#AND and. i got headphone fatigue because the guy next to me a few hours ago kept slurping his fucking snot

[darklight-owl]

Why does the guy next to me REEK of fried food

[mah-gah-lee]

You’re such a bitch - (Charlie Gillespie x reader)

Word Count: 2486 Request: no, again @jatpsmut​ inspired me with his fic “What Happens in Hawaii Stays in Hawaii - Charlie Gillespie x Reader (SMUT - 18+)”. I asked her if I could use the Hawaii idea and now I am writing this!

However, some details change from the original fic:

“Charlie and y/n haven't been best friends since they were kids, but from the first season of jatp. y/n is an additional actor on Julie and the Phantoms, also a dancer. Charlie didn't confess his feelings to y/n in Hawaii.

The only thing I got from the idea of @jatpsmut​ is the fact that something happened in Hawaii. So thank you to her for writing this incredible fic, without it this could not happen Summary: You and Charlie were best friends and roommates in LA. One evening, you heard it with a girl, the next morning, everything is awkward, bitchy and everything changes. Warnings: mention of sexual activities - language disclaimer: I don't know Charlie or his family personally or what his life is like. All you will read in this "x reader" is from my imagination. My point is not to invade Charlie's privacy. I don't want to offend him or offend anybody else in his life (family, potential girlfriend…). All of this is not the reality

 Tagged: @asdfghjkl-fanfics​ @standingtalllove​ @lukeys-giggle​ @happinessinthedarkesttimes​ if you want to be tagged in my next fic let me know ! 

--- 

You try to focus on the TV show you were watching, but obviously your roommate had company. And that company was way too loud in your opinion. You were rolling your eyes in annoyance when suddenly your phone vibrates, displaying the blonde head of your second best friend. If there was one thing you miss since you came back to live to Los Angeles, it was obviously living with this sarcastic character. Vancouver seemed so far away to you. You picked up your phone and Owen's face appeared.

 “Hi sweetie.” Owen told you with a smile “Oh, hey… Why that face?” he clearly noticed your annoyance. "Hi O." you said before complaining "Ugh, I miss living with you in Vancouver so much" "Yeah me too. We had so much fun. But hey, I'm sure we'll have a season two." "I hope so much"

You were an extra cast member on Julie and the Phantoms, you also were a dancer on the first season, just as Tori. You wished so much Owen was right about Jatp season 2 renew but Netflix seemed to enjoy making you patient. But the coronavirus had also literally messed up all your plans. However, you were angry, some series came out long after yours and got renewed while yours stayed on hold. It was clear that fans of the series as much as you were just waiting for the renewal of season two.

A moan came out of Charlie's bedroom with the sound of a bouncing mattress, you rolled your eyes again, groaning with a sort of anger.

"Jesus Christ ..." you complained "Wait, y/n, what's that sound?" “You know what I miss most about living with you in Vancouver O’? Rule #3. " “Rule #3? Rule #3" he seemed to think about what you said when he finally realized "Oh ... Oh! Rule #3! Wait.. Oh my God! Is Charlie being with a chick right now? ” He asked you with stupefaction. "Oh I wish you were wrong"

A laugh came out from you best friend mouth and you gave him a killer look through the screen, making him laugh harder. When you were in Vancouver, living with two boys forced you to set limits and rules for living. The first was; everyone cleans up their own mess. Second, the housework takes turns. Third rule: no one-night stand allowed in the flat. Surprisingly as it may seem, this rule had been followed very well by everyone. But at the same time, the boys' schedules really didn't make time to bring anyone home, and then after all, they were professional. But as soon as Charlie returned from his parents' quarantine, he forgot the existence of this rule, as if it did not apply to Los Angeles. It wasn't like he brought a different girl home every night, or even every month. It might have been the second or third time since you had moved in. But this situation embarrassed you more than you might have thought.

“Owen, don't make fun of me. I've been hearing them for about an hour now. " "Poor you. Now you understand how I felt in Hawaii" he smirked at you. "Wait, what did you say?" you asked him, in shocked. "Oh please y/n ... you heard me clearly"

Of course, you had heard what he said, but you were in shock at the revelation, so you needed confirmation. This story was supposed to be a secret between you and Charlie. The fact that Owen mentioned it could only assume two things.

"Did you hear us in Hawaii?" “I was in the room next door! Of course, I heard you. It's not like you and Charlie are the quietest couple ever having sex ... " "It seems Charlie is the loudest one…" you said, referring to your best friend having sex in the next bedroom. "Oh darling please, I can remind you of what you said that night. You two gave me nightmares." "Please don't. I feel so embarrassed right now"

Last year you went to Hawaii with several cast members and Kenny. A booking error forced you to share a bed with Charlie. It seemed that sleeping with a girl seemed more adequate than two boys sleeping in the same bed. Charlie and Owen had avoided that possibility the second the problem had arisen. One thing leading to another, after a few strong cocktails, you and the dark-haired boy had ended up having a horny night. The shame caused the next day made you both never talk about it again and "what happened in Hawaii will stay in Hawaii". You didn’t know that Owen heard you and it seems that boy can keep a secret for so long now.

The problem was that that night you realized that you felt more than an attraction to your roommate. It went beyond friendship or mere sexual tension at the sight of this Canadian. You wanted every aspect of what you might have experienced with Charlie and more: the laughs, the funny times, the lots of talking, the quiet times watching a movie or just playing Nintendo Switch, the sex. But you also wanted the PDAs, the feelings, just being with him like his girlfriend. But the actor was totally oblivious to your feelings for him, and you didn't even want to try to make him understand it on his own. You just created a shell for yourself and buried your feelings deep within yourself.

 “I don’t understand y/n. Why didn’t you tell him your feeling?” “Because I know he doesn’t love me back, O.” “Oh come on! You two are the most stubborn people I ever met!”

Again, for the third time tonight, you've rolled your eyes. You were pretty sure Charlie didn't feel the same way you did. Since Hawaii, neither of you had stepped forward towards each other, but sometimes your behaviors showed that you were more than friends. Another moan was heard from Charlie’s room and Owen's face on the screen was memorable. His eyes were wide and his cheeks were red.

"Okay, y/n. I'm sorry but I don't want to keep talking to you and hear my other best friend hooking up at the same time ..."

 You laughed and he hung up the phone not forgetting to say goodbye. You tried to focus on your screen again, your headphones being way too far away for you to catch them. Minutes later you finally heard the distinctive sound of Charlie's orgasm and knew you were finally going to be able to sleep.

 …

The next morning you woke up with a high level of fatigue. You casually walk to the kitchen to make coffee. While you were pouring yourself a cup of this much-desired black liquid, a person entered the kitchen.

 "Who the fuck are you?"

You raised an eyebrow, bringing your mug to your lips. The girl looked at you with a disgusted face.

"Roommate, darling. Not nice to meet you." "Why the hell are you wearing his shirt?"

A smirk appears on your lips, far too happy that she asked the question. When you were in Vancouver, it wasn't surprising to see you wearing the boys' t-shirts, although you had a preference for Charlie's, there were times when you wore Owen's. The boys never complained about this mania and you had to continue when you moved to Los Angeles with Charlie. The scene was pretty funny, you were there drinking your coffee in a t-shirt borrowed from your roommate while his conquest from last night stared at you in disgust, decked out in another Charlie t-shirt. You took a look at the Looney Tunes t-shirt you were wearing and just shrug your shoulders.

 “Old habits.” You simply said. "Yeah, you're gonna have to break this habit."

You laughed disdainfully. You didn't like this girl. Not because it was the conquest of your best friend for whom you had blatant romantic feelings. But rather because she had this condescension and believed that spending a night with Charlie gave her every right.

 "What makes you think that, sweetie?"

 You leaned against the kitchen counter, your posture offhand, a smirk on your lips. You weren't used to being such a bitch, but the girl in front of you pissed you off. And it was only nine in the morning.

 "Well, hello, I spent the night with Charlie." "Oh yeah sure, but that doesn't mean you're dating him." "Charlie is a great guy"

She wasn't wrong. Charlie wasn't heartbroken but he was still human and a twenty-two-year-old boy. Just looking at her you knew your best friend hadn't chosen her for a serious relationship with her. The little conversation you were having with her now confirmed that he couldn't date her. Another smirk spread across your lips as she looked at you with disdain again.

 "Who the fuck do you think you are? You are nowhere near his level" she said to you

This time, you couldn't help but laugh sarcastically. Yeah, she really pissed you off. Physically, she was everything Charlie didn't like about a potential girlfriend: big breasts, much bigger than him, slightly shallow. Oh but she had a fucking ass and maybe that was why he had chosen her. Her whole body reflected Charlie's choice for a one-night stand, but not the ideal girlfriend.

 "Oh honey, I'm nobody, but neither are you. Listen. You were just a one-night stand and me? Me, I'll still be here in his apartment with his t-shirts on when he brings you home, telling you that it was cool but that it will not go further. I will always be there ... "

Charlie woke up and headed straight for the kitchen. He greeted her conquest with a nod, giving her a hello. Instinctively, he approached you and put his hand on your waist before placing a soft kiss on your cheek. Charlie was tactile, it was his language of love. You couldn't help but smirk at the girl, giving her a victorious look. The actor looked at your outfit and a smile appeared on his lips.

 "So that's where it was! I thought I lost it in the Galapagos." he was referring to his looney tunes t-shirt

Your attention fell on Charlie and you smiled happily at him. You cheekily handed your cup of coffee.

"Coffee?" "Hell, yeah"

He grabbed your cup and took a long sip, leaving his conquest almost nonexistent to his eyes. The girl was so pissed off that she seemed to be boiling. She cleared her throat, annoyed.

 "Hmm, I'm going to go" she said. "Oh wait, let me have lunch and I'll bring you back if you want." "It won't be necessary."

You bit the tip of your tongue, amused, far too happy to hide it. Charlie's conquest returned to his room to get dressed. Your roommate turned to you and gave you a questioning look.

"y/n, what did you do?" "Nothing. We were happily getting know each other. I'm surprised at your choice, by the way" "Are you getting revenge?" "Get revenge for what?" "Since ... Hawaii, you've scared all the girls I've brought back." "Did I scare them? Stop, I haven't acted any differently than usual." “You scared them away,” he repeated. "Oh come on, Charlie, please, it's not like you're going to date them."

 He pulled away from you with a look of dismay. You were not wrong, he had never called back the girls he had brought back here, he did not intend to call back the one who was currently in his room. In fact, the only person he really wanted to spend time with was you. But since Hawaii, you seemed to be okay with never mentioning your night together again. This Canadian boy has been in love with you for months, maybe even years now. It quickly fell for you when you were in Vancouver.

"You're right. But I could have ..." he finally confessed "It's wrong. You know it's wrong Charlie, I know you, I'm your best friend. These are not the kind of girls you date. "Yeah… I couldn't date any of them. They just aren't you." He said, his last sentence ending in a whisper before hastening to take a sip from your cup of coffee.

You were paralyzed. Did he really just say what you've been dreaming of hearing for months? Did he just drop it like a bomb, in the middle of a morning conversation between sips of coffee?

“Wait, what?” “Nothing” “It wasn’t nothing, Charlie, you said something” “Nothing important” he repeats “Did you just say that if you didn’t date those girls it’s because they weren’t me?” “You seems to hear voices” “Charlie, I’m not joking… Did you say that?!” “Maybe” “Oh fuck, you’re an idiot!” “I am a..”

You snatched the cup of coffee from her hands and hurriedly put it on the counter. Never mind about the stains on the floor, you will clean up later. You didn't want to miss a second of this possibility. You wrapped your arms around Charlie's neck before resting your lips on his. Your best friend seemed surprised at first so much but quickly relaxed and wrapped his own arms around your waist as your lips moved to give the kiss more tender. The situation was most strange and funny; you were kissing your best friend, running your fingers through his long brown hair. You had to admit that even though you had found him attractive with his Luke's look but you couldn't imagine Charlie without that impressive mass of hair. Luke had short hair, Charlie had long hair. End of the discussion.

So, you were kissing your roommate, making up for lost time while in his room, a girl he had fucked the night before gathered her things. Charlie's conquest stepped out to head for the exit. You broke the kiss making Charlie growl in protest.

"I'm not showing you where the door is." you said. "whore .." the chick whispered.

Charlie stepped away from you and brought his one-night stand to the door, apologizing. He wasn't that kind of boy to go from girl to girl and the circumstances were really strange. The girl left, not without forgetting to curse him. When Charlie walks into the kitchen, you were sitting on the counter, a smirk on your face.

"You're such a bitch y/n" “It's my revenge for keeping me awake last night.” 

His gaze was sly, his smile was mischievous and you knew he was going to find a phrase worthy of the fucking boy he could be. 

"I can keep you awake for a while if you want." “A date wouldn't be too complicated, Charlie. Please be a gentleman. "You can count on me"

He gave you a softer look and you wrapped your arms around his neck again before kissing him. Ultimately, not everything that happened in Hawaii has to be restricted to Hawaii.

[unstoppableforcce]

dark side

—CHAPTER TWO: complicated

pairing: Javier Peña x reader

previous part | next part | masterlist

a/n: this part may not flow the best but I think the next chapter is where a lot of it is going to come together. I just really love these two but to show y’all why, I have to get to the next chapter so bear with me here

There’s more to Colombia than drugs and communists.

He’d been in deep in this game for longer than he liked to admit, but he had never once heard a single soul at the Embassy acknowledge the country for anything more than America’s playground as moral authority. The United States government wanted to protect their interests, they put the DEA on the ground to stop the coke influx stateside and they put the CIA there to make sure their precious capitalism was protected.

That was drugs and that was communism. So what the hell did you mean when you said there was more?

He understood the greater sense of the sentiment, that it’s a real country with real people and real culture, but he figured that wasn’t what you had meant. When you said it, you meant there was another reason for you to be in Colombia.

Not something as big as coke and communism, otherwise Stechner would have never pulled you off of it, but clearly something big enough to piss you off about the new position you had in his bullpen. He just didn’t know what.

What he did know was that Stechner, for all that he was, was not lying when he said you were good at your job.

Javi spent the majority of his days trying to keep his head down in budget meetings and strategy discussions with the Ambassador, the Colombian government, and more men in suits than he cared to count, but you sat at your desk, and against every grain of rational thought you surely possessed, did work as you were ordered. Reviewing intelligence reports from the police that gave up nothing because the police were paid to give up nothing, transcribing summaries on useless movements of underling cartel members, making phone calls for tips that turned out to be nothing 99% of the time and most of all, leaving the room whenever he wanted to talk without CIA ears around.

In all honesty, he had never, in a million years, expected you to have been telling the truth when you said you didn’t want to be the spy you were placed there to be, but each and every day, he showed up to the office and there you were, already there before him, head down and doing work that wasn’t close to worth your time.

He just didn’t get it. He didn’t get you.

But against as better judgement, he was starting to think that maybe, just maybe, he was starting to believe you, to trust you.

So when the reporter outside all but told him explicitly that the accidental gas leak in Cali was a coverup, he got stuck on an idea he knew was bad the second it hit his mind.

“Can we talk in my office?”

Standing at the front of your desk as you listened to tapes through headphones, at first all he got was a finger held up to his face, asking him to wait while you tried to hear the last of the recording. From the looks of the files scattered across the top of your desk, it looked like it was probably a tape from a cornerstone interrogation in Miami.

However, from the look of the empty pad underneath the tip of your pen, it wasn’t yielding much in the way of information.

After a few seconds, you stopped the tape and pulled the headphones off, looking back up to him, “yeah?”

“My office?”

You nodded, following him in through the sliding glass door and waiting by his desk as he slowly shut it behind him. “Is there a problem?”

“What do you know about this gas leak?” He asked somewhat mindlessly as he slid around you and sat back at his desk. If this whole ‘putting a plant on his team’ thing was under the cover of interagency cooperation, shouldn’t he be getting something out of it too?

Judging by the way your brow quirked, he figured maybe not.

But after a second to steal a glance to the bullpen then to scan over him, your face returned to the look before the shock and you took a step closer with a shrug of your shoulders. “What do you know?”

“That there was a gas leak.”

You scoffed at that, shaking your head. “Amazing detective work there—“

“What do you know?” He was quick to cut you off before your sarcasm could make a full appearance but you merely shrugged again.

“They’re calling it an accident.” You took a step forward, resting your hands on the back of the chair across from him, “I think anyone with the ability to think for themselves know it probably wasn’t, or at least, not the kind they are going say it is.”

“You have more information that we do?”

“The CIA has guys on the ground in Cali, you don’t.” Everything sounded so matter-of-fact when you said it, like you had this infinite knowledge and his questions merely bored you. He hated that he wanted to know what you know, he hated it because he knew how you knew it.

Looking at you, he didn’t see you as the enemy anymore, but you certainly weren’t an ally, not as long as you were CIA. He couldn’t ignore that.

“I kind of got shit on the last time I had guys in Cali.” He tried to play off casually, like the weight of the mistakes made wasn’t still sitting on his shoulders, like he didn’t have to send two perfectly good agents back to the states to appease the absurdity of the situation...

But it got you to chuckle, a break in your serious disposition he had yet to see from you until now. And he really didn’t mind it. If anything, he wanted more.

“You have to play by the rules.” You smirked, “until you can’t.”

He quirked his head at that this time, “What do you know that I don’t?”

Another chuckle. He was in much deeper than he thought if you were going to keep doing that.

“The total tonnage of what I know that you don’t...” you shook your head as you trailed off, patting the chair gently before standing back up to full height. “You trust your people more than me anyways, right?”

He gave a curt nod.

“Then put some of them on the ground in Cali.”

With that, he gave you another nod and watched you leave, back to your desk to do more work that was so far beneath your skill level it wasn’t even funny. And that night, long after he noticed you leave with a stack of files under your arm, he turned on his TV to watch the news call the leak in Cali an accident, and like you said, it didn’t feel right.

He needed people in Cali, despite everything the ambassador wanted from him and Stechner expected of him, he knew what he wanted from himself.

He wasn’t so much as sleeping these days as he was laying in bed, threatening to succumb to the hellish weight of guilt on his chest. Both from the past and from now. And it certainly didn’t help that every time he fell to his bed even slightly sober that he was enraptured with thoughts of you and that one idiotic night.

The days of using woman as sources were over now that he was dealing with Cali and not Escobar, so his days of going home with anyone else had really ended the night he was with you and getting off to the thought of you, the CIA agent, and his hand certainly wasn’t helping his conscience.

He knew what he needed to do, he knew he needed to be a real agent again, supposed surrender or not.

So that night, before he left the office, he ordered Fiestl to Cali with his partner, and by the time he made it home, he actually caught an hour of real sleep.

Turns out you gave good advice.

Not just on putting men in Cali, but two days later, when he found you lingering by the coffee pot, you silently encouraged him to “follow the money”, and you were right then too.

The combined wit of himself, your sly commentary, and the ample help of the reporter and he found himself thanking Bill Clinton and knowing the name of the cartel’s money man within a matter of days. It was luck he hadn’t had in a very long time, so long that it felt way too good to be true.

He was getting back into the rhythm that reminded him of working on Escobar, doing real work, working towards real answers. He lacked good men to bounce ideas off of, missing Murphy and Carrillo more and more everyday, but he was doing good work. For the first time since he had been back in Colombia, he felt like he was doing the right thing.

He should’ve know the second he moved for a plane to Panama that nothing could ever work this perfectly for him, he just didn’t deserve it.

But you looked good in fatigues.

He wished he could’ve done more looking at the way you were practically highlighted against the drab airfield by the sharp cuts of your black tank top and the stilling army green of your cargo pants. He wished he could’ve taken a dive head deep into that distraction but he couldn’t.

As with every time he almost got caught staring at you, he was painfully reminded of exactly who you were. This time, it was you arguing with Stechner to pull him back to reality.

He didn’t hear the argument, he could just see the two of you were locked in it as he approached. By the time Stechner spotted his approach, he dismissed whatever you were saying and ended the conversation before Peña came close enough to hear.

He caught your stare briefly, noticing what he almost tricked himself into thinking was a blink of apology in your sincere stare, but he knew now that he didn’t have that kind of luck.

“What the fuck is going on?” He turned to the CIA station chief, trying to figure out if he really knew the definition of smug until he met him.

“Orders are orders, you heard the ambassador.” Stechner responded simply, the same kind of simple he always got from you, but at least a thousand times more superior in every way as he crossed his arms over his chest and gave a minuscule shrug. “Our friends from the senate want the down low from a real life hero.”

He heard your scoff from where you leaned against the helicopter, even as you tried to muffle it.

“Guess that’s you.” Stechner continued on, gesturing with a turn of his shoulders to the senators he had met earlier in the week, suiting up in vests and boots. “You got somewhere better to be?”

With that, he turned away completely, leaving just you, still leaning against the helicopter colored in the same shade of camouflage green as your fatigue pants were.

“You’re wearing the wrong shoes.” You tried to joke out but it was clear even through the heavy sheet of tension between the two of you that he didn’t find it very funny.

He let out an exhausted sigh and reluctantly loaded into the helicopter with you, Stechner and the two senators, pulling out his tie as he did. Unfortunately, as you moved for the empty seat next to him, Stechner grabbed ahold of your hand and redirected you to the seat next to him, leaving the prime real estate next to Peña wide open for the desperately chatty senators.

You tried to offer something of an apology in your stare as you pulled your headphones on and strapped in, but either he wasn’t reading into it what you were putting into it or he was just too annoyed to care. You certainly had no problem reading the frustrated annoyance in his stare, especially as the senator next to him tried to ask some question you couldn’t hear over the noise from the helicopter.

After a while of traversing over the seemingly endless green landscape, you felt the acceleration shift as the chopper began to land, but as you hopped out behind Stechner and tried to steal a glance back to Javier, he was back to ignoring you, stripping off he jacket and rolling up his sleeves.

He was terribly overdressed for a day in the jungle, which was a shame, it was a good suit on him.

As Stechner began his lecture for the Senators, you specifically hung back to be only a step in front of him.

“You were out, otherwise I would have warned you.” You offered over you shoulder once you were convinced the senators were entranced by the demonstration.

He was out tailing the king of cartel money laundering, he was making real progress... he couldn’t help but roll his eyes, no matter how genuine you sounded.

“I’m being serious—“

“I’m supposed to trust you?” He spoke in more of a whisper as he crunched through the jungle on your heel.

“Some things do exist outside my range of control, Peña.”

He starts making real progress and he gets detoured like this? No matter what you argued, mo matter what he thought about his own bad luck, coincidences like this didn’t just happen. He wasn’t needed here, ambassador’s orders or not, what the hell did the senators need to come out here for anyways?

Then came the smell.

The jungle had its own smell, but coke and dead bodies always managed to shine through.

“FARC or traffickers?” The senator asked.

“Both...” he heard Stechner say as he continued his explanation.

A blatant lie. All of this was a big fucking lie, one you seemed to have a personal hand in telling now that Stechner turned to you and easily coaxed facts from you, he couldn’t stand it.

He peeled off from the group, just trying to get out of his head but by the sound of crunching jungle beneath boots from behind him, he knew you were close following. Turning back towards you, he threw his hands up by his sides and let a scoff slip out, not expecting you to flinch but in no way comforted by your near robotic stare directed back his way.

Glancing behind you to be sure the senators and Stechner were out of range, he blew out a breath and turned back towards the jungle, “this whole thing is staged.”

You didn’t respond though, you just maneuvered around him, coming face to face with him.

“These aren’t traffickers.” He would kill for a cigarette as he stared you down, “they’re strapped with AK ammo and those fancy guns Stechner had you modeling are M-4s.”

“You know your guns...” you mused carefully and he purposefully scoffed directly in your face this time.

He was so far from amused, your comment barely registered with him before he continued on, “He’s using you as what? The pretty face behind all of this?”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing, like you’re the hero who brought down Escobar.” Shooting back, you took a challenging step up towards him. “He’s using you too.”

“You think I don’t know that?” He didn’t raise his voice, but his low shift in tone was just enough to send shivers down your spine.

But you weren’t one to back down, “Well you could’ve fooled me—“

“You’re the one who plays along—“ he was just as quick.

“It’s my job to play along, what the hell is your excuse?”

He stopped for a second, realizing just how close to argument brought him to you and took a step back, scratching at his brow as he did. He didn’t know why he let you get him so riled up, he didn’t know why you had the effect on him that you did.

Part of him figured it was because he liked you, that the determination and ability you demonstrate when you work as hard as you do is enough to distract him from who you are just long enough to let you in under his skin. But then he remembers why he isn’t supposed to like you, he remembers what you are a part of and it infuriates him. He can’t blame you for being what you are, he can’t even blame you for lying about it. Everything you had done up to this point was honest...

He could only blame himself for letting it get to him and he was pretty good at blaming himself for things.

“You have a cigarette?” He muttered as he turned back to you.

With your arms crossed over your chest, practically drawing his eyes to the low neck of your tank top, you shook your head, snapping his gaze back to yours. “I don’t smoke.”

He kicked the dirt beneath his shoes, the wrong shoes, and let out another hefty sigh.

“Were you lying about being in Colombia for something other that drugs and communism?” He eked out with a voice weaker than he could be proud of.

“I haven’t lied to you since I met you, Peña.” You were quick to retort, your voice never dropping in strength. “Why?”

He shook his head, settling his hands to his hips, “if you’re not here for this, why the hell do you let Stechner use you as a prop? Why do you let him get away with these lies for fucking fundraising?”

“It’s politics.” You scoffed back to him, taking a step closer. “You didn’t come to Colombia for it either, but here we both are.”

Great, he thought, another similarity between the two of you.

He hated that he couldn’t out-argue you, not that he was used to outsmarting the women he worked with, but most of the women he worked with were secretaries and assistants who were almost eager to bend to his will. You were smarter than him and he could tell the first time you opened your mouth in that bar.

He just wished he had realized then the shit he was about to bring down on himself and stopped before he even started.

But you were smarter than him, and he had to deal with that now.

“What did you come to Colombia for?”

You twisted your head, having not expected the question, but before you could open your mouth to give him the answer he was looking for, another voice called from behind the two of you.

“Agent Peña?” Both of you turned to see Stechner stood with his hands on his hips, “the Senators want to speak with you.”

He stole a glance back to you and you gave a heartless shrug, “good luck.”

A laugh nearly bubbled to the surface of his frustrated demeanor, like a joke the universe was playing. He had never had an ounce of good luck in his life, not before Colombia and certainly not now, as he scanned you over one last time.

You were his type, almost too perfectly his type. He couldn’t help but wonder if Stechner grew you in a tube just to mess with him, he certainly wouldn’t put it past the man. A beautiful woman, standing strong in army fatigues and a member of the CIA. He was shaking his head a lot more these days then his last time in Colombia, or at least it felt like he was.

Good luck...

He didn’t have any of that. All he could hope was that maybe Fiestl and Van Ness did.

-> tags: (let me know if you’d like to be added or if I missed you! I’m not great at tagging lol)

@the-feckless-wonder @arrowswithwifi @ms-dont-care @leo-moon @tiffdawg @readsalot73 @way-too-addicted-to-anime @keeper0fthestars @adikaofmandalore @opheliaelysia @magneticbucky

[nox-scrie]

The Burning Devil

TMA5 Countdown- Day 1, The Corruption and The Vast

So... the trailer dropped yesterday and this fanfic is NOT really true to the canon universe but I don't really care (as Jonny doesn't care about me or my feelings). Also it's not corrected so I'm sowwy for this @pilesofnonsense . Hope y'all like it though!!

Content Warnings: Burning, Loneliness, Cancer and some kind of Madness

Characters: Jon "Jarchivist" Sims, Martin "Too Pure 4 This" Blackwood, Jude Perry and some OCs

Fears: The Corruption, The Vast and some mentions of The Eye

Rating: Teen and Up Audience

Setting: ~a month after the ending of Season 4

Word Count: 3585

~~

The Burning Devil

The train almost reached London when the weird things started happening. Most of the passengers were asleep, the train having been going non-stop for the last 15 hours. Nobody even cared to look at the two men sitting in a bed together in a sleep  car, one of the two shaking so badly you couldn't focus on his shape and the other franatically searching for something in a backpack.

The first light bulb went out as easily as if you blew a candle. One of the men started nervously bitting his lip, before abandonind the bag and craddling the trembling man in his arms. A girl on a few beds away from them, headphones in her years and a book opened in her lap, sent a nasty look towards the non-functioning light, and then looked at the two men as if she knew they were looking at her. She didn't say anything though, other than smiling in an approving way.

Then, the whole train shook, as if it was passed by an electric wave. Now most of the passangers were awake, some screaming in distress, others just mumbling about the poor quality of transportation in England.  Nobody looked at the men that were hugging on the bed, and how something started... moving on one of their skin. A sigh escaped the trembling person as they started clinging to their lover's sweater.

"Martin." was all he said, and then the eyes that have appeared on his skin started blinking rapidly, chaotically, and Martin started feeling sick.

"I... I think I can find it, Jon. I really do. Just..."

"No. The girl. She has something to tell me."

Jon was looking down at the dirty bedsheets, rows of sweat covering his forehead, but the eyes kept staring at the girl with the headphones, who was now half out of her bed and walking the short distance towards them. Martin covered Jon's forearms with a blanket, but he could do anything about the eyes that appeared on his lovers' face and neck. He was hungry, and there was no other meal than information, trauma, pain and sorrow he needed right now.

"Hey... is your partner okay? It looks like-" and then she saw the eyes. The moment was imprinted on her face, which turned a ghostly white, her black eyes wide and mouth started opening to let out a scream.

"No." was all Jon said, looking at her with his own eyes, and the scream was stuck in the girl's throat. The eyes on Jon's skin started to shine, as if blazing from within. "Tell me... tell me your story."

A tape recorder appeared on his hand out of thin air, and Martin closed his eyes for a few seconds and signaled for the girl to have a seat on their bed. She did that, but Martin wasn't sure how much of that was her own will and how much The Eye's. He extended a hand though, and she looked at it, panicked, before looking at Martin once again and seeing.. something on his face that made her take his hand.

Nobody was paying attention to the two men and the girl that were sitting in a bed, prefering to watch the windows that were now cracked in shapes that perfectly resembled some eyes. Martin started feeling his heart pumping, fatigue overtaking his body, and he didn't look st Jon, he couldn't. Instead, he focused on the girl's face and clasped her hand with both of his.

Jon pressed play, and the eyes were rolling around and around on his skin, all kinds of colors and shapes, from white to blue to purple and yellow, from small to wide and enlongated. His voice was calm, collected, and it sent a chill down Martin's spine as he tightened his grip on the girl's hand. He hated the this, the fact that The Eye had so much control, the way it turned his lover into a puppet. Even though anger was building up inside his chest, he took a deep breath and focused on the story. There was nothing either of them could do now.

"Statement of... Alicia Jesper... regarding the last car race she ever took part in. Statement recorded directly from subject, the first of November, 2018. Statement begins."

There was a moment of silence, and the eyes focused on Alicia at once, burning on her. She let out a sigh, one of distress or fear or both, and she opened her mouth and started talking. The words were heavy, and being dragged out like this was like seeing someone be placed in a chair and given a handgun, so they can kill themselves before it gets worse for them. Martin felt his hands crushed by her, and he realized that maybe she was angry too. He hoped she was; anger is not hopelessness, he would know.

"I've always been interested in cars. Either in an aesthetic sort of way, or driving them, cars are a constant in my life more than anything else... or, they used to be, at least.

My first memory is me in the front seat, being held by my father. I remember how small my hands were on the steering wheel, and how he laughed, or caughed, because I was shaking and I thought that's what it felt like to drive on a bumpy road. I must have been around three or four years old then, and my father died when I was ten. Mom never recovered, and by the time I turned fourteen, sha has changed half a dozen of jobs and has given up entirely on at least trying to get better.

When she told me we had to sell the car to pay our rent, I revolted. It was not my fault that she couldn't get herself into psychiatric help, and neither was the car's. I told her, begged her, to try to get into therapy and finding a job, but she was hellbent. And that's how I got my first fake ID.

One of the upperclassmen, some person named Morgan Doe, was into this shady, movie-like, kind of bussines. They had a reputation for faking IDs and other documents, and getting their hands on everything you wanted for the right price. I took all of our economies, which were really not that many now that I think of it, and asked for a Graduation Certificate and a fake ID. They haven't even looked at me for more than three seconds, and nodded. In two weeks, I was a new person, Allison Jay, an 18 year old who was taking a gap year before going to the University of Manchester. I got a job of delivering pizza without even trying too hard.

Now I just had to learn how to drive. There are many... many Youtube tutorials and Wikihow articles that really do help, but I had to learn it on my own, my short body barely reaching the pedals. It was a long process, but luckily I haven't destroyed anything in the time I was learning, and the police never stopped my car, even as I knew I was not driving under the speed limit.

From then on, it was the time for jobs related to driving: I delivered pizza, drove people around, even signed up for Uber for a while. The tips were good, but I had to clean the backseat so often that the material started wearing off. All in all, throught high school my mom and I did great money wise. She was still a nasty thing, angry and... in pain all the time, but at least we had something to put on the table every day. And then she died too, and I was left with a three-room apartment and crappy car. I was finishing high school then, and after the graduation ceremony, I packed my things, burned up any remains of the name Alicia Jesper I could find, sold the apartment and the car and left.

My first sports car was won in a race. It was a lucky strike; I was with one of my friends, Mirabella Ashton, who's place I was crashing, and we thought it could be fun. We were both into driving, and my friend even participated in a few races, but I was a newbie. Still, when this drunk guy came to us and said that he will race for his car, my fingers started trembling and my brain was on fire, and before I knew what was happening, I said yes. My friend was pretty tipsy too, and they let me borrow their car as long as I get it back in one piece. I joked that they didn't even know me, but I was nervous anyway. I placed a few grans on the bet, almost all of the money I had left, got into my friends' car and tried to calm my heart. I looked at the other drivers, all of them young and overrexcited that they will compete against a drunk guy and a girl, and the anger that started in my heart was more powerful than any fuel you can lay your eyes on.

So I drove. And I won. I shared the profit after the first race with my friend, and with the rest of the money and the car, I left the city. And so my life of car racing started. It was not always illegal, but it was hard to make a name for yourself in a men's world, without college or relations to send you to the top. I lived the next decade in abandoned train stations and open fields, drank so much booze my blood turned to beer, and had the time of my life. It was last year, when the incident happened.

I was good at what I was doing. I was so good, people were started to call me The Burning Devil, and got out of my way when I came to the races. It's not a popular activity, with only a few true sponsors, and after I settled down I started to get to know most of the people that came to these events. It would have been surprising to not notice the new person who came in that awful day, all dressed in red leather and with ginger hair.

She said her name was Jude, not giving a last name too. She said she was a newbie, as if you couldn't see that from how she was too-casually leaned on her car. She said she wanted to race, and that she wanted to race me.

I laughed, a bitter sound, and told her I don't want to crush her dreams when they're still so young. She in retutn extended a hand towards me, a wide smile on her face, and told me that if I give her a chance I might just change my mind. I didn't laugh this time; there was something in her voice... it made me jump slightly, as if there was a small flame under my feet. She was the one who laughed, and got inside her car without wating for me to shake her hand.

I looked at my friends, at my family basically, the only people who have cared for me and helped me improve, and smiled an already winning smile. They cheered me, and Mirabella, who was staying at my place for the time being, gave me a kiss on the lips. We were kind of in a relationship at the time, but that didn't continue after the race.

It was an easy win. I had a decade of experience and a good car, way better than the one I won when I was eighteen. I looked over to the girl in red leather, and she was staring right back at me. As the signal that warned us to get ready was heard, she smiled at me, again. This time I felt the flame cover my arms, and I hissed. I remember thinking that I should not let her get in my head.

This race was held on a hill, as were most of the races sponsored by Simon Fairchild. We were supposed to ride from the bottom of it to the top and make an U-turn to get back to where we started. It was more complicated than one might think, having to control the car both as you drive on a diagonal line, and and as you turn on a small area of space. Yet, I've made this circuit for more than a dozen of times so I wasn't worrying.

It took me only three minutes to get ahead by a good few hundred of metres. I could barely see har car, as red as her clothes, in the rear view mirror, and laughed out loud, feeling one with the car, feeling so free and so present in the world... The top of the hill was right ahead, and I was already feeling the taste of the rum the others' were going to give me and the smell of Mirabella's skin when she hugged me. It will be amazing to see the girl in red red with anger.

I reached the top of the hill witht he right speed limit to make the turn. My hand was on the break, at ready, and just as I turned it it... wasn't moving. It was stuck. I frantically started moving the handle, the end of the cliff top approaching me hurriedly, and I just couldn't. I started unbuckling my seat belt, ready to jump out of the car, and then I saw the red car, right next to my window. With half a mind I thought about how could she have gotten there so fast, and then I started to notice the fire. Her whole car was ablaze. She was laughing, but I couldn't hear her, just watch the wicked way her lips moved, and then she waved at me and I noticed that.. her skin was dripping. Just like the wax of a candle. The last thing I remember before plumetting off the hill was that her eyes and hair have caught fire too, and that it was beautiful in it's horror.

And then the car plummeted off the cliff. My seat belt was off, and I frantically tried to open the door, but it was stuck too. I think I screamed, I must have screamed, waiting for my awful end. But I.. I didn't die. The car was falling at a constant speed, like a paper airplane, almost floating in the air. The sky above me was too bright, and the green of the hill was barely noticeable in my fall. I didn't move, out of terror that changing my position might cause the lose of balance the car has. So I just waited for my inevitable death.

It's a weird thing, knowing that you'll die in only a few minutes, and knowing how it will happen, but being useless as in making a change. I watched the sky above me, that burning blue, and thought of my father. He has died of lung cancer from working long hourse in a mine around my hometown. Mom passed away in a similar way, lung cancer, but it was a weird thing... she has never smoked, or been around so heavily polluted air as my father did.

As the car kept crashing, falling, floating, I felt it. I felt the air being stuck in my chest, and I started coughing. I couldn't breath. I couldn't open my mouth enough to get in some air, any air, I couldn't make my nose inhale, or my chest stop hurting, and my head started feeling heavy as I was coughing and falling and floating towards my own death. I felt blood vessels explode across my skin with ugly pops, my eyes glued shut, I felt hopeless and wished so, so, hard to just die already.

And then it stopped. The car was still floating at a constant speed, but the pain in my chest was no longer there. I could breath, and I did that for at least ten minutes before allowing myself to open my eyes. The sky was brighter than ever, and I hated it.

That's how I lived for what must have been three days. It was coughing fits and the impossibility to breath, it was me crying softly in the driver's seat, not caring about any kind of balance as I tried with all my might to open the door, any door, and kill myself to escape from that hell. The sky turned black when night begun, such as it did everyday, but even that was too bright, ablaze, mocking me in its freedom. I couldn't sleep. I didn't feel hunger, or thirst, either, I just sat there, watching, wishing to die, wishing for the coughing fits to stop, but none of my wishes came true.

When I felt something of that floating shift, I was just getting out of a coughing fit. This one was different than the others, blood having painted my hands now. That was the moment the car started falling.

It took only a few seconds. It took only a few seconds for it to get stuck in a tree around the other end of the hill, and for me to open the driver's door as if it was nothing. I fell on the ground and started running, expecting to be sore or hungry or in pain, at least, but I was feeling nothing. I ran and left my crashed car behind, as far away as I could. I needed to get on the road, to hitchhike to the city, and to make sure everyone knew I'm okay.

That's when I saw all the people gathered right where the race started, cheering for the girl in red so loudly I could hear it from almost a mile away. I stopped in my tracks; there was no way they could have been sitting there for three days, in exactly the same clothes. Uncertain, I walked towards them and saw the girl, Jude, with her arm around Mirabella's shoulder, saying something in her ear. She was not burned up. She was fine, her car was fine, her clothes were fine. I was not fine.

When Jude saw me, she smiled that wide, awful grin. I felt like I could cry, but I cried so much in the air that I don't think I'll be able to do it again. Jude thanked me for the race, and kissed Mirabella on the head. Her eyes were slightly unfocused, but she looked at me with an indescribable expression, before turning in Jude's embrace, away from me.

"And thanks for my prize, too." said Jude, barely above a whisper, as she turned towards the crowd with Mirabella. I could see that Mirabella's shirt had a hole on the shoulder where Jude's hand has been, a hole that looked as if it was burned in the material. It was the shape of the girl in red's hand.

I hitchhiked the way home. None of my friends offered me a ride."

Martin's hands were sore, and Allison's eyes were red, as if she has been crying. Jon no longer had the eyes covering his skin and he looked tired, not sick, as he looked before. The trembling stopped, and the windows were back in their original shape. Most of the passangers thought they must have imagined them breaking, or saw the branches of the trees in the pale moonlight hitting across the windows and thought they were cracks.

"Statement ends. Thank you... Alicia. "

"Do. Not. Call me. That." she extracted her hands from Martin's grip and formed a fist towards Jon, clutching her jaw. "I don't know what you just did, how you made me talk, but what I've been through has been hard enough without some creppy guy digging in my past and making me throw up all my trauma to be recorded on that stupid tape. Do you and your boyfriend get off on that?"

"It's really not like that Allison, we-" Martin started, but she extended her hand and made a fist of his sweater, threatening him now.

"Stop it. Stop it. This has been.. a very weird night. I will go back to sleep and when I wake up you two will not say a word to me ever again, not if you don't want me to call the cops. This night, this discussion, has not happened."

Jon let out a soft, unamused laugh, and nodded. Allison got up from the bed, clutching her hands around her neck, and started coughing. She returned to her bed with her back turned towards them, headphones in her ears, and did not move from that position.

"I hate when that you have to do that." Martin said, failing to hide the edge of his voice.

"I know. Me too. But it will be over soon, okay? It will be over soon."

They looked at each other and Jon sighed, placing a small kiss on Martin's forehead. He has been getting hungrier and hungrier in the past few days, but at noleast now they had a plan. Jon clutched the tape recorder in his hand and looked at the sky, the sky that was looking back at him, and hoped that their plan will work.

[kilyra]

What Was I Supposed to Do?

Frank Castle (Punisher) One-Shot

A/N: You wake up in this hospital and a very unimpressed Frank Castle is right there beside you.

Warning: None. It’s spoiler-free and not even bad language. But I want to apologize because I try to keep my reader-inserts neutral (particularly with gender and race). With this one though, the reader-insert is female. Whenever I tried to cut/modify those parts, it just didn’t sound right. Sorry guys!

The dull, throbbing pain slowly pulled you out of the pool of black numbness. Tears started to well as the bright light burned your eyes, even while they were still closed. Squinting, you blinked rapidly, feeling the tear roll along your temple.

“That mean you’re actually awake this time?” A gruff voice cut through the remaining floating feeling you were trying to hold on to.

Frank.

Keeping your eyes closed, you heard his heavy boots shuffle on the tile when suddenly the light went dim. 

“What?” The question came out in a soft croak as you struggled to talk without breaking into a coughing fit. Your throat was raw.

He huffed a hard sigh. “You were conscious yesterday. Twice, actually. Enough for them to take out the breathing tube, but you didn’t wake up.”

Your eyes fluttered open. It took a few seconds before you could keep them open, but with the dim lighting, they were able to focus.

Staring down at you, Frank was a wreck. His skin was so pale and his eyes were wide, but beady somehow. His short hair was wild, not even casually styled. It looked like he had been tugging at fistfuls of it instead of getting any sleep.

You wanted to lift your hand to comfort him, but it took too much effort. “What’s wrong?”

Scoffing, his chest dropped as he glanced towards the ceiling. He was so agitated, he rocked between his feet. “What...what's wrong?  She finally wakes up and the first thing she asks is what's wrong.”

Slowly, your gaze drifted over the room. You were in a hospital. What was a distant beeping became sharper as you realized the machine was beside you. It was next to a stand that held a couple of IV bags. One of them had to be painkillers, something keeping you dull. That had to be the reason you were just confused and not panicking.

“What are you talking about?” Your ragged voice sounded far away to your own ears.

Looking back at you, his nose flared as he fought against frowning. “Yeah, I bet you got questions. But  what I want to know is what the hell you were thinking?”

Growling, he kept his voice low but you could see it took all his willpower to keep from yelling while his intense stare bore a hole right through you. His knuckles turned white as he gripped the rail on the side of your bed.

“What I was thinking,” you echoed.

“You don't...?" Pushing off the bed, Frank loudly sighed as he shook his head and looked away. "Yeah, of course, you don't remember. The kid?...No? None of it?"

The kid.

In a flash, it all came flooding back to you.

You were heading up the block to meet with Frank by your favourite diner. He was already waiting for you across the street by the time you were coming up to the crosswalk. And that's when you saw it.

Some asshole was burning up the street, swerving between lanes before sideswiping a parked car. And a kid was walking towards you on the crosswalk, with his headphones in. He was completely oblivious to the death on wheels that was moments away from running him down.

Dropping your bag, you sprinted the rest of the way, taking long strides onto the road. You already knew there wouldn't have time to grab him and get out of the way. The car was right there.

Dropping your shoulder, you checked him as hard as you could. He flew backward, a screaming pile of flailing limbs. Turning your head, the last thing you saw was the grill.

Gasping, you tried to sit up.

Spinning back on you, Frank reached out and grabbed your arms, lightly pinning you down. “Shh, shh, shh, whoa, Y/n. Hey, hey hey,” he quietly murmured as he stopped you from moving.

“The kid. Is the kid okay??”

“Yeah...yeah, the kid's fine. Shh, just lie back, okay? The kid's fine but you won't be if you keep moving." His eyebrows were lifted as he spoke to you with a gentleness he didn't seem to possess just moments ago.

Keeping your eyes glued to his, you let the moment of panic pass until your muscles finally relaxed.

Sensing it, he nodded. “There you go, atta girl.”

Why was it so hard to move? Finally, you looked down at yourself, but the blanket hid most of your body.

Keeping one hand on yours, Frank ran his free hand over his hair and cupped the back of his neck. “See, they uh...you had to get a few surgeries, Y/n. And you probably will need a few more until they get everything fixed up. Right now, you've got pins holding some of your bones in place because they were shattered. When the nurse comes back she can...she can...she can uh...”

His words grew faint until he was finally just repeating himself, his words coming out as an airy breath while his eyes trailed down the blanket.

Finally, his eyes snapped up to yours and his eyebrows pinched together. He looked lost. “Why did you...what were you thinking, Y/n?”

Shifting in the bed, you tried to give some relief to your sore tailbone. As you spoke, it came out in a groan. “I thought I wouldn't be waking up, actually.”

When you realized the car was on you, your exact thought was so this is how it ends. It was almost amusing at the time that something so random would be what gets you.

Frank's face dropped, his concern turning back to anger. “Is that some kind of joke? You...I watched you. You shoulda...shoulda...”

“What, Frank? Huh? Seriously, what was I supposed to do? Just let him die? When I could have done something? Is that what you would have done?”

In the face of your irritation, Frank's anger couldn't hold up. Rubbing his fingers against his eyes, he pinched his nose and sighed. “No, I...you're right. I just...”

Dropping his hand, you could see just how red his eyes were. He looked like he was coming unglued.

“Frank, how did you know I was conscious twice yesterday?”

Blinking, he bobbed his head back at your question. He replied with a shrug.

“Have you been home at all?” Your throat still felt like sandpaper, but it was getting easier to talk.

Throwing his shoulders back, he glanced to the side.

“Don't they have visiting hours?”

Turning back, a cautious, wry grin broke out. “I don't know. Maybe. No one really challenged me when I told them I was staying.”

Closing your eyes, a grin found its way to your own lips. “Please don't piss off the team that's making sure I stay alive right now, Frank.”

His grin sobered as he gave you a sidelong glance. “Yeah, you got it. I won't...”

You snaked your fingers between his and clasped his hand tightly. “I'll be okay, Frank. It's ok.”

Looking towards the ceiling again, he started to mumble again. It took a moment before you could make out his words. “I...I almost...I almost lost you Y/n. I thought I had. I thought you were gone. When I saw you lying there.”

His despair tore through you, but a wave of fatigue rose up to claim you. He needed rest and you needed rest too. “Well, I'm here. But...I don't know if it's the meds or what, but I'm still so tired. I just want to go back to sleep. You really should go home and get some rest. I'm okay.”

Nodding, he reached behind and pulled a chair over to the side of your bed. Not letting go of your hand, he sat down next to you. “I got you, Y/n. Get some sleep, I'll be right here.”

You knew better than to argue as you let your eyes flutter closed again. There were still so many questions – what happened with the kid, or the driver? Just how bad were your injuries? Can you still walk? Would you need to testify?  Yet, the only thing you could focus on was the wave of sleep crashing over you.

And the way Frank gently squeezed your hand as you drifted away.

[complicatedandstained]

The Other Day at Hot Topic: Something Pretty

“Find something pretty for me, Roxas?”

Roxas recognizes the voice instantly, which would be less embarrassing if the sound of it didn’t resonate in his ear like a musician hitting a note just right, or if it didn’t turn his stomach into something like grape jelly.

Kneeling on the floor of Hot Topic, Roxas sits beside an open plastic display case of piercings, intimately acquainting himself with products he’s never given a second glance before, as he tries to remember Aqua’s instructions on what goes next to or in front of what, and on which display.

Which is to say that he does not remember.

She had promised to answer any questions he had, and then promptly left on her fifteen-minute break.

Despite the excitement with Vanitas, it’s still pretty early in the morning, and with his fatigue catching up, it takes Roxas a moment to cobble together his five-star response. “Axel, hey.”

Setting a short stack of neon colored plastic balls on metal rings back in the box, and internally telling his stomach to chill the fuck out already, Roxas glances up.

It is a huge mistake. His eyes have to climb a pair of metallic gold jeans, hugging calf and thigh muscles, before they can skim the hard lines beneath a black V-neck, pass over pale, sun freckled skin, and settle on the shock of loose, unstyled red spikes and amused green eyes.

So, he didn’t sleep off that crush thing, like, at all, then.   

“Putting out some new ear thing-a-ma-jigs,” Roxas explains, lifting one to get the jade gaze off of him before something in his chest decides to implode.

“Well…” Axel leans forward, the metallic denim flashing in Roxas’ peripheral. “Actually.”

Roxas is pretty sure no one has a right to look that damn good in a pair of pants. You know, legally speaking.

Axel tilts the piercing in Roxas’ hand toward him with his fingertips. “That’s a tongue thing-a-ma-jig,” he smirks lightly, “but I appreciate your enthusiasm.”

Roxas fights with a smirk of his own. “Shut up, I’ve had a rough morning.” He can’t resist sticking out his own tongue. Does Axel have to be good at everything? “Know-it-all.”

Axel’s smile brightens. He must bleach it. “It’s literally my only job.”

Roxas laughs and returns to rooting through the box, pulling out another slip of cardboard and plastic that had caught his eye earlier and setting it in Axel’s palm. “There.”

“Yes, good. Plugs,” Axel teases as he flutters the package in front of Roxas’ eyes. “These are for ears.”

“No, I mean,” Roxas’ brow furrows, and he turns his attention back to the box, “ah, fuck it.”

But Axel doesn’t appear to be going anywhere. “Mean what, Roxas?” his needling lilt would be grating, Roxas decides, if it didn’t seem to serve as a thin paper wrapping actual concern.

“I thought you’d…” Roxas looks up, you know, like an idiot, and gets stuck again on curious green eyes, until the next words come out more a mumble, “maybe like those.”  

“Oh.” Axel leans back on his heels, twisting the packaging between his fingers and drawing it up to examine. “Shit. Yeah?”

Roxas rubs at the checkered cuff along his wrist, offers a half smile. The plugs were black, like Axel’s own, with a mandala cut out revealing a whirl of purple, green, and pale yellow. “They’re little stained-glass windows.”

Axel runs his thumb across the plastic. “How about that?” he muses softly, scarlet brows rising.

“It’s dumb.” Roxas’ face feels stretched, sunburnt, his thumb fumbles at the joint of his glasses. “I just liked them, and I thought—”

“I’ve always liked stained glass windows.”

Roxas shuts his eyes. “You’re just saying that.”

“Nah,” Axel waves off Roxas’ second-guessing. “I’ve never seen anything like these, and I’ve seen a million of ‘em.”

“Yeah?” Roxas shifts purposelessly through the befuddling contents of the box, unwilling to look up in case his flush has burnt through the golden tan the islands gift him when he’s home too long.

“Yeah.” A toe prods at Roxas’ side until Roxas swipes at Axel’s boot, grinning up at him in spite of himself. “Thank you, Roxas.”             

Chastising himself as he realizes his temperature rises ten degrees every time Axel drops the hard R in his name, Roxas returns to his work, nods. One shoulder lifts. “Sure.”

In his peripheral, another mirage-like shimmer of gold as Axel leans forward like he’s got something clever to say, and then decides against it. “Hey, if you’re doing okay, I gotta,” Axel fingers the silver hoops lining his helix and winces, “go be responsible.”

“Oh,” Roxas blurts, before he can stop himself. “Right, yeah.” He shrugs. Fistfuls of piercings occupy both hands, and a couple drift to the floor. “Do that.”  

“Don’t miss me too much.” Axel chuckles. “I’ll be right back.”

Roxas’ shoulder lifts again and he misses the frown he earns in response.

Axel takes a few steps forward, pauses, doubles back.

“You know.” Axel halts, just a step past the blonde on the floor now, facing the opposite direction. Nostalgia thickens his voice, as he raises the plugs to eye level again. “When I was younger my grandma used to drag me to church every once in a while, trying to save my little heathen soul.”

Confused but intrigued, Roxas stills, cringes a bit.

“And Grandma wasn’t fucking around…”

Roxas snorts and sees a grin pull at Axel’s lip as the redhead turns to bear witness to the sound.

“…Went to this big-ass Gothic cathedral in the heart of Radiant Garden.”

Roxas lifts his chin to see Axel’s sweeping gesture, up and toward the ceiling, as if his spindly fingers could paint pillars in the aisles of Hot Topic.

“And that was a brand-new word for me. Soul. That’s how hedonistic my parents were.” Axel’s fingers swish fondly, and Roxas has a sudden desire to know what kind of people had resulted in this.

“And I was a literal sort of kid, so sitting in that rock-hard pew, staring up, I kinda always figured souls must look something like those huge stained-glass windows, y’know? Mosaics of color and light, pictures of people and things that really mattered…Sometimes beautiful, sometimes all clouded up, sometimes blinding.”

Roxas’ throat dries. He can almost see them himself, a million kaleidoscopic crystals of light weaving together.

Words seem insufficient—unnecessary. He nods.

Axel looks a bit sheepish, unleashing words Roxas gets a sense he’s never said before. Rubbing at his shoulder, the underside of each forearm reveals a tattoo, black V’s blossoming into single, fully colored tongues of flame pausing a few inches before wrist and elbow. Roxas imagines Axel’s window might look like that. Sharp scarlet, electric orange, soft yellow: fiery, expressive, bright, and just a little dangerous.  

“I used to try and draw them,” Axel admits, “way back when, but I could never quite…” he grasps at the air like he’s trying to catch fog, the black leather cords around his wrist slipping down. He matches his eyes to Roxas’ again, but once more the words don’t come. Axel shakes off the memory. It seems to evaporate from his expression like smoke from a shaken match and the wry smile returns, as he turns away. “Anyway,” Axel says. “Bet yours would be pretty, all that gold in the sunshine.”  

With this final swordthrust through Roxas’ crushing heart, Axel picks his way around Roxas’ set up and saunters toward the back room where Vanitas is hiding out, blue eyes trailing after him.

“Yours too,” Roxas murmurs lamely, but if Axel hears him, he doesn’t react.

*          *

Axel wonders dimly what it is about Roxas that makes him feel guilty every time he leaves his side. Thoughts of crumbling white pillars and an ocean blue window with sand golden ridges spiral in Axel’s head as he pockets the plugs he’ll buy later and shifts the door marked ‘Staff Only’ open, offering it his usual grin for the sake of irony.

Axel finds Vanitas sitting at the desk in the back, beside a computer and a set of security monitors. He has his chin resting on his arms, his headphones hugging his neck and his eyes straight on Roxas in a security frame. He’s watching Axel’s new friend layering packages of piercings on a display shelf, a step off from where Axel had just been standing himself. In other words, playing I Spy: Hot Topic Edition.

And yeah, sure, Roxas is pretty fucking adorable, but that’s not exactly an excuse.

“Slacking off again, V?” Axel teases. He can feel the teeth behind his words, sharper than the ones he jabs at Demyx’s lazy bones.

Only a flicker of Vanitas’ eyes acknowledge Axel’s presence.

“Overcompensating again, Ax?”

Axel wonders if Vanitas is referring to the silent conversation he’d been snooping on, or Axel’s metallic gold pants.

Probably the pants.

Axel can feel his mouth drop into a scowl before his lazy smirk reasserts its dominance. “No need,” he purrs, pocketing his hands and striding right up behind the prickly douchebag. “Break’s over. Out.”

Vanitas is not one to hide his scowls. “Technically, I have more right to be back here than you do.” He relinquishes the chair anyway.

Axel sinks into black pleather, spinning around to face the monitor, fatigued at the prospect of fast-forwarding through hour long segments of Hot Topic employees unloading boxes at paces that would put sloths to shame. “Technically, you should have been fired by now.”

Vanitas shrugs.

If Vanitas were smart, he’d leave it at that and get to work. Axel won’t be awarding him a scholarship any time soon. He can feel the shadow lingering just past his shoulder, watching him load the security footage.

“You probably don’t want to watch that,” Vanitas sings, too fucking close to his ear, and Axel snaps the chair back around sharply.

Axel’s assessing glare must chill even Vanitas’ soul, because the guy unconsciously runs knuckles over the glossy blazer buttons above his abdomen and backs off a couple steps.

“Why?”

Vanitas regroups, sneering at his informational upperhand, and gestures to the blonde bedhead still shifting around on-screen, trying to reattach a plastic door to the piercing display case that he likely has no idea was already broken to begin with.

“Yeah, okay, sure.”

Roxas is sweeter than a slice of strawberry shortcake with cream, Xigbar complains in Axel’s head.

Vanitas flutters a hand over his heart, facial features and voice softening eerily as he tries to feign innocence, “Wouldn’t want anything to come between you and your precious new bestie.” Vanitas chuckles, flipping up a palm in consideration. “I mean, aside from the obvious.”

Axel has too much pride to ask what the fuck that’s supposed to mean.

Scoffing, Axel continues booting up the program on the computer, waving Vanitas in the direction of the salesfloor. “If you’re not going to tell me what you did, get lost.”

If something had happened, Roxas would have said so. Right?   

But as much as Axel wants to believe Vanitas is spouting absolute bullshit, the voice of experience is tying Eagle Scout level knots in his stomach.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Vanitas takes up a fully loaded rack of hanging clothes, (maybe he really had been working?) and rolls it out of the cluttered backroom and onto the floor.

Axel mentally runs through his conversation with Roxas again, chastising himself for oversharing, though Roxas hadn’t seemed to mind, had almost seemed to get it, even.

Nothing weird from Roxas, though, other than the new hipster vibes his thick rimmed glasses and khaki pants had given him. That, and his, frankly tragic, lack of knowledge about tongue piercings.

Shut up, I’ve had a rough morning. The Roxas in Axel’s head smirks and parts pouty pink lips to stick out a pretty pink tongue. Axel chides himself for zeroing in on that, but shit.

Shit.

Axel adjusts the settings on the security program and hesitates only a heartbeat before pressing play.  

[sweetener-forever]

Kirishima’s Existential Crisis

Rating: T

Characters: Kirishima Eijirou, Bakugou Katsuki 

Tags: A little heavy of a topic on maybe not existing, not suicide related, but take care of yourselves

Summary: Sometimes a bro needs to unload his weird dilemma about existing to a bro wearing headphones.

AO3 Link

Study sessions with Bakugou are anything, but quiet for the most part. There is yelling back and forth from both parties, objects are occasionally thrown, and Bakugou is known for hitting him in the head with a rolled up notebook if he gets too frustrated (usually this is reserved for math). However, sometimes it can be completely silent. When Kirishima is turned loose to work on the dictated problems and Bakugou puts in his earbuds to discourage Kirishima from getting distracted and talking to him.

It works, for the most part, but Kirishima sometimes takes these opportunities, as few as they come, to talk more with a busy Bakugou that can't hear him and won't respond back.

"Hey, Bakugou? Can you hear me?" Kirishima isn't whispering by any means, but he also isn't going out of his way to be heard by his explosive blond friend.

When Bakugou doesn't so much as flick his eyes up and continues working on his own problems Kirishima finally relaxes. He makes short work of pretending to work on the problems so Bakugou won't yell at him for messing around and slowly begins talking.

"Do you ever just think about just not existing?" He pauses and looks up to watch Bakugou write for a few seconds before looking back down at his own paper.

"No...you probably don't, I've heard your life goals before, so you don't have time for stupid stuff like those kind of feelings." Kirishima writes out three numbers and then erases them again as he talks, eyes no longer lifting away from his paper as he does.

"Sometimes I do though. Not that I want to commit suicide or die or anything like that! I just mean that I kind of want to stop existing?" The words of the problem Bakugou had assigned him to work on aren't making any sense. They seem more like swimming jibberish the longer he stares down at his paper. And that is probably a pretty good metaphor for what is going on in his head right now.

"Dude, this is so hard to explain to someone like you, I hope you know that..." It's more of a mumble than an actual accusation, especially since Kirishima doesn't expect Bakugou to answer and really doesn't want him to hear this.

He can only imagine the kind of scoffing ridicule he would get, the thought so terrifying that he doesn't want to even dwell on it. The thought that if Bakugou knew deep down how weak he is that he wouldn't want to hang out with him like this anymore. It's scary, but he keeps talking.

"I mean that I don't want to stop existing completely and forever, but more like put my whole existence on pause?" No, that didn't make much sense either, not in Kirishima's head and certainly not when he says it out loud. He furiously scribbles away some of the useless doodles on the side of his paper.

"It doesn't happen all the time, or even that often anymore. I just sometimes get really tired." He pauses and thinks about his next words carefully as if he really were having this conversation with Bakugou instead of reflecting his own ideas off of someone that can't hear him.

"I like being around people a lot and helping out our friends if ever they need me! I'm always down to help anyone at any time, really! But sometimes I guess I get really tired while doing it?" A few frustrated taps against a number that is starting to look more like a letter with his pencil as he bites his lips and considered a better analogy.

"Oh, I got it! It's like when your phone battery starts to get really low..no, no that's stupid actually." A small huff and another scribble erased. Analogies are not his friend today and he knows it. "I don't get tired physically? I'm more tired emotionally and it starts to feel like a little too much." He doesn't want to say that it's something that he can't handle, not in front of someone as put together and focused as Bakugou. The guy seems like he never has any doubts (even if Kirishima knows that isn't true from first-hand experience, but traitorous thoughts always bleed in that maybe Bakugou has those figured out in the end as well).

"I just want people to stop talking to me and being around me, and I want to go lay down and listen to music or something. But the kind of music that doesn't have people talking. It's just some kind of white noise that blots out that I'm anywhere physical. Which is dumb because I'm training to be a hero, so I'm going to be around people all the time." This is a perfectly valid reason as to why Kirishima will never say any of this out loud to Bakugou in a situation where the blond can actually hear him. Appearing weak aside, he can't let anyone know and doubt how much he wants to become a hero.

"I know it's pretty unmanly, but it's just how I feel sometimes. Even though I know I shouldn't because it sounds super worrying when I say it out loud like this."

It takes Kirishima several seconds to realize he has stopped all movements of trying to pretend that he is working on his homework.

"I get overwhelmed by everything. It's not like I wouldn't trade my life for anything else because I am super grateful to be here with you all, but sometimes I feel like I need a break. From everything, even myself. I get really tired being me and trying to be happy all the time, but not thinking about how everything makes me worry." The only noise in the room is Bakugou's pencil gently moving across the paper.

Despite everything he is feeling and saying the noise is somehow soothing to the fatigued and frustrated parts of Kirishima's brain. He soaks it in while he can before Bakugou eventually notices that he isn't actually doing his work and tries to get all his thoughts back into a row.

"I'm really tired, and I don't know how to tell you without sounding like a jerk because I want to either be alone or just sit in silence with you. You're my best friend and I like the manly way you talk and scream death threats at me, but I really like moments like these too where we can just be quiet and be around each other." The irony is not lost on Kirishima that they could be doing just that if he would only shut up already.

"I think I'm just tired of being tired in general. So maybe that's why I want to stop existing for a little while, so I can recharge without having to feel tired?" That actually seemed like a satisfactory answer after all, and it makes Kirishima finally look up from his paper to grin over at Bakugou at having found an answer to what he is feeling.

Except Bakugou is no longer working on his problems.

He is staring at Kirishima, one earbud pulled out, and an unreadable expression on his face.

The muscular armed clock in his room ticks a little too loudly for comfort as they both sit without saying anything. Kirishima's brain stopping completely with the sheer overwhelming amount of panic and Bakugou with his blank expression and pondering thoughts.

"Oi, are you finished yet?" Is what Bakugou says when he finally speaks, pulling the other earbud out and turning off his phone.

Kirishima starts to breathe a little easier as his lungs fill up and then the air is blown out in a loud and awkward laugh.

"Uh, no, not yet, dude! I think I'm stuck on this one problem?" An understatement, he can't remember a single thing that Bakugou had said while he had been explaining the problem earlier. That and his paper looks like he has been trying to torture it for information instead of solving a math problem.

"Amazing. We'll pick this shit back up in an hour." That is not what Kirishima had been expecting and even less so when Bakugou closes their shared math book and pushes it aside.

Bakugou doesn't just take breaks, it isn't normal for him.

"Dude, are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure! Get up, hair for brains, or I'm going to make you work on the next five problems instead!" Bakugou's patience is at the end of its rope and Kirishima knows better than to test it any further. Scrambling to his feet and following Bakugou out of the room he feels a little relieved that he hadn't been caught rambling.

And if it makes him more comfortable to speak to a wall, then Bakugou would never tell him that his earbuds are broken.

[astronomyparkers]

Skyline {VI}

Warnings: Language, blood mention, panic attack

Pairing: Peter Parker x reader

Word count: 2.7k

A/N: Oh my god you guys!!  I have so much to discuss but first and foremost I want to thank all of you for making this story into what it is.  I started this story two weeks ago and in those two weeks I’ve gained almost 2000 followers and have had success that I never even dreamed of.  Thank you so much for all that you’ve done for me, for this story, and hopefully for stories I write in the future!!! Skyline wouldn’t be what it is today without you guys.  Secondly, there will be a pt. 7!!!  I know I keep saying this, but I really did mean for this to be the last part.  It’s just that there are so many things I want to include and plot points I want to flesh out, and although I feel bad for writing angst chapter after angst chapter, I want to give you guys my all and I don’t want to short change you.  Finally, I would like to thank my friends Zoe and Jen for helping me brainstorm ideas and helping finalize details and plot points.  I love you guys so so much!!  Also, everyone, again, I DO NOT HAVE A TAGS LIST!!! I put this at the beginning of every chapter, it’s in my bio, and I’ve made multiple posts but people keep spamming me about it.  I am truly not trying to be mean, but I do my best to respond to every ask and message I get, and having to sort through a million people asking the same question is hard guys!!!.  Before, I go, one last thing: because everyone has sent me in songs that they listen to that remind them of Skyline, I compiled them into a playlist along with ones I listen to!!  Please give it a listen and try to listen in order, as the songs follow the storyline.  Link is below.  Enjoy everyone!!

skyline: a mixtape

{part i} {part ii} {part iii} {part iv} {part v} 

Waking up the next morning was hard.  Sleep was like temporary amnesia, and when you awoke alone in bed, your hand automatically reached out for the note that Spider-Man always left before he disappeared every night.  Instead of feeling the usual smooth sheet of paper, however, you felt empty sheets that seemed colder than ever before.  It was then that the events of the previous night tumbled into your head, from your request to know Spider-Man’s identity, to him saying I love you for the first time, to you giving him up.

You groaned and rubbed your hand across your face, fatigue taking over.  More than anything, you wanted to fake an illness, stay in bed all day, and wallow in your thoughts, but you knew you had to get up. Although the breakup hurt you (did it count as a breakup if you were never really together in the first place?), you knew you made the right choice.  There was no way a relationship with a superhero would work out if the significant other didn’t know who they were; if you were to fall in love, you would need to be able to fall completely.

With a sigh, you dragged yourself out of bed and got ready for the day, going through the motions of your morning routine.  By the time you had reached Midtown and had taken a seat in your first class, which was American history, you were regretting your decision to not wallow.  Wallowing was good for the soul.  At least, it was better for the soul than listening to your teacher try to rap along to Hamilton.

Still, you went about your day with your best foot forward, and tried to act as normal as possible.  You answered questions in each class, aced an English quiz, made conversation with your friends at lunch, and, by the time you reached chemistry, had sufficiently put Spider-Man to the back of your mind.

Alex was turned around in her seat just like any other day, back to the front of the room as she made conversation.  You smiled at a joke she made as you unloaded your books, flipping open to the readings you were assigned yesterday.

“And the thing is, I know for a fact that—are you okay, Peter?”

At Alex’s mention of your friend, you looked up from your textbook to see Peter slumping into his seat.  He looked tired, with bags under his eyes, and his sweater was rumpled like he had thrown it on haphazardly.  His hair was a mess, too, as if he had spent a great deal of time running his hands through it anxiously.

“Yeah, I-I’m fine,” Peter mumbled, barely looking up at Alex to answer her. “Just tired.”

“I missed you at lunch today,” You turned toward your friend, concern apparent in your voice. “Where were you?  We were going to study for the academic decathlon meeting next week, remember?”

“Yeah, I, uh,” Peter fiddled with a page in his notebook. “I was busy.  Sorry.”

“Oh.” You bit your lip. “It’s okay.  What were you busy with?”

“Just…” Peter fiddled more. “Stuff.  For the Stark internship, you know?”

“Right.” You were confused as to why Peter was refusing to make eye contact with you. Had you done something wrong?

Even after the teacher walked in and called the class to order, you continued wracking your brain to figure out what you did to warrant this change in behaviour.  Yesterday, Peter had been holding your hand and making you feel things that you weren’t quite sure you were supposed to feel. Things that, after you thought about them, helped push you to the decision that you had to end your affair with Spider-Man.  It wasn’t as if you were going to rebound right away and make a move on your chemistry partner—you weren’t even sure if that was something you wanted.  But you did want to spend time with your friend, which was kind of hard to do if he wouldn’t even look at you.

About twenty minutes before the end of the class, the voice of one of your school secretaries came through the PA system, interrupting your pondering.

“Peter Parker, please report to the principal’s office,” the voice crackled through the ancient speaker. “Peter Parker, to the principal’s office.”

The class made the typical teenage taunting noise as Peter began packing up his books and stood up, slinging his bag over his shoulder.  He quickly glanced at you and, without saying a proper goodbye, walked out of the room.

Alex twisted around in her seat as the teacher tried to continue on with the lesson.

“Do you know what’s up with him?” Alex mouthed, trying to escape the notice of the teacher.

You shook your head as you stared with worry at the empty door frame.

 Peter never returned. When the bell rang, you practically jumped out of your seat and darted through the halls, hoping Peter would be waiting for you at your locker like he usually was between classes.

To your disappointment, Peter was nowhere in sight.  With a sigh, you opened your locker and retrieved the books you needed for your next class, all the while wondering what the principal could possibly have needed to talk to Peter about.  As far as you knew, he hadn’t done anything wrong.  Was everything okay?  The more you thought, the more you worried, and you knew that you had to talk to Peter right away.  Instead of turning down the next hallway for your class, you ducked into the nearest bathroom and pulled out your phone.  No messages from him.

You leaned against the wall.  Where would Peter have gone?  You wracked your brain for all the places he and you had gone together in the school. The quad?  No, you had passed it on your way to your locker and Peter was nowhere in sight.  Maybe the library?  You considered, but crossed it off your list.  Whatever was happening, you had a feeling that Peter wouldn’t be somewhere that required silence; if anything, he would go somewhere that allowed him to make as much noise as he wanted or needed to.

The class bell rang from the hallway, and it was then that the answer flew into your mind.  The shop in the basement of Midtown was secluded from other classrooms, far enough down that no one on higher floors could hear the noise of the machines, and Peter frequented it regularly for robotics club.  While the shop wasn’t much of a lead, and it was likely to be empty, it was the only location that was even remotely close to being where Peter was.

You exited the bathroom quickly and made your way to the basement stairs as inconspicuously as possible, not wanting to get caught without a hall pass.  You pulled open the door to the stairs and, with one final glance to make sure the coast was clear, ducked inside, shutting the door firmly behind you.

Carefully, you made your way down the dark, sloped passage.  The lack of light made you doubt that Peter was in the shop at all, but as you walked further down, you began to hear movement.  At the bottom of the stairs was soft light, like there was only a work bench lamp on.  You peered around the corner of the stairwell, trying not to be seen.

Standing at the back wall was Peter, sweater off and in a sweat-soaked undershirt.  You could see his frame shaking from your place on the stairs, and you could hear his ragged breaths as he dragged in lungful after lungful of air, fast and tight.  Repeatedly, his right hand snapped out, punching the wall over and over again in the same spot.  

You wanted to stop him, to run over and pull his hands to his sides and restrain him, but you felt paralyzed.  What had happened in the last half hour that had caused him to react like this?  You had never seen Peter in such an emotional state; you had to admit, it frightened you.  Peter was your friend that built LEGO death stars for fun.  He was your friend that almost exclusively wore shirts with science puns.  He was your friend that walked you home and helped you study for tests and didn’t make fun of you for playing the same movie soundtrack over and over when you shared headphones on the subway.  He wasn’t angry.  He wasn’t destructive.  He wasn’t this person in front of you, who didn’t notice the blood on their fingers as they ran their hands over their face and through their hair.

Peter punched the wall a few more times, before coming to a jerky stop.  He looked at the wall, and reached out a gentle hand, just touching the cracks in the plaster.  You watched as a finger traced a streak of blood.

The boy stepped back from the wall, cradling his hand to his chest.  He finally seemed to register what he was doing, seemed to realize that the skin of his knuckles had split open.  He gazed down at his hand, body halfway turned towards you so that could see his tear streaked, blood stained face.  With his left hand, he cautiously touched one of the knuckles, hissing in pain.

“What am I doing?” Peter muttered to himself, shaking his head adamantly. “What the fuck am I doing, what is this all for, who is this going to help, who the fuck is this going to save—” Peter began gulping in air again, squeezing his injured hand to his chest.  The tears bubbled up again and began to escape his eyes as he began sobbing again, the sound of it breaking out of his chest like he was a prisoner in his own body, breaking down against his will.  Peter coughed after a few rough breaths until he finally let out a scream. You felt your heart break in your chest as you watched your friend’s legs give out, and he collapsed onto the floor as his sobs shook him.

Seeing Peter on the floor caused something inside you to snap.  You quickly wiped your face and rushed over to your friend, wrapping your arms around him and dropping to the floor.

Peter tensed for a moment, looking over at you but not completely seeing you. “Y-Y/N?”

“Peter,” Your hands moved from his shoulders to his face, looking him in the eye. “Peter, what’s wrong?  What happened?”

“I—” Peter continued sucking in air faster and faster, tears still pouring down his cheeks. “There was—in—”

“Breathe, Peter,” Your thumbed stroked his cheeks as you measured your breathing. “Come on, watch me.  In and out.”

Peter tried to match his breathing to yours, sobs still choking out of his throat.  He squeezed his eyes shut again, lowering his head to the ground.  Your hands moved from his cheeks to the back of his neck, gently rubbing in a way that you hoped was soothing.

Peter’s head came forward to rest on your shoulder.  You knew that his tears and blood were staining your shirt, but you didn’t care.  You brought one of your hands up to his head, running your fingers through his hair. You held him as tightly as you could, hoping with all your heart that everything would be okay.

After a few moments, Peter’s breathing regulated and his sobs quieted down.  Still stroking his head and neck, you approached the question again.

“Peter,” You whispered gently. “What happened?”

“There was—” You felt Peter suck in a gulp of air. “There was an accident, in the city.  A bad guy, with some of—some of the Vulture’s weapons still.  He—he caused a huge car accident, with at least ten vehicles, and—”

“And what?” You steeled yourself for the answer about to come out of Peter’s mouth.  You had a sneaking suspicion of what it might be.

“And May was in the accident.”

Peter broke down again, clinging tighter to you as fresh tears made their way down his face. You hugged him closer to you, as close as you possibly could.

“Is she—?” You knew Peter lost his parents when he was little, and you couldn’t even possibly imagine what it would be like for him to lose another one.

“She’s okay,” Peter mumbled. “A little bruised, and without a working car, but—but she’s okay. She called from the hospital; they’re keeping her overnight to monitor her.”

“Oh my…thank God,” You held onto Peter tighter, relief coursing through your veins.

“But, Y/N,” Peter began shaking again, and he pulled himself away from you. “People—people died. And more are injured, and—”

“Peter, none of that is your fault,” You protested, hand still lingering on the back of the boy’s neck. “There’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Yeah, okay,” Peter raked his injured hand through his hair, wincing in pain as his gaze flickered to the cracked plaster. “Can’t keep my family safe, can’t protect the people I love, but at least I can fuck up a wall pretty good, right?”

“Hey.” You grabbed Peter’s hands in both of yours, squeezing as tight as you could without hurting him more. “It’s not your responsibility to protect everyone!”

“Then whose is it?” Peter turned to you with eyes that seemed to go a shade darker as he spoke. “Spider-Man?  He hasn’t done much good, Y/N.”

“Don’t do this,” You shook your head. “Spider-Man—”

“Spider-Man couldn’t protect you from getting beat in the head with a gun this summer!” Peter’s shaking returned as his voice got rougher. “Spider-Man couldn’t protect those people on Queensboro Bridge!  And he couldn’t protect everyone today, and because of him, people died.  And my aunt was almost one of them.”

“But she wasn’t—”

“But someone’s aunt was.” Peter’s hands gripped yours tighter, tight enough to look like it hurt. “Someone’s aunt is never going to come home because of what happened today.”

“Peter, trust me,” You looked down at his bloody hands. “Spider-Man is only human.  He can’t protect everyone, and we can’t expect him to.”

“Yes we can!” Peter tore his hands out of your grip. “If—if he can’t protect everyone, then who can? Answer that, Y/N!  If you have the power to help, and you don’t, then the bad things that happen are on you.  And it’s your fault if the people you love get hurt.”

Peter stood up and grabbed his things in a hurry, haphazardly throwing his bag over his shoulder.

“Peter, wait!” You tried calling after your friend, but he was already hurrying up the stairs, tears beginning to fall once more as he left your sight.

You sighed, rubbing your hand against your forehead.  Your attention turned back to the wall, where Peter’s blood was beginning to dry in and around the cracks in the plaster that had appeared due to his punching. Cautiously, you reached out a hand and lightly touched the wall.  A few loose pieces of plaster crumbled away, coating your fingers in white dust.

“How did he…?” The words tumbled out of your mouth as you rubbed your fingers together.  You knew that Peter wasn’t a weakling, but you had no idea your friend was strong enough to punch holes in walls.  

You couldn’t stop seeing his bloody and teary face in your mind, and the image stayed with you for the rest of your day.  From the walk to the subway to the train ride home to climbing into bed that night, you replayed the pain in his eyes, and those eyes were the last thing you saw until you closed your own and drifted off to sleep.

A sleep that didn’t last long.  You awoke at around two am to knocking on your window, which really, you should have expected.  Did you really believe that Spider-Man wouldn’t come back for you?

{part vii}

[coffeenfun]

Cookies

Summery/Request: @i-am-mina requested hijabi!reader. The reader owns a small bakery and has a little thing for The Winter Soldier.

Triggers

Word Count: 1500+

A/N: I Sorry it took me so long.

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‘Come on, Bucky. This is the best coffee I've ever had. Get out of the gym and come with us.’ Bucky was lying on the bench pressing so much weight the bar looked like it was bending. He had been there for most of the day since he couldn't sleep.

‘Yeah, just give me a minute’ he breathed out while resting the bar back in its place.

‘No. come!’ Nat yelled at him. Wanda, who stood next to her, giggled at the way Bucky flinched at the red head.

‘Alright, I'm coming’. Steve was also there, giggling at the fear in Bucky's eyes.

‘You gotta taste this coffee, Buck. They also do cakes’ they were on the way, cramped in Steve's little car. The two supersoldiers sat in the front seats and the two Russians sat in the back, laughing to themselves about something.

‘Yeah. It's this small independent bakery in the middle of nowhere but it's so good’ Wanda chipped in.

‘Stop guys, if you keep building it up it's gonna be shit’ Bucky was a little upset they got him out of the gym without as much as a shower but happy they thought of him when they tried the coffee.

-

When they first arrived it was after a mission, it was Wanda and Natasha only. Both of them were in civilian clothing but they were all tattered and torn so you guessed that had just come back from a fight. The fatigue in their voice added to your suspicion.

When they walked through the door you were almost closed with no one at the tables and your staff all gone. Usually you'd stay for an hour or so, just to clean up and organise for the following day. It was the time you would put your headphones in and dance like no one was watching.

They reached the door before your usual cycle of dance and saved you of the embarrassment of showing the deadliest people in the world how well you could shimmy.

They apologized for barging in and began to leave when they noticed the lights were off and the chairs were placed on the tables. But you ushered them in. They told you that it was a really tiring mission and they hadn't eaten all day so you got them one of your speciality savour pastries and a cup of coffee.

According to Wanda, you should go work at the Stark Tower as their chef and baker. Apparently none of the Avengers could cook. Well, no one but Bucky, after years of being in isolation he loved food and cooking soothed him. At his mention you visibly blushed. Being the observant spy she is, Natasha immediately picked up on it and asked. It took ten minutes of begging from the two girls for you to admit your crush on the Winter Soldier. The thing that broke you was when Wanda told you that she could read you mind if you didn't give up the information willingly.

Since then you had exchanged phone numbers, they visited almost every day for the next two weeks. On day 5 they brought Steve. They said since bucky was still very sensitive Steve liked to go out with him. He deemed the café okay and said that they'd bring him to meet you in a few days.

-

Natasha stepped into the bakery first, looking around for the woman she came here to see. You.

At the time you were serving a particular rude customer a latte. Apparently waiting for the milk to steam was too long for her and she shouted rather loudly to you and your staff, saying she'd never come here again and when she wants a coffee she expects to get it that day.

Natasha, Wanda and Steve took their usual seat and Bucky followed. He took the seat in the corner of the room, that happened to face you. You glanced over to see three of them chatting away, but bucky was looking at you.

After the rude woman (you'd call her a witch but since the real life scarlet witch was really nice you didn't think it would be fitting) left, slamming the door behind her, you walked over to the table of four.

‘Hey guys’ you stood at the ready, pen and pad in hand.

‘Hey Y/N!’ Steve smiled his perfect white teeth at you. You grinned back.

‘My profit is going to skyrocket if you keep bringing people here.’ You directed your statement at the two girls at the table. ‘What would everyone like?’

‘Just the regular for me’

‘Ditto’

‘Ooh I'll try your coffee of the day but same cake as every other day’

‘So Americano and red velvet cup cake for Natasha, Latte and vanilla cup cake for Steve, and coffee of the day and quadruple chocolate cupcake for Wanda’ they all nodded. ‘But you haven't been here before so you don't have a regular.’ You spoke to Bucky. Your hands trembled under his glare. You clinged onto your notepad. God! he was gorgeous.

‘Yeah, why don't you go up to counter and see what they have?’ Natasha said. You silently cursed her. Although you wanted to meet him, you were also scared of acting like a complete idiot in front of him.

He got up silently and walked around Natasha. Since her face was no longer in his view she winked at you, making Wanda giggle and Steve blush. Sure to make Bucky suspicious.

You lead him to the counter where you had rows and rows of delusions pastries and cakes. You walked to the back of the display so you could reach in and get whatever he had chosen. Instead of telling you instantaneous he bent down and pointed to one of your cookies.

‘How do you do that with the icing?’ He looked up at you. It was a sugar cookie he was pointing out. The top was flooded with pastel blue icing and two corners had brush embroidered flowers.

‘You make the jagged edge here’ you mimicked the motion you needed to make with the piping back with your finger. ‘With royal icing and use a wet flat brush to drag down the lines.’

‘Oh’ he looked down at another cookie. This one had white icing in a quilted pattern. ‘And you do you do this one?’

‘You do it in sections and wait for it to dry’ he nodded.

‘Natasha told me you like baking. You know you can help me make them one day’

‘Really?!’ He nearly shouted. He was mainly just really shy, but you saw that his eyes showed something you hadn’t seen in him before. Excitement.

‘Yeah, let me just serve your friends and then we can talk more.’ He walked back to his table where it looked like his friends were getting hungry so you turned to the coffee machine and started on their orders.

They came in pretty late to start with. Only 5 more people came in the cafe after they did so you didn't have your work cut out and even managed to have a few short conversations with the four.

All your staff had left by now and you were clearing up the tables. “Kids were cute” you thought to yourself as you sweeper up an entire cupcake from under the counter “but they are so messy”. You looked over at the table in the corner where Bucky, who was first stiff when he walked in, was now more relaxed. His face was contorted into a smile that looked so intense, it looked almost painful. He caught your eye and nodded to you politely. You grinned back and continued cleaning.

‘Aren't we overstaying our welcome’ bucky mumbled to his best friend.

‘No, Buck. Y/N doesn't mind company’ Steve said rather loudly, completely

‘No, I don’t’ you called over from the other side of the room.

‘Y/N said she'd let me bake with her’ Bucky said proudly.

‘Oh yes!’ Wanda clapped happily. ‘Please come to the tower and bake?! Please, please, please!?’

‘I will but I need to agree times with Bucky’

‘Yeah. Buck, why don’t you help Y/N and talk so more?’ Natasha suggested. She was always playing matchmaker. He did as she said, copying you and putting chairs on top of the table. He walked over to you after he had finished and you were cleaning the inside of the display.

‘Y/N?’ you heard his voice from above you. it was more shy than you would have expected. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

‘Of course’

‘Why are you wearing that on you head?’ you were a little surprised by the question. He clearly noticed it and began explaining himself. ‘I asked Nat and she said that it was okay to ask you but I’m sorry if I offended you. I’m not really used to real life yet and-’

‘No, no. Bucky. I’m not offended, just a little surprised.’ you giggled at his defence ‘I wear this because i want to and it’s an option in my religion’

‘What religion is that?’, He rubbed his shoulder and was clearly nervous so you tried to make him as comfortable as possible.

‘Islam’

‘Y/N? Do you think you could tell me more about Islam when you teach me to bake, please?’, How could a master assassin be so cute?

‘Of course I can, Bucky’