#I don’t know what’s wrong w me it’s not quite brain fog and its not sleep deprivation

[makkie-is-screaming]

Almost walked in front of a moving car earlier

[trentaafcsblog]

NSFW Alphabet

Mason Mount

A - aftercare You’d be lying if you said that this wasn’t sometimes your favourite part about having sex, something about how soft and caring Mason becomes once the two of you have reached your highs just making you feel like the only girl in the world, and don’t get me wrong, he looks after you in the best possible way when you’re doing the business, but he’s just so much more attentive afterwards and he’s happy to kiss, cuddle and play with your hair as long as you need him to

B - body part Your ass, god he’s got an obsession with it, always catching him licking his lips whenever you wear *those* gym leggings or a tiny pair of shorts, and it’s got to the point where it feels weird not to have his hand glued to it twenty-four-seven

C - cum At the start of your relationship you were super strict about Mason wearing a condom, so it’s only recently that you’ve started to be a bit more adventurous when it comes to your orgasms, letting him try out all kinds of different things to see which you both prefer, whether that’s cumming on your ass, your your tits, in your mouth or inside your pussy, you’re still trying to figure that your one out, but it’s honestly the hottest thing knowing that at least one part of your body is decorated with his seed

D - dirty secret You’ve recently discovered the world of sexting, and it’s quite possibly your favourite thing, loving how you can pass your thumbs tapping away on your screen as ‘oh I’m just messaging my boyfriend’, when actually you’re begging him to be balls deep inside of you tonight whilst he fucks your pussy raw

E - exposed Not to jinx it but you haven’t been caught yet, there was one time where his mum came home from work early and you were face down on the mattress whilst Mason fucked you from behind, but that’s as close as it’s got, and fingers crossed it stays that way

F - foreplay Again, it’s something that’s taken time for the two of you to get into the swing of doing, but now it’s become an essential part of your sex lives, sometimes not even bothering to do the actual deed and instead just letting Mason eat you out whilst you suck his dick, loving how the other person can bring you so much pleasure in the most incredible ways

G - goofy At the start of your relationship there were a couple of times when you ended up in a fit of giggles, mainly because you were both worried incase you got ‘too’ into it and the other person wasn’t ready, but now you’re so much more comfortable around one another that it’s rare that you have outbursts of random giggles anymore 

H - horny Mason finds it hard not to be when you’re his girlfriend, always wandering around with a boner because you look so good all the time, looking at you with a twinkle in his eye each time you come down wearing a tiny top or a little pair of shorts in the hope that you catch on to what he’s thinking

I - intimacy It’s such an important part of your relationship, taking you a little while to feel completely comfortable around one another but now you’re both so close, both emotionally and sexually, which obviously helps when it comes to the bedroom

J - jack off Normally he tries to keep himself under control, especially since he knows that his hand has nothing on yours, but there have obviously been times when he’s been caught out and he just has to relieve some of his tension, sometimes struggling to keep himself sane when you’re busy spamming him with messages explaining how you’ll be sucking him off later

 K - kinks Mason’s got the biggest praise kink, loving how he thrusts deeper into your pussy or groans in your ear each time you call him your good boy, finding it so hot that those kinds of compliments just roll of your tongue without you even thinking, his brain fogging over with pure pleasure each time and causing his cock to almost explode 

L - location You usually stick to the bedroom, obviously there have been occasions where you’ve had sex on the sofa halfway through a movie or let him bend you over the kitchen whilst you’re making dinner, but you much prefer to keep it under the covers

M - moaning That boy knows what he’s doing so it’s practically impossible for you to hold back your moans, always turning into a complete whimpering mess for him when he’s slamming into you, and Mason’s just the same, always grunting and groaning in your ear with each thrust because you make him feel so good 

N - nudes You’ve both sent and received a fair few, Mason always choosing to pass his over when you’re out for lunch with your friends or sat at work, a series of photos of his rock solid cock appearing on your screen and causing the most furious blush to sweep across your cheeks, Mason finding it hilarious how you’ll get so turned on in an environment where you can’t do anything about it, only giving you a reason to punish him when you’re home 

O - oral His favourite thing in the whole wide world is seeing you knelt before him with his cock in your mouth, fucking your face for hours on end just so that he can hear you gagging and spluttering around him, your eyes streaming with tears and rolling back into your head as his cock hits the back of your throat

P - position Mason’s got two favourites - doggy and missionary, his choice of position depends on the mood that he’s in, opting for doggy if he wants to be a bit rough and reach his orgasm quickly, but choosing missionary when he wants to be a bit more intimate with you, loving how he can be so much closer to you and how you can feel his thrusts so much deeper

Q - quickie You both prefer longer sex sessions but obviously when the seconds are counting down on the clock then you’re making the most of the time that you have together, letting Mase fuck you at the most ridiculous speed before he needs to go to training or before you’re about to head out for dinner with your mates, loving how you can go about your day afterwards as though you haven’t just had your brains blown out, nobody knowing what you’ve been up to other than you two

R - risk You’re not the biggest risk takers to be honest, preferring to keep your sex life exclusively between the two of you rather than sharing it with a whole car park or holiday complex, but saying that, you have let Mason fuck you on the balcony in the early hours of the morning and you’ve also sucked him off in one of the back rooms at Stamford Bridge, yet other than that it’s pretty much safe sex in the company of just you and Mase

S - spit/swallow Swallow, always, why would you want to waste the aftermath of all of your hard work? Mason finding it the hottest thing ever that you don’t even have to contemplate your next move when he cums in your mouth, giving him your best innocent eyes or a little wink before you’re swallowing it down without any hesitation

T - toys You’ve got a vibrator that occasionally makes an appearance when you feel like you’re missing something in the bedroom, but nine times out of ten, you just let Mason do the work, his cock hitting all of the places that no toy could and his fingers rubbing your clit in a way that feels so good that you can’t even compare it to a vibrator, both of you preferring to be the people that bring each other pleasure, rather than letting a toy do the work

U - unfair Never ever ever, Mason’s honestly the sweetest person when it comes to sex so he’ll never cum before you, and even if he’s desperate to reach his orgasm, then he’ll try and hold off until your pussy is spasming around his cock first, hating seeing you begging and whining for him to let you cum so he’s always making sure that your needs are met well before his own

V - volume You can be prettyyy loud, which isn’t really hard when Mason fucks you so well, loving how you can scream his name as loudly as you want when it’s just you and him, your moans bouncing off the walls and echoing in his ears for hours afterwards, honestly finding your whines and whimpers so fucking sexy, especially since he knows he’s the only one making you feel that way

W - wild card Mason’s recently invested in a Polaroid camera to try and capture some of your best memories together, and somehow it’s managed to make its way into the bedroom too, resting on his bedside table until the perfect photo opportunity arises, taking a few snaps and hiding them away ready to look at when you need a bit of inspiration

X - x-ray It’s a good size, a veryyy good size, well and truly filling you up and managing to hit all of the right places, so you definitely aren’t complaining, even if it does sometimes take you a while to adjust to his length, much to Mason’s satisfaction 

Y - yearning He’s always in the mood to fuck you, I mean, who wouldn’t be when they’ve got such a pretty girl as their partner? Always catching him staring at your ass or letting his mind run free when his gaze brushes over your tits, but you don’t mind, because secretly you’re doing exactly the same to him

Z - zzz It’s hard not to fall asleep after sex, particularly your longer sessions, and regardless of whether it’s emotion-based or rough, it’s still wearing you both out and you can’t help but collapse in each other’s arms and drift off into a deep sleep afterwards, staying in the same position until the sun starts rising and you’re woken up to the memories of last night 

[gouged-out-eyes]

From The Stars, Part 9

Summary: Kira moved out of town for isolation and peace and quiet. But that quickly gets turned on its head when a spaceship crash lands not far from her house and a strange creature decides she's its new queen. Luck had never been on Kira's side, but things are going to get a lot worse for her as she's forced into this new role and everything her new alien subject thinks it entails.

Warnings: Lying, shady parents, some hinted at violence at the end.

Authors Note: Again, this has been up on my Ao3 since like February. Link is in my masterlist if you prefer to follow there and get updates sooner. There’s going to be only a couple more parts to this one however, so might not even matter. 

MASTERLIST

Kira watches the SUV roll down the hill and into the lake. It’s cloudy, the moon and stars covered, bathing the trees in darkness. Kira’s only light is from the flashlight in her hand, aimed at the SUV currently sinking in the lake. She won’t move until it’s gone under completely, not wanting anyone to see what’s happening.

Two months ago if you had told her she would be standing in the woods in the middle of the night sinking a federal agent’s SUV in the lake to cover up their murder by her alien babies, she would have thought you were insane. But now she felt nothing. Her babies needed to eat and it was just unfortunate that the Feds happened to be the first to show up.

Kira waits until the bubbles have stopped before turning, making her way up the hill and back to the road. It’s a bit of a hike back to her house, the air cold enough she can see her breath fog in front of her. Her mind goes to her children and if they’re warm enough in the barn. Her alien hadn’t shown any signs of minding the cold, but her children were obviously different than him, and she can’t help but wonder if they can tell the temperature difference.

She feels a sense of urgency as she gets closer to her house, hating being apart from her family. They were her family now. Her children, their father. She doesn’t understand the relationship between them, she doesn’t even know if it’s biologically possible for her to love an alien. Humans could feel emotions towards animals, inanimate objects. Emotions including love. Who’s to say it’s not possible to feel the same for an alien lifeform she has no communication with who had forcibly impregnated her with his eggs. Maybe it’s only the oxytocin talking, the immediate motherly instinct she had felt over her babies that was drawing her closer to her alien. Or maybe it was because around him, she felt safe.  

Kira opens the door to her barn when she returns to her property, quickly closing it behind her as her babies run up to her. They’re hip-height now, growing faster than she thought possible. All eight of them surround her, bumping her gently with their heads. She smiles down at them, patting them each on their smooth heads. They let out content little cries, warming Kira’s heart. Her alien approaches her, nudging her gently with his own head. She gently strokes its elongated head, leaning against him.

Her eyes drift closed, her brain buzzing with energy. She focuses on it more and finds she can see with her eyes closed. The barn looks distorted like she’s seeing out of a fish-eye lens. The colors are darker, not quite as vibrant with her own eyes, but she can hear every small sound wave bouncing off the walls. She can hear something speaking, not words but a sort of idea in her mind. She can feel her eight babies around her, all of them like strings connected to her mind.

She wants to lose herself in the sensations, bury herself in them, and never come out, but her phone vibrating in her pocket snaps her out of it. She pulls away from her alien, her brain reeling for a moment before she centers herself back on Earth.

“I have to take this. I’ll be back.” She says, backing away from her babies and her alien.

She leaves them in the barn, heading back towards her house. She looks at her phone. She doesn’t want to answer, but she knows she has to.

“Hello?”

“Kira? God, I thought something had happened to you! I was going to come and check on you but...you sounded so sick when we talked last and then you weren’t answering.”

Kira feels a pang of guilt in her chest. “I’m sorry, dad. I was on some heavy meds. It was some kind of viral thing. Wiped me out for a few days. I didn’t even think to look at my phone. I’m doing better now though.”

“That’s good. That’s...really good.”

“Do you want to come over? Catch up a little?”

“Yes. That would be great.”

*********

Kira sets the cups of coffee on the kitchen table before taking a seat. Her dad looks old. Older than the last time she saw him. He’s had something on his mind. She can tell by how messy his hair looks. He would always run his fingers through his hair repeatedly when he was thinking hard. Her mother used to joke he’d go bald from doing it one day. Now that she looked at him, Kira can see his hair is thinning. There are dark circles under his eyes and he looks about as bad as she does, but she doesn't think he birthed alien eggs days ago.

“Kira...I’ve had a lot on my mind recently. About you. About this place.”

Kira sips her coffee. It’s scalding but she can’t bring herself to care. She hums in response, letting him continue.

He runs his finger in a circle around the rim of the cup. It’s an old habit. It means bad news. “You’re all alone out here. I shouldn’t have left you out here by yourself. But...your mother...I just couldn’t...”

Kira reaches out, putting a hand over his. It feels strange to her, to touch human skin again. She almost doesn’t like it. “It’s okay. I know.”

Her dad stares into her eyes for a moment, taking her in. “There’s so much she wanted to tell you. She begged me to tell you, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t face the truth. I didn’t know how to tell you. I wasn’t sure you’d believe me.”

Kira frowns, her stomach churning. She doesn't like his words. “Dad...what are you talking about?”

He sighs, taking a long drink of his coffee, staring out the back door. “I remember it like it was yesterday. Right out there. Where the roses are. It used to be hydrangeas before...before you arrived.” He runs a hand over his face. “God, I should have told you this years ago Kira...”

“Dad...you’re scaring me.” Kira’s hands are shaking as she sets her coffee cup down.

Her dad turns back to look at her, holding her gaze. “You’re not ours.”

Kira’s body goes cold at his words, a strange feeling running through her. Her whole life she’d been told they were her parents. This was her dad sitting across from her. And now...

“W-What?” She pulls her hands into her lap, squeezing them into fists to stop them from shaking.

“We don’t know where you came from. Well...we sort of knew...” Her dad glances back out at the garden before looking at her again. “Kira...you fell from the sky.”

Kira can’t say anything. None of it was making sense. Her brain was buzzing, churning, his words seeming like a foreign language. Thankfully he doesn’t wait for her to respond.

“It happened almost twenty years ago. It was almost dark. Your mother was outside planting tulips on the other side of the garden. I was making dinner. Grilling, like I used to. Everything was quiet like it gets out here, but then...the sky exploded. Blew the windows out, it was so loud. Came down in a ball of fire right into your mother’s hydrangeas. I thought it was the end of the world for a moment, but then...your mother was always so quick to act. Put the fire out with the garden hose. I thought it was some kind of meteor, but once the flames died, I could see what it was. It was...some sort of space pod. We tried and tried to get it open, see inside. Eventually, we managed to pry it open and inside...You couldn’t have been more than four years old. Teary-eyed and sucking your thumb. You looked so human.”

He runs a hand down his face. Kira can see the tears in his eyes.

“The feds were on us almost immediately. I wanted to turn you over to them, but your mother refused. She knew what would happen to you if we did. So we hid you. Made up some bullshit story. The feds didn’t believe us, but we were insistent.”

Kira’s mind begins to work at high speed. The visits from the feds suddenly didn’t seem so strange anymore.

“You were so human in every way. Almost every way. You never got sick. Kids always got sick but you never did. You could bend metal with your bare hands and you could hear things miles away. Your mother taught you to control it. She was better at that than I was. I made it my job to make you feel as normal as possible. She dealt with all the...strangeness. That’s why when you told me you were sick...I knew something had to be wrong. Something was going on. You’ve never been sick before.”

Kira clenches her fists tighter, taking in her father’s words. She had arrived on Earth in a spaceship? She supposedly had superpowers? He was right in one thing...she had never been sick before. She just thought it was a good immune system. But apparently, it was something else. Something more.

“Kira...please say something.”

“I don’t...” Kira bites her lip, breathing deeply. “You expect me to believe that? That I fell out of the sky in a spaceship and...I’m supposed to be what, Superman?”

“No, it’s...” Her dad sighs, looking down at his coffee. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me. I wanted your mother to tell you from the beginning but...she thought it would be best...if you thought you were normal...”

Kira stands from the table, unable to sit anymore. “Bullshit. I call bullshit.” She makes her way to the back door, looking out at the roses. The place she supposedly crash-landed on Earth. “You had an affair, didn’t you? I was never my mother’s child and you couldn’t live with that so you made up some bullshit story to hide it! That’s why you couldn’t stay!”

“Kira, you know I would never have...”

“I don’t know anything anymore.” She clenches her fists again, glaring at him. “I don’t know what’s more unbelievable. The story that might be true or that you would spew some bullshit to try and hide something else you did to fuck up.”

“Kira, I loved your mother!” Her father stands from the table, knocking over the chair. “I loved her more than anything. But we couldn’t...” He takes a deep breath. “We tried. We tried so many times. She wanted so badly...but we couldn’t. Then you fell out of the sky like an answer to our prayers.”

Kira feels tears prick behind her eyes. The story is starting to sound not so fake the more she thinks about it. She had an alien hiding in her barn with her babies she had birthed after mating with him. An alien that had crashed to Earth and found her and chosen her. If she was also an alien...it would make her new reality not quite so strange anymore.

“Kira...I’m sorry...”

“I want you to leave.” She says, her voice shaking. She hates it. She turns back to face her dad. “Get out. Go home. Don’t come back here.”

Her father stares at her brokenly for a moment before grabbing his coat and heading towards the door. Kira stays where she is until she hears his car door shut before heading out to the barn. She’s shaking by the time she reaches the door, slipping inside quickly and closing the door.

She takes a few steps into the darkness before dropping to her knees, tears falling down her cheeks. She’s overwhelmed, not knowing what to believe or even what to think. If the story was true, then so much of what had happened made perfect sense. But if her dad was lying to her to cover up something else...either way he had lied to her. He had hidden the truth about her for her entire life. She feels anger bubble up inside her.

Her children are by her side in seconds, snuggling up to her. She reaches out to them, touching them, solidifying herself in reality. She should have died. She had carried eight eggs to term and birthed them. She had lost so much blood...too much blood. But here she was, mostly healthy with no medical help. She had never been sick a day in her life. She had managed to tame an alien simply with her presence. She had seen what he was capable of. He could have killed her instantly that night, but something about her had stopped him.

Maybe she was alien.

Kira is on her feet as soon as the barn door slides open. It hits the other side with a slam, the shadow of her father standing in the doorway. Her heart leaps to her throat, the buzzing of her babies loud in her ears.

“Kira...what the hell?”

“Dad...you should have just gone home.”

[cdroloisms]

more of the ghost!dream au!! still no good names for it, sorry (feel free to give me recs? maybe?) - picking off right where we left off here [x]. i’ve gotten quite a bit of this pre-written already as well as quite a bit planned - it’s definitely one of my favorite universes at the minute and something im really excited to show yall !! 

tw: death, memory loss (?), grief, unhealthy coping mechanisms, unhealthy relationship, grief, emotional distress, implied torture/abuse, aftermath of prison arc/pandora’s vault, dark(ish?) portrayal of c!sam (he’s one of the main figures of this au lmao but it grapples quite a bit w/ what he did in pandora)

Sam had only met Ghostbur once.

He never knew the former president well, had been busy with his own base during the Revolution and came back to the server in chaos after an ill-fated election and the man exiled. It hadn’t mattered, much, at the time; Wilbur was an imposing man, even in others’ recollections of him, and their words left very very little to the imagination. From what he knew, Wilbur was a smart man, cunning and silver-tongued, brimming with an unending fountain of belief that he could change the world with his words and his words alone; the server, overrun with memories of scuffles and battles and wars and countries Sam had not been around to remember, only seemed to serve as proof that he could. The few glimpses of the man that he managed to catch showed dark, tired eyes, a figure that stood almost as tall as he did, lips twisted in a perpetual tight-lipped smile.

Even as he spiraled, unexplainably, whispers of madness chasing the wind and landing in choppy fragments in the Badlands meetings held over Skeppy and Bad’s dinner table, those eyes never became less piercing, never failed to seem like they were burning through whatever and whoever they looked at. Sam hadn’t been the subject of that stare many times, but he remembers the bone-deep anxiety from having those eyes on him, even now.

Ghostbur, somehow, was the complete opposite; where his eyes had once been all-too knowing, belying their owners’ intelligence, a ruthless penchant for analysis that would split bone from marrow with a single sharp-edged glance, the phantom’s eyes were completely vacant. Instead of the glossy whites and rings of brown that would flicker warm to cool and warm again without warning, there was only an empty, all-encompassing blue.

He had floated over to Sam following a particularly difficult- session, with the prisoner, greeting him with an airy call of his name as Sam set off to his base for the night. He’d startled, then, still fresh off the adrenaline that was sent coursing through his veins each time he entered those blackstone walls, and started a sort of easy, unfocused conversation as they went along the path to the nether portal.

Ghostbur was - off, for the lack of a better word, even with Sam’s lack of familiarity of either side of the man - who he’d been before and what he’d become. His memories slipped through his mind like water seeping through fingers, and his attention span didn’t seem much better. Still, Sam listened to that echoing, otherworldly voice, nodded along as he eagerly recounted his day - or what he could recall from it, at least, until his feet had brought him along the same well-worn path to the nether portal, spitting purple sparks into the night.

“I’ll have to be going, Ghostbur,” he’d said through a thin smile, muscles aching under netherite as he pulled his shoulders back. The ghost’s head had cocked to the side, watching him with empty eyes, hands outstretched in front of him, palms up.

“Sam-” the ghost blinked slowly, “Are you sad?”

Sam froze. Ghostbur stared at him, face still kept in that same blank expression, eyes still an endless blanket of blue, but something - in his stance, perhaps, in the echoes of his words as they reverberated off of nothing, felt familiar, felt like looking up expecting a window and coming face to face with a shattered mirror - before the phantom’s face broke out in a weightless smile.

“Have some blue!”

The blue was dropped unceremoniously into his hands as he fumbled the catch and nearly let it fall to the ground; the clear, glassy surface of it tainted blue by his fingertips, the color swirling and darkening in his hands. He watched it, mesmerized, as blossoms of blue bloomed beneath his skin; his feelings, sharp-edged, became sea glass tossed in its shifting waves, smoothed, numbed, slowly sucked away in a pulsing chorus of blue blue blue-

“That’s quite a lot of blue,” Ghostbur chirped, and Sam blinked at the thing in his hands - navy, the same color as the sky above their heads clinging to the last remnants of twilight - “Would you like some more?”

“...no thanks, Ghostbur,” Sam looked back up, feeling through the new, blue-tinged fog in his brain, memories blurred at the edges but lacking the same burning sting of regret, “Good night.”

“Good night, Sam!” Wilbur smiled, blank blue eyes trained on his face even as Sam stepped into the portal and the world swirled away. “See you soon!”

---

“Sammy,” Dream walked - no, floated, forwards as Sam took a step back, unresponsive, “is there something wrong?”

Sam swallowed, mouth suddenly dry.

He was a spitting image to Dream as he first knew him; the same tousled hair, freckled face, down to the ratty old jacket that he’d insisted on wearing at all times, made of a garish shade of lime-green and covered in customized patches that Bad - unable to resist his puppy eyes - had always ended up fixing the thing with. He had a gap in his teeth that had left him with a lisp for weeks back then, prompting Sapnap’s teasing much to Dream’s annoyance; his head tipped to the side, curious, familiar, and something deep inside Sam’s chest ached.

“Dream-” he tried, chest tightening further when the ghost’s face broke out into a brilliant smile, “why are you here?”

Why do you remember me?

He hadn’t talked to Ghostbur much, but he’d heard, to some degree, about how the ghost operated, how his memories were inconsistent at best, seemingly dependent on the emotions he’d attached to them while alive. How he went through the world in a state of unshakable bliss at the cost of his mind. Dream’s memories of him should’ve been anything but happy; why was he here?

“What do you mean?” Dream blinked at him, eyebrows scrunched, lips set in a small frown. His eyes, black and vacant, seemed to swallow all light, even with the sun streaming through the branches. “Where am I suppos’d to go?”

“Don’t you want to be with George and Sapnap?”

Dream’s face was blank, and the pit in Sam’s gut grew deeper. “Who’s that?”

“George?” Sam could feel his voice begin to tremble, eyes widening. “Sapnap? You know them, right?”

“No?” Dream drew out the word, looking at him like he’d grown another head. “Should I know them?”

“Should you- Dream, this isn’t funny- they’re your best friends! They were your best friends- Pandas? Do you know Pandas?”

“You mean like in the jungles? I haven’t been in a jungle before, Sam, d’you think we could visit one?”

“No- Pandas, do you-” Dream only looked at him with the same confused, uncomprehending expression, not even a flicker of recognition in his face; Sam could hear his heart thudding in his ears, a distant horror growing and wrapping around his throat, “How about Ponk? Alyssa? Calla? Bad?”

Each name did nothing to change the blankness on Dream’s face, the screaming thoughts in Sam’s head growing to a fever pitch when the ghost in front of him shook his head, hair whipping back and forth.

“Nope!” His hands tugged at his hoodie sleeves, the movement familiar in a way that had echoes of long-forgotten memories drifting to the surface, holding his heart in a chokehold and squeezing tight. “Are they your friends?”

“Dream,” he stepped forward - felt a shadow of a pickaxe held in his fists, the shape of the name in his mouth bringing forth the taste of iron and smoke and painting the inside of his eyelids red - and stopped in his tracks. The images melted away, left just a kid standing in front of him, rocking back and forth on nothing, and Sam was going to be sick.

“Who do you remember?”

Dream smiled as the question registered, directing a look of such open, unadulterated adoration his way that it stole all of the air from Sam’s lungs.

“You, dummy!” He laughed, airy and light. “Who else?”

---

He brought him to his base, because what else was he supposed to do?

Dream skipped behind him, entirely enamoured with Fran; he watched as she melted under his enthusiastic scratches at the tufts of fur at her neck. He’d always been a soft touch with animals, had brought home stray mobs more than a few times as a kid; Sam swallowed around his unease and trudged forward.

“Puppy!” He nearly screeched with laughter, and Sam looked back to see Dream with his arms wrapped around Fran’s neck, face buried in her fur as giggles made his shoulders shake. Fran gave him a sloppy lick on the cheek, making him break out into a new round of high-pitched wheezes, “Good girl! Good puppy!”

“Hurry up, Dream,” Sam turned away. “We don’t have all day.”

“Oh- m’sorry,” Dream’s voice quieted, almost seemed to wobble, and Sam bit down on his tongue as they continued to walk back. He- didn’t know what to do, not with this version of Dream, not the little kid he’d half-forgotten instead of the masked monster he’d become so accustomed to. It was so much easier to slip into the mask, let his voice drop cold and deep and empty, the role of the Warden heavy and comfortable like a set of netherite armor. He pointedly kept his eyes staring forward, looking for the edge of the forest they’d ended up stuck in so he could finally see.

A sudden, yipping bark came from behind, thoroughly startling him and sending a sword appearing in a flash of white. He huffed at Fran, looking at him with faux innocent eyes, really?

Unfortunately, both she and Dream had somehow fallen ridiculously behind, the ghost having lowered to the ground at some point as Fran sat and wagged her tail. He rolled his eyes, making his way back towards the duo, feeling irritation press in the form of a headache against the front of his skull.

“Come on,” he muttered, wincing at how clipped his words sounded, even in his own ears. Not the same Dream, Sam. You’re not in the prison anymore. He shoved his hands into his pockets, eyes narrowing as he came closer; Dream hadn’t just stopped because of some distraction, as he first assumed. The kid was leaning against Fran, hands twisted loosely in her fur, head tipped forward and leaning against her body.

“Dream?”

The ghost looked up at his voice, one hand going to rub at his eye. His hair seemed to be moving around less than earlier, lips twisted in a small frown.

“M’sleepy, Sammy,” he mumbled around a yawn, bottom lip jutting out in a pout. He reached both hands up, palms facing the sky, as he stared expectantly. “Up.”

Aren’t you a little big to be carried? The retort came to mind as easily as breathing, echoed in his own head by his own voice, younger, exasperated but fond. His arms shook with the memory of a kid wrapping his arms around his neck and fumbling with his crown, with the feeling of a dead weight resting against the crook of his elbows, tall and lanky and far too light for its size, held in his arms one final time-

“Please?”

Sam shook his head.

“We’re walking to my base. Come on.”

[gumnut-logic]

The Mechromancer

There may be more to this.

This started out as an attempt to write something completely different, but it was determined to do this instead. So you have a pile of fishTank, just a different pile than expected.

Warnings for angst, hurt/comfort.

Many thanks to @scribbles97​ @janetm74​ @tsarinatorment​ and @flyboytracy​ for all their help on this one. My brain fried in the middle of it and it is a little odd as a result. These wonderful peeps put up with an extremely whiney Nutty for a few days there so they should be congratulated for not hitting my over the head with something solid :D

I hope you enjoy this anyway.

-o-o-o-

They say mechromancy is born of the Earth, of rock and metal and the energies that drive the planet.

He can feel it.

Feel metal spinning as it is cut and cries out in its making, its shaping, its becoming. It resonates in his soul as he gives birth to a new creation.

He pulls the new shape off the lathe, the smell of hot metal curling in his nostrils. A rough edge catches skin and pricks a scratch.

Red iron smudges grey steel, metal on metal.

Virgil wipes it away with a stained rag and the cog gleams in the light of his workshop.

-o-o-o-

Gordon’s days were grey.

At first, waking was pain and fog. Everything was broken. The fine instrument he had built his body into no longer worked and was little more than a source of ongoing agony.

The doctors were brutally honest. He could not expect more than a life of grey walls and kindly nursing staff for the rest of his life.

That’s if he had one. There was always the opportunity of a sudden infection and an early termination of that agreement.

His family was there.

Always.

Grandma was in charge, no matter what the hospital thought. You didn’t cross his grandmother and survive. The fact there was a looming grey-eyed and very wealthy Jefferson Tracy gave much more weight to Doctor Tracy’s demands.

His father was there.

This was something both expected and unexpected. Father was a very busy man, but each time Gordon woke in those early days, his eyes would clear to find the silver-grey suited millionaire somewhere in the room. He didn’t say much, not being a man to show a great deal of emotion, but the fact he was there and there so often said enough.

Said how dire things really were.

The most consistent presence was Scott, of course. The man’s cane was heard in his sleep. Sometimes Gordon wanted to reach out and shake it from his brother’s grasp and break it in two across his knee.

But it was a fantasy. Because not only did he not have the strength to grab the cane, he no longer had any knees to break anything.

His legs were gone.

The thought flickered through his mind and he shied away.

Alan…Alan tried to cheer him up while trying not to cry himself. It was heartbreaking.

John reached out to brush fingers through his hair, a single tear falling unacknowledged down his cheek.

Gordon was in so much pain himself and yet also the cause of so much more. It tore at his heart.

Had his sole purpose in life been reduced to a bane on his family?

And Virgil…

He dreamt of his brother. His loving and gentle mechanic brother.

But he never saw him.

In the early days after Gordon had first opened his eyes after the accident, he had asked after Virgil. Scott’s eyes had been full of…something. His eldest brother always kept up his military stance, hiding his true thoughts should they present a vulnerability and those defences were ever so thick at the mere mention of Virgil.

Even in his bleary, pain-filled state, Gordon sensed there was something wrong, but he didn’t have the strength to pursue the question.

His days were awash with painkilling concoctions of his grandmother’s recommendations that took his mind along with the pain. Distorted versions of both his father and Scott were his earliest memories after the accident.

And the dreams…a sense of heat, holding him down, burning, preventing his escape. His own fear overlapped by someone else’s desperation and panic. Flame burning down his nerve endings demanding he stay.

Stay.

Whispers in his mother’s voice.

Denial and determination.

Ever so hot and hurting.

They always ended in such a flare of light and sound, he woke up yelling.

And Scott would be there. Words of reassurance and love.

Gordon always asked for Virgil after the dreams. They meant something, he was sure of it and they had something to do with Virgil.

And Scott never quite answered.

-o-o-o-

He stokes the fire to exactly the right temperature, the coals glowing eye-blinding white, forcing his goggles onto his eyes. His skin pricks with the heat.

Cahelium requires it.

Metal hits flame in a shower of sparks and sucks up the energy, shining as brightly as the sun. He feels it breathe in, draw in the life-giving energy of creation.

His hammer shapes with each strike, the metal thinning as he bends it to his will. Muscles flexing as he swings, the energy of his body fighting, forcing form.

Sweat trickles down his brow as he frowns with the effort. His leather apron protects his vulnerable body, but the sparks still sneak through to embed in the bare skin of his arms and burn holes in his shirt.

He doesn’t care. He can feel the metal with his mind and it is becoming.

Scars in the making only record the process.

-o-o-o-

Days turn into weeks and still Virgil didn’t appear.

Scott had excuses but none of them rang true. Gordon created all kinds of scenarios in his head. Maybe Virgil was injured. Or sick. Maybe he had died. All of the above terrified him until one day while they were alone, he yelled at his big brother, demanding to know.

Only then did he get to see Virgil.

Scott wheeled him in.

Gordon stared. His engineer brother looked terrible.

“W-what happened?”

Virgil’s hands were swaddled in bandages and he was literally wilting in the chair. “Hey, Gords.” His eyelids were drooping.

Gordon looked up at Scott and his big brother’s eyes dropped to the floor.

“What happened?!” His body was busted but there was nothing wrong with his brain bar the concoctions they kept stabbing him with.

Virgil reached over and lay a bandaged hand on Gordon’s chest. “I’m well. I promise.”

“You look awful, Virg. What happened to your hands?” He stared at the swathed fingers on his broken body. Virgil’s magic fingers. His eyes widened, dreams and reality suddenly merging. “What did you do?!”

“Gordon…” His name was weariness itself, his brother’s usual baritone barely there. “You were dying. I had to.”

Gordon’s eyes shot to his brother’s bloodshot brown, so like his own. “You fix machines.”

“The human body is only another type of machine.”

“You fixed me?”

Virgil shook his head, his eyes closing. Scott, who had remained silent, knelt down beside the engineer in his chair and placed an arm around Virgil’s shoulders.

Virgil’s hand was still on Gordon’s chest. He fought with the sudden need to want it gone, yet desperately wanted to hold it in his own.

He settled for slowly, ever so slowly moving his right hand to land on top of Virgil’s as gently as he could.

“What did you do?”

“I fixed enough.” An exhausted exhale. “Just enough.”

“What has it done to you?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit. You look half dead.”

Virgil closed his eyes again. “I am well, Gordon. Don’t worry about it.”

Gordon turned to Scott, whose eyes again dropped to the floor. His big brother swallowed.

Back to Virgil. “You are a pathetic liar. You know that.”

Virgil’s eyes joined Scott’s on the floor. “I’m sorry, Gordon.”

“What?! It’s obvious that you foolishly did something that might have saved my ass, but trashed yours. Scott, tell me! What the hell did he do to himself?”

Virgil straightened up and a more familiar fire flared. “I did what had to be done. And I would do it again.”

“Then why the hell are you apologising?”

Virgil shrunk back and shook his head, but didn’t say anything further. If anything, he wilted in his chair further.

“Virgil…” It was an exhalation of his brother’s name. His eyes darted again to Scott seeking answers. His eldest brother still had a protective arm around Virgil’s shoulders. Whatever had happened, chances were it was bad.

Blue eyes looked up and caught Gordon’s. Scott’s lips thinned and his jaw tightened.

Very bad.

Virgil’s hand on Gordon’s chest was trembling.

“Tell me you will be well.” He begged Virgil to look at him so he could see the truth.

As if summoned, that dark-haired head rose, bloodshot, brown eyes caught his. “I will.” A swallow. “I promise.”

“And your hands?”

“They will heal.”

“And be as they were?” Please.

“They will heal.” It was a repetition, almost a self-reassurance.

Gordon swallowed hard, almost terrified to look beneath those bandages to discover exactly what his brother had done trying to ‘fix’ Gordon’s machine.

Virgil was suddenly pushing himself to his feet. Scott hurried to steady him. “Virgil, what are you doing?”

But their brother didn’t answer. He took a shaky step towards the bed and, leaning over, wrapped his arms as best he could around Gordon without disturbing him. “So good to see you, Fish.” There was an emotional shake in his voice and that tremble in his hand proved to be system wide.

Gordon lifted one hand the best he could and rested his temple against Virgil’s. “Glad to be here.” His voice was suddenly hoarse. “Thank you.”

There was a muffled sound in Gordon’s pillow he couldn’t identify. Then  a rough, but firm, “Anytime.” Virgil shifted and pushed himself up a little, enough to catch Gordon’s eyes. “Anytime.”

And Scott was hauling Virgil up and back into his chair.

Gordon didn’t want his brother to go, but the man was sagging where he sat, alarming Gordon even more. A glance at Scott and he encountered that same worry there.

“Time to go back to bed, Virgil.” Their eldest brother secured him in the chair and unlatched the brakes.

If Gordon could have, he would have stretched out his arm. “Be well, Virgil.”

His weary brother nodded once and Scott pushed him out the door, leaving Gordon to stare at where his brother had been and what he had done.

-o-o-o-

He lines up the fine golden metal cladding and, with a punch he cast himself, embosses a detailed etch of an octopus into the hot cahelium-brass.

Beside it, he chooses to place a shark, its fins a sharp dent in the metal.

His breath is evaporated as he peers closely before punching in a twirled sea shell.

His fingers ache to touch the metal.

On the desk beside him lays the mechanisms. Setting the section of the cladding aside to cool, he returns to the final touches, the fine tuning of the gears and the delicate gyroscopes that will balance movement.

His fingers flicker as he reaches for information.

There is a thin screwdriver in his mouth, held across his lips as his hands correct and make minor adjustments. The metal tastes like possibilities.

His fingers twitch. There is still stiffness in his skin. They remember the feel of his brother’s broken body. Feel what was being lost.

What he was losing.

The heat needed to forge, to fix, had been unbearable, and it took from him, so much.

Now he is different. Part of him is with his brother, keeping him alive, like a donation of a body part. A donation of part of his soul.

Given willingly.

Virgil sighs and returns to the forge to shape more cladding.

The metal is warm under his fingertips.

-o-o-o-

 FIN?

[luthienne]

Hi ! I was wondering if you had quotes / thoughts about feeling lost in life, when nothing feels right and choices have to be made even though they all feel like lukewarm water when you wanted a hot bath. That feeling of losing a sense of grounding and not seeing the direction in which to move. thank you xx

(I’ve been wanting to compile this from the moment I received your ask in my inbox. I know the feeling intimately, and I love the way you articulated it. Hope any of these quotes resonate w what you were looking for xx)

“What shall we do my darling, when trial grows more, and more, when the dim, lone light expires, and it’s dark, so very dark, and we wander, and know not where, and cannot get out of the forest…”

—Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters

“She had never figured out how to figure things out. She was only vaguely beginning to know the kind of absence she had of herself inside her.”

—Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star (tr. Benjamin Moser)

“But as it is / I lack myself.”

—Anne Carson, Grief Lessons; “Herakles”

“Even now I can’t explain. Something happened, a kind of earthquake that shook everything and I lost faith and touch with everybody.”

—Katherine Mansfield, Letters of Katherine Mansfield

“She felt suddenly as if she were a ghost in her own life—”

—Catherynne M. Valente, The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden

“I hate seeing myself dissolve and slip and separate so that I’m living in one half of my mind, and I see the other half of me helpless and frantic and driven and I can’t stop it, but I know I’m not really going to be hurt and yet time is so long and even a second goes on and on and I could stand any of it if I could only surrender—”

—Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“It makes me tremble. (…) To think back. I remember exactly how I thought life would be.”

—Anne Carson, The Beauty of the Husband

Emily Dickinson, “I felt a Funeral in my Brain”

“and I didn’t care / and I was alone / and there had been war / and that thing (my soul) / was a lost star / or a lost boat / adrift,”

—H.D., Child Poems: “Dedication” 

“She had a perpetual sense (…), of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.”

—Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway 

“You know the feeling? One lies in a kind of daze, feeling so sensitive—so unbearably sensitive to the exterior world and longing for something ‘lovely’ to happen.”

—Katherine Mansfield, Letters of Katherine Mansfield

“I don’t care a bit—about anything—I just seem to be asleep and can’t wake up—”

—Georgia O’Keeffe, Art and Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe

“Life is what happens to someone else; / I stand on the sidelines and wring my hands.”

—Lisel Mueller, Waving from Shore

“…it is a little thing to say how lone it is — anyone can do it, but to wear loneliness next to your heart for weeks, when you sleep, and when you wake, ever missing something, this, all cannot say, and it baffles me.”

—Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters

“My life now is a dream too, semi-detached, and seems to happen to somebody else.”

—Martha Gellhorn, from Selected Letters

“I don’t know—I don’t know anything. There is no one here I can talk to—it’s all like a bad dream.”

—Georgia O’Keeffe, Art and Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe

“…she does not know whom she wishes to catch, only that she wishes to catch someone, anyone, to be anchored, to be connected, to not be abandoned.”

—Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“I had lost my true rhythm. But what was my true rhythm?”

—Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin: Vol 1, 1931-1934 

“People kept saying It’s only a matter of time so I persevered in the hope they weren’t lying. At the same time beginning to think I might’ve been lying to myself. Wasting everyone’s time with fantasies of this career I couldn’t have. The person I could never be. There was just so much rejection and not enough of me. I got so afraid. And I lost my nerve—”

—Eimear McBride, The Lesser Bohemians

—Denise Levertov, Life in the Forest; “A Daughter (I)”

“I’m not lost. Or not lost much. Lonely. It is that and … I don’t know what to do. So I move. And cars move. And it’s almost life.”

—Eimear McBride, The Lesser Bohemians 

“What prevents you? The future. The future tense, / immense as outer space. / You could get lost there. / No. Nothing so simple. The past, its density / and drowned events pressing you down, / like sea water—”

—Margaret Atwood, “Up”

“What is there to say? I became physically ill. It was as if I had fallen into space and hung there while life passed me by.”

—Boris Pasternak, Letters Summer 1926: Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Rilke

“And nothing else happens. The days go by, lost, wasted, and I have no drive to write, no words come… And I grow more and more solitary.”

—Martha Gellhorn, Selected Letters

“I cannot write anymore, dears. Though it is many nights, my mind never comes home.”

—Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters

“As time goes by, especially in the last few years, I’ve lost the knack of being a person. I no longer know how one is supposed to be. And an entirely new kind of ‘solitude of not belonging’ has started invading me like ivy on a wall.”

—Clarice Lispector, Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector 

“There’s a loss of personality. / Or rather, you’ve lost touch with the person / You thought you were. / You no longer feel quite human.”

—T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

“My wings are cut and I can-not fly I can-not fly I can-not fly.”

—Katherine Mansfield, Letters of Katherine Mansfield

“Me, as ever, gone.”

—Anne Carson, Decreation; “Despite her Pain, Another Day”

“…and I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.”

—Emily Dickinson, Letters

“…why this doubt that I have about everything I do, this void that frightens me, all these lost illusions?”

—Gustave Flaubert, Intimate Notebook 1840-1841

“What I fear I avoid. What I fear I pretend does not exist. What I fear is quietly killing me. Would there were a festival for my fears, a ritual burning of what is coward in me, what is lost in me. Let the light in before it is too late.”

—Jeanette Winterson, “The Green Man” 

“Around. Around. There / should have been / a lesson somewhere.”

—Louise Glück, “The Game”

“Only occasionally do I find I have to break my peace: shout or be lost in the shuffle. But mostly I am lost in the shuffle.”

—Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“Things went wrong. She lost confidence. She became apprehensive in crowds. I recognize how that she was feeling then as I feel now. Invisible on the street.”

—Joan Didion, Blue Nights

“She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown;”

—Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway

“You might not remember me, dears. I cannot recall myself. I thought I was strongly built, but this stronger has undermined me.”

—Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters

“I have no world to go back into, or to go forward into. Because these years have cut me away from many things – from everything: not only materially, but also mentally, spiritually.”

—Martha Gellhorn, Selected Letters

—Rita Dove, “The Venus of Willendorf”

“…for we are in such fragile skin, so close to getting lost in the in-between.”

—Eimear McBride, The Lesser Bohemians

“I do not want revenge, I do not want expiation. / I only want to ask someone / how I was lost, / how I was lost,”

—Margaret Atwood, “Owl Song”

“I felt as if the sky was torn off my life. I had no home in goodness anymore.”

—Anne Carson, “The Glass Essay”

“Let it be over, she pleaded within herself. Let it never have happened—any of it. Let me be young again, and the story just starting.”

—Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“The ultimate fantasy: the recovery of an irrecoverable past. But if I could daydream about an invented happy future…”

—Susan Sontag, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh

“Tell me what’s the difference / between hope and waiting / because my heart doesn’t know / It constantly cuts itself on the glass of waiting / It constantly gets lost in the fog of hope”

—Anna Kamienska, Astonishments

—Denise Levertov, To Stay Alive

“I long to—ah, so much!! If that were possible I’d get back to my spirit.”

—Katherine Mansfield, Selected Letters

“I told my Soul to sing— / She said her Strings were snapt—”

—Emily Dickinson, Complete Poems; “The first Day’s Night had come,”

“Surely it is a privilege to approach the end / still believing in something.”

—Louise Glück, Averno; “October”

“There is a wild raging river flowing inside of me. I can’t dam it. I’m hurt so badly. Believe me—oh shit! Believe, believe—what’s there to believe anymore?”

— Henry Miller, A Literate Passion

“And life tasteless. And so eager, so eager that I should accomplish a miracle. People always expect miracles.”

—Anaïs Nin, A Literate Passion

“I want to be filled with longing again / till dark burn marks show on my skin. I want to be written again / in the Book of Life, to be written every single day / till the writing hand hurts.”

—Yehuda Amichai,“I Walked Past a House Where I Lived Once,”

“I want / my heart back / I want to feel everything again—”

—Louise Glück, Averno; “Blue Rotunda”

[lu-undy]

I got a idea, it's spy's birthday and sniper wants to do something special for spy

Alright, Spy’s birthday, here we go!

The day had been beautiful so far and Sniper was satisfied with his performance on the battlefield. He managed to outdo the enemy Spy and dominate his counterpart. 

When the Administrator announced the end of the match, he put his rifle on his back, collected his SMG and kukri, and headed for the respawn room. 

"You did well today, pardner!" Engineer put a hand on the tall man's shoulder. 

"Yeah, thanks. I didn't do too bad."

"Yeah, I saw that. The enemy Sniper didn't stand a chance! And Spy didn't even need to bother him!"

Sniper's eyebrow twitched. 

"Y-yeah. Roight I'll see ya later." 

The Australian went straight for the common bathroom in the base. He needed a shower. That, and a good moment of reflexion. 

He stripped naked and stepped under the shower head. The water was quite cold first which he didn't usually appreciate but it cleansed him inside and out. It felt like it wiped away the fog in his mind and he could see better. 

Spy. 

Usually the enemy Sniper wouldn't stand a chance because of the Frenchman, not because of Sniper's faster reflexes. The Australian rewinded the events of the day.  

Not a single sentry was sapped. Medic and Heavy had taken care of them, übercharge after übercharge… 

Sniper frowned as he washed away the foam of the shampoo and the shower gel. 

Something was unusual about Spy. 

Oh, bugger…

He opened wide eyes and his pupils retracted to a dot. 

I forgot…

Sniper flew out of the shower, got a change and raced to his van. He jumped in and floored it, heading for the nearest city. 

A few hours later, one man could be found sinking on his armchair, his brow furrowed and a glass of wine in his hand. He was silently staring at the flames dancing in the fireplace. 

"Quelle vie de merde…"

[What a shit life…]

He drank more of the bitter dark beverage and it stung all its way down his throat. His feet were crossed in front of him and his eyes were riveted on the burning flames. He needed to get closer.

Spy moved out of the armchair to kneel in front of the fireplace. He removed his jacket and vest that he carelessly threw away behind him. But before he tossed his jacket away, he retrieved his cigarette case and opened it. There was only one left. Bah… 

He delicately took it between his index and his thumb and it revealed the picture that he had stuck at the back. 

"Vie de merde…"

[Shit life…]

He stared at it and it stung sharply. Unlike with the wine, it was nowhere he could point at on his body. Non, the pain he felt was on something that he felt resonate everywhere in him: his forehead, behind his eyes, his teeth, his entire jaw that he clenched hard, his tense shoulders, his stomach tightly knotted, his slightly wobbling knees… 

Spy sighed. He slammed the cigarette case shut and threw it away. It tumbled and each shock between the wooden floor and the metallic box that contained proof of his cowardice sawed his ears and hurt him like a punch in the throat. 

The Frenchman put the last cigarette between his lips and got closer to the flames of the fireplace still. He closed his eyes. Spy didn't care that they burnt his face, devouring the fabric of the mask he wore in shame, for no one else to ever have to see the appearance of a man who had made of his life a theatre play, an act, a joke. The scorching heat like a fire tongue lapped at his face, eating away his skin, like hell and the devil himself lit the cigarette end for him. Spy sucked on the cigarette a few times and satisfied that the deadly vapor scratched where the alcohol had stung a few minutes before, at the back of his throat, he withdrew and sat back. 

The Frenchman smiled at the flames. He knew that when his time came, they would be there for him, to welcome him. He deserved nothing else. He raised his glass of wine to the fireplace and downed more of the bitter liquid.

It was the same sad show every year come that day. It was a day that he regretted his life, regretted his decisions more than the rest of the year.

Knock, knock.

"Go away!" He shouted as he undid his tie. His throat was burning badly. 

"Spook, it's me." 

Spook.

The Frenchman opened his eyes wide.

Merde.

[Shit.]

He pulled himself together and put his glass on the floor quickly. In his haste, it tumbled and fell on its side. As Spy stood up, he dropped his tie on the floor and headed to the door, unbuttoning the first two buttons of his shirt. 

"What do you want?" He asked, stuck on one side of the door. 

"J-just let me in, please." 

The Frenchman rolled his eyes up and sighed in an exasperated way. He opened the door, standing behind it. He didn't want any passer-bys to see him that way. 

Sniper entered and the Frenchman slammed the door shut. He spun on his heels and giving his back to his Australian colleague, he asked.

"What is it that you want from me?" 

"Spy, look here." 

Sniper saw the Frenchman's shoulders sink but he turned to face him anyway. 

"Mon Dieu…" The cigarette fell from his lips and bounced on the floor a few times, the ashes flying. Spy's jaw had dropped and his eyes snapped wide.

Sniper removed his hat from his head and was smiling tenderly. 

"Happy birthday, eh." 

Spy's insides melted. The Australian was wearing a suit. A suit. A proper one, dark red, with a white shirt, a red bowtie, matching varnished shoes and…

The Frenchman took a step forward and touched the white scarf around Sniper's neck. It refracted the light beautifully and indeed, it was made of silk. 

"W-what have you done that for? Why?" 

"For you. I thought you'd like it maybe… Uh, here, that's for you too. It isn't much but I hope you'll like it. But let's sit first maybe, eh?"

Sniper took his colleague by the hand and dragged him to sit on the sofa. He noticed the jacket, vest and tie on the floor. The metal cigarette case reflected the light from the flames to his eyes and it caught his attention, as did the tumbled glass of wine and the dark puddle next to it. 

All those clues told him the story of the events that had happened before he knocked on the door with the knife symbol. He dismissed it all. Sniper was there now. 

"Go on, open it." 

"Mais…"

[But…]

"C'mon, now, don't try and make me believe you're shy, eh!"

Spy lowered his head and smiled. He felt ashamed. He had made a fool of himself and the state of his flat spoke louder than words. His fingers fumbled with the wrapping paper until he removed it all.

"How did you know?" 

"I saw you a couple of days ago, you took a cigarette before cloakin' and you seemed pissed off. When I scoped in, I saw you were runnin' out so…"

"You're watching me at work?" Spy asked. 

"No, not like that, you make it sound so bad! Nah, I just try and keep an eye on everyone and that includes ya."

"I see…" Spy raised his eyes and his heart skipped a beat. "Thank you very much for the cigarettes, Sniper. And you got the brand right as well."

"Bloody well hope I did, it took me hours to remember what it was and to find them. Can't find them in any odd shop!"

"Of course not, you know me." Spy leaned his head on his friend's shoulder. 

"Course…" Sniper rested his head on his friend's. "Oh, wait-!" 

He quickly withdrew. 

"Why does yer mask smell like you burnt it?!" 

Spy's eyes snapped wide. 

"Uhm… I…" 

Sniper pulled himself away from his friend. 

"Let's not talk about it, please." Spy pleaded with his fair blue, almost grey eyes. The flames of the fireplace danced in his irises and Sniper saw it. 

"Spook… Is that why you were pissed off today?" 

The Frenchman looked away. 

"Hey, look." Sniper took his friend by his shoulders. "It's me, it's only me, yer good old Bushman." 

"Every year it's the same. It's… It's even harder for me to look at myself in the mirror." 

"I can understand." Sniper answered and Spy raised his eyes to him, intrigued and surprised. "I mean, yer eyes are gorgeous on their own, God only knows what the rest of your face looks like. I'm sure it could kill by just lookin' at it."

Spy's lips parted and Sniper continued.

"I… 'm sure that you're uh… You're beautiful." 

It hit the Frenchman in the chest, hot and soft. He put a hand on his mask and pulled his fake skin up and away. He felt the burnt fabric scraping the surface of his face and his hair got pulled back. He shedded it away like a snake. When it was completely off, he lowered his head and dropped it on the floor. His cinder hair shone in Sniper's eyes like silver. 

Yes, the Frenchman had salt and pepper hair. He was that old, and even more so on that particular day. The Australian's jaw had dropped. He didn't want him to remove his mask, he didn't say it to force him or anything… 

And yet, when Spy raised his eyes to meet with his friend’s, it felt like the Frenchman was naked. Sniper couldn't believe his eyes. He was wrong. Describing Spy as beautiful was the understatement of the century. The man was handsome beyond what Sniper had seen and imagined in his mind. He was irresistible, even with his hair disorganised as it was. His eyes shone differently without the mask. He looked more human, more vulnerable. 

The Australian's breath had stopped. His hand rose to touch that face that was invisible to everyone but him. His fingers got closer to Spy's head and the latter backed off slightly. Sniper stopped. 

"I…" 

No words would match the Australian's thoughts. He just wanted to make sure that such beauty existed, that it was not a construction of his mind, an image that his brain had created, even though he knew it very well. Such charm was not something his wildest thoughts could have dreamt of. 

He pushed his fingers in the air closer. Spy closed his eyes and in a mad instant, a demented second, Sniper's fingers met with the Frenchman's face. He pushed his hair behind his ear slowly, feeling the silver silky locks flow against his curious digits. They dived behind Spy's head and their eyes met. 

"Y-you're… the most handsome man I've ever seen…" Spy could hear Sniper's heartbeat through his words. 

The Australian put his other hand against Spy's cheek and gently stroked. 

"You should wear suits more often." The Frenchman answered. "I can hardly take my eyes off of you." 

"I'd uh… I'd hoped you'd consider it as a gift too." 

"Sniper…" The French accent sung exquisitely in his ears. "You, your presence, it's the best present I could have hoped for. I…"

Sniper's pupils dilated. Their faces were a few inches apart. 

"Look, I don't care what you go through every year, alone for yer birthday. But I'm here now, okay? Please don't hurt yerself like that. I uh… makes me sad." 

Spy nodded, his head still between the Australian's hands who touched every square inch of it. It was real, it was really his face. The man was really that attractive. 

"Merci."

[Thanks.]

"I love you, I… I look at you and… Spy, I-"

The Frenchman pushed himself forward and his lips met with the Australian. Oui his presence was all he needed. He pushed him to lie on the sofa and kissed him as passionately and desperately as he could. Sniper's arms laced him intimately. 

"I am in love with you too. Thank you so much. You make me feel alive." 

Spy buried his head in Sniper's neck and laid there. The Australian tightened his embrace.

[therainroguefanfiction]

📱 Find Me (Tooru Oikawa) #12; It’s a Deal~

📑 Table of Contents | ◂p r e v i o u s

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“Mom, I’m leaving!” You called as you slipped your sneakers on, tugging the baby blue mask up to cover your mouth and nose.

She peaked her head out from the kitchen. “Be safe and don’t kill anyone!”

You rolled your eyes. “Thanks for believing in me, mom.”

“You’re welcome, sweety!”

You picked up the messenger bag from the floor and slid it over your shoulder before pulling the door open and stepping outside. It was ungodly hot today, the air weighing heavily upon you like a thick fog. You seriously considered just turning around and heading back into the air-conditioned house, but you knew you would never hear the end of it from Kenma if you did so.

With a sigh, you headed out the gate that surrounded the small property, only to step back in surprise. Kenma was standing in front of you, his golden eyes glued to the gaming device in his hands. Next to him stood a black-haired boy that you assumed was Kuroo. ‘Holy shit he’s tall…’

The ravenette nudged Kenma in the ribs and he finally glanced up, his face betraying no emotion as was the usual for him. “Where’s my game?”

You sweatdropped, digging into your bag to produce the plastic case that housed the game in question. “I still haven’t beaten Cage, so I’m tempted to keep it. What are you doing here anyway? I said not to pick me up.”

“If you can’t beat Cage, we’re no longer related.” He took the game from your hands, carefully placing it into his own bag. “And Kuroo insisted that we come pick you up.” He then turned around, heading back in the direction he had just come from.

“At least introduce us!” Kuroo cried out before sighing and turning back toward you with a kind smile, offering you his hand. “Hi, I’m Kuroo Tetsuroo. It’s nice to finally meet you, Y/N-san.”

You slid your hand into his with a nod. “I’m L/N F/N, it’s nice to meet you, too, Kuroo-san.”

It was mostly silent between the three of you as you made your way to the train station that would take you to Nekoma high where the game was being held. It was mostly Kuroo asking you random questions in-between scolding Kenma for being rude, but you didn’t really mind his company, he seemed like a nice guy, plus he was taking care of your idiot cousin for you, so he already had points in your book.

The school came into view and Kuroo glanced at you. “Are you nervous?”

“No,” your brow furrowed in confusion. “Why would I be? It’s not like I’m playing.”

“Because of Oikawa,” Kenma responded simply, his cat-like eyes zeroing in on you. You came to a dead stop, eyes growing wide as your brain processed the words. “You forgot who we were facing, didn’t you?”

“I-In my defense, I’ve been sick.” You scowled at him, thankful that the mask was there to cover your reddening face. How could you have possibly forgotten such an important detail? ‘Calm down, Y/N! He doesn’t know who you are, just pretend like you’re a Nekoma student.’ “Give me your jacket, Ken.”

“No.”

Your eye twitched as he continued toward the locker room. “You little -”

Kuroo chuckled, sliding the red Nekoma jacket from his shoulders. “It might be a little big, but it should do the trick. He doesn’t know who you are, right?”

You nodded, taking the jacket from him and sliding it on. It was huge on you, making you feel quite small, but as long as it did what it was supposed to, you could live with that. “Nope. I never told him.”

The two of you reached the locker room just as a group of boys stepped out and you immediately caught the eye of a boy with a blonde mohawk. His eyes snapped between the two of you before he started to freak out, pointing at you as if you were some piece of art hanging in a museum.

“You have a partner, captain?!”

“No, this is Kenma’s cousin, Y/N.” Kuroo proceeded to introduce the Nekoma volleyball team to you, inserting little comments about each player as he did so. “They are here to watch the practice game and they’re still sick, so leave them be.”

“Why are you starin’ at me, huh?!” Yamamoto demanded, narrowing his eyes at his captain.

“Guys, Aobajohsai is here.” Yaku nodded his head toward the front of the school where the group of boys was filtering through, dressed in their white and blue track suits.

Your body tensed up upon seeing them and you tried to pull the mask farther up your face. Kuroo, sensing your discomfort, turned to Fukunaga. “Can you take Y/N to the gym so I can get changed?”

The black-haired boy nodded, giving you a kind smile as he motioned with his hand for you to follow him. The two coaches were inside the gym already, talking quietly amongst themselves. The older one noticed the two of you first.

“Oh, who is this?”

Fukunaga smiled politely at the older man. “This is Kenma’s cousin, sir. They came to watch the game.”

His dark eyes shined as he held his hand out to you. “Nekomata Yasufumi, I’m the head coach for Nekoma.”

“Nice to meet you, sir.” You took his hand, bowing lightly before introducing yourself. “I hope it’s okay if I watch the game.”

“Of course!” The younger man grinned before introducing himself as Naoi Manabu. “We appreciate you coming to support the boys.”

Nekomata glanced at the door where the opposing team had appeared. “You can sit with us on the coach’s bench.” He patted your shoulder as he passed by, going to greet the coach of Aobajohsai.

You made the mistake of glancing at the group, catching Watari’s attention. His eyes widened in surprise and you quickly looked away, hoping he wouldn’t give you away as you settled yourself on the bench, pulling the jacket tighter around your body. The gym was pretty cold because of the weather outside, so you were thankful for the warmth it provided.

Kenma and Kuroo entered the gym, greeting the other team before heading over to you.

“You look like a turtle trying to retreat in its shell.” Kenma commented blankly.

“Because I am,” you scowled, attempting to smack him in the stomach but he stepped back before you even got close. “You of all people should understand that.”

He just shrugged and began his warm up stretches. Kuroo chuckled as he glanced between the two of you. “You two are a lot alike.”

Both of you snapped your eyes to him and scowled. “We are not!”

Oikawa glanced up at the exclamation and, at first, he didn’t recognize you as you sat in Nekoma’s jacket, a mask covering the lower half of your face, but then you shifted your head and he got a better look at those eyes of yours. How could he ever forget those eyes? They were burned into his brain.

Watari noticed the captain’s shift of attention and he chewed on his lip, wondering if he should try to distract the brunette, but before he could make a decision, the third-year was already striding toward the three of you, his expression a mixture of determination and annoyance. Kenma was the first to notice his approach but he didn’t have enough time to speak before Oikawa was standing beside you, hand on his hip.

“You have some nerve ignoring me, deleting the app without a word, only to show up at our game!” He huffed, brushing his bangs away from his forehead.

Your eyes widened, heart racing within your chest. You wanted to deny the accusation, to claim he had the wrong person, but something within his eyes told you that he wouldn’t be fooled by your lies. He knew it was you. You glanced at Watari, who was watching the scene with a worried expression. Had he betrayed you and told Oikawa who you were? ‘Of course he did. They’re teammates.’

“You owe me an explanation!”

Kuroo slid himself between the two of you, eyes glinting with amusement. “Sorry, but Y/N doesn’t owe you anything.”

His brown eyes narrowed. “This has nothing to do with you. It’s between me and them.”

The ravenette hummed, grin spreading across his face. “Let’s make a deal, then.”

“What?”

“If Nekoma wins, you leave Y/N alone. But if Aobajohsai wins -”

Oikawa’s eyes met yours. “When we win, you have to at least hear me out.”

“Deal.”

“W-Wait a minute -” You cried out, your voice cracking because of your nerves. “Don’t I get a say in this?”

“No,” the two captains chorused, glaring at each other. You could just see the electricity between their gazes.

You looked to Kenma for help, but he only offered you a sigh, knowing that he would have to work harder to make sure Nekoma took the win. You had never wished harder that the ground would swallow you up whole.

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The game was intense.

Judging from how hard both teams were trying, you wouldn’t be able to guess that it was simply a practice game because they were acting as if it was the final battle for the gold. Every time Oikawa was up to serve, he made a show of staring at you for a solid five seconds before finally serving the ball and you hated it.

Just to spite him, Kuroo started doing the same, his grin stretching wider when the brunette glared at him. It was obvious to the ravenette that Oikawa was feeling jealous because he didn’t know the extent of the relationship between you and Kuroo.

It seemed to go on forever, at least to you since you weren’t used to watching volleyball games. Aobajohsai took the first set, but Nekoma took back the second set. The third set dragged on forever, neither team willing to give up but, in the end, Aobajohsai took the set by two points, much to your dismay. You could only hang your head as they celebrated their win.

Kuroo approached you with a sheepish smile, rubbing the back of his neck. “Sorry, Y/N-san. We lost.”

“I hate you, Kuroo-san.” You mumbled in reply, making the taller boy pout.

“That’s not very nice~”

Oikawa wasted no time heading over to you, a smirk upon his lips. “I won. Time to keep your side of the barga -”

Iwaizumi came up behind him, smacking him in the back of the head. “You won? Last time I checked, volleyball is a team sport, Shittykawa.”

A light strip of pink covered the brunette’s cheeks as he whirled around, his voice hushed. “Not in front of Y/N, Iwa-chan!”

But the boy only rolled his eyes. “You can figure it out later. We’re gonna miss the last train.”

Oikawa’s eyes met yours and he held his hand out to you.

For a moment, you just looked at his hand.

“Your phone,” he stressed, flexing his fingers. “I won’t let you get away again.”

Hesitantly, you pulled out your phone, but you were clearly taking too long so he snatched it from you, tapping away. To be honest, you expected him to make a comment about how you only had four contacts in your phone – your mom, dad, younger brother, and Kenma -, but if he thought anything of it, he kept it to himself as he tapped away on your phone.

“There. I’ve called myself from your phone so I have your number.” He handed it back, offering you a smile. “If you block me, I’ll find you, Geek-chan~”

A chill went down your spine and you couldn’t pull your eyes away from him as he left the gym with the rest of his team. Silence settled over the three of you for a moment before Kuroo clapped his hands.

“Well, that’s settled. Let’s get you home, Y/N~”

Your eye twitched as you stared down at his number in your call history, lips tugging down. Why did it feel like fate was messing with you?

“He really called you Geek-chan,” Kenma mumbled under his breath as he followed after Kuroo.

You scowled, bumping your shoulder against his. “Shaddup, Ken.”

It was barely visible, but the corner of his lips tugged up in amusement.

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You were just crawling into bed when your phone started to ding on the bedside table. You considered just ignoring it, but you knew he wouldn’t stop until you answered so, with a defeated sigh, you picked up the phone and checked the messages he had sent you.

You decided to get it over with, saving the picture he sent to use as his profile photo as you saved the contact to your phone. As you filled out his name, though, you took pause, watching the line appear and disappear as it waited for your text.

‘Oh, I know!’ You erased his name, typing in something different. You had only just saved the contact information when he messaged again, clearly impatient.

Despite yourself, you smiled at the cute image he sent, setting the phone on the table before settling under the covers. Unbeknownst to you, Oikawa did the exact same thing, falling asleep with a smile upon his lips.

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▸n e x t

📜 Read more by checking out my masterlist 📜

Tag List: @the-broken-halo-writer​ @nekoma-hoe​ @iishoto-chan​

[kilyra]

Who Are You? (Part 1)

Klaus and Ben Hargreeves (The Umbrella Academy) One-Shot **Parts 1-4 ARE AVAILABLE from the masterlist in my bio**

A/N: So, @pegxcarter developed her own OC with some ideas of a story for her, and has graciously let me play with this arc. I’m so, SO happy she approached me. It’s just too fun!

You are one of the other miracle babies and your gift is to heal which led you to a career as a paramedic. Everything went smoothly until you responded to a call for Klaus who was ODing and in rough shape.

Warnings: None. Spoiler-free and a minor swear word.

If you want to be on my tag lists, (all or just a character) just let me know!

Snapping your gloves on, you knelt beside the young man lying on the cold sidewalk. His breathing was shallow and his dark curls were pasted against his sweaty head. “Sir? Sir, my name is Y/n and I'm here to help you.”

He didn't respond and you weren't expecting him to. A small crowd had formed but the officer that first responded to the call already had everyone edged back. Looking up, you nodded at him. “Do we know what happened here?”

Not waiting for a reply, you slid your hands around the back of the man's head, carefully feeling his scalp and checking your hands for blood. Nothing. You continued your initial check down his body.

“No, the caller didn't see anything, but he's apparently around here regularly  – usually strung out. She says his name is Klaus.”

His nose appeared to be broken and blood was splattered along his upper lip. Lance, your partner, frowned. "Well, it looks like he got his clock cleaned tonight too."

Prying his eyelids open, you shone your penlight into his eyes. His dilated pupils showed minimal response. Shifting up on one knee, you looked between the officer and your partner. “Looks like OD or possible brain damage. Or both. His vitals are weak, we need to get him to the hospital. We good to take him?”

After giving you the go-ahead, it was mere moments before he was strapped to the stretcher and being loaded into the back of the ambulance. As Lance slid behind the wheel, you braced yourself and continued to monitor Klaus.

He seemed slightly more responsive as his eyes started moving under his lids. Softly groaning between uneven breaths, an aura of pain seemed to settle around him. It tugged at you.

Glancing up, you made sure Lance was focused on driving after sorting out with dispatch which hospital to head to. Since they directed him to one across the city, it was going to be a long ride.

Staring down at Klaus as you checked his pulse again, the tugging at your heart grew more insistent. There was so much hurt and something you couldn't quite put your finger on. He seemed small somehow under the oxygen mask. Feeling the growing pull of your patient, you knew you were going to help him. Really help him.

You didn't do it often because you didn't want to draw too much attention, so if a patient was stable, you held back. But, in truth, you liked it. You liked helping people and getting them back on their feet as soon as you could. Only your version of soon was immediate.

It was a guarded secret in your family that, the morning of the day you were born, your mother wasn't pregnant. You were one of the 43 children born in October of 1989 and at a young age you discovered you could lay your hands on people and pull their injuries from them. It caused you to feel a phantom version of their pain as you healed them, but it passed. In your heart, you knew sharing their injuries was a small price to stop someone's suffering. Although you couldn't stave off death, you could mend broken limbs, close wounds and reverse other various damage to the body. It was definitely a perk for this profession.

Clearing your mind, you let out a long exhale as you gave your hands a quick shake. Taking another steadying breath, you set one hand on Klaus' cheek and the other on the bare skin of his hand. Focusing all your strength on him, you let your energy reach inside and pull his pain as you braced yourself. You were sure he at least had a concussion so this wasn't going to feel great.

A blinding white light of pain exploded as you felt the bridge of your nose crunch. Something was very wrong.

Grunting, you let go and stumbled before a floating feeling lifted you away. You were flying...but were you still in the ambulance? Everything seemed to loosen its grip as it melted away and you drifted.

What's an ambulance? Why did that matter when you just wanted to keep floating?

But you couldn't keep floating. You became aware of a sensation, something was radiating from your face, a warmth. No...no, it was cold. Didn't you hurt your nose? But the cold was above that, from your forehead.

And then the screaming started. But not yours.

People were all around you, insistently shrieking and yelling as they closed in. They blinked in and out, moving between transparency and solid forms, but all shouting at you. Squeezing your eyes closed did nothing to shut them out and your heart was pounding so hard you thought it might seize up. It was deafening...and horrifying.

Slowly, you realized they were all screaming the same thing. Klaus.

“Klaus, Klaus! Breathe. You're in the worst of it now...just try and stay calm.” A kind voice cut through the chaos, freeing you.

Struggling, you fought to open your eyes as the screaming faded. Sinking back into yourself, everything came into sharp focus as you gasped for air.

You were still hanging onto the side of the stretcher with your forehead pressed against its cold framework. Clumsily, you pulled your feet back under you, but everything was so hard. Your limbs were slow to respond. Were you high?

A muffled voice drew your attention. Following the sound, you looked up and saw Klaus staring down at you, wide-eyed. He glanced at the oxygen mask before he slipped his hand from under the strap and pulled the mask off to hang around his neck. “Are you okay?”

As he spoke, he reached for your arm. Watching his hand come closer, panic shot through you.

Throwing yourself back, you crashed against the side of the ambulance, sending supplies tumbling to the floor. “Don't touch me!”

Clutching his hand to his chest, Klaus froze as the ambulance swerved.

“What's going on? You okay, Y/n??” Alarm overtook Lance's tone.

Swallowing heavily, you fought to find your voice. “Y-yeah. W....we're all good back here, just keep driving.”

“You...you did your thing didn't you? But wasn't he stable?” His voice was softer.

“Just...just keep driving,” you said as you carefully used a small shelf to pull yourself to your feet. Everything was trembling so hard you didn't trust yourself to stand without help.

Turning his attention away from you, Klaus hissed. “What's going on? Why am I here?”

“You don't remember?”

Looking towards the new voice, you saw a young man with neatly kept hair, casually lounging at the end of the stretcher.

“I...I mean, do I really need to remember every little thing?” Cocking his head, Klaus scoffed.

“You got knocked out for being an asshole, that's what happened. And you were out so cold they had to call you an ambulance because they thought you might die.” The stranger sounded unimpressed as he tilted his head, mirroring Klaus.

“But why am I sober? I paid a lot of money to not be sober. And what was with...” He let his words dangle as he jerked his head your direction.

“That, I don't know. She just touched you and-”

“Who the hell are you? How did you get in here?” As you cut him off, his eyebrows slowly rose. In almost perfect unison, he and Klaus turned their stunned gazes onto you.

You felt weak, but you forced your confidence. “You can't be in here.”

Leaning forward, he narrowed his soft, brown eyes. “You can...see me?”

Fighting through the receding waves of fog, you realized your face was still throbbing with a dull pain. Reaching up, you pressed against your nose and found it was intact and fine. But as you rubbed your hand under your nostril you saw smeared blood on your fingers. "Yeah..."

“Wait, wait, wait. You can see him? Ben. That guy right there??” Klaus pressed the question, pointing to the stranger.

“The guy I didn't let in here? Of course I can...I...what's going on?” You rubbed the blood between your fingers and thumb. You've never bled from pulling an injury before. And you've never...whatever the hell happened, you'd never been through that before.

“I have no idea. No one else has been able to see me before.” Ben replied with a mix of confusion and excitement as you were looking down.

That voice...it was the same one that pushed all the screams away.

Snapping your gaze back up to him, something felt off. Looked off. Blinking rapidly, you tried to bring your eyes back into focus on Ben but it was like you were looking at him through a dirty window. And then he was gone.

“Where did he go?”

Turning to where you were facing, Klaus muttered under his breath before he shook his head and shrugged. You only caught the last few words. “No...I guess not..alright, alright, I'll ask.”

You rubbed your knuckles into your eyes as though that would somehow help. But it didn't.

“So...you don't see him anymore? But you did see him...right?” Klaus waved his arm, pointing between you and where Ben had been sitting,

Letting out a shuddering breath, you slowly had to force yourself to look back over at your patient still strapped to the stretcher. His eyebrows were pulled together as he openly stared at you, waiting for your reply.

“Who the hell are you?”

Klaus' eyes grew wide as his head bobbed back from your question. His dark-rimmed eyes closed to a hesitant squint as a grin grew. "Klaus, obviously. Better question is...who are you?”

**Parts 1 - 4 are available in the masterlist in my bio**

Taglist:  @foreverfaeries  @flower-two  @getlostinyourparadise  @w0nder-marie​

This is the Diego list but I may do other TUA stuff, so please let me know if you JUST Diego from here on out so I don’t spam you. Thanks!!  @actiongirl2005  @soul-of-a-traveller  @blathena

[kessielrg]

[DA + KH] Hurricane and Venus

Summary: In which Ventus is distracted by an Orlesian bard. Inspired by, but not directly related to @chibi-mushroom's Dragon Age AU for Kingdom Hearts, because I needed an excuse to write about Sabrina and Ventus again. It’s been over a year, and that’s too long.

Rating: K+

Word Count: 2,448

-

She had been following the trio for three solid days now. If the older two had noticed, they certainly didn't let it show easily. Not that she actually had plans on intercepting them at any point. By now, rumors and legends could easily identify the blue haired woman in that trio; the Gray Warden, the Hero of Ferelden, Aqua Amell. Traveling with her were two male companions, one about the same age and one younger. The one close in age to Aqua was another Gray Warden; Terra. The younger one, the one she was slowly growing an odd fondness for as she watched the trio travel, was actually the son of a Ferelden arl; Ventus.

The trio were on a mission, given to them by a friend, and it was one that she could have been a part of. But seeing the trio now? From just watching them deal with wildlife, and bandits, and those dumb enough to make known that they were hunting the trio down, she realized that she had made the smarter move here. Old habits wouldn't let her stop watching them, however. She simply wasn't trained to remain idle when people of interest came along.

And Ventus? He was very much a person of interest to her.

She just needed to get a little bit closer…

. . .

At first, Ventus thought he was going insane, hearing flute music come from somewhere deeper in the woods. Terra didn't seem to notice it, and Aqua had already gone out to scout the area. He didn't really tell Terra that he was going -more of an over the shoulder 'I'll be back' kinda deal- but he didn't expect that flute to be so far into Ferelden's dense forests either. The idea that he shouldn't have come alone didn't even hit him until the music suddenly stopped. Dead silence rang in the young man's ears. He considered tracing back to their campsite before he heard someone say;

“You must be some kind of idiot- following strange music in the woods like this.”

Surprised, Ventus turned around and found himself almost face to face with someone new. This person was a young woman, her shoulder length raven hair tightly curled and gently resting on her left shoulder. An ornate mask, designed in the shape of a rabbit head, covered her face- preventing him from knowing what her eye color was.

Ventus knew that, because she wore a mask, it meant that she had come from Orlais. He wouldn't have assumed that at first, though. Her voice barely contained the familiar Orlesian accent- only coming through with the way she'd lengthen her 'A's and 'S's. He wondered if it meant she was Ferelden, then taken in by an Orlesian family. Or perhaps it was the other way around, and she was losing the accent? Was that even a thing?

“W-who are you?” Ventus questioned. “And why are you-” he didn't finish his sentence, because his mouth almost betrayed him by saying 'so pretty.' And that was ridiculous. He didn't even know her; for all he knew, she was another one of Luxu's guards sent to kill them. Besides, how could he find her pretty when there was so little of her to be seen? The mask covered most of her face, and her clothing hid even the tiniest bit of skin from showing.

The woman straightened up a little at him. She walked toward him, offering her hand out in peace.

“The name's Sabrina. Means 'princess.'”

“You should be.” Ven sighed before he could stop himself. When he realized what he said, he flinched and quickly started to babble, “I-I-I mean, you… you should be going! Y-yeah! Going! I'm a lot more dangerous than I look! Oh yes, you haven't seen nothing yet. Absolutely nothing.”

“Just shake my hand, you idiot.”

Ventus suppressed the urge to say 'Yes ma'am' before quickly taking her hand. Her hand was much smaller than his- with a jolt he wondered if it meant that she was younger than him too. He had been so focused on how small her hand was that he nearly jumped out of his skin when she asked; “And what's your name?”

“Ventus.” he replied, almost too quick and with a high squeak. “Ven. Ventus.”

“Well, which one is it?”

“My friends usually call me Ven.”

“So what am I to you?”

“I… I don't know yet.” he admitted. “We just met.”

Sabrina's mouth curled as she thought this over. She eventually started to bob her head in agreement. “Not a bad answer.” the young woman decided. Ven momentarily froze. Had there been a wrong answer? What if he did give bad answer? Of course, he wasn't completely defenseless, but if this was just an elaborate ambush…

“I've been watching you and your friends for awhile.” Sabrina then decided to tell him. “If I wanted to kill you, I would be dead just like the other morons that tried to intercept you three.”

Well, that answered that question.

“Then why are you here?” Ventus wondered. “If you're not here to kill us, and you've been watching us for this long, then why make yourself known now?”

For this, Sabrina offered a small roll of her shoulder. “I guess...” she mused, “I guess I wanted to see you.”

Ven's face suddenly became a deep scarlet in surprise. “Me?”

The young woman nodded her head, folding her arms in thought before looking back up at him.

“How long have you been away from home?” she softly inquired. “A week? A month?”

“Well, it's been… uh… um...”

Sabrina took a rather large step toward him. They weren't close enough to actually touch each other, but Ven could almost feel the heat come off of her. He could definitely feel the intensity of her eyes from behind that mask, though. It was an odd feeling- simultaneously making his heart race and his stomach queasy.

“You're just so… green.” she continued to observe. “And I don't mean by how obviously nauseated you are to be in my presence. No, there's this innocence to you. Like your whole body radiates in a warm light...”

Another step forward and Ven was sure she could hear his ragged breathing. He could definitely hear her softly exhale as she looked over him. Ventus tilted his head, slightly, at her. He couldn't describe it. He just wanted… something. Something he was sure Sabrina could give if they were just a little bit closer.

Likewise, Sabrina was trying very hard to fight the thoughts she was having. Ventus wasn't the first she'd been this curious about. Her training as a bard dictated that she was to never get attached to anyone. Too bad that they were close enough now that if she didn't stare into his deep blue eyes, then she'd be looking at his lips. She was sure they were very inexperienced. Inexperienced boys were the absolute worst- but they were more susceptible to distraction..

“Ventus,” Sabrina carefully said in a low voice, “Have you ever given someone a thimble?”

“A thimble?” he repeated, his voice reduced to a husking rasp. He was drifting closer to her now. He could almost see that the eyes of her mask were covered in some kind of mesh- half lidded dark brown eyes were hidden under them.

“A thimble is a precious thing.” she informed him, mirroring his movements. “You should never give them out lightly.”

“Never?”

Sabrina let out a soft laughter. “Well, I guess one misplaced thimble wouldn't hurt...”

Ven didn't know who was the first to kiss the other, but at that point it took him a moment to realize that they even were. His brain ran off into autopilot as his heart pounded in his ears. He could barely notice that Sabrina had made a small movement before deepening their embrace. The young woman was the one to break the kiss. It was with a surprised gasp as she pushed Ven a small distance away. Ventus could only stumble backward a bit- his mind was reeling from what had just happened.

“Drop the knife.” a voice resembling Terra's carefully demanded.

Ventus's mind was still in a fog. Knife? He didn't have a…

“Urg, fine.” Sabrina grumbled. The sound of something heavy hit the dirt ground with a thud. Ventus's eyes trained numbly to the ground. Sure enough, there was a knife laying there. A very ornate one too, with hand pressed curls on the handle and a very sharp blade.

Ventus looked up at Sabrina to find her mouth in a thin line. He noticed something shining behind her- his heart jolted in shock to find that it was Terra's sword. Commanding the sword was Terra himself, his face red with anger and looking hard enough to kill. That was when Ven woke from his stupor and moved quite a bit away from Sabrian.

“Terra, don't!” he started to plead, waving his hands in defense. “She was just…!”

“She was just about to kill you, Ven.” came the blunt interruption. To Sabrina he said, “And just give me one good reason why I shouldn't run you through with my sword. No one assaults my friends. No one.”

“Assault?” Sabrina repeated- a small, bemused chuckle crossing her lips. “I hardly consider it assault when he was the one leading.”

Terra growled before pressing his sword further into Sabrina's back. The young woman let out a small sound of surprise in response.

“Stop Terra!” Ventus cried. “This isn't like what happened with Aqua! Let her go!”

“I'm gonna tell you what I told him,” Sabrina said to Terra from over her shoulder, “If I really wanted to kill you, I'd already be dead. I'm practically a foot in the grave now and I've barely done a thing!”

“Please Terra,” Ven once more tried to plead. “Just put the sword down.”

The look on Terra's face indicated that he did not plan on standing down. It was with a lot of reluctance that he moved the sword from Sabrina's back- pointing it to the ground, but not placing it back in its sheath. Freed from the spot, Sabrina bent down to retrieve her knife, but was quickly stopped by Terra placing his blade right in her eyesight.

“You can leave that there for a little longer.”

The side glare the bard gave him was a dark one, but she didn't argue against it. She came back up to cross her arms in defiance.

“You're being so unfair.” the bard pouted. “Poisoned Apple didn't even have poison in it today.”

“Poisoned Apple?” questioned Terra, raising an eyebrow in suspicion.

“The knife.” she explained, even giving a small gesture to the object. “That's what I've called it. There's a hidden compartment in the handle that holds poison. When it cuts, it releases the poison. The knife has been in the deIsigny family for generations.”

“deIsigny?”

“A fallen noble house from Orlais. You may be more familiar with the derogatory name 'Disney.'”

“Well that explains the mask...” Terra mumbled over his shoulder.

“As if it were ever in doubt?” Sabrina teasingly mused.

“I thought the symbol of the deIsgny family was a mouse?” Ventus then interjected. “If you're from the deIsgny family, then why are you wearing a rabbit mask?”

“You really are kinda innocent, aren't you?” the bard laughed. Not unkindly, but it wasn't intended to be pleasant either. “Heraldry of a noble house can change for many reasons; their main source of income switches, sometimes the old one was just plain ugly to look at, or -in the case of deIsgny- their golden child gets snatched up by the Circle and is never heard from again.”

“You know quite a bit about nobility.” Terra noted. To this, Sabrina merely shrugged.

“What can I say? I enjoy The Game.”

Terra's body tensed upon hearing this. His grip on his sword tightened as it took it with both hands. “Ven has absolutely nothing to do with Orlesian politics.” he told her.

If they had seen it, both boys would have seen Sabrina cock an eyebrow at him. “No?” she mused. “I heard he was Orlesian by blood. That makes him a player by proxy.”

“Ven has nothing to do with Orelsian politics.” Terra repeated, this time much darker. This led him to finally ask, “Who sent you? And why are they after Ven?”

“Well, someone tried to buy me to kill all three of you off. But I declined.”

“Why?”

“Because you three aren't truly part of The Game, that's why.” There was a small huff before the prudent addition of, “But I'm a curious girl. Goldilocks over there was a lot cuter close up than I thought.”

Ventus's cheeks flared a deep scarlet, but Terra still wasn't budging.

“Who tried to hire you?” Terra questioned. “Who?”

“Terra? Ven? What's going on?”

The two young men and the bard turned their attention to the newcomer. The bard held her breath in realizing that it was the Hero of Ferelden herself. If there was anyone who could easily kill her for kissing a naive moron, Aqua Amell was the one Sabrina was sure would do it. At least, that's how the rumors went. Seeing the Hero of Ferelden now was soon proving at least two thirds of those rumors false.

“It's nothing, Aqua,” Terra tried to quickly dismiss, “We were just...”

“I was just leaving.”

All attention turned to Sabrina now. A devious smile traced itself on her lips- this was her favorite position, with all eyes on her. In a single motion, she bent down at the hip to neatly scoop up her knife, placing it in a holder attached to her upper leg. Her head was held particularly high as she started to leave. Sabrina stopped next to Ventus- their shoulders brushing slightly.

“If you ever find yourself in Orlais,” Sabrina started to muse before moving a bit closer to his ear, “Come find me.”

Sabrina's fingers gently grazed against his own, causing a small shiver to run up Ven's spine- his lips parting slightly to let out a breath he didn't know he was holding until then. The bard could not hide the satisfied smirk on her lips as she departed. Even moments after she was out of eye range, her presence was still felt between Terra, Aqua, and Ventus.

“Ven,” Aqua eventually spoke up, breaking the silence, “Are you alright?”

For a moment, the younger between the three of them didn't react. Slowly, Ven started to look up at his friends with a wide smile.

“I'm fine.” he assured them. “But I think I just gave away my first thimble.”

[clairelutra]

a fic year in review

meme stolen from @isadorator! ty as always~

this was the year i did get your words out. i signed up to write 150k words of anything over the course of the year, ~400 words/day, ~12k words/month.

i didn’t manage to make that w/c in half the time like i wanted, but i did get it by october, which, like? still bamf :D and 200k for the whole year! only 133k of which was published, but still!!

January

sun protection (shuann, oneshot)

the month of motivation!! and 0 results because i was hitting peak anxiety re: my writing, what i was allowed to write, etc etc etc. i got better but it wasn’t in january, that’s for sure lol.

February

child’s play (gen, abandoned)

taste testing (shuann, oneshot)

we’re here to steal your bride (gen, abandoned)

attempting to find a rhythm that worked and not quiiiite finding it, sort of floundering through it all—i hadn’t really dragged anyone in with me yet and i was suuuuuffering.

i can’t remember precisely, but i think this was when i decided to declare a hiatus. no posting for me for a while to get the long-running panic attack under control.

March

the one and only month i managed to really and truly stick to the hiatus thing. also the month(?) that @sixsaltysweets jumped in after me, and fandom things with a friend made everything better. ♥♥♥

April

dirty money (shuann, pwp)

absolute territory (shuann, pwp)

aka the month i kind of lost patience and started posting again, just to arcanawildcard instead of anything to do with clairelutra, because crippling anxiety is a biiiiitch.

also the month i started lovers confidant: world famous model (aka, the babysitter au).

May

may, the month of continuing to wrangle with the babysitter au, which is my pride and joy and magnum opus.

June

Lovers Confidant: World Famous Model (shuann, complete multichapter)

the month of finishing babysitter au! my precious... my preeeeecious....

legit tho, this was a huge confidence booster. two hellish months of Work and this fic was my bouldy through it all. i’m still ridiculously proud of it—on a technical level it’s some of the best work i’ve ever done.

hilariously, i was stalking fail_fandomanon on DW and decided to jump in on one of the fic exchanges there, and someone?? took offense to the way i worded my signup?? and left me a fic comment purely to tell me to change it because the only contact information i had up was my ao3, which. dude. dude.

July

candyman (good clean fun) (akira/everyone, drabble collection)

ash blonde (ffxv ignoct, oneshot)

assisted negotiations (ffxv noctis/everyone; aranoct; noctis&prompto, oneshot)

the month i started lockdown infiltration, brushed off a few old projects, punch-boxed my sense of shame, and did my exchange piece.

originally i was planning to write something in response to the ffa wank, but it proved to be too high a hurdle for me, and i gave up.

August

the night belongs to... (ffxv lunoct, pwp)

detangler (my girlfriend is a t-rex yuuma/churio, oneshot)

simple aims (shuann, oneshot)

picked up a pinch hit for an exchange, did a request, finished up a prompt from the ffxv kink meme... not in that order lol.

most of what i was writing was, again, lockdown infiltration. dedication!! i was showing it!!

September

more lockdown infiltration, because by jove, i was going to finish this fic.

October

the perfect 10 (shuann, oneshot)

yep yep yep more lockdown infiltration. now with a soulmate au request to oil the brain hinges! the first soulmate au i’ve ever played totally straight, i think. twas much fun.

GOD THIS SHIP GIVES ME SO MANY FEELS.

November

lockdown infiltration (shuann, completed multichapter)

MY WORK. MY LOVE. MY BABY. C O M P L E T E. i think i hit stockholm syndrome with this fic at some point lol, by the end of it i was almost sad to see it go, no matter how much i loathed writing it at times.

i’m still not totally sold on its quality, but at the same time, i do see why it’s my most popular p5 fic. the concept and chemistry of the shady cop (akira) and noble thief (ann) was just... so good? LIKE. i get that joker is joker, but ann’s naturally trusting nature and akira’s eternal desire to stick it to the man gives them a very good reason to want to talk to each other, even without a plot to help them along.

THEY JUST HAVE AMAZING CHEMISTRY OKAY.

incidentally, around september was when i fiiiinally started to feel Good about my characterization of both of them and how they clicked as a couple and now i am lost to this ship f o r e v e r.

December

in turbidus veritas (shuann, oneshot)

boyfriend material (shuann, incomplete multichapter)

nice shirt. what’s it made of? (shuann, pwp—need to read boyfriend material first)

the bitter pill (shuann, oneshot)

so i started boyfriend material in november and put down like 16k for it in a couple of weeks before i completely crashed and struggled through the next few parts. 

the pwp spinoff was inspired by a comment on the original that just needed to be done justice and i have zero (0) regrets.

Total Year’s Output: 133,601! i didn’t quite manage to post all those 200k words, but 2/3rds ain’t bad.

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d predicted?

y’know? i really don’t know. the whole beginning of the year is kinda... lost to the fog. i was still trying to figure out what was wrong with me and coming up with 326492387 reasons and trying to tackle each one as it came up and i was still loosing weeks on end to the apathetic sleep, so;;;

I’M BETTER NOW AND IT’S GREAT,

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2019?

i 100% never predicted that i would finish a multichapter. and now? i’ve finished two :D :D :D

What’s your favourite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest.

THAT is a good question. i’m absolutely most proud of Lovers Confidant: Wold Famous Model, but boyfriend material might be the only multichapter i’d go back and reread of my own volition. it’s a tossup.

(as for oneshots, i still really like absolute territory. first and best accomplishments in cunnilingus!)

Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?

win gywo again (signups are open until january 15th, by the way!!)

finish boyfriend material (13 chapters to go (9′-’)9)

write through a velvet room attendant!ann alternate lovers confidant fic

write through a marichat-inspired alternate lovers confidant

find a good pace for requests.

leave and fill one prompt every month for the ffxv kink meme

publish 150k to ao3, regardless of when the fic was written (there’s one fic that i put down 17k for in like march looool. if i’d published that i’d have hit that number this year)

it’ll be a full (and hopefully fun) year :D

[buriedinbleach]

The Goddess in the Glen - Pt. 1

When I originally signed up for the Big Bang, I requested prompts for the story that is now Kensei’s long ass fic. I promised that whoever’s prompt I used, I would write a fic as a prize! This is that prize. Well, the first part anyway.

I ended up going to town on this and splitting it into two chapters. Smut in both, so pace yourselves, drink plenty of water. Apparently, no one makes me spawn multi-chapter fics quite like Shunsui. He’s just so hot. Can you blame me? 

Train anon asked: Shunsui said he had a script idea but Nanao is all like "I do not allow any movie with the rating of adults only". Write Shunsui’s porn.

For reference, that exchange takes place in episode 298.

-The Goddess in the Glen-

Shunsui had locked himself away in his study every night that week as soon as he returned home from the Eighth division. It was rare enough for Shunsui to set foot in that particular room once a month, let alone staying there  –  working furiously  –  night after night. It was baffling. You had tried to find out exactly what he was doing, but every time you asked he simply gave you a wry smile and said, ‘Its a secret, Petal.’

Dim, flickering light trickled out into the hallway underneath the door as you crept close and pressed your ear to the cold wood.

“You look lost. Perhaps I can help.” It was definitely Shunsui’s voice, but it sounded odd. Almost… feminine? Well, at least as feminine as Shunsui was capable of sounding with his deep timbre.

You were torn between utter confusion and trying to stifle your laugh as you called to him through the door. “Shun? Are you coming to bed?”

“I’ll be there in a minute, love.”

You cast one last suspicious glance at the door, listening to his quiet, indistinguishable murmurs before heading off to bed.

***

Two days later, you went looking for Shunsui as soon as you arrived home from the Thirteenth division. You couldn’t wait to tell him what ridiculous idea Kiyone and Sentaro had come up with as your division’s entry for the film festival. Poor Jushiro.

You were still laughing to yourself when you headed straight to his study, expecting to find him hard at work on his mystery project once again. But when you arrived, the door was open and the room was pitch black. He wasn’t even napping on the couch.

“Hmmm…” You shrugged, wracking your brain, trying to think of where he could be when it hits you. Smiling, you know there was only one place you need to look  –  its the one spot no one else ever bothers checking for him. You walk out to the gardens, warm spring air swirling lightly around you when you see Shunsui leaning against a sakura tree, staring off into the foreground at the expanse before him.

Shunsui gently swirls his cup of sake  –  distracted. His eyes never leave the fixed point he regards in the distance. He didn’t need to look directly at you to feel your presence, he knew your reiatsu well enough by now. Instead, he raises his arm as you smile and curl in beside him.

“Is something wrong, love?” You ask, nuzzling against him, placing your hand on his firm chest.

He sips the cup of sake slowly until the cool liquid is gone, his brow is contemplative, but you wait patiently for him to speak. “Nanao-chan won’t let the division use my script for our entry in the film festival.” Shunsui reaches for his bottle, pouring another cup of sake, offering you the first drink before carefully nursing it once more.

So that’s what he had been working so hard on. You smiled softly, kissing his cheek and nuzzling in closer. Suddenly, excerpts from ‘The Rose Colored Path’ began swirling through your mind. It became slightly harder for you to fault Nanao for turning his script down now. But, that was also an easy fix. A few simple edits and Shunsui could try again.

“Why don’t I look at it? Maybe I can help make a few suggestions and then we can try talking her into it? Let me see your script.”      

Shunsui sighed lightly, downing the last drops in his glass before pulling out a rolled bundle of papers from behind his back and passing them to you. He knew there wasn’t much use. There was nothing you could have said that would make Nanao change her mind now, but a part of him was now eager to see your reaction.

“Hmmm… ‘The Goddess in the Glen’.” You sat up a little straighter, flipping open the first page. It was a little bit of a cheezy title, but that was kind of to be expected given his usual standard. You couldn’t help but wonder what kind of sappy romance you were about to find. “Why did you say Nanao wouldn’t let you-”

Heat immediately began rushing to your face as you scanned through the pages, not bothering to read the script word for word. Your heart was racing, blood was coursing through your veins at a furious pace. All the while, Shunsui sat next to you looking as calm and casual as he always did.

“I believe her exact words were, ‘I will not be associated with any film rated ‘adults only’. But now I’m more curious what you think of it petal.” Shunsui smiled lazily, the heat of his stare only compounded the boiling fire roaring through your body.

“I-” you choked on your next words, trying to clear your throat, to make them come out but they were stuck. Taking a deep breath, you started over. “I had no idea you could write like this.” It was the first thing you could think to say. Truthfully, the script was good. Surprisingly good  –  and very hot. You couldn’t stop the flood of images that began racing through your mind. Your nails dragging through the dark hair on his chest; fingers groping his muscles and sinking into his shoulders; Shunsui’s lips against your neck; his callouses grazing your breasts-

Shunsui laughed, “What do you mean? You’ve read my column before!”

Your mind scrambled to free itself from your daydream, to cover your faux pas quickly. “Right! I just mean this is even better! But, I think I understand why Nanao wouldn’t allow you to make it. Even if she did, there’s no way Head Captain Yamamoto would allow it to be shown.”

“I’ll admit, you have a point there.” Shunsui conceded, relaxing back against the tree.

“But Shun, who exactly did you think you could talk into being the Goddess and this warrior she’s supposed to seduce?” Setting the script aside, you curled against him, bringing your hand to rest against his bare chest. You let your eyes drift closed, ready to slip into a lazy nap at Shunsui’s side where you could have all the time in the world with your fantasy  –  uninterrupted.

However, the way his fingers began inching up your leg underneath the hem of your Gotei kimono made you reevaluate those plans. For the better.

Shunsui turned, bringing his lips down to your neck, letting his deep voice sink into your skin and down to your very bones. “You and me, petal.” The sinful way his lips parted to lick and suck his way over your neck nearly blocked out his words, you would have agreed to almost anything if he would just keep going.

Almost.

“Wait, what?” You place your hands on either side of his face and reluctantly pull him away.

Shunsui leaned back against the tree, but his hand resumed its pace  –  inching up your thigh. “Well it doesn’t matter now.” As his hand moved higher, your heart began pounding with excitement, an interesting idea crept into your mind.

You sat for a moment, mulling over your choice, pulse now thundering in you ears. “Love?”

“Mmmm?” Shunsui acknowledged. His lips pressed against your neck again, this time moving lower. The vibration of his hum rattled straight to your core.

“Maybewecouldmakeit?” You blurted the words quickly while you could still get them out. You knew Shunsui heard  –  and understood  –  when his fingers paused just inches from his goal at your breast.

His eyes met yours while your face blazed with the heat of embarrassment. Shunsui’s pupils looked like deep pools and you were about to be swallowed by their depths. You were anxious to look away, but couldn’t bring yourself to pull your eyes from his sinful stare. While he had you awestruck and trapped, Shunsui wrapped an arm around your waist and maneuvered you to lay beneath him on the soft, cool grass. You cast a quick, sly glance around the garden, cautious of prying eyes, only to find the estate was silent. Shunsui’s private area of the gardens was completely undisturbed by anyone but the two of you.

The tickling stubble of his beard against the center of your chest pulls your focus back to him. His callouses graze over the swell of your breast, opening the collar of your kimono, softly kissing the newly revealed skin. “Maa… really? Its not even my birthday.” Shunsui resumed his present course - kissing his way to your nipple. But this time, he was watching you, hypnotizing your mind with his erotic, dark stare.

“Y-Yeah-ah!” You inhaled a sharp, gasping breath when Shunsui’s teeth grazed the sensitive bud. Winding your fingers through his hair, you held him against your body, arching up to meet his face. Shunsui worked to keep you at ease, nearly breathless; he wanted to hear every pleasure-fogged, uncensored thought crossing your mind; he needed to taste every whimpering moan that skipped past your lips.

“I mean, we  –  hhnn  –  w-would just keep it to-oh! Yessss,” you hissed. Shunsui’s finger drifted up and down your slit over your underwear, pressing lightly to test the fabrics resistance. He watches your face sharply. Though his smokey eyes seem hazy with lust, he catalogues every motion as you lick and purse your lips, memorizing the sound of your gasping breath. “For our  –  mmm  –  eyes only.”

Shunsui pulls your underwear aside, sinking a finger slowly into your heat; his lips covering yours, drinking down your moans. “Of course, Petal. Now that I think about it, I wouldn’t really want anyone else hearing the beautiful sounds you make, just for me.”

He kisses your neck - licking and sucking just enough to lightly color and mark your skin. Once you’re lost in a haze, he slips another finger in to join the first, turning and curling his digits to brush your sweet spot again and again. “Hhnn  –  you’ll have to-” you hissed with pleasure, feeling warmth creeping over your body, “learn your lines. Yes! Shunsui! Mmm, right there!” Shunsui presses his lips to your neck, kissing as your pulse throbs and cries of his name are ripped from your throat; your release floods your muscles like the waves of a tsunami.

As your eyelids flutter, bringing you back into the present, Shunsui kisses your lips  –  long and slow. He settles between your legs, his kimono open and hanging loose around him. Shunsui frees himself from his hakama, never once pulling his lips from yours.

Your leg wraps around his bare hip, urging him closer. He smiles against your mouth before kissing along your jaw. As his lips trail over your jawline, Shunsui’s hand  –  calloused, wide, strong  –  smoothes over your leg. He starts at your ankle, dragging up your calf, caressing your thigh until he holds your leg against his hip. The hot head of his cock presses against your entrance, just lightly parting your folds, making you hiss and shiver with anticipation. Shunsui slowly pulls your leg up his hip as he inches forward into your heat  –  claiming and filling.    

Cool silk kissed the back of your hands, juxtaposing pleasantly with the warm, bare muscles of his back underneath your fingertips sliding underneath his kimono. “Are we really supposed to  –  mmm, Shunsui  –  to a-act through…”

A light breeze drifted through the garden, but neither of you felt a thing. Shunsui covered your body completely with his own, stoking a fire that promised to burn you from the inside out with each surge of his hips. He loved hearing your breathy voice climb higher as you desperately try to keep yourself together just long enough before he rolled against your clit again and you were lost.

“I don’t think either of us will be acting. I can’t keep my hands off of you.” His voice is like liquid honey trickling down your muscles  –  warm and satisfying  –  it only feeds the consuming heat stretching and filling your core. Shunsui pulls his hips back lazily, wanting to be sure you felt every ridge of his cock. He kisses away your hitched gasps and thrusts forward, burying himself again.

He was right, there was absolutely no need to act. Shunsui knew how to work every pleasure point on your body, how to turn you into liquid in seconds. But could you make his movie? Shunsui pulls your leg up, just an inch, but it leaves you dizzy and gripping his shoulders for more. Gods how you wanted more. Even if it meant filming a highly explicit home movie. Hell, the more explicit the better. You were aching to make it now.

One more precise tilt of your hips combined with Shunsui driving into your heat, rolling against your clit when he bottomed out was your undoing. Flames of pure ecstasy blazed out of control, licking and kissing your nerves. You wind the fingers of one hand through his thick waves, pulling him into a kiss.

Shunsui holds your hips tighter, thrusting harder  –  deeper  –  allowing the constricting, steady clenching of your core around his shaft to drive him higher. He chases his release right along with yours, managing to work you through one last, weaker orgasm before filling you with a satisfying warmth unique to Shunsui.

While you lay together recovering, his favorite floral kimono wrapped around your body in place of your own disheveled one, Shunsui huffed out a laugh and you giggled like a naughty child. The two of you were going to go for it. You would make his movie and keep it safely hidden away to be watched together whenever the mood strikes. Or when one of you was on a mission...

The sun was beginning to go down as you curled underneath his long arm and the two of you walked back inside. When you make your way into the bedroom, Shunsui walks silently behind you and stops to kiss your neck. You dreamily stroke his cheek, encouraging him to continue. “Shun, just one thing. How is this going to be filmed? I don’t want – “

“Relax, love.” That sinfully warm velvet voice of his poured into your ear as he stepped around to face you. Shunsui moved the collar of your borrowed kimono out of his way and kissed the skin before speaking. “I’m sure Kisuke could make something that didn’t require an operator.”

You froze. Your entire body went stone still until you narrowed your eyes in suspicion, pulling Shunsui’s eyes up to meet yours. He looked positively clueless as to your reaction. Clueless and gorgeous, but seemingly very aware of the warning edge to your voice.

“Kisuke Urahara better not get his hands on a copy of this.”

[bubble-tea-bunny]

satellite

[peter parker x reader]

author’s note: reading you by caroline kepnes inspired me to play around w pov and try something a lil diff in style. had a lot of fun w it and i hope you enjoy! (kinda funny the last time i tinkered w pov it was also in a fic for ps4 peter ha)

word count: 2,929 

It’s Aunt May’s suggestion that it would be good to give my eyes a break from staring at screens so much and for so long that initially gives me the idea to come here, but it’s the conversation I have with a stranger on the subway this morning about the book he’s reading that actually prompts me to stop by after work. I had every intention of seeking out that novel for myself; the description on the back cover about the story already sounded interesting, and the details shared by the man in the black beanie made it even more so. But I quickly realize how easy it is to get sidetracked in a bookstore, and instead of heading straight for crime and mystery, I’m strolling past comics and scanning the titles, first for ones I recognize so I can think to myself Hey, I know that! like we tend to do when we spot something we are familiar with and that little corner of our brain lights up at spotting what is thought to be long forgotten.

The pages of these graphic novels are glossy, smooth beneath my fingers, and the colors are bright and I see myself in several of them slinging webs through a cartoon New York, and yellow boxes in the corner of each panel are denoting the time of day and the current scene’s setting, and big words like BAM! and POW! punctuate every heavy hit and at the end of every strip, all of it is just another day for Spider-Man. I have to admit, it’s sort of surreal having comics about me. Not that they are technically about me. The alter ego in these stories is Nathaniel Patterson and he’s got blonde hair and blue eyes and he’s quite the looker.

I slide the comic with its shiny cover back into its spot on the shelf and I think I turned one of the pages wrong because the pad of my index finger stings like I’ve sliced it. My brows furrow as I check to see if I’m right, if it’s begun to bleed, and the smell of fresh books is strong, but the smell of strawberries is stronger.

I pause. I glance up and look for the source, and I’ve just missed it. Just missed you. I catch a glimpse of you continuing down the aisles, and you’re blocked from view by the tall shelves and there are no gaps through which to see you because they’re packed so snug with books but even if they weren’t, these types of shelves have a wall in the middle. I contemplate leaving it well enough alone, but the scent of my favorite fruit lingers in the air and it’s strangely strong to still be so apparent, like you’d been standing near me.

So I leave the comics and go in the direction you’d gone, glancing into each section and trying not to be obvious about it, obvious about the fact I’m looking for someone. I read a few of the titles in each aisle, and I’m taking them in, I am, since maybe along the way I’ll find a book I do want, but it’s done half in earnest because it is incredibly easy to get sidetracked in a bookstore.

Then I see you, in the set of shelves across from mine, a table in the space between us with staff picks for the month. You’re in crime and mystery and your nose is buried in a novel. I wonder what you’re reading. You flip through the pages, stop to read a paragraph or three, and flip through some more. When you’ve had your fill of that, you close the book and read the information on the back. It’s been chilly in New York lately so you’re in a sweater, and the sleeves slide over your hands as you grip the novel because they’re too long. You try to pull them up so the fabric bunches in the bend of your elbows, but it doesn’t work and they just droop back down.

For all my efforts of being subtle as I walked through the shop searching for you, I forget it when it’s most crucial, and I’ve stared too long and you look up and you notice me, and my stomach jumps at being caught and I probably seem like a creep. Nice one, Peter. Getting flustered around pretty girls is right up your alley.

I swallow, and I smile slightly to ease the awkwardness and show you I’m not being creepy, I swear, and the heavens are watching out for me because you smile back, lips shining with lip balm you’ve no doubt applied to protect them from the harsh wind outside. And I am melting. I’m melting like an ice cream cone in the summer and suddenly I want to ask what your favorite ice cream flavor is.

Your eyes slide from mine off to your left (my right) just for a second, before they meet mine again, and then return to the book in your hands. I can see the slight curl of your mouth as you turn to the bookshelf in front of you and put the book back, then continue reading the spines until one stands out and you pull it out to do the process all over again. But I’m caught up on what you had looked at fifteen seconds ago, for the briefest of moments, easy to miss but being me (being Spider-Man) has forced me to be more attentive, and I glance to my right (your left) and I see the bookshelf. My eyes slide up higher to the sign. I’m in romance.

My cheeks grow warm and you probably think I’m in this bookstore looking for love like the protagonist of half the novels on this shelf. You probably find it amusing, and I think you might even laugh if it weren’t so quiet in here, and I should be embarrassed but I’m not. I like the thought of making you laugh. Besides, I’m not in this bookstore looking for love. I’m in this store to find a specific book and if anything, love is looking for me. February’s months away and Cupid should be busy sharpening his arrows. Maybe I’m his test run?

You’re still at crime and mystery, still where I need to go, so I go there. In my peripherals I notice you glance at me and your gaze lingers, curious to see what book I’m going to pick up. I read the last name of every author, until I arrive at the one I want. There’s three copies remaining of the book I’d come to this shop for, and I grab the copy in the middle. All the while I’ve been trying to figure out how to start a conversation with you. I had planned to ask what book you’re holding right now, or if you had any suggestions. I would listen and pick up a few of the titles you say because I trust you have good taste.

However, I’m not the one who starts a conversation. You beat me to it.

“A Christie fan, huh?” you begin. Your voice is low so as not to disturb the silence but I can tell even if we were outside or elsewhere, you would sound equally as quiet anyway. “She’s a classic.”

I smile and you are well-read and I’d like to get to know you more. “It’s my first Christie novel actually,” I respond.

Your eyes are bright when you hear that, and I wonder what you know that I don’t, wonder what’s so captivating about Agatha Christie’s books that has your gaze twinkling with excitement for me and what I’m about to experience. You are so sweet. “You picked a good first novel then. Sometimes I wish I could read that for the first time all over again.”

“You a mystery fan?” I inquire, and I’m cringing on the inside because I’ve just asked you this while we’re standing in front of crime and mystery and you are clearly well acquainted with Agatha Christie. But it seems you think my pointing out the obvious is cute and you nod.

“I read stuff from other genres sometimes but I always end up back here. Guess I love the thrill of a good whodunit a little too much.”

You chuckle, and oh God maybe I am like those protagonists in the romance novels across the aisle since I swear my chest tightens a little, enough to be uncomfortable, a twisting and then an unraveling like my heart is sighing. And I don’t think there’s such a thing as loving a little too much because love is love and I’m loving talking to you right now. I don’t want our conversation to end and I wonder if I asked if you wanted to grab a coffee sometime if you would agree. Or maybe we could go out for pizza (there’s a great place in Brooklyn that has $1 slices of pizza the size of your head).

It’s a bit difficult to get any words out; your smile is disarming and there’s a softness in your eyes and you could be your own superhero because to be the recipient of just one or the other is enough to get someone to slow down, but to witness both is enough for someone to stop entirely and cause them to forget what they were doing, what they were about to say. Or maybe that’s just me. But gradually my thoughts come back to me, the fog clearing (though it had been nice while it lasted and are you sure you don’t have any powers?). You’re watching me, expecting me to talk, and I’ve been oddly silent and it only make me more nervous. You probably think I’m weird.

“No such thing as too much,” I finally force out, referring to your earlier comment with the same playful tone.

You smile. Maybe you like weird.

A burst of confidence surges through me and I introduce myself, holding out my free hand. “I’m Peter.”

You shake it and tell me your name, and a brief quiet settles between us again. And I don’t think you want our talk to end either. My hand slides back down to my side and it misses yours already. It’s just you and me and Agatha Christie and if this were a game, this would be the crossroads. Press A to carry on our conversation or Press X to say goodbye or press nothing and leave it to the roll of a dice, the flip of a coin. But I’m not imagining that hopefulness on your face that this—us?—could turn into more, and I don’t want to leave something this important to chance and I sure as hell don’t want to press X.

“Well, [Name],” I continue, and I like saying your name, “would you wanna get coffee sometime? It’d be nice to have someone to discuss this with.” I hold up the Christie book.

“I’d like that,” you reply, and I like you saying my name.

It’s a date and three days later we meet up after work. We go to the pizza joint in Brooklyn because I’d suggested it as an alternative to coffee, if you were up to it, and you wholeheartedly agreed because you wanted to see those pizza slices for yourself. We sit down at the table in the corner, the red and white checked vinyl tablecloth reflecting the glare of the fluorescent lights and Wow, you remark, you weren’t kidding about the size of these slices!

You’re a waitress at a small diner where it’s calm most days. There aren’t any rushes, and the primary customer base is regulars whose orders you have memorized and when you see them, you’re able to carry on your conversation from the last time they came in. An elderly couple eats there every Friday. You had a chat with them today.

“They’re like grandparents to me,” you muse, smiling to yourself as you soak up the extra oil on your pizza with a napkin. “All my relatives are out of state, so it’s nice to have a sense of family like that.”

My eyes are glued to your grin and I think I love you. You thrive on human connection, and you don’t have to seek it out since it comes to you at your job. You didn’t have to seek it out when you met me either, because I was the one to approach. I wonder if you knew that’s what would happen, how the entire situation would play out. Maybe you were confident or maybe you were unsure and were prepared to approach me, and we would have our first conversation in front of romance instead and we would talk a little about romance novels until in a roundabout way we start talking about crime and mystery because like you said, you always have a propensity to end up back there eventually. And even if connections like this didn’t come to you, you’d go out to find them. You’re proactive like that.

The tables turn as you ask what I do, and I explain what Doctor Octavius and I have been working on. I keep it simple so you can follow along, and you’re genuinely interested, and my stomach is doing flips because I am the center of your attention and honestly, it feels nice. Would you please look at me that way forever?

We get so caught up on other topics that it isn’t until I’m walking you home that we finally start discussing the Christie novel I bought. I’d been running around in our few days apart, splitting my time between work at the lab and patrolling the city, but you can bet I spent every spare second I had reading that book. Part of it was in anticipation of seeing you again because I know you’d want to know my thoughts on it and another part of it was because I did find the plot captivating. I often ponder the clues and come up with theories, which I share with you. You listen to them all and you never reveal anything. I ask for hints but you shake your head and laugh.

“You have to solve it on your own!”

“Not even one hint?”

“Nu-uh. Channel your inner Poirot, mister!”

I chuckle. “My French is a little rusty, but I’ll try.”

All too soon we’ve arrived at your apartment building and we are standing in front of the stoop and you turn to face me and have I spied with my little eye reluctance to part in yours? The evening air is cold. We’re bundled in thick coats and a gust of wind ruffles your hair.

“Well…” you start.

“Well…” I mimic. We are both prolonging goodbye.

“This is me.” You motion to the dark brick building, a careless wave to your right (my left) but you’re still staring at me and you smile.

“I guess it is.” I smile too and briefly glance over at the structure before looking back at you. “I had fun tonight.”

“Me too.” You are positively glowing. Your smile and your eyes and your everything is bright and you are beautiful beneath the yellowish tinge of the street lamp. The time since I saw you in the bookstore had dragged on, agonizing and frustrating, all of it a buildup to tonight, a night which has gone by too fast.

You take a slow, cautious step forward and you’re in my bubble but I don’t mind. And you are close, so close, and I can’t breathe because I’m on a tight rope trying to maintain my balance and you’re on the other side, what I focus on to keep from teetering. I wait and you wait and the rest of New York is forgotten. Then you stand on the tips of your navy blue Mary Janes so you can reach up to kiss my cheek.

“I’ll see you later then, Pete.” You say see you later because goodbye sounds too definite, too sad, and you call me Pete because you’re comfortable with me and you like me and on the inside, I cheer.

“See you soon, [Name].” I watch you walk up the steps and when your hand curls around the doorknob, I call out, “I’ll have the book finished the next time we hang out.”

You look over your shoulder and smile. “I’m holding you to it!”

My own walk home is boring without you around. Our night together has reached a close but my night isn’t done yet. I’ll be suiting up once I’m back at my apartment and you’ll be in the back of my mind as I respond to dispatches I pick up on the scanner. I wonder if you’re on cloud nine like I am, if I’ve inspired you to pick out an Agatha Christie from your personal library to re-read. Maybe you choose the novel I’m currently working through so you can experience it with me.

The spot where you kissed me is still warm and you must be born of the sun. Or if not that, then surely you’re a star of your own, and you’re officially my favorite one if only because you aren’t high in the sky too far away but rather, right next to me, and I don’t know about you, [Name], but I can’t think of a more perfect place than that.

[fizzyren]

NSFW prompt (Lance/Possessed/Angst) from way long ago for @usagi-monet, :,) sorry I’m late, I didn’t forget you. This is on AO3!

Hunk/Lance, possession, alien sex, overstimulation, in heat, multiple orgasms, dry orgasms, pwp, the whole nine yards yall just...read it. 

“Oh god, oh god, quiznak I- guys, guys- ” Lance gasped, frantically patting his hands over his armor, trying to touch for cracks, for some entry point.

“I-I think something just went inside of me, oh my god. I’m going to die . I’m-”

“Lance! Calm down.”

Hunk sighed out beside him, looking at the blue paladin as if this was another joke of his. Lance looked at Hunk pleadingly when he pulled his foot up out of the sticky goop or sap or whatever was coming out of these trees and coating the planet’s surface.

“Hunk, did you not see that-that thing go inside of me!?”

“I didn’t see anything at all other than you shooting at random shadows. Stop playing around, man.”

Hunk shook his head before turning back around, his bayard activated in it’s larger gun form, resting with the end towards the ground.

Lance made a small noise of apprehension, still looking down at himself and then behind as if he might see the figure once again.

Just as quiet as the forest they were in, so too was the...apparition. Lance had no idea what to call it. It had no definite shape and had seemed to float listlessly towards him. Had he been paying more attention to the trees around him and not getting sap off his boots, he could have probably easily dodged the thing. But as it was, Lance looked up right as the opaque fog-like being ran into him with barely a cold touch. It had startled Lance’s bayard to activate and his clenching hand shot a ball of hot plasma into the ground. Hunk’s echoing scream as he whipped around matched Lance’s when he too turned to try and find the source of the fog.

And now it left a sour taste in both their mouths. Hunk upset with Lance scaring him, and Lance upset that there was some whisper-y motherfucker that just waltzed right through him.

They didn’t have long to bicker about it. Lance suddenly felt like a fire had been lit inside his armor. When he looked up to Hunk, ready to ask him if he felt any different too, he paused.

Hunk was staring at him, or more accurately, Lance was staring down the barrel of Hunk’s activated bayard cannon. Confused, Lance took a half step back and held a hand up.

“Woah, hey. What the heck?” he tried to say, but instead what came out was a monotone, “don’t shoot.”

Hunk’s grip on his bayard tightened and Lance could see the narrow of his eyes behind his helmet’s visor. Lance’s voice came out again, devoid of any emotion and fluctuation.

“I will not hurt you. Please put away your weapon.”

“I’m not doing anything you say.” Hunk all but growls, and the yellow gold light of his bayard goes brighter like he’s preparing to shoot. Lance feels himself panic, or is it whatever has suddenly taken over him that is startled?

“You will not shoot your friend. He is precious to you.” He says, or... it says. Like it knows how deep his and Hunk’s bond runs.

Hunk stays quiet and doesn’t move. The...entity takes that as signal to continue or get to its point. Lance, meanwhile, is freaking out at his lack of control on his own body. It feels strange. As if there are blankets wrapped around each of his limbs and holding him close like a swaddled up baby. It doesn’t help to calm him down as his inability to move creates more problems than comfort.

“I will explain more when you take me to your leader,” Lance wants to rolls his eyes at the cheesy line, “all I wish is to seek council with your authority. We are in trouble.”

“And who is we?” Hunk asks carefully.

Lance’s eyes do roll this time, though more on the entity's part.

“Were you listening? I said I will explain only with your leader present.”

“How do I know you’re not just trying to kill us all?”

“Were we in any position of desire to harm you and your team, it would have happened as soon as you entered the forest.”

There’s silence before Hunk finally sighs and lowers his bayard. Lance’s fluttering heartbeat returns to normal as he sighs.

“What did you do to Lance?”

“Your friend is still here. We are simply borrowing his form. Our species is unable to communicate with others without a medium.”

Hunk still looks wary. Lance inappropriately thinks he looks quite handsome like this, a half glare-scowl on his face and his shoulders squared up to make him look straighter. He looks big, strong, worthy, the little voice rooming in his head purrs.

Hunk turns around before speaking, “Hey, Keith? Got something on our end. Mute Lance’s com when you respond though.”

Lance makes to complain but he knows that it’s probably for the better. They don’t know what this thing is. They don’t know if it’s really a friend and not a foe. And right now, Lance is completely compromised. He just wishes it was a little more comfortable.

He expected to still be cold, for that entity’s chill to settle in now that he was….possessed? Inhabited? But there’s been an ever growing heat inside, starting at his toes and fingertips and crawling up.

The entity must sense his unease because it relinquishes control and suddenly Lance can move and speak. He stumbles back when he has to focus on his weight on his knees and feet.

“W-Woah-“ he mumbles, blinking away the sudden dizziness. Hunk turns around in alarm only to see Lance almost fall back again.

He’s saved by the hand on his forearm, holding him upright and Lance’s heartbeat washes the heat over him in stronger, faster pulses. It rises and rises and Lance groans from feeling suddenly lightheaded.

“Lance? Hey, what’s wrong? What’s happening?”

His view of Hunk suddenly blurs into two, and somehow that’s the funniest thing he’s ever seen in his life at the moment and he catches the back end of his own chuckle before he passes out.

Waking back up is, in every sense of the word, hell. Before he can even open his eyes heat swallows him. It burns a headache behind his sinuses and his joints grow stiff. His chest is burning but his stomach and pelvis are boiling.

He doesn’t want to open his eyes, too scared that he’ll see charred skin and bone where his body should be. That thought becomes a fever dream when a chilled hand lays across his forehead. Lance groans and turns into it, not caring who it is, just hoping they stay a little longer.

Cold pressure rubs across his brows and down the bridge of his nose and Lance mumbles Hunk’s name, recognizing the touch.

When he blinks, trying to make sure it really is Hunk, he’s met with a dark room and Hunk’s shadow hovering over him. He looks worried and Lance has an apology on the tip of his tongue ready to make that worry go away.

Heat suddenly pulses through his veins, interrupting that line of thought. It comes again, stronger with the gasp he takes. Hunk’s hands draw away and Lance sobs because that’s so much worse. It makes the heat so much worse. He can hardly see anymore, vision fuzzy and caving in. There’s nothing for him to hold onto as his body feels like he’s been spun around, rotating on one point like an empty bottle.

Hunk’s hands come back on his shoulders and chest when he rolls, trying to stand up. A stupid idea, probably, but it’s too hot to stay laying down anymore. The sheets and mattress under his back were trapping too much heat.

There’s something squirming inside his head. He can feel it pressing between his brain and his skull, slipping through tissue and vessels. He’s suddenly so nauseous he can’t breathe. Words are being spoken to him but he doesn’t understand their meaning. Up becomes down and left becomes right.

Hunk eases him to the floor from where he’d stumbled forward and then he can’t tell where the rest of his surroundings are. Every point of contact between him and Hunk burns ice cold and it’s a drug Lance wants more of. The world falls away.

Hunk however...Hunk is very much freaking out. Not only does his best friend get possessed by a creepy planet alien ghost, but now he’s acting weird. Well, weird doesn’t come close to it. Hunk is just glad Lance is still breathing and not spouting that ‘take me to your leader’ crap.

The situation he’s facing now, might be in the running for being worse, though. Lance is feverish, mumbling in some strange language that Hunk can’t put a name to, and trying to walk away to quiznak knows where. He’s also, somehow, become incredibly strong. Every time Hunk tries to sit Lance down, he’s pushed away.

It’s all fine and controllable until Lance gets Hunk on the floor, flat on his back and hovering with this dazed sway that makes him look like he’s a breath away from passing out again.

“Hurts- ” he whines, breathless when he straddles Hunk’s hips, “it burns. Do something. Please, do something-”

Hunk’s tongue turns to stone in the back of his throat when Lance pushes down without warning, pert bottom rubbing circles on top of Hunk. He has a firm grasp of Hunk’s shirt hem, pressing against his stomach like it’d keep him down while he grinds into him again.

Whatever heat Lance is feeling blends up Hunk’s cheeks.

Now that Lance has gotten a good rhythm for himself, he doesn’t look like he’ll stop any time soon. His head rolls back on his shoulders as he sighs, moans on his next thrust forward and again when his hips swing back. Hunk chokes on the pleasure.

“Th-this is like... the least best way to handle this-” he pipes up, not loud enough it seems. That, or Lance is definitely ignoring him.

“It’s so hot,” Lance moans, filthy and airy and oh quiznak are his eyes glowing?!

Lance’s head rolls again like he’s only upright because of a single string. His eyes are barely open but Hunk can still see the white glow pouring from behind his pupils. The color of his irises bleeds out, turning the glow a baby blue shade that falls on his cheeks.

Hunk finds himself sweating under that gaze. Or maybe he’s sweating because Lance feels like he’s been sitting in an oven for five hours. He’s sweltering hot in his lap and Hunk might actually melt. He’s too scared to touch Lance. Worried he would literally burn himself.

The layers of clothes between him and Lance are suddenly a blessing. Deliriously he thinks, there’s a reason you wear oven mitts when taking something out of the oven.

Hunk remembers that they’re actually in the middle of some negotiations with these alien entities. Whatever is inside of Lance is also somehow inside of Shiro and they are holding a meeting with Allura and the rest of the paladins.

Lance was unable to join, seeing how he’d been unconscious on their return. And with his steady rising temperature, Hunk didn’t want to leave him alone. The problem at hand is….still manageable.

Lance suddenly begins to pull on Hunk’s pants and that “still manageable” runs in the other direction.

“Woah woah woah, what are you doing?” Hunk goes to grab Lance’s hands and gets swatted for his effort. Hunk makes a stressed noise and hovers his hands, not wanting to get slapped again.

“We shouldn’t be doing this. Like really really. You need to be laying down.”

“It’s hot. Don’t wanna lay down. Wanna-” Lance trails off, words slurring to incomprehensible mumbling and murmuring as his heated fingers pull Hunk’s cock free from his boxers. “Burns inside” he gasps.

Hunk meets Lance’s eyes again, and even though the glow is starting to hurt to stare into, it dims when something passes over the light source inside. That something being, what looks to Hunk to be a ball of circles and cubes. The shape is almost crystalline and oh so very tiny. He loses track of it when Lance blinks sluggishly.

It was enough of a distraction that now Lance is completely naked on top of him, and his pants and boxers are bunch up under his knees.

“Oh man- Lance we really shouldn’t be doing this. This is such a bad idea.” he mutters more to himself than anything because Lance isn’t listening to him anymore.

Lance is sweating, body finally unable to handle the dangerous temperatures that his fever is working up. Lance is also trying to seat himself down on Hunk’s half hard cock like it’s nothing.

In a blind panic Hunk grabs Lance under the knees and lifts. They go toppling off to the side and Lance sobs like he’s been shot. He thrashes to try and get free, screaming like Hunk has done something wrong.

“Lance! Lance, stop! You’re going to hurt yourself!”

“A-aaah- I-I can’t-“ Lance’s voice wavers between that monotone pitch and his own frenzied voice. He’s fighting it. Hunk can tell that Lance is trying to be good but whatever is inside him isn’t budging.

Lance moans again before his eyes drop down, looking at Hunk with a burning sort of hunger he knows that he won’t be able to get away from.

“If I give you want you want you have to leave him alone,” he says suddenly. Lance doesn't seem to hear him until his head rolls back and a laugh comes free.

Hunk is busy watching the way Lance’s skin pulls across his collarbones and ribs as he tips back. They’ve not has any way to get UV light but Lance still looks like he’s been on the beach for the weekend. There’s almost this glow to his skin or maybe it’s the sweat, maybe it’s the alien inside him doing something.

When their eyes meet Lance has that backlit look to his eyes again and the monotone voice from the entity inside him actually sounds amused .

“You’re smarter than you look, Paladin.” it purrs. Hunk isn’t amused.

“You didn’t come here to talk with us, did you?”

That laugh comes again, more frantic when Lance squirms and pushes his hips into Hunk’s.

“Your friends have not lasted as long as you in resisting the temptation. Will you allow your Lance friend here to burn himself out? This really is a painful way to go,” Lance’s eyes glow brighter as a sharp grin curves his mouth. It looks eerily out of place on him.

Hunk takes Lance by the jaw and presses in frustration. He can’t hurt this alien without also hurting Lance.

The entity seems to have thin patience the longer Hunk tries to stall.

“The longer your friends fornicate with me the longer your lover here suffers,” Hunk wants to make a comment about them being lovers but the alien continues, “we’re waiting for you. Complete the link.”

It’s cryptic. It makes no sense, and Hunk has a growing feeling that whatever this alien is getting at means that the other paladins are in a similar state as Lance. Probably already fucking each other. Hunk doesn’t know what this thing means by completing the link but he knows now that if he doesn’t Lance will die. Will this affect spread to the other paladins?

He doesn’t dwell anymore on it. He’d made his decision and as a Paladin of Voltron, he has a duty to save people. His fellow teammates included.

Hunk and Lance end up back on the bed again where he can reach the lube he has stashed.

He spends the time prepping Lance despite his protests. And he’s glad for it once he starts to press inside because Lance is almost too tight.

Lance reaches down to grab at the top of Hunk’s thighs, nails biting in as he gasps. The glow in his eyes flickers before fading away and Lance looks Hunk over with clear blue eyes for the first time since this started before shivering. His bottom lip gets caught between his teeth when he stares lower at where Hunk is still inside him, holding still, waiting for a go ahead or for Lance to stop wincing.

It takes a whole awkward three seconds for Lance to finally start making little movements with his hips, up and down to test the feeling. He pushes towards Hunk’s hips and his eyelashes flutter and Hunk has to squeeze his eyes shut to stop looking.

His crush on Lance is nothing new. They practically grew up together. Lance has been with him through everything. And as annoying as Lance is, Hunk has always found himself drawn to the other. Hunk prides himself in being the person Lance is most comfortable with and he takes every casually tossed arm over his shoulder and hug and bump with pride.

They’ve talked about it before too. Lance is very aware of Hunk’s crush. Not because he could see it, course not he’s dense on that romance stuff, but because Hunk had made a mistake of confessing one night at the Garrison as they snuck out to look at the stars and talk about their futures.

Somehow with all of that, they didn’t date. Hunk kept his crush and Lance conveniently didn’t bring it up or voice any feelings that would suggest he felt the same. He just made sure that Hunk knew he wasn’t bothered with it. It made things like this a little tougher.

“Oh god … you’re so big- ” Lance whined, leaning in to slip his hands to the back of Hunk’s thighs and pull. His legs rest up on Hunk’s hips and he grinds down.

Hunk’s chest hurts watching Lance’s head fall back and a moan tumble free. It feels more than good when Lance clenches around him with that noise.

His eagerness is a little unexpected but Hunk could have it worse. He guesses Lance could be actually dead by now. Or trying to hop on someone else’s dick. It’s a though Hunk doesn’t want to linger on.

“Ngh - yeah, yeah right there Hunk I-” Lance gasps, pulling at the back of his thighs harder when Hunk rocks forward with power behind his hips, “fuck yes that feels good!”

The words keep falling past Lance’s lips like he hardly has any control over it and Hunk is almost embarrassed to admit that it’s getting him turned on. But he’s come to accept that Lance sets all sorts of fires in him a long time ago. He’s had plenty a fantasy of having Lance under him like this, whining and begging for his cock.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, deeper. Go deeper Hunk,” Lance babbles again, starting to squirm in his lap. Hunk is stumped for the first time.

He’s quite literally as deep as he can be. Balls pressed up firmly against Lance’s spread open hole, wet and dripping with lube.  He can’t go any further than this despite Lance’s pleading. But damn if he doesn’t try.

He leans over Lance with one arm, other curling under his waist to keep him at a good angle before pulling his hips closer. They slot together a little better this way and it almost feels like he’s deeper even though he knows there’s not much of a difference.

It’s what Lance apparently wanted. He moans, croons to himself while he scrambles against Hunk’s broad back until he’s squeezing his shoulders and biting.

The pain makes Hunk wince, starting to fuck into Lance in hopes it will get him to let go with gasps and noises; It partially works. Lance moves away from biting and scratching to screaming. His eyes are gathering up that glowing charge again as he stares blankly off at the ceiling.

The change almost makes him worried if Lance is about to pass out on him but he keeps mumbling Hunk’s name between pleas for more, deeper, faster. He doesn’t sound different other than his voice being tighter.  

But then he’s clenching around Hunk’s cock and gasping, no actual noise coming from his parted lips. His skin stretches against his throat when he shoves his head back, arch of his neck a mirror to the one in his back.

Hunk pulls Lance closer, kisses under his jaw and chin until he’s shivering and finding his voice again.

“Hunk, keep moving,” he whines, “don’t stop, don’t- oh fuck- fuck, fuck, fuck right there, yes, yeah, right there just like- nnggh-“

Hunk leans back a little, hands finally settling on Lance’s hips when he asks, “are you okay?”

He’s not expecting the full body shudder, Lance’s eyes squeezing shut and head falling back. Hunk doesn’t think it’s in reply to the question, but maybe to the small and shallow thrusts he’s keeping. Even that he’s having doubts about, Lance just came, right?

After a few shaking breaths, Lance tenses up again, toes curling and this time a moan pressing out past his lips, “ah- Hunk-”

“Lance?”

The breathing under him picks up again, whining growing tighter the more Lance squirms. He calls out for Hunk again, lips trembling and eyelashes wet. Hunk tries to comfort him through whatever is happening.

He rubs his hands over Lance’s sides, up over his chest and shoulders to gently cup his face, thumbs swiping away the tears that start falling. He hates seeing Lance cry, but it’s a strange situation and Hunk has a hard time coming to terms with the fact he’s still hard inside of Lance.

“Cum in me,” Lance slurs, head lolling off to the side and then back in the other direction as he tries to open his eyes and focus on the face hovering above him, “gotta- I need it inside!”

Lance’s head bobs once more before the glowing comes back and his voice changes, but even now, the voice sounds out of breath and well-fucked, “complete the link, Paladin.”

Completing whatever stupid link this thing wants isn’t something Hunk think he knows how to actually do, but completing inside of Lance is. That’s easy to do. He’s already wound up so much from Lance squirming on his cock and squeezing around him every time he shifts around on the bed.

There has to be something wrong with him too to have cum so fast, and on command like that, but Hunk doesn’t care anymore. His mind goes peacefully blank for a few seconds, softly lulled through with Lance’s sighing and hands rubbing his shoulders and chest to encourage him or just show his appreciation.

When he comes back to reality, Lance is quiet and unmoving, arms by his sides now rather than trying to touch anything he can reach. His chest is moving slow in time with his breathing and Hunk assumes this is it.

As he pulls out slowly, he wonders if he should be more panicked than he is. This whole thing feels surreal.

The last thing he sees is Lance’s gaping entrance, wet and leaking pearly white onto the sheets. The last thing he hears is that monotone voice in his own head, purring gratitude against every nerve and driving the world black.

[gumnut-logic]

Bad Days

Title: Bad Days

Gentle Rain Series

Author: Gumnut

8 Apr 2019

Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go 2015/ Thunderbirds TOS

Rating: Teen

Summary: Em Harris has bad days.

Word count: 2064

Spoilers & warnings: Scott/Em

Timeline: Sometime after ‘Gentle Rain”

Author’s note: This is to celebrate Nutty injuring her back again yesterday. We all have bad days and Em more so than some. This is also an example of the fact that things are not always as rosy as they seem. I guess we’d all like a Tracy to come to our rescue sometime :D

Disclaimer: Mine? You’ve got to be kidding. Money? Don’t have any, don’t bother.

-o-o-o-

Em Harris has bad days.

There are days that start shitty and will likely end shitty. Days where she is reminded, that yes, she is paraplegic and look, now a double amputee to polish it all off. Days when the nerve pain gets her down. Days where the bare necessities of survival get ahead of her and existence just sucks.

At home, she would call in sick - her practise has back up plans for this exact reason - they’re doctors, they know the deal. She would hole up at home and just get through the day. If it got really bad, she had the visiting nurse to call. There were ways and strategies to get through the suffering and out the other side. Ways to rebuild her core, reinforce her shields and get herself back out there, usually with a smile to face the world.

It was necessary. It happened. She managed it.

But today she wasn’t at home. Today she was on a sparsely populated island in the middle of the southern Pacific.

She had woken to find Scott gone. This was nothing new. The man was a rescue operative, for crying out loud. IR had callouts around the clock. But the moment she gained consciousness, she knew it was going to be one of those days and just for once she granted herself enough selfishness to wish he was there to hold her and simply tell her it was going to be all right.

But she was Em Bloody Harris and she had been doing this alone for a long time. Get your ass out of bed and get the necessaries done, because not doing the necessaries of paraplegic existence really weren’t worth the neglect.

So she got out of bed and to the bathroom and did what she had to do. If there was a moment or two that found her cheek leaning against the coolness of the tiled wall, so be it. She had to get through this, so she would do it any way she could.

By the time she got through her routine, she was exhausted.

The irony of neuropathic pain was that while it damn hurt, it was all fake signals. There was nothing wrong with her beyond what was always wrong with her. It was just a seriously damaged nervous system doing its best to do its job when it couldn’t anymore. Pain was the result and days like today, it could get bad enough to break through her reserves and take her down.

So Doctor Harris downed some painkillers and prescribed herself a day in bed. Curling up under the covers, she closed her eyes and willed the day away.

Unfortunately she forgot to tell the Tracy family.

Sometime after no lunch there was a discreet knock on her door.

She blinked herself awake. She had finally managed some sleep, but her brain hadn’t let her fully escape, providing warped dreams where she was falling and Scott was desperately trying to catch her, but never quite fast enough. Her whole head had spun and it was only the sound of knuckles on wood that had stopped her plunge.

“Em?” Virgil’s voice. “Are you okay?”

Her head was full of cotton wool. The medication had the lovely side effect of dulling her thought processes along with her nerve pathways.

“Em?”

She opened her mouth to reply, but her body chose that exact moment to spasm and instead she found herself curled up working through a wave of pain. There may have been a whimper.

She didn’t hear the click of the door’s lock being overridden, but the voice exclaiming her name and the gentle touch to her forehead was enough to shock her brain into functioning at a bare minimum.

Virgil was crouched beside her bed, worry in every line of his face. “Em, talk to me.”

“Virgil, w-what are you doing in here?”

“Grandma was worried. It is unlike you to miss a meal, much less two. What’s going on?”

She closed her eyes and rubbed her face with a hand. “I’m fine. Juss a bad day.”

She didn’t want to look at him. Em Harris didn’t like vulnerable. Her medical status put her in that position far more often than she preferred and she put up with it, but this was new. This was her boyfriend’s brother, her boyfriend’s family, and to top it all off, Virgil was also one of her patients.

Vulnerability was not an option.

“I’m fine. I just need to get throu-“ And yes, her nervous system was the master of betrayal as it paired up the previous spasm with a lovely demonstration of exactly how bad, bad could get.

She grit her teeth and worked through the pain. Goddamnit, why did it have to hurt so much. The fog in her head wasn’t strong enough. She was due for another dose. She screwed up her face and tears leaked out of her eyes. A moment and she was gasping. Okay, okay, that one sucked. Where was her damned medication?

She opened her eyes to find a hologram of her own body floating above her.

What the hell?

“Em, what medication have you taken?”

“Wha?”

“I need to know what medication you have taken for your neuropathic pain.”

She pointed towards the bedside table and the bottle of pills. Red flannel danced in the shadows.

“I want you in the infirmary.”

“Virgil, I’m fine. I’ve got this handled.” She was so proud of actually finding her voice, she almost missed what he said next.

“Doctor Harris, the patient is in chronic pain, dehydrated and, no doubt, suffering from a low blood sugar level due to self neglect. Our infirmary has equipment that can help. I want you there and I want you there now.”

“I’m the doctor.” It was a stupid thing to say, but her reserves were shot and the thought of being paraded through the house on a stretcher sent chills up what was left of her spine. He would see her. See her injuries. See the real Em Harris. The broken mess under the facade. “No.”

“Em.” He sighed and she suddenly realised she wasn’t talking to Virgil, Scott’s brother. This was emergency responder and medic, Virgil Tracy. The man knew what he was doing. “Trust me.” The voice so many desperate people had heard in the most dire of circumstances.

As with many a rescuee, it worked. “Okay.” Her voice was so small, it was pathetic. So bloody embarrassing. She closed her eyes and hid her face behind her hands.

“C’mon, let’s get you out of that bed.” She couldn’t see him at that exact moment, but she knew he was offering her his arms.

So bloody embarrassing.

She pushed her self up, but, of course, today was a bad day so her body protested.

Loudly.

He caught her as she fumbled, scooping her up with a ridiculous lack of effort and held her close as she rode through it. She ended up gasping, her head on his shoulder, and she discovered he used the same aftershave her father had.

And then she was in tears.

Oh god. Em Bloody Harris bawling her eyes out all over his red flannel shirt. There were comforting noises, his chest rumbling with his soft voice. There was movement. She clenched her eyes shut, desperate to keep the world at bay.

And then he was laying her down on soft, cool sheets. There were beeps of medical machinery. The gentle touch of his warm hands on the skin of her back.

And the pain disappeared.

Oh god, the relief had her sagging into the bed. All her breath rushed out in a whimpered sigh.

Warm fingers brushed her hair out of her eyes. She looked up to find worried brown looking down at her. “Better?”

“Better.”

A small smile of relief flashed across his face, but then he was fiddling with an IV bag, hanging it far above. Exhaustion washed over her.

She didn’t feel the prick in her arm as sleep finally took her.

-o-o-o-

The next time she opened her eyes she encountered a pair of worried blue.

“Em?”

She swallowed. “Scott.” He was sitting beside her bed. She was in the infirmary. How?

Her brain finally decided to start functioning properly and memories lined up in all their embarrassing glory.

Shit.

“Uh, uh, uh.” His hand came down gently on her shoulder, holding her in place as she made to push herself up off the mattress. “You are staying here.”

“But I’m fine.”

A single arched eyebrow. “Tell me what happened.”

“Nothing happened. It was just a bad day.”

“That has you curled up in bed in pain.”

“It happens. I deal with it.”

His lips thinned. “Em, you’re not alone anymore.”

She opened her mouth to scoff at his words, but then their meaning sunk in and her mind jack-knifed.

Her hand was wrapped in one of his and she frowned at it. His other hand reached up and caressed her cheek. “We are not unfamiliar with the effects of injury in this family, Em. We help each other. Yes, there are bad days. We all have bad days. But those days pass better with help.” A ghost of a smile. “This family specialises in help.” He swallowed. “The thought of you hurting alone...I am so glad my brother is a stubborn ass who will chase up any member of this family hiding a damned illness. Please, Em, we’re here. There is no shame in asking for help.”

Her heart was in her throat. It had never occurred to her. She had not even thought about it. All she had seen was embarrassment and inconvenience. His fingers were so warm on her cheek. She closed her eyes and revelled in his touch.

No longer alone.

Oh god, it had been so long.

She bit her lip and was astonished to find herself holding back a sob.

Bloody hell, not again! What the hell was wrong with her today?!

His fingers brushed away a tear. His shadow fell across her eyelids and his lips touched her forehead. Whispered. “Think about it.” A smile against her skin. “I love you, Em Harris, and with me comes a large, bumbling family. You will never be alone again.”

His words had her eyes open and seeking to look at his expression, but he was too close and his lips were brushing hers, his hand in her hair. Ever, ever so gentle. Her gorgeous Scott Tracy.

She fell into the moment.

But he eventually broke it off and she missed his touch as he stepped back, sitting in the chair beside her bed, that still slightly smug smile of his knowing exactly the effect he had on her.

“Virgil says he is going to order a second TEEPS machine for you. Until then you can use Gordon’s as needed. Knowing Virgil, he’ll go and pick it up himself just for peace of mind. No doubt the second machine will be here before we have to worry about the both of you needing it at the same time.”

She blinked. “Why does Gordon need a TEEPS machine?” The thought of the cost of one, much less two, froze her brain for a moment.

“Ah, you’ll have to speak to Gordon about that. You’d be the first one to kill me if I divulged my brother’s medical information to you.”

Bloody hell, yes, she would be following up on that immediately. She had to know this stuff. What if she had to treat him? What if he needed her help? An image of the younger Tracy’s laughing face danced across her mind. Why did he need a TEEPS machine? She was almost terrified to find out.

But then she had seen Virgil’s medical records. Why wouldn’t his brothers’ medical history be any different? Her heart clenched.

“Hey, Gordon’s fine. It’s managed. And yours will be, too.” His hand tightened briefly on her arm. “Now, you focus on you.” And his hand was touching her cheek again. So distracting.

He leant in again. Another kiss.

Oh.

Perhaps he was right. Perhaps her bad days could be a little less bad. Perhaps...and her mind lost its train of thought as his tongue begged entry.

Oh god.

-o-o-o-

FIN.

[fanfictionsrookie]

Cookies And Cabernet: Chapter 1

Ruby never precisely knew how her brain worked.

Then again that should've been expected… especially since it functioned on nothing but cookies, chocolate and strawberries. But the statement was even more true one Saturday morning when she found herself standing in front of the gates to the University of Vale, the country's most prestigious institution of higher education, unable to move.

With wide eyed awe she stared up at the colossal building and the black, red and gold banners decorating the front gates and the rest of the building as it fluttered in the breeze. Almost as if to call over everyone who walked past.

Unfortunately for Ruby the seemingly welcoming sight did nothing to stop the paranoia building up in her chest.

This was her dream University, where the heroes of the world were created. Doctors, businessmen, engineers…people who were destined to make a difference in the world. Ever since Ruby was little she knew that she wanted to be a superhero and this was her chance. But then came the thought of somehow messing things up and it didn't help that Ruby was visiting on her own. Usually she'd be accompanied by one of her friends or sister who were all at least two years older than her. The thought made her even more conscious of how small she felt at that moment.

Without meaning to Ruby found herself swaying on her feet, face buried halfway into her favourite red hoodie. A few moments passed where all she could do was stare at the crowds buzzing with excited conversation, while kicking the ground with her boots and feeling rather silly.

'Come on Ruby! You're not backing out of this one, not on my watch!' She mentally scolded. And with the sudden burst of courage the girl stomped through the gates to the main hall where two rows of students, all dressed in the University's signature uniform, stood. Welcoming everyone with a bright smile, pamphlets and booklets in hand.

Ruby let out a groan of slight annoyance, knowing that she'd have to pass win all those pair of eyes in her.

It wasn't that the girl didn't like people, Ruby loved her friends and family dearly, but around new faces she found herself to be awkward and never knowing what to say. It made first impressions and making new friends difficult, but her grey thoughts were instantly replaced with relief when she saw a head of snow white hair among the others.

"Weiss!" The girl squealed and with a burst of excitement' Ruby rocketed herself with outstretched arms at the familiar face and before the girl could protest, Ruby had her tightly wrapped in a hug, unaware of the the passing stares.

"Let go of me you dolt!" The young woman screeched and made sure to give Ruby a warning glare before straightening out her skirt. "Were in a public place, the least you could do is act like it."

"Sorry Weiss." The girl grinned sheepishly as she scratched the back of her head, further ruffling her crimson tipped locks.

Weiss let out a sigh, knowing very well how Ruby could be at times and offered her friend a small smile. "I'm glad you're could make it." And then proceeded to hand her a booklet but refused to let go as her icy glare met Ruby's shining sliver.

"Blake and I will meet up with you at two o' clock and for the love of Vale. Do. Not. Go. Wandering. Off.'

With that said Ruby scampered off before taking a seat in the back, giddily shuffling around in her seat, gaze wandering about. Everyone around her seemed just as excited as her, but more confident...more intelligent...more important and suddenly it made her feel so out of place.

To be honest Ruby didn't even know why she was invited to this Open Day in the first place. Only the students whose combined math and science scores were among the best were personally invited to attend. The girl wasn't unintelligent by any means, she just never thought of herself as that smart. So it came as a very big surprise when Ruby received the invitation. The poor girl hardly slept a wink the previous night…which might be why she slept through most of Professor Ozpin's welcoming speech.

His very...very...very long welcoming speech. As well as the recount of their student's achievements the previous year.

'...And the student surprising us all with a 94% average…' Ruby was sure that Weiss got all of the academic trophies so she convinced herself that she wouldn't miss anything that important if she zoned out. '…Fall.' But it became very clear that when the groups of people filtered out after the speech, with each group showed around by two students, that Ruby had missed very important information.

Luckily she caught a few words of all of the groups meeting up on the fields, but that's where her luck ended. Ruby had no idea where she was after trying for ten minutes to find it. Now she was walking in an empty hall with classroom doors on each side.

'Come on Ruby come on. Don't freak out just-' But her attempt to regain focus and to calm down a little bit was quickly cut short when she saw clouds of colour crawling out the entrance of a nearby classroom.

Like a child drawn to an ice cream truck Ruby made her way to the door, overcome by curiosity as to how those colourful plumes of smoke were made.

When she hesitantly stepped inside, with her head popping into the room first, the girl was struck with surprise at how big and well equipped it was. Her eyes flew over every corner before landing on a woman standing at the very back.

Clad in black jeans and red top under a chemical dusted and splattered lab coat she was hard at work. All of her attention fixed on the beakers that oozed red, yellow, green and blue clouds. With her shoulder length black hair covering one side of her face Ruby couldn't help but to think that she looked familiar. But no matter how much Ruby squinted at the woman, she couldn't quite put her finger on a name. Then her gaze shifted to the plastic containers that the woman was opening. She carefully measured off the contents by the milligram before adding the red powder to water in a beaker.

'Is she working with Dust?' Ruby wondered to herself, already feeling the excitement build up in her chest.

Dust was highly reactive, especially in its raw form but even when handling it can be dangerous, the risk proved to be worth it once mankind discovered what it could do. After the Schnee Dust Company first started mining for those crystals there was no longer anything that limited man in its usage. So Ruby could only wonder what she was up to. When it looked like she was about to prepare for the next step of the second experiment Ruby sneaked closer, eyes never leaving the crimson liquid.

Then with gloved hands and a pair of tongs the woman took hold of a small metal container that leaked ice cold vapour. Whatever it was Ruby was sure that it had to be very...very cold. And once she emptied its contents into the beaker Ruby wondered if it would crystallize.

But instead she was met with a deafening explosion and the sound of shattering glass shooting in every direction.

Desperately trying to get to cover the girl shielded her face and dived behind the counter. There was a moment of silence and Ruby suddenly grew worried about what might have happened to the other woman. Then she heard the shuffling of shoes upon glass and the muttering of cuss words, gradually growing louder until a loud crash of glass being swept off the counter in frustration, followed.

Tentatively the girl stood up and was met with the sight of the woman pacing around, raking her fingers through her hair and revealing a black eye patch where her left eye should've been. As well as the scars crawling from underneath.

Luckily they seemed to be due to a previous accident.

"Are…are you okay?" She managed to choke out, almost shivering when she felt a cold and calculating glare move up and down her body. Suddenly Ruby felt very self conscious.

"Can I help you?" She shot and Ruby was surprised at how uncharacteristically hoarse her voice sounded. That and the look in her amber eye, enough to make the girl sink behind the counter again.

"Hi. Uhm…sorry I just wanted to see what uh... you were working on and stuff. The fog uhm... it was really pretty." The girl finished with a nervous smile, hoping to diffuse the growing tension between them.

"And I suppose you couldn't have knocked beforehand?"

Ruby could tell that the woman was angered at the fact that her experiment had gone so wrong and her unwanted presence, but to be fair Ruby knew that she had been intruding, the girl was never supposed to be here in the first place.

"I'm really really- ouch." Ruby tried to apologize, but was cut short when she felt a jolt of pain shooting up her arm. And when she looked down, the girl let out a surprised gasp upon noticing the gashes on her arm and hand, as well as the shards of glass jutting from out the drying blood.

"Oh no." Was all she managed to say with the only thing snapping her out of her thoughts, being the mentioning of the woman's red painted finger nails to give Ruby her arm.

"Uhm you don't-"

But the woman didn't give Ruby a chance to protest and grabbed hold of the girl's wrist, ignoring her winces as she pulled closer. Only to let go with a sigh as she made her way towards the exit.

"Come with me."

Ruby knew that sigh all too well, it was one that she frequently heard around Weiss when she was either being bothered or being driven into a difficult position yet too polite to say anything. It was obvious that this mess wasn't something the woman wanted to deal with.

"I don't wanna bother you or anything." She tried to protest in hopes of releasing her of the burden that she was clearly being.

"Should I leave you to bleed out then?" The woman asked, the look in her eye indifferent, like it wouldn't matter to her at all. But still however it seemed this woman was offering to help and Ruby didn't like the images of losing a hand, flashing through her mind.

"Oh right… thanks." She stuttered and timidly followed her as she briskly walked through the empty halls. The woman strutted like she had all the confidence in the world, like everything belonged to her even though she wore used-to-be-white sneakers.

For a moment Ruby found herself wishing for that kind of confidence.

They walked further and further from the excited buzz that Ruby could faintly hear coming from the fields.

The girl let out a soft sigh, only then managing to grasp the position she was in. Not only was she nowhere near where Weiss told her to be, but she was also dragging a woman who clearly had better things to do, to patch up the mess she got herself into.

Why didn't she just listen to Weiss and stayed in that same place until they came looking for her?

"Uhm is this the right infirmary?" There was a hint of worry to her voice when they stopped at a locked door.

"I prefer to work in silence." She stated, surprising Ruby completely when she pulled a key from her pocket and unlocked the door. "And since you were injured in my presence that makes you my responsibility."

The woman gestured for Ruby to sit on the nearest bed while she rummaged through cabinets for gauze, tweezers and disinfectant.

"I'm Ruby. Ruby Rose." The girl introduced herself with a nervous smile, as if their sudden acquaintance would make her forget that she was letting a complete stranger give her medical treatment. "Sorry I never introduced myself. Kinda busy with not getting blown up and stuff." This time her smile didn't falter under an intense stare.

"…Cinder Fall." The woman finally said, her voice carried some kind of authority when she ripped open a package of disinfectant wipes.

Ruby prepared herself for the pain that she was sure was yet to come but surprisingly Cinder treated her injury with care. The only pain being the occasional sting as she removed the glass and excess blood. The girl didn't know whether looking at her would come off as rudely staring or not doing so would make Cinder think that she found her appearance off-putting. But Ruby looked anyway, watching the woman drift into some kind of rhythm like caring for students who got into trouble was something she was used to.

"I presume this isn't the first time an experiment had gone wrong in your presence Ruby Rose." Cinder stated, breaking the silence as she slowly turned the girl's hand to look for any cuts she might have missed.

"How'd you guess?" Ruby didn't think her being clumsy would be that obvious and the thought brought a blush to her cheeks.

"Perhaps the fact that you didn't run for a faucet once you realised you might be contaminated with Dust particles."

She couldn't help but to chuckle, half embarrassingly scratching the back of her head with her free hand.

"I did that once with a neutralization experiment in tenth grade after I got some stuff on me. I thought the water was gonna burn my hand off or something."

"Well aren't you careless for an aspiring chemist." She stated dryly and began wrapping up the cuts with gauze. Ruby wasn't sure whether it was a compliment or not.

"Why do you think I want to be something like that?"

Although she was finding it very strange how the woman could point things about her in such a casual manner.

"I don't think a business student will come sneaking into a class room because they thought an experiment was 'pretty'." Cinder answered simply as she finished clipping the bandage into place and started to put away the medical supplies. "But perhaps even they will know better than to observe without caution and to keep necessary safety measures in mind."

With her cheeks now a glowing red blush Ruby followed in suit, shuffling after Cinder as she handed her the equipment to be put away. With the woman only using the one hand. Her right one to take it from Ruby. The girl wondered if those burns still hurt, but she didn't feel like it was her place to ask.

After cleaning up the infirmary the two of them headed back to the science lab and as usual the silence between them because too uncomfortable for Ruby to bear.

"Do you uhm…know what went wrong with it? Unless it was supposed to explode like that."

"The Dust was contaminated, traces of other chemicals must have been in contact with it during the previous practical session."

Cinder knew precisely whose fault that was and she was determined to make them very sorry for their negligence. They'll remember not to cross her ever again.

"I suppose this is where you take your leave then?" Cinder stated coolly as she opened the door, instantly hit with the scent of smoke wafting in the air.

Ruby shook her head in protest. "Oh no I couldn't leave you with all that glass and stuff."

"You had nothing to do with that accident, you merely got caught in the crossfire."

"And you took care of me after I got cut." Ruby fired back, surprising even herself when she heard her voice grow a pitch louder.

Cinder's eye widened slightly upon hearing how adamant she sounded, the woman didn't think the girl could be absolute about anything.

"The least I could do is help you clean it up."

Cinder then watched as the girl tried in vain to intimidate her by crossing her arms, and trying her best to prove that it didn't hurt at all, as well as straightening her posture. For a moment Cinder found herself thinking of that little Schnee that she'd grown to have such a distaste for. A thought that would usually irritate her, but instead Cinder found herself to be slightly amused.

Perhaps she had misjudged her a bit. The woman didn't know if she should be relieved at the fact or not, but for now she let it slide.

"I'd appreciate it."

There were more pressing matters to attend to after all.

"Ruby Rose!"

But just as Cinder was about to let the girl in, a horrific screech rang thorough the halls, stopping them both in their tracks.

At the end of the hall a fuming Weiss Schnee was storming towards them. The sight was almost enough for Ruby to hide behind Cinder for cover. And before she knew it, the young woman was standing right before her and there was no escape. All Ruby could do was prepare herself for the scolding that was sure to come.

"You are in so much trouble young lady! I explicitly remember telling you not to go wandering off."

Ruby smiled apologetically at her friend but Weiss gave her no time to explain.

"Do you have any idea how far behind schedule you put me? I should have you-" But once Weiss caught a glance of the woman staring daggers down at her, her attention was quickly diverted.

As she turned towards Cinder, Weiss instantly regained her composure.

"…Cinder." She greeted with bitter distaste that the young woman didn't even bother hiding.

"Schnee." Cinder's raspy voice was now more of a growl than anything else, easily holding Weiss' icy glare.

The heiress looked between the two, quickly hiding her annoyed expression as she opened her mouth to speak. "Now what if I might ask-"

"No you may not." The woman cut her off, successfully baffling the young heiress.

"E-excuse me?"

"What I do with my time is hardly any of your business now is it?" Cinder's tone was as cold as ice and Ruby watched the scene unfold with disbelieving silver eyes.

"You two know each other?" She ventured, hoping to relieve the tension between the two, thick enough to be cut with a knife.

"Unfortunately." Weiss deadpanned as she put a hand on her hip, almost daring the other to return fire. The last thing Ruby wanted was for a fight to break out because for some reason Ruby just knew that Weiss didn't really know what she was getting herself into.

"She doesn't mean it!" The girl waved her off, Cinder didn't look convinced.

"Weiss is just a little-"

Stubborn, bossy, sassy, judgy. Ruby couldn't really pick one.

"Conceited." Cinder added, enjoying the heiress' red faced expression far too much.

"Don't talk about me like I'm not here. And how dare you!" The young woman scolded, having had enough of this ridiculous banter. When she shot Ruby a warning glare Weiss grabbed hold of her wrist and started leading her away.

"Ow Weiss. Owowowowow." The girl quickly wormed her way out of her friend's grasp and it was only then when the heiress noticed the bandages.

"What-" Her wide eyed concern was quick to turn to slits as she accusingly pointed at Cinder. "If you have something to with this-"

"Nononono Weiss it wasn't Cinder's fault." Ruby came to her rescue and when she turned back to Weiss she could see that the young woman wanted an explanation that instant.

"Well I uh…" As Ruby's gaze wandered about the area a sudden laugh escaped her lips, it was strange how the incident seemed funny now when an hour ago she wanted to die of embarrassment."I maaaay have gotten cut by some exploding glass but Cinder fixed me up at the infirmary sopleasedon'tbemadokay?"

Ruby lifted her hands with an assuring smile for Weiss to see the other's handiwork, then mentioning to Cinder. "See she's…nice."

Cinder couldn't help but to scoff at the comment ,she had been called many things in her life and 'nice' wasn't one of them. At least it seemed to calm the Schnee down enough for her to turn heel with nothing more than a 'Let's go Ruby.'

The girl was hesitant to leave however. "Ah Weiss wait… I still have to help Cinder clean up."

She then watched Ruby turn halfway back to her while continuing to stumble onwards.

"I'll be back later okay!" She shouted down the hallway, reaching out to her like it was some kind of promise. "I'll come back if you need some help."

With that said the view of Cinder disappeared once they rounded a corner, leaving the woman standing alone in the hallway and uncertain as to how she should feel.

The girl had piqued her interest that's for sure, but whether it was a good or bad thing was up for debate, Cinder supposed that she'll just have to wait and see...

For the rest of the day, Ruby along with a group of visitors followed Weiss and Blake through the campus. From lectures about the University's history to the number of courses that are available as well as with fun activities, they were kept busy until four.

Ruby could honestly say that the day went on better than she thought it would. …Okay she could've gone without the history lessons, but still!

When the Open Day came to a close the masses of aspiring students trickled away until only a few groups stood scattered about. Weiss was still busy answering questions and Ruby saw it as her chance to slip away. Even though the girl very much doubted that Cinder would still be there, she knew that she had to go and check anyway. Ruby did promise her after all. When running at full speed ,and nearly into a glass door, it took a while for her to find the same laboratory again without getting lost.

In a blur of red and black Ruby rounded the last corner just as Cinder came walking down the corridor. Ruby slammed her heels into the tile and skidded to a stop before she could crash into the woman, who watched with incredulity.

"Haven't you been taught not to run in the halls?" Cinder's tone was cool as she spoke and when Ruby looked up she stared straight into molten amber, her face a few inches from hers.

"S-sorry." She stuttered as she shuffled backward, her fingers subconsciously playing with the bandages on her arm. "I thought I could catch up to you before you finished cleaning up."

Cinder's eye widened in slight surprise, pursing her lips in thought. So this girl was serious after all. Even after what must've been a very busy day, Ruby still came back to offer her help. Foolish.

"Guess I'm not as fast as I thought." She confessed with a sheepish grin, swaying on the balls of her feet and timidly meeting Cinder's eye again. The woman couldn't help but notice how those silver orbs smiled back at her.

Foolish? No.

Naive maybe… but not foolish. Perhaps sincere was a better word. Cinder searched her mind for it, as if she would when skimming through a dictionary. It was a word she hasn't used in ages and just like the strangeness of this girl, Cinder couldn't quite put her finger in it.

"You just missed me I'm afraid."

Ruby's expression visibly fell and she couldn't help but feel bad at the promise she wasn't able to keep, even if Cinder didn't think of it as a big deal.

Why was this girl so adamant about helping her in some way, the woman wondered. Her eye slowly moved from Ruby's concrete scraped sneakers and up to her shining silver eyes. Cinder wasn't necessarily annoyed but the concept was just so foreign, perhaps that's the reason why she was so intrigued by this girl.

"I suppose some company wouldn't hurt." She finally gave in with a sigh as she smiled to herself before adjusting the book bag strap on her shoulder.

"Walk with me?"

With that said the woman gestured with manicured nails, Ruby happy to oblige. Once they were out of the building and walking along the edge of the field, Cinder pulled out a packet of cigarettes from her book bag. Followed by a lighter from her pocket.

"So you're a third year?" Ruby ventured and for a split second Cinder's face lit up with a spark before the veil of smoke covered it, then slowly reached for the sky.

"First." Cinder corrected and her eye lazily drifted to the girl, mouth curling the cigarette between a faint smile.

Ruby's nose wrinkled at the smell but she couldn't decide whether she liked it or not. She probably shouldn't. Smoking was bad, that she knew. But like all things, once a teenager was told not do something they automatically wanted to the opposite. But curiosity was all it was, Ruby knew that if she ever tried it her sister would kill her.

"I take it you're in Matric?" Cinder deducted, but when she saw Ruby perk up at the sound of an ice cream truck nearby, the woman knew that she had to be a few years off.

Or it was just a part of her personality.

"Ah almost." Ruby grinned sheepishly, rising a hand to shield her eyes from the sun peeking through the row of trees. "I'm in grade eleven this year." Usually people would guess her to be about fifteen but then again she was attending a University Open Day.

"What do you plan on studying?" Cinder asked as she flicked the ashes from the cigarette butt, rising her brow inquiringly at Ruby who just shrugged in reply.

"I want to go into engineering but I'm not all that smart." She explained and sheepishly scratched the back of her head. "So I don't really know."

"You needn't be smart miss Rose." Cinder stated and the two of them came to a halt at a fountain close to one of the entrances. "All you need is to put in some work and the rest will work for you."

And strangely when Ruby stood next to her, she didn't feel as nervous anymore. For a few moments they stood staring at the statue of Professor Ozpin in the middle of the fountain. When Ruby looked at Cinder her eyes widened at the sight of the fading sunlight framing her silhouette with golden light. The reflection seemed to set her eye on fire, smouldering in thought.

"So perhaps I'll see you here in a few more years miss Rose."

Whatever might have gone through her mind, was not betrayed by her gaze that was always guarded…until she looked back at her.

"But this is where I take my leave." Cinder finally said with a hint of disappointment and as she turned to Ruby she offered her a hand, that the girl took with a bit of downcast. "Yeah I guess it's getting pretty late."

The girl was surprised to see the small smile that Cinder offered her and she instantly brightened up, returning the gesture tenfold with a beaming grin.

"It was really nice to meet you Cinder." And before the woman could protest Ruby wrapped her in a quick hug, catching her completely off guard but she was quick to regain her composure. For a moment her calloused tone was soft when she stepped back.

"Likewise miss Rose."

Just before she turned to walk down the street, the woman glanced over her shoulder and met Ruby's eye with a knowing smile.

"I hope you'll stay out of trouble in the future."

The girl couldn't help but giggle and gave her a small wave, watching Cinder disappear into the sunset with both contentment and a strange melancholy in her silver eyes…

It was nearing midnight but the Rose and Xiao Long household was still shaking with music, singing and cheers. But then again this was a Yang Xiao Long party so Ruby should've known that it would keep her up till late.

The girl wasn't really sure why her sister decided to throw this party, but it wasn't like her she needed a reason to have fun. That was just the way she was, but when her father told them that he would be away for the weekend Ruby should've known Yang would pull some sort of stunt. Not that Ruby minded that much, crazy parties were what made Yang…Yang and she loved her sister. But at that moment Ruby would've loved her more if she didn't stash the cookie supply in the top cabinet.

"Come…ooon just a little closer." When she stood on her toes her fingers only managed to brush against the box. And with one final attempt she jumped up, knocking her hand against the box for it to sway back and forth before tumbling over into the girl's hands. "Gotcha!"

"Aren't you a bit young to be attending a college party?"

The girl nearly jumped up in fright at the sudden sound of a voice behind her, hoarse and nearly breathless. Recognition struck her instantly. With a quickening heartbeat the girl turned around to see a familiar face, one half obscured by short ebony hair and the other side with a golden eye staring back.

Cinder.

But instead of casual jeans, t-shirt and sneakers the woman wore something entirely different. It made Ruby wonder if she just didn't inhale some alcohol fumes and was now seeing things.

The girl could hardly look at anything else besides that red dress with intricate gold patterns twisting down the long sleeves, as well the low cut exposing her long and slender- 'No Ruby. Bad! You're being gross.' The girl mentally slapped herself, trying to get a grip by shaking her head to get the images out of her mind.

"No good?" The woman asked with a faint smile on her lips when she noticed the girl staring, mocking half-hearted disappointment as she did so. She then grabbed a few glasses and a bottle of red wine from the counter before making her way to the living room.

"Oh no- I mean yes!" The girl insisted as she followed, her cheeks growing a darker shade of red and the tone of her voice a pitch higher.

"I just didn't recognise you for a bit." Ruby scratched the back of her head with a sheepish smile before sitting down on the opposite edge of the couch. Cinder said nothing and took a long sip of her wine, eye never leaving the girl and Ruby couldn't help but fidget next to her.

Suddenly Ruby didn't know whether she was intruding or not and the silence between them, well as much silence that is possible at a party involving Yang, didn't make things easier.

"I didn't know you knew my sister." Ruby leaned toward the coffee table to grab a handful of chips, then happily crunching away at them.

"I don't." She stated and slowly stared to swirl around the red liquid in her glass before draining the last of it. "But Belladonna insisted that I attend."

Out of all the people that Cinder got to know over the past year, Blake was one of the few who didn't instantly discard her after learning as to how she got into the University.

"Oh yeah." Ruby brightened up at the mention of one of her friends. "Blake mentioned you before."

Cinder smiled to herself. "Good things I hope."

The woman would never say it but for that she was grateful. She could talk to someone without wondering what Blake would say about her behind her back, not that Cinder cared for other's opinions. It also helped that they shared a similar interest in reading material, one that was fairly hard to come by these days.

When the woman's mind drifted back to reality her gaze landed on Ruby's arm, the one that had gotten cut a few weeks ago.

"I take it you've been staying out of trouble?" She asked, putting down her glass before reaching out to take Ruby's hand. Cinder's touch was both silky smooth and calloused at the same time with one hand holding hers and the other absentmindedly tracing over where the cuts used to be.

"Perfect." The woman observed but even as her hands left Ruby's the trace of her touch lingered, still ghosting over the girl's palms.

"Hehe yeah you fixed me up real good."

When Cinder's attention shifted so did Ruby's gaze wander to the puddles of water leading from the kitchen to the sliding door. She could faintly hear the splashing of water and Sun yelling 'cannonball!'before diving into their pool outside... followed by Neptune's panicked screaming.

"Sauvignon?" Cinder offered, eyebrow raised inquiringly as she held out another glass of red wine, snapping Ruby out of her thoughts.

"Ah no thanks. I don't drink." She wasn't eighteen yet and that much should've been very clear but it didn't seem like Cinder minded at all.

"Pity. It's all the way from Mistral and the first of the season."

So Ruby took the glass anyway and watched with curious silver eyes as how to hold it, fingers fumbling at first.

Ruby had seen Yang and her friends drink a bunch of times before, but this was something different. The girl didn't think that downing a shot was the same as drinking Cabernet Sauvignon.

Swirling the glass for the wine to lap up against it Cinder inhaled the piquant flavour before taking a sip, closing her eye to savour the rich black cherries mingling with herbs and oak. After carefully paying attention, Ruby tentatively followed in suit, but when the bitter taste touched her tongue she nearly gagged.

"Ackh!"

Cinder watched amused as Ruby desperately tried not to twist her face into unimaginable expressions. Then as casually as the girl could muster, she reached for a box of cookies to drown out the bitter taste in her mouth.

"But I suppose I should've picked a different one."

If it wasn't for the laughter in Cinder's raspy voice Ruby would have just dug her merlot cheeks into a couch pillow.

"I guess I wasn't ready for it." Ruby couched and couldn't help but to feel rather childish at that moment. "I never had wine before." But then again this woman seemed to be mature far beyond her years.

"I forgot that most tastes aren't piquant and bitter as mine."

Suddenly Ruby wished that she liked the more adult things in life, but the girl also thought that the opposite was true for Cinder. Despite their mutual dislike Ruby could see a lot of similarity between Weiss and Cinder.

"Maybe you just need to learn to like sweet stuff too." The girl offered light heartedly before attempting to take another drink, nearly spitting it out again when Cinder leaned her face a few inches from hers, rising an eyebrow and smiling curiously.

"Like?"

It must have been the alcohol, because for some reason Ruby couldn't remember the name of a single cookie that she had eaten in her lifetime.

"I uh-"

"Hey Ruby do you know whe-" The two men walking in stopped dead in their tracks once they saw the scene before them. Ruby's head snapped to the side and instantly she could feel her cheeks heat up for what felt like the tenth time that night. Standing with their towel-wrapped-but-still-soaked bodies Ren and Jaune looked from Ruby to Cinder…and from Cinder to Ruby.

"Are we interrupting?" Ren asked, ready for them to leave if need be.

"Oh n-no we were just talking and stuff." Ruby insisted as she shot back to the opposite end of the couch. "Did...did you guys need anything?" The girl was seemingly oblivious to Jaune's discomfort after noticing Cinder.

Although they were only a few years apart 'a boy' was all Cinder would ever see him as and she smiled to herself when she could see him grow uncomfortable under her unwavering gaze.

"Nora is looking for those water guns… do you still have them around?" He wondered out loud, looking everywhere that wasn't at Cinder.

The two of them had met before, but the circumstances were not pleasant and although Jaune knew that Cinder had no official power over him, she was not one to be trifled with.

"Oh yeah sure I'll go get 'em for you guys." The girl agreed happily and jumped up to her feet, leading the way.

"I'll be back okay!" Ruby called out to Cinder with a small wave of her hand before disappearing behind a corner. And when she watched the girl leave Cinder couldn't help but feel as if the atmosphere had grown dull and the Sauvignon a tad more bitter...

When Ruby came back with a slight skip in her step, Cinder was sitting there, eye glancing at passerby's with half lidded disinterest.

"Not much of a party person hu?" She girl mentioned as she sidled up next to her.

"I'll admit it's not my type, no." The woman confessed with a wry smile. Cinder had been to many high school and college parties, but the appeal had worn off long ago. Now drinking until you passed out just seemed so mindless to her, she wanted something to be worth her time.

"Yeah I'm not that into it either." The girl shrugged as she watched the mass of drunken bodies sway to the beat of window-shaking music. "I just like having a few friends over you know?"

Cinder answered with a silent nod, grateful that she wasn't the only one feeling rather out of place. And as she reached for one of the cookies on the table, Ruby was moulding over what she wanted to say, figeting with her eyes darting from and to her. The girl bunched up the soft fabric of her t-shirt in her hands before exhaling, releasing her words as she turned to her.

"…W-would you maybe like to come to my room instead?"

Cinder couldn't help but to crack a grin and her hoarse voice seemed to laugh before biting down on the chocolate chip treat. "I'd never think you'd be so bold miss Rose."

When Ruby realised what the context of her words implied, the girl thought she would explode right then and there. "Wha- oh nonononono." She waved her hands around frantically as if to get rid of the sudden hot air around them. "I just meant like to talk and stuff not…not bad stuff- not that there's anything wrong with that stuff I uh-"

As her words stared to fail her Ruby dug her face into a couch pillow like an ostrich into the ground, hoping that it would shield her from further embarrassment.

"I'm just teasing little Rose." The woman reassured, delight clear in her tone when she reached out to comb through her hair, fingers playfully toying with the crimson tipped locks. "No need to be embarrassed."

If the gesture was meant to calm her down it sure wasn't working because Ruby was sure that the shades of red on her face just darkened tenfold.

The girl wasn't even sure how exactly it happened. One moment she and Cinder were drinking wine on the couch and the next they were sitting on the carpet of Ruby's room. Both were locked in an intense battle of Kung Fu Ninja Slayers Ultimate Death Battle 2.

This was where Ruby was supposed to be in her element and show the other how its done, and maybe try to impress her a bit with her awesome gaming skills. Unbeknownst to Ruby, Cinder's hand eye coordination was better than she let on. What was supposed an easy win turned into something much more difficult.

"Eat this!" The girl exclaimed as she slammed her thumbs down on the controls, ready to chop the head off Cinder's character. But the woman blocked and countered her combo with ease, slashing away another chunk of her opponent's health bar.

"You're predictable miss. Rose." The woman warned, and turned to Ruby with a pleased glint in her eye once the screen flashed 'GAME OVER.'

The girl let out a groan and rolled around on the floor as an attempt to release her frustration. "No fair. I demand a rematch!" The girl pointed accusingly at Cinder who merely smiled in return.

"I wouldn't expect anything less."

And so for most of the night they spent bashing away at controllers until Ruby was satisfied that she had won enough times to at least be on par.

"How can you be good at science and video games at the same time?" She asked while stuffing her mouth with more treats. They had successfully brought half of the kitchen into Ruby's room, but the girl doubted that Yang would notice. Even if she did, the chances of her making it up the stairs were very slim.

"I could ask you the same thing." Cinder replied as she made herself to the window, needing a quick nicotine fix. It was only when she opened the window that the woman discovered a makeshift balcony on the roof.

"I hope this is safe." She remarked, leaning out the window and feeling a cool breeze waft in the air.

"Oh yeah." The girl was quick to jump up to her feet, nearly tripping over her makeshift blanket cape as she did so. Suddenly there was a sense of pride in her voice. "My mom built it for me a long while ago." And as she clambered through the window a soft giggle escaped her lips. "My dad isn't allowed to fix stuff in the house anymore."

After making sure that she was still steady on her feet Cinder tentatively followed, now standing under a roof that must've been built after as well as a wooden fence running along the edge where Ruby was standing. Deep in thought the girl stared ahead, the silver of her eyes seemed to reflect the stars in the night sky and Cinder caught herself staring when she came to stand beside her.

"So...have you always lived in Vale?"

"I moved here from Mistral actually." The woman confessed and reached for her pack of cigarettes. There was only two left.

"I've visited Mistral with my uncle Qrow once." The girl mentioned and smiled happily at the memory. "It was so much fun and so many stuff to do…lots of fun stuff."

Cinder couldn't help but to crack a smile at the girl's subconscious slurring, dry red wasn't her cup of tea but late harvest sweet wine sure proved to be.

"It's certainly busier than Vale." She agreed and lit herself a cigarette, hoping to numb the headache that was surely coming along.

"Why didn't you…study at Haven?"

Deep intake followed by a slow release and with half lidded eyes the woman savoured the burn at the back of her throat and watched the high turn into smoke.

"I needed a change of scenery I suppose."

"Well I'm glad that you came to Vale." Ruby murmured and she gently leaned against Cinder who smiled softly in return. When the breeze started to shake them with shivers, the two women sat together on one of the bean bag chairs on the balcony. Ruby's blanket cape was draped halfway over them. They didn't want to go inside just yet. Outside the harsh drumming of music faded into a gentle thump and the fingers combing through Ruby's hair should've been enough to send the girl off to sleep.

"I think I wanna remember this." The girl mumbled as she watched the small ember light up and fade out with each breath the other took. "…Remember you."

When the other stopped her absent minded untangling of her hair, Ruby looked up at Cinder and finding her seemingly conflicted for a moment before her gaze softened and her touch drifted down to cup the girl's cheek.

"And I you miss Rose." She whispered and the girl erupted in a fit of giggles. The girl didn't quite know in what state of mind she was at that moment. The line between sober and intoxicated had become foggy just like her thoughts.

"R-Ruby. Just call me Ruby."

But the feelings she had were pleasant, a warm kind of fuzzy, just like Cinder who slowly leaned closer to whisper into her ear.

"Ruby."

The girl couldn't stop the giggles bursting from her mouth when she felt the tickling of Cinder's breath on her ear. The woman grinned slyly as she moved towards her neck.

"Ruby."

"Hahahaha You…you say it weird." She continued to laugh and squirm, but doing that without falling off proved to be very difficult. Somehow Ruby had gotten herself into a position that the girl couldn't escape. With Cinder casually leaning over her.

"Care to elaborate Ruby Rose?" There was a tone of authority to her husky voice, but her eye smouldering with amusement gave everything away.

At the back of her mind Cinder knew that she was drunk, but she couldn't bring herself to care. She hadn't felt like this in years, like a silly teenager, not because those years had passed but rather because she was never allowed to be. But with this girl…with Ruby she could be someone else.

"Nope." The girl teased and stuck out her tongue in a rather childish manner, and with that Cinder settled back down next to her. A moment of silence fell between them where Ruby contently listened to the slow rise and fall of the other's breathing.

"Doesn't it hurt?" She delicately started to trace the golden patterns of the woman's dress. "…Or burn I guess." Ruby went on, gaze shifting to Cinder.

"A little." There was a lazy smile on her lips, and the mirth in her amber eye, half closed. "But it's pleasant."

"It's a good kinda burn?" She asked, tilting her head to the side, foggy mind not quite wrapping around the concept and Cinder couldn't help but to smile.

"What a curious one you are..." She murmured and leaned forward, faces inches apart as she turned the cigarette towards Ruby's lips, offering a taste to satisfy her curiosity.

With the alcohol swimming in her head the girl gingerly closed her mouth around the cigarette. Surprisingly she found it to be warm and laced with the lingering taste of cherries…Cinder's lip gloss she guessed. Her silver eyes looked to the woman for direction.

"Breathe in slowly." She instructed, gaze never leaving the girl as Ruby's eyes fluttered to a close, brow forming a soft crease with small plumes of smoke leaking from her lips. Those soft, delicate lips that she just wanted to capture as her own.

"You need to exhale little Rose." The woman smiled and clumsily shoved her intoxicated thoughts to the back of her hazy mind.

And when Ruby blew the smoke into the night it was between splutters and coughs, it's warm touch grazing against Cinder's skin.

"Yeeaahp…" The girl drawled, head lolling to the side to find a resting place in the crook of Cinder's neck, inhaling the sharp scent of her perfume before cracking a grin. "Good burn."

It was like watching a child discover something new for the first time, fumbling as how to hold it once Cinder let go to reach for another one. Without a second thought Ruby took another drag and nearly swallowed the cigarette whole when Cinder leaned forward to light hers with the small smouldering ember.

"Breathe."

Half lit and only inches apart Ruby could clearly map out the curve of her cheekbones and the fine lines between smooth and scarred skin. She knew that she was staring but then again so was Cinder.

For some reason neither of them really minded…

The rest of the night and early morning hours went by in a hazy blur of washed out colour and white noise as they talked about anything and everything. Glimpses of their life were shared in between bits of faded memory, until both were on the verge of passing out or crashing down from their high.

"…Cinder?" Ruby mumbled, using all of her remaining energy to keep her eyes from falling to a close. She knew that if it did, it wouldn't open until noon. "Mmm- I drunk?"

"…I'm afraid so." Her voice was hoarse with fatigue but even so Ruby could hear the ghost of a smile

"Does 'hat mean I'll have a… crazy bad headache when wake up an'… I'll be addicted to smokin' n' stuff?"

"Don't worry little Rose...you will be quite alright." She comforted, her whisper nearly lost before it reached her. "But yes, you might have a hangover."

The girl let out a yawn before turning to snuggle deeper into the warmth next to her. "Don' tell Yang 'kay?" And after finally giving in Ruby's eyes fell to a close, diving deep into her sub consciousness, warm and welcoming to sleep.

"Your secret's safe with me."