whatever's easiest for you."

Naomi's features softened as she took the container from Harry's hands. "Yeah, I can do that," she smiled, "This is for (Y/N)?"

"Yeah," he murmured, rubbing his knuckle against the tip of his nose, "'S my mum's recipe—she used to make it when I was little and sick from school."

An exaggerated pout crossed Naomi's face, her expression creased and warm as she looked up at Harry with her fingers around the container as if it were a velvet box of jewels. "That is so sweet, Harry," she bubbled, "She's going to love this."

"I hope," he laughed, inching towards the hallway where (Y/N)'s door awaited, "Let me know if y'need help or anything."

Ny only waved him off, urging him to her friend's room while she padded through the kitchen.

Hyper aware of the plastic bag on his wrist, Harry carefully made his way into (Y/N)'s bedroom. The space was silent as he crossed the threshold, her curtains cinched tightly shut with a pile of blankets covering the bed. A tissue box was placed on her bedside table next to a half finished bottle of water and her charging phone. While he couldn't spot her through her cocoon of quilts, he could hear a slight wheezing with every breath she took.

"(Y/N)?" he murmured, voice just above a whisper as he slowly approached her bedside.

No response.

"(Y/N), love?" he tried again, spotting her head through the layers of blankets as he drew closer. Even in sleep, she looked tired, eyes heavy with circles underneath and her mouth dropped in a gape. Given the pile of tissues at her bedside, he wasn't surprised to catch the sides of her nose looking chapped.

Instead of another attempt at catching her attention, he settled for unpacking his bag of treats for her, including a soft stuffed cow he hoped she could find comfort in. A reup of her medicine bottle was placed on her table, a nasal stick to help clear her sinuses with a sniff of the menthol scent, and a bottle of cranberry juice in hopes of giving her some vitamin C. When she woke, he'd show her what he brought, but in the meantime he'd settle for climbing in beside her.

(Y/N) didn't even stir when he cuddled in at her side, body above the blankets though he still fit his limbs around her form. As much as he hated hearing the wheeze of her lungs, and the slight shivers that still ran down her spine despite her cocoon, there was a layer of relief having her back in his arms. He hadn't realized how worried he'd been back in the lecture hall until he could now see she was just fine—albeit a bit sniffly and fighting an off-and-on fever. A tension in his muscles had evaporated by the time he had her cradled into him as best he could through the downy blankets.

He'd have to text Naomi that (Y/N) was still sleeping, the soup could wait. He'd give himself a moment first, though.

—————

"(Y/N), flower, are y'waking up?"

Feeling her features twist, annoyed and hurt that someone would shout so close to her ear like that, (Y/N) only clenched her eyes shut tighter.

A breathy laugh followed right after, filling the quiet of her head with something a little sweeter, even if it was uninvited.

Whatever it was that was bothering her, she chose to ignore it, instead rolling under her blankets and giving them her back. Unfortunately, they didn't seem to get the hint, instead running a hand through her tangled hair, coaxing her to stay awake despite her best efforts.

"You've been asleep for a while, love. I want y'to wake up and at least take some medicine," the soothing force tried again, tone matching their gentle touch, "I even brought y'some soup, if y'wanted to eat."

The idea of exerting the kind of energy required to eat was enough to have (Y/N)'s body feeling heavy, sinking into the mattress. "Don't want to."

"I know," he crooned, the velvet of the faceless voice finally conjuring up a vision of a bespectacled Harry. (Y/N) wanted to shift, see what cardigan he had on today, but there was no way she could roll over again. She didn't have that kind of energy. "Naomi said y'haven't eaten since this morning, flower. I think you'll feel a little better if you at least have a bowl."

"No," she whined, shaking her head as she attempted to burrow that much deeper on her blanket cave. "You're being too loud, Harry."

Another plume of laughter sounded in her room, though it wasn't quite as uninvited as before, now knowing it was from her boyfriend.

"Okay," he relented, voice decidedly softer than just a moment before, "We'll eat a little later, but you've got to take some medicine. I brought something that should help clear your nose out, too."

(Y/N) hadn't even realized she wasn't able to breathe out of her nose until he mentioned that, her throat suddenly dry along with her lips. Through her sleep-addled, fever-drenched brain, she could only imagine just how long she'd been fast asleep with her mouth wide open, only worsening the swollen throat she'd woken up with.

The idea of a small reprieve was enough to have her tossing under her blankets to face him. Peeling her eyes open, Harry was crouched at her bedside, gentle smile on his face with a dreamy vignette framed around him.

"Morning," he teased, "I missed you today."

"Sorry," she croaked, leaning into the warmth of his hand when he pressed his palm to her forehead. She pretended not to notice when he cringed back after a moment.

"Don't need to be sorry," he murmured, a pinch settling between his brows as he reached towards a pill bottle on her table, "'M sorry y'don't feel good, flower. What happened?"

"I don't know," she said, voice slow and drawling even to her own ears, "I thought I had a migraine last night, and then I woke up this morning, and yeah."

Despite promising to stay awake long enough to take some medicine and sniff whatever it was that would clear her sinuses, the longer Harry fiddled with the bottle, the more of an opportunity she had to sleep instead. He'd wake her if he needed her, she decided.

"Don't go to sleep, (Y/N)."

She frowned at his scolding.

"Don't make that face, love," he laughed, "Sit up for me."

Her frown only deepened.

If he said anything more in response, she didn't hear him. Instead she felt the mattress dip around her, Harry crawling up beside her.

Slipping an arm underneath her, he helped her shift under the pile of blankets shrouding her form. (Y/N) let out a whine, unhappy with being moved from the wam imprint she'd left in her bedding.

"Don't be like that, flower," he mused, "Jus' want to help you—your fever is making me nervous."

Instead of giving any kind of answer, (Y/N) only twisted in his arms, cuddling up to the warmth of his chest. She turned into him, shedding some layers of blanket only to lean into his warmth that much more. He hooked his arm around her middle, supporting her with his forearm around her back and his hand conforming to the dip of her waist. Laying her head on his shoulder, she curled her hands into the knit of his top. If he had planned on climbing out after helping with her medicine, that was definitely no longer an option with the way she clung to him.

"Here," he offered, prompting her to crack open her eyes once more to see a pair of coated pills in his hand for her, "I've got some water for you, too."

There was a concerted amount of effort that came with lifting her hand to take the medicine from him, enough to have Harry squeezing his arm around her when he saw how much concentration it took.

As soon as she popped the pills in her mouth, Harry passed along the bottle of water he had at his side, unable to keep himself from helping her hold the weight after seeing her previous struggle. She chugged down the rest of the bottle then, realizing just how thirsty she was, her breathing coming out in pants by the time she pulled the container from her mouth.

"Want more?" he asked, reaching for another bottle he had positioned on the bedside table.

"No, no," she shook her head, already slumping against him once more with shuttered eyes, "Tired."

This time he didn't laugh or seem amused at all at her mumbling. Harry only tugged her tighter to his side, his free hand pulling up one of her blankets to cover her up to her shoulder. "I know, flower," he murmured, pressing a kiss to the top of her head, "Y'sure y'don't want to eat right now?"

"Just want to sleep," she said, shaking her head against his shoulder.

"Go to sleep, love," he crooned, "I'll be here when y'wake up."

Though it wasn't hard to stay asleep, it was hard for (Y/N) to fall asleep with the ache in her body and the pressure in her head. She needed an extra push, something to lull her to the edge.

"How long have you been here?" she asked, hoping Harry would unwittingly put her to sleep with the melody of his voice.

"Only a few hours," he told her, shifting until she was laid atop his chest as he reclined into the pile of pillows behind them, "After y'didn't come to Stanfill's, I called Naomi."

"In the middle of class?" she blanched, attempting to picture Harry being so disruptive in the middle of lecture.

She felt his laugh more than heard it, rumbling from his chest underneath her. "No, I stepped out before I called."

"And he let you go back in?"

Flexing his hand on her waist, she could feel him shake his head before planting a kiss to the crown of hers. The vibrations of his voice accompanied by the soft of his touch was already working on her, distracting from the ache in her muscles enough to stretch closer to the edge of sleep. "I don't know—I didn't really stay to find out."

"Wait," (Y/N) drawled, her features pinching, "Did you skip?"

"I suppose y'could call it that; I did go, I jus' left early."

"Harry," she whined, elongating the syllables of his name, "Why would you do that? You love physics."

"Because," he started, an affectionate current to his tone, "I wanted to see you. I was worried about you, love. You've never jus' disappeared on me before like that—I wanted to make sure y'were alright."

"But," she attempted to fight, though she didn't have much organization to her thoughts, "It's physics."

"I know," he crooned, a smile audible in his voice, "And you're you. I can make up the notes another day, but I can't make up another day with you, can I?"

It was a sweet sentiment, enough to have her softening that much more. If she'd had the energy, she may have cried, instead opting to burrow closer to him.

"I love you," she blubbered, her words barely decipherable given her thick throat.

"I love you too, flower," he reciprocated, tender notes to his voice, "Go to sleep, I've got you."

That was all the permission she needed to drift off, no doubt that Harry would keep his promise.

Maybe it was the medicine beginning to kick in or the warmth of Harry's hold, but (Y/N) swore she might already be beginning to feel better.

—————

thank you so much for requesting nad taking the time to read this! So sorry if theres any mistakes I missed!!! if theres any ideas or requests you have pleaseeeee send them in :)

692 notes · View notes

allllium · 4 months ago

Note

I really love your fics!!! They’re seriously just 10/10. Could you maybe do something with Jason Todd getting a crush on the new vigilante in town? Or him meeting his childhood best friend after being resurrected (possibly him saving them as Red Hood) and just SIMPING over how much they’ve changed since last time he saw them. Like, his mind just going “minemineminemine” and “Yes, I am now a married man”

Love your work!!! ❤️❤️

Miss You

~ Fluff, WC: 1,119

~ Jason meets you again

Jason had a best friend, before he died that is. Ever since he came back he's felt alone, no one being able to fill the hole left when he lost you. Lost you isn't the right word. He can go to you at any time, replace the friendship he craves to have again, but he won't. Call it pride, call it self-doubt, call it whatever you want but he'll never do anything to fix it. Not unless he has too.

You're walking along a strip of dark buildings. Not a smart choice but definitely the fastest to take after a long night shift. The only thing you want to do is fall into your bed and sleep a whole day away. Living in Gotham means you are no longer surprised or scared by the constant yelling and booming noises. Most of them are made by teenagers doing dumb things with their friends or random people deciding to fight in the streets. They don't last too long considering the millions of vigilanties that are always running around.

But tonight as you walk by multiple allies, on a dark street, near where you know multiple self declared "gangs" hang out, everything is silent. Somewhere else, anywhere else, that'd be a good thing. But right now it gives you the chills. Every step you take feels like it's being watched, no, like it's being analyzed. Like something or someone is trying to memorize every move you make. A gaze you somewhat recognize.

Jason doesn't mean to be a creep. He really doesn't. But he can't look away. After he died he never thought he'd see you again. Everyone told him you stopped showing up to dinners and didn't answer any of their calls. It was hard for him to think of never seeing you again, he didn't know a time in his life when he didn't know you. Now he finds himself sitting on a windowsill on the opposite side of the street, unable to look away from you. You've changed a lot since he last saw you, but somehow you still look exactly the same. Jason has never had a crush on you before. Of course he always wondered what being with you would be like, and he's thought a lot about how amazing it would be to kiss you, not to mention the hundreds of times you've had him blushing like a crazy person. But he's never had a crush. That'd be insane.

You continue walking around as if nothings bothering you. The last thing you want to worry about is someone watching you. It's probably nothing. On the other side of the street you can hear thumping every couple of feet. It doesn't take a genius to know the sound is coming from someone jumping from roof to roof. You look over just in time to see someone land on their feet. It's obviously one of the vigilanties, guessing by their size and stature.

Jason feels his heart almost stop when you look directly at him. He knows you don't know it's him, how could you after all this time and in the dark, but it makes him panic just a little bit. You'd think after everything he's had to deal with he wouldn't freak over such a small thing. It's not until he sees you raise your eyebrows expectantly that he starts making his way off the roof and towards you in the street. He can't believe how much you've changed, how amazing you look.

You watch intently as he comes closer. It only takes a moment before he's standing face to face with you.

"You better have a damn good reason for following me."

He doesn't answer.

"Hello? If you're going be a creep at least explain why."

All you can here is heavy breathing through his mask.

"Okay this is just weird." You begin to walk away but he grabs your arm to stop you. "Did you really just grab me?"

"I'm sorry." You don't recognize his voice but something is pulling at you. You let out an angry breath.

"Are you gonna explain yourself yet?"

"I wasn't trying to be a creep I promise." He starts to defend himself but trails off. "You walked by some bad people earlier and I wanted to make sure you got home safe."

"Mhm. What else?" You cross your arms over your chest, not believing he gave the whole explanation.

He pauses again. For a second you believe he won't answer. "You look good."

"I thought you weren't trying to be a creep, what the fuck?" You take a big step away from the man standing to your front.

"No no no no that's not what I meant." He tries to come closer to you but you take another step back.

"I don't care what you meant, that's weird man."

"Where do you live?"

"Okay I'm leaving now."

"No wait, again not how I meant for that to sound. I just mean I can give you a better explanation when we're not standing in the middle of the street." He rambles.

"Fine, but I expect no more excuses."

You reluctantly show him to way to your house. Now that you've been closer to him you recognize him as Red Hood, a newer vigilantie. He's a good guy, he wouldn't hurt you, right?"

"Here we are." You announce as you step up to unlock your door. Red Hood follows you a little too close.

"It's nice." He says quietly, almost as if he's unsure of his voice.

"Thanks. Now explain." The second the door is shut you demand to know more.

"I'm not really sure how to say this."

"Well you don't really have a choice do you?"

"No I guess not. I've never been able to say no to you." He makes a sound that almost seems like a laugh.

"Never? Do we know each other?"

"Yeah."

"I'm gonna need more than a single word."

Instead of saying anything he takes off his mask Suddenly every makes sense. Or as much as it can when you're dead best friend is standing in front of you.

"Jason." You smile.

"Hi. This isn't how I wanted to do this."

"No? How did you?" You take a step closer to him.

"Well to be honest I wasn't. I really didn't expect you to know I was there."

"You aren't very quiet." You turn away and take a seat on your couch.

"I should probably work on that." He sits next to you. You look amazing."

"Thank you Jay."

"Aren't you going to ask me anything?"

"I will later. Right now I just want to sit, I've missed you."

"I miss you too."

350 notes · View notes

islayhawkin · 5 months ago

Text

It's from her

Captain John price x fem!reader

Summary: The task force learns that john's beanie holds way more importance to him than it should

Warnings!: sad and vulnerable john, prob ooc, not edited

Leaving for a mission was always hard. He knew that you struggled immensly with it and while he never showed it, it took it's toll on him too.

To leave you behind. Knowing that you had a hard time because of him.

To have the mission ahead of him. The knowledge that he'd be away for weeks or even months on end. The contact to you was rare and it took a lot of effort for him to be able to have a phone call or receive a letter from you. He always worried. While he was the one fighting for his life, there was always a part of his mind that thought about how you were doing, if something happened, if you needed him...The constant uncertainty was driving him on edge sometimes.

And he missed you. Oh, how he missed you. He spent so many lonely nights in his tent or a safe house imagining you beside him while the snores of his comrades filled his ears.

John clung to the few things he had with him that were you. One of them being his hat.

It was one of the first things he got from you. You had knitted the beanie when you first moved in together. Every evening when you two had cuddled up on the couch, the TV playing, you had knitted. He had seen it develop and it was the most calming sound to him, whenever he heard your needles clicking softly against each other. Not until you finished the hat had he been aware that you made it for him.

"Here. I made this for you." You had smiled at him proudly as you handed over the dark-knitted beanie.

It was nothing special and with closer inspection, a few mistakes could be sighted but for john it meant the world. At first, he had struggled to even think of a response as he gripped the soft fabric in his rough hands.

"I know you always like to have something on your head and I thought that would keep you warm when you're in a cold area..." you had muttered out your explanation.

"thank you." He had replied quietly. The love and astonishment had been evident in his expression.

There were times when he thought back to that moment and wished he had said more. That he would've been able to express what it meant to him. But you knew without him saying so. It was clear in his actions.

It was endearing how he still took it on every mission after all these years.

The 141 started to notice it's importance to him when he couldn't find it at base. His usual calm demeanor was slightly irritable and underlined by the strong walk as he barged into the common room as if he were on a mission to save the queen.

"Does any of you shitheads have my hat?" His deep voice made the whole room go quiet.

Soap and ghost exchanged glances. "Got no reason to steal your hat captain." Ghost grumbled out.

John clenched and unclenched his fists multiple times. The muscle in his jaw tightened. "You'll have no problem then if I check your rooms lieutenant." There were some unspoken words between them as two pairs of hard eyes met each other.

"No problem." Ghost replied.

Price took a look around the room before giving them a nod and leaving for their private quarters.

"What's wrong with him?" Gaz leaned over the table to his comrades.

"No bloody idea. Probably got his period." Ghost grumbled.

Price rummaged through room after room methodically. The drawers and cabinets were thrown open and closed softly after close inspection. He muttered a few annoyed curses when he arrived at soap's room: the drawers were already opened but his clothes were probably more scattered over the floor room than in his closet. Room inspections were obviously in dire need of attention.

When he made it to Gaz's room the hat was the first thing his eyes spotted as he opened the door. There it was. slightly frizzy and worn at the edges but still looking soft the way it always did. Except that it didn't lay at its usual spot in his neatly organized closet.

"Can't keep their bloody hands to their own stuff." John grumbled.

The tension fell from his body as he picked the beanie up and took it back to his room. He laid it back to the dedicated spot with a scarf next to it. His eyes observed how it seemed to lay so innocently in front of him. A tired sigh escaped his lips before he pushed himself into an upright position and locked the door to his room for good measure.

In the next moment he dragged gaz out of his chair pressed him against the wall. Johns hand clasped the collar of gazs uniform. While gaz grunted from the impact of his captains weight against him, his face stayed nonchalant. If you knew him better you'd seen the small sliver of nervousness in his eyes.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing with my stuff?" Price gritted out.

"I didn't take anything from you sir." Gaz shot back almost angrily at the accusation.

"You think that's funny huh?" John sneered. It was unusual for the captain to throw angry words at his team. He was always the composed one; giving them a sense of confidence and security in the battlefield.

"No sir."

"Hmhm. I found something in your quarters. My goddamn hat on top of your closet."

Gaz frowned. "Captain I didn't- sir I don't know anything about that."

Price grunted in frustration before ghost stepped to them and slightly pulled the captain back. "Take it easy cap."

John let himself fall back before pointing a warning finger at the young sergeant. "Just keep your hands off of my things. Especially that hat. Got it?"

Gaz gave him a nod but he didn't back down from his position as innocent. The air was tense as everyone watched the ongoing confrontation.

Ghost gave his captain a look which held john back made him leave the room back to his own office (where he should've worked for the last hour). The lieutenant followed him out as if to escort him. "Why are ya followin' me simon?"

Ghost was about to protest about his name choice but decided there were more important matters at hand right now.

"I figured you'd want to tell me what's going on?" The deep voice came from behind the mask.

Price stopped in his tracks and crossed his arms while shifting his weight onto his toes. "What?"

While price was a tall and muscular man he had no chance against the build of ghost as he towered opposite of him.

"You're going wild over a damn hat for no reason." His tone sounded almost bored.

"It's not just a bloody hat!" John's jaw clicked.

Ghost scoffed. "Then what is this about?"

"With all due respect lieutenant, you wouldn't understand."

That was it. It was never brought up again until a few months later on a mission at the Russian border.

A small safe house offered them shelter before they took off for the next day.

The night was a troubled one. Everyone was anxious and tired, which was a dangerous mix of feelings in a group of men. But they were trained for this. Keeping one eye and ear open constantly; without pause. This was the requirement to survival.

John took the night shift after Ghost woke him up out of a rather unpleasant dream. Everything was quiet except for a few night animals chirping in the forest surrounding them. The sun already brought a bit of light through the windows.

He sat down against a pillar and rubbed his exhausted eyes with his calloused palms. A defeated sigh escaped his lips as he took the gun into his hand and let his head lull back against the wood.

The last few months had been rough. The 141 was on this mission since almost two months now and it felt like they didn't get any closer to their target. For john it meant two months without you. No call, no letter, nothing. For all he knew you could be laying in bed with another guy right now. He couldn't blame you. No, what was he thinking. That was a riddiculous thought. He grunted quietly as he rubbed a hand over his beard. John definately needed sleep.

His beard and hair had grown out over the time, which made him think of the way you'd sit him on the toilet lid and step between his legs to shave his beard for him. You never realised how that position made it quite impossible for him to relax under your intense stare. He smiled at the memory and simultaneously hope that he'd be able to be in that position soon again.

The nightmare had made him unpleasantly agitated and worried. John just hoped, prayed and begged Laswell to make sure that you were okay.

A few hours later the sun started to rise above the horizon, which brought john his clue to wake everyone up and get going for the day ahead. When everybody was checked and price paced slowly in front of the group to explain the plan his voice got stuck in his throat. He had been telling them that they would be making their way into the snowy area as your voice made it's way into his thoughts.

'to keep you warm in colder regions.' you had said with that sweet smile when you gave him his hat.

The hat.

He didn't have his beanie on. It got soaked through yesterday and he took it off to dry. But they had checked the whole safehouse already, ready for departure.

"My hat. Has anyone seen it?" he questioned the group of men standing before him. They looked stunned at his sudden change of topic.

When they didn't answer he started walking up the stairs. Frantically going through the rooms again. Soap went with a nod to the others after him. "Capt'n. We're ready for departure. None of us saw yer hat."

John shook his head. "Not without it." He searched the drawers in the room even though he knew it couldn't be there. His expression was stoic and unreadable but there were emotions behind those blue eyes.

They gave him a few minutes but when he didn't make a move to get on with it ghost shouted up the stairs. "Cap we have a schedule remember?" It sounded slightly irritated coming from behind the mask.

"I said I'm not going without it!" John thundered back.

He couldn't leave without it. It felt like leaving you behind. It was irrational and stupid and the hat was going to cost him his goddamn life someday but... he needed it. That feeling couldn't be explained with rationality or tactic. you would have described it as love. But john would rather name it desperation.

"It's just a bloody hat. We need to get going." Ghost came up beside him.

"It's not. It's from her." John pulled his lips in a thin line as he exhaled through his nose sharply. The room went quiet for a moment at his admission.

Ghosts expression stayed emotionless as he crossed his bulky arms over his chest.

"Yer bonnie wife?" soap asked for clarification.

John nodded sharply and but turned away quickly from the pair when soap raised a brow.

"Honestly dinna know yer were married to her until a few weeks back. I'm sure ye'll survive a week without the hat and see yer lass soon hm?"

Ghost grunted in frustration. "Seriously? That's been the reason for this bloody hat."

"I wouldn't expect you to understand. When you're married we can have this conversation." John shot back at his lieutenant. His voice thick with accent and a deep grumbling from the throat.

Soap got between them before Ghost had the chance to respond. "So we ready to go then? Captain?"

John pursed his lips and it pained him to go through with it but he shut off his emotions like he so often did and gave them a stern nod. He started to talk about their upcoming task again as he took the lead once more.

When he got home to you a week later he couldn't hold back a few tears in his eyes when you presented him a new, more colourful beanie, that you made when he was gone. And to his delight you ushered him into the bathroom to shave him first thing in the morning.

The task force never dared to touch his hat again.

#captain john price #john price #call of duty #john price cod #fanfic #x reader #female reader #fluff #cute #Husband! Price #hurt/comfort #tf 141 #cod headcanons #task force 141 #wife!reader #angst #light angst #one shot

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bg3daydream · 1 month ago

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Breakfast (Lucanis x Rook fanfiction)

Lucanis x Female Rook one-shot.

Summary: Lucanis makes breakfast for Rook after they spend the nigth together once she's back from the Fade-prison, relieved to have her back but still worried about her. Short (2285 words) and sweet.

Lucanis woke up feeling rested for the first time in…he didn’t even know how long. That he'd been sleeping in Rook’s arms sure was the reason for it.

They were scrunched together on the couch in Rook’s room, with barely room to move, but for Lucanis it was perfect, with his head pillowed on Rook’s chest and her arms around him. Even Spite seemed to have calmed down, he hadn’t annoyed him once. His only regret was not having slept like that before that night, the distance he’d made himself keep for reasons that seemed important once but not anymore.

He was all too aware of how close he’d been to losing Rook. Since she’d been trapped in the Fade, Lucanis had been consumed not only by fear but also by guilt and regret. He’d let it happen, he hadn’t been quick enough, smart enough, and Rook had been taken from him. She had needed him and he had failed again.

He’d been searching non-stop for a way to get her back, even Spite had been agitated, driving him crazy, and he knew he had to be grateful for the team that they’d found a way to get Rook back.

After that, he’d known there was no way he’d let his fears and insecurities keep him from being truly Rook’s any longer. He’d kill the gods, the blight itself, anything that threatened Rook’s again, no matter what, he wouldn't fail her again, and he wouldn’t deny himself the comfort of her arms any longer.

Mindful not to wake her, Lucanis pulled back from Rook’s chest. She was still fast asleep, and Lucanis wondered if she’d slept at all those weeks she’d been trapped in the Fade, if she’d even needed it.

She didn’t seem more tired than usual, neither did she seem hurt, but Rook hadn’t really elaborated on what had happened to her, and Lucanis hadn’t pushed her to tell him. She seemed more worried about what’d been happening while she was gone and how to fix it, and Lucanis knew it was important, but he wished Rook looked out for herself more. If she didn’t, then he’d be the one to watch over her and care for her.

Lucanis brushed his knuckles ever so softly over Rook’s cheek. He didn’t feel there was much he could offer her, besides his knives and his skills as an assassin, in which he felt he’d been failing abysmally.

It seemed Rook was going to sleep longer, and so, Lucanis decided to get up and get her breakfast. Feeding her was, at least, one thing he could do for Rook without failing her.

He carefully covered Rook with a blanket, pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead, and got dressed quickly.

Walking out of the room and down the stairs, Lucanis found Emmrich already awake, sitting down on the armchair next to the coffee table, doing research, with a cup of steaming tea in front of him, while Manfred hovered near. Emmrich looked up from his papers to give Lucanis a tired smile.

“Good morning. How is she?” He asked as he glanced upstairs.

Lucanis sighed and shrugged. “I don’t know. Not bad I think, but she hasn’t told me much of what happened to her. She wants to focus on what we have to do now.”

“Understandable so,” Emmrich conceded. “I know everything we lost, everyone…and everything we have to fight now. But we got Rook back, enjoy that.”

“I plan to. Thank you, Emmrich.” Lucanis was aware of how, without the Fade expertise of Emmrich, he probably couldn’t have gotten Rock back to him.

Emmrich nodded graciously and went back to his papers.

“Manfred,” Lucanis addressed the skeleton, who hissed a yes. “If you see Rook getting up, you come running to find me before she can”

“Yes!”

Once in the kitchen, Lucanis tried to decide on what to do for breakfast. He didn’t want it to be something overly complicated or that would take too long, afraid that Rook might wake up before he was finished and find herself alone.

Finally, he settled for orlesian pancakes.

The kitchen felt cold and abandoned. Lucanis had been in no mood for cooking during the last couple of weeks, his mind was desperately looking for ways to bring Rook back, when he was not mourning their potential loss and blaming himself, and having to deal with Spite’s own commentary and franticness.

Trying to ignore the nagging thoughts of their missing friends, everything that had gone wrong and could get worse soon, and the still lingering fear of losing Rook, Lucanis focused on making breakfast and on the thought of a sleeping Rook, back to him.

He cooked swiftly, and once everything was ready, he placed several servings on a trail and walked out of the kitchen and back to the main building.

Emmrich was still in the armchair, studying the papers, while Manfred stood as a lookout on the staircase, watching the door of Rook’s room. When he saw Lucanis, he hissed and did a thumb-up, and Lucanis couldn’t help his smile.

“Thank you, Manfred,” Lucanis said while placing a cup of coffee and a plate of pancakes on the table in front of Emmrich.

“Oh, thank you Lucanis,” Emmrich smiled at him over his papers. “This was most kind.”

Lucanis shrugged and made his way back to Rook’s room. She was still asleep. Lucanis placed the tray with the pancakes and coffee on the table and knelt down next to the couch, looking at Rook. He reached to trail his fingers down her cheek, ever so softly.

“Doesn’t. Wake,” Spite said, unhelpful.

“She needs rest,” Lucanis muttered, trying not to let Spite’s agitation get to him.

“She. Is not. Waking up,” Spite insisted.

Lucanis never thought the demon could care for anyone, but there they were. Still, he didn’t need Spite putting more fears inside his mind and going frantic again, it wouldn’t help anyone.

“Rook’s tired, she’ll wake up when she’s rested enough,” he tried again, although Lucanis wasn’t very sure if he was convincing himself or the demon. “Go play with Manfred.”

“Pff.” Spite brisked. “He. Thinks. He Is. A mage. Now,” the demon pretty much ranted. “He. Thinks. He. Is. Better.”

“I doubt it,” Lucanis answered, but truly, what did he know…he just hoped Manfred didn’t decide to try and teach Spite magic now. “Go with Manfred or shut it and let Rook sleep.”

Spite didn’t say anything else, but Lucanis could feel his unhappiness.

He watched Rook’s face, caressing her cheek ever so gently again, trying not to entertain Spite’s thoughts of her not waking. There was no reason for that, she was just tired, even if she was in the Fade in her sleep, she was not trapped there any longer, it was just normal dreaming…right?

Lucanis’ heart had begun beating faster, Spite’s unease was growing too, and so he tried to stop that train of thought. Rook was back, she was alright, she was just resting…but if she didn’t wake up by herself soon, he’d wake her.

Moving even closer, Lucanis leaned over Rook, still kneeling on the floor, until he could rest his head over her chest. He closed his eyes, listening to her heartbeat, feeling her chest rising and falling as she breathed, and he tried not to let worry and overthinking take hold of his mind.

Eventually, Lucanis felt the change in her breathing as she began to wake up, and relief washed over him. He pushed back to look at her as Rook’s eyes opened, and she gave him a drowsy smile that made something in his stomach flutter and twirl. She was there, she was awake, she was fine…and she was smiling at him, her sleep-lidded eyes looking at him so lovingly that it was hard to believe she was looking at him.

“Hey….” Rook reached to cup his face and Lucanis leaned into her touch. Her smile turned into a frown when she noticed he was on the floor. “Did I kick you off the couch? Shit, I’m sorry.”

“No, you didn’t,” Lucanis rushed to explain. “I was up already. I made you breakfast.”

There it was again, that soft smile and that love in her eyes, making Lucanis’ heart skip a beat. “Of course you did.”

Rook’s voice was quiet, content, while her hand cupping his face caressed his cheek, and Lucanis turned his head to kiss her palm. Rook’s smile grew wider at that and she leaned to press a soft kiss to his lips. It was gentle, chaste, yet it made Lucanis feel like he might melt.

Rook pulled back, reaching to take her shirt that somehow had ended up hanging from the back of the couch, and she put it on. Then, she reached as if to take her cup of coffee, but Lucanis was already handing it to her.

“Thanks,” she smiled again and reached to take his hand. “Come here.”

Lookanis got up from the floor and sat down on the couch next to Rook. Ignoring his own cup of coffee, he looked at her as she contently sipped hers while she looked at the fishes swimming in that odd aquarium. Lucanis had felt uneasy about that part of Rook’s room before, it reminded him of the Ossuary, but it didn’t anymore, not with Rook there next to him.

Rook caught him staring at her and gave him a small smile, leaning to kiss the side of his head. “I’m fine,” she reassured him.

Lucanis wasn’t sure if it was true, but he didn’t want to push her. She’d be fine, though, he’d make sure of it.

Rook leaned to place the cup back on the tray and cut a piece of the pancakes, bringing it to her mouth. She closed her eyes with a delighted hum and Lucanis felt something in his belly stir at it.

“This is so good,” she said as she took another bite.

“I’m glad.” Lucanis was pretty confident in his cooking skills, more than in his assassin skills right now, but it was nice to have confirmation that Rook was enjoying her breakfast.

Rook looked at him over her shoulder. “Did you have something besides coffee?” she didn’t let him answer. “Of course you didn’t.”

She cut the rest of the pancakes in small, bite-size pieces, and leaned back on the sofa again, taking plate and fork with her. “Here.” She reached the fork with one of the pancake pieces towards Lucanis.

“It’s your breakfast.”

“It’s enough for us both and more…come on,” Rook insisted and Lucanis gave in, taking the bite that she was offering.

Lucanis wondered if it should have felt ridiculous, letting someone feed him pancakes, but it didn’t, he just felt content, loved even. He wondered when was the last time he’d felt like that, or if he’d even felt like that at all before.

He let Rook feed him another couple of bites before nudging her and reminding her to eat herself, and so she dug into the pancakes with appetite. “Seriously, Lucanis, these are so good,” she said between bites and he couldn’t stop how pleased it made him feel.

Still, he couldn’t help but wonder if she’d been hungry, maybe even starving. How hadn’t he thought of feeding her sooner, he shouldn’t have fallen asleep last night without making sure she was fed, no matter how warm and comfortable her arms had felt.

“Did you eat anything while you were…away?” Lucanis found himself asking.

He wasn’t sure how the Fade worked, how she could have survived those weeks without eating anything, if maybe she didn’t need it while in the Fade…

Rook shook her head and leaned over to place the plate of pancakes, with barely anything left, on the table, taking the cup of coffee instead and leaning back on the couch again with a sigh.

“I know it was weeks for you here but…for me…I don’t know,” she trailed off. “I don’t know how it works, but it felt…I don’t even know…eternal but static at the same time…” Rook shuddered and Lucanis leaned to place an arm around her, regretting to have asked. “I don’t want to think about it now.”

“Of course,” he whispered, pulling her close.

His wings popped out without him meaning to, wrapping around them. Lucanis’d be embarrassed about his lack of control of the wings sometimes, if it weren’t because Rook seemed to like them. He had to wonder if Taash was right when they told him he should get out the wings when he was with Rook, that she’d like it.

“Good morning, Spite,” Rook said, smiling.

“Rook,” the demon greeted, but Lucanis was thankful he didn’t try to control him, seeming content just being acknowledged.

Rook took another sip of the coffee and then offered the cup to Lucanis. He was about to refuse, that was her coffee, he had a cup for himself, but she was looking at him with that soft smile, those caring, loving eyes, in a way that made him feel as if his heart was growing in size, and he couldn’t refuse her, taking a sip of the coffee before giving her the cup back.

Rook leaned against him with a content sigh and Lucanis kissed the side of her head.

There were gods to kill, people to help, a world to save, friends to avenge, they had to get at it soon but perhaps, perhaps it all could wait just a bit longer.

Perhaps they could stay like that, Lucanis’ arm and wings enveloping Rook, basking in each other, for a little bit, if only until they finished their coffee.

NA:

Both me and my Rook have fallen in love with this gentle, caring assassin and we want to hold him and protect him, but sometimes Rook needs to be taken care of too.

I think I want to write more for them.

If you liked the fic, please let me know in a comment, and as always, reblogs are more than welcome.

Excuse my English, it’s not my first language.

#lucanis dellamorte #lucanis dellamorte fanfiction #lucanis fanfiction #rookanis #rookanis fanfiction #lucanis x rook #lucanis x rook fanfiction #rook x lucanis #rook x lucanis fanfiction #protective Lucanis Dellamorte #short and sweet #emotional hurt/comfort and just comfort/fluff

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ckret2 · 19 days ago

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So I heard y'all are really eager to see Bill shipped with an old man. This is what you wanted, right??

(Sorry, it's still gonna be a while yet before we get to the old man y'all are looking for.)

Chapter 80 of that fic with human Bill as the Mystery Shack's increasingly casual prisoner: the government comes snooping around the shack again, scaring the crap out of everybody—including Bill, who's too nervous about getting arrested to realize he's being flirted with.

####

Bill woke late in the morning to the smell of dead fish and a subtle but insistent full-body itch. It was one of the most pleasant mornings he'd had since he died.

Sunburn, he thought. No surprise there. He dragged the false nails that had survived since the girls' sleepover across his shoulder and reveled in the way the pain was momentarily relieved and then flared back up twice as strong as before. Sunburns had always been one of his favorite human sensations, that constant pleasant background burn prickling across his skin and blazing higher any time he was touched; he hadn't realized just how much he'd been missing them while he was locked inside. He wasn't built to be out of the sunlight.

While most of him just vaguely itched, the bands of skin around his waist and upper thighs where he'd applied the anti-sunscreen were on fire. When he tossed aside his bedsheet to inspect, he was satisfied to see the difference the anti-sunscreen had made—the skin was only slightly darker and ruddier, but it was visibly leathery with tiny bumps. It was a good start. Still—they might have been more visible if the rest of him were less sunburned.

He pushed that thought from his mind. He'd sooner die again than admit that sunscreen might have been a good idea for any reason. If the lines weren't visible enough after the sunburn healed, next time he could strengthen the anti-sunscreen recipe and shoot for blisters, that might leave scars.

He dug his nails into one of the more deeply burned lines and was hit with a dizzying rush of euphoria as the burned skin screamed in pain. Oh, he could happily do that all morning. But first maybe he should get some breakfast.

He rolled off the sofa, landed on all fours on the floor, and grabbed Journal 4 from under the sofa—he'd left it there with the pages spread out so the watery fish brains he'd finger painted on each page didn't glue the book shut. He documented last night's "dream"—he'd haunted the halls like a ghost, collecting what tools he could access to start repairing the portal—then hid the journal behind the sofa in the window seat's cushion where it belonged. He still needed to find a better hiding place for it. Maybe after breakfast.

There hadn't been a grocery run since he'd acquired his new fridge, so all he had upstairs were half a dozen condiments, a bag of tortilla chips, and enough cider to kill a horse. If he could get somebody to open the kitchen fridge, maybe he could steal the eggs, that was probably the single most nutrient-dense ingredient currently in the house; that'd keep him going between meals until grocery day...

Where were his clothes.

The t-shirt and bikini he'd worn to the beach yesterday were still flung across the sofa; but the box he'd stuffed all his other clothing in had vanished. He stared at the shelf it was supposed to be on. His hoodie. Who'd stolen his skin?

He scowled.

He folded his Pony Heist bedsheet lengthwise, folded it around his waist and rolled it down like a sarong, pulled on the t-shirt and his eyepatch, and stalked from his room.

The kids' bedroom door had been left open. No sign of Bill's clothes in there, but he found an important clue: Dipper's ever-present mountain of dirty clothing was gone. Laundry day. Soos must have mistaken Bill's box of perfectly clean clothes for dirty laundry and stolen the whole thing. Great.

While he was momentarily unsupervised in the kids' room, he flipped through Dipper's journal, annotated some of the recent pages with helpful info and added an embarrassing anecdote about Ford's research years (all in code, of course), and stole Mabel's glass pyramid and a pair of pink sunglasses that were shaped like the words "RAD DUDE" from her bedside table. He stashed the pyramid in his room on the window seat.

And then he headed downstairs, trying to mentally calculate the most impactful way to whine about his clothes having been stolen in order to make Soos feel as guilty as possible without making himself look pathetic.

"Hey Bill!" Mabel called from the living room. She held up a couple of headbands; she'd wrapped two pipe cleaners around each that stuck up like antennae. Foam stars were glued to the ends of one headband's pipe cleaners and pompom bees to the other. "I'm making deely boppers! Do you want one?"

"More than anything!" Bill claimed the one with bees and shoved it down over his tangled hair. Mabel was in here doing crafts, Dipper was watching crappy local TV—Bill couldn't get into the gift shop with them in here as witnesses. "Hey, here's something crazy: did you kids ever notice the stairs to the attic have 32 steps going up and 28 steps going down?"

Mabel and Dipper looked at each other; and then ran for the stairs. "No way!" "How's that possible?"

That would keep them occupied for a few minutes. Bill backed through the gift shop door.

Wendy looked up from her phone. "What up, dude."

"Hey, cool girl!" He spun around on his heel and trotted over to lean against her counter. "If anyone asks, you let me into the shop."

"Got it." She glanced at Bill's sarong. "Is this the return of Toga Guy?"

"Nope; laundry day."

"Oh, yeah. Washing machine's been going all morning," Wendy said. "Soos says Ford's been running around in a coat that smells like nasty lake water, so he stole it."

"And stole my box of perfectly clean clothes." Bill refused to entertain the possibility that this might be partially his own fault for making his room smell like dead fish. The smell would air out! "So I'm gonna humiliate him for it in front of his tour group."

Wendy laughed. "Don't do that, man. You know what he's like, sometimes he makes goofy mistakes." She gave him a quizzical look. "You keep your clothes in a box?"

Right, he'd been keeping Wendy teetering on the edge of thinking Bill was in an unsafe situation here. Was there any benefit to her knowing how inhumane his living conditions were? Not at the moment, when things were finally improving. "Shack's run out of guest rooms and I didn't need new clothes in the mindscape! We just shoved my clothes in a crate until we can get a spare dresser or something." Topic change! "Hey—I saw your brother beating up a fish at the lake yesterday."

"Oh yeah, you mean dinner? Marcus was so proud of his catch. He did the worst job deboning it, though. I almost got a surprise lip piercing." Wendy stuck out her tongue. "What about you guys? Soos says you fought Bigfoot or something?"

"They did. Ask the Stans for the details; while they were catching fish, I was catching rays," Bill said. "And I think I was more successful than them."

"Suntanning?" Wendy took in his blatantly sunburned appearance.

"Unless you're about to say 'oh wow, you look great!' say something different," Bill said. "Anyway, I'm a wilting houseplant! I have a sunlight deficit I'm trying to catch up on." He glanced wistfully toward the window in the door and the bright beautiful day outside. "If I didn't have to ask someone to let me in and out, I'd be out there right now."

He'd been angling for Wendy to graciously offer to help escort him outside. Instead, she said, "Oh, dude, we leave the door unlatched during the day. You can just walk through it backwards like you do from the living room."

"Wait—really?"

"Yeah, go ahead."

He gave her a skeptical look; but when he glanced through the door's window, he could see himself standing out on the porch just a few seconds in the future. All right, he wasn't complaining. "Then I'll see you later." He sauntered over and backed through the doorway.

It worked. He was outside. He stepped off the porch and spread his arms, soaking in the sunlight. Look at that—escape was really that easy the whole time. He could have just backed through a couple of doorways. A little frustrating that he was learning this after he'd found a complicated workaround that required climbing on the roof, but this would make his life easier in the future. He walked back into the doorway again.

It didn't budge. He kept trying to walk for a couple of seconds before his brain forced him to accept that there was, in fact, a door there, and it wasn't getting out of his way. Did the doorway trick only work in one direction?! How did that make sense! The doorway to the living room handled two-way traffic just fine!

"Hey!" He spun around and gave Wendy a death glare. She laughed silently. He knocked furiously. "Hey, I'll get you for this, see if I don't!" When Bill had his power back, maybe he'd make her into a gargoyle on the outside of the Fearamid while the rest of the town was nice and cozy in his throne. See how she liked being locked outside. Pyramids didn't even need gargoyles.

She just waved at him, oblivious to the danger she was courting.

He muttered, "Oh, Icy, if you weren't Raina's kid..." She was Raina's kid, though.

All right, fine, no big deal. He wasn't letting anyone think this bothered him. Eventually a tourist would come along and let him in. If the Pines caught him and got mad, he could tell them that Wendy had tricked him into getting stuck outside, and it wouldn't even be a lie. (Would they believe him, though? Mabel would. Ford definitely wouldn't. Bill thought he at least ought to earn points for nicely sitting on the porch like the obedient dog they wished he was...)

A dented beige car rolled into the parking lot; Bill perked up as three out-of-place-looking men in black suits stepped out. Well, look who was back. "Hey, nice car! Much subtler than the fedmobile you were driving yesterday."

Agent Powers almost stumbled mid-step when he noticed Bill. "Er—yes. I appreciate the recommendation."

Bill got to his feet and leaned with one hand on a post. "I see you at the beach, I see you at this tourist trap... I'm starting to think you're on vacation, agents!"

Solemnly, Powers said, "I can assure you we're not."

"Definitely not," Agent Trigger agreed.

Bill glanced past them. Agent Dale was grinning broadly and snapping photos of the Mystery Shack with a camera hanging around his neck. "Wow, this place is so much fun." He tilted his head back to get a picture of the totem pole.

Bill raised his brows.

Trigger said, "Those are investigation photos."

"Sure," Bill said.

"We're looking for the owner of the Mystery Shack," Powers said. "I don't suppose you've seen him, ma'am?"

"Not yet. I think 'Mr. Mystery' is giving a tour right now."

"I see. Thank you for your help, ma'am." He almost moved to head inside, then hesitated.

He'd been doing that a lot around Bill the last couple of days. "Something else I can help you with, agent?"

"Uh—" Powers cleared his throat and flushed faintly red high on his cheeks. "I—feel that I ought to inform you that you're... looking even more exquisite today." Trigger stared at Powers.

Bill—slouched; sunburned; barefoot; fingernails and toenails painted in four different sloppy styles; and wearing a child's bedsheet with cartoon ponies on it, a purple puma t-shirt so large the neck hole slipped down his shoulder, an eyepatch with hot pink "RAD DUDE" sunglasses on top (and faint tan lines showing where he'd been wearing his eyepatch on the other side yesterday), and bumblebee deely boppers—said, "Tell me something I don't already know!" He laughed. "Kidding—that's impossible."

Powers nodded sharply and turned away, wearing an odd look somewhere between disappointed and relieved. "Dale, you stay out here and take some readings."

Dale flashed Powers a thumbs-up and pulled out a tablet.

Powers opened the door; Bill quickly pushed off the post. "Hey! Aren't you gonna hold the door for me?" He had something that looked like a skirt on, he could exploit that social norm today.

"Er—" Powers stopped in his tracks. "Yes, of course, ma'am."

"Aren't you a gentleman!" Bill swept back inside.

Wendy laughed at his grand reentrance��but petered out as she noticed the overdressed new visitors. Bill split off from the agents to circle the shop and try to look like a normal tourist, but he mouthed toward Wendy, "Feds." Her eyes widened.

"Excuse me, miss," Powers said to Wendy. "We're looking for the proprietor. Do you know when he'll be available?"

"Uhh..." All knowledge she previously had of the shack's tour schedule fled her mind in the face of a legit government agent. She circled around the counter. "I'll... tell Soos you're here."

Powers frowned. "'Soos'?"

"Yeah, um—Jesús Ramirez? The owner?"

Trigger muttered to Powers, "I think that's the handyman."

Wendy said, "He took over the business last year."

"Apparently our intel is out of date," Powers said. "Very well. We'll wait here."

Wendy veered toward Bill on her way to the museum and hissed, "Take the register—"

"Hell no," Bill hissed back. He wasn't letting the government know he worked here if the shack was under investigation. "Where's Melody?"

"Out. She slept bad."

Hmm. Strange. "I'll distract the suits." He wanted to snoop, anyway. "Go."

Wendy gave him an exasperated look, but ducked into the museum.

Bill sidled up to the agents, who were inspecting the display of alien-in-a-tube keychains. Trigger picked one up and murmured, "Are they suspended in jello?"

"That has to be a health hazard."

"Good likeness of the real thing, though."

Bill stopped in his tracks. There weren't a lot of places in the US where a government agent could have a personal meet-and-greet with an alien corpse in a glass tank. They must have been assigned to one or two investigations in Hangar 618. Strange; he would have thought there was more than enough going on in Gravity Falls to keep their schedules filled.

He shook off his misgivings, leaned on a display cabinet near the agents, and said loudly, "So!" He tried not to grin too widely when both agents jumped. "Looks like it's just us until the next tour."

Powers' cheeks turned pink again. "It looks like it." He cleared his throat and tried to surreptitiously adjust his tie. "I... suppose I'm overdue to ask you your name?"

"Call me Goldie!" Before Powers had an opportunity to dig deeper into Bill's identity, he asked, "So what brings you by the shack, agents? I don't think you ever explained what you're investigating!"

"Yes, that would be because it's classified. That information is shared strictly on a need-to-know basis," Powers said. "But we're here to check on last week's gravitational anomalies and an odd power surge that was witnessed over the weekend." (Bill loved this chatterbox, funniest secret agent ever.)

"Oh wow. Sounds exciting," Bill said, voice just a little too flat to sound convincing but a little too forceful to sound like he didn't mean it. (Always keep 'em guessing.) "Any leads?" He doubted it.

"Not yet," Powers admitted. "We've tracked similar power surges in Gravity Falls for decades, and last year several occurred concurrently with other gravitational anomalies; but our investigation last year..." Powers exchanged a glance with Trigger. Trigger just grimaced in irritation. Powers finished, "didn't find anything conclusive. So." His voice took on an edge of frustration. "Here we are. Looking around town."

"Again," Trigger grumbled.

Bill was surprised they could even remember last summer's gravitational anomalies. He'd expected Ford had completely erased their memories of the case; but he hadn't seen exactly what term Ford had plugged into the memory gun. "D'ya expect to find anything conclusive this time? Or is this just a routine follow-up on an old case."

"More of a routine follow-up," Powers said.

"Standard procedure," Trigger added.

"Except," Powers said, "that two days ago, we also received an anonymous tip that a dangerous individual may be hiding in this very building—and that they pose an immense risk to national security."

Trigger said, "Possibly global security."

Bill learned what it felt like for a human's blood to run cold. "Huh," he said. "Interesting."

"Witnesses claim the power surge appeared to originate in this part of the woods. We think this individual might have been involved," Powers said. "But it's probably nothing you need to worry about, ma'am." (Bill must have looked more alarmed than he'd meant to.) "We receive tips like this all the time. I doubt we'll find anything interesting here. All the same—"

The gift shop door popped open and Agent Dale poked his head in. "Sirs!" He held up a beeping tablet. "I'm picking up a signal from one of our flash drives."

Powers and Trigger turned their full attention to Dale. "Which one?" Trigger asked.

"The one we lost last summer."

The agents exchanged a look.

Soos hurried through the curtain to the museum, Wendy following close behind. "Hey, dudes! Welcome to the Mystery Shack! What can I get for you, a tour? Souvenirs? Um, bribes...?"

Bill grimaced. As Wendy passed, he muttered to her, "He does not have the grace at this Stanley does."

Powers's eyes darted between Dale and Soos; and then settled on Soos. "Mr. Ramirez. I'd like to have a word with you about your business. Privately."

"O-of course! I hope you don't think we're up to anything or anything." Soos pulled aside the museum's curtain. "Just step this way. Through my magic portal to a world of wonder and whimsy!"

"If I have to," Powers said tiredly. "Trigger, Dale—you two follow that signal. I want that flash drive back."

"Yessir." They hurried out of the gift shop.

Before Powers followed Soos into the museum, he turned to Bill. "My apologies for disrupting your trip, ma'am, but I'm afraid the next tour may be... delayed." A look of panic flashed across Soos's face.

"I can come back tomorrow!" Bill waved off the apology. "Watching a small-town business owner get investigated by the feds is way more exciting! You oughta check his financial records, I bet there's all kinds of tax evasion going on here!" Soos's panic escalated to sheer terror.

To Bill's surprise, something akin to fear flashed across Powers's face as well. "You think we're—? That is—we're not that sort of federal..." He cleared his throat loudly, mumbled, "Very kind of you," and hastily retreated after Soos, cheeks red.

What the hell was that? Powers had been paying way too much attention to Bill the last couple of days. Was it possible he was playing dumb? Did he already know that Bill was the "dangerous individual" in the Mystery Shack? Was he just trying to figure out the best way to bring Bill down and drag him in—

"Man." Wendy laughed, keeping her voice low. "You really distracted him. What'd you do to the poor guy?"

Bill leaned on the counter by the cash register. "What?"

"He's head over heels for you." At Bill's blank look, Wendy said, "Wait, did you not notice?"

Bill opened his mouth. Nothing came out while he tried to reconcile Wendy's claim with the idea of his body ending up suspended in a glass tube in a secret military base. "What?"

"Did you see him?" Wendy asked. "He can't stop staring at you, every time you glance at him he gets redder, you said one nice thing to him and he completely fell apart..."

Bill mentally ran through the last two days. Ohhh. In retrospect, that did explain why Powers had offered to rub sunscreen on him. "I barely even noticed! I'm used to everyone treating me like that! At least four people fall in love with me daily," Bill said. "I turn heads and drop jaws everywhere I go. I've got a whole collection of lower jaws preserved in formaldehyde." Admittedly, not all of them had dropped naturally. A few had been coaxed.

"Most people just steal their partners' shirts, but alright. I can respect a good murder trophy collection."

"There's a fine line between a lady-killer and a serial killer," Bill said cheerfully, "and I'd know! But enough about my love life!" As much of a relief as it was to realize Powers wasn't plotting Bill's arrest, that didn't mean it couldn't change. "What did you guys do with the flash drive with the agents' secret mission?"

Wendy shrugged. "Dunno, I wasn't here."

And Bill hadn't been either. While the Stan twins had been recounting their tragic life history, Bill had been fully occupied at the Quadrangle of Qonfusion, repairing the damage Ford had done before the portal opened and trying to get his Henchmaniacs to chill out about those guys who'd died. (Seriously, none of the dead guys had even been among the Henchmaniacs' A-listers, who cared?) By the time he'd realized something interesting was happening, the agents' memories were already erased and they were heading out of town.

"Okay. Great." He backed into the living room. "If you see 'em again, slow them down."

####

Bill pounded on the guest room door and waited.

"Just a second!" Ford answered the door, his freshly laundered coat in one hand and a Bigfoot fur-covered lint roller in the other. "What is—? Bill." His expression immediately closed off. His gaze flicked up to Bill's bumblebee deely-boppers. "What are you wearing."

"High fashion, not important. What did you humans do with the flash drive you got from the eagles?"

"The what from the what?"

"Last year. Right after you got home. Government agents. Little black plastic stick full of knowledge."

"Oh, that. Fed it to the goat," Ford said. "Why."

"Because the agents put a tracking device in it, and they're tracking it right now."

Ford's brows shot up. He hurried to the guest room window; Bill peeked around him.

Agent Trigger and Agent Dale were wandering around outside, Trigger in the lead while Dale trailed behind him looking at a tablet screen and saying, "Warmer... warmer... colder... okay, now warmer again..."

"Damn." Ford rushed to the back door.

Bill grabbed him by the sweater before he could get outside. "Whoa there, cowboy. If they see you, do you have a story prepared for why the 'superior officer' who sent them packing last year is still here?"

Ford raised a finger. "I... do not." He rushed to the stairs. "Kids!"

"Grunkle Ford!" Dipper stumbled to the bottom of the stairs, sweating and breathing heavily. "Hey—" Mabel ran into him from behind, nearly knocking them both down. They grabbed the banister for support as they panted. Dipper tried again, "Hey... did you know... the number of steps on the stairs..."

"Yes yes, the half of the staircase hidden by the turn in the landing changes when you can't see it," Ford said. "Dipper, Mabel, we have an emergency. I need you to catch the goat! Now!"

####

Gompers gnawed placidly on a paper towel hanging out of the trash can. He detected the subtle bouquet of rotting bell peppers. And was that spilled orange juice? Truly delectable. He took another bite.

The back door burst open. Gompers turned to stare as Dipper and Mabel charged outside.

He bleated indignantly as they scooped him up between them. Dipper hissed, "Go, go, go!"

They hauled him inside and slammed the door.

Trigger and Dale circled around the corner of the shack. Dale said, "It should be right... huh. That's weird."

"What is it?"

"The signal from the flash drive just moved."

"Moved? Where?"

Dale walked in a small circle, trying to get the tablet to re-triangulate the flash drive's location. "Inside the shack."

Trigger frowned at the door.

####

"C'mon, Gompers," Mabel hissed, trying to drag him down the hallway with Dipper. "We've gotta get you somewhere the government guys can't see you through the window!"

Gompers bleated again. Dipper smacked a hand over his mouth.

All three froze as someone knocked on the door. Voice low, Dipper said, "We're not home. Nobody's home right now." Mabel nodded.

####

Bill lurked next to the living room door, listening to the conversation in the gift shop as Powers said, "Thank you for your time, Mr. Ramirez. Oh, and by the way—you wouldn't happen to have seen any top secret government flash drives around the place, would you?"

There was a long pause. "Why, no," Soos said carefully. "I have not."

"Then do you have an explanation for why my agents detected one in this vicinity... and it's moving?"

There was an even longer pause. "Perhaps it was... eaten. Without our knowledge," Soos said. "Mayhaps by some variety of creature."

"Hmm," Powers said. "Perhaps. Would you mind if we look around for it."

"Uhh... yes. I would mind," Soos said. "Please don't."

Powers sighed deeply. "Fine. We'll be back." The floorboards creaked as he walked toward the exit. "Trigger, Dale—let's move out."

The household didn't heave a collective sigh of relief until the gift shop door had shut.

####

(A lot of y'all have been waiting for the Bill Seduce A Government Agent plot for like a year and a half. We're finally here! Yay!

Back in April when I was starting to write this plot in earnest, I was trying to figure out a reason why the agents would turn their attention on the shack (and the Pines family) again that was more threatening than just "yeah there are more gravity anomalies, again. whatever." And @quartz-the-moth-cat solved it with one word: "Gompers." Genuinely that one suggestion pulled the whole plot together. So thank you again for that.

In the months since TBOB came out, a lotta folks have incorrectly assumed I've made changes to my plot due to TBOB or that eerily TBOB-compliant things I wrote before the book were actually written after. So I think I'm gonna start documenting what I'd already planned/written, because I'm petty and I don't want TBOB to get credit for my own ideas:

The entire Agent Powers plot arc was written before TBOB came out. Adding fish brains to J4 was a post-TBOB addition (since we now know that's how he controls books), as was the bit with the agents discussing aliens and the aside about Hanger 618. And the chatter about stealing people's lower jaws, because in the wake of TBOB I think I need Bill to crack more jokes about gore & body horror. Nothing else in this chapter was changed due to TBOB.

I'm looking forward to hearing y'all's comments!!)

#(i think the funniest part of this week's art is the combination of eyepatch on Bill's left eye + eyepatch tan lines on his right eye)#bill cipher #human bill cipher #agent powers #agent trigger #gravity falls #gravity falls fic #gravity falls fanart #fanart #my art #my writing #bill goldilocks cipher

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