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oneverydelululemon · 9 months ago

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SXF MANGA SPOILERS, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Hi! It's me again!

I want to thank all of you wonderful people who have read the first fic I did, The Conversation. I love and appreciate every single one of you! <3

Since that post gained a bit of traction, I decided to write down the prequel, aka how Damian even realised Anya can read minds. (Un)fortunately, this fic got a bit long so I'll be posting the first part for now. I hope you enjoy!

The Revelation - part 1

Damian was sitting on his bed in the dorms, his legs crossed. He had spent almost the entire day studying in the library, his nose in the books until Ewen and Emile dragged him out. After forcing Damian into the dorm, the boys went to get something to eat. Since Damian wasn't hungry, he chose to go to their room instead and have some well deserved rest. However, once he snuggled into his bed, he couldn't fall asleep.

Damian had been struggling with insomnia for a while, and the causes of his lack of sleep were always one of two things. If he wasn't stressing about his academic status, his mind liked to drive him crazy with all the memories he has about that shimp-haired commoner. The latter frustrated Damian to no end. He hated his own mind for toying with his heart in such a manner, for having chosen to give so much of its precious attention to someone so undeserving of it. If he'd paid as much attention to his studies as he did to Forger, he'd have already become an Imperial Scholar. A part of him wished he would come to his senses, but a small part of him hoped it could be like this forever.

So Damian did what he always does when he needs to relax and stop thinking about that girl - he took one of the many "The Serpent's Orb" comics he owns and began rereading it.

"The Serpent's Orb". Oh, how he adored that comic. He started reading it during the Dark Preschool Ages. He would read it whenever the halls of his mansion felt too empty and the rooms too big. Damian cringed thinking about the time he spent reading and reenacting the story to Jeeves. He cringed even harder when he remembered he would sometimes tell the same story to his old plushie whenever he'd be too scared to sleep at night, believing there were monsters in his closet. By the time he moved into the boys' dorm at Eden, he already knew every line in all the volumes, every episode of the show. Damian was ecstatic to hear Ewen and Emile were fans of the show like him, but they were never as enthusiastic about it as he was. He never blamed them for not loving it as much, though. For them it was just another cool show, but for Damian, "The Serpent's Orb" was a lifeline.

He took one of his favorite volumes from underneath his bed and began reading the first page. He usually reads through an entire volume in the matter of minutes, but he found it hard to concentrate during school break. His mind had been too occupied reliving the last time he saw that peanut-obsessed stalker. He did his best to call the night of the gala anything but magical, even if he did spend a good portion of it arguing with her.

Damian rubbed his eyes in hopes of erasing images of Anya dancing with him. He reread the page he stopped on. The main character read the mind of his best friend to find out what happened on the planet he visited. Damian hadn't really found this scene as interesting as many other fighting scenes up until that moment.

Mind reading, huh? - he pondered. It reminded him of the joke that dummy made at the gala. Damian knew better than to believe such an ability exists. This is the real world, not some cartoon or a comic.

I mean, imagine what life would look like if telepathy was real. You would know exactly what the other person thinks. If i could read minds, I'd have perfect grades! I would win every game of Old Maid and excel in every quiz! There's no one I wouldn't beat in every single football match! Bazooka Bill would fear me!

He kept daydreaming, chuckling to himself.

Until it hit him. He felt his stomach sink.

Didn't Anya make Bill cry when she dodged his every single throw, as if she knew what he was about to do? Didn't she know about some of the most embarrasing moments in Damian's life, like when Max pushed him into a pond on accident? Wasn't it Anya who won the first round of Old Maid, before she agreed to play another round because it seemed like she cheated? Didn't she somehow find out the bombs around their necks were fake in that damned bus, despite nobody ever hearing any of the terrorists say it?

Damian's mind was racing, going over every single interaction he's ever had with Forger. He stared wide-eyed at the pages in his lap, his face turning paler by the second. He dropped the comic from his hands as they were too shaky to hold it anymore.

In that moment, he was rethinking his entire existence. Is this life real? Is Anya real? Is he real? Is this all just a bad dream or some sort of a fictional simulation? Does he live in an actual cartoon?!

Damian didn't sleep that night. He barely managed to sleep every other night after that, counting the days before the beginning of the second semester.

He had some investigating to do.

And that's it for this one! I heard somewhere Damian imagined he's on a planet in Dragon Ball Z when he was "training" for the dodgeball match, so I took that fun fact and ran with it. That being said, I've never watched the anime or read the manga, I just searched up if it involves any telepathy. It's why I tried to keep it vague. I hope I didn't get anything wrong but let me know if I did!

I'll make a part two that will revolve around Anya finding out he knows.

Let me know what you think! Any feedback is appreciated! And thank you once again for reading my delulu little stories! Love you to the moon and back!

Byeeee <3

#spy x family #spy x family manga spoilers #anya x damian #damian desmond #damianya #anya forger #can you tell who my favourite sxf character is #i like te idea of damian breaking the fourth wall and being meta #like that one time in the manga when he broke grabbed his own speech bubble and stomped it with his foot #i think that's the only time a character did smth like that #not sure tho #it'd be funny if the only chars allowed to be meta were the kids and Franky #Franky's the only adult in sxf that strikes me as the type of guy who thinks life's a simulation lol

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phantasm-ae · 17 days ago

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okayyy so i was rewatchingg this old series called WifeSwap and well! I HAD AN IDEA. What if all the boys and their partners swap?? I hope u guyss like it hehehe. Might be a series hehehhe who knows??

cw: grumpy x sunshine, afab reader x simon ghost riley, tf141 is here, just pure fluff and a bit of… angst

HEADCANON: as part of a routine exercise punishment, Soap suggests wife swapping after one too many episodes of WifeSwap. The lot of them didn’t expect it to bloody backfire of course

PAIRING: Ghost x afab reader, Ghost x Mrs. Price

If you asked any of the boys how it started. Fingers would always find their way pointed to Soap.

Classic bloody Johnny it was -- loud, half-drunk, and far too entertained by the thought of chaos not involving stray and undocumented gunfire.

It was after an op gone haywire. Intel gone wry. Point person MIA. Comms scrambled to shit, and no one knew who was meant to breach what building until Ghost kicked in the wrong door and found three goats and a naked informant mid-yoga. The sullen old brawn just stared at the scene -- naked man in a headstand, goats chewing on what looked like classified documents -- and muttered, “Wrong fucking door,” before backing out like it was a haunted house.

They made it out alive though, somehow. Bruised egos for sure, one dislocated shoulder (Soap’s, naturally), and a four-hour debrief where Laswell looked like she aged a year slide after slide.

Letters circled red and a lot of possible red tape and blacked out notes to keep it more hush-hush than most. Because having to explain to the fucking government why the John Price -- the Captain Price -- UN hero, medalled and corralled by the classic gentry. Regarded and deemed a supersoldier on human payroll, the unofficial face of “stiff upper lip and carry on” -- had been photographed mid-sprint while the said naked informant did downward dog behind him and his bloody goat pissed on a thermal detonator. Paired with the Ghost himself ending up three feet from a nudist spy and another goat chewing on NATO credentials. And well... that wasn’t exactly great for PR now, innit?

Nor was it good for Laswell’s migraines.

So they were grounded.

“Enforced downtime,” Laswell said, like that was a reward and not a slow descent into group madness.

Two weeks. No ops, no field work, no high-value targets. Just paperwork, team-building exercises, and mandatory counseling sessions where Gaz tried not to laugh while the in-base therapist asked Ghost if he’d like to "practice non-violent communication" and Ghost just stared at her until she wrote down “resistant to healing.”

By day three, Soap was rearranging all the furniture in the barracks “according to the principles of Scottish feng shui, ya ken?” and Ghost -- obviously bored himself -- had replaced the coffee with bourbon and called it a morale test -- forgetting to place the filter all back together and had to back out of the room and deny everything when a young recruit looked dozed and glassy-eyed halfway through a briefing and said, “Sir, the coffee tastes like confidence.”

Gaz found Simon two hours later, trying to faux-mediate and justify to no one in particular why the coffee incident wasn't technically his fault. Brooding hulk of a man in a mask crouched in front of the charred machine like it had testified against him in court.

“I didn’t tell him to drink six cups,” Ghost muttered. “He made choices. We all make choices.”

“War crime, it is,” Gaz whispered, sipping it anyway once offered.

No one dared rat him out. Mostly because Price at the end of it --drank it too.

By the end of the week, Soap had made a piñata of Laswell’s face out of shredded incident reports, Gaz had tried to set up a frog enclosure in the unused sink, and the barracks dog had learned how to growl on command whenever someone said the word “mindfulness.”

Laswell was spiraling.

And when the rec room microwave exploded -- not from a bomb, but from someone (allegedly Soap) trying to “reheat soup in a tin can for science” -- Laswell finally snapped.

She stormed into the barracks mess with an expression like a woman ready to kill something or redeploy someone to Siberia.

“You lot need a goddamn outlet.”

Soap, full of energy and zero shame, sat forward. “You want a real outlet?”

“No,” Ghost warned.

Soap ignored him, of course.

“We swap.”

Laswell blinked. “Swap what?”

“Partners. Domestic partners. One week. New routines, new homes. Emotional resilience. Empathy. Psychological terrain navigation.”

Gaz spit out his tea. “Jesus.”

“It’s genius,” Soap went on, all fire and glee now. Enthusiasm and meandering intelligence after re-watching three seasons of the WifeSwap series from the common room's old casettes. “You don’t just test the soldiers -- you test the home dynamics. We live in each other’s shoes. You get to evaluate adaptability, control, even stress response. Like The Apprentice, but with more firearms and worse communication.”

Ghost muttered something under his breath about war crimes.

Laswell opened her mouth -- to say no, they assumed.

But instead, she looked… intrigued.

Oh shit.

She stared at the room, the war-hardened mess of them all. Then rubbed at her temple like she could already feel the paperwork punching her in the soul.

“…Fine.”

“What?” Price asked sharply. Sitting straight-up because having any of these wankers within arm’s reach of his wife, her kitchen, or his thermostat was not something he’d emotionally budgeted for.

“We’ll call it a trial. Psychological adaptability and domestic immersion assessment. No external observers. Seven days. Voluntary.” Her eyes scanned them one by one. “Unless I make it mandatory.”

Soap actually clapped.

Price looked like he aged five years on the spot.

Ghost just said, “This is how people die.”

“You’re serious?” Gaz added after a breath, wide-eyed, already mentally scrubbing the image of any of his team living in with his girlfriend’s own chaos-cave slash makeshift radioactive laboratory.

“I’m tired,” Laswell muttered, as if that were a legal defense. “And you lot are turning into a feral commune. I will try anything that gets me through this deployment without someone eating soap. Again.”

“Tha’ was one time,” Soap said, unconvincingly.

Laswell sighed, then pointed at Soap like a general drafting a madman. “Since you’re so enthusiastic, MacTavish, you’ll be responsible for drawing names and pairing assignments. I want folders and house profiles by tomorrow.”

“Aye, I’ll laminate ’em,” he said proudly, already pulling out a Sharpie and a deck of Uno cards like that was going to help.

“No fucking way,” Ghost finally spoke up, deep and flat.

“You’ll participate,” Laswell said without looking at him.

“I’m not letting one of these muppets touch my kettle,” Ghost grunted.

“That’s not your biggest concern,” Gaz muttered. “Mate, your entire side of the flat is just weapons, gym equipment, and one fork.”

“And it works,” Ghost replied.

“You live like a serial killer with a protein obsession,” Soap added, cheerfully.

Laswell clapped her hands once. “Great. Briefing at 0800. Draws will happen then. Everyone be ready to emotionally evacuate your homes.”

And with that, she turned and left -- muttering something about moving to a mountain and living with goats. Better trained ones, presumably.

The silence that followed was heavy. Charged. Stupid.

Soap, beaming now, stood slowly like a conductor at the edge of a masterpiece. “Right, lads. Time to play Domestic Roulette.”

Price scrubbed his hands down his face. “God help us all.”

Ghost just stood up and walked out.

No one stopped him.

They all knew he’d be back.

----

Truth be told, he made it about thirty paces down the hall before the heavy clomp of Laswell’s boots echoed behind him like a death knell. Hunting all 6'4 of him down with her “I am ten seconds from quitting” face, cornered him in the back hallway of the armory, and said, very calmly, “If you don’t go back in there and participate, I will personally assign you to the next UN ‘hearts and minds’ mission in a jungle so remote even your nightmares can’t reach you. With a therapy dog. And a journalist.”

So of course, bloody 2 days later, after having drawn your name from the makeshift sack from a decaying old Santa hat that Soap dug out from some hellish base closet. The shucking and moldy thing -- Gaz was pretty sure it carried its own form of disease -- still glittery with stray tinsel and regret.

Drawing your name from it and reading the card with lettered like a death sentence it was -- was like stepping on a landmine in slow motion.

Ghost blinked once. Deadpan. Held the card up like it was incriminating evidence in a war crime tribunal. Sighing a bit in both irritation, disavowed, and quiet... anticipation

Across the room, Price’s eye twitched.

Not a blink. Not a wince.

A twitch.

Tiny. Violent. The kind that meant blood pressure was rising in real-time and a man was silently calculating whether homicide was worth the paperwork.

Soap howled.

“Oh, that’s rich!” Johnny cackled, slapping his knee. “Och, Laswell, did you see that? That’s karma, that is!”

Gaz choked on his water.

Even Laswell looked vaguely amused, which, for her, meant one corner of her mouth might’ve moved half a centimeter.

“Switch,” Price said flatly, already reaching out. “Draw again. That one doesn’t count.”

“It absolutely counts,” Laswell said, pulling a pen from behind her ear like this was the greatest show on Earth. Half a smirk shadowing her features as Soap tried to outrun Price's fuming figure around the room. Two hands clutching the jiggly santa hat with fervor, trying to evade Price's grubby hands and wrath like it was a live grenade.

“I don’t make the rules!” Soap shouted gleefully, dodging behind a training dummy as Price lunged after him.

“Domestic immersion is meant to challenge your current dynamic, Captain”, Laswell only replied in return

“You’re pairing my wife with him,” Price snapped after a pause, jerking a thumb toward Ghost. “He barely talks.”

“Exactly,” she said, writing down the pairings. “Could be refreshing.”

Ghost remained perfectly still. Only his eyes moved -- locking on Price's daunting figure, dark and unreadable behind the mask. His voice, when it came, was low and flat.

“Not exactly thrilled myself, mate.”

“Oh, don’t flatter me,” Price grunted.

Soap was already wheezing on the floor after being deliberately tripped by Gaz, who had sacrificed him to the wolves in exchange for a front-row seat to this slow-motion disaster. “This is better than telly.”

Ghost looked at the card again, as if it might’ve changed names out of pity.

It hadn’t.

Just your name in small, tidy letters. Neat. Proper. Like everything else about you.

He slid it into his vest pocket with the solemnity of a man receiving his final orders.

Price folded his arms. “She’s not gonna like this.”

“She’s very adaptable,” Laswell offered, not looking up from the forms.

“She has standards.”

“She bakes,” Soap reminded them helpfully. Smiling in memory at all your lemon-drizzle cakes and blueberry muffins. “You’ll be fine, Ghost. Just try not to knife the tea towels, aye?”

Ghost muttered something unintelligible and sat down hard in his chair, clearly contemplating a fake injury or possibly desertion.

And so, it was done.

Ghost had drawn you.

And judging by the way Price’s jaw flexed every few seconds, one of them might not survive the week.

Probably not Ghost.

Probably.

48 hours later and Ghost still couldn't fucking believe it. Mrs. John bloody Price was in his home. In his wife's own kitchen. Her previously labeled sundries and preserved jams -- once in disarray and cluttered into her system of cowgirl chaos -- now lined up in rows. Actual rows. Sorted by type and date and, for some reason, emotional purpose.

There was a little handwritten note stuck to one jar that read: For rainy days -- peach and ginger.

Ghost stared at it like it might explode.

Mrs. John Bloody Price had done this in less than two days. Quietly. Like a ghost of her own.

She’d arrived with three tins of tea, a modest suitcase, and the calm certainty of a woman who could run a battlefield and a bake sale with the same tone of voice. And she had taken over -- not forcefully, not loudly, but like the tide.

The kettle had a new trivet. The towels matched. His one fork had multiplied into a cutlery set that actually jingled.

And it wasn’t his wife’s kitchen now. Truth be told too.

His chaotic messy cowgirl of a wife had swapped sides -- gone off to live with Captain Beard and Discipline himself for a week -- and in her place stood this gentle, soft-voiced, cardigan-wrapped domestic saint who made tea with lemon and asked if he’d like his towel “folded the long way or the proper way.”

She was humming.

Ghost, who had gone through three tours of duty without blinking, was standing stiffly in the archway like the world's most haunted IKEA display.

“You alright, Simon?” you asked over your shoulder, stirring something in a pot that smelled like autumn and kindness and maybe guilt. You had this little dance to it -- kettle, two cups, sugar pot, that weird fucking ceramic cow you used for cream. Ghost watched you like you were some strange alien species. Polite. Efficient. No sudden movements.

He realized he hadn’t said a word in five minutes. Maybe more.

He blinked once behind the mask. Twice. “Fine.”

You placed a mug in front of him, then sat across the table. Calm. Unbothered. Like you did this every day. Like you chose to do this every day. Like you weren’t in the home of a man who had once sharpened a knife on a live op briefing just to make someone nervous.

Ghost cleared his throat. Following suit like a sugarfly to melted honey at the scent of tea across from him. Massive weight of a man creaking the chair as he took the seat across from you. “You don’t have to do all this, you know.”

You tilted your head. A bit of your hair running loose from its updo at the movement. The gentle rivulet of you falling gracefully by your shoulder, “All what?”

“This.” He gestured vaguely at the tea. The soup. The you-ness of it all. “I’m not your… you know.”

You smiled, and it was quieter this time. Smaller. But no less real.

“No, Simon. But you are someone’s.”

The words hit like a slug to the sternum.

But you are someone’s. Someone's.

You belong, Simon.

I'm here, Simon.

Come home, Simon.

He didn’t flinch -- but only because he’d been trained not to flinch. Trained to take things that hurt and fold them small, bury them deep, line them up in rows like kill marks on his ribs. But your voice wasn’t sharp. It wasn’t prying or smug. Just... true. Gentle as a field breeze, and twice as disarming.

He looked away. Jaw tight. The steam from the tea fogging his mask slightly.

He stirred the tea. Once. Twice. Didn’t take the mask off. But didn’t leave either.

You didn’t press. You just took a sip from your own mug and sighed like the world could be kind for five minutes.

“Is it alright?” you asked, nodding at the mug he hadn’t touched yet. “Too much sugar?”

He gave a grunt that might’ve been a no. Might’ve been a yes. You nodded anyway, as if it had been clear as crystal.

There was a pause. Still, not tense. Just... slow. Like a moment stretching out without expectation.

Like sitting in a chapel after the bells had stopped ringing. Old beggar staunched with the promise of alms and salvation at the steps of saints and pilgrims.

Something sacred about the silence, it was. Not empty -- but held. The kind that let thoughts settle in your chest instead of your head. Like maybe not everything needed to be fought to be real.

Ghost stared at the cup again.

Still steaming, still warm.

He remembered something then. Not fully, not clearly -- just a memory flickering at the edge of him like a candle left in a hallway. His hands were smaller. The table was too tall. And the voice -- her voice -- came from the kitchen as snow fell sideways outside the window. Ten year old boy, knees scraped raw, socks uneven, a tiny cut on his knuckle from climbing over someone else’s garden fence. Too proud to cry, too stubborn to apologize, but sitting obediently as he watched her cradle his baby brother Tommy in one hip and a kettle in the other.

“Not too much sugar, love. Just enough, aye? Just right.”

Kitchen light golden soft, dust from last weeks mess still floating like tiny spirits. Jam on toast. That worn old jumper she always wore when it got below freezing. And her voice, clear as breath --

"Come here, love. Sit down. It's alright. You're alright."

It echoed. Old and far and full of weight. A morose and bronzed cathedral bell rung just once -- long enough to vibrate in your bones but never again. Marrows shaking and spine drawn taut like the strings of a too-old violin being shucked and tuned timely for another symphony. Long enough to remember what it was like to be safe before the world cracked open and asked you to bleed for it.

Ghost blinked. The mug in front of him didn’t change, didn’t move. Still steaming. Still warm.

But in the silence, he swore he could hear it -- the soft clink of a teaspoon on porcelain, a lullaby not meant for the battlefield, the sigh of his mother’s breath as she smoothed his hair down and told him that boys could cry too. That softness wasn’t weakness. That love didn’t need armour.

He flexed his fingers around the handle of the mug. Gloved, calloused. The kind of hands that knew how to break bone and build shelter in the same motion.

“Is it alright then? Too much sugar?", you only repeated.

He didn’t flinch.

Just breathed once -- deep and deliberate -- like steadying before a breach.

His hands, still gloved -- armored is what is was -- curled a little tighter around the mug. He raised it slow, like the heat might burn him if he wasn’t careful. Brought it under the mask.

Sipped.

And for a long moment, he said nothing.

Then, quiet. Barely above a breath. The kind of answer you didn’t say unless you meant it with every cell of your body.

“…Just right", he only grunted in return.

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