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blazingstar29 · 4 years ago

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No Room For Ghosts

Trigger warning for child abuse, self harm, homophobia

“My father died this morning,” he whispered but Sherlock heard it. He heard it very clearly and looked up.

John's abusive father dies opening the flood gates to some long forgotten trauma

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John walked silently up the stairs without meaning to. Usually his heavy military walk announced his presence wherever he went but today he was too numb to do much more than shuffle.

Sherlock was lounging in his chair, in his hands was a note left by the killer in Lestrade’s pigeon hole at the yard. Somehow the killer had got in and left the Yard without being seen by man or computer. He didn’t notice John lingering absently in the doorway for quite some time. Then the floor creaked and it was like Sherlock remembered he was there.

“John you’ve been there for a while, what do you want?” He said vacantly. John broke from his trance and stepped in the room, gravitating towards his arm chair and sinking heavily.

The silence continued, stretching and sickening. John couldn’t stand it, so he broke it.

“My father died this morning,” he whispered but Sherlock heard it. He heard it very clearly and looked up.

“I, John, I’m very sorry for your loss. I can’t imagine how you feel,” he said sincerely. John couldn’t help it, he laughed.

He laughed loud and hard, but it was stiff with emotion.

“I don’t understand, John?” Sherlock leaned forward to settle on one knee next to John, resting a hand on John’s forearm.

“Nor do I. Sherlock, I’m, I’m glad he’s dead. I’m so fucking happy he’s gone, he’s...he’s,” John started crying and his breathing disrupted as he wheezed.

“He’s oh god he’s, I’m terrible. I shouldn't.”

John was working himself up into a mess. Sherlock didn’t comprehend it, usually people were deeply upset when their parents had died.John was in obvious conflict about his emotions.

“John, I need you to talk to me, what’s wrong,” he tried again to get through to the doctor.

“It’s me, I’m what's wrong,” John cried out. “My father is dead and I couldn’t be happier.”

Sherlock frowned, “there’s some plausible explanation for this. Some sort of trauma…”

Then John slid to the floor and sunk against Sherlock, loudly and violently sobbing. He clung to Sherlock which the detective hesitantly returned and after a moment his grip firmed supporting John.

“John please talk to me,” Sherlock whispered desperately. John was lax against his body and still crying heavily but the horrific sobbing had stopped. John couldn’t find it in him to care; he was essentially curled up against Sherlock’s knee, his head resting on the man’s thigh.

And neither did Sherlock.

“He kicked Harry out when she was seventeen. She came home with Clara one day and said she was in love with her. I knew, I knew she was gay. Had for a long time. It’s when it all started to go to shit y’know?” John whispered, his voice croaky. “He was always yelling and breaking things, yelling at mum and me an’ Harry. But it was the straw that broke the camel's back.”

John’s desperate wheezing had reduced to sniffles now. Sherlock had laid back and John’ head had gravitated to rest on his stomach. Without realising it Sherlock was carding his fingers through John’s hair.

“I um. When he told Harry to leave I swung at him,” John tilted his head and pulled up the hair at the base of his skull. It revealed a thick white scar, “Got that for my troubles but it got Harry time. Got Harry and mum both time to grab what they needed. Me and dad were on the floor hitting each other with whatever we had. Then they were gone, I saw Harry at school. She was thriving, checked on me but didn’t...”

“But she didn’t see what was happening. You couldn’t tell her because she’d come back,” Sherlock said. It wasn’t the way he normally said his deductions, it was quiet and passive, not trying to prove a point.

“Yeah. I never told him I was bisexual. I’d be dead. He chased my family away, I was fourteen. I wanted to die. But Harry got to live, I think she would have died had she stayed. One way or another she would have. As soon as I could I left. No way I could afford medical school, so I joined the army.”

John sat up to look at Sherlock with watery brown eyes, “am I wrong? Is it wrong?”

“What is?”

“That I’m glad he’s dead, I’m not going to the funeral. I don’t think there will be one.”

Sherlock sighed, sorrow filling his usually bored eyes, “no John. You owe that man nothing. You surrendered yourself to be the sole target of his anger. You did an honourable thing. You owe him nothing.”

Without thinking Sherlock had to know the answer to something, so he tenderly reached for John’s arms and pulled down the sleeve of his jumper of his right arm. It was clean. With the apology on Sherlock’s lips but John pulled the collar of his jumper down over his upper arm and shoulder.

Straight white lines, over and over and over.

There were five pink cuts, scabbing. No more than a few hours old.

Sherlock grabbed John close. They were eye level now as they hugged, quiet sniffling coming from John. Spontaneously and without cause Sherlock lowered his head and kissed the pink cuts softly. And then kissed the white ones. John turned his head away, embarrassment flooding his face but Sherlock pulled him back.

“I’m sorry you had to see tha-”

John was cut off as Sherlock leaned closer and kissed him softly on the lips. John showed no resistance and even with salty tears leaking down his face he kissed back.

“Don’t appologise for who you are,” Sherlock said firmly.

John smiled thinly, “I don’t want to be that person anymore. I tried so hard to not do it but I couldn’t stop myself. I rang Harry afterwards and told her. She said she was coming over but I was already in a cab here.”

The pair stayed on the floor for a while. When John dozed Sherlock thought about a case when he was awake they spoke softly. Sherlock would tell a story of his adventure growing up with Mycroft or John would tell more of his own life story.

In one of those times when John was in a deep doze, Lestrade rang.

“Quadripple murder outside the Hyde Park. The vics are clawed to death.”

“Not interested,” Sherlock said dully with his quiet voice.

“Not interested? Thought that'd be right up your ally. We need to prove it’s a murder not some random lion. What’s with the quiet voice anyway?” Lestrade responded with heavy confusion at the consultant’s hesitance.

“I’m not interested. I’m with John, I can’t come in.”

Lestrade was close to begging, “bring John. We need you down here Sherlock. Anderson’s back at the Yard.”

It was tempting, but now wasn’t the time.

“I can’t come down because of John. I’ll come this evening but not now,” Sherlock snapped.

Lestrade was even more confused and was losing patience, “Sherlock. Stop playing games.”

Checking John had completely dozed off Sherlock raised his voice an octave, “this morning John Watson’s abusive father died. He came back home this morning from God knows where, distressed and a danger to himself having cut himself this morning. I will not leave him until he wakes up and I can properly assess his well being until then do your own bloody job.”

Sherlock hung up and slid the phone across the floor.

Sherlock did go to the crime scene later that evening after feeding John some take-away and putting him to bed.

Lestrade was extremely apologetic but Sherlock quickly brushed him aside.

“How is he?” The DI asked sincerely.

“He’ll be okay but I’m sure you understand my hesitancy to leave him. He’s currently asleep and I hope he remains that way.”

John slept deeply through the night and woke late in the morning. He felt heavy and his eyes still stung. Sherlock’s violin drifted throughout the flat from wherever he was playing. He rose from his bed and ventured down into the kitchen resuming his normal routine like any other day.

Until he broke a plate.

Until the soft strings of the violin stopped abruptly.

Until Sherlock shouted “John!”

But it wasn’t Sherlock who John heard shouting his name, it was his father’s voice booming. Without thinking, fueled on fear, John fled the flat. More shouting filling his ears and no ability to differentiate where it came from.

When Sherlock came to the kitchen it was empty aside from a shattered plate and thes street door wide open.

John was gone.

Sherlock called Greg instantly. He had to repeat himself every few sentences because he was talking too fast.

“John’s gone, he’s gone, he’s run. He’s not on the street, he. Lestrade we need to find him now ,” Sherlock pleaded with an unfamiliar tone.

“Sherlock, I can’t send out units to look for him, it’s not my jurisdiction,” the D.I admitted softly. “I’ll put Donovan on this case, wait where you are and I’ll be there in twenty.”

For those twenty minutes Sherlock phoned John thirty three times before realising that John had left his phone at the flat.

“What happened?” Greg asked as he bolted up the stairs. Sherlock was close to distraught, still in his pajamas.

“He’s not in his right mind Lestrade. He self harmed yesterday, his joke of a father died yesterday. He is extremely unstable, when he broke the plate he fled as soon as I called out to him. He needs to be found now ,” Sherlock all but yelled. Greg nodded, the severity finally surfacing.

The D.I reached for his radio and spoke briefly, “all patrols in the City of Westminster look out for a man, five-foot-seven, Doctor John Watson is unstable, approaching calmly.”

As soon as the report went out Sherlock calmed slightly.

“What are his bolt holes?” Greg asked whilst moving to clean up the broken plate. Sherlock sighed and rubbed his face.

“I have no idea, he doesn’t. He doesn’t bolt, he freezes that’s…”

What Sherlock doesn’t know is that the Army taught John to freeze. Stop, assess, react.

John was a bolter, but Sherlock hadn’t met him when he was like that. He still had hidden bolt holes all over the city, he could be anywhere.

“Harry,” Sherlock suddenly shouted. “His sister!”

Sherlock rushed to snatch John’s phone and returned to the kitchen. He quickly broke into the phone, opening up the contacts list he rang Harry.

“John?” Harry’s voice rang down the line.

Lestrad snatched the phone before Sherlock could say anything.

“Harry Watson? I’m Detective Inspector Lestrade from Scotland Yard. I’m here with your brother's flatmate Sherlock. John bolted from the flat about half an hour ago after an incident. We believe he is unstable, is he with you?”

Harry was silent for a moment, fear coursing through her, “no, he’s not with me. I, I know where he might have gone.”

An hour later Sherlock, Lestrade and Harry were combing their way through woodlands on the outside of London. The once popular trail had been visited less and less over the years but the path was still there.

“John!” Sherlock shouted once more, his voice had steadily become rougher as he shouted for his friend over and over. Harry was sniffling quietly as she combed the undergrowth for her brother.

“John it’s me, Harry. Harry the raging fucking lesbain please. Please tell me where you are, “ Harry cried out. Her breath hitching with a laugh at the inside joke but she continued to cry. “John please. I’ve lost a terrible father today, I won’t lose my brother as well.”

Lestrade and Sherlock said nothing. After another fifteen minutes of searching they came across an open field. In the middle was John, lying facing the sky.

“No!” Harry shouted but Lestrade grabbed her around the waist before she could charge into the field. Sherlock sprinted ahead, begging whatever higher entity people normally believed in for John Watson to be okay For John Watson to be alive.

And he was. He had tear tracks down his face and his arms hard crescent shapes all along them.

“Oh John,” Sherlock whispered, clutching the man close. Together they cried, clinging to each other. Clinging, clinging. Harry was there too, she hung off John’s waist as she sobbed and sobbed and they were a mess all three of them. Even Lestrade was wiping a few tears of relief away as he embraced John at the edge of the clearing.

John slipped and he fell.

Sometimes he could lay there for hours and sometimes he got up in an instant.

Sometimes he couldn’t get up at all, not by himself.

Sherlock would find him broken on the living room floor or having an anxiety attack in the bathroom over the spilt water.

Mycroft once said to him it was no point crying over spilt milk.

One day John did. It was arduous finding an equilibrium to remembering and forgetting. There would be days when he was in the middle of a case and a memory would resurface beneath all the suppression.

Those were John’s worst days.

It was all well and good dealing with something he knew, but when the panic was clawing up his throat and he was choking on air and hands were ripping into his neck from some long forgotten ghost...That’s when John would break.

He would break hard, shatter.

John would break so hard he was scared Sherlock wouldn’t go get the sticky tape. That the detective would falter and wonder why he was still doing this.

Why would he want to look after John Watson?

But he never did, he never faltered and even if Lestrade and Molly were talking him threw a panic attack through a mic in his ear. Well, John never knew. All he knew was that his friend was there.

His over half was there.

And when his over half was there, there was no room for ghosts.

#sherlock #fanfiction #johnlock #love #homophobia #tw #self harm #child abuse #john watson #gay #angst #hurt #comfort #fuff #lestrade #harry watson

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mimik-u · 5 years ago

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Flower Child (Chapter 13): Blue (III)

Goodness, I'm nearly a year and a half late, but here we are—Chapter 13 of "Flower Child." First of all, I want to give my sincerest apologies for the delay... I mentioned this at the start of my fic "Facets," but the simplest and truest story is that my muse for writing Steven Universe and, well, writing in general petered out for a long time and has only recently returned. But, because it has recently returned, I wanted to begin to make good on a promise I made to you guys so many months ago—that one day, I would finish this story. So let's do this. <3 I'm ready now.

(1) I read through the previous twelve chapters, lmao, and half-loved and half-hated my writing, but the point of that exercise, beyond getting acquainted with the plot of "FC" again, was to also do some quick grammar and flow revisions, so a few of the previous chapters should read just a little better than maybe they had before.

(2) Fun fact! Chapter 13 is pretty interesting because some portions of it were actually written over a year ago; it was an incredible challenge for me to work with what I had as a 2019 writer versus what I've learned as a 2020 writer.

(4) Someone asked on Tumblr a long time ago if there was a��playlist I worked with in writing this story...

(5) And finally, and most importantly, this chapter is incredibly heavy, dealing with themes of suicidal ideation and extreme depression.

Please be cautious while reading if these are topics that are triggering to you!

The shiny, black town car eased to a stop at the pull-through entrance of the hospital, drawing the gazes of passerby on the sidewalk. An older lady in a wheelchair, a group of what appeared to be college kids in scrubs, a scraggly-looking patient who’d obviously escaped the confines of his room to light a cigarette—they all stopped and stared as the back door of the overtly fancy car was pried open from the inside out, as a metal cane preceded a woman who quite looked like she needed it.

Blue Diamond unfolded into the light of day, trembling.

Because it was hard.

It was so hard.

To be here.

(To be.)

She wanted to collapse where she stood, dissemble and dissolve away one piece of herself at a time; she leaned heavily on the head of her cane and lit upon the sole pair of eyes that weren’t looking at her—or, really, her Lincoln. The man named Greg Universe stood next to the automatic doors with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, staring at the ground, all but boring a hole into it. When the sliding doors opened and closed at his backside, they appeared to be ripping into him, piece by miserable piece.

“I’ll call when I’m ready,” Blue murmured to her valet before shutting the door and slowly hobbling over to Greg.

Clank.

The onlookers glanced away as the town car drove off, resumed their lives and cared not for yet another broken person in their midst. The hospital was full of them as it was. Perhaps they were even broken themselves—very probably they were.

Blue Diamond did not care to know.

Clank.

I’m betraying her, she thought, she was always thinking. I’m leaving her behind. I’m betraying her. I’m—

Clank.

The clanking did the trick, catching Greg’s attention and only half-holding it. He lifted his head slowly and mustered a smile that must have been agony. It wobbled on his lips and very nearly disappeared in his bushy beard. It pulled at him—all over. He looked like a Picasso gone wrong, an abstraction of a man stretched too far.

“Hey, just in time.” He gave a shaky little laugh that rather sounded like a sob and then somehow kept talking, his entire physiognomy alive with his nerves. “Steven’s so excited to see you again. He hasn’t stopped talking about ya since this morning, which is kinda nuts because he was so tired yesterday, but this is a good thing, and so we should really go up and see him now because—”

She cut across him; it was a quiet act, a merciful one. “Greg.”

It was just his name, a singular syllable, a sound, but even that was enough.

Mr. Universe’s face fell into geometric disarray.

“No use hiding it, huh?” He half-wept, half-laughed again, scrubbing a hand over his face and bringing up his shirt to soak up what was left.

“No,” Blue Diamond whispered, her hands tightening on the head of her cane. “It’s scrawled all over you, I’m afraid.”

“Figures,” he said hoarsely. “I’m a mess.”

“No more than I am.” She pried one of her hands away from the other and gestured loosely at her entire body with a wry smile. “If you’re a mess, then I am a dereliction.”

It wasn’t a contest; it was the truth.

Four years of grieving had wasted her.

Blue Diamond was skeletal.

Broken.

Greg took this in and considered; his smile that really wasn’t a smile resolved itself into a quiet, aching sort of frown. It tugged his face downwards; it tugged at the hollows of her chest. She’d seen him only a little over a week ago, and yet today, he looked as though he’d aged a hundred years in the span of eight days. There were bags under his eyes and sunken dunes in his cheeks.

There was a little boy in a hospital bed.

There was a disease.

It was killing them both.

“How do I do this?” He asked the ground. “How did you—” But he stopped short; his breath hitched.

It was a highly personal question after all.

It was no short wonder that Blue’s cane didn’t snap beneath her grip.

“How did I do it?” She returned softly all the same. The slight breeze stirred the strands of hair poking out of her silvery braid.

Greg nodded mutely, the desperation in his face tangible. She could reach out if she wanted and touch his hurt, the very heart of it, and all of its dimensions. (She didn’t want to.)

“To be entirely truthful,” she murmured, “I’m not sure that I ever did.”

ii.

It was nearly one o’clock in the afternoon, and it was also 2:38AM, the very moment when a police officer had the audacity to come to their door and tell two mothers that their daughter was dead, gone, and never coming back. His expression was a gathering bruise, and his words were like bullets, striking right between the ribs.

Blue Diamond couldn’t breathe.

In the darkness, she sat on the edge of Pink’s bed and dragged every mouthful of air inwards like it was painful; her chest heaved with the awfulness of it, the punctured horror of leaking lungs.

Her child was dead.

Oh, God.

Her child was gone.

Why, oh, why, oh, God, my God?

And she was never coming back.

Goddammit.

In the coagulated darkness, Blue clutched her daughter’s favorite sweatshirt close to her chest; it was black and ratty, full of holes and little tears. A small alien logo perched on the chest, grinning up at her from depthless eyes.

They used to fight over this particular number.

Constantly.

“You’re a multibillion dollar heiress.” Blue would pinch the bridge of her nose and try not to raise her voice above an acerbic whisper. “Would it inconvenience you to buy some nicer clothes?”

Pink was unsparing in her retorts, wicked and witty, face upturned in a haughtiness to match her mother’s own.

“Would it inconvenience you to get off my ass, Mother? It’s just a sweatshirt.”

“Pink!”

And on and on.

The fabric was cold between Blue’s long fingers, still scented with Pink’s favorite perfume.

They were going to bury her today, mere hours from now.

Last week, they’d been fighting over this shirt.

On and on and never again.

The funeral… mere hours from now… less than three… but how could that also be true when it was only 1:52AM and Pink Diamond was coughing her last, strangled breath on a dirty pavement outside a bar on 9th Avenue?

Blue Diamond hadn’t been there, but she forced the words on the detective’s report to come to life in the theatre of her mind’s eye anyway. By the time the paramedics had arrived, Pink was all but gone; she gasped, and she coughed, and her brown eyes marbled in one final supernova of emotion. They tried to resuscitate her, but the damage was too extensive.

She’d fought back, the officer had said. (He thought it was a consolation to them.)

The proof was caked in her nails and scratched all over her arms, but it’d been three against one.

She was a lion, and they were men; she was a twenty-one year old girl, and they were men.

In the darkness, unraveling, Blue Diamond’s face dripped onto the sweatshirt, onto the alien smiling up at her with a black sliver of a mocking grin. She did not register—she did not care to register—the slow creaking of the door opening inwards.

Amber light strained from the hallway to find and reach and touch her but didn’t quite make it.

Yellow Diamond was a shadowy figure in the doorway.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” she scolded, and yet, she moved into the room anyway—the hypocrite—her sharp heels muffled in the carpet. Stiff and forbidding, she came to stand in front of Blue, arms crossed over her chest, a frown crossed over her face. “It’s not healthy for you, Bl—“

But Blue cut across her. It was not a kind act; it was a precise incision—cold and surgical—three inches long and just as deep. “Our daughter is dead, Yellow.”

The shadowy figure recoiled but did not bite.

Even now, Yellow couldn’t bear to be seen as vulnerable, couldn’t bear to give one damn inch.

“I know that, dammit,” she muttered to the wall. “Dammit—do you not think I know that?”

But Blue had no pity for her, no shred of any emotion left except for the vicious tangle of grief; it tangled in her fingers, which sunk deep into Pink’s shirt, and it tangled in her cold eyes, leaking down her pale face and salting her anemic lips.

“Then act like it,” she hissed.

The exhortation bruised the air.

It demanded a reaction.

On its hands and knees, it begged for a response.

And yet, the shadowy figure said nothing. She didn't move her clenched fists.

She could not face Blue in the eyes.

Coward.

Hypocrite.

(Mourner.)

(Mourning.)

She simply left, staggering out of the room on precariously high heels, and Blue simply stayed, conflating the hours and the days and the minutes.

Later that day, they buried their daughter in a mausoleum, a gazebo—in a cemetery slathered in golden sun.

iii.

Greg explained the details as best as he could on the way up to Steven’s room. It was hard to find him a kidney because his blood type was O negative, which meant that he would only be able to receive a kidney from a Type O donor. And though he’d been on the waiting list for months now, and though he’d recently been moved to the top of the list given his worsening condition, it was still anyone’s guess as to when a kidney would become available.

(“If,” he could barely choke out, “we can even get one at all.”)

After slowly making their way across an expansive skywalk, they finally arrived at a pair of double doors labeled Truman Ward. The sun pierced through the tall glass windows and lit upon Blue’s sunken face, and Greg’s red eyes, and her metallic cane, and his wobbling lips—as though it was doing them a favor by doing so.

Greg reached behind her and pressed a button on the wall, alerting someone on the other side to their arrival.

“Listen”—he ran his hand along the back of his neck as the doors slowly parted open in welcome—“I’m going to go back to the room for a bit and see if I can get some paperwork done. Feel free to stay as long as ya’d like. Visiting hours don’t end ’til eight.”

Blue stared at him.

Every moment—every hour, minute, and second with this child was precious nowadays, and here Greg was, lending her time out of his own.

She felt the gift of what he was offering deeply.

(She could have never found it in herself to be so generous with Pink.)

“Thank you.” She swept a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “I… I appreciate you allowing me to visit him.”

But he only shook his head and urged her through the doors with a pinched smile.

“If he’s happy that you’re here,” he shrugged, “then I am, too.”

And with that, he waved a last goodbye, and the doors folded to a close again with her on the other side of them.

Room 11037.

Walking became a monumental task as the clinically white hallway stretched out before her, lengthened by her mind, twisted and contorted into an obstacle she had to surmount.

It should have been just a hall.

Clank.

The memory of Pink burned bright behind her eyelids, stained there permanently by principle but stamped in starkly with assistance from the harsh fluorescents overhead. She was laughing, always laughing, in these flashbulb reminiscences, her freckles coalescing and then expanding across the bridge of her nose like the bellows of an accordion.

Clank.

But it wasn’t just Pink, though it always would be.

Clank.

It was Steven now.

Clank.

A ghost she chased, as opposed to the one who perpetually haunted her (who mercifully, who cruelly stayed.)

Clank.

But he wasn’t a ghost just yet, right? He was still here and still fighting—did that not count for something? Didn't his heartbeat, the very state of its continued existence, teach her to hope?

Clank.

But hope was such an awful word—so empty, brimming with meaningless sensationalism.

Clank.

(Maybe it was the vestiges of her long dead religion, but she wanted to hope anyway.)

Clank.

Hope was such an awful word.

Clank.

Room 11037.

The door was decisively closed.

A tall woman with bicolored eyes leaned against it, her dark lips corkscrewed into a frown.

Blue Diamond vaguely remembered her from the cemetery but couldn’t quite place a name. She could place an expression, though, and was surprised to name the one on this stranger’s face as disdain. Disdain rolled off this mysterious woman in waves, from the resolute clench of her jaw to the iron way that her arms were folded across her chest. It burned in her eyes. It seemed to languish inside of her, seething just under a facade of smooth skin.

She was a monolith of quiet loathing.

Blue squared her rounded shoulders in a manner she thought to be composed; her hands trembled on her cane nonetheless.

“You don’t like me very much, do you?” She asked it quite politely, even as the walls were harsh and white around them. She used to command rooms by the authoritative nature of her voice alone, and now she struggled to keep it together long enough to face a singular woman in front of a singular door.

“It’s not you specifically,” the woman replied, impressively put together, admirably composed. If her electric blue eye was cold, the brown one simply burned. Both were bruised underneath with tired shadows. “It’s what you stand for. It’s about the morals that Diamond Electric doesn’t have.”

“You’re an activist,” Blue surmised quickly, almost flippantly. Activists were challenging DE all of the time, and activists were always losing. Before Pink… she’d largely assumed that these sorts of protesters simply had no logical case. After Pink, she had had much more consuming thoughts on her mind than petty lawsuits against their multibillion dollar company.

“A Crystal Gem,” she corrected tersely, “but that’s not what I want to talk to you about.” Her gaze slid subtly to the doorway behind her, and Blue understood her at once.

“Steven,” she whispered.

The woman nodded.

“Steven,” she agreed, and her voice cracked as she said it, splintering into thousands of little pieces and struggling to regroup. When she swallowed to compose herself, it was almost as though she was swallowing the shards. “He likes you, and I can’t… I won’t begrudge him that.”

In the way that she said it, it was almost like she was convincing herself most of all.

“There is an implicit but there,” Blue parried softly. “You won’t begrudge him that, but.”

Again, the woman nodded, the gesture slow and measured, as though she was working something out in the tiny motion. When her squared chin came up again, her mismatched eyes were bright, intense with quiet pain.

“But don’t hurt him.”

It was a reasonable demand, but the implication behind it stung immediately and anyway.

She inhaled sharply and scrambled to defend herself, to salvage the punctured wound, but the damage was already done. Her voice came out more broken than it did cold.

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“Maybe not intentionally,” the Crystal Gem said, shaking her head. “Most people never really intend to hurt someone… but it happens. We get caught up in our emotions. We get selfish. We get distant. And then we hurt people.”

It struck Blue Diamond at that very moment that she hadn’t even deigned to ask the woman’s name.

“So, all I’m saying is don’t hurt him.” She unfolded herself from the door and stepped aside. “He likes you.”

iv.

Two days after the first anniversary of Pink Diamond’s death, a doctor shined a light in Blue Diamond’s glassy eyes and waited for a pupillary response. When he received one—an involuntary but nonetheless reactive blink—he unceremoniously clicked off his pen light and straightened up into the unfriendly darkness once more.

In the sparse incandescence bleeding in from the hallway, Yellow Diamond cut a shadowy figure by his side, her usually tidy hair rumpled from all the times her fingers had become ensnared in it that day.

Her tie was loose, and lines had already begun to etch themselves beneath those hawklike eyes of hers.

Soon, they would become permanent fixtures, marked there by time and age and grief.

For now, though, they were only suggestions.

Hints of what was to come.

(So many sleepless nights.)

(How many haunted days?)

“Well?” Though the CEO tried hard to strangle her voice into a whisper, the sharpness of the syllable was still the loudest sound in the room. Subtlety had never quite been this woman’s strong suit; she wielded her words as though they were gavels to proclaim on the heads of all who dared to cross her path.

“Catatonic depression,” the doctor replied, just as succinctly, replacing his pen in the pocket of his lab coat. “The staring, the lack of movement, the loss of appetite, the elective mutism. All textbook symptoms that point to the fact that your wife is still grieving, Mrs. Diamond. Frankly, I’m worried for her health.”

The shadow on his left scowled at this diagnosis, and she fidgeted, and it was apparent by these two idiosyncrasies alone that she was scrounging deep for some incisive rebuttal against the truth that laid like a breathing corpse directly below her.

“Then what, pray tell, do you intend to do about it?” Her voice exceeded its former intentions of quietness. “That’s the problem. Now what’s the solution?”

“Well, I admit her to the hospital and start her on an intravenous Lorazepam treatment. It’s a sedative. It’ll assuage some of her anxiety and relax her muscles to prevent spasming.”

“Yes, and then?”

They were talking about her as though she wasn’t even there.

It was a fair enough assessment.

“And then what, Mrs. Diamond?” The doctor stared at her incredulously, shoving both of his hands in his pockets. “With all due respect, I can treat your wife’s physical symptoms from sunup to sundown, but that’s not touching the heart of what is truly debilitating her. She’s grieving, ma’am, and she needs psychiatric treatment beyond what I can provide as a private doctor and you can provide as her spouse. We discussed this the last time I was here.”

“And the time before that—yes, I know,” Yellow Diamond laughed humorlessly, the sound half-mad in her constricted throat. “Because you stand there, like an imbecile, and tell me that there’s no underlying medical cause to this?!”

She jabbed an accusing hand at Blue Diamond, whose oceanic eyes were wide open and unseeing, silent tears slipping from the corners of them and falling sideways across her face. There was an untouched tray of food on her nightstand. There was a lankness in her unwashed hair. There were pill bottles accumulating like a grotesque collection next to the alarm clock.

And there was an air, an atmosphere, an oppression of silent decay.

The funereality of it was undeniable.

An uncomfortable wooden chair stood next to the bed where Yellow Diamond had been sitting vigil for the past two nights since they had visited the cemetery on the day of the anniversary.

Blue Diamond’s keening sobs had sliced the autumnal air.

Her daughter was dead.

Gone.

Never coming back.

She stared at nothing, it seemed to Yellow and the doctor; she languished in the visions of Pink that seized across her mind with every dripping second of consciousness.

“Depression is an underlying medical cause, Mrs. Diamond.”

The doctor’s voice softened.

Minimally.

For the first time since the house call had begun, his lanky silhouette jerked a little, as though he wanted to place a hand on the CEO’s shoulder, but thought better of it upon seeing something forbidding in the other’s expression.

“And she’s tired, ma’am. You both are.” Look at you, his rust colored eyes seemed to say. You’re both historical wrecks to a long dead ghost. “You can’t take care of her alone… moreover, you shouldn’t have to.”

But the doctor had finally overstepped one prying comment too far, and he must have known it immediately, because he took a step back from the golden eyes glowering at him in the darkness of that dusty bedroom.

Yellow Diamond’s entire face transformed, twisting itself into facets of shattered rage.

She was feral.

(Wounded.)

Apoplectic with fury.

(Grieving, she was inconsolable.)

Dangerous.

Goddammit, she was on fire.

“Do not ever deign to tell me what I can and can’t do when it comes to my wife,” she snarled, all pretense of quietness long gone, devoured in the hurricane of emotion. “Get out! OUT!”

“Mrs. Diamond, please—“

“I SAID OUT! OUT!” She shrieked, harshly shoving his shoulder with the flats of her palms. “GET THE HELL OUT!”

The doctor did not need telling again; he fled the room as the force of Yellow Diamond’s dismissal stoned his back.

Blue blinked slowly as a shaking hand suddenly clasped her arm in the wake of the carnage, the imprint of a steel wedding band carving itself into her flesh.

That hurts, Yellow.

She blinked again, the words swelling on her tongue and dying there unrestfully.

That hurts.

The warnings of Steven’s guardian standing sentinel on top of her frantically beating heart, Blue Diamond turned the knob to Room 11037 and pushed inwards until the door reluctantly gave way to a sight she had forgotten to steel herself for in-between the guilt of moving on and the agonizing action of doing so.

Steven himself.

Dwarfed in a hospital bed.

A mere wisp of the boy who had sat with her on the balcony only three days ago and stuffed his face with little chocolate cakes.

Her prodigious mind working far ahead of her paralyzed body, she frantically tried to recall his text from yesterday, what it had said about his condition, if it had indicated anything about his current state at all. But he had only told her that he had passed out and ended up in the hospital again. The boy had said nothing about the extensive tubing and the wires that ribboned and scissored his entire body in streaming colors. Lines crisscrossed each other and tumbled over and under and around his blankets.

She saw the bottom of an empty catheter bag at the edge of the bed.

And the bruises like angry embers pulsing up his arms.

Somehow, amongst all the other things she was absorbing at precisely the same time, she noticed that next to a vase of elegantly arranged sunflowers, there was an inelegantly arranged tray of hospital food.

Untouched.

He had texted not a word about the yellow pallor of his skin.

He had used exclamation points—exclamation points!—to indicate his excitement.

Blue Diamond could not shake the notion, the very absurd idea, that he had lied to her somehow, had drawn her here under false pretenses.

(This was not the truth. She had estimated at what she was getting herself into and crossed the line into getting herself into it anyway.)

“Hi,” Steven Universe said sheepishly, his cheeks flushing darkly. He was caught, and he knew it. “It’s good to see you again, Blue.”

The seconds dripped between them.

The heart monitor on the wall counted them out.

One…

Blue’s plump lips parted slightly.

Two…

Her hand shivered on the head of her cane until the sound of it rattled the clinically quiet room.

Three…

She couldn’t do this again.

She wouldn’t grieve for another dead child.

One had been too much—one had almost killed her.

Four…

God, and there were still days where she wondered if it still would.

Without thinking, desperate for relief, Blue turned away and braced her free hand on the door, drawing in harsh, ragged breaths that scratched at her beaten lungs, that bled them anew until they were leaking.

Who was she to believe that she wasn’t falling apart at her seams? How delusional was she to hope that a boy with a flower would be the difference between her saving grace and her inevitable dissolution? Was she so naïve to overlook the contours of his illness and think that his determination would be enough to save him from the eternal truth of this world? Was she so weak?

Death didn't discriminate between the old and the young, the sinner and the saint.

Pink Diamond was only twenty-one years old.

Steven Universe was a child.

“Blue!” Steven pleaded. “Wait, please don’t go. I—”

“I cannot look at you, Steven Universe," she cut across him, her voice low and fractured. Hot tears stood in her eyes, suddenly blurring her hand against the smooth door. “I’m sorry, but I cannot bear to see…”

“Can’t bear to see that I’m dying?”

He didn’t just refuse to mince the word; he stabbed it into her back so remorselessly that she gasped sharply. She glanced down at her chest and half-expected to see it lodged there, poking out, her beating heart speared on its tip.

“People can skirt around the word all they want,” Steven laughed bitterly, “but there’s no other word for it… without a kidney, I’m gonna die soon, Blue Diamond. I’m dying right now. I think I’ve been dying all this time. And everyone… all they wanna do… is look away from me. Pearl, Garnet, my dad…”

He sniffed.

“They keep looking away, and I’m so tired of it… I-I’m exhausted.”

The door felt cold against her palm.

Icy.

On the balcony, two days ago, she accused Yellow Diamond of shoving their daughter away in a drawer with the rest of her useless items.

In an arctic hospital room, Blue Diamond was ready to consign a boy to the same grave her daughter was buried in…

… but dead children couldn’t talk.

Dead children couldn’t be tired.

They were simply dead.

“So, please, Blue Diamond… please don’t look away.”

The seconds dripped between them.

The heart monitor on the wall counted them out.

One…

Her eyes were wide with the horror of everything, of it all, the senselessness, the depravity, the nihilistic revolutions of this awful, uncaring world.

“I had a daughter once,” she whispered to the door. “Her name was Pink Diamond, and she was… she is… my everything. She had a smile wider than this planet could ever hope to contain… and she very much liked to laugh.”

She had never talked about Pink to anyone other than Yellow before.

Even evoking her name felt like blasphemy.

Two…

A second passed, and no lightning fell from the sky to strike her dead; she supposed her own self-flagellation was the punishment and the eternal damnation alike.

“I looked away. Yellow and I both did. She wanted more from life, and we wanted to contain her life into… into a little box that could fit on the shelf with all our other trophies. She was our accomplishment, you see, our legacy.”

Three…

Blue Diamond’s hand fell away from the door, so she could bring it up to her mouth in a futile attempt to dam the sobs that racked her shoulders.

Four…

“We looked away. The night that she… she—” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word aloud. She wasn’t brave like Steven. “We thought she was in her room, and I didn’t tell her that I loved her that night because we had argued… I thought I’d get the chance the next day or the day after that because we argued all the time. It was normal for us.”

On and on and never again.

When was the last time Blue Diamond had said those three words to her daughter?

These past four years, she had scoured her brain for the answer, but the answer was as elusive as the phrase was from her mouth.

For the simple truth of the matter was that she hadn’t said it very often.

In all her vast intellect, she had always assumed that it was assumed.

Implied.

Understood.

You’ll never let me grow up, will you?

I love you, she could have said.

You’ll never let me grow up, will you?

I didn’t want you to, she would have replied then. I wanted you to collect dust with all the rest of our awards and certificates. I wanted you safe, where I could see you. I wanted to quantify the entirety of your life and itemize the particulars. I wanted you to always be mine.

I love you.

I looked away.

An oxymoron.

A tragedy.

Five…

“So if I look at you, Steven Universe,” she murmured, screwing her eyes closed tightly against the pain, “really look at you, then I have to face that truth again—that I loved someone once… and I looked away… and now she’s… gone.”

And that was the immutable truth of the matter, the conclusion she circled around to no matter how many times the Earth continued to revolve away from the day since Pink Diamond had last existed on this world.

Four thousand revolutions later, and this would still be what it came down to in the end.

Her daughter’s blood was on her hands, staining them crimson, veining her lifelines with the guilt and the awfulness and the unbearable, crucifying shame.

And her daughter’s blood cried out, You’ll never let me grow up, will you?

And every time she so much as looked at her own palms, that was the only echo she saw written across their hollows.

Those last words.

Unanswered.

Unfinished.

Undoing and undone.

Six…

“But… I’m not gone yet,” Steven argued softly. His voice fought to be heard over all the machinery keeping him alive. “I’m here.”

He must have moved because blankets shifted somewhere behind her.

Dead children didn’t move.

Dead children weren’t here.

They were simply—

Seven…

Eight…

Nine…

Ten…

Do it, she commanded herself.

Look at him.

But Blue Diamond was frozen, and she was statuesque; she was a calcification barely anchored on the foundation of her cane. One false move and she would crumble entirely.

The safest bet on her own survival was to limp away and dare not look behind her lest she turn to salt and dust.

Someone else could clean up the carnage.

That woman who stood at the door—she’d do it—Greg Universe and the boy’s other guardians, too.

Don’t hurt him, that same woman had also said. He likes you.

Eleven…

Twelve…

Thirteen...

vi.

It was wash day.

For nearly a year and half after Pink Diamond died, Yellow would force Blue out of bed every few days for a bath or a shower—usually a shower because it was becoming increasingly hard for the CEO to lift her wife in and out of the tub.

Today was a tub sort of occasion, though.

Date night with the Diamonds.

The presence of death was always with them, though, an intrusive third wheel.

With a slight groan, Yellow lowered herself into the warm water behind Blue, steam rising around their naked skin like curling smoke. Once upon a time, this used to be a favorite pastime of theirs, a chance to reacquaint themselves with each other and their bodies… but now the gesture was simply hygienic in purpose, asexual and quiet.

It was always quiet in the Diamonds’ penthouse suite these days.

Silent.

“Is it too hot?” Yellow asked, her voice as gentle as she could wrangle it. Somehow, at the same time, it was still edged with the trappings of harshness. “I can add some cold water?"

She waited briefly for a reply that would never come.

Blue stared limply at her knees, pulled up awkwardly as they were to her chest. Her sensitive skin had already reddened in a couple of places where it was touching the water. There were pink fingerprints wrapped around her armpits where she’d been handled into the tub.

“I think it’s too hot. You’re getting a rash.” A well-manicured hand flashed out from behind her ear and knobbed the far left tap. There was a quick murmur and then the steady hiss of cold water.

“There,” she humphed satisfactorily. “This’ll feel better.”

The running stream answered its assent.

Blue Diamond did not say a word.

She hadn’t in days now, maybe even weeks; time was irrelevant to her, and the words would not come.

There was only a dullness in her head, numb and numbing, like an icy compress coiled tightly around her thoughts.

Yellow didn’t think so, but this was better than the alternative; this was the far superior solution to the problem, the pain, and the pervasiveness of the ghost who was their daughter Pink Diamond.

Because when the analgesic of her own catatonia faded, and some of the feeling tried to seep through, her chest would unfailingly tighten, a vice squeezing hard upon her weary heart.

She couldn’t breathe.

Her child was dead.

“I…”

The sound came from behind her, guttural and choked, as though the speaker was fighting hard against the noise and losing the war.

“I’m so tired, Blue.”

It was an admission, and it was a copout.

Both of them knew that Blue Diamond wasn’t registering a single word.

She heard them—yes, this was true.

But they came to her—they landed softly—like distant echoes; she did not feel the pain of them, the visceral agony; at the present moment, she did not even feel her own pain, the grief and the scalding water and the grief.

Because it was always the grief she was trying to repress.

Everything else was just ancillary.

“You don’t know, goddammit, you can’t know, how exhausted I am.” Yellow Diamond’s voice shattered in the tub.

And her entire body hitched.

As though to keep that from breaking, too.

“You exhaust me, Blue Diamond. You exhaust me every single day. And you don’t even know it, goddammit. Who are you? What the hell have you become?”

The question was delivered to her backside, where it slipped down her tall, curving spine and into the water, splashing there with the delivery of the tap. With a violence that was almost cruel, Yellow reached from behind her again and flung it back into an off position.

There was quietness then.

It was so still, that it was disquiet.

It was always quiet in the Diamonds’ penthouse suite these days.

Silent.

Blue continued to stare blankly at her knees.

There were red patches on her skin.

Her child was dead.

After a moment’s hesitation, her breath heavy on the back of Blue’s long, slender neck, Yellow Diamond gathered her silvery hair gently in one hand and grabbed the comb on the side of the tub with another.

She was careful as she maneuvered its teeth through damp, lank strands.

She always was.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Blue.”

That was what Blue Diamond’s note would say merely a few months later.

I’m sorry and I’m sorry and I’m sorry.

Love always, Blue.

But that was the crucial thing, wasn’t it?

Sorry was not enough; love was not enough.

Because if love had been enough, Pink Diamond would still be alive.

vii.

In a hospital room pierced through with golden sun, Blue Diamond turned around and faced the light of day, her heavy braid swinging along with the slow, deliberate motion.

She wasn’t looking away, Steven Universe.

She was staring straight at him—at his sunken face and his tubing and at the catheter bag and at the sunflowers.

The boy was dying, but he was not yet dead.

It wasn’t much.

At the very least, though, it was something.

He was not gone, even if he was going.

He was here.

In this moment, in this very ephemeral second.

The heart monitor on the wall attested to that; it counted his heartbeats; it pleaded with her to have hope.

(Hope was such an awful word.)

“Those are beautiful flowers,” she whispered. Her cane clinked against the tiled floor as she carefully drew closer to observe them better.

Their petals were tall and spiky, assaulting the air with attentiveness and regal magnitude.

They vaguely reminded her of Yellow.

With a light finger, she tried to prop up one that was beginning to droop beneath the weight of all its brethren, but the moment she withdrew her touch, it fell again, sighing listlessly.

Poor thing.

“But not quite as pretty as that hibiscus you bequeathed me.”

Steven’s eyes, edged with the trace remnant of his tears, were wide and dark, full of velvet and silvery stars.

“You don’t still have it, do you?” He asked, incredulous and rather pleased.

He played a little with his hands on top of his blankets.

He tried to tamp down his hope for an affirmative with an unconvincing casualness.

Blue Diamond’s smile bruised her lips.

“I placed it on my nightstand, sweet boy, so I could look at it everyday.”

It took a second, but the irony of that word choice was not lost on either of them.

viii.

Yellow Diamond placed the failed suicide note on her nightstand for Blue to see and know that she saw. They didn’t talk about it afterwards.

How could they?

What was there to say?

It remained there for a few days afterwards, shriveled and guilty-looking next to the alarm clock; every time she opened her eyes, she would see it and feel its quiet condemnation. She would close her eyes against its glare and wait for sleep or numbness one to wrestle her into the dark.

One day, she woke up, and the paper was gone again.

The realization drew a frown across her wrinkled face.

When she thought about getting up to search for it, and mustered the appropriate will to get out of bed, apparently, many days had passed in the interim.

A month.

She only recognized this upon surveying her bathroom on her way to the toilet; she couldn't find her shaving razor anywhere.

One night—the day, the month, the year undetermined in the abscessed haze of her mind—a dull ache throbbed through Blue’s hip, growing in intensity and sharpness with each passing second that she laid on the wounded area.

There was a part of her, not entirely inconsequential, that invited the pain. For after all, suffering was the only victory the woman had left in the entire world; she wrestled with it nightly, and she embraced it. She made it her new lover and exchanged an oath that only death would do them part. She didn’t shoot herself, or cut herself, or swallow a handful of pills that would surely do the trick.

She laid on her bad hip and convinced herself that she deserved it.

But that night—whatever night that it was—the agony was unbearable, pulling at her all over.

With a groan that wasn’t voluntary, Blue wrested herself into some semblance of a sitting position and looked for her phone so that she could call Livia for an ice pack, but it wasn’t on the bedside table as it usually was… and since it wasn’t in its usual position, she had no clue where she had last left it.

If she wanted relief, she would have to brave the kitchen herself.

She wanted relief, and the guilt of it half-immobilized her.

So she sat there for a couple more minutes still and endured the stabbing ache before finally coaxing herself upwards into the dark night of the bedroom.

Assuming her cane in one hand, Blue crept silently towards the door and out of it, where the hallway stretched out before her like a cavernous tunnel, all the lights extinguished.

Even the telltale glow of lamp warmth that usually emitted from the study across the hall was gone out, which meant that Yellow had likely succumbed to sleep on the couch within.

A twinge of something bothered Blue’s sternum at the thought.

She limped forward anyway and all the same, lifting her cane off the floor to keep from making noise; the wall was her guide in its stead, the pads of her long fingers moving along its smooth planes until she reached the end of the archway, where she immediately intuited that she wasn’t alone.

In the moonlight that wept into the living room through the tall windowpanes, Yellow Diamond was a stark figure sitting on the edge of the couch, leached of all her color. Her blonde hair, her silky pajamas, the leathery musculature of her corded neck—all of it was leveled by blinding whiteness.

Illuminated.

Vulnerable.

Exposed.

When her wife swallowed, she could see every line in her powerful jaw working through the peristaltic motion.

In the shadowed hallway, Blue Diamond stood still, even though the sharp pain in her hip demanded attention.

For this moment, this night, this moonlit haunting did not belong to her—even though most of them usually did.

She understood, somewhere in the mire of her own head, that to disturb this scene would be sacrilege. So she watched, and she waited.

Yellow Diamond was holding something between her sharp, angular hands.

With a jolt, she realized that it was Spinel, a stuffed pink cat who had been Pink’s favorite companion once upon a time. Her left ear was still stained from the tea Yellow had once accidentally dripped on it during a princess tea party.

Washed it though they had—several times over—the spot was stubborn; Spinel had been permanently marked.

“S’okay, Momma,” Pink had only said, grinning up at them both from gapped teeth. She had hugged the toy to her chest. The affected ear brushed against the side of her freckled neck. “That just means she’s one of a kind."

Yellow’s fingers were wrapped around the cat’s plush stomach tenderly; she stared at it from depthless, ancient eyes.

It struck Blue Diamond—then and there—that she wanted something more from this vignette; she wanted Yellow to say something. Selfishly, she desired a confirmation for what she had already so trenchantly inferred.

She wanted, she desired, she longed, she needed to know that her wife was broken, too.

It was a horrible hunger, an itch that felt terrible to scratch.

But Blue Diamond was voracious.

Sometimes, maybe even oftentimes, she could be cruel.

After a long while, though, Yellow Diamond only placed the cat down on the coffee table and stared out into the irradiated night with her hands templed below her sharp chin, lost in silent thought.

She looked older than she ever had in all of their collected years together.

She was only fifty-four.

ix.

They talked—for a long while—as the sun slipped away from the sky, sunset coming in fragments through the slats in the window blinds.

Blue Diamond held Steven’s hand, the one that didn’t have so many IVs in it, and rubbed smooth circles against his wrist.

“Pearl does that, too,” he smiled at her softly through hooded eyes when she began. “It’s nice.”

They talked about everything, and they talked about nothing.

He told her about his favorite show, which seemed to be about morose breakfast items from what she could vaguely surmise, and he talked to her, very quietly, about his disease.

It was rapidly progressing, far more quickly than his nephrologist had anticipated.

“Those chocolate cakes we shared on your balcony,” he admitted with the air of a child waiting to be scolded, “I may have accidentally puked them up in your toilet. Sorry..."

“It’s of no consequence,” she returned with a small, sad smile.

And this was very well true.

She wasn’t the one who had to clean it after all.

They talked about everything, and they talked about nothing.

Blue told him about the sunrise yesterday, how all the colors had seeped together in a swirl of delicious color, and she talked to him, very quietly, about Pink.

“In the best of possible ways,” she mumbled, the sound caught in the column of her throat, “you remind me of her sometimes. She smiled at everything, even when there wasn’t exactly something to be smiled about.”

“That’s a very pretty way to put it.” Steven wriggled a thumb from beneath her palm to stay it against the side of her hand.

“Yes,” she nodded gently, “I suppose so.”

When it was time for her to leave—a team of nurses had come in to administer Steven’s evening medicines and check his vitals—she pressed a kiss against his forehead.

Very light and very soft.

“You didn’t look away,” he whispered against her cheek as she withdrew. His breath was sickly sweet with disease. “Thank you, Blue.”

She froze, meeting his eyes.

There was hesitancy, and there was consuming grief.

The scribble of guilt.

Scrawled all over her face.

“I wanted to, though,” she breathed. “If we're being technical... if we're being fair... I think the impulse counts against me.”

“But you didn’t.”

Steven’s chapped lips tilted into the beginnings of a smile.

“And that’s what matters, right?”

She brushed a stray curl off of his clammy forehead and thought about Pink and Yellow and all the things she did and didn’t do.

She loved them.

She looked away.

“Yes,” she told Steven Universe.

Yes.

Alone, Blue Diamond slowly crossed the skywalk, her silvery hair crowned in all the colors of the sunset, a phone pressed against her ear.

Her cane struck the tiled floor with each shuffled step forward.

Clank.

The dial tone droned rhythmically—bzzt and bzzt and bzzt.

Clank.

She felt her heart work its way up her throat, clambering up its fleshy rungs. The immensity of what she was doing transformed her nervous system into a network of beating, pulsing neuroses.

She was ready for this, and she was not.

She could do this; she half-hoped that she wouldn't receive an answer.

Clank.

And then—

“Blue?” Yellow Diamond’s low voice threw its instinctive panic across the line. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Because this was new.

And yet, achingly familiar.

So many years of having not sought Yellow out—all those weeks, days, and months—were well-established patterns that were not easily overturned and undone.

All those collective hurts—hundreds of them, thousands.

Four years of misery sat between them like four hundred thousand miles.

Blue Diamond swallowed thickly, stopping dead in her tracks as the spillage of people continued to swarm all around her like a package freed of its contents: doctors and patients and sundry other visitors. She was the eye of their storm, and yet, she was just another broken person in the midst of so many other broken people. She was separate from them, and yet, she was their intimate kin. The contradiction seemed untenable, unworkable like all the rest.

Her fingers tightened on the head of her cane.

“I’m… I’m fine, Yellow,” she began. “Please don’t worry. I just had to… I wanted to tell you something. Are you busy?”

On the other end of the line, somewhere in a giant, yellow skyscraper at the edge of Empire City, there was the sharp intake of breath.

And the hesitant beginnings of a fearful reply.

It was a start, though.

And that was what mattered, right?

Yes, Blue Diamond thought to herself.

Yes.

#bellow diamond #blue diamond #yellow diamond #steven universe #garnet #greg universe #s: steven universe #mimik-u #flower child #holy shit - i can't believe i wrote this

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softtransbf · 4 years ago

Text

Ninth Inning

Greg Serrano x Male Reader

Reader referred to as “handsome”, no other physical descriptions

1,466 Words

Rating: T for alcohol, kissing, implied sex

~~~~~~

You walked into Home Base with a sigh, pushing past a half dozen kids in baseball uniforms as you made your way to the bar. You certainly didn't want to be here, but it was the only place in town that got the right sports channel. Fucking hell, LA can't even get sports bars right. This isn't even LA, though. Fucking suburb. One more night, that's all. Then I'm on a flight back home.

You took a seat at the bar and noticed that you'd missed the first inning. Fuck LA traffic. You were too focused on catching up to notice the bartender make his way over to you.

"What can I get you?" he asked, his voice deep and smooth in a way that gave you little gay butterflies.

"Oh, um, can I get a-" you finally looked at him, and your mind went blank. He was beautiful, in a very cynical sort of way. You'd seen his type before, guys with a chip on their shoulder who run on sarcasm and self-deprecation and get away with it, because they're hot. Which is to say, exactly your type. "An Old Fashioned, please?"

"You got it. You from around here? I haven't seen you in here before," he asked while making your drink.

"Nope. Just here for a work thing. It's my last night in town, actually, and I figured I'll need a drink or two if I'm gonna watch the Giants game this deep in Dodger territory." He handed you the drink, and you raised it to him, a silent toast of thanks. It was perfect, far better than you were honestly expecting.

"Openly admitting to being a Giants fan down here is a ballsy move. You from the Bay Area?" there was a wistfulness in his voice you recognized- you had it, too, when you were stuck in your tiny home town.

"I'd wager that I'm pretty safe from rivalry-related trouble here, given how many children are around. And yeah, I was born and raised in a tiny town just outside San Francisco. It's not very different from West Covina, actually, just 40 thousand people smaller and on the beach."

He chuckled. "So, not like West Covina at all."

"I dunno. A small suburb is a small suburb is a small suburb. The culture's the same, wherever it is. Everyone knows everyone, and it's easy to end up feeling stuck. Sorry, I'm sure you have no interest in my philosophical thoughts on suburbia. I'll shut up and stop holding you here." You rubbed the back of your neck with your hand and smiled apologetically. He returned the smile, and you prayed your blush wasn't as strong as it felt.

"No no, I totally get what you're saying. Enjoy your drink and the game. Maybe we'll talk more philosophy between innings." He winked before turning and walking away, and you fought back a literal giggle as you turned your attention to the game. You'd missed another half-inning. Oops.

True to his word, which you reminded yourself was just good customer service, he came back around a few times, and you chatted a bit more about baseball and suburbia. After the 6th, with the Giants down by 4, you ordered another Old Fashioned.

"Not to overstep, but are you sure? You're already looking pretty toasted, and I don't want to have to take your keys."

"Oh no need to worry there. I took a Lyft here, because I knew that there was a chance I'd be watching the Giants lose in Dodger territory, and that's something that requires significant intoxication. The only thing worse than LA in general, including its 'burbs, is LA sports fans, especially baseball. Polo shirt over there", you gestured to a guy on the other side of the bar, "made me as a Giants fan a couple innings ago. I've been getting smug face every out since. Drunk me doesn't care enough to do anything about it. Sober me would have called him out already and listed off half a dozen statistics that back up the Giants being the more successful franchise. Really, I'm doing everyone a favor by drinking my anxiety away." You gave him your best innocent look, and he laughed.

"Okay, I hear you. One Old Fashioned coming right up, then, for the greater good."

He handed it to you, and you toasted again. "To the greater good". You took a sip. "Seriously, you make a fantastic Old Fashioned. Total honesty, walking in here earlier, I wasn't expecting a drink this great." You paused before mumbling "or a bartender this hot".

"I'm glad you like the drinks, but, uh, what was that last part?" Fuck. "I'm so sorry. It's absolutely no excuse, of course, but as you've pointed out, I am quite tipsy. And you are, objectively, a very attractive man. I shouldn't have said anything at all, though. It was beyond inappropriate, and I am so, so sorry."

"It's alright, man. I wasn't offended, but I appreciate and accept your apology. Enjoy your drink and the rest of the game, yeah?" He leaned in a bit, and your breath caught in your throat. "I'll die denying that I said this, but tonight, I'm a Giants fan." He winked again and walked back to the kitchen.

You blinked a few times, trying to parse the flurry of thoughts in your head. They wouldn't solidify into anything coherent, though, so you took his advice and just watched the game.

It went one extra inning, but the Giants took home the win. You didn't see the bartender (you kicked yourself for not asking for his name or giving him yours) since putting your foot in your mouth, so you just shot Polo Shirt a smug look, left cash on the counter for your drinks and a 100% tip, and left the bar to wait for your Lyft.

"Wait, wait!" You heard his voice right as you reached the sidewalk. You turned around to see him running after you, holding the cash you left. "This is way more money than the price of your drinks."

"I know. But the drinks were fantastic, the conversation was great, and I wanted to apologize a bit more for objectifying you. Plus, they won, and I'm superstitious enough to think that someone who grew up in an LA suburb rooting for them helped." You smiled softly.

"Wait, how do you know I grew up here?"

"The look in your eyes and the tone in your voice when you asked if I'm from the Bay Area. I had the same tone and look for a very, very long time, back in my own little suburb. Anyway, my ride's about to get here. Please, keep all of the change. You deserve it. It was a pleasure meeting you, although that's a bit weird to say when I never got your name."

"Greg. My name is Greg. And, uh, I really didn't mind being objectified by you. You're… god, handsome as hell and smart and funny. And you're only here for one more night, so now is kind of my only chance. My shift just ended, do you wanna, I dunno, grab a drink somewhere else?" He talked with his hands a lot, which you found endlessly adorable.

"I- holy shit. Um. I really didn't think I stood a chance in hell with you, even if you were into men. We could go drink somewhere else, or we could go back to my hotel room and order room service? Like you said, it's my last night here. Just one night. No strings, no hesitations, no regrets." His body language changed as you spoke, from anxiety to pure desire, and as soon as you were done, in a blink of an eye, he was kissing you. Cliche as it was, the kiss felt like it tilted your universe off its axis.

You broke the kiss with a slight gasp to tell him your name, but stayed in his arms. You couldn’t believe how beautiful his deep brown eyes were.

"Nice to meet you, Y/N. Wanna cancel your Lyft and tell me which hotel you're staying at?"

You did just that, spurred in no small part by the breathlessness in his voice.

He insisted on driving you to the airport the next morning, saying that cabbies and Lyft drivers don't know what they're doing. You disagreed, but honestly the previous night was so much fun, both in bed and out, that you weren't quite willing to say goodbye until you had to.

He gave you one last searing kiss before you walked into the airport, and as you boarded the plane, you figured that maybe LA wasn't so bad after all, and you were gonna miss that shitty little suburb.

#greg serrano #greg x male reader #greg x reader #greg serrano x male reader #greg serrano x reader #crazy ex girlfriend #otp: no more settling

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fairymadnessyeah · 5 years ago

Text

That Little Bit of Me inside of You

Summary: What if when White Diamond used her powers on Steven something different happened?

SPOILERS for Homeworld Bound. See the episode first.

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As soon as Spinnel left the room, White Diamond started to work. Different light bath the room in their light, changing until White was completely pink. She opened her eyes and slowly blinked, getting accustomed to the light.

"That's weird, shouldn't I be able to move your body," Steven said after he felt nothing from the change. He started flopping his arms and jumping up and down, to try to activate whatever he needed to activate, and finally get some awareness over what was happening to him. He tried more movements, but stopped once he noticed White was crying. "Oh no, Am I hurting you!? Is it my Diamond powers!?..."

"No! No!" White's body said with a different voice. A... familiar different voice. Steven couldn't help but think he heard it somewhere before. White wiped away her tears and kneeled in front of him to get closer. "Oh Steven, I never thought I would be able to meet you... or see you face to face..." White said as she smiled at him, a few tears coming out as she watched him.

"Mom...?" He asked confused, happy, sad. He was going a million emotions at a time. He was already having problems, he didn't need this again. He thought he had put This behind him, that he already had an answer for it. He wasn't his mom, he was Steven. Not Rose, not Pink. Steven... Right?

"STEVEN!" His mother's voice snapped him out of his spiraling thoughts. "Please, stop thinking like that! You are Steven! You are your own person! There is still a little of me inside of you, White must have sensed that a pulled me through thinking it was you! Now please, slow your breathing!" He never noticed he was hyperventilating until she mentioned it. He saw his mother do exaggerate breathing gestures with White's body and tried to copy them. After a while, he calmed down. His mother let out a relieved sigh and smiled at him again.

She lowered her hand until it was right beside him, with the back of White's hand against the floor. Perceiving the silent question, he climbed on top of it and braced himself against one a pink finger when she moved the hand closer to her. Once he was in front of her, her smile got somehow wider. And prouder.

"...So... Ummm... What's up Mom...?" He said, looking at his feet. God, this is so awkward. What am I supposed to say to a mom? I never had one. And after everything she's done, everything I had to fix for her. What am I supposed to think of her?

But she seems to be able to read his thought, because as soon as he started remembering everything he had to go through because of her, she began talking again, making him look up to her.

"Steven, I'm sorry. I never meant for my actions to catch up with you. When I had you, I thought you would live a happy life with Greg and the Gems on Earth," She told him as the last of her tears dried.

"...Thanks. It's nice to hear that from you," He told her with a small smile. Then an idea crossed his mind in a flash. "You should come back with me. Pearl, Amethyst, Garnet, they all miss you... and, the rest of the Diamonds... they'll all be so happy to see you again"

Rose's smile became more melancholic. "Steven, I can't do that. It wouldn't be right for me to just highjack White's life away. She has a new purpose. A good one, even. I can't just steal that away from her" She explained to him with sadness in her eyes. She wish she could. There was nothing she wanted more than to see her son every day and spend time with him and her family back on earth. But she couldn't.

"Oh, right..." Steven sighed as he thought better about it. "But.. you could come to apologize-"

"I can't do that either" She disagreed.

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not sorry." She pointed out to him. "Every decision I took, every move I made, every battle I fought; they have all been choices I was ready and proud to make. Starting the rebellion, faking my shattering. I can't apologise for them if I'm not sorry about them. How could I be?..." She smiled at him again and petted his hair with giant fingers. "They all lead me to you."

He smiled a little wider at that and leaned into the comforting affection. Rose squinted her eyes at him, wetted her finger with her tongue and then stroked carefully his cheek, trying to clean him. Steven groaned at the embarrassing motion, but chuckled anyway. It was nice. He liked having a mom.

He had gone a lot of years being quietly envious on the sides as others celebrated Mother's day or did something with their mothers. He may have his dad and the gems and he would never replace their moments together. But somethings you had to experience. His mother consoling him, loving him in real life, face to face, was one of those.

"Anyways, you needed somebody to talk to?" She asked him cautiously and still a little awkward. "I don't know if I will have all the answers or solutions to your problems... But I have always been a good listener..."

Steven sighed and sat on the pink hand holding him. "It all started a couple of months ago...

----------------------------------------------------------------------

"So I came here to see if maybe the Diamonds could help me."

Rose in White's body hummed in understanding. She had listened to her son's tale of events that had been driven him mad quietly. Sometimes adding a, "That such a Garnet thing to do" or "She did that?".

They had changed positions and moved around to get more comfortable. From placing Steven in her shoulder, to sitting in front of each other. Now, Rose was laying down flat on the floor, with Steven on top of her, settled on top of her chest in a fetal position, as she caressed him lovingly. Her other hand placed on her tummy and ready to catch Steven if he slipped. It had happened and she had caught him. She was cuddling him like a baby when he was a 17-year-old teenager. But Steven did not care in the slightest.

He had never done or feel anything like it before. As if he was wrapped in the coziest and warmest of blankets, that left him feeling safe and light. The last time he had felt like this was when he was a kid and his dad consoled him after a nightmare.

He liked it in here. He had torn open his heart to her, exhibited his fears and insecurities, his mistakes and embarrassments. But instead of feeling exposed, misunderstood or judged like he would feel with the gems or his dad, he felt like he could finally breathe. Maybe because he knew Rose had made a lot of mistakes? Because she was a part of him? Or maybe the simple reason that she was his mom and would love him no matter what made him feel more relaxed about his confession.

"Steven, what you have been going through is a lot." She said still gracing him tenderly. "Too much in my opinion. And you are so accustomed to being asked for help and putting your feelings aside that you don't know how to ask for help anymore." Steven felt her sat up and cradle him in her hand to look at each other again. "You have so many people that love you and cares for you. And you have asked them for aid, I know you have. But asking and letting them is very different."

Steven nodded and held onto his pink giant mother tighter. Pink embraced him tighter too. He loved having a mom.

"Hey, can I ask you something?" Rose hummed, signaling him to continue. "Why did you bubble Bismuth? And leave Spinnel in that garden?"

"Well," She balled herself up and left Steven on top of her knees. "When they first gave me Spinnel, I thought they were trying to get rid of me, give me something to entertain myself so that I would leave them alone... But then I realized that they saw me as Spinnel. I was a joke, an entertainment for them. They wanted me to be like Spinnel, always happy and content with what they gave me yet never complain or ask for more. To be treated like a Diamond, I had to leave her behind. And... she can be a little annoying sometimes." She whispered to him the last part and he chuckled in agreement.

"And Bismuth?... I was afraid she would shatter me on the spot if I told her I was Pink Diamond, when she showed me the breaking point. But I also didn't want her to go through the motions of shattering a gem... I had had gem shattered before, and it's one of the coldest and most horrific things someone can feel." Steven felt her shiver and she must have noticed his frightened expression at the mention of shattering, because without missing a bit, she began to calm him down. "Shhhh, It's okay," She told him as she stroked him warmly. "Remember, what happened with Jasper was an accident. Bismuth wasn't talking about an accident, she was determined to see her plan to the end... After everything, I couldn't face her."

Steven, having the newest urge to not see his mother sad, jumped to her face, and embraced her, trying to pass his happiness and joy to her. She giggled and moved her hands to support him. When he lessened his hold, she moved him away to see him better. When they were again face to face, she started to rub her thumb against his belly.

Steven was laughing and telling his mom to stop since he was very ticklish when the doors slid open. Yellow and Blue Diamond stepping in with Spinnel in Blue's hair loop around her gem. Both parties ceased their activities, with Blue and Yellow stopping their chat with Spinnel and Pink halting her tickling and standing up straight with a jump, hiding Steven behind her. Old habits die hard and she had been hiding Pebbles a good chunk of her life.

"Well, White, it seems like you have discovered a new ability within your new power. Fascinating" Yellow stated, her eyes observant with interest and curiosity.

"Yellow, please, we only came because Spinnel told us, you had been here for a while. I hope we weren't interrupting." Blue said and waited for an answer.

Rose raised her hands to make Steven face the other Diamonds with her. Mother and Son looked at each other confused and uncertain. Then, Rose giggled with Steven following her. She looked back to her sisters and said:

"You two haven't changed that much."

The reaction was immediate. Both Diamonds let out a gasp, their eyes widened in disbelief. Spinnel got rigid and the little bouncing he was doing perched in Blue stopped.

Rose turned back to Steven and with a sad sigh said "I guess this is my cue. Now, promise me you will let your family help you. All your family. Even your... Ummmm.... what was that word that Greg had taught me...OH... Ants... your Diamond Ants. They may not seem like it now, but they can be very wise."

Steven smiled but it faltered easily. He glanced at the pink face of White and felt tears slide down his cheeks. He swipes them away with his sleeve and hugs her thumb. "I'm going to miss you Mom" He told her as he squeezed his face against her digit. To try and stop her from seeing him cry.

"But, Steven, I'm not going anywhere. I'm always going to be beside you. There will always be a little of me inside you. Remember that, okay?" She told him as he slowly let go of her finger. She kissed him on the top of his head, White's giant lips reaching even to his forehead. On that kiss, she left every littlest emotion she felt for him. How proud she was, how happy. "I love you, Steven."

"I love you, too, Mom"

Rose lowered him to the ground and when she stood up, the pink slowly left White's body, bathing her again in her original flawless white. The large Diamond blinked twice before the water-works began.

Not only was White crying but Yellow, Blue, and Spinnel, that had been quietly astounded from the shock, snapped out of it and bombarded Steven with questions. They were all crying. Some leftover tears, some heavy tears and some light but very angry tears.

Steven tried to explain as best as he could. How White must have pulled out a little spark that was left of his mom, that they had talked and that she had helped him and cuddled him like nobody had ever before. The three Diamonds and Spinnel listened attentively, then the three younger gems looked at the eldest one and asked if she remembered anything.

"Not much..." White admitted. "I remember feeling, pain, sorrow, fear, but they were all overshadowed by love, joy, and... warmth." White sniffed and rubbed off the last of her tears. "I might be a bit tired from it, so I will go lie down for a while."

"I'll help you there" The only male offered her.

White nodded as a thank you, and headed towards the door, with Steve hot on her heal. "Steven," Yellow called him. "I was wondering how much time you will be staying. We can have a room prepared for you with all your human necessities"

"Yeah, that'll be nice. I kinda want to stay for a while longer"

#steven universe #steven universe future #fanfic #su steven #pink diamond #rose quartz #rose quarts is pink diamond #white diamond #mother-son meeting #au canon divergence

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thecleverdame · 6 years ago

Text

Control and Release - 11

Series Masterlist

TEDTalk!Sam x Reader

Summary: With the rest of the staff caught in a snowstorm, you find yourself acting as a personal assistant to the notorious Sam Winchester.

Warnings: Dom/Sub, humiliation, embarrassment, sexual objectification, mutual masturbation, spanking, cum play, fingering, anal play, orgasm control, dub-con, nipple clamps, breath play (more warnings as the story continues)

Words: 5.6k

Beta: @ilikaicalie

Parts Twelve and Thirteen (Fourteen coming tomorrow) are currently available on Patreon for a monthly pledge of $2.50. This includes early access to all my stories and Patreon exclusive content. >> CLICK HERE <<

You sit there naked as the shower turns on. There’s a part of you that knows you should leave, it’s the safest way to ensure a clean division between sex and, well, everything else. But the truth is all the logic in the world doesn’t stop you from getting up and joining him in the shower.

He turns toward you as you open the glass door and step inside, his hair slicked back. He moves out of the way for you to wet your hair before switching places. He doesn’t touch you, instead he watches as you lather your body with the hotel provided soap. His eyes follow as soapy hands move between your legs, then over your breasts. He waits for you to finish and then steps out, wrapping himself in a fluffy white towel, handing one to you before wordlessly disappearing back into the room.

You follow him, toweling dry, trying to act casual as he stands stark naked, rubbing his hair with the towel and slipping into bed. You do the same, walking to the other side and crawling under the sheets as he reaches over and turns off the light.

“Good night,” are his last words as he turns onto his side, facing away from you and settles in.

There’s a hand rubbing up and down your back as you lie belly down, still in the depths of sleep. Slowly you blink awake, the early morning sun shining through a crack in the curtains, cutting like a knife through butter into the dark of the room.

While you don’t know what time it is, it’s still early enough that no part of you wants to move. It’s Sam’s voice that brings you back into the land of the living and the realization that you’re still in his bed.

“You have to get up.” A big, warm hand spreads wide across your back, fingers fanning out. The feeling of his hands on you, skin on skin is a simple but rare pleasure.“It’s almost six and Pepper will be here soon. Our flight leaves at nine, and you need to pack.”

“It’s too early, just leave me here. I’ll live on the West Coast now.” you whisper, rolling onto your back. He’s hovering above you, propped up on one elbow looking bright eyed at this ungodly hour. “Do you ever sleep?”

“Rarely.” He pushes a strand of hair back from your cheek. “Really, you need to get up.”

“I’m moving.” With a final push, you force yourself to sit up and get out of bed. You're naked and it’s cold as you hop around the room, trying to find your clothes and get dressed. Still half asleep you walk to the door in a daze and he follows you. “Last night was...incredible. Really, I’ve never felt anything like that.”

He seems to enjoy your early morning confession, grinning as you yawn into the back of your hand.

“Go on,” he opens the door. “You can sleep on the plane, you deserve it.”

Five Days Later - Tuesday

You’ve spent the better part of two days staring at lists of phone numbers and calls. The computer does most of the cross-referencing, all you’re left with is a spreadsheet full of names, dates and times. Thousand of them.

It’s early afternoon when you realize that something’s wrong.

Before you were assigned to the endless pit of phone calls, Max had you sorting through and categorizing depositions, ensuring the transcriptions were correct. You know this case inside and out. You’ve heard every word of testimony a dozen times and that’s how you know that Kurt Jablonski, your client, swore up and down multiple times that he never made direct contact with a private investigator named Lea Hammond.

And yet here you are staring at a number identified as one of Lea Hammond’s burner phones making and receiving calls from an office line that only Kurt had access too. His calls are normally made through his security so it’s possible he’s naive enough to think that there wouldn’t be a trace, but you’re staring at the proof of their connection.

You’ve got no idea what this means, but it’s a huge case. Sam’s had teams flying back and forth from Florida for months.

Now comes the hard part, you have to tell Max.

You never returned his texts and he’s been giving you the cold shoulder. But you report to him, at least for this case, so there’s no way around it. You write down the names and dates on a post-it and head to the conference room where Max has set up shop with half a dozen other junior associates.

“Excuse me,” you knock lightly on the door frame and they all look up. Frank Walenchecz looks from you to Max and grins, which piques your interest but that’s not why you’re here. “Max, can I talk to you for a minute?”

“We’re kinda in the middle of something here.” He rotates his chair, eyeing you up and down. “I’ll find you later if you need me.”

Everyone in the room chuckles and your cheeks flush hot.

“I think you should look at this, I found something-”

“I said we’re busy.” He’s emboldened now, his condescending tone laced with an underlying hostility that you pick up on in a second.

“Max, this is serious,” you insist. “It says on the schedule that the team in Florida is going through final prep with Mr. Jablonski but-”

“Why don’t you worry about your filing and leave the thinking to the big boys, huh?” He tilts his head, making no attempt to hide as he stares at your breasts. “I’ll find you later, sweetheart.”

You can hear snickers as you shut the door, humiliated.

You wait. And wait.

It’s nearly six when you walk back down the hall only to find the conference room empty. He’s left for the day.

Wednesday

You’ve only been in the office for an hour, sorting through a new stack of documents when Lance Barton saunters up to your desk. He’s not exactly a friend, but the two of you are friendly per se. He’s a junior associate and just as full of himself as every other lawyer working at W & S, they all know how good they have it.

“Good morning,” he perches on your desk, shoving a paperweight to the side to make room for his ass.

“Hey,” you look at him, offering a genuine smile. He doesn’t say anything, just sits there staring at you with a shit eating grin on his face. “Did you need something?”

“Actually, I came to ask you that.” He chuckles, biting his bottom lip. It takes you a minute to understand exactly what he’s implying. When the realization finally dawns you’re so taken off guard that you don’t know how to respond.

“I-” you start, sitting back, staring at him in disbelief. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

You turn back to your work, trying to ignore him, but he doesn’t move.

“Come on,” Lance leans down, placing his hand over yours on the desk, you jerk it back in response, unprepared for actual physical interaction. “We’ve always gotten along, haven’t we?”

“Please stop.” You pull your hand away, clutching it in your lap.

“Max said you liked to play hard to get.” He whispers, now close enough that you can feel his breath on your cheek. “But he also said it was worth it, that you’re a wild little thing.”

You look at him wide-eyed, mouth falling open as nausea sets in. “Max told you that?”

“Don’t be shy.” Lance smiles, his eyes trailing down your body. “You just let me know the next time you need an itch scratched and I’ll take care of you.”

He saunters away, looking smug, leaving you gutted. You’d already guessed from Max’s reaction yesterday that he’d greatly exaggerated his relationship with you, but this is a whole other level.

Greg Smith from IT walks by your desk, eyes lingering too long and you know it has already grown into something you’re not going to be able to control.

Thursday

“Everyone knows your dirty little secret.” Pepper pours herself a coffee looking up at you. “I mean, you probably think you’re hiding it but I can see right through you.”

You almost choke on your spit, stopping to stare at her, swallowing hard.

“What are you talking about?” you stammer and she smirks, sipping her coffee.

“Oh stop it. The whole office knows about you two.” She shakes her head and you want to melt into the floor.

“You’re talking about….Max?”

God, you hope it’s only Max.

“Who else?” Pepper is always a bitch but she’s really enjoying this. “I knew there was something between the two of you.”

“There was and never has been anything going on between us.” You correct her, holding your head high.

“I could have told you he was a snake. They’re all wannabes with too much money who think they’re going to be Sam Winchester some day. It’s pathetic.”

“Whatever he said, it’s not true.” You want to ask for more details but you’re not sure you could handle it.

“He told everyone, might as well have sent out a newsletter. Every nasty detail, how you suck cock, how you begged him to fuck you...everywhere. He told Colin you’re too slutty for him. Too much of a whore for Max...that must be a new low.”

“Why are you telling me this?” you whisper, fighting back tears. There’s a swell of anger and humiliation rising in your chest.

“Because you should know. I might be a lot of things, but I’m not afraid to say things to someone’s face. I know you’re Sam’s favorite right now, God only knows why. But that doesn’t mean anything in the real world. Outside of his office, you’re just a small fish, fighting for room in the pond with the rest of us.”

She turns on her heels and walks away, leaving you stunned.

The last thing you want to do is see Max face to face, but you need to show him the information you found. While you’d love to see him crash and burn, it could affect Sam and you won’t let that happen.

You knock twice on the door to his small, windowless office and he looks up. His face hardens when he realizes it’s you. “Back for more? Can’t stay away huh?”

“What are you talking about?” You shrug, stepping inside and shutting the door. “It’s just us now, stop the act. I thought we were friends, Max. Why are you doing this?”

“What am I doing?” he asks, picking up a stress ball and squeezing it in his fist. “I haven’t talked to you in a week.”

“You’ve talked to everyone else. Telling stories about things that never happened.” Stepping closer to his desk you search his face for some kind of understand. You didn’t see this coming. Are you this bad of a judge of character? “Why are you trying to hurt me?”

“Why are you such a cock tease?” he spits, crushing the foam ball in his grasp.

“You know,” you back out the room, defeated, “the sad part is that I thought you were a good guy.”

“Why don’t you go find someone else to play your games with,” Max calls out as you leave and you hear the ball hit the wall with a soft thump.

Friday Morning

Sam waits outside the door to the conference room as Pepper hands him the latest update on the case. He opens the folio, reading through the documents. He’s always fully prepared.

“Do you need me?” Pepper asks, “Because I need to finish the notes from your call with Mr. Takahashi. You’ll need the final proposal before your one o’clock.”

“No,” Sam shakes his head without look up. “I should be back in my office by eleven. We’ll have time to review.”

She wanders off and Sam’s flips through page after page, scanning the notes. He’s not really listening, it’s your name that pulls him out of what he’s reading, moving closer to the open door.

“I’m telling she was practically begging for it,” Max explains.

“If Y/N was so into it then why are you so hot and cold?” Another voice asks. “You’ve been after her for months.”

“Because every other guy has already been there.” Max laughs. “I mean she’s a real whore, let me fuck her ass the first time. That’s how you know she’s been open for business.”

“Shit,” someone else grunts. “If you don’t want her, I’ll damn sure get in line.”

“Go for it man, two drinks and she was all over my dick like she hadn’t been fucked in years. She was starving for it.”

Friday Afternoon

“What is it?” Sam snips, looking for up for only a second. You haven’t seen him since you got off the plane in Boston last week. You know he’s been busy but you expected less hostility.

“I need to show you something.” You inch into his office.

“Can it wait?” He sits up, pulling off his glasses to stare you. He normally looks you up and down but right now his eyes are boring a hole into yours with an unwavering stare. “I’m busy. I don’t have time for you today.”

Jesus.

You take a breath, holding back with everything you have, you’ve wanted to cry for forty-eight hours but you didn’t think Sam would be the one to push you over the edge.

“Um-” you stutter, words getting caught in your throat.

“Um?” He raises an eyebrow. “Pull yourself together, use words like an adult.”

You swallow hard, tears brimming, as you try to swallow the thump in your throat.

“There’s something I came across when I was sorting through phone records for the Jablonski case.” You manage stable words, masking your looming breakdown.

“And you’re bothering me with this why?” He asks plainly as if you’re some low-level employee he’s never laid eyes on before.

“I just thought-”

“What did you just think? That because I fucked you I would suddenly have time for whatever this is?” His eyes are on fire and you wished you could melt into the floor.

“Jesus Christ, you’re a real dick, you know that?” you whisper, a tear running down your cheek, mouth trembling. “What did I do?”

His eyes light up, rage threatening right there under the surface. “Why aren’t you giving this to your project leader? Max has time for you, I’m sure.”

“I tried. He won’t listen to me.”

“Why?” Sam’s jaw locks, seething with anger. You’ve got no idea where this is coming from but you’re fully prepared to leave this building and never come back. “Stop crying, it’s pathetic.”

“Because,” you close your eyes, fresh tears falling, you’re really crying now. You stare at the floor, unable to take any more of his glare. “Because he’s mad at me.”

“Why is he mad at you?” He pushes as if he's waiting for some lurid confession.

“I wouldn’t sleep with him. He’s been an absolute asshole. He’s successfully made my life a living hell. I’m pretty sure he told everyone in the building that I’m a whore. I’ve got people I don’t even know whispering about me in the halls. I tried to show him but he won’t listen to me. I found something. I think it’s important so I came up here to tell you and now you’re...whatever this is. Please just take this so I can leave.”

You hold out a folder, wincing as he steps forward. He takes the folder out of your hands, but the next thing you feel is both his hands cupping your face, thumbs pressed into your cheeks.

“Calm down.” His voice is softer now, less commanding, more soothing.

You look at him, and gone is his threatening stare, it’s been replaced by something gentler.

“I haven’t done anything, to anyone.” you offer, stripped bare of pretense as you look up at him. “I’m just trying to help.”

“I jumped to some conclusions, I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.” It makes sense now, he’s heard the rumors. One of his hands moves from your face to your chest, placing his hand wide over your heart, resting between your breasts, guiding your breath. “I’m sorry.”

While it doesn’t excuse his actions you’re fairly sure Sam Winchester rarely apologizes, if ever.

“Okay,” you whisper, unable to dive any deeper, not right now at least.

“I’ll look through what you brought and take care of the Max situation.”

“I’m not a snitch,” you gulp, “I didn’t tell you to get him in trouble.”

“I know that. But you did tell me and I can’t have one of my employees talking about another like this. I won’t allow this kind of hostile environment for anyone.”

“He’s going to know I told you.”

“He’s going to know you told HR, because that’s how we’ll deal with it.” He sets the folder on his desk and picks up his phone.

“You’re done for the week. Go downstairs, I’ll have my driver take you to my house. You’re going to spend the weekend with me.”

“The weekend?” You look up, wiping tears as your mind tries to shift off of Max and into whatever this new territory is. “I don’t have anything with me.”

“You won’t need much.”

Sam’s house is a huge, modern home in Newton, Massachusetts. You know from listening to Pepper that he has a loft in Boston but this sprawling architectural wonder is his real home, far outside the city.

Dealing with him on a more intimate level it’s been easy to forget that he’s filthy fucking rich. He’s made more money than most people can dream of and this house is a jarring reminder that you’re in his world now.

The driver walks you to the door, punches in a code and ensures you’re inside before leaving. The floors are dark wood and everything else is stark white, it makes the place feel almost antiseptic. You take your shoes off and trail down the hallway that opens up into a generous living area, twice the size of your entire apartment. There is a couch, several chairs, and a coffee table. The walls are bare, save for one huge painting hanging on the wall, it’s all dark colors and strange shapes.

You continue exploring, wandering down a narrow hall to the right and find the kitchen. It’s just as devoid of personality as the rest of the house. He could feed a small army and you wonder if he’s ever lonely being one man with all this unnecessary space.

There’s a labyrinth of empty bedrooms, filled with furniture and not much else. At the end of this hall is his room, it’s unmistakable. In contrast to the rest of the place, there are splashes of color. The door to his closet is open and you slip inside, flipping on the light to find hundreds of suits, pressed and hung with meticulous care. There’s a second closet filled with his casual clothing, sneakers, and gym clothes. It sparks a lot of thought about what he’s truly like outside of the professional world.

Is this it? Is all this naked space his life? It seems...unfulfilling.

At the end of the closet, there’s a dresser with two pictures sitting on top. You pick one up and examine it. It’s a family, mother, and father, a young boy and a baby. It’s easy to guess that the baby is Sam, this was a life that was taken from him.

The second photo is unmistakably Sam with a mop of wild hair hanging over his forehead. He looks to be in his early twenties and he’s smiling bright and happy, eyes lit up with joy. He’s got his arm around a beautiful blonde who’s pressing her lips to his cheek. This Sam looks alive, warm and inviting. Another version of him from a happier time.

There’s a faint sound and you set the picture down, shutting off the light and scrambling out of the room. You find him in the living room, slipping his suit jacket off and laying it over the back of a chair. He looks up, a half-smile crossing his lips.

“You,” he points to you, shaking his head. “Just saved me from an utter disaster. I have twenty lawyers on that case, five paralegals and you’re the only who caught the phone calls.”

“It was something?” you question, moving closer.

“More than something. Kurt hasn’t been telling us the truth. If we had moved forward with our current strategy he would have ended up in jail and our reputation would have taken a massive hit.”

“Well, I’m glad I could help,” you offer, still reeling from the rollercoaster of a day you’ve had. “Before you say anything else, there’s something I need to say.”

“What is it?” he asks, getting closer.

“I know you have a lot going on. You’re busy and you don’t always have time for me. I understand that you’re blunt and like to get right to the point. But I can’t handle the way you spoke to me today. I enjoy what we have, but I won’t be around someone who treats me like that.”

He waits for a beat, eyes honing in on you, his head tilting as his tongue darts out. You can practically see the gears turning.

“I overheard a rumor and took it as truth. I, of all people, should know better,” he offers. “I don’t share. I’ve never played well with others and when I heard what I did, I reacted. I am sorry for that. I asked you to trust me and I need to trust you in return. It’s the only way this works. I trust you to keep your word, make good on your commitments. I will never speak to you that way again.”

“Good.” You gulp, feeling suddenly small in his living room. “Let’s not talk about it anymore.”

“Agreed.” He moves past you, reaching out to squeeze your arm as he heads off toward the kitchen and you follow. “Are you hungry?”

“Yea - Yes. I am. I was so worked up all day, I haven’t eaten anything since last night,” you confess, almost afraid of what kind of strange, kale-infused delicacy he’ll offer you.

“I’ll make something.” He opens the refrigerator, looking back you. “How do you feel about beets?”

“What I’m about to do is all about trust,” Sam explains as you sit naked in his lap, knees on either side of his thighs. His cock is thick and hard, trapped between your bellies.

“I know,” you nod, one hand on each of his shoulders. Your nails sink into his skin, holding on like he’s already begun. You look him in the eyes, searching for understanding. “I trust you, I’m just...nervous.”

“You’ll like it.” He nods, both hands holding your hips tightly. “It’s an incredible release.”

His hand wedges between your bodies again, finding your clit, rubbing a few last times before he gets started. He’s spent the better part of an hour getting you worked up, you're wet and throbbing, ready for more.

“Lift up,” he instructs and you rise up on your knees as he takes his cock into his hand and slips the head into your pussy. “Now lower down, take it all.”

You stare at him as you slide down his dick, not stopping until you’re filled to the brim.

“Jesus,” you gasp, eyes fluttering closed for a moment. He’s thick, a wonderful stretch that sends little jolts of pleasure up your spine.

“Hands behind your back.”

You comply, placing your wrists together at the base of your spine. He picks up his discarded tie, reaching around and securing your wrists. The fact that he doesn’t need to see to be able to properly tie you up, has you both excited and concerned.

Sitting back he looks at you, then down to where you’re sitting on his dick.

“Fuck yourself on my cock, slowly.”

Lifting up you hum with satisfaction, feeling the drag of him inside you. It’s only intensified when you sink back and find a rhythm, even and constant, as you stare at each other. After a few minutes he starts to breath faster, mouth clamped shut as he studies your face. One hand comes up and slides around your throat. His fingers nearly reach the back of your neck, thumb pressing into the opposite side under your jaw.

He squeezes, not hard, just enough to make you feel the pressure and you whimper, sliding up and down his shaft. Leaning all the way back in the chair, he reaches between your bodies with his free hand and begins to carefully rub your clit.

Your mouth falls open as the pleasure builds, everything between your legs slick and throbbing. His cock alone would be enough to get you off like this, you’re not used to the stretch yet, you doubt you ever will be, but it’s a wonderful challenge as you lift yourself up and down in his lap.

“Feels so good,” you whisper, biting your lower lip, his thumb moving faster over your swollen clit.

“Stick your tongue out,” he instructs. You blink, feeling the all too familiar shame creep in as you drop your jaw and stick your tongue out.

He keeps you just like this as the minutes tick by, your whimpers and moans sound even more desperate with your mouth wide open, tongue hanging out like some kind of slutty porn star.

Tugging at your hands you almost falter, only to have the hand around your throat grow tighter, holding you in place.

“You don’t have to ask permission to cum, just let it happen.” And with that his lips curl and his fingers clench and suddenly you can’t breathe. You knew this was coming, he’d prepared you for it but the first time you can’t help the panic, your heart speeding up.

For five seconds you are open-mouthed, fighting for air and then he lets up and you suck in a huge breath.

“Don’t stop fucking,” he reminds you. You’ve slowed down but you pick up the pace, sliding back and forth more than up and down. “Tongue back out.”

You comply and his grip tightens until you can’t breathe again and this time it’s longer. His thumb works faster over your bud, his hips rise up, keeping his cock moving inside you.

This time it’s ten seconds, and by the time he lets go your whole body is hot, sweat breaking out from head to toe.

You expected more pleasure, it’s not exactly bad but also not the pay off you anticipated.

After a few deep breaths, you stick out your tongue and ride him as his fist closes around your throat, tighter than the two previous times. His thumb presses firm, you feel your orgasm building as he squeezes the last breath out of you. You start to squirm, pulling at the restraints out of instinct. A desperate gagging sound leaves your throat and you’re getting closer and closer and then it happens at the same time. Your vision starts to go spotty and you cum at the same time. He eases up, but barely, still controlling the air supply as you jerk on his cock.

You’re floating and then there’s a rush of pure euphoria. It’s a tingling, weightless feeling that seamlessly melts into the pleasure of your orgasm and the whole world fades away. There’s nothing else, only the feeling of your body rolling up and down and an incredible pleasure between your legs.

Unsure how long you’ve hung in this transcendental state, you blink, vision clearing only to find Sam staring at you, both his hands cupped around your cheeks, holding your head up.

“Wow,” you whisper smiling like a fool, looking at him from under hooded eyes as an overwhelming wave of satisfaction and bliss sets in. “Thank you.”

“It looked incredible.” His eyes are lit up and moving quickly, searching your face.

“Untie me please,” you request softly, not entirely of sound mind yet.

He blinks, hesitates for a moment, then one hand leaves your face to reach behind you to free your wrists. Without thinking you wrap yourself around him, both hands sliding behind his neck as you rest your head on his shoulder.

His palms slide up your back, holding you as you come back down to earth, thumbs stroking back and forth until your breathing is back to normal. Once you’ve semi-recovered you sit up, inches away from his face as you look at each other. He’s even more handsome up close, the little wrinkles around his eyes and the pink of his lips are beautiful.

Wordlessly you lift yourself up, letting his cock slide almost of your pussy before sinking back down, finding a pace that makes your thighs burn as you ride him, desperate to give him the same release he’s just gifted you.

“Fuck,” he groans, head tipped back, the muscles of his neck straining. The two big hands on your hips pull you down onto him, holding you in place as he cums, spurting warm inside you until he’s finished.

After a few minutes, he lifts you up and off his semi-hard cock, rubbing his knuckles directly over your cheek, a tender caress that makes your eyes close in response.

“Now, get on your knees and suck my cock until it’s clean.”

“Sam,” you start, watching the subtitles on the muted TV as a newscaster talks about the upcoming election. “Why am I here?”

“What do you mean?” he responds, only half paying attention.

“I’m in your house, in your bed. You said you want to me stay all weekend. Don’t get me wrong, I want to be here, but I didn’t think you would want someone in your personal space.”

“I don’t mind having you in my personal space as long as it’s at my request.” He explains evenly, glancing up. “I’ve been busy this last week. My schedule is only going to get tighter. Weekends might be the only time we get to see each for a while. I won’t have time for the same interactions while I’m at work.”

“That makes sense.”

“Are you alright with that? Do you have a cat that needs to be fed?”

“No, no animals, no social life to speak of. We’re perfect for each other.” You smile and he grins looking back to the screen.

“What will happen to Max?” you ask, laying on your back staring at the ceiling of his bedroom.

“Do you care?”

“No. I’m sure he deserves whatever he gets,” you nod, the feeling of the last few days washing over you again.

“What happened to make him so upset?” Sam’s inquiry seems genuine.

“I turned him down. Some men are like that, for whatever reason they can’t handle being told no. Honestly, I had no idea he was that upset with me. I can only imagine what they all think of me. It’s so embarrassing.”

“You’re not the one that has anything to be embarrassed about.” His eyes go back the report in front of him, sliding the screen up but still talking. “Even if everything he said was true, it shouldn’t matter.”

He goes back to his work, reviewing some document that can’t wait until Monday and you lie there, pretending to watch a rerun of Frasier that comes on after the news broadcast.

“Sam, can I ask you something?”

“It seems like you’re going to regardless of my answer.” He glances at you.

“Are you happy?”

He stops, looking up and forward before turning to staring at you as if you’ve just asked him to hop on one foot.

“Is anyone?”

“I am.” You roll onto your side. “I mean, I’m not over the moon every day, but I’m content and I have moments of real, true happiness.”

“Why are you asking me this?”

“I was just thinking about you. I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have asked-”

“It’s fine.” He sets down the tablet on the nightstand and rolls onto his side, propping his elbow on the pillow. “No, I’m not happy in a traditional sense. I’m satisfied. I’m focused, I accomplish things no one else would ever be able to. There are a lot of things you have to give up to have the career I’ve had. I built something. I gave up happiness for success, it was a conscious choice.”

“Don’t you want more than your job?”

“No.” He shakes his head without hesitation. “When you add too much into the mix, things get messy.”

“Is that why you have me? I mean, you’re a pretty big deal. I can’t imagine you’re desperate for dates.”

“I don’t date, I have no desire for that. Having people in your life makes you unfocused, they’re distractions.”

“I’m not a distraction?” you inquire. A psychologist would have a field day with him.

“You are exactly what I need you to be. I’m not a robot. I have the same base urges as every other red-blooded American male, but instead of marrying the first pretty girl with long legs that liked my money, I decided to leave sex in its own category. My life is compartmentalized, things run smoother that way.”

“Do you have friends?”

“Not anymore.” His voices wavers, just a little but you catch it, trying your best to not let on. “For me friends are either a liability or a disappointment. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t fall into one of the two categories.”

“Geez, which one am I?”

“You’re not my friend,” he states, eyes narrowing. “You are a category all your own.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.”

#tedtalk!sam #Controal and release #sam winchester x reader #sam winchester smut #sam winchester fanfic

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honeypiehotchner · 6 years ago

Text

Trust -- part seventeen

Fluff. Mycroft “discreetly” tries to offer the reader some protection. Reader and Sherlock go on a case. John is suspicious. The lot.

Someone is banging on your door again. You glance at the clock and groan loudly. You’ve only been in bed for an hour, and someone is already banging on your door. If it’s Sherlock, you’re going to kill him. If it’s someone else, well, you’re still going to kill them. Maybe not if it’s John, but John knocks on your door like a normal human.

You make sure you are somewhat dressed (in case it is Sherlock), at least with trousers on this time, as you make your way to the door, grumbling under your breath the entire way. You pull the door open, half hoping to see Sherlock because then at least it would be someone you could tolerate, but it’s not. It’s your babysitter.

You think you’re going to call him that now. The babysitter. Seems fitting, considering he won’t leave you alone for one day. But you know that’s Mycroft’s doing.

“Can I help you?”

“Delivery from Mycroft Holmes, ma’am.”

“And you couldn’t just leave it in the hall?” You ask incredulously, glancing at the suitcase at his feet, and speaking to the ridiculous hour. “What the hell is it, anyway?”

And to make matters all that much worse, John comes skipping down the stairs, putting his jacket on over his shoulders as he goes. He comes to a stop on the bottom step when he sees you and the man in a suit talking.

“Uh, everything alright?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He wasn’t asking you, doofus,” you roll your eyes, ignoring the fact that the childish insult of doofus came to your mind before anything else. “Yes, I’m fine Johnny. This is my babysitter Mycroft has following me around.”

“He follows you around?”

“Not literally, no. I was joking, anyway—What in the world does Mycroft want? It’s barely seven.”

“It’s protection, ma’am.”

At this point, though John is obviously late for work, he has stepped over to get a better look at the scene unfolding in front of him. He moves to stand next to you, his body language changing completely at the mention of protection.

“Protection from what?”

“Gidon,” you reply easily. “What protection are you talking about?” You thought when Mycroft said he was trying to protect you, he was just going to up your surveillance – again. It’s what he always does.

Instead of answering verbally, the babysitter picks up the brief case and holds it in his arms as he unlocks it, opening it up before turning to show it to you.

Weapons. That’s what he meant by protection. There’s a small handgun, some ammunition, an extra clip, a holster, and a blade, all neatly placed in velvet indents.

You grab the top of the case and press it back down, letting out a sigh. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, ma’am.”

“I’ll take this,” you offer, locking the case and sitting it inside the doorway to your flat. “You can go. And tell Mycroft to leave me alone for a few days. I do have a life outside of him.”

Your older brother waits until the babysitter has gone before he starts with the questions. He stands in front of you, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Why would Mycroft send you that?”

“He told you. Protection,” you shrug.

“Yes, but you wouldn’t need that type of protection unless you were, I don’t know, going somewhere where Gidon might be?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“I’m not being absurd, Y/N,” John replies firmly. “And you told me you couldn’t handle a gun.”

“I never said I was going to use the stuff Mycroft sent. I didn’t even ask him to send it,” you mutter, sending a fleeting glance to the case inside your flat. It looks and feels foreign sitting there.

“We’re gonna talk about this later,” John promises firmly. “Just you and me.”

“Okay. Deal.”

“Good.”

“Now go to work.”

He gives you a look like he wants to say something else to you, but he doesn’t. Probably for the best because he is going to be even more late if he doesn’t leave right away.

You lean your head against your doorframe as the door shuts behind him, closing your eyes. This has become a mess. A complete and utter—

“Did you tell him?”

“Jesus!” You jump, nearly knocking your head into the other side of your doorframe, all because of Sherlock Holmes’s stealthy nature. “Where did you come from?” Composing yourself, you answer his question. “No, but you heard the entire conversation, I’m sure.”

“Hm. But are you going to?”

“Are you going to mind your business?” You counter, raising an eyebrow.

But Sherlock Holmes only smirks. He inhales sharply, narrowing his eyes rather playfully. “Lestrade called. There’s a case. Dress quickly.”

On that rather abrupt note, he retreats back into his flat.

“How can there be a case at seven in the bloody morning?” You grumble, shutting your own flat door behind you.

But despite grumbling about the early hour, you quickly walk off to your bedroom to get dressed. Looking a little forlornly at the case sitting inside your flat, you decide to bring it with you, thinking at the very least, you’ll take the blade.

~~~

“You’re carrying a gun.”

“Brilliant deduction,” you reply, glancing worriedly to the front of the cab, even though he is correct – you caved and decide to wear it, even despite how heavy it feels. And sometimes you think Sherlock just doesn’t remember there is someone driving, someone who is liable to phone the police if he says something entirely off the wall – which he normally always does.

He hums. “Your hips aren’t that wide.”

Your eyes widen as you fight the blush crawling up your neck. “Sherlock Holmes, have you been observing my hips?”

He doesn’t reply, but his own blush says all you need to know.

My God, you think. Of all the things you expected to come out of his mouth during this cab ride, that was not one of them.

You aren’t even entirely sure why you’re in this cab. You got a total of one hour of sleep, and now you’re in a cab, the last of the drugs from the night before still riding through your system, but they’re mostly gone – unfortunately.

But your point is: Sherlock can probably solve whatever case this is from the flat. Or in five minutes. So why he felt the need to drag you out, you aren’t sure. But then again, he didn’t really drag you out. You decided to come out rather willingly, now that you think about it.

The cab pulls up to the edge of the crime scene, which is blocked off by police cars and an ambulance.

Here you go again.

After paying for the ride, Sherlock steps out, surprisingly holding the door for you as you step out behind him. The surprise on your face mirrors that of Lestrade’s when he sees you walking alongside Sherlock.

“Nice to see you again, Y/N.”

“You too, G…reg. Greg?”

Surprisingly elated, Lestrade nods. You smile, feeling a little triumphant that you remembered his name for once, and when you see Sherlock smirking rather smugly, you shove his shoulder to make him stop.

“What have you got for us?” You ask, following Lestrade into the scene, being careful of where you step because you decided to wear your heels.

“A break in,” he replies casually.

You nearly stop dead in your tracks. “You called us out here for a bloody break in?”

“Oh, should I mention there was an attempted murder?”

“Yes, lead with that,” you mutter, your interest returning.

Lestrade stops just inside the scene, giving the both of you looks. “Now, I don’t normally tell you how to do this, but the woman there is—”

“Traumatized and pregnant,” you finish for him, noting her shaken form and slight glow to her skin. “I’ll talk to her. Sherlock, you go to the house.”

Sherlock reels back, furrowing his eyebrows as you begin to walk away. You glance back and see he hasn’t moved, so you give him an incredulous look.

“Now, would be nice. Not five years from now.”

Lestrade gapes at the two of you, his surprise only growing when Sherlock stalks off in the opposite direction toward the house, obeying your command.

You return your focus to the terrified woman sitting on the edge of the ambulance, a blanket around her shoulders. She’s barely showing, but she’s a woman of rather small stature, so she looks bigger than someone else would.

Her eyes are wide, but you see her trying to soften her features and put on a brave face when she sees you approaching her. You offer a sympathetic smile, hoping to convey to her that she doesn’t need to hold it in right now. You’ve been where she is. It’s tough.

“Hi there, I’m Y/N. What’s your name?”

“Mary.”

“Mary. That’s a lovely name. Do you mind if I ask you some questions?”

She shakes her head, and then scoots to the side. “Sit. You look tired.”

Definitely a mother, you think. “Thank you,” you smile, taking a seat next to her. “Can you tell me what happened?”

She nods. “I was having my morning tea, and I was reading a bit of scripture because that’s how I start my days when the door was suddenly busted down.” She takes in a shaky breath. “This man…He came into my kitchen and held a gun to my head and talked to me…about the scripture. About a song, he asked if I knew it…it was something Latin.”

“‘O Magnum Mysterium’?”

“Yes,” she furrows her eyebrows. “That. I had never heard of it before.”

You nod slowly, already knowing exactly who is behind this, and your blood is already boiling. “Did he tell you what his name was?”

The woman nods timidly.

“What did he say?”

“He…He said he was God.”

Your face falls.

“I know he wasn’t. God wouldn’t act that way,” she states firmly, like she has met him. She looks around before leaning closer, lowering her voice. “You said your name was Y/N? Are you possibly Y/N L/N?”

Hesitantly, you nod.

“He told me to give you this,” she replies, thrusting a paper into your hand. “Please, take it. He told me he’d spare me if I gave this to you.”

“Thank you,” you take the paper from her. “You’re gonna be okay, alright? Don’t you worry. I’m not going to let him get to you.”

Tears well in her eyes, mixing with the fear and spilling onto her cheeks. “T-Thank you.”

You nod, wrapping her in a brief hug before the medics have to take her away. You step away from the ambulance, not noticing that Sherlock is watching as you open the paper.

I am watching. –GD

You fold the paper back over, gripping it tightly.

Your patience is wearing thin. If Gidon doesn’t come forward and show himself at some point, you’re going to lose your mind more than you already have.

Sherlock leaves Lestrade, taking long strides over to you. He saw the change in your expression when you read the paper. Whatever it said, wasn’t good. That he’s sure of.

“Come on,” Sherlock places his hand in the middle of your back, guiding you toward the main road. “There’s a café around the corner.”

You don’t try to fight him, stuffing the paper into your jacket pocket and letting him guide you.

He waits until you’re in the cab before he asks, “What’s wrong? What happened?”

Silently, you hand him the note.

“He’s a coward,” you start talking without thinking. “A bloody coward. Scaring that woman, killing my friends, and leaving a damn note like some—” You shake your head, hating the thickness to your voice that is coming from the sheer frustration you feel vibrating through your bones. It’s insane. You thought Gidon was done with, but then he wasn’t, and then he was being quiet, and now he’s still quiet, but in the loudest way possible.

Your thought process is interrupted by a warm pressure on your left hand. Turning your head to find the source, you see Sherlock has his resting on yours, his eyes waiting for you to find them.

And when you do, all you see is sincerity.

He doesn’t even need to say anything to you. Just the look that he gives you says enough and calms you down for a moment. The frustration in your chest has been replaced with raging butterflies, your body finally catching up with the reality that Sherlock Holmes is holding your hand.

Along with the butterflies comes a blush that you feel beginning to paint your cheeks under Sherlock’s gaze. He smirks when he sees the color and averts his eyes but doesn’t move his hand.

~~~

John doesn’t forget his promises.

And you’re reminded of this when, the second he returns to Baker Street from work, he nearly storms into 221B, finding you and Sherlock in front of the fire. Sherlock is thinking about the case and you’re reading, though before, you were ashamedly staring at Sherlock, taking in all of his features – but John’s loud footsteps interrupted that.

“Alright,” John stands in front of the fire. “Tell me. Why did Mycroft send the weapons over now? After all this time has passed, why now?”

Said gun is lying on the table next to John’s chair, looking entirely out of place, but it was uncomfortable on your hip. It felt too heavy. “Mycroft said Gidon is too dangerous of a case for me to be involved with. And when I told him to can it, he sent protection over.”

“Have you been looking for him?”

“Yes,” you answer honestly, closing your book to fish the note out of your pocket. “But I apparently didn’t need to look very far.”

John takes the note and glances at it, his eyes widening. “Where did you get this?”

“Crime scene today,” you sigh, leaning your head into your hand. “A pregnant woman was nearly murdered, but Gidon spared her life as long as she promised to get that note to me.” You shake your head at the incredulity. “I’m gonna kill him. I’m gonna cut his head off and use it as a bloody football.”

The silence that follows is paired with two shocked looks coming from your brother and the consulting detective in front of you who you broke out of his mind palace at your odd statement.

You return their strange looks before sighing in annoyance. “I’m kidding.”

“Really?” John mumbles, holding the note out to you. “I couldn’t tell.”

You pinch the bridge of your nose, closing your eyes. “Sorry. I’m just ready for him to stop fucking around. I mean, his problem is with me. My problem is with him. He’s being a bloody coward for dragging other people into this and I’m tired of it.”

John kneels down in front of the chair, placing a hand on your knee so you’ll look at him. He waits until you do before he begins talking.

“We are going to find him. And when we do, you can use his head as a football,” he teases, earning a chuckle from you. “But beating yourself up isn’t going to find him.”

“I’m not beating myself up,” you try to defend yourself weakly, but John obviously doesn’t believe you. Even the look Sherlock gives you is disbelieving.

“You are. And that’s what he wants you to do. So, if we’re gonna kill him, it’d be better if you didn’t kill yourself in the process.”

You avert your eyes as you nod. John expects this is all he’s going to get out of you, so he pats your knee and says something about taking a shower. The second he’s out of the room, you look to Sherlock.

And Sherlock is already looking. Has been since John said those words.

“You haven’t told him.”

“The time hasn’t been right yet,” you reply with a low voice.

“There is never a right time to tell the truth.”

“Yes, and I’m sure you of all people know that,” you roll your eyes, looking to the fire. You haven’t decided yet if you’re going out tonight. You don’t know if you have the energy to.

“When I came back and told John the truth, it wasn’t the right time. There was never going to be a right time. I just had to say it.”

“He told me about that,” you murmur. “He only told me what happened when you came back, though, he never told me how you did it.”

Sherlock smirks. “That’s a long story.”

“Well, Sherlock Holmes, I have all night.”

“Do you?” The question wasn’t meant to sound as accusatory as it did, but it still came across that way.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.”

So instead of going out tonight, you find yourself spending it in front of the fireplace with Sherlock Holmes, as he tells you how he expertly faked his death.

#Trust #sherlock #bbc sherlock #sherlock x reader #sherlock holmes x reader #sibling!reader #half-sibling!reader #john watson #mycroft holmes #greg lestrade #hand holding #soft #angst #fluff

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earthtocass · 5 years ago

Text

I’m Sorry

Dear Alex,

I know you probably will never see this, because you haven’t used this site in forever but i need somewhere to say this to you and I don’t know if i will get the chance to make things better.

Where do I start? our first date? I couldn’t believe that I had finally met someone who I resonated with quite like I did with you.

Do you remember? we spoke all night like it was nothing, we shared our interests, our thoughts, our dreams, what we wanted in life. every aspect of what you wanted matched mine. I never wanted that night to end, I could have spoken to you until my lungs gave out. I could have looked into your blue eyes until I was old and grey and you would have captivated me every step of the way.

I remember laughing and smiling, sharing shitty date stories, our heart breaks. I knew from the moment you walked into my life that I would do whatever it took to keep you by my side. to see your cheeky grin.

I remember thinking how much I hated beards, but god damn did you look amazing in yours. I never wanted to see you without it, and to this day I haven’t.

We started seeing each other frequently, and every time I saw you, my whole body caught fire. Touching you ignited a flame in me, it was electric, and i still feel it every time you touch me. Even to this day. While it may no longer be a intense burning, it is a warm welcome fuzzy feeling i like to call home.

I remember feeling like a little school girl, with a crush, we went to the zoo I still remember the wild dog toy you bought me as a gift. the photos of that day still hang on our walls. Such a happy memory.

we shared so much in common, music, games, passions, drive, a want for children, and so much more, you really were instantly the half of me I had been missing my entire life. It was like a melding of minds that just made sense, and I know you felt that too as we spoke so often about how we just instantly connected.

It took two weeks for me to finally build up the courage to ask what it was we had become. I remember clearly i was at Lachlan’s house and they were all asking me about this mysterious boy and what you were to me. I remember yearning for you to say that i was your girlfriend, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up for the fear that you weren’t ready to label us.

Much to my delighted surprise, you wanted to be mine! my heart could have burst I was so happy. YOU, You wanted to be with ME!

the days where we didn’t see each other, they grew shorter and shorter. I remember cooking for you and your family, and them cooking for me. Home life for me then was not the best, with a new step dad being imported from another country and all the concern that brought. Your home life wasn’t that fair either at the time. but I remember admiring how dedicated you were to your family, supporting them through a decision like moving states and keeping them afloat.

It came a time where the Flemington house would be no more, what were you going to do?? where would you stay? would I move in? and sure enough, myself and my two dogs moved into a crummy little 2 bedroom house with a pink shower bath and wooden floors.

It was by no means our flashiest moment of living, but it was ours. Okay Sean lived there too, and yes that presented its own set of challenges. But we wanted to help! and we did for so long.

I remember you getting so drunk you threw up all over our bedroom floor, and on the day we had an electrician coming. I remember being so mad, but now I look back on it and smile, it isn’t a bad memory. You flooded our floor and were so sick. I cared for you that day, feeding you and cleaning you up. Because I love you and that is just what you do.

I remember when it all got too much, and what a strain that put on us. but we talked it through and came out better.

I remember when everything fell apart between your Aunty and your Mum, and that the family that said they would always have your back, suddenly abandoned you without work. I wasn’t earning the best wage then, but we made it work. whatever we had to do to make ends meet and to support each other.

You started working with my dad, I still have fond memories of that, he got to know you so well and you him. You built a bond so strong, he would do anything to help you out.

We stuck that out for a while, us and our little family.

I remember in December of 2016, you had been driving around that cursed Mitsubishi with all it’s huntsmans and you hated it. I remember you looking at the most disgusting green wagon I had ever seen, but you loved it. oh the petty bickering we did about that colour. Yet somehow I still look back on those little sessions and I smile, we had differing opinions but we never let them be a focus we just made it witty little banter, that was uniquely ours. Like your love of the E30, which I will never understand.

No actually I do, you love the engineering genius, you love that they are aerodynamic, you love that they are quick and punchy and they are able to be used for lots of things, you love the way they drive and you hate that you sold the one you had. You think they are comfortable and classic and beautiful to drive and I know your dream is to purchase another and to work on it. I know I said that I wouldn’t let you get one, but really I probably could be persuaded.

Anyway off track, you wanted that wagon so much. I remember how much I wanted to make you happy. I wanted to give you the world on a silver platter, I still do. You said to me that this was your dream car, you had always wanted one, so one day on a whim we went to a dealer and we spoke to them about it. we took it for a test drive and I remember the look on your face, how excited you were, like a kid in a candy store. I wanted so bad for you to feel that every time you drove it. so we bought it. We made it work, was it a rash decision? probably, did it bring us joy and memories, bloody oath it did. So it was worth it. Every penny, every complex issue, it was worth every smile it gave you.

Moving in with my mum to try and save was probably one of the worst decisions we made. But it allowed us to get in front, a little. I remember not caring that we only had a little bedroom to live in, if we could use this to build what was ours, it would be worth it.

I remember you coming to me and not wanting to work for Greg anymore, we decided that if that was going to be the case we would find something you wanted to do. We obtained your mutual recognition as an electrician and you got a job doing your trade! how exciting! but not for very long. I remember wanting to murder the man who bullied you. How fiercely protective of what was mine, and so angered that it had resulted in you being left without work again.

But you are smart and resilient, you picked yourself up, you dusted yourself off and we started the hunt for work again. You make yourself useful to every employee and you work hard! I admire that in you, you are such a hard worker, and you want to ensure that you are pleasing everyone. One of the many things that I love about you.

We lost a dog, it was hard... and I know what we are going through now brings back memories of this. I remember being so stressed, but you were my pillar and I hope that I was yours. we got through it unscathed. It was time consuming, yes, but in the end, we came out on top.

It then came the day we were moving out of that wretched house, away from the woman who gave us so much grief. Boy could we not be happier that day had come.

Our new town house, all our own, no eyes, no family, just me and you! finally! we needed that I felt. While we may have bickered, I always ensured you knew how much I loved you at the end of every day. That love is never ending, and I know sometimes you felt like it wasn’t.

Then I got sick, we couldn’t figure it out, and I was sick for a long time. You supported me, cared for me, and made me whole. I got better after a trip to the hospital and my love for you just continued to flourish and grow.

The time came where we needed to heal our hearts and welcome a new member to our family. You didn’t want another Siberian like I did, you wanted something cool, something different.

We had stumbled across the Swedish Vallhund in our search years before when we were living in our little two bedroom home. You loved the look and sound of them and I loved that they would have the same energy as Evee who so desperately needed a friend.

We made it happen, signed the contract and I went to go visit them, you drove 3 hours to come and pick me up from Bendigo. My god I love you.

Months later, a little baby girl was made available to us, she was a dream come true, so adorable and cuddly, and perfectly ours. She brought us so many laughs and smiles, something to talk about outside of our daily lives.

I got lost in showing her, I wanted to do it every weekend! now I reflect on it, it was not only about going out and doing something and it being a passion of mine. It was about spending time with you, the love of my life and our dogs. It meant that we weren’t spending every weekend in our house, but out seeing new places, meeting new people. We could talk about new experiences.

I wanted to do things with you, for you to be involved and it seemed to be good at the beginning, but I know I over killed the ambition. I’m Sorry.

We welcomed another into our home 6 months later, although it was meant to be temporary, that goofy little boy, you loved him so much.

I remember the time you came into the kitchen and you told me that I needed to get my licence, that you couldn’t keep being the only driver in the house and it was taking a toll on you. I remember trying to defend myself like I always do, and I am not making excuses, but I was raised a defensive kid. I was so anxious, but the more I thought about it. The more I knew that I needed to do this, for you! I couldn’t let you feel miserable being the only one driving and able to freely move around.

I thought about what you said long and hard and we began learning, I remember when you first took me out on the road in the wagon. You took me into the back streets of an industrial estate. I sat in the drivers seat for the first time since I was 18. I cried, boy did I cry, I had a full blown anxiety attack, but you held me until I calmed down, you were so patient with me and my heart flew. We drove around that estate for what felt like forever.

You were patient and kind and reassured me I was doing a good job. But that car made me anxious, all that power, even if it wasn't that bad, I needed a car I would feel safe in. So on the hunt we went. We looked at so many cars, cheap ones, expensive ones, not so expensive ones. We looked together, we test drove so many.

Finally we bought my car, while it was more than we wanted to spend, it was what made sense. Because it would make you happy and I could drive it and get my licence and you could be a passenger and we could sing together to our favourite music in there.

I drove and I drove and I drove with you in those back streets, trying to learn how to park, becoming more confident.

I remember the first time I drove home, you were so proud of me. I remember being so happy that I had made you proud and that I wanted to do this more so that you could continue seeing I was trying to make an effort.

We welcomed a litter of puppies into the world, squeaky squarky little balls of beautiful fluff.

We spoke many times over the years about buying or building, looking at houses, looking at land, looking at plans and hopes and dreams. Our vision changed a few times, with many discussions. We settled on maybe looking into acreage, a beautiful block. I’m sorry if that wasn’t what you wanted, I thought we had discussed it and agreed.

I wanted the acreage not only so I could pursue my dreams, but you would be able to pursue yours too. You had spoken may times about wanting the E30, and a few other cars you could tinker with and rally around. Much to my worry, the thought of losing you to a car accident makes my heart stop.

I know that the start of this year has been less than ideal, paying two lots of rent, being behind on things and now the dogs in their situation. I know that this puts a real strain on us financially, but we don’t have to do it on our own. Our family and friends are there to help support us. My dad would do anything to ensure that we are looked after, Ayla has offered her support, and I am sure your family wouldn’t let us go homeless either.

I know that it is hard, because there is no one to blame, and it has put stress on us and we both haven’t been treating each other fairly. For that I apologise, I have been trying so hard not to let what is happening effect how I respond. To make sure I still check in with you and ask you how you are doing and make sure you know I am here to lean on, we could concur anything!

I know you hate that I never just shut up and let you vent about work without psychoanalysing everything and giving you my thoughts. I try so hard to resist the urge, but it doesn’t come from a place of being right or wrong, it is because I want you to see the positives in situations and not focus on the things that are dragging you down, because everyone has their own stuff happening. It is my way of trying to support you. I hope you know that, and every time I see you make progress or rationalise something that maybe before you would have clung to, I beam, I get so proud of you for being the better person in those situations.

I know I can be better, and I try to every day. When I say no, I usually say no because I am thinking about you, and us, and the life we want to build together. To make sure we aren’t making stupid decisions, but that is part of growing and learning. We make dumb decisions and then we work our way through them.

I promise, if you come home, and you want to sell the wagon. We will do it! we will work out what that is going to look like and we will go through with it if it is what you want. If you want to move out of Geelong, we will look for something else. If you want to go back to buying something pre-existing okay lets go. If you want to buy a standard block and live in it for the next 10 years, okay. All I want is to be where you are and I don’t care what that looks like.

If you never want to move again and you want to rent here for the rest of our lives. Okay, if you want to save slowly and take our time to find our what is right for us, there is no pressure for us to leave here.

I love that you listen and you want to please me, but I also want to please you. Let me listen to you, let me go along with what you want.

If you want to move back to Adelaide, I will follow you, I would follow you to the ends of the earth if that is what would make you happy because every action I take, every decision we make, we do it thinking about our future.

I was laying in bed the other day, after Cathryn’s wedding, thinking about how beautiful you looked. How much I loved seeing you all dressed up in that suit, how much I loved you. I began looking at wedding rings, and thinking that, well I could propose to you.

I started thinking about where I could do it, what were our favourite spots. I didn’t even care that you had been smoking, in truth, it actually made you sexier, don’t ask me how, because you know how much I hate the smell and the taste. Not to mention how may little tiffs we had over it, me trying to understand. But you were just unapologetically you, in all your glory and I didn’t think my heart could be any more full in that moment because I had you.

I know I put restrictions on recreational drug use, but I never wanted to stop you in full. I just wanted you to be safe, and not have an issue later in life which may be tied to the use. Those actions always came from a place of love, a place that wanted to keep you safe. For whatever reason you hadn’t been doing it much lately anyway, which I found surprising. But had you, it wouldn’t have mattered because you are the most important thing in my life.

You left, and I have no closure, I don’t know if you are coming back, but by god I would move heaven and earth to bring you home. I keep going over things in my head, what did I do? can I make it better? was it me? was it money? did I gain too much weight? did I not ask what you wanted to do enough? I have so many questions unanswered.

You need space, and I understand this and I am sorry I did not check in more.

I miss you more than words can express, I feel like my other half of me is missing and I don’t know how to find it. I am torn in two not knowing if there is anything I can do to make this all seem like a blip in our road.

Maybe we need time away, from this house, from the stress. at a little cabin or our tent, in the woods or on the beach where it is just us. No one else, no technology, just rediscovery and the comfort of each others presence.

I honestly cannot express how much you and this relationship mean to me. I don’t care about physical things, I don’t need you to buy me gifts for my birthday or special occasions. I just need you, I’m not hard to please. Being with you has been the easiest thing I have done in my life, because it just made sense.

I will be yours, always and forever.

Cass

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the-consulting-strange-vidder · 6 years ago

Text

"No. No. Nope. Hell no."

Mycroft Holmes glared at the man in front of him.

“You are overreacting Greg,’‘ he told at the silver-haired photographer that was pacing in front of him inside his office.

‘‘Am I what? I’m sorry, have you met your brother?’‘ answered Greg, looking Mycroft with wide eyes.

Mycroft released a deep sigh.

‘‘Yes Greg, I have. I practically raised him myself. And you know that he is magnificent in his craft.’‘

‘‘Sure he is. He’s also a prick. And you are asking me to put him in a photoshoot with Molly Hooper. The personification of sunshine.’‘

‘‘Again, you are overreacting. While I believe you that this miss Molly Hooper is wonderful, I would really appreciate it if you stopped acting like Sherlock is the incarnation of the devil. We both know that this title belongs to the one and only Jim Moriarty.’’

Hearing that name was enough for Greg’s eyes and body to start twitching.

‘‘I hate that guy...’‘ he whispered, his eyes staring at the emptiness.

‘‘Don’t we all?’‘ Mycroft agreed. ‘‘So what do you say? Will we have Sherlock and Molly Hooper work together in this photoshoot?’‘

Greg shook his head to get rid off the images of Jim Moriarty and sighed. ‘’Alright, fine. I’ll do what you ask. But please inform your brother that if he does or say anything that will make Molly Hooper even slightly sad I will kick his gorgeously shaped arse and never work with him again,’’ he said and left Mycroft’s office without another word.

Mycroft smirked, looking to the closed door.

‘‘Won’t be a problem.’‘

John was trying his best to resist the urge to laugh at his best friend face. He had never seen him like that before and the image he presented was both extremely amusing and horrifying.

Everyone believed that Sherlock Holmes was an arrogant arse with no filter, and while though that was true, the people closest to him knew that he was more than that. He was also very caring especially with his family and the people he considers family like John and his wife Mary and their daughter Rosie, his landlady Mrs. Hudson that he thought of her as a second mother, even Greg Lestrade the photographer that had discovered him and gave him the chance to become the most successful male model the world had ever seen, with fashion designers literally begging him to work for them, ready and willing to satisfy his every whim.

He had also a truly wicked sense of humor when he wanted to, ready to poke fun to everyone and everything. His brother Mycroft was, of course, his favorite ‘’victim’’ for pranks and jokes. The older and long-suffering sibling was taking it all with the patience of a saint. Most of the time anyway. The times that the brothers got into arguments and fights weren’t few. But it was their own, bizarre way of showing their love for each other so everyone just let them be.

Currently, he was nervous. He was pacing back and forth, releasing sigh after a sigh, his hands fidgeting, his mind obviously racing with carefully crafted plans that John was sure would go to hell as soon as he got face to face with the reason of his nervousness, Molly Hooper.

Because Sherlock Holmes, the machine as some people that didn't really know him used to call him, was in love. John couldn’t honestly say why his friend was in love with that particular woman. From the photoshoots that she had made and John had seen, she was petite, almost mouse-looking. He supposed she was kinda attractive, but definitely not the type of woman he could picture Sherlock falling for. Not that Sherlock had ever shown any indication about what type of woman he was into. Or that he had any romantic interest at all, of any kind, either male or female or both or none.

But here they were, on the backstage of a very important photoshoot that Sherlock had fought tooth and nail to be into, and not because it would look good in his resume, but only to meet Molly Hooper. John and Sherlock were friends for many years now, but the man was still a real mystery to the former army doctor.

Eventually, John had enough of his friend’s pacing back and down.

‘‘Sherlock, sit the hell down, you’ll open a hole in the floor if you continue like that,’‘ he complained.

‘‘Don’t be ridiculous John,’‘ said Sherlock, not even sparing him a glance. ‘‘That’s impossible in so many ways.’‘

‘‘Then sit down, you are making me dizzy,’‘ he answered back.

‘‘I couldn’t care less,’‘ quipped Sherlock, but he did sit down on a chair across from John, only to get up on his feet again two seconds later.

John groaned.

"For God's sake, Sherlock calm down. She's just a woman after all," he said making Sherlock glare angrily at him.

"Just a woman? Molly Hooper, just a woman?"

"Yes. She's not even that pretty for you to react this way," he said aiming for a reaction. And a reaction he got.

‘‘Not that pretty? Not that pretty? Molly Hooper, not that pretty? Ok, John, first of all, I would suggest you visit an eye doctor. Secondly, Molly Hooper is not simply pretty. She’s the most stunning, beautiful woman I have ever seen and not just because of her good looks. She’s also kind, and good-hearted, and funny, and sweet, and stubborn, and strong, and there’s not a single man on this planet worthy of her, least of all me, but I know that if I don’t at least try to be with her, I’ll regret it for the rest of my days. And third?’‘ Sherlock paused to take a deep breath. ‘‘I have no idea how you got so lucky to find and marry a woman like Mary because Lord knows you do not deserve her.’‘

John looked at his friend feeling offended.

‘‘The last one was uncalled for,’‘ he complained.

‘‘Well, it’s true,’‘ insisted Sherlock.

‘‘Of course, it’s true you git. That doesn’t mean that you should rub it in my face.’‘

‘‘Well, then maybe, you should stop behaving like you’re God’s greatest creation and a gift to humankind, because you’re really not.’‘

‘‘Why did we suddenly turned this conversation on me? We were talking about your crush.’‘

‘‘Molly Hooper is not my crush,’‘ said Sherlock. ‘‘I’m gonna marry her one day. Take a good look at Sherlock Holmes my friend. In a couple of years, he will be Sherlock Hooper - Holmes.’‘

Before John could have any kind of reaction the door of the dressing room opened and Mary entered.

‘‘The set is ready Sherlock, we are good to go.’‘

Sherlock jumped on his feet and started straightening his already completely perfect clothes and walked towards Mary.

‘‘He does not deserve you,’‘ he told her while pointing at John and then kissed her on the cheek.

‘‘Agh... Don’t I know it?’‘ she said. ‘‘But what can I do? I need him for reproduction.’‘

‘‘Hey!’‘ shouted John, making the two people he loved most in the world, to start laughing at him.

She was impressed. When she had told to her friends that she would collaborate in a photoshoot with Sherlock Holmes, every single one of them warned her off because ‘’he’s rude and annoying’’ an ‘’arrogant prick’’ that he ‘’behaves like a mean and spoiled brat’’. But of course, she wouldn’t miss the chance to work with him, and so far he was nothing but kind to her.

Not that she didn’t believe any of her friend's accusations. If nothing else Greg Lestrade’s reaction to Sherlock simple calling him by his name was very telling. She just didn’t believe that that was all he was. She had met him briefly, many weeks before she landed this job, at an event. They managed to talk for maybe ten minutes and she quickly realized that while the rumors about him had some truth in it, he was much more than that.

He never intended to be rude or mean to others, at least most of the time. He just was very bad at filtering the words in his brain before letting them come out of his mouth, but he never meant to hurt anyone. She hadn’t hesitated to tell him that, just seconds before her agent whisked her away, to potential clients.

So there they were now, posing together, moving flawlessly around each other like this wasn’t the first time they were working together like they were doing this since the beginning of time.

She was surprised when the photoshoot got wrapped up. She didn’t even notice how much time they spend there, working, exchanging glances and words between shots and changing clothes.

She was walking to her car, wondering whether she would work with Sherlock again, when she saw him waiting for her near her parking spot.

‘‘Sherlock,’‘ she said without even trying to hide the smile in her face. ‘‘What can I do for you?’‘

‘‘Um, actually...’‘ he paused to take a deep breath and try to calm down. ‘‘Actually Molly, I was wondering if you would like to have coffee. With me, I mean. A date, basically.’‘

‘‘You want a date with me? Why?’’

‘‘Why does everyone keeps asking this? Because I like you. In fact, I more than like you. From the moment we met, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. It’s not every day that you meet someone who sees who you really are deep inside without even trying and within minutes from your introduction. You are amazing. You’re beautiful and funny and sweet and just... perfect.’‘

‘‘Nobody’s perfect Sherlock,’‘ she said with a sweet smile.

‘‘Maybe not. But even so, I would really like to take you out on a date. If you’re not interested in that, that’s fine too. We could be friends instead. If you want that too.’‘

‘‘Okay.’‘

‘‘Okay, what?’‘

‘‘Take me out on a date.’‘

Sherlock’s smile alone was enough to light up the entire city of London. And as it turned out, two years later he proved himself to be right. He really did became Mr. Sherlock Hooper-Holmes.

Edit:

Tagging: @sherlollyandspoilers because that is her prompt. Looking forward to the next prompt.

#sherlolly #sherlolly fanfiction #sherlock bbc #sherlock holmes #molly hooper #sherlock x molly #ship: sherlolly #otp: you can see me #my otp's #my fics #this is horrible #save yourselves #don't read it #ugh...

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winter-rose-of-ninjago · 5 years ago

Text

Winter Rose (chap 2)

When an Elemental Master dies without leaving an heir, the powers will transfer to the next available candidate. Rose was a normal young woman until the Master of Ice gave his life to save Ninjago from a great evil.

Rose woke up on a train.

At first, she didn't remember why she was there, or even when she got on. But as she sat upright and stretched after a night spent curled in her seat, the memory of last night came rushing back.

The station was robbed. Or at least, there was an attempt, one that she had stopped entirely by accident, too. By freezing one of them! And afterwards, she just left work and got on a train headed straight for New Ninjago City.

She didn't even go home and change first. She just left as soon as her manager and the police had given the O.K.!

'Mom is going to be so peeved when she finds out.' Rose thought, stared out the window as the darkened scenery rushing by. 'Hopefully she'll let me explain before she starts assigning chores.'

She passed the time by continuously frosting the window with her hands. It was weird, especially since it melted quickly in the pre-Summer heat whenever she took her hand away. And, of course, it was cold. But, she noticed, whenever she used the ice, she felt less cold herself.

When the train pulled up to the station some hours later, the sun was close to rising. Rose disembarked and pulled her hood up, heading for the vending machines and buying two candy bars and an energy drink. She then took a map as she left the station, opening it up as she chewed on her candy. She looked it over, then turned down street and started walking.

She could only hope that Hailey wouldn't mind being woken up so early in the morning.

Hailey was NOT a light sleeper, not by any stretch of the word. Many a time had she fallen asleep at a friend's house or in public, only to be abandoned where she lay when no on could wake her. But when a loud, frantic knocking dragged her out of peaceful sleep, she rushed to the door in a half-asleep haze, thinking she'd slept through the fire alarm again.

However when she yanked the door open to run, heedless of the fact she wasn't wearing pants, she found herself crushed beneath a short, heavy, and familiar weight. With a grunt Hailey pushed the intruder off, and kicked the door closed, not getting up off the floor.

After a brief pause, Hailey spoke up. "So," she started, "why are you in my dorm room at..." She sat up and turned to look at her alarm clock. "5:13 in the morning?"

"Funny story, that." Rose said, also sitting up from where she'd bee shoved. " I think we may have a problem. "

"What do mean, 'we'?" Hailey asked, taking the desk chair. "Did you finally kill Jak? Because if so, I am NOT helping you hide the body." Hailey pushed herself off the floor and went to grab a glass of water. "I broke up with the guy who could do that before I moved here."

"What? No, I didn't kill Jak! Not yet, anyways." Rose muttered the last bit, then took a deep breath. She paused, and let it out in a long sigh. "This, is gonna be hard to explain. Let me have your water for a second."

Hailey handed over her water without the usual fight, if only because she wanted to see what Rose would do. 'Although if this ends with a mess,' she promised herself, 'I'm going to kick her out.'

Rose held the water with both hands, took a deep breath, and then froze it, glass and all. When she finished she looked up to find Hailey staring down at her with wide eyes.

"Well," she said, sitting down at her desk, "that's new. Do you know why you can do that now?

Rose shook her head and put the chunk of ice on the floor. "No. It just started, tonight- uh, last night. I thought maybe you could help, so I came here." She leaned back on her hands, staring up at her friend.

"Wait, you started freezing things, so you came all the way out here, at ass o' clock in the morning, just to wake me up so I could help you?" Hailey picks up Rose's mess and sets it in the sink. "Gods, it's like those middle school book reports all over again."

"No! I started freezing people, and then came out here to wake you up." Rose said with a huff. "And besides, I really did need help with those reports. Writing is hard."

"Hold on, back up." Hailey turned around with and fixed Rose with a Look. "What do you mean by 'freezing people'?"

And so Rose tells Hailey everything that happened last night. From the attempted robbery, to Crazy Greg, to the ice she froze him to the floor with. She then moves on to how she immediately went to the train station after being dismissed by the police. By the time she's done, the sun has fully risen, and it's time for Hailey to start getting ready for class.

"Listen, I've got to get to class." Hailey told her, as she collected fresh clothing for the day. "Why don't you take a nap or something while I'm gone? We'll work this out when I get back."

Rose's only response is to flop on the bed and wave.

"The shower is down the hall on the left, and there should be something that'll fit you in the dresser." Hailey waited for a response, which was just a grunt and thumbs-up, before turning to leave. "I'll see you in a few hours."

Rose grunted again, and Hailey left the room, making sure to lock the door behind her. No need to have someone finding her before she can explain, after all.

By the time Hailey came back from class, Rose had showered and gotten dressed, although she didn't look any less tired than earlier. Hailey luckily didn't have any afternoon classes, not that she'd be able to focus much anyways.

So she grabbed Rose and dragged her out of the room to a cafe close to the college, deciding that they should have lunch before trying to test Rose's powers. After all, you can't do anything on an empty stomach.

Lloyd normally wasn't the one who answered the phone. Usually, it was his mother who did that, in between her studies. However as he raised it to his ear and gave the greeting he had the feeling things were about to change.

"Hello, Garmadon and Borg Training and Research Facility. How may I help you?" He rattled off, hopeful that they weren't looking for him. It was why he'd left out the part that mentioned he lived there.

"Hello, I'm looking for Lloyd Garmadon, the Green Ninja. Is he available?" The woman on the other end asked. Lloyd silently cursed, but answered anyways.

"Uh, yeah, you're talking to him. What do ya need?" 'Please just say "talk to my kid and tell him to do his homework".' Lloyd prayed futilely.

"I'm officer Briggs of the Jamanakai Police. We need you to come down to the station as soon as you can." Briggs cleared her throat. "There was a robbery yesterday that involved some... unusual circumstances. We need to talk to you right away."

Robbery? Unusual circumstances? 'Oh great, it's another Ancient Evil, isn't it? ' The teen thought to himself. 'The Overlord is back to steal everyone's cookies, or something.'

"Unusual how?" Lloyd asks, shaking himself out of his thoughts. This was no time for jokes.

"Well, one of the robbers was frozen to the floor." Briggs seems a bit incredulous as she says that, as though she doesn't quite believe it herself. Lloyd however feels his heart stop.

"Frozen?" He asks, voice barely above a whisper. He almost drops the phone, but forces himself to hang on. Zane is dead, and it could just be someone invented a freeze-ray or something. It's not Zane it's not Zane it's not-

"Yes. Listen, when you get here, you can review the tapes, alright?" Lloyd can hear papers shuffling on the other end. "I think you'll find them... interesting."

"Uh, yeah. Yeah. I'll be there in two hours." Lloyd doesn't wait for an answer before hanging up the phone. The second it's in it's cradle he leans against the wall, feeling almost like he just ran a marathon. He stayed like that for a minute, then took a deep breath and stood up, heading for the door. He had some tapes to review.

Lloyd actually makes it to the station in one hour and thirty minutes. He's greeted by Officer Briggs, an older woman with her hair tied back in a bun. She escorts him into a room where he watches the tapes in shock.

He was right about one thing. It's not Zane.

Instead, paused on the screen with her arm outstretched and shooting ice from her hand, is a young woman. She's short, but well built, with pale blonde hair tied back in a ponytail.

"Who is she?" He asks, after staring at her for a while. She looks a little familiar, but the video is too blurry to really tell.

"Rosemary Julien. And, we don't know where she is right now. Someone said they saw her get on a train, but nobody has any idea where she went." Another officer, younger than Briggs, explained. He adjusted his glasses before continuing. "She does have family in town, though. They're already here and are being questioned. With any luck, they're have some idea about where she went."

Lloyd nodded, although he wasn't sure how much that could help. "Do you mind if I take a copy of the tape back to the Facility? My parents and uncle might know who she is."

"Of course Green Ninja." Lloyd sighed, though the officer either didn't notice or didn't care as he made a copy. He handed it off to Lloyd, who thanked him and left quickly.

Maybe his father would be able to shed some light on this.

Rose and Hailey find themselves watching T.V. in the student rec. room after a long afternoon of practice. Rose wasn't necessarily better with her powers, but she had managed to learn how NOT to freeze things. Thus she was able to eat her food without turning it into ramen -flavored ice-cream.

While they were watching their show, a cartoon Hailey liked about twins and a magic journal, it cut off right in the middle. While Hailey and a few other students gave cries of outrage and disappointment, as it switched to the news, although they quieted down when they saw a picture of Rose on the screen.

"Attention citizens of New Ninjago City, this is an announcement made at the request of the Green Ninja, Lloyd Garmadon." The voice sounded male. "He is requesting any information possible on the location of Rosemary Julien, age 19." Here a picture of Rose came on screen, stating her name and age underneath it, along with a phone number. Rose herself pulled her hood up and sank into the couch cushions. "If you have any information on her whereabouts, please call the number on the screen. This announcement will play once every hour until Miss Julien has been found. We will now return you to your regularly scheduled program."

The T.V. switched back to the cartoon as Rose leapt from her seat and took off running down the hall. Hailey followed her, though she made sure to grab their food before she left.

They made it to Hailey's room and lock the door behind them. "This is bad, this is really bad Hailey!" Rose said as she paced around the room. Hailey just sat on her bed and continued to eat. "Why are you so calm about this?!"

"Because," she answered between bites of ramen, "you're going to call that number."

"What? No I'm not! They're gonna arrest me or something!" Rose was full on panicking now. "Maybe if I leave now, I can go somewhere else. Like Ignacia, or Stixx. Those places don't have a lot of people, right?" She grabbed at her hair. "Oh man, mom's so gonna kill me..."

"Rosie, you're not gonna get arrested. The Ninja don't have that authority. The police do, though. Which is why you've gotta call them." Hailey pointed her fork at her friend. "Or, I can call them. Whichever way works for you."

"You wouldn't dare!" Rose glares, but Hailey glares back.

"Bet me I won't. You think this bad for you? Imagine if they found out about me." Hailey sighed. "No, it's better to get this taken care of as soon as possible. It's less trouble that way."

"Can't I just go hide with your ex?" Rose asked as a last resort.

Hailey fixed her with a Look. "No." She tossed her her cellphone. "Now call the Ninja. I'll be right outside so you can have some privacy. I need to return these bowls, anyways."

Hailey got up and left the room, closing the door behind her. Rose stared after her, then turned towards the window. After making sure she wouldn't survive the jump, she sat on the bed and stared at the phone. This was quite possibly the hardest call she would ever make since she asked Hank out in middle school.

#ninjago #lego ninjago #fanfic #winter rose #chapter 2 #kai #lloyd #zane #jay #cole #nya

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howtohero · 6 years ago

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#204 God Brawls

Superheroes like to present themselves as the ultimate forces of good, and frankly, that’s just good marketing. Why would anybody ever come to you for help if you were only like the second or third most powerful force of good or, heaven help us all, the fourth or fifth most powerful force of good? Yet, as it transpires, superheroes are often not the ultimate force of anything except for excessive capes, and even that’s up for debate. Have you ever met Cloakus, the self-proclaimed (maybe?) god of capes? That dude has got excessive cloakery down to a science. And that’s just my point (sort of), it’s hard for any mortal, superhuman or not, to claim to be the ultimate anything, since there will always be some deity or mythological powerhouse from some pantheon or plane of existence that’s been doing it better and for much longer. These beings are often obscenely powerful, aggressively petty, ostentatiously dramatic, and overwhelmingly insecure to the degree that they need everybody to call them gods.

All of these factors also means that these beings are just incredibly irritable all the time. It also means that there’s nothing stopping them from doing something incredibly petty to another all powerful being. Think about it, if you were incredibly insecure while also wielding potentially-universe-destroying-or-at-the-very-least-destroying-it-as-we-know-it-because-as-we-all-know-matter-cannot-be-destroyed-but-it-can-be-turned-into-an-ice-cream-sandwich-no-problem power and you found out that there was some other guy out there who also purported to have god like abilities, wouldn’t you teleport into his golden cathedral and prank him to show dominance? I know I would. (A prank? How about scattering their still-living body parts across throughout time, space and the multiverse. See, this is literally the reason nobody has granted you unlimited power, you think too small.) Oh please like you also wouldn’t just toss a boston creme pie in their face and call it a day. (Let me out of these infernal parentheses and I’ll show you what I’d do!) No! So, with all of these unquantifiably powerful beings antagonizing each other, it is not unheard of for Earth, which remember, is under your protection, often gets caught in the crossfire.

Normally when you come across two people in outlandish costumes with improbable abilities fighting, you’d do well to ascertain which one of them is the good guy and which one is the bad guy and then launching into the fray alongside your fellow do-gooder. But when the gods fight, that kind of thinking goes right out the window. Even if you’ve, in the past, fought alongside one of these awesome figures at some point in your past, you should not assume that they care on iota for you or your world. They’re simply way too far above you and your mortal, small-scale perceptions of good and evil. Sure at one point you teamed up to prevent another dimension from bleeding into yours but while you were doing it to save lives, they were simply in it to protect their real estate. In the grand scheme of things, Earth is completely beneath their notice, and if they’ve happened to have chosen it for some kind of prophetic ultimate battle against their brother or their counterpart in another Pantheon. (Gosh, remember that 3000 year bar fight between the Greek Dionysus and the Mayan Acan over who could get mortals drunker? They really dragged that one out. {Quit your whining!) don’t think you can just pop in and try to appeal to their sense of benevolence. If these people were interested in saving their lives they’d use their awesome power to be heroes, not gods.

So if there are deities raging in your neighborhood (trust me you’ll know) you have to immediately rally anybody you can to get down to the battle zone and try to clear it of as much civilian life as you can. Every teleporter, speedster and space bus (except for of course the Hedonian, the space party bus that has been keeping the party going since the dawn of space, we would never try to infringe on the eternal party. Please carry on like always.) needs to be on hand to ferry people away from as wide of a radius as you can. When it comes to warring titans, no berth is too wide to give these people. Fights can explode out of control with no warning, you’d honestly be safer getting people off world. (Try sending them to a world that has already been completely destroyed by this specific godly wrestling match. The gods have too much pride to ever ravage the same planet twice during the same fight.)

Once everybody is as safe as they reasonably can be when two guys dressed like they’re going to a frat party are dueling with the concepts of strife and rage made tangible, it’s time to just kind of do your best. Which sounds bleak but if you’ve got a good crew of superheroes with you, it could be a lot of fun. Like we said, these self-proclaimed gods are bunch of whiny crybabies (yeah that’s right! Come to our house and smite us you whiny crybabies!) just like anything can launch them into a millennia spanning cosmic thumb war, there’s no telling what could get them to stop. So let’s get creative:

List of Things That Definitely Maybe Might Get These Piss Baby Drama Queens to Stop This Nonsense:

Rig up some speakers, get Morgan Freeman on the line, have him tell them to stop it right this instance in his smooth heavenly voice.

Open a portal. Get lots of shoelaces. No wait get the shoelaces first ah dang it dang it, Half-Face McGee fell into the portal. Dang. That guy has really bad luck with portals. I wonder what this is going to do to his face. Sorry guys, that’s on us, we should’ve waited until you had everything ready before we told you to open a portal. Ok, well, moving on then. Get a bunch of shoelaces. Tie ‘em together to create a giant tripwire. Then open a portal to somewhere far away and trip one of the warring titans into it. The other guy might construe this is a tactical retreat on the part of the god you’ve banished and dive through the portal in pursuit. If not, then just do the same thing a second time.

When trying to stop a couple of gods, call in one of your own. Remember that time we had you preemptively trick a trickster god in order to gain their respect. Well its time to call that chip in. Trickster gods have eons of experience in manipulating other gods into doing what they want. Just sit back and leave it to The Real Skeev Shady to take care of things.

Project cartoons into the sky. This actually worked once. The two gods, I wanna say it was Hades and Greg the Skeleton King, had never even heard of cartoons before. Apparently cartoonists and animators get tortured by one of the other rulers of the underworld. But they were so entranced and, quite frankly, positively delighted by cartoons that they made peace right there on the spot and opened up their own animation studio in Burbank.

If you’re dealing with weather deities, try breaking out one of those weather manipulators that you’ve confiscated over the years. You may think its unlikely that Earthly mad science would be able to compete with Zeus’s might, but hey you might be surprised, those guys are definitely dedicated to their craft.

You and a buddy should dress up like the two gods and then roll up to the battlefield. You might get struck down for your hubris. You might make these mythological meatheads feel super awkward and send them running home to change. (Just keep doing it over and over again every time they come back in new outfits.)

Hop on over to Venus, or some uninhabited asteroid, or Universe Designate 3.19∑7 aka the BarrenLand. Then channel your inner ancient deity write the pettiest and dismissive letter you can, fill it with backhand insults and some front hand insults for good measure. Then send the letter to these gods by raven with a stamp on it that tells the gods exactly where the letter came from. With any luck they’ll be so incensed by the myriad of insults that they’ll take their fight over to one of those uninhabited places.

Snacks? Like a dump truck filled with snacks? Do we think that might work?

Try offering up some sacrifices or incense to the gods to gain their favor then, beg them to leave. (If you need a human sacrifice, Professor Paleontologist personally told me that he’s always been fascinated by the prospect so I think that means he’s down.) Ooh, argh, I really can’t condone that but... hm... Ah, no. You can’t sacrifice Professor Paleontologist. Don’t sacrifice anybody.

Loudly talk about how lame Earth is and say, within earshot of these divine dolts, that no cool person would ever be caught dead there. These insecure infinites will have no choice but to pack up and move on to somewhere else. For fear of being deemed uncool. Which would totally harsh their vibes.

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shirleycarlton · 7 years ago

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“So, do you think they bought it?” John asked. He looked at Sherlock somewhat warily from the corners of his eyes, his gaze alternately flickering nervously over the interior of DI Lestrade’s office.

Sherlock’s heart broke a little at the sight of his friend.

John looked tired. Exhausted.

No wonder.

“I think so. Yes,” Sherlock said quietly.

Apparently, Greg wasn’t back from Bart’s yet, Sherlock realised. He briefly put a hand on John’s shoulder, trying a small smile, which he sensed came out forced. “Coffee?”

When John subtly shook his head, Sherlock hesitantly sat down in the chair next to him.

Sherlock felt just as knackered. He pulled in a long breath and held it for a few seconds to steady his nerves. Being interrogated as a witness to Mary’s death by Sally Donovan had taken every bit of his energy and every bit of focus from every single brain cell he possessed. (Usually, that would have meant fun; not so much this time, though.)

Upon entering the interrogation room, Donovan had attempted to act amicably, starting with some inconsequential small talk. Meanwhile, Sherlock had been unable to stop imagining how Mary’s body was at that very moment being taken from the Aquarium to the morgue, then photographed, probed, and documented. He could only hope that Lestrade had managed to get Molly on duty in time. Either her, or some idiot who wouldn’t look too closely at the angle of the entry wound. However, if it was Woods, everything he would try to do here could be in vain.

He’d quickly pulled his thoughts away from that direction.

“Well then. Can you tell me what happened?” the sergeant had asked, earnestly, as she cradled her coffee.

“We used to be so close. The three of us.” Sherlock swallowed. It was essential that he got this right. Of all the times throughout his life he’d had to give it his all, this was the one time he needed to get it one-hundred-percent-right. For John. Focus.

Make your worry, shock and dread look like grief and, if you have to, let your voice wobble, he told himself.

And action. “She was so smart, and… she always used to help us,” Sherlock said, sounding appropriately taken aback. “With cases. We were always working together, having fun,” he huffed, forcing out a smile. “Like that time we tried to use a bloodhound to trace the burglar smashing the Thatcher busts.” He paused. “She was just wonderful. John loved her so much, you know.”

That last bit wasn’t even untrue, if you went back in time far enough. John had, at one point, really loved her, Sherlock thought. And even Sherlock couldn’t deny that there had been a time that he, too, had actually – surprisingly – genuinely liked Mary, and thought that she could be the person to make John happy.

She had fooled so many people. Even Janine Hawkins, whom Mary had managed to get just as close to, in an impeccable ‘best friends’ act – which, when you thought about it, was at least an equally impressive feat, seeing as there’d not been any romance involved.

(For quite a while, Sherlock had suspected Janine to be on Mary’s team, but after careful research – during which the amicability he had initially feigned, once again, in order to get close to her, had eventually turned into an actual mutual friendship, ironically – he’d firmly concluded that Janine hadn’t been pretending to be anything she wasn’t.)

Mary had had an impressive ability of hiding certain skill sets and presenting an array of uncannily convincing personalities, according to what was convenient to her, without any regard for the emotional consequences.

Fascinatingly, she had been a lot like himself, in many ways – both good and bad.

Something painful caught in his throat, so he tried to refocus on Donovan, slowly looking back up at her.

She was frowning. “I’ve never seen you two bring her on any cases with the Yard, though,” she said, thoughtfully. “Were things really going that well between John and Mary? I never actually had that impression.” (It seemed like more an afterthought than an actual question, thank God.)

Sherlock sighed inaudibly.

It had been hellish.

Both he and John had seen very little of Mary indeed over the past months, which in itself wasn’t a problem, of course. But her way of vanishing without a word, and regularly even leaving the baby home alone, had been taking its toll on John, not to mention Rosie herself, while it somehow hadn’t managed to bring him and John any closer to their goal.

Since last autumn – after she’d shot Sherlock in the chest and her true nature had come to light, tearing down the fragile domestic life John had carefully built for himself – Sherlock and John had been working together practically full-time, trying to either find hard evidence on Mary’s past crimes or to catch her in the act of one of the offences they knew she was still habitually committing. They’d thought they’d have her behind bars within a few weeks. Because that was the one place she belonged.

But months of shadowing her hadn’t proved nearly as fruitful as they’d hoped.

None of this would of course have been necessary if Sherlock had actually had any damned proof that it had been Mary who’d shot him, in the first place. But to his utmost frustration, he didn’t. (Obviously, his own statement would not have been worth a thing, after he'd suffered severe internal bleeding, almost died on the operating table and spent several hours unconscious and under the influence of heavy painkillers and other medication. There was no chance in hell that a judge would have taken him at his word if he'd said that he remembered it was Mary who shot him. Besides, for the court of law, a mere statement was never enough anyway. However, as was to be expected, the idiots of Scotland Yard naturally had found nothing on the scene. And by the time Sherlock had been well enough to go back and find any specific traces that could be used as evidence against Mary, Magnussen’s penthouse had of course long been cleared.) And he most certainly hadn't wanted to rely on Magnussen's witness statement, as that nasty piece of work would likely have had no problem lying under oath in order to retain the bargaining value of that piece of information, so that he could blackmail Mary even further.

Yes, Mary had been good at hiding her tracks.

Naturally. Or she would have been caught a long time ago.

And then we wouldn’t have had to do this, Sherlock thought, looking across the table at the lies Donovan had faithfully penned down in her notes.

Read the rest of The Lost Special on AO3

Tagging a few people whose blogs or writing I greatly admire and who I hope might be interested in this S4 fix-it fic that I wrote based on fandom meta! (Please let me know if you prefer not to be tagged.)

@conversationswithjohnlock @iamjohnlocked4life @cupidford @constancecream @swissmissfanartfavs @hubblegleeflower @we-love-the-beekeeper @inevitably-johnlocked @miadifferent @wellthengameover @atikiology @alexxphoenix42 @sussexbound @vanimelda4 @neverendingjohnlock @yellowmiche @cdlafere @astudyinsnoggy

#s4 fix-it fic #the lost special #john's alibi theory #john's alibi #alibi theory #tfp is john's coma dream #johnlock #fic based on fandom meta #i thought i'd try and advertise a bit

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hellacre13 · 7 years ago

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It’s been brought to my notice a clois shipper is taking my comments on CBR without my permission, screen grabbing and pasting in his tumblr to talk trash . So glad you think my comments so worthy that you need to pull out your straw man arguments instead of being honest enough to reply to me there. But I won’t give any credence to your cowardice. You know, some people have been making a habit of this. Taking what I and other posters have said on public forums and going on twitter and tumblr and trying to act all smug and smart and trying...TRYING...to ridicule us. But you know I tend to ignore these cowards. I don’t like wasting my time on shipping wars which is why I rarely get into to and fros with these folks here. Fact, I have most of them blocked. But this I decided has given me a great opportunity to share with my fellow comic fans.

In retrospect, my post my post must have been thought provoking . 😉 😚 Glad to see it got him reacting. So I thought why waste it on CBR alone? I MEAN I DON’T HAVE TO ASK MYSELF PERMISSION. Let me share what it was about. Here was my thoughts on that debacle Batman #39 before it was released based on the Bleeding Cool article that it seemed to have ripped from that notorious Action 571 by Joe Kelly 18 years ago. Now some people, usually clois fans, love Action because it, in their eyes, hold their pairing up as some great love because of this issue. But then there is another side to it and I ask people to sincerely think about this given the fact we have moved on in terms of how we view relationships and dynamics. I am not talking about political correctedness gone mad. Not at all. And no way I would be so disrespectful to call Joe Kelly the man a sexist or anything like that the way some clois fans attack Superman/Wonder Woman fans and writers because they so “hurt” fiction simply paired up two single people in one story line ie the new 52 despite them having tons of stuff in other books and media. Some writers just do stories using outdated troupes that have evolved into sexist plots because times change and they at times miss their mark with a section of the fandom or can be a hit depending which side of the fence you are on. And they should never be personally attacked for it. You can critique them but don’t for the love of god try to label people you don’t know anything about other than you read a comic that you don’t like.

I hate Action #761. Not because of the premise that two people who have been attracted to each other, who have a long history of closeness in BOTH their comics...ie they actually have been shown in the narrative...it's not just dragged in left field... that they can end up closer or intimate. It's actually pretty normal I'd think if two friends with some unresolved tension, after they lose their spouses etc find solace or love again. It's morbid to be so guilt ridden that a dead partner you cannot recall and who you think is dead makes you close your self off to love, when it's clear you really really tempted. But this was never the point of Action #761 to explore love and loss. How can you as a writer if you want to sincerely tackle it when you full well KNOW you cannot shake the boat? It's not AU. It's not an altered timeline where you can follow through without messing up canon. You obviously, in such a scenario, will set up one character to be humiliated by doing something so absurd and heavy handed to try to prop a relationship that supposed to great because it's human etc etc...and being human is supposed to encompass the highs and lows of love, including tragedy and honoring a love by living etc. It tries so hard to beat you over the head Clark would rather be a monk for the rest of his life to honor one dead woman's memory. I did not come away and go aww that's love. I thought sheesh, what a dysfunctional love . Superman is actually crippled by Lois memory or lack thereof. Diana seemed pretty normal to me. And SHE never crossed boundaries or propositioned him. HE was the one raising it. And she backed off and never made him feel at all as if he did anything wrong by rejecting her. She was selfless in one vein and just a prop in another with no pov about how she dealt with it as a woman and someone who left behind friends and loved ones too. It was all about Superman and Lois to prop them at her expense. She comes off as the reject when in fact it's a story that used her in a cheap way knowing all the time that was the only outcome. Can't we all just assume Superman would be faithful to Lois while they together simply because he is that kind of a dude? Why did Joe Kelly need to drag Diana in as some temptation? Just like Superman fans hate when they use Superman as the punching bag to show the strongest character can take a beating by all and sundry, am I to assume Diana has to be used as the apple because she happens to be beautiful and THE premiere female? So, if you refuse Wonder Woman of all people...wow...you gotta love Lois so much. That's pretty sexist crap right there by Kelly. It was a poorly thought out story. But it was 18 years ago and we have moved forward in terms of the way women are used. So color me totally unimpressed King takes this lame troupe and play with it again.Because you can do nothing good with it. Neither Batman or Diana are single. It is not AU. Unless there is a plan to make them dump Selina and Steve. I hardly think this likely since why would DC make such a big deal of the Batcat stuff only to dump on it in this manner. BOTH are with their "love interests". Bruce has made a huge step in his canon. Love with commitment and pending marriage. Diana is shacked up with Steve Trevor. I am not fan of Rebirth. But she is with Steve cureently so why is there this need to muddy the waters at this stage? They could have done this easily when both were single. People might not like or might like it depending on your shipping preferences but at least they free, single and disengaged. They can kiss or date who they please as single people. Batman sure as hell has umpteen women in his books. Wanting a beautiful woman is not exactly strange for him. And King is cheating by trying to say they have some deep, great friendship based on one lame two parter? Because they spend some time in a pocket universe where time passes but is only two issues we to assume their friendship has the same magnitude as say Clark and Bruce's which has had so many books devoted to it? Diana pre new 52 and new 52 could never be seen to be Bruce's close friend and boast of a friendship to equal Superman and Batman or even a romantic dynamic as her other canonical love interests because they had limited stories together. King premises this as some great deep friendship because he wants to retroactively in a paltry two issues cement something they never earned? That's how lazy and arrogant DC and Batman writers are. It was done by Joe Kelly in the JLA run where Batman sucked Diana's face with no build up. It was done by Rucka in Black Night. Seems King is doing it again. Pushing something that just has not been earned. And using the cheapest way to try to claim it. It is baffling he uses Superman and Lois is positive ways and supportive of Selina and chooses to put Diana, a symbol of sisterhood in a story where you have to dredge up sex and intimacy to show how good friends they are. I don't get it. This arc is supposed to be about Batman's friends response to his pending marriage . So he and Diana couldn't spend some time bonding in any other way? What is the purpose? It does not sound at all good to me. So this is why I think that him even borrowing the premise or homaging or whatever he's done a poor choice. Diana will come off looking bad again and a prop or mouthpiece because it is a Batman book and about his issues.

Then Batman 39 hit and I said this.

I'm sorry to say I told you so. But yeah. Whenever batman fan boy writers handle Wonder Woman this is what you get. Lazy ooc plots to claim her as hooked on Batman's irresistible charms. They don't build anything over time. They just slap it in your face. Bruce Timm. Joe Kelly. Greg Rucka, Now Tom King and no doubt soon Liam Sharp. Like I say it doesn't bug me two friends who are close and attracted to each other if they are single try a relationship. But Action wasn't about that. It could not any way explore anything in canon. And no one I know who liked smww or ww cared for it. It was one sided to ensure smll came out smelling rosy and Diana ...oh poor Diana...just rejected because if you turn down Wonder Woman...wow, what a man. What a love! So dumb. Like he couldn't just be seen as faithful because he's a loyal guy in a normal situation. They just needed to go all heavy handed to make a pointless point at WW expense.

Batman 39. Worse. The pacing in Action at least tried to show a bond already there knitting tighter...they did not need this issue to show they are friends. They already were close etc. Diana did not proposition Clark. They maintained boundaries and yadda yadda for a moment looked at each other and then Clark pulled back and Diana is fine with it blah blah. This shows a Wonder Woman in terms of the art, flirting heavily in her body language from the get go. Batman as you clearly see is still trying to be faithful in his body language. She even suggests they get it on knowing he will go back to Selina. I just don't how to take that. No Diana I know would openly suggest that. It's so out of character. She's the apple/ temptress. She has no pov or remembers she has her own lover and life. He's a non issue. Poor Steve prob sitting in their apartment waiting for her.

Now if this is based on Rucka's Diana...then this is not the way I want my Wonder Woman. Not so lacking in empathy, emotional intelligence and wisdom . I don't understand how any one as old as she is with so much relationships under her belt as suggested by Rucka, cannot understand and respect the nuances and boundaries in relationships at this stage. That she views all that she has "loved" as not able to teach her anything. It is baffling to me this Rucka Diana with all this delusion and madness nonsense. She's not a naive here but comes across as very self centered and stiff for a character who is about sisterhood and compassion. You'd think as she has her own lover she would empathize how much Bruce misses Selina...is bizarre what we have here. So whether they kiss or not is not the point. It's the set up and Diana's poor characterization. [/SPOIL]

DC dropped the ball on Diana with Rebirth. Badly and this is where she is now. Batman writers are getting to dictate her motivations, character, personality in throw away arcs and they just don't feel right at all. No matter how people say they hate the new 52...Diana maintained her core personality under the pens of Azzarello, and Soule and hell even Finch and Johns wasn't all bad.

For those who never read either books...you’re missing nothing but Action is the lesser of two evils. You can go read them to at least keep make your own minds up but context is important in everything and timing. Personally I say don’t give DC $ for nonsense. I’m pretty sure you can get it online free to read or see many spoilers around. As much as I don’t like Wonderbat, if it had been done when both were single...(and to be fair it had been back in JLA in 2002 by Joe Kelly and went nowhere)...it would have not been so bad as to raise so much ire. Pissed off fandoms, sure, but I am not so into shipping wars that I would be writing about any issue on this blog. Same way I ignore clois in Rebirth because they are not my new 52 Superman or Wonder Woman. So not sure why in God’s name DC wants to force it now when they did a Batcat engagement and choose to put Diana with Steve. I mean, are they crazy to be playing with that kind of fire when people are so sensitive the way women are used? And then that mini coming up by Liam Sharp is hinting at the same kind of crap trying to write retroactive wonderbat stuff just to have his own shipping preference. After Batman 39, I’d say, he needs to thread carefully. I mean come on, DC. Treat Diana better. It’s no skin of Batman’s nose. He sells no matter his status quo. He can have a harem his fan boys don’t care. But DC chose to go a very important step and make Bruce take a huge decision to tell the woman he loves he wants to commit to her and her be a part of his life. This is not something you sully with this kind of thing at this time. And let’s just say Bruce and Selina break up someway along the line does DC really want it to be because people blame Diana for it? Now is not the time for it. God, DC, you had your chance and never took it. Don’t mess about now. Now maybe King might have a better part two to subvert what we are seeing here but I still think using Wonder Woman imagery as the temptress was ill advised.

And those trying to drag SuperWonder into this. Please. Our New 52 couple is dead. They are not part of this. Try reaching somewhere else. The clois shipper using my CBR comments, your example is so silly of trying to use DC Presents #32 as the same as Batman #39. That story was set in the Silver Age where there was an innocent whimsy and silliness in stories. Eros shot SM and WW with arrows and they kissy kissy for a bit while trying to find a cure. Both were dating Steve and Lois but most pointedly neither had told Steve and Lois they were Clark Kent and Diana Prince in those stories. Both Steve and Lois use to treat Diana and Clark like shit in favor of Wonder Woman and Superman back then. So let’s not even start with the faux outrage. It was just a different time and the Batman Brave and the Bold kids comic replicated it because again, it’s the context and kind of story. No one batted an eye lid nor cared Bats and Wondy kissed under a love spell. The innocence is there unless you’re reaching big time.

Here is that lovely thread people. http://community.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?106190-Batman-39-Could-Be-Borrowing-A-Plot-From-An-Issue-of-Action-Comics

And here is Bleeding Cool’s pov.

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2018/01/17/batman-39-action-comics-761-temptations-wonder-woman-spoilers/

Oh and since I am an admin on Hellyeahsupermanandwonderwoman...it has permission to reblog me.

#superman #wonder woman #action comics #batman #catwoman

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go-imagine-it · 7 years ago

Text

I Need You - Sherlock x Reader

Requested by @trilbygirl212 I hope you like it!!

Prompt 20: ”Have you been crying?"

Prompt 69: ”When you love someone, you don’t just stop. Ever. Even when people roll their eyes or call you crazy… even then. Especially then!

Prompt 110: ”You need to wake up because I can’t do this without you.”

Word Count: 1783

Warnings: drug use/overdose, so much angst

It had been a long day. An extremely long day. When you came into work that morning, Greg handed you three different files each containing a different set of murders. You’d started optimistically; evidence was screaming at you from the pages and within a few hours you were sure you knew who the culprits were. But as time went on, you knew you wouldn’t be getting home for much longer than usual.

Everything came up negative. Every piece of forensic evidence you’d asked to be tested came back either unusable, unrelated to the crime or just plain wrong. Witnesses refused to speak or gave completely contrasting stories. You’d even been screamed at by a middle-aged woman for wasting her time when she had ‘far more important things to be doing.’

No matter how hard you tried, things kept going wrong and for the time being you just didn't know how to fix them. All you wanted to do was go home, curl up into a ball next to Sherlock, and fall asleep.

That was one thing keeping you going: Sherlock. When you first met him, you’d known that your life would never be the same again. What you didn’t expect was for him to fall in love with you. But he did. And you fell hard for him, too.

John seemed to know before either of you did, always giving you sideways glances when you were stood a little closer to each other than perhaps socially acceptable, or the way you both naturally fell into the habit of touching each other when it definitely wasn’t necessary.

After a while, people just assumed that you were a couple and after months of denying having feelings for one another, you both stopped arguing with people and realised that you were just meant to be together.

After that, it wasn’t long before you moved into Sherlock’s apartment at 221B. When he’d asked you, he tried to make it seem as though it was for logical, non-relationship reasons only, but you could see through the facade. He was more comfortable and relaxed when you were around, he could sleep through the night and he could concentrate on his work better with you reading curled up on the sofa wearing his clothes.

Of course, there were some people who didn’t approve. There were a great deal of people who, for one reason or another, greatly disliked Sherlock. It was usually because they were sour about him insulting them in some way in the past, but you knew that some reasons were even more personal.

Hushed voices and quiet laughs accompanied the presence of these individuals, which you knew you found much easier to ignore than Sherlock. He had grown up as an outsider, his intelligence setting him above others, isolating him. You knew it bothered him when he would let go of your hand if he saw people snickering, looks of disbelief clear on their features, and he would shut himself off from you for the rest of the day.

It was around 10PM when you finally decided that enough was enough; you’d come back tomorrow with fresh eyes and a new perspective, you were sure of it. You had to be. Packing up your things, you sighed to yourself before leaving your office and walking out into the main room of the department.

Quite a few people had stayed behind to work tonight, it seemed; Scotland Yard was under a lot of pressure from both the press and the public due to a recent lack of progress on a case that had caught a lot of attention. Consequently, everyone knew that results were needed, and they were needed soon. Nodding and offering a tired smile to a few of your coworkers, you came to a halt at the familiar, displeasing voice that came from the delightful Detective Sargent that was Sally Donovan.

“Going home to the freak now, Y/N?” You wanted to wipe that smirk from her face in an extremely unsavoury way, but knew that she was definitely not worth losing your job over. You turned to her, giving a sickly sweet smile.

“I meant to ask you, Sally, are you going going to be sleeping with Anderson or someone else from the workforce tonight? I heard that Detective Morrison’s wife is away for the weekend if you’re interested. I know that the married ones are your type.” An officer to your left burst out laughing, making you feel slightly triumphant and smug, and you walked from the room - listening to the laughter spread - before she had the chance to form a retaliation.

The cab ride was peaceful; there wasn’t as much traffic at this time of night, and it took you no time at all to arrive at Baker St. You paid and thanked the driver, got out your keys and headed for the front door.

Climbing the stairs, you smelt it before you even reached the door.

The air left your lungs as you scrambled to get the door open, the adrenaline launching through your veins, causing your hands to shake. Once it was open, you could only stand in the doorway in sheer anguish as you saw Sherlock lying there on the living room floor, eyes closed and unmoving, surrounded by heroin bags and needles.

You dropped your keys and your bag, flinging your coat to the side as you rushed to drop to your knees next to him, hands instantly grabbing his shoulders and trying desperately to wake him up.

“Sherlock. Sherlock!” No response.

Remembering to check for a pulse, you felt the side of his neck frantically, almost crying with relief when you felt the heartbeat on your fingertips. Far too slow, but it was there. You leant down, putting your face over his to make sure he was breathing. He was, but barely. You knew that you needed to wake him up; he was lucky, lying on his back, that he hadn’t choked.

You tried pinching under his arm, but when that didn’t work, you tore open the top of his shirt and tried unceremoniously rubbing his sternum with your knuckles.

He stirred. A huff of breath was all to start with, but that was enough. You pinched him under the arm again, and this time his eyes tried to open and he groaned.

“Yes! Sherlock, thank god, you need to wake up. Please!” You begged him, knowing he was in no state to understand what you were actually saying but hoping that your tone of voice would be enough to get him to fight the drugs in his system.

His skin was clammy, so you ran to fetch a wet flannel to try and cool him down a little, manoeuvring him so that he was lying on his side with his head facing you in your lap. As you ran the cloth across his forehead, you couldn’t help but start to cry with both fear and relief at the same time.

“Come on, Sherlock, you can do it. Just wake up. For me.” His hand found yours, and although the grip was weak, it was more than enough for now. After a while, his eyes opened, but as he was about to speak, you could see him slipping back into unconsciousness.

“No! You need to wake up because I can’t do this without you.” Speaking sadly to yourself more than to Sherlock, you stroked his hair with the hand that wasn’t encased in his own, fighting off the sobs that threatened to come out.

“I’m…” Sherlock breathed out. Finally he was trying to speak, his voice hoarse, but you waited for him to continue.

“I’m sorry.” Eyes still closed, you were glad that he couldn't see the tears that had started falling. How could this be happening? This wasn’t the first time you’d seen Sherlock this way, but it had been so long and he’d been doing so well that your heart was breaking to see him back like this again.

“Don’t be sorry. Just tell me why, Sherlock.” You said softly, not trying to keep the despair from your voice.

“I’m just… not good enough.” He was speaking so quietly you almost didn’t hear him. “Sherlock, what are you talking about?” He’d regained consciousness almost entirely now, but he wasn’t ready to face you yet and so kept his eyes closed, the familiar feelings of guilt and regret coursing through his body and mind. Not to mention the drugs that were still firmly in his veins, making his mind cloudy and his speech slurred.

“One day… you’ll realise what a freak I am… and you won't love me any more.” It took far longer than usual for him to be able to get the sentence out, and if you hadn’t thought your heart could hurt any more than it already did, you were wrong.

Continuing to run your fingers though his hair, you heard him mumble ‘it’s only logical’. You didn’t even have to think of the words before they came tumbling from between your lips.

“Sherlock, when you love someone, you don’t just stop. Ever. Even when people roll their eyes or call you crazy… even then. Especially then! I can’t do any of this without you and I wouldn’t want to. I need you, Sherlock. Always.” He didn’t say anything, but you saw the tear that escaped through his closed eyelids.

“I don’t want you to be laughed at because you’re with me.” You’d known he’d been feeling like this since you first got together, but hearing him say it was agonising.

“Who cares what other people think? Most of them are idiots. Idiots who are jealous of how intelligent and incredible you are. All that matters is us, no-one else.” He nodded into your lap.

“I love you, Y/N.” He held onto you tighter.

“I love you too.”

The two of you lay like that until Sherlock told you that he thought he could move, and when you got him stood up, you supported him as you both walked to the bedroom. Placing a glass of water on his bedside table, you climbed into bed next to him so that you were facing each other.

“Have you been crying?” He asked you, but you could only let out a small laugh, knowing he had the answer from your red face and puffy eyes already. Instead, you moved closer to him so that your head was resting on his chest, listening to his now strong and steady heartbeat.

Sherlock settled into a feeling of slightly-groggy content. Lying with you in his arms he realised that, no, no-one else mattered.

#sherlock x reader #sherlock imagine #sherlock oneshot #sherlock x reader imagine #sherlock request #go-imagine-it

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