#12 hours fic

[angst-is-love-angst-is-life]

*plotting more of 12 hours*

My brain: Oh! Here’s another way to traumatize Barry more!!

Me: STOP. WHUMP IS NOT PLOT— WE NEED ACTUAL PLOT

[whump-is-love-whump-is-life]

Your “whumpee doesn’t even plead for it to stop anymore, just a break” reblog reminds me of Barry in that 12hrs fic you posted

Also. Maybe Zoom wakes him with a bucket of freezing water when it’s time for him to get up and run again

The post/reblog in question this one gives me so many whumperfliesssss

Ouch— there were definitely times that happened. Early on I’d say, he probably asked (turned into begging quickly) for a longer break a few times before learning A. It doesn’t work. Zoom just ignores him or the worse alternative;

B. Zoom either hurts Barry, or threatens to hurt Jesse or Jay. The second proves most effective as it gets him moving and running pretty much immediately.

OH???? YOU EVIL GENIUS!! Well that’s canon now. Why not give Barry a little extra motivation when he doesn’t wake up fast enough? Something to consider if I ever do post/finish another chapter👀 thanks for the idea anon! (I assume you don’t mind if I use it; if not lmk)

[rynli]

shut up we’re so fuckin hetero-sexual

[fishfingersandscarves]

cries for 5 billion years about hounds by @xx-vergil-xx

[ohbo-ohno]

Kinktober Day 12 - Somnophilia

Soap x Reader - 5.5k (on ao3)

summary: Your doctor offers to help you get home after your lasik eye surgery. (Reader POV & Johnny POV)

cw: noncon sex, drugging, kidnapping, briefly mentioned lasik eye surgery (no description past one mention of a scalpel)

note: tysm to ceil for giving me this idea <3 i did a few google searches on lasik eye surgery and tried to mention the actual feelings as little as possible, and also the drug johnny uses is probably literally impossible but its fic so who cares lol

“And… how long did you say I have to wear these?” You ask, tentatively touching the glasses resting over your eyes.

“Och, not long at all. Just until tonight, then you come in for a check-up tomorrow afternoon and I’ll let you know what other care you’ll need.” Dr. MacTavish replies, big hands adjusting the frames and pushing them up your nose.

“I hope you don’t mind me asking, but are they usually painted like this?” You’d hardly been able to see post lasik-surgery - mostly just big swaths of color - but you feel far more vulnerable with the sunglasses on, their blacked out lenses leaving you entirely in the dark except for the blurry light around the rims. 

Your doctor’s laugh is low and comforting, his hand patting you on the shoulder before you hear him moving away. “Of course. Not all optometrists use them, but I’ve found for patients like you they have the best results.”

“Like me?”

“Yes,” another chuckle, and the sounds of what you assume are tools being put away. “Patients who struggle to be good and sit still during their surgery.”

“Ah.” You feel your cheeks go hot in embarrassment. “I really am sorry about that…”

“No need,” he reassures, his hand coming to rest on the back of your neck. You can’t help but jerk a little, the glasses slipping down your nose. “Oops, don’t be losin’ those, bonnie.”

Your cheeks go hot and you have to fight the urge not to reach up and fix them yourself since his hand gets their first. He rights them quickly, then taps the tip of your nose with a finger. “There you go. Let’s keep those where they should be, hm?” He gives the nape of your neck a squeeze, his palm warm and rough, and you do your best to nod without awkwardly dislodging him.

“Now, do you have a ride home?”

You suck your teeth a little at that. You hadn’t known you’d be wearing the dark glasses after - the care plan you and Dr. MacTavish had discussed beforehand had made it seem like you’d be able to ride the bus home, but you’re not comfortable doing that in your blinded state.

“Ah, not right now,” you start, tangling your fingers together in your lap to avoid rubbing at your itchy eyes. “But I can probably call a friend-”

“Nonsense,” Dr. MacTavish dismisses, moving away from you and back to whatever he’d been moving before. “You’re my last patient of the day, how about I give you a ride home?”

“Oh,” you start, startled at his offer. “Oh, that’s… no, that’s alright, Doctor. I’m sure one of my friends could-”

He interrupts you with a tsk, and suddenly there’s a hand at your elbows guiding you up, then just one as he walks you out of the office. “No, that won’t do. We need to get you home and in bed as soon as possible - it’s not good for you to be keeping your eyes open so much after surgery, you know.”

“Oh, really?” You gasp a little, letting him guide you. “Should I be keeping them closed? I don’t want to make anything worse…”

“You’re doing just fine, bonnie, no worries.” The hand on your elbow squeezes as you come to a stop, and you hear the sound of something being written on. “I’ll take good care of you now. C’mon.” What must be a pen is dropped onto what you can only assume is the front counter, and you’re guided forward again. “We’ll have you safe at home in no time.”

Dr. MacTavish’s car is nice - the seats aren’t cracking at all, the air conditioning works to cool the interior quickly, there’s a faint minty smell - but it disconcerts you more than you might’ve expected to be left completely blind in an unfamiliar environment, and with someone you don’t know past a professional relationship.

You give him your address after he buckles you in (you swear his hand brushes your chest, but it doesn’t linger and you don’t want to accuse him of something unfounded just because of a slight touch) and he doesn’t bother to input it into the GPS, tells you he already knows where the neighborhood is.

You haven’t felt so vulnerable in a long time. Even around the edge of the glasses, all you can see are blurs of color, and you feel oddly exposed without the ability to see. Your eyes itch and sting, and it takes conscious effort not to rub the feeling away. 

You lift a hand to rub them without even thinking but before it’s even halfway to your face Dr. MacTavish grabs it, pinning it to your thigh and making a low noise of dissent. “No rubbing now, lass, you know the rules.”

The heat creeping up your neck is entirely involuntary, and you tuck your free hand beneath your leg to resist the urge to squirm. “Right, of course, I’m sorry Dr. MacTavish.”

“Johnny, lass, no need for titles off the clock.”

You try to make a vague noise of understanding but end up sounding a bit like a bird, your hand clammy beneath his. He gives you a squeeze, but doesn’t let go. You’d ask him to move but… well, you don’t want to make things awkward when he’s your only way home at the moment and you figure he’s just helping. So you try to relax your fingers, and zone out to the sound of him humming along to the radio.

“Here we are,” he announces eventually, the car slowing to a stop before he turns into your driveway. “Nice neighborhood, hen. Very safe.”

You try to laugh casually and cringe when it just comes off as awkward - you’re unsure how to naviagte small-talk when all you really want to do is curl up in bed and sleep. “I just moved here recently, but it seems to be a pleasant area. I certainly don’t have any complaints.”

Dr. MacTavish - Johnny - hums in response, turning the car off and getting out to come to your side. He unbuckles you quickly and again there’s a little voice in the back of your head that says his hand lingered by your waist for just a few beats too long. But his fingers don’t venture anywhere appropriate, and you tell yourself that you’re seeing something that isn’t really there.

He keeps a hold of your elbow as he guides you up the stairs and into your building. He pauses and then a moment later you hear a ding, and the clear familiar sound of an elevator opening.

“Oh,” you say, shocked as he tugs you forward. “I had no idea the elevator was fixed - it’s been out of order since I moved in.”

“Really?” You hear press a button.

You stand there in silence for a moment, eyebrows furrowed, before you feel the elevator start to move.

“Um, Dr Ma- Johnny, what floor did you pick?”

There’s a pause before he answers, and the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

“Och, silly me,” Johnny laughs, the sound echoing in the metal walls. “Force of habit, bonnie, I picked my floor in my building. What’s yours?”

You try to laugh it off, but the way his fingers tighten almost imperceptiably against the crook of your elbow has you sounding a bit too stiff. “Four, please.”

“Four,” he hums, and you hear him press another button.

The ride up is a bit awkward, at least from your perspective. Johnny makes no attempt at conversation past the occasional hum along to the music, and you’re a little too on edge to worry about small-talk right now.

Calm down, you insist to yourself. He’s just being polite. Making sure you get home safe. You’ve got to stop seeing the worst in people.

You take a deep breath and force yourself to relax.

There’s a slightly uncomfortable silence when the door opens for the first time, both you and Johnny just waiting for it to close and take you to the proper floor. 

The doors are much quicker to open the third time, and you figure Johnny must live on the third or fifth floor in his own building for you to have gotten to your floor so quickly.

“What’s your apartment number, lass?”

You tell him, and his hold loosens slightly against your arm. There’s a part of you - the part still a little cautious for reasons you can’t quite name - that relaxes when the path he takes is familiar. Only a few steps, apartment on the right side of the hall.

“Let me get my keys,” you mumble, tugging your arm away from his and pulling your keychain out of your pocket. You’d opted not to bring a purse to your surgery, thinking you’d be riding the bus home mostly blind, so you’ve got virtually nothing to dig through before offering your keyring up. 

They’re taken, you hear the familiar jungling soun, and then you’re being guided into your apartment by a firm hand placed at the small of your back. You can’t help but sigh deeply in relief, the familiarity of your home a comfort when you still feel so unachored without your sight.

“Very cute place you’ve got,” Johnny compliments, a smile audible in his voice.

“Thank you.” You hesitate just a moment before going on, unsure of how to phrase your next sentence. “And thank you for all the help getting home, Doctor, I really do appreciate it.”

A.k.a., I’m safe, you can leave.

“Aye, of course!” Johnny says, sounding almost offended like you were implying he wouldn’t usually take his patients home. Another part of you relaxes - he probably does this for every patient he sees at the end of a workday, you’re certainly nothing special. “Now, let’s get you settled nice and snug in bed, and then I’ll be on my merry way.”

“Oh, you really don’t have to-”

“Nonsense!” You’re cut off as he drops a heavy hand onto the nape of your neck, ignoring your slightly dramatic flinch and guiding you forward. “I’ve gotten you this far, would be a shame if I left you now and you took a tumble, hm?”

“I think I can get around my own apartment well enough, “ you try to protest, a little huff of offense escaping without your permission.

“Well, now we won’t have to test that theory.”

He moves quickly and just seconds later you’re sort of shoved onto your bed - almost oddly high off the ground, but you chalk it up to the way you stumble onto it. 

Johnny scoops your feet up, laughs a little at your yelp and lays you out on the bed. You blink up into the dark glasses, a little gobsmacked at the sudden shift and odd amount of manhandling from the doctor.

“Do you have any pain meds, love? We wouldn’t want you wakin’ up in the middle of the night, all uncomfortable and hurt. Something light, like Advil or Tylenol?”

“Um, yes,” you stutter a bit, pushing yourself up onto your elbows and glancing up at where you hear his voice. “In my bathroom, on the counter. But Dr. MacTav-”

A hand presses into the center of your chest, forcing you back to the bed with a little oof before your hear him walk away. “Johnny, lass! What’ll I have to do to get you to call me the proper name, hm?”

His voice is almost jovial, and you hear him muttering to himself a bit through the open door of your bathroom before he returns. You hear water running for a moment, and then his shoes on the carpet of your bedroom as he comes back.

“Here,” he says as he grasps your hand, holding it palm open and dropping two pills into it. “And you had a spare cup in the bathroom, so you won’t have to swallow dry.”

“Thank… thank you, Doc- Johnny, truly, I appreciate it.” 

You swallow dryly, suddenly thankful for the glass of water. The pills are small in your palm, familiar but there’s something in the back of your head screaming at you. You run your fingers over them absentmindidly, the stinging itch in your eyes growing.

Johnny scoops an arm around your shoulders, helping you sit up a bit and guiding the glass to your lips. “Here you are, lass, quick sip.”

You listen, then pop the pills into your mouth and swallow them with the water.

“Good girl,” Johnny hums, his voice vibrating through your side. His hand squeezes the shoulder in his grasp, and you shudder out a breath at the odd… intimacy? That doesn’t quite feel like the right word, but affection feels too distant for how close he holds himself.

You’re guided back down, head resting on a somewhat-flat pillow, and Johnny moves down to the end of the bed to take off your shoes.

Now that you’re resting in bed, it hits you how exhausted you are. The past few days of worrying over your procedure, the actual stress of the surgery itself, and the odd tension you’ve carried since all leave you feeling drained entirely once your head hits the pillow.

“We’ll get these shoes off so you’re nice and comfortable,” you hear Johnny say, his voice a little muffled now that you’re nearly half-asleep already. “Tired, lass?”

You only hum a bit, curling onto your side once both of your shoes are off, the sound of them thudding on the carpet almost silent. Your nose scrunches a bit as you get your first scent of the pillow. It doesn’t quite smell right, the lingering air of shampoo is definitely not one you’re familiar with.

There’s a shift of weight against your back, then a hand stroking over your head.

“Just sleep, bonnie. I’ll watch out for you.”

There’s a part of you, still awake enough, that thinks that isn’t right. But the more major part of you is already asleep. 

———————————————————————

Johnny can’t help but smile as he watches you sleep. The little trail of drool dripping from your lips onto his pillow, the soft sounds of your breathing, the twitches to your expression as you dream.

You’re truly adorable. He’d known it as soon as you came for a consultation about the surgery, and every moment spent after has only cemented that in his head. Even the way you tensed and squirmed in his chair while he was working was cute, your desperation to be good and listen overpowering your fear of what he was doing.

He reflects on the day as he gets undressed, folding his clothes on your dresser. You’d been very nervous, and even his most soothing tone and friendly conversation topics hadn’t done much to help. It’s natural - nobody’s ever at ease with a scalpel held over their eye - but he’d still felt a little dissapointed that his presense wasn’t of much help calming you down.

But it’s alright. You’ll learn very soon that you can trust him.

It was easier than he’d expected to get you back to his home. You’re far too trusting, apparently - another reason it’s for the best if he keeps an eye on you - and past some clear tension in your stance, you hadn’t fought him once or even tried to make sure he had taken you to the right place.

Johnny’s certainly not going to complain, though. His plan had been half-baked at best. Honestly if you’d even put up a slight bit of resistance, he probably would have taken you back home - your home - and gone back to the drawing board.

He can’t help but smile a bit. The fact that you hadn’t fought at all is just more proof that this was meant to be.

He climbs over your body, his naked skin brushing against your clothes. You don’t shift at all as he rolls you to your back, your face still relaxed in sleep. His smile grows.

“Pretty girl,” he coos, brushing a hand over your face. “Can you hear me?”

Nothing. Not even a twitch.

It’s easy to push your shirt up your stomach. He doesn’t take it off, not quite willing to risk that much movement while the drugs could still be settling in.

God, the way you’d just taken his pills with no hesitation, with just complete and total trust in him to do right by you. It makes his cock stifen against your stomach, the way you’d just listened and trusted him.

He moans as he finally pushes your shirt up to your collarbones, the sight of your tits bringing him to full hardness almost immediately. You’d dressed up for him, soft white lace wrapped around your beautiful chest. 

He ducks down to suck a peak into his mouth, tonguing at a nipple through the fabric. He groans a bit at the taste of your skin, muted as it is, and quickly tugs down the cup of the bra to get a real bite of you.

He could lay there at your tits for hours, he just knows it. He kisses his way across your chest, gives your other nipple some love and thumbing at the first with a free hand. He forces his movements to stay soft and slow, resists the urge to bite and leave a ring of teeth marks around your areola.

“Taste so good, baby,” he whispers as he pushes himself up, admiring the shiny spit across your skin. He rubs it in a little, spreading himself across any place his lips hadn’t touched. “Gonna let me get a taste of your pussy too?”

Obviously you don’t respond. Still, Johnny smiles down at you and moves to pet your stomach.

“Yeah, I know you will. Just wanna be a good girl for me, hm?”

Of course you do, he already knows you’ll be good to him - be good for him. 

It’s easy to wrap his hands around your waist and flip you gently to your stomach. He guides your head to the side and pulls your hair away to make sure he can get a good view of your pretty face, leans down to give you a soft kiss on the cheek and breathes in the scent of your bodywash and shampoo. 

Your pants are easy enough to get off, and he forces himself to tug them all the way off both legs before even looking at your sweet little ass. He’d been staring at any chance he could all day, had kept his eyes glued to your backside for the entire elevator ride up to his apartment when he was sure you couldn’t see his leering. 

Now he can’t help but groan aloud when he kneels over your thighs, the sight of you vulnerable and limp beneath him almost too much to handle.

“C’mon, spread your knees for me, lass,” he mutters, slowly moving your legs to the side and moving between them. He’s careful as he props you up onto your knees, folding them beneath you and making sure to balance you with one hand on your hip so you don’t fall to the side.

He’s nearly drooling as he gets his first sight of your core - lips just slightly spread, pretty pink pussy peeking out at him. It’s almost too much, he has to give himself a few quick jerks just to lessen the ache building in his cock.

“Look at you,” he says on a sigh, dipping his head low enough to breathe in your scent. He hikes your hips up a little higher to keep you at the right angle, quickly shushes your little noise of discontent at the shift.

“It’s alright, you’re ok,” he reassures, petting over your hip a few times to calm your unconscious mind. “Just wanna make you feel good, pretty thing. You got nothin’ to worry about.”

He licks you, from clit to ass, to help you calm down a bit more. It works - your body goes a little more limp in his hold, your back arching more easily into the position he wants. He licks you several more times, groaning as he tries to cover every inch of your cunt, tasting every piece of skin he can. He lays his tongue flat at first, then uses the tip to make sure he doesn’t miss a spot.

“So good,” he moans, burying his face into your center and just breathing there for a moment. There’s a little bit of slick beginning to drip from your hole, but not much. He licks it up anyway, savoring the taste and promising to feast later. 

He stays glued to your clit for a bit, taking the little bud between his lips and running the tip of his tongue over it again and again until he finds the exact spot that makes your thighs twitch, the pattern that has you whining every other breath.

Johnny moves back up, laps at the sweet nectar dripping steadily from you now. Every little flick of his tongue arouses you more, and no matter how long he keeps his mouth on you he knows he’d never run out of your taste.

It’s with only a bit of reluctance that he pulls away. He spreads both of your cheeks with his palms, admiring your two tight little holes and the sheen covering your most sensitive spots. He’d like to give your ass a few smacks, paint it red and watch you squirm, but he’s not sure how much sensation he can give you without pulling you from the drugs’ hold.

Which is also why he tucks a few fingers into your cunt, just to stretch you out. He’d like to fuck into you without any prep at all, watch your pretty face scrunch up as you’re spread on the thickest cock you’d ever taken (and he knows he’s the biggest you’ve had). Maybe you would even cry a little, blink teary eyes up at him and ask him to slow down.

He groans at the image, scissoring his fingers inside of you to prepare you as quickly as he can. 

It’s easy to ease himself forward and line his cockhead up with your little hole. He knows another finger would’ve been a kindness, but with how his cock throbs between his legs he’s not sure he’ll make it very long once he’s finally inside of you. 

So he taps the tip against your leaking hole, snorts quietly when the thought pops into his head that he’s almost knocking on a door, then slowly lets himself sink inside of your heat. He’s stares transfixed at the way your body opens for him so easily, a smooth coming together that he wishes he never had to look away from.

He keeps a secure grip on your hips, letting gravity do most of the work as his hips push forward steadily. His head rolls back on his neck, mouth hanging open and grunts spilling from his lips as your tight heat envelops him further and further.

He pauses halfway in to take a breather, just so he doesn’t come before his balls even meet your clit. Your body’s grip on him is unlike anything he’s ever felt, and he knos he made the right choice in bringing you home with him.

It’s hard, but Johnny manages to control himself and keep from fucking you too roughly. His thrusts are long and slow if a little extra harsh, and he stares down at your scrunched up little face and imagines all the filthy ways he’ll have you in the coming weeks.

You shift on your knees when he hits a particularly nice spot, little whines pouring from your throat on exhales. His thrusts nearly punch the air from your body, and he finds himself breathing in sync with you as he loses himself more and more to the pleasure.

He slips a hand from your waist to your clit as he gets closer. It would be awfully selfish of him to leave you needy after getting himself off, and he’s not about to deny himself the tight clench of your body as he brings you to climax.

It takes a little bit of trial and error to figure out what feels good for you - he can’t quite discern the difference between a nose scrunch of frustration and one of pleasure - but the steady pumps of his hips and the constant motions against your clit quickly bring you to the edge.

Your cunt tightens deliciously around him as you finally come, but the true beauty is in the way you go absolutely boneless beneath him. He has to firm up his grip on your waist just to keep you from sinking flat on the bed, huffing a laugh as he thrusts just a bit faster, just enough to get himself there too.

He lets his head fall beside yours as the two of you ride out your climaxes together, staring wide-eyed at the way your face relaxes into the pleasure. He leans forward enough to mesh your lips together, messily forcing your mouth open and licking at your tongue.

It’s not the best kiss - he has to do all the work, and he ends up soaking both of your chins in spit - but he relishes in it anyway. Your first kiss together is something he knows he’ll want to remember for years to come.

He hardly notices as he slips from your body, tingles shooting through every nerve leaving him mostly unaware of his body’s functions. He hardly has the energy to make sure he doesn’t crush you beneath him, instead laying beside you and tucking you into his chest.

“Thank you, bonnie,” he whispers into your hair, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head. “That was fantastic. Can’t wait to do it again, maybe you’ll do a bit more next time, yeah?” He laughs a little at his own joke, snuggling you close to him and letting his eyes shut slowly.

———————————————————————

You’re not sure how long it’s been when you wake up next, but you can tell immediately that something isn’t right. 

First of all, you’re half naked. And you can tell you’re half naked because your legs are being cradled by someone else’s naked legs. And you know for a fact that you didn’t bring anyone home with you.

Except… it occurs to you slowly as you finally blink stinging eyes open, except you did. Dr. MacTavish brought you home.

And you let him into your apartment. You just handed your keys over to a man you hardly knew, let him guide you right to bed without any sort of fight.

Your head pounds with a vengeance, right behind your already hurting eyes.

You let him give you pills, too. You remember that, though it’s the last thing you remember. He asked where your pain meds were and you didn’t even bother to check that he’d given you what you expected. You just swallowed them with water, like this was a man you could trust.

The slight soreness between your thighs tells you that you couldn’t.

The tears that begin to gather in your eyes hurt, which makes you want to cry even more. You can’t hold back a sniffle, then a hiccup, then what sounds more like sobs than anything else.

You bring your hands up to cover your mouth, briefly recoil and the weight over your torso.

You can’t bring yourself to look, but you know who’s in bed with you.

Johnny wakes up just minutes later, shifting and making a soft sound of confusion. It must not take him long to put the pieces together because it only takes him a few seconds to start cooing, his rough palm cupping your face over your own hands.

“Lass?” He hums, and from your peripheral you see his brows furrow. It’s only a slight comfort that you even can see. “What’s wrong?”

That almost gets a laugh out of you. You nearly choke on the sound, spit catching in your throat. “What’s- what’s wrong?”

He sighs, like he already knows. Of course he knows. He has to know.

“Don’t be upset.” He leans a little closer, and to your horror you feel him press his lips against your forehead. “You can be awake next time, yeah? Then you won’t feel so left out.”

“Left out,” you echo, a strain of horror making its way into your voice.

“But only if you can be good,” he clarifies. “No fighting me now. Just keep being good for me and you can stay awake, alright?”

“Good…” You feel like a robot, but the combination of your headache and the absurdity of your situation leaves you unable to process what’s happening.

It processes much faster when you feel one of his hands slide up the shirt you’re - by some miracle - still wearing. It’s instinctual to jerk up the bed and away when he goes straight for one of your breasts.

“Get- get off me!” Your voice is nearly a shriek, the pitch sending a shock of pain up your skull.

You don’t make it very far in your tiny escape attempt, Johnny quickly hefting himself above you and pinning you down with his weight.

“Now, lass,” he scolds, face set in a frown that you can’t tell is sarcastic or serious. “What did I just say?”

You can’t make yourself speak, fingers trembling beside your head as you stare up at him with wide eyes.

“C’mon,” he goads, dropping his weight a little lower. “Just gotta do one thing for me to stay awake, tell me what it was.”

“I’m not-” you gasp a big breath, blinking up at the man above you. “I’m not fucking calming down! Get off of me, you freak, how dare you-”

“Alright!” He nearly shouts, drowning you out. “That’s enough of that. Back to sleep with you, I think. We’ll see if you can handle participating next time.”

He’s leaned to the side before you can really register what he’s said, scooping two little white pills into his palm and coming back over you.

“Open wide,” he taunts, lips curled into a small smirk as he holds his closed fist above your mouth.

Every instinct in you says to scream and shout, to fight back. But he’s got you pinned with your arms stuck between the two of you, unable to lift your hands and cover your mouth, so you clamp your lips as tightly shut as you can to keep him out.

Johnny only sighs, like you’re making his drugging terribly inconvenient. You squeeze your eyes shut to block out his face, praying that you’ll open them and this will all just be a terrible nightmare.

“Really, lass?” He complains, his free hand reaching up to pinch your nose. Without anything to hold him up, you’re nearly crushed beneath his body weight. “Very mature. I can pinch far longer than you can hold your breath, y’know. You’re making this difficult for no good reason.”

Your eyes fly open at that, glaring up at him with what you hope is a scathing look.

He only laughs.

“Very cute,” he hums, rubbing his nose against your cheek. Your chest burns from the lack of air. “I think you’ll be just perfect to keep around the house. You’ll brighten this place in all the right ways, won’t you?”

Your eyes well with tears as black stars begin to dance across your vision. Completely against your own will, your lips part and you suck in a deep breath.

Johnny doesn’t waste any time - you nearly choke on the pills as they fly down your throat with the air you desperately inhale. You nearly choke, hacking with tears streaming from your eyes, but Johnny just holds a hand over your mouth and brings you both up enough to harshly pat your back.

“There you go, you’re ok,” he mumbles in your ear, rubbing the place he’d slapped as your chest heaves with desperate breaths. The pills leave an uncomfortable lump in your throat, and you reach up to rub at it as if that will make it any better.

He stays like that, holding you close, for several long heartbeats.

“Good girl,” he hums, lips pressing to your temple and the sound rumbling through the contact. “I hope you won’t make me do that next time, I’d much rather you be awake for this next part.”

He lays you back slowly, and you distantly wonder what on Earth he’s given you to knock you out so quickly. Already your eyes feel heavier and you’ve hardly swallowed. You try to keep your eyes open as long as possible, which leaves you staring up at Johnny as he hovers above you.

“It’s not the worst thing, though,” he whispers, hand cupping your cheek and thumb passing your undereye. “I don’t mind having you like this, soft and sweet for me.”

Your eyes finally flutter shut just as you feel your legs being nudged apart.

[tossawary]

I don't have a solid plot attached to this idea, I don't currently really have the desire to drop everything to go write "The Hobbit" fanfiction, but for a while I've had the idea of *gestures vaguely" some post-canon story (probably some form of fix-it) taking place before, during, and after a grand dwarven opera performance in Erebor.

Because I am absolutely certain that the Lonely Mountain had an absolutely stunningly beautiful Royal Opera House (and plenty of other, less grand performance halls) that, at the city's height, was putting at least one show every single day. Orchestral symphonies, operas and operettas, dramatic plays, dance performances... you name it, they had it and more. The various cultures of Middle Earth evidently ADORE music, dwarves absolutely included. The Company all bring instruments to Bag End to play and sing themselves off before their quest!

Also, beyond the music side of things, with how dwarves are named as master crafters? Smiths and toymakers and magicians? No way that they did not have some of the most gorgeous costumes, sets, and effects on the planet. Dwarves would go WILD with their articulated stage puppets, I know it.

One of my biggest issues with the film trilogy is that it failed to deeply explore the Company as people who had lost their home, beauty and culture included. Smaug not only killed countless people, entire families, and leave many of the survivors poor and desperate, the dragon went on to hoard their heirlooms and life's work and leave these priceless gold treasures UNUSED. It is an additional heartbreak to imagine Smaug tearing through Erebor neighborhood by neighborhood, house by house, so that he could tear out every gemstone in, say, mosaic made by someone's grandmother that sat above the breakfast table every morning. To think that Smaug in the aftermath tore magical lanterns off the walls, the sort that might have been decorated with animals or flowers, to make some daycare walkway just a little more cheery for the children, and in his greed left a dead city in the dark.

The live-action movies put both Smaug and the Balrog in these... absolutely enormous chambers that serve somewhat unclear purposes. The king's treasure vault and a former marketplace, I think? (Moria has been raised by goblins, I can forgive the emptiness.) It's a quick visual depiction of Thror's uncontrollable gold lust to give him a Scrooge McDuck room, sure, instead of anything with an actual organizational system (normally, I assume dwarves are big on sorting their vaults if they have one). Super big columns and hallways and staircases do somewhat effectively communicate the "lost glory" of Moria (I am very fond of these movies!!!), even if I also think it's not as interesting as it could have been. And the other obvious purpose of big, open warehouse-like spaces is 1) it's easier to animate the big creatures moving around in them generally and 2) it allows the films to show off the full-bodied visual spectacle of their big creatures.

But I think it would have also kicked ass to put Smaug in Erebor's former Royal Opera House or something, some enormous theatre decorated across generations. That could be big! The ART (statues, fountains, banners, windows, general architecture) that you could put on the exterior, which has had its face ripped open for the dragon to get inside? The ART that you could put INSIDE (mosaics, murals, and more) as Bilbo sneaks inside? Ohhh, you could include so many potential lore references with thematic relevance!

Also, Bilbo could get jump-scared by old articulated stage puppets or something. IT'S THE DRAGON-! Oh, no, it's some old opera prop. (Yes, we're talking more about an actual adaptation of "The Hobbit" rather than fanfiction concepts now.)

Sure, there's raw material treasure and coins hoarded here in this place, but there would also be musical instruments and toys and household tools and cookware and fancy dishes, wedding jewelry and anniversary gifts and family shrines and festival costumes, fountain statues and street lamps and mailboxes and business signs, and other evidence that people really LIVED here. These are all ordinary objects that Bilbo recognizes from the Shire.

We could tie these objects directly back to objects we saw featured in Bilbo's home early in this adaptation, which he was trying to "protect" from the dwarves during their "That's what Bilbo Baggins hates" song. There are half-burned portraits of people's late parents here too. Did he think that there weren't any dwarves who made doilies or handkerchiefs embroidered with flowers? Of course they made things like that too.

It's perfectly symbolic to, say, place Smaug's bed in an area like the king's throne room. The dragon is now the King Under The Mountain. But I think it would be deliciously haunting to have the throne room of Erebor be empty, the throne half-broken, the silver stripped from the walls and moved elsewhere, because Smaug doesn't care about Thror's old audience chamber. What's a dwarf king to a dragon? He burns the same as all the others. The dragon has instead made his bed in a beautiful public place of art and culture that was for the people, by the people, surrounded by the lovingly crafted belongings of the ordinary people he killed. Gold is gold to a dragon whether it's in a coin or a candlestick.

I think if you really want to sell one of the key messages of "The Hobbit", which in my opinion is: "If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world." then you ought to throw yourself behind EREBOR being a place where food and cheer and song had value, not just the Shire. Thorin isn't lost at the end because he's a dwarf and dwarves don't value such things, but because he as a specific person who makes the mistake of weighing pride and gold over people, and he comes to regret that on his deathbed.

So, back to the fanfiction idea, I think that Erebor had music again in it as soon as dwarves started living in it again. It will take decades and decades before the Royal Opera House is half as splendid as it was before, and there is a performance there with beautiful costumes and puppets and sets comparable to those that came before, some traditional historical show that is part of specific seasonal holiday for dwarves. But that very first winter, when the future still looked grim, I think the dwarves cleared out a small stage and cast the roles of this traditional musical retelling of their history among them, based on who knew the parts best, because they aren't just miners and smiths and soldiers, and there was music again in Erebor that winter despite all the damage that the dragon did.

[suddencolds]

Atypical Occurrence [2/?]

hello!! 10 drafts and (exactly) 3 months later, I am finally back with part 2 of Atypical Occurrence 😭 You can read part 1 here!

This chapter is a little personal to me. I don't tend to linger on writing scenes like this (in part because they are a little difficult for me), so it took awhile to hammer out the dynamic I wanted. That said, here it is at long last!!

This is an OC fic ft. Vincent and Yves. Here is a list of everything I’ve written for these two! :)

—

Summary: Vincent shows up late to a meeting. It just goes downhill from there. (ft. fake dating, the flu, a house visit, and certain revelations)

—

There’s a grocery store that’s a ten minute drive from Vincent’s apartment. Yves picks out ingredients for chicken soup, two different kinds of cold and flu medicine, a new pack of cough drops, a few boxes of tissues, a small thermometer. All in all, it’s less than a thirty minute excursion—something he’s done many times before in uni, where everyone seemed to catch something in the middle of exam season, and a house visit was just a short walk away.

Chicken noodle soup isn’t difficult. He’s made it a hundred times—he’s experimented with a dozen different variations of it. He puts the groceries in the fridge, washes the vegetables, and gets to work.

While the soup cooks, he half watches it, half busies himself with cleaning the apartment—loading up the dishwasher and hand washing everything that doesn’t fit, stocking the fridge and the medicine cabinet with the groceries he’s gotten, vacuuming the floors with a vacuum cleaner he finds tucked behind the fridge.

Then he shreds the chicken, chops a round of fresh vegetables to add to the broth, and waits.

 It’s comfortably quiet. Outside, rain drums steadily on the windowpane. It shows no signs of stopping soon. It’s dark enough outside—the sun fully set, the clouds heavy overhead—that the lit interior of the apartment kitchen feels like a warm reprieve.

Yves likes cooking. He doesn’t actively enjoy doing chores, but there’s something comforting to how mindless they are. It’s an appreciated distraction. 

The rain outside is loud enough that he doesn’t hear the footsteps, approaching, until Vincent clears his throat from behind him.

Yves jumps.

“You’re up,” he says, spinning on his heels to face him. Vincent looks a little worse for the wear—his hair a little messy, his shirt slightly rumpled from sleep, his glasses perched haphazardly in place.

Yves watches him take everything in—the pot on the stove, the chopping board set out on the counter, the empty paper bags from the grocery run flattened and stacked into neat rectangles.

“And you’re still here,” Vincent says.

“I made soup,” Yves says, by way of explanation. “It’s chicken noodle. I wasn’t sure if you’d be up for trying something new.” He reaches over to lift the lid off of the pot of soup. Steam wafts up from it, carrying with it the faint scent of the aromatics he’d added—thyme, bay leaf, garlic, peppercorns. “Actually, you picked a good time to wake up. I just added in the noodles, so it’s almost done.”

Vincent eyes the pot, his expression unreadable. “Did you leave to get groceries?”

“Earlier, yeah. You weren’t kidding about your fridge being empty.”

Vincent frowns. “I can pay you back. Did you keep the receipt?”

In truth, the price of the groceries is the last thing on Yves’s mind right now. He waves a hand. “Don’t worry about it.”

“It must have taken a long time.”

“Soup is pretty forgiving. You just toss everything into a pot of boiling water and wait. It’s barely any work at all.”

Vincent stares at him for a moment longer. Then he says: “That’s an oversimplification.”

“Not really. Besides, I enjoy cooking,” Yves says. “Thanks for letting me use your kitchen—though, technically, I guess I’m asking forgiveness instead of permission. I’ll clean everything up, by the way.” He’s done dishes along the way, so there isn’t really much to do besides rinse off whatever’s left, load up the dishwasher, and store whatever’s left of the soup in the fridge.

“You don’t have to,” Vincent says, before turning into his elbow with a few harsh, grating coughs. “I can clean up. It’s my apartment.”

“If you think I’m letting you do household chores while you have a fever—”

“It’s not that high,” Vincent interrupts, perhaps a little stubbornly. Yves lets out a disbelieving laugh. He leans over the counter, shifts his weight forwards on his feet to press the back of his hand to Vincent’s forehead.

It’s concerningly hot, still, which isn’t a surprise. Though perhaps the way Vincent blinks, a little tiredly, and leans forward into Yves’s hand is a giveaway on its own.

“It’s definitely over a hundred,” Yves says, withdrawing his hand. “If you don’t believe me, I’ll have you know that I bought a thermometer.”

For a moment, Vincent looks surprised. Then he sighs. “That was an unnecessary purchase.”

“Are you admitting that I’m right?”

Vincent just frowns at him, which—Yves notes—isn’t exactly a denial. “Fever or not, there’s not much I can do except sleep it off.”

“You can go back to sleep after you’ve had something to eat,” Yves says. “What was it that you said? That you haven’t had anything to eat since yesterday?”

“...You won’t leave unless I eat, then,” Vincent says. He says it evenly enough that it barely registers as a question.

Yves smiles at him. It’s not a wrong conclusion. “Exactly,” he says.

—

In between the hallway and Vincent’s kitchen is a small dining area, furnished with a high table and two high chairs. Yves waits until the noodles are cooked just enough. Then he turns off the stove, unrolls a placemat to lay out on the dining table, and carries the pot over.

He gets everything he needs: two bowls, two spoons, some of the fresh parsley he’d chopped earlier, for garnish—and lays it all out.

“I can help,” Vincent says, for maybe the third time. 

He’s seated on one of the chairs, which Yves had pointedly pulled out for him, looking like he’s perhaps a few seconds away from getting out of his seat and doing everything himself. It’s just like Vincent, Yves thinks, to offer to help—even at work, aside from all the work he takes on, it feels like he’s always finding some way or other to be useful. 

Yves says, “When you’re not running a fever, you can ask me again.”

When everything is laid out, he pulls up a chair for himself, so he can sit across from Vincent—who is still perched on his seat, though he looks a little less like he wants to get out of it. “You didn’t have to wait for me,” Yves says.

Vincent blinks at him. “It would have been rude to get started on my own.”

“Nonsense,” Yves says. “I made it for you.”

He takes a bite. The soup tastes fine. That is, it tastes the same as every other time he’s made it—light and comforting. It’s just one of those recipes Yves thinks he can make in his sleep. Nothing about it is particularly inventive. Still, he hasn’t cooked for Vincent before—not formally, at least, other than the dish he’d bought to Joel’s potluck—so it’s a little nerve-wracking to watch Vincent take a bite. 

It’s worse, still, to watch his eyes widen by a fraction. For a moment, Yves wonders if he’s done something wrong—if perhaps, it isn’t to Vincent’s taste, after all. He sets his spoon down. “Is it okay?”

“It’s really good,” Vincent says. “I can see why Mikhail said what he said.” 

“What?”

“That your cooking was half the reason why he roomed with you.”

Yves laughs. “So does that mean you’ll forgive me for trespassing?” 

Vincent smiles back at him. “I’ll consider it.” Now, with his glasses off, Yves can see his eyes a little more clearly—they’re slightly red-rimmed, his eyelashes long and dark, his cheeks flushed brighter with fever. There’s a little crease at the edge of his eyes which shows up when he smiles.

Yves is caught off guard, for a moment. The tightness in his chest is nothing, he tells himself. Certainly not a crush that he shouldn’t be allowed to have. 

A crush. That’s new, too. It’s ironic, considering the terms of their fake relationship. He thinks it’s probably supposed to make him better at this—what better way to feign romantic interest than to not have his feelings be so fake, after all?—but instead, he finds himself at an uncharacteristic loss for words, finds himself stumbling over the most basic of pleasantries. 

Of course, he has no intention of acting on his feelings. Vincent is attractive, yes—but he’s also considerate, and attentive, and hardworking enough to go early and stay late, to take on work he doesn’t get credit for. He’s thoughtful enough to entertain Yves’s friends, to have lunch with Yves’s siblings, to fly all the way to France to meet Yves’s family.

But all of that is inconsequential. None of it is going to amount to anything, because Yves knows how to keep his distance. Because Yves needs this—the perks of their fake relationship—more than he needs to indulge in any inconvenient crush. Because he knows enough to know how things would turn out if he were to say something.

That’s the thing. Vincent isn’t cruel. It’s for that reason, precisely, that Yves knows that he’d drop this arrangement immediately if he knew. Vincent would never string him along knowingly, and that’s what makes this so much worse—Yves has gone and gotten himself stupidly attached. 

Now that they’re sitting across from each other, in Vincent’s apartment, having dinner, Yves thinks—a little selfishly, perhaps—that this is the best that he can ask for. It is all that he can ask for. Far better to keep up the pretense entirely, far better to pretend that this is all just for show. When they put an end to this arrangement—someday, inevitably—Yves will thank Vincent for everything, and then they’ll go their separate ways. He already knows how it will go. There is no need to complicate things.

It’s quiet, for some time. Yves finishes his bowl first, heads over to the sink to rinse it off, and positions it neatly in the lowest compartment of the dishwasher. When he gets back, Vincent is spooning more soup into his bowl. Yves allows himself to feel a little relieved to see that he has an appetite.

“It’s been awhile,” Vincent says, after some time. “Since anyone’s done this for me.”

“Made you chicken soup?” Yves says, a little puzzled. “If you want the recipe, I can give it to you. I make it all the time.”

“No,” Vincent says. His expression is unparseable. “Just— since anyone’s looked after me, in general.”

“Oh.” Yves finds his mind is spinning. “How long have you been living alone?”

“Since university. I had suitemates, in my second year. Then I got an apartment of my own.”

“Because you like the privacy?”

“It was just simplest.”

Yves thinks back to his years, rooming with Mikhail—the conversations they’d have to have to figure out groceries, to alternate cooking dinner and doing dishes, to manage transportation. He has a studio apartment now, too, but he’s over at his neighbors’ house frequently enough, or otherwise at home with Leon and Victoire for dinner, so it doesn’t really get lonely.

“You have a pretty spacious kitchen,” he says. “I hope you don’t mind that I used your pots and pans. I’ll wash them, I swear.”

Vincent takes in a small, sharp breath. Yves looks up just in time to see him twist away from the table, tenting his hands over his nose and mouth.

“hhIHh’IIKTS-HHuhh-!”

“Bless you!” Yves exclaims. Judging by the way Vincent keeps his hands raised over his face, he assumes that there are going to be more. He rises from his seat, heads back into the kitchen in search for—ah. Six boxes of tissue boxes, stacked neatly into a block. He tears off the thin plastic film around them, removes a box from the pile, and pulls off the tab.

When he gets back to the dining table, Vincent is ducking into steepled hands with another—

“hhih’GKKT-SHHh-uuUh! hh’DDZSChh-HHuh! snf-Snf-! hhh… Hh… hh-HH-hh’yIIDDzsSHH-hHUH-!!”

The sneezes seem to scrape painfully against his throat, for the way he winces in their aftermath. He twists away from Yves to cough lightly, after, into his shoulder, his eyes watering. “Bless you!” Yves pushes the tissue box towards him. “Here.”

Vincent takes a tissue from the box, blows his nose quietly. When he emerges, lowering the tissue from his face, his eyes are a little watery. He eyes the tissue box. “Did you buy these earlier, too?”

“I did,” Yves says. “I picked up some medicine, too. I didn’t know what flavor you wanted, so I got a couple different kinds. And some other stuff—your fridge was getting pretty empty, by the way—in case you needed it.”

Vincent lifts his head to study him, as if there’s something he’s trying to understand. Finally, he says, “Do you do this for all of your friends?”

“What?”

Vincent frowns, as if the subject matter should be obvious. “Cook for them. Get groceries. Clean their apartment.”

“Sometimes,” Yves says. He’s certainly no stranger to stopping by to help—sometimes with homemade soup, or tea packed tightly in a thermos, or something else. Then again, that was easier to do back in uni, when everyone lived within a twenty minute radius. “It depends on what they need.”

“So this is just a Yves thing.”

“What? Showing consideration for my friends?” 

“Showing consideration is one thing,” Vincent answers. “You could have left after dropping off the files. You would still have been showing your consideration.”

“I guess that’s true. But at that point, I was already here,” Yves says, with a shrug. “It seemed logical to check up on you.”

“Well, now you’ve checked up on me,” Vincent says. “So you can go.”

Yves supposes this is true. 

“Do you want me to go?” he asks.

Vincent says, “It’s late. I assume you have things to get home to.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Yves says.

Vincent says nothing to that.

But Yves gets the message, even without him saying it. If Vincent is the type of person who prefers to be alone when sick, Yves won’t take it personally. He doesn’t want to overstay his welcome—arguably, he’s already stayed for much longer than Vincent had invited him to.

There’s leftover soup in the fridge—enough to last Vincent a couple days, hopefully through the worst of this—and Vincent’s apartment is reasonably well-stocked now. He has something to take if his fever gets any higher; he has all the basic supplies Yves could think of off the top of his head.

And Vincent is a lot of things, but he isn’t irresponsible. He’s shown himself to be self-sufficient more times than Yves can count. There’s no reason why Yves should have to stay and look after him for any longer—no reason, perhaps, aside from the fact that seeing Vincent ill has left him more worried than he’d like to admit.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll go. But at least let me clean up first.”

He does dishes, leaves the cutting boards and the pot out to dry on the drying rack, transfers the soup to smaller glass containers to store it in the fridge. He returns the vacuum cleaner to the storage closet he found it in. Then, as promised, he gathers his things—not much, just his phone and his car keys—and heads toward the front door.

Vincent follows him to the door, presumably to lock it after he leaves. 

Yves steps outside, lingers for just a moment on the doorstep. The car is parked close enough that he hadn’t bothered to grab his umbrella, but now it’s dark out, and it’s raining just as hard. 

“I left new cough drops on the kitchen countertop,” Yves says, biding his time under the overhang until he inevitably has to get rained on. “The medicine’s in your bathroom, behind the mirror, with the thermometer. Everything else is either on the counter or in the fridge. Don’t come back to work until your fever’s completely—”

It happens in a moment: Vincent stumbles. Yves is looking at him, which means he sees the exact moment when it happens. Yves doesn’t think, just reacts—he reaches out to grab his arm to keep him from falling entirely. 

“Woah,” he says, steadying him. “Are you—”

Vincent’s hand is concerningly warm, even through the fabric of his sleeve. For a moment, he leans into Yves’s touch, though this seems less intentional as it is inevitable. He’s breathing heavily, his eyes tightly shut, his shoulders rising and falling not as soundlessly as usual.

Yves swallows past the alarm he feels percolating in his chest. Had he been about to pass out? Just how high is his fever right now? “Vincent—”

“Sorry,” Vincent manages, through gritted teeth. He makes an effort to regain his balance, to move away. He sways on his feet, and Yves feels the panic in his chest rise anew. 

He reaches up and slings an arm around his waist. “Hey,” he says, trying for reassuring. “I’ve got you.”

Vincent doesn’t say anything, to that. He just stands there, perfectly still, his eyebrows drawn together, his shoulders a little stiff under Yves’s touch. 

Without letting go of him, Yves shuts the front door gingerly behind him, toes his shoes off at the door again. “I think it would be best if you laid down,” he says. “Do you think you can walk?”

Vincent nods, slowly. Yves tracks the bob of his throat as he swallows. 

“Sorry,” Vincent says, again. “I… didn’t expect it to be an issue.”

He’s frowning, hard, as if he’s upset with himself, though Yves can’t quite piece apart why he’d have reason to be. “Hey, no apologizing,” Yves says. “Save your energy for walking.”

Vincent seems to understand that their current arrangement will not change until he’s in bed, so he lets Yves steer him towards the bedroom. It’s a short walk—down the hallway and then off to the left—but Yves spends half of it distracted by how warm Vincent is. Like this, he practically radiates heat.

It’s not until Vincent is settled on his bed, the blankets pulled loosely over him, that Yves allows himself to let go.

Truthfully, the last thing he wants to do right now is leave. But it isn’t about what he wants, and perhaps Vincent would sleep better if he did.

“Are you warm enough?” Yves asks. The words feel heavy on his tongue.

A nod. 

“Do you need me to get you anything else?”

Vincent shakes his head.

“Okay,” Yves says. “I guess I shouldn’t overstay my welcome, then.”

Vincent will be fine, he tells himself. At the end of the day, they are only coworkers, and Vincent is one of the most independent people he knows. If Vincent doesn’t want him here, the best Yves can do is comply with his wishes. He straightens. “Text me if you need anything, I mean it.”

He lets go of the blanket, rises to his feet. Only, then—

There’s a hand on his sleeve, tugging.

Yves goes very still.

When Vincent notices what he’s done, alarm flashes through his expression, and he pulls his hand away as if he’s burned. 

“Sorry,” he murmurs, again. And just like that, he’s back to how he always is—his expression perfectly, carefully neutral, in a way that can only be constructed. “I’m sorry.” But Yves doesn’t forget what he’s seen. “You can go.”

Yves’s heart aches. He settles back at the edge of the bed, reaches out a hand, settles it gently at the edge of Vincent’s forehead. At the physical contact, Vincent’s breath catches.

And for a second, Yves wonders if he’s made a mistake—if maybe Vincent doesn’t want to be touched, right now. If he’s misread the situation; if Vincent wants him to go, after all. He opens his mouth to apologize.

But then Vincent shuts his eyes. The tenseness to his expression eases, almost imperceptibly, his eyebrows unfurrowing. Oh, Yves realizes. His head must hurt—Yves suspected as much—but if he’s not mistaken, the expression on Vincent’s face right now is…

Relief. Cautiously, Yves traces his fingertips lightly over the edge of Vincent’s temple, combs them slowly through his hair. Vincent’s eyes stay shut, but the furrow to his eyebrows loosens, and his jaw unclenches, just a bit. The change is minute, almost imperceptible. If Yves weren’t paying close attention, he might’ve missed it.

As if he could pay attention to anything else, right now.

Tentatively, Yves cards his fingers through Vincent’s hair, traces slow circles into his scalp, slowly, carefully.  He does it until the heartbeat he feels thrumming under his fingertips—quick and erratic—slows. Until Vincent’s breathing evens out, until the hurt in his expression dulls. Until the tension in his shoulders eases.

By the time he finally withdraws his hand, Vincent is fast asleep. Yves fetches a new glass of water for his nightstand, changes out the plastic bag lining the trash can, and lines the cough drops and medicine up at the edge of Vincent’s desk. He flips through folder 2-A, assessing.

Then he heads back out to his car to get his laptop, and gets to work.

—

He doesn’t remember falling asleep.

But when he wakes at Vincent’s desk, it’s to an unpleasant ache in his neck that spreads laterally into his shoulders—probably from sleeping with his head pillowed awkwardly against his arms. He lifts his head. 

Behind him, there’s a weak, uncertain breath, and then the sort of cough that makes Yves’s chest hurt in sympathy. It sounds wrong, somehow—too quiet, for its proximity. Muffled.

It’s dark inside, aside from the faint glow of Vincent’s digital alarm clock, the pale green digits cutting into the black. He hears the rustling of blankets, followed by another short, painful intake of breath.

The sneeze that follows is stifled into something. Even stifled, it sounds uncharacteristically harsh—all force, pinched off into a short, muffled outburst which sounds barely relieving, at best.

“hH’ih’iNNGKkk-t!”

Yves blinks. Then he leans over the desk to flick on the lamp. Dull golden light suffuses the desk, bright enough to cast Vincent in form and graying color. 

“Are you okay?”

At the light, Vincent’s eyes widen. He looks—stricken, somehow. Then his expression shutters, and he frowns. “Did I—” he stops to cough again into his fist. It sounds as though each breath he’s taking in is an effort of its own, shallow and unsatisfying. When he speaks again, his voice sounds noticeably hoarser. “—Did I wake you?”

Yves opens his mouth to respond. Before he can think up a convincing excuse, Vincent shakes his head dejectedly, as if he already knows the answer.

“Sorry,” he says. “I was - cough, cough - tryidg to be quiet.”

Quiet. As to not wake Yves, presumably. The revelation causes an ache to settle somewhere deep inside of him, heavy and inexorable. Yves is more than certain that this flu is already miserable enough on its own, even without the added challenge of having to be quiet about it. He wants to say, do you really think that’s what matters to me? He wants to ask, how long have you been up dealing with this on your own?

“You don’t have to be quiet,” is all he manages, instead.  It’s a miracle that his voice manages to come out as evenly as it does.

Vincent looks like he’s about to say something. But before he has a chance to, he twists away to cough harshly into his shoulder. Now that he doesn’t make an attempt to muffle the coughing fit, Yves can hear just how harsh it sounds. 

It’s the kind of coughing fit that just sounds exhausting—forceful enough to leave tears brimming at the edges of his eyelashes, his breaths coming in shallowly. 

“Can I get you anything?” Yves asks, when Vincent is done coughing.

Vincent just looks back at him, unmoving. In the dim light of the desk lamp, he looks perhaps more exhausted than Yves has ever seen him—really, he looks as though he hasn’t slept at all. He’s seated with his back against the headboard with a blanket pulled around his shoulders. One of his hands is clenched loosely around it, pinning the corners in place. 

“Tea?” Yves offers, because it’s better than saying nothing. “Water, cough drops. A cold compress?” Vincent doesn’t say anything, but Yves thinks, a little helplessly, that there must be something he can do. “Extra blankets? Tissues? Ibuprofen?”

“Water… would be nice,” Vincent says, as if it takes a lot out of him to admit it. Yves blinks, surprised—he had half expected no answer at all. At Yves’s split second of hesitation, Vincent’s frown deepens, his grip around the blankets tightening slightly. “...If it’s not too much trouble.”

Yves has never gotten out of his seat faster. “Of course,” he says. “I’ll be right back.” he swipes the empty glass from the nightstand and heads out into the hallway.

It’s dark. There aren’t many windows in the hallway to let in light from outside, but once he gets to the dining room, it gets easier to see. Judging by how dark it is outside, there are probably a few hours left until sunrise. It’s still early, then. Early enough that it’s quiet, around them—no traffic out on the streets, save for the occasional car, headed to who-knows-where; no neighbors going about their early morning routines; just the steady trickle of rain on the windowsill. Yves rinses the cup out in the sink, shakes it dry, and fills it again.

When he makes it back to the bedroom, it’s unusually quiet. Vincent is still sitting at the edge of his bed, looking like he hasn’t moved at all since Yves left the room.

Yves crosses the room to hand him the glass. Vincent blinks up at him, a little blearily.

“I got you water,” Yves says, unnecessarily.

Vincent takes the glass from him with both hands, as if he doesn’t quite trust himself to hold it with just one. Yves looks away as he drinks.  

When Vincent lowers the glass at last, Yves takes it from him and sets it back into place onto the bedside table. He straightens, turns to face Vincent again. “Any better now?”

Vincent nods. It’s quiet, for a moment. Outside, the rain has nearly stopped—the room is soundless, aside from the thin whirring of the air conditioning. “I didn’t think you’d still be here.” 

Yves hums. “To be honest, I didn’t either.” He stifles a yawn into one hand—he’s still a little tired. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“You must be tired,” Vincent frowns, looking him over. “You came right from a full day of work to check on me. Does your neck hurt?” 

“What?”

Vincent inclines his head towards his desk. “I’ve fallen asleep there before. It’s not very comfortable.”

Yves thinks he shouldn’t be surprised, at this point, that Vincent has picked up on something so subtle. “It’s not that bad,” he says, reaching up with a hand to massage his neck. “My neck would probably be sorer if I’d slept through the whole night. I should thank you for waking me.”

“You could’ve taken the couch instead,” Vincent says, a little disapprovingly. “It would probably have been wiser.”

“I wanted to be here so I could keep an eye on you,” Yves says, because it’s true. “Besides, you sat in a chair while I slept in France. That can’t have been comfortable either.”

“It’s not just about that. You—” Vincent raises a hand up to his face, ducks into his wrist for a sudden: “hh-! hhiH’GKT-sSHuh! snf-!” He sniffles, then presses the wrist closer to his face, his expression shuttering. “Hh…  hh’IIDDZshH’Uhh-!” 

“Bless you!” Yves says, startled.

Vincent blinks, a little teary-eyed, turning over his shoulder to muffle a few harsh coughs into his wrist. “You shouldn’t have slept so close to me. I really don’t want you to catch this.”

He’s frowning, as if it really is a big deal. As if even now, even shivering and feverish, it’s somehow Yves that he’s more worried about right now.

Yves isn’t particularly concerned about that—he has no shortage of  sick time to take off of work, in any case. If he does manage to catch this from Vincent, he’ll just stock up on essentials before the worst of it hits. It would be nothing he hasn’t done before. Still, Vincent looks so—well, so tornby the mere possibility of it that Yves wants to say something to comfort him.

“How about this?” he says. “If you’re so worried about it, you can buy me cough drops next time I come down with something, deal? Then we’ll be even.”

Vincent’s eyebrows furrow. “That’s a terrible deal for you.”

“I’ll get sick at some point in my life, anyways,” Yves says, with a shrug. “If this means I get free cough drops out of it, I’d say it’s a win.”

He moves the desk chair over so he can sit down at the edge of Vincent’s bed. Vincent watches him, uncertain. He looks like he’s resisting the urge to say something—to tell Yves to move further away, probably.

“Relax,” Yves says, reflexively. “It’ll be fine, seriously. I know what I signed up for.” 

He leans forward, presses the back of his hand against Vincent’s forehead. Vincent closes his eyes. A slight tremor passes through his shoulders at the contact, but aside from that, he stays perfectly still.

“Your fever’s worse than before,” Yves says, withdrawing his hand.

“It’s not.” Vincent’s eyes are still shut. “The temperature is just higher because it’s night time.”

The suggestion is so far from comforting that Yves almost laughs. “You know,” he says, “that’s not very reassuring.” The blanket around Vincent’s shoulders starts to slip, so Yves reaches over and snags an edge of it, fluffs the whole thing outwards to lay it neatly around Vincent’s shoulders, like a cloak. Secures it with a loose knot. “Are you feeling any better than before?”

Vincent does open his eyes, now. He looks as though he’s trying hard to figure out how acceptably he can lie. “I…”

“You can be honest.”

Vincent’s jaw clenches. He reaches up with one hand, his fingers curling around the blanket Yves set down around him.

“My head feels heavy,” he says. He screws his eyes shut, his eyebrows furrowing. “And my chest hurts.” He lets out a short, frustrated breath, as if every sentence is a new and difficult admission. “I’m… not used to getting sick like this.”

Yves’s hands still. “Like what?”

“In any way that would necessitate taking time off from work,” Vincent says, looking away. The discomfort sits, plainly and indisputably, in the way he holds himself—his shoulders stiff, his jaw clenched—everything a little too tense, despite his exhaustion.

Yves stares at him for a moment, considering. In the end, it’s the small, impulsive thought that wins out.

He takes a seat at the edge of the bed, next to Vincent. The mattress dips under his weight. 

Vincent has always been taller than him, but sitting down like this, they nearly see eye to eye. It’s a risk, of course, to offer this. He and Vincent haven’t been physically intimate outside of the times where they’ve had to prove their relationship to an audience. But when he thinks back to how Vincent reacted to Yves feeling his forehead, or Yves carding his hands through his hair—if he hasn’t misread, it almost feels like—

Yves opens his arms out in offering, tries on a smile. “I’ve been told I give good hugs. Good enough to cure all ailments, obviously.”

For a moment, Vincent stays perfectly still. Yves has five seconds to overthink all of his actions over the past twenty four hours. 

Then Vincent inches closer, ever so slightly, to lean his head on Yves’s shoulder.

Yves curls his arms around him. There’s the slightest hitch in Vincent’s breath, at the contact. Then the stiffness seeps out of his shoulders, and he presses a little closer—as if he’s allowed himself permission, at last, to let go.

His whole body is concerningly warm. “You’re burning up,” Yves says, softly. He reaches up with one hand to run his fingers through Vincent’s hair.

“...I figured,” Vincent says. The next breath he takes comes in a little shakily. “Whoever gave you the review was right. You are a good hugger.”

Yves laughs, a little surprised. “Careful. You’re going to inflate my ego if you keep talking.”

“I can’t help it if it’s true.”

Yves has hugged a fair share of people in his life. He doesn’t think he’d be able to list them all if he were asked to. It’s different, though, being so close to Vincent—so close that Yves can reach out and let his hair fall through his fingertips. He can lift up his palm and feel the rigid line of his spine, the slope of his shoulders; he could reach out and trace the dip of his wrist, the form of his hand. Vincent’s chin digs slightly into his left shoulder. His nose is turned slightly into Yves’s neck—like this, he is almost perfectly still. Yves can feel the warm brush of air against his neck whenever Vincent exhales. He is so close that Yves is afraid, for a moment, that he might hear how badly his heart is racing.

Would dating Vincent be like this? Would this kind of exchange be given and received as easily as anything? Yves wills himself not to think about it. This is nothing, he tells himself, but a simple offering of comfort between friends. To think otherwise would be disingenuous.

They stay like that for some time. Time slows, or perhaps it expands or collapses—really, Yves would be none the wiser. The whir of the ceiling fan and the light rain on the rooftop a constant. When Vincent pulls away at last, it’s to turn sharply off to the side to muffle a sneeze into his sleeve.

“Hh-! hhIH’IIDZsSHM-FF! snf-!” 

“Bless you,” Yves says, blinking. The sudden absence of warmth is a little jarring. But Vincent isn’t done.

His eyebrows draw together, and he ducks tighter into his elbow, his shoulders jerking forward. “hHIH’iiGKKTsSHH—! Sorry, I— Ihh-! hHHh’DZZSSCHh—uH-!”

“Bless you again,” Yves says, reaching past him to hand over the box of tissues on the nightstand. He holds out the box for Vincent to take.

Vincent turns away to blow his nose. When he returns, he’s a little teary eyed. The flush on the bridge of his nose hasn’t gone away.

“When I asked you to come over,” he says, “I wasn’t expecting you to stay.”

Yves blinks. “Is it so strange for me to be here?”

To that, Vincent is quiet, for a moment. Yves looks out the window, where he can see the skyline, off in the distance, the dark form of the apartment building across the streets, the street in between lit dimly with golden streetlights.

“A little,” he says. “When I was young, if I got sick, it wasn’t really a big deal.”

At Yves’s expression, he amends: “That’s not to say that my family didn’t care, because they did. No one spent too long in my room—better to not risk catching it, if they could help it—but back then, if I didn’t have much stomach room, my mom always cut fruits for me to leave on my desk. Sometimes she made ginseng tea, too.” he shuts his eyes. There’s a strange expression on his face—something a little more complicated than wistfulness.

“We had a habit of keeping the heat off, in the winters, and closing the windows. But if I was running a fever, my brother always made sure to keep the heat on.” His lip twitches, almost imperceptibly. Then: the smallest of smiles. “Sometimes he’d stay outside my door to talk about his day. He was the class lead, back when he was in high school. It was always something inconsequential, like which of his classmates he liked and which ones he held a grudge against, and why. Almost always for the smallest reasons, like someone borrowing a pencil and forgetting to give it back, or someone tossing the ball to him in gym class.”

“Were you and your brother close?” Yves asks.

“Close is relative,” Vincent says. “I never really knew how to—inhabit his world, I guess. When I moved to the states, and when I decided to stay here, part of it was out of some sort of defiance. I didn’t want to have to follow in his footsteps, because then I could only ever be focused on doing things differently.”

He shuts his eyes. “But I felt close to him, then. When he stood outside my room and told me those stories. Even if they were things I wouldn’t have cared about had they happened to me, I guess. It’s strange how that works.”

“I think I know what you mean,” Yves says. He’s always had a good relationship with Leon and Victoire, though that doesn’t mean they’ve always seen eye to eye on things. “Sometimes it’s less about what they say, and more about the fact that they’re saying it.”

Vincent nods. “They all cared about me in their own way,” he says, at last. “I don’t think I appreciated the extent of it at the time. When you’re a kid, you tend to take everything at face value.”

“Do you regret it?” Yves asks. “What?”

“Not appreciating them more, back then.”

Vincent smiles. “I was just a kid. I suppose it’s natural that I didn’t know better.” Yves has a feeling that that statement is perhaps further reaching than Vincent is making it out to be. “I didn’t think much about it at the time.”

“Do you ever miss being part of a large household?”

“It’s peaceful on my own,” Vincent says, at last. “I usually don’t mind it. I usually have other things to worry about.”

He hasn’t asked if the information is useful to Yves, Yves realizes, a little belatedly. Back then, at Joel and Cherie’s potluck, Vincent had seemed to believe that the only way Yves could possibly be interested in him was if the information could serve their fake relationship, somehow.

The realization settles him. Perhaps Vincent has shared this because he knows Yves cares.

“Your apartment is nice,” Yves says, trying to ignore the insistent beat of his heart in his chest, which all of a sudden seems to want to make itself known. “I can see why you would like living here.”

Vincent tilts his head up towards the ceiling. “It’s not the same, of course. As home. Though that’s a given.” Yves notes the usage of the word: home. Here, instead of home, the clarifier salient, even though Vincent’s done nothing to emphasize it. Could it be that after all these years, Vincent still considers Korea to be home, for him? “When I’ve had people over, it was just for dinner. Not for…”

He looks over to Yves, now. Yves knows what he means, knows how to fill in the rest of the sentence: not for the reason you’re here, now.

“I know I’ve intruded a little,” Yves says, with a laugh.

Vincent frowns at him, his eyebrows furrowing. “I wouldn’t consider it an intrusion,” he says. “You’ve helped me a lot. I just—I’m a little embarrassed that your first time over had to be under these circumstances.”

Your first time over. Yves ignores—well, tries to ignore—the implication that this could be the first out of many. That he might have another opportunity, in the future, to swing by. Vincent hasn’t confirmed anything, and it’s not likely that their fake dating arrangement would warrant another house visit, out of the public’s eye. Yves tells himself that the warmth he feels in his chest is misplaced.

“You don’t have to worry about that. I like seeing you,” Yves says.

Vincent raises an eyebrow at him. “Even bedridden with a fever?”

Isn’t it obvious? “Of course.”

“I’ve been terrible company,” Vincent says. “And even worse of a host. I recall I fell asleep yesterday, only for you to spend two hours cleaning my apartment?”

“Vacuuming is therapeutic.”

“You said that about cooking, too,” Vincent says, narrowing his eyes. “Am I supposed to believe that you enjoy doing all household chores?”

“It’s not like you made me do them. I just wanted to be useful, and your vacuum was easy to find.”

“I’ll be sure to hide it thoroughly next time,” Vincent says, deadpan.

Yves laughs. “It’s like I said,” he says. “I like spending time with you. Even—” To steal Vincent’s words from earlier. “—bedridden with a fever.”

Vincent huffs a sigh, a little incredulously. 

“Though, I promise I won’t intrude for much longer,” Yves tells him. “I’ll probably head out in the morning.” He’s almost done with the work Vincent has on his desk—he’d fallen asleep checking over one of the income statements for discrepancies. A few hours should be enough time to make sure that everything is in order. He still has work at eight—he’ll probably be a little tired for it, considering how late he’d slept, but that’s nothing new.

“I’m sorry,” Vincent says, averting his glance. He frowns down at himself, as if he really is apologetic. “You must’ve had other evening plans.”

None as important as taking care of you, Yves catches himself thinking. He can’t say things like that if he wants to keep this—well, this unfortunate recent development, i.e., his feelings for Vincent—to himself.

“It wasn’t just for you,” he says, instead.

“What?”

“I didn’t just do it for you.”

Vincent blinks at him, a little confused. “Are you going to say you get personal gratification out of seeing my apartment clean?”

“It’s like you said,” he says. “I’ve never seen you this unwell. You said this doesn’t happen often, right? When you didn’t show up at work, I…” The next admission feels a little too honest—but there’s a small, unwise part of him that wants to get it across, regardless. “I was really worried. Even though you said you had everything covered, I wanted to make sure you were fine.”

Vincent nods. “I get it. It would be an inconvenience if I were unfit to be your fake—”

“It has nothing to do with that,” Yves interrupts him. His heart hurts a little, with it. “I wanted to see that you were fine because I care about you. To be honest, I think I would’ve spent the entire night worrying if I hadn’t come.” He laughs, a little self-deprecatingly. “It’s a little selfish, I know.”

Vincent’s eyes are very wide.

“Anyways,” Yves says, with the sinking feeling that he’s said too much, “you should try to get some more sleep.” He rearranges the blankets around Vincent, a little unnecessarily, fluffs the extra pillow that’s leaned up against the headboard, and turns away. “It’s still really early. If you’re planning to be back in office next week, it would be best to keep your sleep schedule intact.”

“Yves,” Vincent says, from behind him.

“Hmm?”

“...Thank you.” 

When Yves works up the courage to look over, Vincent is smiling, unreservedly, as if something Yves has said has made him very happy.

Yves’s heart stutters in his chest. Fuck.

(On second thought, it might not be so easy to live with these feelings, after all.)

—

At daybreak, Yves drives home to get changed, takes a quick shower while he’s at it, and heads off for work. He yawns through half his morning meetings, adds an extra espresso shot to the coffee he snags from the break room.

The text arrives halfway through the day, just before he’s intending to head downstairs for lunch.

V: When I asked you to bring folder 2-A, I didn’t mean for you to complete my work along with it.

Yves smiles. He’d emailed Vincent the completed work from yesterday’s late-night work session before he’d left. Vincent must’ve seen it.

Y: some genie i met told me your wish was to have your work done before the deadline

V: What are you talking about?

Y: he also told me you were very stubborn about not redistributing your assignments to anyone else  Y: so you can’t blame me for taking matters into my own hands

V: Yves.

Y: feel free to check it over for errors :)

[bougiebutchbinch]

so nearly done with the next chapter of the transfemme wade fic!

[thychesters]

do you ever think about how zoro says “scars on the back are a swordsman’s shame” but one of the first scars he received after joining luffy was on his back after buggy stabbed him through the stomach, and not only that but it was for luffy, too.

[bamsara]

Genuinely. Not asking for a new update on anything. How long does it take to write you a chapter is the stars align and you have a time? Because your chapters are long and you pumped out 4 COTL chapters in like a month and they all have the same level of quality and I'm here impressed and worried

[yesokayiknow]

okay so you know how it goes: fourteen comes to life in thirteen's clothes. and they're both too short and too loose and entirely too bright for his frame of mind. they worked with a doctor who hid everything behind a too wide smile; not so much with a doctor whose pain and tiredness is written across his face

he needs to change. obviously

and then the star beast starts, and fourteen leaves the tardis, and he's still in thirteen's clothes

he just. he doesn't know. how does he choose new clothes? he feels wrong. how will wearing something else change that?

(donna tells him that it's christmas, mate; it's bloody freezing. maybe wear longer trousers, yeah? also he's both too young and too old to wear braces. just a friendly note)

he doesn't have to explain who he is to the unit scientist, not with those clothes. instead he talks about how he doesn't understand why he looks like this. why he is this. why this face? why isn't he someone new?

actually. maybe he is someone new. was he ever this open before? hm

why do you look like that, sylvia hisses, trying to hide him from the daughter he destroyed ruined left

it's a lottery, he replies, purposely ignorant

he still has his thirteenth self's screwdriver. it's too small in his hands

(the whole time they were her, her hands were too small. she didn't like touching anyway, but whenever someone took her hand, it felt wrong. they were too small. sometimes it felt like if she worked fast enough, tinkered about without stopping, she wouldn't have to look at them)

everything goes wrong. his fault, like always

(blimey. of all the things to carry over from the first time he had this face, it had to be the guilt, didn't it?)

you shouldn't look like that, the doctordonna says, and he runs a hand down his face with a tired laugh

no, the doctordonna says, not the face. a hand reaches out to grasp at the collar of his shirt, at the dangling earring chain. this isn't you. who are you, doctor?

like he knows. like they've ever-

she dies.

she lives. he doesn't deserve it. it isn't about him. he still doesn't deserve it

we're letting it go, donna says, and he looks down at himself, at another him's clothes, another him's screwdriver

well, she never was subtle, his donna

the tardis is gorgeous, though when isn't she. he tries to show off his new console to donna, and she rolls her eyes, and drags him off to the wardrobe

unlike normally, where all the clothes are scattered about, the new tardis wardrobe now also has a line of wardrobes stood against the wall. fifteen of them, to be exact

the last wardrobe is open. and empty

he goes to the second to last, and opens it to reveal a wide array of rainbow patterned shirts. she probably would've hated for her things to be organised like this. always creating mess so she wouldn't have to think about anything important. he laughs. and he takes off the sky coloured coat and the worn boots and the earrings and gently places them inside. tag, he thinks, as he closes the doors

and then he moves down to the eleventh wardrobe, full of brown coats and blue suits and neatly pressed shirts and pairs of converse. and he stands in front of it. and he wonders

after a moment, donna's like wait do you want me to leave?? you never cared about nudity before, did you? and he's like oh actually i do feel more self conscious. huh. weird.

he doesn't have to say, i think i'm a different person. not to donna. she just gives him a smile, and a shoulder nudge, and tells him she'll see him in the console room

the last wardrobe is empty

he takes a breath, and then goes to rummage about in the rest of the clothes

[angst-is-love-angst-is-life]

Most people today: Oh cool, happy Flash day!

Me: *writes and posts yet another fic where I make Barry Allen’s life hell*

[kaizsche]

ohmygod someone help me i think i might die bc what is this....what did i just create......

[arcanegifs]

[swiftfootedachilles]

The Good Fight by Ada Limón | Famous Last Words (An Ode to Eaters) by Ethel Cain | Cornflower Blue by Flower Face | I Love You Like An Alcoholic by The Taxpayers | I Wanna Be Your Dog 2 by AJJ | Moon Song by Phoebe Bridgers | Strangers by Ethel Cain | Little Beast by Richard Silken

[internetaddict104]

Tbh this was the only thing I could think of when 15 and Rogue first met