#I have so many tips for my current bingo card but like no time to finish them :’(

[mikeyp16]

THANK YOUUUU for ur Steve x Logan art I’ve been obsessed with them since I first watched Evolution…but it seems literally nobody gives af about them 💔💔💔

AAAA YOUR WELCOME!!

I’m happy to see I’m not the only one!! :DD I too became obsessed after watching Project Rebirth in XEvo and it actually shocked me that there’s so little content!! There is like so much untapped potential!!!

But hey! Can’t find content? Fine! I’ll make it myself

[bcdrawsandwrites]

[ID: The first image Psychonauts fanfic banner on a black-to-gray gradient background. On the left in white text it says “Prompt #5: Never Be Hurt Again” On the right is a light blue animated figment of a scaler (a long metal dental tool with thin hooks on either end).

The second image is a Bad Things Happen Bingo card. Various prompts are marked with a half-brain (prompt requested but not filled) or full-brain (prompt requested and finished) symbol, while the “Never Be Hurt Again” prompt specifically is marked with a full brain symbol. /end ID]

Okay I keep forgetting to post this, but I thought of it just now so I’m finally taking an opportunity to get this posted! Here is, FINALLY, my next fic for my @badthingshappenbingo​ challenge! \

I am currently NO LONGER OPEN FOR REQUESTS. I have enough to work on to get a bingo! I MAY decide to reopen prompts later if I want to keep going after finishing these fics, but for now, requests are closed!

This request is for @loveandmad​! Hope you enjoy it! Also big thanks to @jaywings​ and Pinky G Rocket for beta-reading.

Prompt: Never Be Hurt Again Characters: Caligosto Loboto, his parents, and various OCs for his backstory Warnings: Emotional manipulation/parental abuse, (SPOILERS: implied dental torture)

---~~~---

Traffic honked and wailed in the streets below his window. It was not the city he had been in originally, the one that his parents sent him to a few years ago; he had chosen this city.

—~~~—

"Stoneton?" Caligosto looked from the pen in his father's outstretched hand to the application on the kitchen table. "That's on the other side of the country."

"Yes, but it's a very good city," his mother replied, with the same enthusiasm she'd used to talk about the "very good highschool" or the "very good summer camp" that he'd been forced into in the past, that he still had nightmares about.

"I don't know..."

"Look, son, we're doing you a favor!" His father slammed the pen onto the table. "You want dental school? Here it is. We're offering to pay for your tuition!"

"Your father is willing to give up the money he was putting toward his second yacht! We're making a personal sacrifice for you!" His mother looked away. "I don't know how we managed to raise such an ungrateful child..."

"No, no! It's not that—"

"We're doing this for you, son! You want to live your dream of becoming a dentist, we're letting you do that!"

You never wanted to before, Caligosto wanted to say, but the words retreated back down his throat. To live his dream... he couldn't let this slip away. He stared down at the application again, then grabbed the pen, the yellow gleam of the kitchen light glinting off its metal surface.

—~~~—

Light danced on the tip of the hook as he turned the scaler in his hands. He stared at it, feeling its weight in his palm, remembering the last time he'd used it.

His fingers clenched around it, knuckles white beneath the glove.

—~~~—

The room was a blinding white and silver, save for the dull gray chairs and the dummy heads strapped to them. The heads were painted in flesh tones, faceless save for gaping mouths with complete sets of teeth. Many of his classmates had shied away from these at first, but Caligosto had always rushed to his assigned dummy, half his mind giddy with the thought of finally getting to practice, and the other half with the thought of his parents seeing him as a successful dentist.

He held the scaler down toward the dummy, ready to practice methods of scraping plaque from teeth, when his professor strolled by.

"Now, you'll probably deal with patients who put up a fight," she stated. "Some patients will struggle and squirm. Some may try to bite."

Of course, they'd gone over this before. This professor had always liked to make a show of taking off her glove and revealing a scar one of her own patients had left on her hand. So he nodded along, continuing to move the hook between the fake teeth, digging gently into the silicone gums.

"But you may even have patients who are... unnatural, so to speak."

He paused.

She strode toward a cabinet in the back of the lab as she spoke. "Of course, you need special methods when dealing with them. There are certain tools we have in the medical profession to deal with them, which I'll show you in a moment." She glanced over her students with a glint in her eye.

Slowly he looked back down at the dummy, unsure of why his hands were going numb.

"They're known for all sorts of tricks," she went on, turning to open the cabinet. "They can dismantle your tools with just a look!"

His hand twitched, leaving a small scratch on a fake tooth.

"Or they could reach out and infect you with a deadly virus, just by their touch..."

He gripped the scaler, his knuckles turning white.

"Even if they don't touch you, some can reach out with an invisible hand and change your future, just enough to bring you misfortune!" Finally she turned around with a strange pair of earmuffs in her hand, and something about the sight of them sent a jolt up his spine and caused his chest to burn, and he jumped away from his dummy. His professor didn’t notice as she continued, "That's why—"

"Th-that's not true."

He suddenly became aware that everyone was staring at him, and that his professor's grin had fallen. "Pardon?"

It was too late to back down, so he straightened his back. "They can't dismantle something instantly. They can do it without their hands, but they still need to pull it apart. And there's no psychic power that can cause illness, unless they're spinning you around like a ferris wheel!" He snorted. "And if they could change their future, wouldn't we see a lot more of them winning the lotter—"

"Stop."

He shut his mouth, but his eyes were locked on the earmuffs she held, and he wasn't sure why the sight of them was making him tremble.

The professor approached him, her gaze dark. "Are you defending these mentalists, Loboto?"

"Wh-what?!" he sputtered, head snapping up. "No! I just—"

She got in his face, and he swore he could feel some form of terrible, familiar energy from the earmuffs in her hands. "Never in my class would I ever have expected to encounter a psychic sympathizer!"

The phrase turned his stomach to ice and lit his head ablaze—outraged that she would accuse him of such, and horrified by the implications.

It wasn’t the last time he would hear it, or even worse terms that he didn’t like to think about.

They came up during a meeting with the dean regarding his dismissal from the college. They were spat upon him when he tried to apply for jobs in the area as he scrambled to find his footing. They were hissed at him from former classmates who had once gotten along with him.

The term was even snarled at him over the phone, when he contacted the last two people he could think of for help.

“Psychic sympathizer.”

—~~~—

The shriek of metal on glass brought him out of the memory, and he stared down at the faint scratch across his window.

After taking a moment to unclench his jaw, to breathe, to set the tool aside onto its cart, he turned away from the window and strode across the dark room. There was no point in reflecting on those memories, those terrible manglings of his character, those people who chased him away from what had felt like the one chance of ever achieving his dream. They were behind him now.

But his foot nudged a book that stuck out from the lowest shelf, and he reached down to adjust it, frowning when he noted the misaligned printing on the spine.

—~~~—

Caligosto plucked up the book, flipped through it, picked off the sticker, and slipped it into his jacket. It had gotten easier after the first several times; his hands no longer shook, though his nerves still fluttered in his chest. After browsing through the shop for another quarter hour, he shrugged and trotted out, bidding the owner good-day as he headed back to his apartment to plot his next course of action.

The book, while a measly paperback, was a signed copy, and would surely yield him enough money to cover the rest of this month's rent, which was due in two days. He just needed to choose the next store carefully—one he hadn't been to in a while. There was Jamie's down the road, but he'd just sold a set of pilfered baseball cards there a week ago. He hadn't been to the one on 5th and Maple in a while, but it was closed today... Ah, right, the one another town over—he hadn't been there in a couple months, so that one should be all right. It would be a bit of a hike, but it would be worth it.

So he made the trip, which ate up a chunk of his day, clutching the book under his jacket. Just one more time, and he would be set for another month—another month to figure out how to get out of this dump.

"Got a good one for you this time!" Puffing up his chest, he slapped the book onto the counter. The force at which he'd done it had caused the binding to come somewhat loose, and he fought the urge to wince, hoping the man wouldn't notice. "It's a signed copy, you see?"

The shop owner slid the book closer to himself, lifting it up and turning it this way and that, studying it through narrowed eyes.

Even though he'd gotten away with it before, the sweat still trickled down his back as he awaited the man's evaluation. Maybe he could settle for a lower price if the shopkeeper wasn't willing to pay what it was worth—just so long as he could cover his rent, that was all he needed—

The man huffed out a laugh, shaking his head. "Not a signed copy," he remarked. "It's a photocopy." He'd pointed out the spine, which, now that he looked more closely, didn't even have the title aligned, part of it folding over onto the back cover of the book. When the man opened it, his finger traced the margins, which didn't line up with the edges of the pages. He set the book back on the counter, giving him an unpleasant grin, one with poorly-placed veneers, revealing the blackened teeth between where the porcelain didn't line up with the gums. "I'll give you two bucks."

He trembled all over, the blood rushing from his face, before his mouth twisted. "I hope you choke on your own rotten teeth!" He snatched the book before storming out.

His trek back to his apartment was made in a blind, numb haze, his stomach sinking as he wondered just how he could word a plea to his landlord to allow him another week to pay the rent. If his landlord would even allow that, if his landlord hadn't already heard the gossip being spread about him.

The thoughts left him the second a hand grabbed his arm and yanked him behind a building. His mind clicked into self-preservation mode while some voice screamed in the back of his head that this was it, someone had caught him, or someone had heard the rumors and come after him—

"C-Caligosto, is that you?"

He found himself staring at a young man with a frightened, pale face, and dark circles under his eyes. At first he narrowed his eyes at him, prepared to bolt, only to realize he recognized the man's messy orange hair, though it was a lot messier than the last time he'd seen it.

"...Bower," he said slowly, yanking his arm away. He'd shared a few classes with the student during his short time at the university. "What do you want?"

"Help," Bower choked, huddling in on himself. "I... I just need your help with—"

"I haven't been a student in months, in case you haven't noticed," he said, voice dripping in bitterness.

"Yes, exactly, that's exactly why I need your help!"

He stared at him. "What."

"Everyone avoids you, so—so... no one would know!" A manic smile stretched across Bower’s face as he spread out his sweaty hands.

"...No one would know what?"

"Look, I-I kinda owe someone some money—"

"You're talking to the wrong person."

He turned away, but Bower caught him by the shoulder and turned him back around. Jerking his arm away, he grit his teeth and glared down at the man, who held up his hands.

"I owe them a lot of money! And—and if you can help me get some, I'll give you half."

He opened his mouth to protest, and closed it, looking away as he mulled things over. "Do you have a plan of some sort?"

"I-I do. But it's risky, and I need help. And after that, you never have to speak to me again!"

"...You never spoke to me anyway."

"Look, I know, just—please, just this once?"

Deep down, he could feel something—something telling him it was nice to feel needed. Not to mention, he did need the money on short notice.

He steeled himself. "All right. What's the plan?"

—~~~—

He shook his head. While it had been the moment to launch him into his current career, he'd been foolish to think that he'd been needed by that idiot. No, Bower hadn't needed him specifically. If he'd refused, he would've found someone else. No, Bower had used him, and had been planning on keeping all the money for himself, if he could get away with it (which he hadn't—as he'd predicted, Bower had gotten caught by the police, and ratted him out, but he'd been long gone by the time they'd come looking for him).

He'd been free.

—~~~—

With his few possessions in a duffel bag hanging on his shoulder, Loboto strolled down the sidewalk of the new town, which looked brighter and more promising than his old college town ever had.

It would be a new leaf for him. Perhaps he could forge a license and start a dentist practice, if not here, then somewhere further out. The robbery had given him more than enough money to rent a new apartment for the rest of the year, so housing wouldn't be a problem for a while. Just so long as he could find a job to start with...

He stopped at the bulletin board, perusing the job postings and skimming past event fliers. He wasn't terribly picky, so long as it was something that could pay for rent and still have some left over for food and savings—

A pair of familiar glasses caught his eye, and his blood ran cold.

Wanted: Caligosto Loboto.

His teeth grit so hard they nearly cracked, he tore the poster from the board, and ran.

—~~~—

...It was better now.

The police hadn't found him, of course. Never, in the past few years of his career, though they'd searched. Oh, they'd searched, and he'd had to move again later, but it was all good now.

Especially since his new client had opened up a world of new possibilities to him.

—~~~—

Loboto found her staring at the tools, still in pristine condition, arranged on the shelves. "Interested in those, are we?" He tipped his head. "Do you need some dental work done?"

No sooner had the words left his mouth than his heart began to flutter in excitement, and he perked up. "I know you're here for business, but if you ever need some work done on your pearly whites, I can—"

Nora held up a finger. "I'm just here for business."

His heart and hopes dropped to the floor, and his shoulders drooped. "Yeah, of course."

Yet she was still looking over the tools, eyes narrowed. Without a word she picked up a dental hook, pressing it into one of her fingers until it drew blood.

"Hey!" he cried. "You should be wearing gloves—"

"These tools, Cal," she said quickly, rubbing the finger she'd pricked against her thumb, smearing the blood. "They look like they would hurt."

Grumbling, he snatched the hook away and hunted for a bottle of cleaning alcohol and a cloth. "No," he said absently, stooping down to snatch up a bottle. "In the right hands, the procedures can be mildly unpleasant at worst."

As he disinfected the tool, Nora reached out to him. "So could those same hands..." She gently grabbed one of his palms, and he yanked his hand away, shooting a glare at her. "...make them hurt?"

He stared at her.

"Perhaps, enough for a patient to beg, to plead, to give whatever information you want?"

Loboto held the hook away from her, but hesitated a moment. "...Why do you ask?"

Nora stepped back, regarding the tools on the shelves. "It doesn't look like they've seen much use, and it would be a shame for them to go to waste."

—~~~—

His hands shook, in spite of his smile.

This was it. He was finally going to see his dream come true—perhaps not in the way he'd originally planned, but that's the fun of it, isn't it? He was past all of that nonsense—his parents and professors and even the police trying to control him, trying to get in the way of his goals.

His dreams were coming true. He was finally, finally getting to put his skills to use. And no one was going to convince him otherwise.

"Cal!" a harsh voice called from the room he'd remade into a new "dentist's office." "Your patient isn't cooperating. Get in here!"

"Right away!" he called in return, wheeling his cart into the room.

On the other side of the room was his client, Nora, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. And before her, strapped to the dental chair, was his patient. Both his mouth and eyes were wide, the former from a mouth prop forcing his jaw open, and the latter from terror.

Loboto looked him over, selecting the scaler from his cart and fighting to keep his hand from shaking. He looked from the patient's teeth and gums, then to Nora, who nodded impatiently at him. He stared down at the pointed tip of the tool in his trembling hand—one of many tools that hadn't seen use since his college days.

"Get on with it," Nora hissed.

He clenched the tool, forcing his hand to still, and aimed it at the patient's gums, grinning down into his terrified eyes. "Say aaah!" he said, and jabbed.

[spencers-renaissance]

I turn and reach for you

Summary: Three months after Hankel, Spencer starts getting terrible nightmares that keep him up at night. He tries desperately to keep his secret until one day when it's all too much to bear anymore. Luckily, Derek Morgan is there to hold him together as he falls apart.

Tags: nightmares, hurt/comfort, ptsd, angst with a happy ending, fluff, literal sleeping together, getting together, post-revelations TW: past non-con drug use mentioned once in passing

Pairing: Derek Morgan x Spencer Reid

Word Count: 2.1k

Masterlist // Read on AO3 // Bad Things Happen Bingo

This feels the "Nightmares" square on my Bad Things Happen bingo card, and was written for this prompt by @i-write-whump. Title from a poem by Devon Strang.

After Spencer is kidnapped by Tobias Hankel, he stays with Derek. Nobody on the team wants him to be alone, and he’s always felt the most comfortable with him, so it makes sense. Besides, he’s got the space.

Spencer sometimes wonders whether the team pushed so hard for it because they genuinely believed that, logistically, Derek was the best option, or because they could also see the slow-burning romance simmering under the surface of their relationship. They’ve always had a special friendship, but Spencer can feel the growing tension: the deep and intense looks they share mid-case, the lingering touches on backs and arms, the affection leaking into each ‘pretty boy’ and every ‘Der’.

Perhaps if Hankel never came into the picture they’d already be together — it really had felt like they were on the precipice of something special — but it’s three months later and Spencer’s still sleeping in the spare room; there’s still just as much will they, won’t they lingering in the air between them.

He tries not to mind too much. After all, he’s never had so much free access to the man he’s pined after for years now, and they’re living in each other’s pockets. Almost every waking hour is spent in one another’s company: they cook together, eat together, watch films together, and neither of them are showing any sign of getting sick of it. But every time they’re cooking pasta and Derek says something ridiculous, Spencer wishes he was allowed to lean in and kiss the tip of his nose; every time they sit down to watch something together, he wishes he could burrow into his side and rest his head in the crook of his neck.

(Sometimes, Spencer wishes he could rewind to the weeks immediately after the Hankel incident when Derek would carry him around the flat to keep him off his broken feet; when he could press his face into his shoulder and inhale the scent of complete and utter safety.)

It’s almost torturous, being so close yet so far.

He isn’t quite sure why the nightmares start so late. The nights during the first couple of months are blissfully dreamless, so exhausted from the physical and emotional trauma that sleep was a tantalising escape, but once he’s back in the field, once normal life resumes, everything changes.

The first time he wakes up sweating and panting, heart pounding as he tries to convince himself that he’s no longer in Hankel’s clutches but is safe and sound in Derek’s apartment, he dismisses it as a one-off. He hasn’t had nightmares yet, so why should they start now? He doesn’t go back to sleep that night, too shaken to relax back into the comforting embrace of sleep, too afraid of deception: that he wouldn’t sleep dreamlessly but that the nightmare would be waiting for him once again.

The second time worries him. He gets up this time and gets a glass of water as quietly as possible, leaning with his back against the kitchen counter as he ponders what this could mean for him. The thing is, they’re so incredibly vivid. It really feels like he’s back at the mercy of a three-in-one torturer armed with drugs and belts and guns, genuinely unsure of whether he’ll ever see his family again. He doesn’t go back to sleep this time, either, instead pacing around the living room until Derek wakes up. He lies that he’s only been up for half an hour, and Derek believes him.

The third time solidifies for Spencer the fact that this is a problem. Three is a pattern, everybody knows that, and Spencer spends the rest of the night scouring the internet for studies conducted around delayed trauma responses and discovers the prevalence of delayed-onset PTSD. He’s tempted to contact a professor he met during his third PhD who specialised in the psychology of trauma, but he thinks better of it. Admitting these nightmares would be admitting defeat.

This is something he has to deal with alone.

(He ignores the truth that it’s more fear than anything else that keeps him from telling anyone: fear of being seen as weak, fear of nothing changing, fear of voicing his trauma out loud. It’s easier to pretend it’s about independent agency.)

It doesn’t affect him too much at first. Sure, he’s scared to go to sleep and he sweats so profusely that it soaks through his bedsheets almost every night, but he’s managing. He’s okay. He contributes just as much to their profiles and takes down unsubs without flinching. He dances around Derek like they have done for over a year, and he sits through Dr Who marathons with Penelope just fine. So what if he’s a bit tired? He’s stared down some of America’s Most Wanted and interviewed famous serial killers, he can cope with a little fatigue.

It doesn’t stay that easy for long.

Soon everybody’s asking about the bags under his eyes, his slower reaction times when they visit the gun range, his twitchiness around the team.

“Are you sleeping okay, Spencer?” Penelope asks him one day, brushing a curly lock of hair behind his ears as they sit side by side on the sofa next to a conked out Derek.

He can’t nod his head quick enough. “Yeah! Yes, uh. Yes, Penelope, I’m sleeping fine, I promise,” he says as convincingly as he can, flashing her a smile. He hates lying to her, but he can’t let anyone find out, he just can’t.

Slowly, he begins losing his grip on reality. He’s almost delusional from the sleep deprivation, and he starts seeing Hankel everywhere he goes. He’s stood behind the fridge door, in the foyer of the FBI Headquarters, in the toilets of a local police station, stood right behind the unsub they’re currently trying to talk down, goddamnit.

He’s beyond exhausted, but some nights he still refuses to sleep, too afraid of what awaits him in his dreams, too afraid of the fear he knows he’ll carry into the next day, too afraid of feeling weak again. Helpless. Completely and utterly without agency.

He sits up with his back against the headboard, the main light off but the lamp switched on, scrolling through as many scholarly articles as he can read in a night, drinking cup after cup of steaming black coffee. Most nights he makes it through till morning without sleeping a wink, but sometimes he can’t stop himself from drifting off The nightmares on those nights are the worst.

He isn’t okay and people are starting to notice. Everyone’s walking on eggshells around him right now, but he knows it won’t be long before Penelope organises an intervention that Hotch hosts and Derek directs. The worst part about it is that he feels like a trainwreck waiting to happen. He’s headed straight for complete and utter collapse, and the only possible way to stop the train in its tracks is to reach out and get help, the one thing he can’t get himself to do.

And he isn’t even really sure why.

It all comes to a head on a warm night in July. He’d fallen into bed that night deliberately, actually intending to sleep for once. The bone-deep tiredness had finally caught up to him and he didn’t even care that he was walking straight into the arms of Tobias Hankel, if it meant he got even an iota of refreshing sleep, then it would be worth it.

But he isn’t quite of the same mind when he wakes up at two in the morning like he does almost every night: soaked in sweat with his heart going a million beats per minute, with only one difference. Tonight, he’s crying.

Maybe it’s the emotional turmoil of the last few months catching up to him, or maybe it’s just the severity of this particular dream, but whatever it is, he can’t seem to stop even once he’s awake. Sobs wrack his shoulders as he cries miserably into the pillow, finally letting out the emotions he’s kept bottled up so tightly, and he’s almost wailing after a couple of minutes of anguish.

All he can think as he cries helplessly is how badly he wants Derek. He wants to be wrapped up in his strong and safe embrace, he wants to feel the movement of his soft goatee against his cheek, he wants to inhale the comforting scent of his sleep t-shirts, he wants the warmth and solace that only Derek Morgan can give him, and in that moment, emotionally distraught and so incredibly sleep-deprived, he decides to get it.

He stumbles out of his bedroom and down the hall, stopping once he reaches Derek’s door. He hesitates for only a second before he pushes it open slowly, allowing the light from the lamp they keep switched on in the hallway to gently illuminate the shadows of his bedroom.

“Spencer?” Derek asks groggily, immediately sitting up and wiping his eyes. “What’s wrong? Are you crying?”

At the acknowledgement of his tears, Spencer starts to cry harder, and as embarrassed as he feels, he can’t slow the steady stream of tears rolling down his face as he stands in the doorway like a child in their parents’ room.

“Spence,” Derek says again, gentle and sympathetic, “come here.” He lifts the duvet up and scooches over slightly as if to make room for him in his already spacious king-size bed.

He doesn’t need to be told twice, though, and he stumbles forward, collapsing into bed and wrapping himself around Derek instantly. His arms come up to circle Spencer’s waist, caressing him gently as he holds him close to his body, shushing him quietly.

“It’s okay, Spence,” he murmurs. “I’m here now, alright? We’re gonna fix whatever it is, I promise you. We’ll get through this. You’ll get through this.”

He lets himself cry and cry and cry until his tears are dried up and he’s hiccupping from the force of his sobs. He would feel terrible about the damp spot left on Derek’s t-shirt, but he simply doesn’t have the energy. Instead, he continues to lie there on Derek’s chest, listening to his softly spoken assurances and losing himself in the sensation of Derek’s fingertips caressing the skin of his waist.

After a couple of minutes of silence, interrupted only by the odd hiccup from Spencer’s tired lungs, Derek finally asks the question. “What was that all about, pretty boy?” he asks with a tenderness Spencer isn’t sure he’s ever heard before. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Been having nightmares,” Spencer whispers, keeping his eyes closed against Derek’s imploring gaze.

He feels Derek tense beneath him, his fingers briefly pausing before resuming their comforting patterns on his waist, and a heavy breath escapes his lips. “For how long?”

“Last couple of months,” he mumbles, and somehow another tear manages to escape Spencer’s screwed up eyes.

“Well,” Derek sighs, “I suppose that explains a lot. We’ve been so worried about you, Spencer. We had no idea what was going on but we could all see you withdrawing, and it wasn’t exactly a secret how exhausted you were.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Derek says sadly. “I should’ve pushed harder to figure out what was going on with you. I’m so sorry you’ve had to deal with this all alone.”

“I didn’t know how to tell anyone,” Spencer says, suddenly desperate to explain as he shifts slightly to look Derek in the eye. “I was so scared and I didn’t want anyone to think that I was weak or I couldn’t do my job anymore, and I just didn’t know what to do.”

“I know, Spence,” Derek says soothingly, “but you’ve told me now, haven’t you? And I’m going to do everything I can to get you some help. We’ll fix this, baby. I promise you, I’m going to make sure you’re happy and healthy again if it’s the last thing I do, okay?”

Spencer sniffs a little, wiping tiredly at his eyes as he blinks up at the sincerity on Derek’s face. For the first time in far too long he manages a smile. “Okay.”

Derek runs a hand through his hair before dropping a kiss to the top of his head. “Do you want to sleep here tonight?”

Spencer’s smile widens and he buries his face in Derek’s chest again as his cheeks flush red. “Please.”

Months later, they’ll realise they never officially asked one another to be in an actual, exclusive relationship. Months later, they’ll know instinctively and with absolute certainty that this night was the night that changed everything for them, and exactly one year later, they’ll celebrate their first anniversary on that date.

Tonight, though, they sleep curled up next to one another in Derek’s bed, and although Spencer doesn’t fall into the same dreamless sleep he grew used to immediately after Hankel, for once he isn’t haunted by nightmares, but dreams inflected with hope for what the future holds for them, and he’ll take that over dreamlessness any day.

taglist: @criminalmindsvibez @lesbiantodds @suburban--gothic @strippersenseii @takeyourleap-of-faith @negativefouriq @makaylajadewrites @iamrenstark @livrere-blue @hotchseyebrows @enbyspencer @reidology @transhanniballecter @spencerspecifics @bau-gremlin @hotchedyke @tobias-hankel @ @marsjareau @garcias-bitch @oliverbrnch @im-autistic @anxious-enby @kuolonsyoja @reidreids @ropoto @thosecriminalminds (add yourself to my taglist)

[5-falsehoods-phonated]

(Prompts with boxes have been taken, highlighted have been written)

Requests for this card are closed, thank you to anyone who sent in requests! If you don’t want to see these you can block the tag #false bthb. As always shoot me an ask if you wanna be tagged in future stories, whether it be for bad things happen bingo or any of the other series, one shots or in general!

I’ve been picking at this particular request since early December as the person who requested it had a lot of details they wanted put in making the writing process a bit more challenging. As a disclaimer, note that the chapter is split between present time and the past; with Logan recalling things in his past in an attempt to make the details requested for the story flow better. I received this request from AO3.

General taglist: @im-an-anxious-wreck

Experimental Socialization

Summary: Logan was raised by the government to be nothing more than an experiment and a weapon, utilizing his unique abilities as a mutant. When he finally escapes things are much different than he imagined they’d be but thankfully finds others like him willing to help guide him right where he needs to be.(Happy Ending)

Warnings: allusions to abuse, physical punishment and human experimentation, tw for weapons and fire, panic attack. If there are more please let me know

Prompt; Not Used To Freedom (requested by AngstyEmoGal on AO3)

Ships: Intrulogical, Logan x Remus

WC: 3432

“You just gotta breathe, Logan. In four, hold seven, out eight remember? You’re doing great, just keep going.”

Logan felt himself slowly coming back to reality as his breathing evening out, the raw panic that had gripped his chest easing slightly as Virgili continued coaxing him through the exercise. He felt the other slowly rub up and down his arm in a slow, steady beat that helped ground him further in reality and he smiled up at his friend gratefully and nodded to let xem know he was okay. Gripping his knees as Virgil’s voice trailed off he squeezed his eyes shut tightly and let out one last calming breath.

“Thank you, Virgil. I-” He struggled to find words, gesturing flippantly in the air making Virgil grin.

“It’s okay. Take your time, L.”

Logan puffed his cheeks out in frustration, thoughts swirling too quickly for him to comprehend anything but the apprehensive fear he held for the plans Remus had made for them later that evening. “I am- not used to being outside. Given my history and the threat I pose as a potential compromise to our place of hiding I fail to understand Remus’ reasoning for going out when we could just as easily celebrate our relationship here.”

“Hm.” Virgil leaned back on xyr hands and looked up at the low ceiling of their underground paradise. “Can’t really see the stars from here, no matter how many stickers Princey finds and puts up it can't really be compared to the real thing.”

Logan had made the mistake of going on a tirade of space facts a few months into his stay in the hideout, Remus patiently listening to the extensive infodump of constellation facts and space physics and planetary rotation. Having a limited amount of books to entertain oneself with for extended periods of time meant memorizing entire books on one subject, which Logan had used all too happily as a figurative escape from his situation in the past until he had actually managed to escape when he was 16. Hearing Logan speak so passionately about the subject had apparently made his mind up that he was taking Logan outside for their first “official” date to view the stars, which had then landed Logan in his current state of panic as he realized that date was today and he was decidedly not ready for what might lay in store outside of safety of the hideout.

“I can stay close by if you want. I won’t spy or anything and Remus won’t have to know.” Logan looked over as his thoughts were interrupted by the offer, Virgil turning invisible and reappearing a couple seconds later to emphasize xyr point. Smiling Logan shook his head, knowing the other derived as much joy from going outside as Logan felt about going himself.

“Thank you for the offer though, you’re very kind.” Letting his thoughts drift again he idly wondered when Virgil had discovered xe could disappear and reappear at will and if xyr parents had tried to hide it before the government had found out. His own parents-

-----

“Logan?” A very small Logan turned at his mother’s voice, losing his concentration which made the hidden jar of Crofters fall from its suspended place in the air and smash to the floor. His parents hadn’t known he possessed any sort of powers, and even as small as he was he still understood the position he’d put them in if they ever found out. Fearfully his hands dropped to his sides as his mother covered her mouth in shock, tears rolling down her cheeks as she took a step back.

Men in suits and long coats were there just a few hours later, speaking in hushed voices while both of his parents cried and he was ushered out the door and into an unmarked car, quiet as he understood yelling and crying would do him no good now. What’s done was done, all he could do was be compliant and hope to be treated gently.

-----

The room suddenly brightening with a flickering light brought him back out of his thoughts, Roman entering with his signature bright flame held proudly in his hand. The image of him in his rather scrapped together Princely outfit posing subconsciously in the doorway was almost enough to make Logan roll his eyes but he didn’t want Virgil to think it was because of xem so he managed to restrain himself.

“My dearest brother has been pacing in the same spot for two hours now and I haven't been able to calm him down soooo I thought to check on our resident nerd.” Roman declared with his usual flare. Logan actually did roll his eyes this time but Virgil did as well so he figured it was fine.

“The ‘resident nerd’ is doing fine, Roman. Though it's concerning to hear Remus is nervous as well considering he’s the one who suggested the date.”

Roman waved his hand at Logan dismissively. “He’s just a sap- moreso than me surprisingly. He doesn’t want to do anything to put you in danger but he wants to do something nice, so he’s worried that’s all. Remus is an idiot but I trust him with my life; believe me when I say you have nothing to worry about except his terrible sense of humor.”

Logan merely hummed in response, staring at the way the flame moved around as Roman gestured with his words.

-----

He panted as he rolled out of the way of another flamethrower, singeing the tips of his hair in the process but he couldn’t afford to slow down enough to worry about that. Years of training with different fighting styles had earned him incredibly fast reflexes but a good portion of his accuracy in knowing where to step and when was owed to him working even harder to focus his powers. Thoughts from others constantly surrounded him on a regular basis, getting more and more prevalent the older he grew. Learning to block out the constant string of stimuli was a useful skill to keep him sane but learning to hone in on specific thoughts to predict actions was what had kept him alive.

He ducked below another bullet and brought up his leg in the same motion, kicking a throwing knife to the side and sending it to clatter harmlessly between one of his assailants feet. A twirl to the side and a tilt of the head let another bought of flame boil the air beside him while another knife just barely brushed his ear. The constant bang of bullets and roar of flames and whistling of knives was overwhelming and made the air so thick he could barely draw a breath and it was becoming a struggle to concentrate the way he needed to and-

A high pitched alarm sounded one, twice, three times- a blaring flash accompanying it that left him blinking painfully. His shoulders slumped as the barrage finally ended, another successful training day completed. He watched as everyone began putting their weapons away, laughing and congratulating each other, clapping themselves on the back and discussing whatever they had planned after this. No one even spared the thing they had been firing at seconds before a spare glance, save for the director of the branch, who took long steps forward to stand in front of him only to snap his fingers and motion forward no doubt to see him back to his room until dinner. Absorbing the sounds around him he drank in as much praise as he could that wasn’t his and would never be for him; people rarely congratulated weapons after all.

-----

“Is this where we all decided to hide today?” Logan looked up to see Patton sitting cross legged on one one of the beams in the ceiling, grinning happily down at them even as their fluffy ears twitched nervously and even fluffier tail whipped back and forth in agitation. They must have come back from trying to calm Remus as well, Logan mused; Patton had never done well being in the same room as Remus who tended to voice his thoughts abruptly and without much care to how they might sound to others which always managed to set Patton on edge no matter how hard they tried not to show it.

Patton was a rare mutant in that as opposed to being born with abnormal traits or abilities they had been a science experiment from the start- an effort to create super soldiers rather than stealing them away from families and training them. Even rarer was the fact that the DNA splicing had taken extraordinarily well by pure chance as Patton was born with a mutation that left their DNA incredibly malleable- a mutation that never would have been discovered had cellular manipulation not been the reason for them being in the experimental branch that they were. They had tried cloning Patton at first to see if their power could be duplicated but when that failed to work they began trying to combine them with different animals to see if desirable traits would come forward. By manipulating them on a physical and anatomical level they were able to change some parts of them to be more cat like, intending, Patton had guessed, to turn them into a kind of stealth soldier but they got away before they completed it, leaving them with heightened agility and surgically coaxed cat ears and a tail. They were only a child when the lab had done this but somehow they were never bitter, simply preferring to leave their past alone and embrace whatever future they could make- a trait Logan greatly admired them for even if their unending optimism could be somewhat grating at times.

“Did Janus brush your tail out Pat? It looks fluffier today.” Patton preened at Virgil's compliment, their tail beginning to wave in a more relaxed manner as their mind was distracted from whatever it was Remus had been ranting about.

“He did! He found a cat brush and got it for me so I could finally get the undercoat out!” Jumping down and landing lightly on their feet they posed a little and flashed another wide grin.

“Beautiful as always, Patton.” Roman said genuinely as he lowered his hand into a barrel to light up the paper scraps and wood in it for the night, the dim sunlight that had filtered through the grated having long since died. The home was a modified branch of a sewer system, thankfully the part most removed from the city where it flowed without the stench and was sealed off inconspicuously enough that in the ten years Janus and Remus had been using it no worker had ever found it.

-----

It had been Janus and Remus who had found him, beaten and bloody from an escape attempt he had made just days before his real one. He had made a weak attempt to coax the scientists into a false sense of security, holding back the full scoop of his powers during training for a year in anticipation for his final escape. He had punished severely but had simply thrown him in his regular cell, assuming he wasn’t strong enough to do any more damage than they had seen him do already and trusting that they had beaten him down enough that it would be a while before he tried again- if he ever did. Not six days later the mangled metal of the front of his cell was tossed into a group of guards, walls torn apart in a straight line to the exit and the huge buzzing gates leading to the outside world thrown open wide and stuck there with varying amounts of heavy debris.

The outside world, as it turns out, was a lot bigger and louder and downright terrifying when you weren’t being sent out as a personal assassin or field missions or training sessions- all controlled on some level to keep him from being killed and compromised. Without the begrudged protection from the labs and moreover having to hide from said lab was another story entirely. The times they searched for him and how closely they came to his spots were random and made it incredibly hard for him to pick out their thoughts from anyone else’s in the city and figure out how close they were. On more than one occasion they passed right by him crouched under piles of garbage or laying low under a hedge, his breath held as he tried desperately to keep himself as still and quiet as possible, thoughts of what they would to him once they found him pounding against his head and making him squeeze his eyes shut to keep his terrified tears from falling.

That was how Remus had found him. It had been dark and hours had passed since the searchers had left that park he had been hiding in. He had still been hiccuping down his sobs as he rolled out from under the hedge that he hadn’t bothered to scope the area for anyone’s close by thoughts, having shut out as much as he could after they had left to try and block out any other hate fueled thoughts that may send him spiraling again. His heart had leapt in his throat so high his breath caught painfully, immediately shifting to offense as he tensed, ready to fight as long and hard as he could. He couldn’t go back- he wouldn’t. No matter what they did or promised him or punished him with; he’d go down fighting or not at all.

But Remus had only raised his hands in the air in a motion of peace, eyes widening as he locked onto the government issued bracelet that marked him as an experimental mutant. He had grinned impossibly wide then Logan remembered, briefly disappearing from his sight and reappearing a moment later, setting him even more on edge but curious nonetheless.

“I’m like you.” Remus had said quietly. “Basically I run real fast and the government hasn’t figured out how to get me yet.”

Logan had watched as he jiggled his wrists a bit for emphasis, bare save for colored chords that he assumed didn’t associate him with any government branch since they didn’t look official.

“Are you okay?” Remus had asked next and mutely Logan nodded, unsure of how to react to this fellow mutant who had never been caught by any sort of lab, apparently living as free as one could when you were as different as they were. He stepped back as another man appeared behind him, Janus he later learned.

“Liar.” Janus had hissed, making Remus reach around and smack the back of his head.

“It was a polite thing to ask that he tried to dismiss Jan. Let the adults speak for a second.”

Logan had noted the faint pout on Janus’ face though he was still trying very hard to look intimidating. And then all at once his eyes had turned cold as his attention was once again focused on Logan, glaring menacingly from beneath a black bowler hat. “I’m younger than you and yet I’m the one that has to put my foot down. He’s being chased clearly; we are not bringing him back with us.”

Remus has turned, Logan seemingly forgotten for the moment. “That’s not how it works! He needs help and we’re not leaving him to starve or be found in the middle of a park! What would Patton say?”

“Patton is a soft fool who needs to figure out where their morals stand. I myself am choosing not to compromise our place of hiding and three other people that you know those power hungry idiots would love nothing more than to get their hands on!”

Remus rolled his eyes so hard his head had lolled with it, face going pale as he watched something in the sky. It was then that Logan heard the telling sound of a helicopter flying low and getting closer but he had barely tensed before he found himself gripped around the middle and held vertically with the ground flying underneath him. They stopped abruptly and he was set down, blinking in rapid confusion as Remus grinned sheepishly at him.

“Welcome to the hideout?”

Logan’s eyes had widened and his breath had caught yet again, chest tightening as he shook his head vehemently. “You can’t- I need to go back! They’ll do anything to get me back-!”

He was stopped from going forward with a finger to his chest, his blue eyes locking with beautiful brown as Remus held his gaze. “And we will do everything to keep you safe.”

Safe. With that one word Logan was his. He hadn’t known why and he still didn’t quite understand it but he had trusted Remus with everything he had- and he still did. Even as Janus had stalked off grumbling and Virgil and Roman had kept their distance at first Remus had kept him close and showed him how much better his life could be, even if they were living in a modified sewer system.

Back in the present he looked up as a hand was thrust under his chin, smiling softly as he took Remus’ hand and let himself be led away from the others’ idle chatter. He counted himself extremely lucky in the end that Janus had eventually come around to him, seeing how happy he made Remus and how Remus made Logan feel it had been him to finally talk to Logan about it and get the two to officially talk about how they felt, going on about the being “hopeless gay idiots” when they had finally started to date officially. Logan wasn’t sure what he’d do without Remus at this point, just a year later and he was so attached to their small group of hideaways he wouldn’t trade for the world.

They approached the exit to the sewers, Remus swinging their hands between them. Logan held his breath right before they crossed the threshold, closing his eyes and letting it out slowly as his feet met grass and he opened his eyes to the darkened field. There were a few tunnels that lead out to different places depending on where they needed to go and this, Remus had told him, was his favorite because of how empty it was. The city lay far in the distance so there was almost no light pollution to block out the sky. Soft grass and flowers brushed his ankles as he scanned the area carefully, seeing nothing but trees lining the far end of the field with a road so far away he could barely, make it out in the darkness. Remus tugged his hand softly to get his attention, searching his eyes for any hint of discomfort.

“Is this okay?’

Logan took another breath and let it out, the last of his nerves fading away as he took in the quiet. “It’s perfect Remus.”

The other grinned and tugged a little harder this time, walking fast to the middle of the field where he stopped suddenly and raised Logan’s arm up to lead him into an impromptu twirl. Logan laughed quietly and then louder as he was dipped, secure in Remus’ strong hold as he reached up to grip the back of his neck. He was safe. He was free and safe and happy finally with someone who truly loved and cared for him. His breath caught in his throat again but this time in awe, Remus chuckling as he was laid down carefully tucked into his side, till with his arms around his neck.

The stars shone bright and winked lazily while swirls of color dusted faintly behind them. The moon was waning, a barely there light that let the beauty behind it show fully as the wind whisked away any clouds that dared to try and cover it. It was everything Logan had ever hoped it would be and more, excitement thrumming through him as he squeezed Remus tightly in an attempt to convey it. He felt Remus grin against his scalp where his face was buried in his hair.

“It’s beautiful isn't it?”

Logan looked back at him, light from the stars reflected in his eyes and wild brown hair framing his face. He leaned up slightly and kissed him, a faint brush of their lips that left them both grinning like the idiots they were. Placing a hand on Remus’ cheek Logan smiled at him, thumb brushing over his cheek in adoration.

“Absolutely stunning.”

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[theangriestpea]

Party of Four

Summary: Y/N has been stringing her favorite serpents on for months. Sweet Pea has a dare for her that she can't possibly refuse. .  <ao3> <Kink Masterlist>

Pairing: Sweet Pea x Reader x Fangs x Jughead

Rating: Mature // Explicit

Word Count: 1.9k+

Warnings: Four-way, Triple penetration, Oral sex, Anal sex, Vaginal sex, Gangbang, unprotected sex. 

A/N: I have one Bingo down  for @riverdalebingo​ and I'm aiming for more! I'd like to fill my entire card but we'll see. I'm currently holding a follower celebration where you can request a fic from me! So click the link, follow the rules, and request away! I’ve gotten a few requests already that I’ll be working on soon. This is for the "Multiple Partners" square on my card.

Serpent parties had always been known for their debauchery. Nine times out of ten the cops were called but since FP was made Sheriff, nothing was ever done about it besides a light tap on the wrist. He’d tell them to turn the music down a bit or take their antics to another location. Tonight in particular he had asked them to relocate, however four snakes in particular stayed behind to have a little extra privatized fun.

She had been stringing along the three of them for months. Jughead, Sweet Pea, and Fangs were her favorite play things and while they had no idea what her endgame was or who she liked most, they all still did their best to win her affection.

Naturally when she said that they should stay behind to play a little game, the three boys obliged with fervor.

Y/N was laid out on the couch, legs in Jughead’s lap as she waited for Sweet Pea to choose someone. They had been playing truth or dare the past thirty minutes and dares were getting raunchier and raunchier. She was already down to her bra and underwear while Fangs had thrown up due to drinking a strange mixture of leftover beer and liquor.

Jughead’s hand was on her thigh, creeping upward. This did not go unnoticed by the other two Serpents, however they said nothing to their king. Sweet Pea’s tongue darted out to wet his lips, unsure if this dare was too much. She could always turn him down. She had one pass still.

“Y/N.” He finally said, “Truth or dare.” She had been declining to tell the truth all night as she knew they’d ask her who she wanted to be with when the answer was more complicated than either three wanted to hear.

She hummed, pretending to be in thought, “Dare.” She said, turning her head to look at the tallest of the snakes with a pretty smirk on her pouty lips.

Sweet Pea stared back at her as he hesitated. This wasn’t just his idea, Fangs had proposed it as well. He just wasn’t sure how Jughead would take the dare. He was the more sexually reserved one of the three boys. “I dare you to take all three of us at once.” He said, finally smirking back at her proudly. If she declined then that was fine, but him and Fangs had been talking about how to ask her to do this for weeks . The time had come and he wasn’t about to waste it.

Fangs shifted nervously while Jughead gave Sweet Pea a curious look. Since he had already been sharing her time with them, he wasn’t totally opposed to the idea. It was just unexpected. Y/N was looking up at the ceiling, contemplating her choices.  

She could have passed and taken truth instead but then she’d have to answer their question. Her finger came up to tap her chin as she pondered, could she even take all three of them on at once? And would it really be so bad?

Y/N sat up, looking between the three of them before shrugging, “if you three think you can take me, then I’m game. Look, I’m already mostly naked for you.” She joked at them with a devious look in her eye. None of them had expected this answer and all were looking at her with mouths agape.

“You better put those mouths to work if you’re going to have them open like that.” She purred to them as she took her legs off of Jughead’s lap. “I have a few jobs in mind…” She continued to tease them as she moved into the Serpent King’s lap and peppered his neck with kisses.

Fangs was up next, his hands running up her sides before unhooking her bra and taking it off so he could squeeze her bare breasts. Sweet Pea was ripping his own clothes off so that he was down to his boxers. He came up behind her and slipped his hand into the front of her underwear to probe at her clit.

She shuddered as she captured Jug’s lips with her own, kissing him roughly as the other two continued to grope and tease her until she was moaning. Her hips were grinding against Sweets’ hand, her own wetness soaking into her underwear. Jughead’s hands were in her hair, holding her head close to his as he took control of the kiss. He didn’t even notice her toss his beanie to the floor.

“I call her pussy,” Fangs said first before anyone could say anything. He grinned as Jughead groaned.

“Then I get her asshole.” Sweet Pea said back hotly and Jughead groaned again.

Y/N giggled, “That leaves my mouth to you, Juggie. Don’t you like my pretty little mouth on your dick?” Her hands moved through his hair before tugging on it.

Jughead couldn’t deny that her blowjobs were mindblowing. Instead he smirked before kissing her again but Y/N pulled away.

“Sweet Pea is the only one not wearing too many layers.” Y/N said in a childlike voice, “How can I touch you if you’re still wearing so much clothes?

Sweet Pea grabbed her and lifted her off of Jughead and placed her onto the couch beside him, attacking her mouth with his own while the other two discarded their clothing.

Y/N moaned again as he skillfully took off her underwear as they waited. He pulled out the kiss and twirled them around his finger, “these are soaked already. You excited over getting plowed by all three of us at once, babe?”

She blushed as he tossed them to the side. He leaned down into her ear, “what a little slut you are.” Y/N pushed him playfully, unoffended by his teasing words.

“It’s my turn.” Fangs said as he pushed Pea to the side and scooped Y/N up into his arms. She squealed and put her arms around his neck. “Let’s go somewhere a bit more comfortable, shall we, princess?”

Her response came in a light giggle as he carried her naked form to a nearby bedroom. He laid down with her on top of him and she adjusted her position to straddle his waist. “Fangs, are you hard for me already?” She asked with a fake gasp, “I had no idea I had such an effect on you.”

He smacked her ass and she giggled again, the other two joining them. Fangs pulled her down for a hungry kiss as Sweet Pea and Jughead moved behind her. Sweet Pea was already grabbing lube to squeeze a grotesque amount onto her ass before sticking in a sole finger. Jughead put his own two fingers into her core. Both boys were pumping her, eliciting whines of pleasure in response.

Her hips rocked to try and feel more, the feeling of both holds having something inside of her was already maddening. She had no idea how she’d take their cocks instead of their fingers.

“It’s like a waterslide in here, Fangs.” Jughead said with a grin, “I’m jealous.”

“You can have it next.” Fangs said, shrugging and Y/N was pouting at him.

Sweet Pea stuck in a second finger while Jughead pulled his own digits out. He licked them clean, still grinning, before he began to rub her clit at an agonizingly slow pace. She grinded onto his hand, whimpering into Fang’s neck as he continued to smack her ass hard enough to leave red hand prints.

After a few more minutes of grueling foreplay, both boys retracted their hands. Fangs grabbed both ass cheeks and spread them playfully, “make sure there’s plenty of lube on this cute little ass!”

Jughead moved to where their heads were laying, his own cock standing at attention as he pumped it lazily with one hand. “Think all of this is going to fit?” He asked, smirking down at her.

Y/N looked up at him with dilated pupils. “We’ll just have to find out.” She said seductively before opening her mouth wide for him. Jughead slipped inside of her mouth, groaning at the warm wetness of it. It didn’t all fit but she took as much as she could and put her and on what she couldn’t.

While she was distracted, Fangs entered her pussy with his own penis. He moaned at the sensation of her wrapped around him finally, enjoying the fact that he was having her this way first. His hands were still spreading her for his best friend as he got himself ready.

“Hold her still.” Sweet Pea said in a throaty tone as he probed her ass with his tip. She held in a breath as he slowly pushed into her. He could feel Fang’s throbbing cock through the small barrier of tissue, the sensation somehow exciting him further. “Fuck it’s tight.” He breathed out. “Ready, princess?”

There was a garbled affirmative as a response as Y/N’s mouth was currently fully of Jughead’s dick. She sucked and twirled her tongue expertly as he gave shallow thrusts into her mouth.

“Fuck her mouth, Jones, she loves it. Trust me.” Sweet Pea said, smirking as he began to move his hips at a slow pace.

Jughead grabbed a fistful of her hair. He knew that she had blown Sweet Pea before so this wasn’t exactly news to him. He began to move his hips more, hitting the back of her throat and making her gag. She made no sounds that indicated to him that she wanted him to stop. Instead she urged him further by sucking harder and moaning loudly.

Fangs and Sweet Pea started moving in sync with one another. They’d go in and out at the same time at a decent pace, Sweet Pea reached up and grabbed her shoulder roughly, pulling her back against his hips harder and harder.

Tears prick her eyes as a natural response to Jughead’s presence in the back of her throat. She breathed through her nose expertly as she tried to control the drool from slipping out of her mouth.

As he increased his pace, Fangs grabbed both of her breasts and squeezed them before turning his attention to her nipples. She was practically screaming now as all three boys were thrusting into her over and over.

She hit her first peak in no time at all, becoming a whimpering mess that was only being held up by their hands. Jughead pulled on her hair harder as he pushed in even deeper, effectively choking her.

Sweet Pea increased his speed, making Fangs speed up as well. Fangs reached down and started attacking her clit with his fingers gently. Within minutes she was unfolding again, her cries of intense euphoria muffled by Jughead’s cock. He came first, spilling his warm seed down her throat and across her tongue.

He gave one half-hearted thrust before pulling out, panting as he let go of her hair. He crouched down and gave her a forceful kiss, tasting himself on her tongue.

The tallest serpent came next, filling up her ass with his cum as he moaned loudly. Fangs came shortly after in just a few more quick thrusts. Both boys pulled out and Y/N collapsed on top of Fogarty, leaking fluids all over him.

“Wow, you actually did it.” Fangs breathed out into her hair as he rubbed her back. “Damn, babe, who knew you had it in you.”

“I can’t move.” She grumbled, “and I’m spilling out. It feels so gross.”

Sweet Pea came with a towel and started to clean her up lightly. “There, that should be better.”

She rolled off of Fangs and laid beside him panting, “So….who wants to go again?”

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[neuronary]

Fic Questionnaire

(blame @ford-ye-fiji for my being obnoxious.)

How many works do you have on AO3? publicly mine? 32. there are about fifteen or so that i have orphaned and/or posted anonymously

What's your total AO3 word count? again, publicly: 45 875. after some quick tallying of my orphaned and/or anonymous works: roughly 600k (listen twelve year old me did not write well but she did write a lot)

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they? sixteen: a:tla, the umbrella academy, dirk gently, skullduggery pleasant, the adventure zone, dimension 20, h*rry p*tter, s*pernatural (AS A JOKE. as a joke.), doctor who, percy jackson, spider-man, the loki tv show (not as a joke, regretfully, but i am an unironic sylvie/b15 truther), the descendants trilogy, kingsman, carmen sandiego, and the witcher

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? five very unoriginal gift fics that are only popular because they’re remix fics of fic by a popular author. i don’t regret writing them but i don’t like that they’re my most popular.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not? sometimes! if the comments are particularly heartfelt, or i can think of a witty reply, then yes. but i do get quite a lot of them, so i don’t have time to reply to all of them. also, i know some people try to judge fics by the number of comments so i don’t want to skew those numbers too much.

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending? so those of you who recognise the term ‘genetic irohny’ might be happy to hear that there’s a full fic for it! you might be less happy to hear that it ends with azula being publicly executed in front of mai and ty lee. it got very dark, very quickly, and it still requires some heavy editing before it’s going to be light-hearted enough for me to be comfortable posting it.

Have you ever recieved hate on a fic? oh yeah. lots. luckily my early days in fandom were defined by a lovely group of older teens on fanfiction.net that hyped me up endlessly and gave me a lot of tips on improving my writing. (i owe them so much.)

Do you write smut? If so what kind? nah. i do kinda wanna try my hand at it though.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? not as far as i’m aware. tbh i don’t think i’d necessarily give a shit because like. it’s fanfiction. it’s really not that deep for me.

Have you ever had a fic translated? everything i write is translated! my usual writing process starts with the rough outline and taster scenes being written in french, and if i’m struggling with a scene i’ll switch back to french and translate it later!

Have you ever co-written a fic before? no, but i’d love to. (fij i am side-eying u so hard rn)

What's your all time favorite ship? i’m really not a huge ship person tbh. romance is always secondary to me. unless a ship really icks me out, i’ll read anything with a good plot.

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will? friendly bentacles my beloved. you are so hard to write but you are such a fun concept. so much angst to be delivered.

What are your writing strengths? hmm. i think i’m pretty good at adapting/changing my style for different stories and genres. also the angst.

What are your writing weaknesses? the run on sentences. good god the run on sentences. i use too many fucking commas.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? if it’s a language i speak, then sure!

What was the first fandom you ever wrote for? skulduggery pleasant. oh the joys of being groomed age nine on the internet

What's your favorite fic you've ever written? uhhhhhhhh currently i hate pretty much everything i’ve written but once i’ve stopped doing that probably the one i wrote for my bad happens bingo card.

Tagging: @ultranos, @jenny-green-teeth (pls ignore me if i am being obnoxious) also anyone else who fancies it.

[justheretobreakthings]

Okay, we’re starting off Bad Things Happen Bingo with a bit of a throwback to the Voltron Bingo event from back in 2018. Way back then, I got a request from @familyofpaladins for my ‘Taking the Fall for Someone’ square, for Keith taking the fall for Hunk, and then the bingo ended and the prompt has just been sitting there for an eternity. But now, my BTHB card has just the square for me to finally get this prompt filled. Hope it was worth the very, very long wait!

Got Your Back

Written for @badthingshappenbingo Prompt: Taking the Blame Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Word Count: 13,198 Characters: Hunk & Keith Read on AO3

Summary:

While defending the planet of Crelxatain from attacking drones, Hunk causes what he believes to be some minor collateral damage, but what turns out to be much, much worse. And when the Crelxats needed something to blame, Keith steps in to take the fall.

I don’t even drink coffee.

It was fortunate that Hunk had gotten better with flying during the battles and flight practices he’d been through with Yellow. It might have been the Lions’ magic helping to keep their pilots stable, or the more mundane gyroscopic design of the cockpit helping with his equilibrium. Or, of course, it might just be a matter of him getting used to it. Whatever the case, he had come a long way since his Garrison days, when even a fifteen-minute run in a simulator would be more enough to empty the contents of his stomach.

It was fortunate, because if he hadn’t gotten better about keeping the nausea at bay, his cockpit would be a revolting mess right about now.

He and Keith had only been tasked with coming here to Crelxatain to negotiate for supplies, its geography home to mineral ore that Coran assured them could be top-grade fuel when Altean alchemy was in use, but just as they had approached the planet’s atmosphere, Yellow and Red both picked up a distress signal from the same city they were nearing. It seemed they had coincidentally arrived just in time for an air strike on the city from a nearby Empire ally, and the Crelxat had little in terms of defensive weaponry. So of course, that duty landed on the paladins.

If Yellow’s failed attempts to detect life in any of the little attacking cruisers was correct, they were only dealing with drones, not manned vehicles, but the maneuverability of the drones was downright amazing. They were constantly dodging strikes and blasts from Yellow, skimming near the tops of buildings and sometimes slipping between them, making sharp turns and speedy dives that left Hunk reeling.

The drones’ weapon of choice appeared to be some sort of energy pulse, and well-aimed blasts had elements of the infrastructure and sections of buildings toppling inward. These pulses were also being aimed at the Lions, and although they were made of strong enough material to resist being damaged by the force, the pulses would still send them jerking off course and blown aside.

Hunk groaned into his comm as Yellow tumbled in the air from one such blast, rolling rapidly enough that the gyroscopic cockpit couldn’t stop the blood from rushing to his head and then down again. “I swear,” he grunted, “When we’re finished with these things and back on the ground, I’m just going to spend like three days just lying on the floor, perfectly still, not moving. I’ve had enough movement.”

“You know we’re going to have to head back to the Castle eventually,” Keith replied through the comm. “That counts as movement.”

“So? Allura and Coran said we could take a few quintants.”

“Because it could take time for them to gather and refine the stuff we need, not because they expect us to conk out for days at a time.”

“I don’t care, I’m going for it. Day one, we place our order. Day whatever, we head back. Everything in between, we go comatose.” He squinted into the viewscreen and tried to get his vision to stop swirling before directing a blast toward an oncoming drone. The shot went wide, and the drone responded with a pulse that shoved Yellow backward and threatened to give Hunk whiplash.

“You hanging in there?” Keith asked.

“Yeah,” Hunk replied. At the corner of his viewscreen he spotted a beam of flame, the Red Lion’s fireblast, reducing a drone to ash. “Not as well as you are, though. Aren’t you getting dizzy too?”

“I was on the pilot track at the Garrison, I’ve been flying longer.”

“Still.” He righted Yellow as best he could and caught a drone in his sights. He sent off a cannon fire, and although he didn’t hit it head on, he managed to wing it just enough to send it spiraling. “Seems you’re taking down three of these things for every one I get.”

“We’re not keeping score, Hunk.”

“Just wish I was being a little more useful right now, is all.”

“You’ll be plenty more useful than me when we actually get around to talking to the Crelxats and making deals. You know that’s not exactly my strong suit.”

“Hmm, fair point,” Hunk said. “Your people skills are pretty abysmal, aren’t they.”

“Don’t hold back, Hunk, tell me how you really feel.”

“I’m just agreeing with you.” Yellow lurched upward, and Hunk narrowed his eyes at a drone zipping by from the bottom of his viewscreen while his stomach tried to right itself. He took aim with Yellow’s laser cannon, but just before he fired, another pulse threw the Lion to the side. The laser shot off, and he winced as it blasted through what appeared to be an enormous sculpture in a plaza below. “Crap,” he grunted.

“What is it?” asked Keith.

“I think I just took out some public art,” Hunk replied. “You don’t think that’ll come across as some weird anti-art statement, do you?”

“Let’s hope not. If the pulse things are giving you trouble, why don’t you focus on the drones that are flying higher up for now? I’ll work on the ones nearer to the buildings. Red’s got quicker reflexes, it’s easier to avoid collateral damage with her.”

“Yeah, sure,” Hunk sighed, managing to hold back a self-deprecating remark about how it was probably more to do with the pilot than the lion. For now, he set his sights on a drone careening toward the city's outskirts, and directed Yellow to go barrelling after it.

The pulses continued to give him no end of frustration, but he eventually managed to take down another three drones, and a scan informed him that the sky seemed to be clear around this elevation. He sighed with relief at the scan’s results, and reminded himself that he was this close to finally getting to touch down on flat ground and relax. His stomach was still churning, and his face was soaked in salty sweat, but it was over.

Well, almost over. The skies were clear at this elevation, but there had been more drones closer to the ground, and he wasn’t sure whether Keith had finished them all off yet. Odds were, of course, that he had, and might even be waiting impatiently on the ground wondering why it was taking Hunk such a long time to finish off his own batch. And now he was wasting more time catching his breath instead of actually finding out.

Heaving a deep breath, he grabbed the controls again and started downward, eyes peeled for signs of Keith. It didn’t take long to find him, as Red and her fire were making quite a scene above the city square, currently whipping around in a complicated air ballet while facing off against five drones at once, all focused on sending their pulses into Red from every direction.

Red was able to wing one of the drones before pulses from two of the others sent her flying back, and the Lion let out a growl that was echoed in Hunk’s comm as Keith let out one of his own. She dove back into the fray, expertly wheeling around between the drones and the building tops to send an arc of fire their way.

Hunk hovered on the outer edge of the ongoing fight, feeling the urge to help but not wanting to risk hitting Red by accident. “Uh, Keith?” he said. “There anything I can do right now?”

“Um, keep an eye out if any of these try to make a break for it,” Keith answered. “Other than that, think I got this under control.” As if to emphasize the point, a blast of Red’s fire hit one of the drone’s dead on, blasting it to ash.

“Okay…” Hunk said. He chewed at his bottom lip as he watched the drones, eyes straining as they flitted amongst their flight paths, trying to catch any sign that one of them was liable to break from the pack so he could go after it, but they all seemed to have their sights completely honed in on Red. It felt a little wrong to simply be waiting around while Keith managed the whole firefight on his own, even if Keith had sounded pretty certain of what he could handle and what he needed. He tentatively spoke up as Keith shot down another drone, “You know, um, maybe I could get a shield up and you can sort of feint toward it, see if we can draw them into - ”

He was cut off by a loud blast and a flash engulfing his viewscreen, and Yellow reeled back, sending him slamming his head into his dashboard. It seemed Red had sent out a powerful arcing blast from all to send the remaining drones careening out of the air, at the same time that the remaining drones surrounding her had all pulsed at once. Resulting in a shockwave that pushed Yellow back and, as was apparent when Hunk managed to blink his vision back into focus, leave many of the surrounding buildings with caved-in roofs. Hopefully any Crelxats inside them had had the sense to hunker down in the lower floors.

As he made sure Yellow was steady again, he glanced around for Red, and grimaced when he spotted her. She was still airborne, but the lights on her face and the tip of her tail were stuttering, while bolts of light crackled beneath her flank. “Um, Keith?” Hunk said. “Red’s not looking too hot.”

“I know, I’ve got it under - shit, hang on,” Keith grunted. Red turned around in the air, her movements jerkier than Hunk ever would have expected from Red, and starting soaring away from surrounding buildings. He followed in Yellow, and together the Lions made it to an open stretch of land. Red glided toward the ground, and as she was lowering, her lights went completely dark. She hit the ground with audible force, collapsing in a heap where she landed.

Hunk winced at the sight of the downed Lion before scanning his eyes over ground, making sure the terrain was clear for his own landing. He managed to maneuver Yellow close to the other Lion before lowering her to the ground and disembarking from her mouth. Keith was already outside of Red, standing with his arms folded and staring up at her face.

“You okay?” Hunk asked as he approached. “Looked like kind of a rough landing.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Keith said. “Managed to get nearly to the ground before she went offline. So, little abrupt, but nothing I couldn’t handle. We’re gonna have to see about getting her powered up again before we can head back to the Castle. Think it was one of those pulses throwing off the propellant tank that downed her.”

“Hmm. If that’s the case, I can probably do the repairs myself in a day or two, but we’ll need to replenish the fuel.”

“Hopefully the Crelxats will be willing to help us out for that.” Keith looked around. “Speaking of whom, see any of them coming this way yet? Battle’s over.”

Hunk frowned and joined Keith in peering about at the surrounding buildings. He had only seen a few sparse Crelxats on the ground while they had been in battle, the pale shocks of hair against skin shades of red and orange making them easy to spot, but most of them had likely fled indoors when the drones had arrived.

He felt a tap against his shoulder, and when he turned, Keith pointed; it seemed he’d been first to spot movement, and without a word between them they started off to follow the pair of Crelxats heading away from the Lions’ landing site and deeper into the city.

It didn’t take long for them to see where the many Crelxats had ended up, since after only a couple of turns they could see a crowd gathering in a wide plaza ahead, a murmur from the assembled onlooker reaching the paladins even at this distance. Hunk glanced to Keith, eyebrows raised, and Keith only shrugged, just as unsure as to what had the crowd so enthralled.

As they moved closer, heads began to turn in their direction, some of the onlookers nudging others beside them and pointing, the chatter gradually dying down as they stepped aside to let the paladins through. No face wore the joy or relief that Hunk was used to seeing from aliens after Voltron fought off invading forces for them. Instead, they were eyeing him and Keith with apprehension and suspicion.

This, Hunk decided, was not a good sign.

The Crelxats were quick to step aside for them, so they were able to reach the front of the crowd fairly easily. And Hunk’s stomach knotted itself tightly as he realized what they were all staring at.

The sculpture. The sculpture that he had blasted with Yellow’s cannon. Or, at least, what remained of it.

From above, it had been hard to see what the sculpture had actually depicted, and here from the ground, seeing only the bottom half, it wasn’t any easier to discern. The shape seemed to be fairly complex, a tangle of angles and loops, but nothing that resembled anything Hunk had ever seen before. His best guess was that it was an abstract piece; a lot of the public sculptures that could be found in plazas like this back on Earth were abstract. There was rubble, he noticed, bits of the same material as the sculpture scattered along the ground behind it, some of it smoldered black like the top of what remained of the standing sculpture, burnt up by the cannon’s heat.

The Crelxats standing nearest to the statue turned as Keith and Hunk approached, and one stepped toward them. She was half a head shorter than most of the others gathered nearby, although she made up for it with a piece of headwear that to Hunk just looked to be a tangled pile of wires. She appeared to be unarmed, although the other Crelxats just behind her all wielded either halberds in their hands or daggers at their hips; the weapons combined with the helmets on their head and matching sashes indicated that they were security of some sort, although Hunk wasn’t sure if they were guards for the city as a whole or just the Crelxat with the wires on her head.

Allura had briefed him and Keith a bit on who they would be interacting with on Crelxatain, and she had mentioned one of the Crelxats was both the governmental and religious leader for the city. Malvet, he was pretty sure her name was.

And right now, despite her being smaller than the other Crelxats and unarmed, he was feeling much more frightened of her than of the surrounding guards. Because he had never seen that much icy fury on a person’s face before. Her narrow silver eyes fixed him and Keith with a wrathful glare that he could almost physically feel, her hands clasped together in front of her were shaking from how tightly the fingers were intertwined, and dark veins pulsed visibly beneath the skin on her forehead.

“What,” she bit out, her voice low and dark and heavy, “happened?”

Hunk gulped, though it did little to alleviate the feeling of daggers in his throat or the clawing in his stomach. He had anticipated that people may be upset about the damaged sculpture - people always had a fondness for public art, especially pieces that had been around for quite a while and been accepted as an inherent part of the landscape - but the irate looks on the faces of Malvet and her guards and the horrified silence of the surrounding crowds was far worse than he expected.

Beside him, Keith cleared his throat, making Hunk jump. “Look,” Keith said, “I understand if you’re upset. But collateral damage is basically unavoidable against a weaponized enemy like the one that was attacking just now. We’re both here representing Voltron, and we were expected today, and we’d be willing to assist with repairs to your art while we’re here if you - ”

“Our art?!” Malvet spat, her face going an even deeper shade of maroon. “You believe this monument to be simply art?!”

“Um… isn’t it?” said Keith.

Her hand shook as she pointed a clawed finger toward the sculpture’s remains. “This monument is the vessel for the Twenty Gods of Crelxatain, the channel through which they grant life and fortune. It was built as a cenotaph to the spiritual leaders who have dedicated their lives to guiding Crelxatain to the will of the Gods, and as such is the one site wherein their connection to the citizenry is most powerful. It has stood for centuries, and now… it has been destroyed.”

“...Oh,” said Keith, as a murmur began rumbling through the crowd. He had paled somewhat, and seemed to be at something of a loss for words.

Hunk was faring no better; he didn’t think he’d be able to string two coherent words together right now with his nerves the way they were. This was much worse than he could have predicted. Why the hell would something this important to them be out here in the middle of the town with no additional protection? Why wasn’t it in some sort of ultra-enforced temple and under constant watch? He could only hazard wild guesses - maybe they wanted it to be more exposed to the people, maybe they had assumed that faith in those twenty gods of theirs would keep it safe or something. Now didn’t really seem like the correct time to ask about it.

Keith was the first to speak again, keeping his voice surprisingly level. “I - I appreciate the seriousness of the damage, then. Know that we did what we could to prevent it. The drones were - ”

“No,” Malvet cut him off. “We witnessed these drones. They used force, yes, their weapons have done damage enough. But they burned nothing. The monument - it has been burned.” She swept her arm out to gesture again toward the remains, the singeing and ashes seeming somehow darker now. “We witnessed your ships too. You had cannons and flame. So tell me,  representative of Voltron. What. Did. You. Do?”

“I - ”

“Which of you did it?!” Her voice rose abruptly in volume, crackling with despair. “It had to have been one of you! This callous destruction - which of you is to blame?!” She rounded on Hunk, who stepped back, swallowing down a whimper. “You’ve not spoken, have you, yellow one? And why is that? Have you nothing to say?! No words in your defense?!”

Hunk could feel an icy sweat breaking out on the back of his neck. “I - I - I, uh - ”

“Is it guilt that stays your tongue?!” Malvet continued, jabbing a gnarled finger toward him. “Is the sight of the damage you’ve done before you too much to - ”

“I’m sorry,” Keith suddenly spoke up beside him. Hunk and Malvet both turned to him, incredulous, as Keith stepped forward, arms crossed over his chest and eyes on the ground.

“You’re sorry,” Malvet repeated tonelessly.

“Yeah,” Keith said. “It was my doing. Red - you know, you saw her out there, she’s awfully fast, and, um, gets real heated in battle and stuff, so it can be easy to kinda - to lose control, see, and I wasn’t really paying attention to the, um - ” He waved his hand in the direction of the destroyed sculpture. “The scenery, and stuff, so, yeah. It’s my fault, and I’m sorry.”

Hunk bit his lip as he turned his attention back to the Malvet, who was examining Keith with narrowed, probing eyes. If she knew Keith at all, it would be obvious that he was lying. He had rambled and stumbled and refused to look even remotely in her direction and his voice had kept getting lower as he spoke. All tells of his. Not to mention that Keith was the least likely of any of the paladins to ever focus during a battle or be unable to handle his Lion’s agility and fire.

But the Crelxats didn’t know Keith, so after several ticks of silent examination, Malvet hissed out, “I see.”

She stepped back, and Keith’s eyes darted upward, looking apprehensive. Malvet let silence ring throughout the square for a couple seconds more, but just as Keith opened his mouth to speak again, she nodded.

Instantly there was an eruption of activity, and Hunk was nearly knocked to the ground by the guards rushing past him toward Keith. Half a dozen fully armored guards descended on Keith, and though Hunk saw Keith’s hand fly instinctively to his hip where his bayard was holstered, he either was too caught off guard to grab it in time or thought better of whipping it out right now, since it was still holstered when his arms were wrenched behind his back and he was brought forcefully to his knees.

“Hey!” Hunk yelped. “What are you - ?” His attempt to rush forward to help Keith was stymied by halberds crossed in front of him, and a guard took his arm to hold him back, although he was handling Hunk more gently than his fellow guards were handling Keith, whose ankles were being pinned to the ground by heavy boots on top of them and whose hair was in the tight grip of gauntlet-covered hands. “Stop it!” Hunk cried. “You’re gonna hurt him!”

“After what he has done to us, hurt only seems fair as recompense,” Malvet said, stalking over to glower down at Keith. Around him, Hunk could hear others in the crowd murmuring their agreement. “He must be made to pay penance.”

“He didn’t do anything to you!” Hunk shouted.

“He just confessed to being responsible for the destruction of our monument.”

“But it wasn’t his fault! He only - ”

“Not his fault?” Malvet finally turned to Hunk. “Are you saying that his confession was inaccurate?”

Keith shook his head, or at least gave a little twitch in the guards’ grasp that may have been meant as a head shake, but Hunk nodded at the Crelxat, relieved. “Yes, yes, that’s what I’m saying! It was my - ”

But Malvet was already turning away before Hunk could finish, making a gesture to one of the guards. “You heard him; remove it.”

“Oh thank God,” Hunk sighed. “I’m sure we can all - um - ” He faltered as he watched the guards. When Malvet had told them to ‘remove it’, he had assumed she meant removing their feet from on top of Keith’s legs or removing the weapons from where they were pointed at him, sharp tips far too close to Keith for Hunk’s liking. But they weren’t. Instead, they still held him in place despite his struggling, and one of them had moved in front of Keith and was grabbing his jaw. “Wait, what are you doing?”

“If his tongue is to be used to spew false witness before the eyes of the twenty gods,” Malvet said, “Then it is of no good to us nor to him. It shall be removed.”

Hunk’s eyes blew wide, every drop of blood in his veins turning to ice as the guard managed to force Keith’s mouth open and a dagger’s blade approached. “No! No, no, no, you can’t do that! He - he wasn’t lying, you misunderstood!”

“And pray tell, what did I misunderstand?” Malvet said.

“Just - I meant - he - it was an accident,” Hunk fumbled weakly. “He did but - but he didn’t mean to, you know? It was, like, unavoidable. So - so - so it’s not his fault.” He glanced toward Keith, trying to figure out whether that had been the right thing to say, but with the way the guards were still holding his jaw and gripping his hair, Keith couldn’t exactly make an expression to indicate one way or the other.

Malvet let out a derisive sniff. “Unavoidable? The people of Crelxatain have avoided damaging it for centuries. This one could easily have done the same.” She turned away from Hunk again, back to the guard. “How soon can we have him perform his penance.”

The guard let out a pensive hum before replying, “We’d need until overmorrow’s nightfall to prepare and deliver an oblation to the twenty gods. The penance can take place the morning after.”

“Begin preparations, then,” Malvet said with a nod.

Keith was hauled to his feet, meeting Hunk’s gaze as one of the guards behind him drew a set of shackles from somewhere within their armor to cuff his hands behind him. “Hunk,” he said, a slight rasp to his voice, no doubt from the way his mouth had been manhandled a moment ago, “It’s gonna be fine, okay?”

Hunk almost let out a laugh of sheer disbelief. Keith should be the one being reassured right now, not Hunk. “Are you insane?” Hunk said.

“Look, just get the supply stuff taken care of, I’ll figure this out, and we can - ”

“Get moving,” one of the guards said, shoving him away from Hunk as two others began wheeling him around by the arms.

“Just a sec,” said Keith. “See if you can get Red up and - ”

He grunted, his words cut off by the hilt of one of the guards’ daggers being slammed into his face. When he scowled back up at the offending guard, his nose was bleeding. “I said get moving,” the guard growled.

“Hey!” Hunk cried. He tried moving toward the retreating guards, but the ones who had held him back before intercepted him again. “Hey, you can’t treat him like that!”

It was useless. The guards ignored him, and as the crowd began surging and milling around him, they disappeared, along with Keith.

This was so, so, so bad.

For a long moment he simply stood there on shaking knees, uncertain what to do, until he felt a tap on his shoulder. He whipped around, coming face to face with a tall, narrow-faced Crelxat. “What?” he snapped.

“Your companion said you were here as a representative of Voltron,” the Crelxat said. His expression was stoic, unfazed by Hunk’s tone and by the scene that had just gone down before him.

“Yeah,” Hunk said. “And?”

“I am Kalgex? Of the Crelxatain Geological Survey Bureau and Mine Repository. I was contacted about overseeing a trade deal between your organization and our department?”

Hunk stared. “Um,” he said, “Look, I’ve kind of got other things on my mind at the moment. Keith - I - I don’t know where they’re - I have to figure this out, I have to see - ”

“I am certain a member of the security force will be in contact with you once your friend has been duly processed,” Kalgex said. “They are quite efficient in matters of communication.” He pulled something out of his pocket, a small cylinder with a screen across it that lit up like a cell phone. “Those attackers put us behind schedule. We really oughtn’t postpone negotiations any longer than necessary.”

A part of Hunk, a small but strong part, wanted to punch Kalgex in the face right then and there. He was talking about Keith being arrested and hurt and forced to pay ‘penance’ - Hunk wasn’t sure what that entailed exactly, but it didn’t sound like fun - as if it were a minor inconvenience in a normal workday. As if Hunk were being somehow unreasonable for wanting to go after him rather than worry about the stupid ore.

“No,” he said. “No, I have to go.” He turned away, scanning the crowd and spotting the array of wires that had decorated Malvet’s head. Immediately he began shoving his way through the crowd, ignoring Kalgex calling after him, and didn’t stop until he had reached her, right on the edge of the plaza with a guard at each side. “Hey!” he shouted. “Where did you people take Keith?!”

She turned, eyeing him up and down with pursed lips, like he was a stain on her floor that she was deciding how to get rid of. “To the holding cells to await penance, of course,” she answered.

“And where’s that, huh?”

Malvet’s eyes narrowed. “He will not be allowed visitors until his case has been fully processed according to our laws. Respect our criminal proceedings should be the least we could ask of Voltron, considering the disrespect your friend has shown toward our - ”

“Yeah, I know,” Hunk said, frustration turning his voice to a growl. “Fine. When will that be done so I can visit him?”

“I will see to it you are contacted when proceedings are completed,” Malvet said. It wasn’t exactly an answer, but at least it was an assurance that he would get to visit Keith before the penance took place. “And of course,” Malvet continued, “Your companion will be duly returned to you once penance has been completed.”

“Right,” Hunk sighed. “So, what is this ‘penance’ anyw- ”

But Malvet had already turned away, leaving Hunk standing uselessly, grinding his teeth and dreading what the answer would have been.

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

He tried and failed to come up with a plan.

His first thought once he finally accepted that the whole situation with Keith was out of his hands was, naturally, to contact the other paladins for help. But the reason it had only been himself and Keith coming to Crelxatain in the first place was that the others were on missions of their own. They had docked the Castle, shields in place, on a moon in a neutral zone the next star system over, and Shiro and Allura were off on Heliuruta to negotiate allowance through their blockade into the quadrant, while Coran had recruited Lance and Pidge to help him on a medical supply-gathering expedition. So Hunk couldn’t reach any of them at the Castle, didn’t know where on the planets the groups had gone and wouldn’t have time to track them down, and couldn’t contact them through just the Lions’ communications system at such a range.

Which meant that whatever happened to Keith, he was going to be the only one around to deal with it.

It also meant that he was stuck doing the negotiations for the Crelxat ores alone. Between himself and Keith, Hunk was better with numbers, but Keith was more stubborn and better at steamrolling attempts to mislead. By the time he wrapped up his meeting with Kalgex and his board, they had wound up settling on a price nearly twice as high as what Coran had told them to aim for.

Hunk couldn’t bring himself to be that put out about it, though. The main reason he’d done such a lackluster job of negotiating, after all, was that his mind was more occupied with the much more pressing matter of what the hell was happening with Keith.

He managed a grand total of less than a varga of sleep the first night on Crelxatain, despite the comfortable accommodations that had been prepared for him at a lodging house not far from the plaza where the monument had stood. He had made sure every single member of the staff there knew that they were to come get him immediately the instant anyone contacted him about getting to visit Keith, but no message came.

The Crelxats had predicted it would take them about two days to refine the ore he’d requested and prepare it for transport, so he tried to occupy his time by working on repairs for Red. He dried up nearly all the GAC they’d been given for this trip gathering tools and supplies for it - apparently the ability to fix vehicles must have been considered something of a luxury in Crelxatain, and was priced as such - and as he set to work on her dark and still form, wondered what she would be doing right now if she were up and running. If she was calm, then he’d know Keith was okay. If she was angry and trying to reach Keith by force… well, then he’d be even more worried than he was now, but at least Red would be helping to take care of the problem.

He worked on her throughout the day, still with no word about Keith, and the longer he went without answers the more nauseous he felt. He managed to eat some lunch between getting supplies and starting on Red’s repairs, and it sat like rocks in his stomach for the rest of the day. He didn’t bother with dinner.

He managed to fall asleep at some point that night, and woke tangled in his bedding after tossing and turning in his sleep, not feeling refreshed at all.

It wasn’t until later that day, when he returned from Red’s landing site back to the lodging house, promising himself that he would at least try to eat something because starving himself wasn’t going to help Keith, that he discovered a member of the security force was there waiting for him, had told the staff that he was there to escort Hunk to visit ‘the prisoner’ as requested.

Finally.

The walk to where Keith was being held wasn’t far from the plaza that had housed the monument, and the building he was led into looked from the outside a bit like a country church, long and narrow and with a vaulted roof. Hunk was led into a dim anteroom as the guard who escorted him had a muttered conversation with another who was standing watch inside, then, another door was opened, and he was ushered through and into a hall lined on each side with cells. The guard didn’t accompany him any further past the door, just told him, “You have fifteen doboshes,” before taking his leave, slamming the door shut behind him.

The hall was just as dim as the anteroom, the walls and floors a shale-like shade and narrow windows in the walls of the cells lining only one side of the hall casting sharp shadows, so it took a moment for Hunk to spot the cells’ only occupant, seated on the floor against the wall at the end of the hall. When he did, he let out an enormous breath of relief and rushed toward him, yelling out, “Keith!”

Keith looked up at the sound of his name, and Hunk grimaced at the sight of him as he got to his feet. He’d been stripped of his armor and left only in his dark undersuit, and was shackled hand and foot, maybe a foot and a half of chain between each metal cuff on his wrist, and the same around his ankles. A red and purple bruise spread from his cheek to his nose, swelling enough to make one eye squint; this was likely the result of that guard who had struck him with the dagger hilt the other day. Besides that, Keith appeared to be uninjured, just tired, a fact that the dark rings beneath his eyes could attest.

“Hunk,” he said. “So, um. So, how are you do- ?”

“Are you out of your mind?!” Hunk cried. Honestly, he had been intending to ease into that a bit more, give Keith a friendly greeting and see how he’d been being treated before moving onto the topic of what the actual quiznak Keith had been thinking, but it seemed his brain had forgotten to relay that plan to his mouth.

“Hunk,” Keith repeated, lifting his shackled hands placatingly. “You have to be calm, all right?”

“How can I - you can’t expect - what were you thinking?!” Hunk demanded. “You know as well as I do that Red didn’t - ”

“Hunk, I’m serious. They’ll hear you.”

Hunk shut his mouth, teeth coming together with a click, and looked back toward the door. Right. Apparently the Crelxats really didn’t like being lied to. As much as he hated it, their story was that Keith had been the one to ruin the monument, and that’s the story they were going to have to stick with if they wanted to get out with their tongues still intact. “Sorry,” Hunk said. His eyes roved over the rest of the hall, stopping at the sight of a lens near the ceiling in the center. “Crap, will they be able to hear - ?”

“That one’s just video, no audio,” Keith said. “They can’t hear us.”

“How do you know for sure?”

“The guards told me.”

Hunk raised a brow. “And you’re just taking their word for it?”

“Course not,” Keith replied, shaking his head. “I tested it. They didn’t care one lick about me slinging insults at them through that camera for about an hour straight. Moment I said the same while they were actually here, they got pretty thin-skinned.” He tapped lightly at the dark bruise on his face. “This, uh, this was smaller yesterday.”

Hunk winced. “Dang it, Keith,” he said. “Why did you have to go and do that, huh?”

“... You mean, why’d I have to insult them?”

“You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”

There was a long moment’s pause between them, and then Keith sighed. “I was trying to help, Hunk,” he said. “That’s all. That Malvet, she was so mad, and the guards were at the ready, and you - well, you were - ” He took a deep breath. “I dunno. Maybe if you were able to see how you looked in that plaza, you’d get why I needed to step in.”

Well, Hunk could certainly recall feeling terrified to his core, but he didn’t know how much of it had actually shown on his face. If it was enough to get Keith to take the fall for him like that, though, it was too much. “I mean, you did a heck of a lot more than ‘step in’,” he said. “Look, Keith, don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful, but I - God, man, I really wish you hadn’t done that.”

The shadow of a sad smile played on Keith’s lips before vanishing again. “Yeah,” he sighed. “Wasn’t really expecting you to be overjoyed about it. But it’s not like they were giving us a whole lot of time to come up with a better plan to get you out of that mess than just… getting in myself.”

“Why did you decide you needed to get me out of it in the first place?”

Keith frowned at him, appearing genuinely surprised. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because - because I’m the one who caused the mess? Yeah, it was an accident, but it still was mine to own.”

Keith shrugged. “We’re teammates, right? Your mess is my mess.”

“I - ” Hunk took a long breath and blew it out slowly. “You really picked a horrible time to embrace team spirit.”

“I guess. Can’t exactly go back now, though.”

“Right, suppose not.” He let the silence linger a little longer, half-hoping that Keith would suddenly pipe up with an, ‘Unless…’ and a brilliant idea to make everything right, but of course he didn’t. “So we’re just supposed to see this out to the end, huh? Endure whatever they throw at you?”

“Don’t exactly have much choice,” Keith answered. “But, I mean - it’s just a waiting game until tomorrow morning. They’ll dole out their punishment and then it’s over. Just have to get it over with. Did you get the ore stuff taken care of?”

“Yeah,” Hunk said. “And don’t say ‘just get it over with’ like it’s just a hard test at school or something, man. They’re gonna - I don’t even know what, but they were awful mad. What are they planning to do tomorrow anyhow?” Keith didn’t answer, and Hunk’s gaze grew more intense, newly ignited worry crackling in his gut. “Keith? Do you know what’s gonna happen?”

Keith hesitated, dropping his gaze. “Okay, um, they, uh, they haven’t really given me much to go on, so I don’t know for sure.”

“But you have some idea?” Hunk prodded.

“Well, so, you know they said that I’ve got to face ‘penance’ for the monument.”

“Yeah.” Hunk fought down the anxiety that bubbled up at the mere mention of the word. “Still don’t quite know what that means, though.”

“Right.” Keith took a deep breath. “Well, uh, no one’s said anything to me directly, but I’ve overheard some chatter. From the guards here, see. They don’t seem to have any specifics either, but they’ve got a better idea of what ‘penance’ usually refers to, so they were talking, and, um…” He trailed off and began to chew at his lip.

“And what?”

Keith lifted his eyes back up to Hunk, and they were wide, brow pinched, almost appearing apologetic. “You have to promise not to freak out.”

Immediately Hunk was fully prepared to freak out. “What do you mean? What’s there to freak out about?! Keith, what’s gonna happen?!”

“Okay, look, it’s probably not as bad as - ”

“Keith, if you have to warn me not to freak out, it’s probably pretty bad!”

“That’s not what - it’s not the penance part, I just didn’t want you to feel guilty about what happens, all right? I promise, Hunk, I’m gonna be able to handle it. Okay? Whatever happens, you’ve got to keep a cool head. The last thing we need is for them to decide to detain you too. And, well - ” He let out a little cough and rubbed at the back of his neck. “I’m probably, um, gonna need you to help me out afterward…”

Hunk gulped. As much as he dreaded the answer, he had to know. “Keith,” he said, “What’s the penance?”

There was another second’s hesitation before Keith quietly answered, “If what those guards were saying was true, Crelxatain seems to be fond of, um… corporal punishment. A public display of it. Apparently it’s, um, they seem to think it’s an effective way to, uh, deter repeat crimes, and, like - ”

Hunk’s voice, which had frozen in his throat at some point while Keith had been talking, managed to find just enough strength for him to repeat in a squeak, “Corporal punishment?!”

Keith winced. “Yeah. Um, best as I could tell from what they were saying, flogging’s pretty common, so that’s probably the most likely, but, um, yeah… Hunk? Please don’t freak out.”

“How can I not freak out?! Keith, they’re going to - !”

“I know,” Keith snapped. “I - yeah, I know.” He huffed out a sigh and crossed his arms over his chest. “Look, it’s not like I’m looking forward to it, but it’s not exactly like we can opt out. The place is under heavy guard, Red is still down… Only thing for us is to ride this out, let them take their anger out on me if they have to, then get back to the Castle as soon as we’re able so we can, um, you know.” He tightened his arms where they were crossed. “Fix anything that needs fixing.”

With a frustrated sigh, Hunk leaned against the wall, letting his shoulder rest up where the hard wall met the narrow bars of Keith’s cell. His legs were feeling leaden, like they would give out on him if he spent much longer standing on his own two feet, so he let himself slide down toward the floor. Once he was seated, Keith joined him, sitting down cross-legged on the other side of the bars, although it took some maneuvering to get settled with those chains on his ankles. “You okay?” Keith asked.

“Don’t ask me that,” said Hunk. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be in that cell right now, not you.”

“Hunk,” said Keith, “You didn’t do anything wrong. It was an accident.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t do anything wrong either! You know as well as I do that Yellow was the one who took down that monument. You’re too good a pilot, you’d never let something like that happen with Red.”

“It has nothing to do with who’s a better pilot. Yellow’s bigger than Red, it’s harder to avoid collateral damage with her.”

“Doesn’t matter. The damage was still mine. And you - ” His lip began to tremble, and Keith seemed to tense at the catch in Hunk’s voice. “You shouldn’t have lied to the Crelxats like that. You should’ve just let me take responsibility. What good does it do for you to have to do this stupid ‘penance’ thing instead of me?”

“Hunk, I - ”

“Either way, we’re ending up with one paladin who’s gonna wind up really, really hurt, so why did you get to decide it should be you instead of me, huh? Why would you go and complicate things like that? What the hell were you thinking?!”

Keith sighed, bringing his hands up and combing his fingers into his hair as he grabbed his head. “I was thinking, you were scared. And I just… I dunno. I wanted to fix that.”

Hunk set his jaw, hoping that that would help keep the tremor out of his voice. “And you just decided the best way to do it would be to take on all the consequences for yourself? That’s not fair to you, Keith.”

Slowly lowered his hands from his hair to cross his arms over his chest instead, and he muttered something under his breath that Hunk couldn’t quite make out. “What was that?” Hunk asked.

“I said, nothing’s ever ‘fair’,” Keith replied. “This isn’t about fairness. If things were gonna be ‘fair’, the Crelxats wouldn’t be upset with us over that monument in the first place, they’d be too busy being grateful to us for saving their asses and they’d realize that that should be much higher priority than a stupid statue. But as is, we can’t leave, we can’t get help from the others, and the Crelxats want blood. It’s not fair, but it’s happening, so all we can do now is get it over with.”

“I know, but - but - ” Hunk sighed and rested his chin on his hand. “I still say you shouldn’t have done it.”

“I know.”

“And I wasn’t that scared.”

“Okay.”

“Are you scared?”

There was a pause before Keith answered, “No.”

Hunk sighed. “You’re a really awful liar, Keith.”

“I know.”

They sat in silence for a long while before Hunk slowly reached through the bars of the cell and took hold of Keith’s hands, twining his fingers into Keith’s and trying not to think about how cold they were. “I’m sorry, man,” he said softly.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Keith mumbled.

“Sure. I’m just gonna go ahead and be sorry anyway, kay?” He gave his hand a squeeze. “Besides the face, have they hurt you?”

“Nah. Bit of shoving around, but that’s all.”

“They been giving you water? Food?”

“Enough, yeah.”

Hunk frowned, making a mental note to set aside some food from the lodging house to fill Keith up the moment he was released. He was just opening his mouth to ask if Keith had any requests - none of the Crelxat food was an exact match to any from Earth or any they’d encountered in space so far, but he could at least do some taste testing and see if he could find something similar to whatever Keith wanted - but he was interrupted by the door at the end of the hall slamming open.

“Time is up,” the guard grunted. “Make your leave.”

Hunk scowled at the guard, but after giving Keith’s hand one final squeeze, he rose to his feet. “I’ll be right there waiting once the penance is done,” he said. “The ore delivery should be finished early tomorrow morning, so once Red’s back up and running we can go straight back to the Castle. Get off this planet for good.”

“That’ll be nice,” Keith said, and he grimaced when the guard knocked his halberd into the doorframe, ordering Hunk to get moving. “I’ll - I’ll see you then. Better get going.”

Reluctantly Hunk complied, shuffling back down the hall of empty cells and giving Keith one last wave goodbye before the door was slammed shut again with a sickening finality.

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

Time moved at a crawl as Hunk waited. He kept himself occupied as best he could, working on Red’s repairs throughout the day, and he managed to convince a guard to let him take Keith’s confiscated armor and bayard off their hands (with the understanding that if he tried any funny business with the weaponry he would be tossed into his own cell before he could so much as blink) to have them ready for Keith when the penance was finished, and he polished the helmet three times over just for something mindless to do.

He stared at the ceiling in his room that night, trying to convince his exhausted body to sleep, but it wasn’t easy. Every time he closed his eyes all he could see was Keith, standing before that same crowd that had been in the plaza, and he was facing his penance, Malvet raising a whip with sadistic glee in her smile.

He always opened his eyes again before it actually made contact.

It took vargas of pacing around the room that night - ignoring the irritated knocking from whoever was staying in the room below his - to finally wear him out enough to get any amount of sleep, and then he was up again, getting the ore loaded onto Yellow in the earliest hours of morning and anxiously watching the planet’s sun creep upward into the sky, the whorling dread in his stomach growing stronger with every inch it rose.

No one came to fetch him or let him know when the penance was starting, but they didn’t have to. He could see for himself when Crelxats started to eagerly emerge from their homes and head off all in the same direction, and he overheard bits and pieces of discussion about whether they thought the twenty gods would be appeased and what they thought of the offering that had been made by the city the night before; Hunk didn’t know what that offering had been, and honestly he could not have cared less, but apparently it had been act one of this show, and Keith’s penance was the finale.

For visibility’s sake Hunk donned his full paladin armor before leaving the lodging house, hopefully for good, and he followed the flow of Crelxats past the building that housed Keith’s cell and even past the plaza featuring the statue, which, judging by the scaffolding that had been set up around the plaza, was currently under repairs. The Crelxats moved down a road veering off to the side and sloping down toward a long, solid wall, where they congregated toward a large arched entryway flanked by two guards.

He started toward the entry, but was stopped by a hand on his arm. He jumped and whipped around to find a stony-faced Crelxat guard, dressed in the same garb as the guards had been in the jail where Keith had been kept. Two other guards were hovering nearby, watching with the same stoic expression.

“If you are intending to view the penance,” the guard said, “You must remain under our watch.”

“What?” said Hunk. “Why?”

“You have made known that you hold close personal connection to the transgressor.” Ire scratched at Hunk’s throat at Keith being referred to as ‘the transgressor’, but he held his tongue and let the guard continue: “It is standard, then, to ensure that you are kept under supervision to prevent attempts at interfering with the penance.”

“Oh. Um, right,” Hunk relented. It made sense, he supposed. Any decent person witnessing their friend being publicly tortured would want to try to put a stop to it. It seemed that even if he hadn’t already promised Keith that he would let the Crelxats go through with their punishment, there wasn’t much he would be able to do under the eye of their guards.

The one who had stopped him nudged him forward as one of the others began leading the way toward the entrance, while the other approached and held out his hand. “No weapons are allowed at the viewing. Hand it over.”

Reluctantly Hunk removed his bayard from where it was holstered at his hip and dropped it into the guard’s hand. The guard nodded curtly and turned to follow the other, turning the bayard in his hand to inspect it as he went, and Hunk was nudged again, a cue to follow.

He trailed behind them, and as they passed through the entryway, he got his first view of where this penance was being held. The space seemed to be some sort of amphitheater, with rows of seats curving in a semicircle, getting lower and lower as they reached the center, where there stood a completely bare platform, high enough that the spectators sitting in the front row would probably have to crane their necks to see what happened on top of it.

Hunk wanted to go toward the front, to be as visible as possible when Keith was brought out, so he would be able to see him in the crowd, know he was there to support him and rush to his side the moment this whole mess was finally over, but the guards instead led him into a row toward the back. As they filed in, Hunk scowled at the Crelxats who were milling around the amphitheater, filling up the rows of seats in front of them. All these people, taking the time out of their lives to come and watch Keith suffer. As though this was some sort of entertainment to them. They wanted blood, they wanted it from Keith, and there was nothing about this whole situation that wasn’t disgusting.

He had to take care to clench his jaw so he wouldn’t wind up just shouting at everyone in the crowd, since that would probably only end with him being forcibly escorted out by the guards, and took his seat obediently. The other Crelxats in the crowd were gradually sitting down as well, taking their time far too casually, and every dobash of waiting felt agonizingly long.

After that wait, though, the crowd finally hushed at the sight of the guards coming through the entrance at the front of the amphitheater behind the stage, and as they did, Hunk wished they could go back to the waiting. Harrowing though it was, it was still better than watching Keith being escorted onto the stage.

His wrists and ankles were still shackled, so his gait was only a shuffle, and the guards at either side of him pushing him forward didn’t seem to be making walking any easier; he tripped on the steps leading onto the stage and, rather than pause to let him regain his balance, the guards grabbed him under the arms and began dragging him before Keith managed to find his footing again. He still wore the leg portion of his underarmor, but he’d been stripped of the top, and his bare torso looked deathly pale in the too-bright sunlight.

He also, as Hunk realized with a surge of fury as Keith shook his hair out of his face, been gagged, a strap of what looked like leather cinched tightly over his mouth and digging into the skin at the corners. Hunk wondered vaguely what he had said to the guards to warrant that addition. Or who he had bitten.

The Crelxats in the amphitheater around him had begun to jeer as Keith was escorted onto the stage, and only stopped when another figure stepped out: Malvet, the wiring of her head blindingly reflecting glints of the sunlight as she raised her hands for quiet.

“We are gathered here,” she began, her voice booming despite Hunk not seeing any sort of microphone or other audio equipment anywhere, “To offer the Twenty Gods of Crelxatain a display of our respect, our reverence, and our compunction. The offender who stands before you now has, in an act of brash disregard for our planet and its citizens - ”

She continued, but Hunk tuned her out, and not just out of anger toward the way she was talking about Keith. His focus had instead been drawn to the guards who had come forward along the stage. Where he had thought there had just been flat floorboards, they opened a hatch, and from beneath the stage they unfolded a bundle of beams that clicked into place as a solitary and stationary pole, with a hooped hook sticking out of it a good six feet up. Keith was pulled forward, and the chain between his wrists was lifted and latched onto the hook, leaving Keith standing with his arms stretched above him, back stretched out and exposed.

So Keith had been right about the flogging, and Hunk pressed his lips together, feeling nausea bubble up in his throat and wondering if he were going to start blowing chunks onto the row of Crelxats in front of him.

He kept his eyes on Keith, trying to meet his gaze, and Keith was looking out to the crowd too. It was hard to be absolutely sure from this distance, but Hunk was pretty sure that Keith spotted him, because his gaze was definitely aimed Hunk’s way, his pale face and wide eyes directed right toward him.

And no matter what Keith said, he was definitely scared.

Unlike in Hunk’s nightmarish visions from the night before, Malvet wasn’t the one to bring out a whip. Instead it was one of the guards, unfurling a length of cord from behind him as Malvet stepped toward the pole, fixing Keith with a withering glower before turning back to address the crowd once more. “To each of the twenty gods he has chosen to desecrate, he shall pay blood in penitence. Firstly, to Taelxot.”

That was all the fanfare given before the crack of the whip rang through the amphitheater, making Hunk jump at its suddenness. It seemed too soon to be starting, he needed more time, more time to emotionally ready himself and for Keith to say his own piece, but here they were. It was happening. Now.

The first lash seemed to have taken Keith off guard too, since he let out a yelp at the contact that was muffled by his gag. The crowd of Crelxats let out applause as the whip struck, and the sound seemed distant to Hunk as he watched Keith, trying to see if he was okay.

“Secondly,” Malvet continued, “To Vokrin.”

Another crack of the whip, another cheer. These names Malvet was saying, Hunk surmised, must have been the names of some of those twenty gods she kept talking about, and they must have been giving Keith one lash for each god that had been disrespected.

Which meant there were going to be twenty lashes in total. Hunk’s eyes widened as the whip dragged on the floor as the guard reeled it back, leaving a red streak on the wooden planks that Hunk could just barely see from where he was sitting.

There was no way he was going to be able to stomach eighteen more of these.

At the third lash, Keith squeezed his eyes shut against the pain, and at the fourth, the whip struck deep enough that Hunk could see blood droplets flying directly from Keith’s back. The crowd was eating it up, getting to their feet as they applauded, and at the fifth lash, Hunk stood too, because that was the only way he could still see over the heads of the cheering Crelxats in front of him.

The lashes kept coming.

Hunk’s hands hovered over the lower half of his face, threatening to move up and cover his eyes, but he resisted the admittedly powerful temptation. He owed Keith this much, at the very, very least. He owed it to Keith to be there and watch, to meet his eyes whenever Keith opened them so that the red paladin would have a face to look toward for support, for a silent message to hang on, just hang on, it will all be over soon.

Besides, closing his eyes now wouldn’t get rid of the image of those blood droplets Hunk had already seen spraying from Keith’s back, so there really was no point. That image would probably stay burned in his mind forever.

Another lash - Malvet was still counting them, but Hunk couldn’t hear her. All the sounds in the amphitheater were starting to blur together in his ears, muddling into loud and angry static as he focused only on Keith. The pain of the flogging must have been getting to be too much even for him, because an agonized shout escaped into his gag this time, much to the delight of the assembled Crelxats. At the next lash, he screamed again, and his eyes flew open, meeting Hunk’s almost immediately.

Hunk’s heart stopped at the sight of the tears gathering there, the sun sparkling off of them, and it started up again, pounding like a drum, when the whip came down again and the tears broke free and began to fall.

The specks of blood staining the platform were growing thicker with every lash. They couldn’t possibly keep this up. They were going to kill him.

On the next lash, the whip’s aim was off, and it landed over Keith’s shoulder. The barb on the tip must have caught on his skin, because it ripped a line of flesh off with it as the guard pulled it back, sending a splash of blood across his chest.

Hunk finally threw up, then, and the cries of delight coming from the Crelxat in front of him turned to ones of disgust as the sick splattered onto his back. Which did nothing to relieve Keith’s pain, but it did give Hunk just the tiniest glimmer of satisfaction before he straightened up again to watch the last of the lashes.

“And to the twentieth God of Crelxat, Skovok!”

The whipped cracked for the final time, the crowd cheered, and Keith was motionless on the stage, all his weight dangling from his wrists, his head bowed and hair covering his eyes so Hunk couldn’t tell whether they were open or closed. The floor at his feet far, far too red.

Hunk could only spot the tiniest bit of movement, just catch the way Keith’s chest shook as he breathed, and he tried to focus only on that as he waited for Malvet to give her stupid closing speech and Hunk could finally take Keith back to the Lions and try to find some way to patch up his back, which had to be a grotesque mess at this points.

“To each of the gods, a due has been paid,” Malvet was saying grandly. “So all that remains is our assurance that the transgressor can never again bring harm to the gods, or to Crelxatain itself. To that end, we offer the last of his life, that they may find solace in its removal and a better purpose for it in the world beyond our own.”

… What?

With great difficulty Hunk pulled his eyes away from Keith to see what was happening on the rest of the stage. All but one guard had moved to the other side, and another hatch, like the one from which they’d pulled the pole, had been opened, something else being unfolded from this one. They locked the pole into place, but this one kept unfolding, into a bracket that projected over the hole the open hatch left in the floor. The hatch was pulled back into place, and one of the guards hooked a loop of wire over the projection.

It took a long moment for Hunk’s brain to catch up to his eyes, for him to realize what he was looking at.

Gallows.

His heart racing, blood pounding he whipped around to face the guard next to him. “What - what is that?!” He jabbed a shaking finger toward the stage, and oh god, the guard who had stayed by Keith was taking him down and starting to drag him across the stage.

“It is a device that will allow penance to be completed,” the guard said, explaining it like he was a teacher giving a classroom lecture. “The wire is placed around the neck of the criminal, and the hatch - ”

“I know what it is!” Hunk yelled. “Why is it here?! Keith paid his penance! He got his punishment already!”

“He paid a blood penance, yes,” the guard said. “Now, they are ensuring that he can never again cause harm to the sacred - ”

“We were never gonna even come to this stupid planet again!” Hunk shouted. He ignored the surrounding Crelxats who were turning to glare at him, a couple snapping at him to be quiet. “They don’t need to ensure it! They - they - they said he’d be returned to me once the penance was done! What happened to that?!”

“He will. To be preserved or memorialized as you and your culture see fit.”

Disbelief had Hunk lost for words for a few seconds, while on the stage, he could see Keith, even in the state he was in, starting to struggle in the guards’ hold. “I don’t want his corpse!” he finally squeaked out. “I - I - oh god, I’ve got to - ” His eyes roved toward the guard holding his bayard.

A hand thumped onto his arm, holding him in place. “Consider this your only warning,” the guard said. “Any attempt to derail the proceedings will result in you joining him.”

Hunk swallowed, his legs feeling close to giving out under him as the loop of wire was wrestled over Keith’s head and around his neck. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening. “Please,” he begged, tears pricking at his eyes. “There - there has to be something I can…”

Keith was shouting into his gag, and Malvet was saying something again, raising her voice to drown Keith out. The guard’s grip on Hunk tightened, and he felt dizzy. Keith was going to be hanged right in front of him. Keith shouldn’t even be the one going through this, it should have been Hunk.

Keith was going to die, and it was going to be Hunk’s fault.

There had to be something he could do. He owed it to Keith. Keith had saved him from the Crelxats’ wrath, hadn’t even thought twice about him, and Hunk needed to repay him. He couldn’t let things end this way.

If he were up on the stage right now, in that noose, and Keith were the one having to watch, what would Keith do?

Lance would probably say Keith would ‘punch his problems until they go away’.

It wasn’t much of a plan -

A thunk sounded as the hatch below Keith’s feet was dropped and the wire went taut.

- but it was all he had.

All the fury that had built in him since the moment he had been ushered into the amphitheater flooded into his fist as he whirled on the guard holding him, and it connected with the chin of his helmet. His knuckles immediately throbbed with pain, but there was a satisfying crunch of bone as the guard’s head reeled back, his grip going slack.

Hunk dove for the guard holding his bayard. The guard let out a shout and tried to jump back, but Hunk was not to be deterred, and he bodily tackled him into the next row, the Crelxats there shrieking and scampering out of the way. He clawed his way up the guard’s arm, fighting to pry his fingers off of the bayard, and when he wouldn’t give, he decided he didn’t have the time to fight clean. He hauled himself forward and bit down as hard as he could on the guard’s hand.

The bayard was dropped immediately, and Hunk snatched it up and clambered to his feet. It expanded into its miniturret launcher form as he hefted it up and aimed it toward the stage. Several Crelxats screamed, and his vision swam as he saw Keith through the optic. He was still moving, still jerking in his bonds even as the wire tightened around his neck and his face began turning blue. That meant his neck hadn’t broken when he dropped. He was still alive. There was still a chance.

Although, that chance was getting exponentially smaller with every tick that passed, and Hunk didn’t have time to reach the stage. With his vision hazy and his body shaking and his stomach doing somersaults, it would be insane to try to shoot from here. There was too much chance of hitting Keith. He was going to survive being hanged only to be killed by cannon fire instead.

But it was the only thing he could do.

He fired, praying to anything that was out there and that might be listening that the shot would hit its mark.

It didn’t. It went too high. Hunk’s heart sank, despair flooding him -

Until another shot came from behind him, the projectile this time much larger. This one took out the projection of the gallows that Hunk had been aiming for, dropping Keith’s struggling form to the ground, and burned through half the stage along with it.

He turned around.

Never in his life had he ever been so happy to see the Yellow Lion, hovering just over the amphitheater’s entrance. The buildings behind her were darkened by her enormous shadow, and her eyes blazed down on the crowd that was practically trampling itself to get out of her way.

Yellow had come. She had sensed Keith in danger and -

No, that wasn’t quite it, Hunk realized as he finally noticed Yellow’s presence in his mind, the weight trying to ground Hunk like a heavy blanket, the low rumble of her growl asking if he was okay.

She had sensed Hunk’s distress. That’s why she had come. That’s why she had flown here on her own.

Huh. It seemed Keith wasn’t the only one with an overprotective Lion.

And speaking of…

Hunk’s bayard shrank back down into its dormant form as he raced down the amphitheater steps, shoving panicking Crelxats out of the way and sliding onto his knees as he reached Keith’s crumpled form. The smell of iron from his bloodied back was so strong Hunk could taste it, and he gagged as he rolled him over. Keith’s eyes were closed, his lips gray from lack of air, and Hunk immediately set to fumbling at the wire noose, mumbling reassurances to Keith’s unconscious form as he loosened it.

Right as he pulled it up over Keith’s head, grimacing at the dark bruises it had left on the skin of his neck, the body was yanked aside by the arm, and Hunk looked up to see Malvet, both her hands locked around Keith’s forearm as she tugged at him.

“Get away!” Hunk snarled. “Haven’t you hurt him enough?!”

“He has not completed his penance!” Malvet cried. She swiveled her gaze onto Hunk, and the angry gleam in her eyes was almost manic. “The destruction he caused must be paid in kind! The twenty gods require his life, and we must - ”

Hunk let out a frustrated growl, just about at his wit’s end with Malvet’s gods. In a show of rashness that would make Keith proud, he brought his bayard back up, and it morphed into its energy minigun form as he pointed it right between Malvet’s eyes. “If you even think about hurting Keith one more time, then my gods are gonna need your life in exchange.”

Malvet narrowed her eyes. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Sure I would. I already took out your monument. I’m on a rampage. I can’t be stopped.”

Her jaw dropped, and her hands shook as her grip on Keith’s arm loosened. “You - it was you who - ”

Hunk was already hauling Keith onto his back and taking off before she could finish the thought, and he raced up the amphitheater steps in leaps to meet Yellow at the top, where she scooped the paladins into her mouth and took flight.

The sound of screams below them was cut off as her jaw shut and Hunk collapsed onto the cockpit floor, rolling Keith off of him as gently as he could before rushing to the controls, taking Yellow around in a wide arc and scanning the city below before he spotted where Red lay, still not quite fixed up to working condition. He dove toward her, and Yellow grabbed the smaller Lion up from the ground around the middle like a mother carrying her cub before rocketing upward, gaining speed until she broke the atmosphere. Then he set her autopilot to the coordinates of the Castle’s landing site and…

It was over. After all that, it was finally over. They were off Crelxatain. They were safe.

They were alive.

Well, Hunk reminded himself as he left the pilot’s seat and made his way back toward Keith’s prone form on the cockpit floor, the worst part was over, at least, but they weren’t in the clear yet. He reached to the overhead storage unit to pull out the emergency medical kit and got onto his knees next to Keith to get a closer look.

It wasn’t a pretty sight. Keith’s back had been slashed to ribbons, the gashes in varying depths with a couple cutting so deep Hunk could swear he could see vertebrae. Some of them had stopped bleeding, most had not, and the sounds of the slowly seeping blood dripping onto the floor of the cockpit rang in Hunk’s head. He’d be able to clean the wounds and get some gauze onto them for now, but the cryopods in the Castle would have to do the bulk of the work.

And his back wasn’t the only spot injured. His ankle was bent in the middle in a way it shouldn’t have been able to bend and was starting to swell; he’d probably landed on it at a bad angle when Yellow had shot down the scaffolding. A trickle of blood dripped from the edge of his mouth where the tight gag was cutting into the skin, and Hunk reached up to start working it free, relieved to hear Keith breathing when he pulled it away, even if the breaths were raspy and strained. Small wonder, considering the purpling bruises covering his neck where the noose had strangled him.

He opened the medical kit, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the extent of Keith’s injuries, and decided to pull out the bottle of disinfectant first. His back was definitely going to need it. He unscrewed the lid and held his breath against the sharp smell before lowering it toward the gashes and pouring the disinfectant in.

It let out a sizzling sound as it spread over the wounds, and Keith’s back arched as he let out a strangled yell, his swollen neck leaving his voice as nothing but a dry rasp. Hunk immediately set the disinfectant down and hurried up toward Keith’s head. “I’m sorry, man,” he said. “I know, I know, it’s gotta hurt like hell, but I have to clean it up, I’m sorry. Hang in there, bud.”

Keith let out another rasping groan, and slowly his eyelids began to peel apart. “Keith?” Hunk whispered. “You awake?”

His back rose and fell in a couple of slow, deep breaths before he finally grunted out, “Sh’ro?”

Wow. Keith may as well have just rammed his fist through Hunk’s chest, grabbed his heart, and wrung it dry. “Uh, no. No, it’s not Shiro. It’s me, it’s Hunk.”

Keith blinked slowly, his eyes working to focus on Hunk’s face, and then: “Hunk? We’re alive?”

Hunk let out a breath. “Yeah, man,” he said, giving Keith a wobbly grin. “We’re alive. We made it out of there. You did great, buddy. Just need to hang in there a little longer before we get back to the Castle.”

“I thought they - ” Keith took a rattling breath, but his voice didn’t sound any less gravelly when he continued, “They decided t’ kill me, di’n’t they.”

Hunk grimaced. “Yeah. They did. But that was a pretty stupid decision, wasn’t it?”

“You stopped th’m,” Keith said. “I saw you. In th’ crowd. You had - y’ had your bay’rd. Before I couldn’t see ‘nymore…”

“Well, I - I tried,” Hunk said. “But it was really Yellow who saved the day, you know. She’s the one who started blasting. All I did was get a little chaos going in the stands and grab you. It was nothing.”

“Nah,” Keith sighed. “It wasn’t noth’ng.”

He let his eyes drift closed, and Hunk pushed his bangs out of his face before scooting back toward the medical kit. “Once we’re in close enough range of the Castle, I’ll radio in and see if anyone’s there to get a pod ready for you. If we’re the first there, well, I’ll do it myself. Coran showed me the basics of how those things work, I can at least get you stabilized before he or Allura comes back and can get it started for the deep healing stuff. But, um, for now I’ve got to get this stuff disinfected and wrapped up. It’s definitely gonna sting.”

“‘S’okay,” Keith grunted. “Go ahead.”

“And Keith?”

“Mm.”

Hunk leaned in close. “Don’t you ever, ever scare me like that again, you got it? You’re no longer allowed to come that close to dying, I forbid it. And if you ever try to jump in and take the blame for my screw-up again, I swear to the Twenty Gods of Crelxatain I’ll bring all the wrath of the Yellow Lion raining down upon you. You hear me? Never again.”

Eyes still closed, Keith gave him a weak attempt at a smile. “We’ll see,” he rasped out.

Hunk sighed. Shiro really should have warned them right from the start how stressful it was to have Keith around. “Good enough,” he said, moving back to focus on the gashes. Keith tensed and let out a couple of whimpers as Hunk dabbed disinfectant into the wounds, but they got through it.

It wasn’t until Hunk was halfway through wrapping Keith’s torso in bandages that he opened his eyes and spoke again. “Hunk?” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Remember, when I said t’ just let them get th’ penance over with? ‘nd not to interfere?”

“Yeah…”

“Thanks for not list’ning to me.”

Hunk let out a loud laugh, more out of the hysteria still left in his system than any humor in Keith’s weak joke, but he still broke out a wide smile as he said, “Any time, buddy.”

“And for… ev’rything else.”

“Hey. You had my back from the start, right? Of course I’m gonna have yours too. That’s what teammates are for, you said it yourself.”

“So now… we’re even?”

“Not even close,” Hunk said, shaking his head. “Not until you get out of that cryopod and eat every bite of the feast I’m going to make for you the moment we get back to the Castle. I’m talking twenty dessert courses and live entertainment by the mice. Then we’ll be even.”

Keith let out a breath of laughter and let his eyes slide closed again. “Deal.”

[thisbrokenmask]

Tease

Title: Tease

Pairing: Namjoon x reader

Genre: Established relationship, light smut, slight fluff?

Warnings: Mentions of dom/sub themes (literally just a mention of how Joon takes control), semi-public, heavy petting, teasing, possessive boyfriend, light smut.

Word Count: 5.6k

Song inspiration: Burning Up (Fire)

A/N: My fourth submission for ficswithluv’s Bulletproof Bingo Event is finally here! This is my longest one so far, sort of a commission for a friend of mine who isn’t on tumblr. I asked her to pick my next song from my bingo card and then asked her what kind of thing she wanted and which member/s she wanted to feature. All she gave me was ‘something passionate’ and nominated our very own President Joon. I sent her this earlier this evening and let’s just say she was pretty happy with it! It’s the closest to smut I’ve written in a long time, which is why it took me so long to write as I was making more edits than normal to make sure it was to a level I was happy with.

Also, for the purposes of this story, Y/N is the same age as Taehyung and Jimin :)

The heat around you was stifling, and yet you couldn’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else right now. 

You held your necklaces down against your chest as you jumped in time with the beat, the bass line emphasised by the hundreds of other bodies that were doing the same around you.  You hadn’t stopped smiling the whole time you’d been here, but you’d given up on singing along a few songs ago, your throat dry and starting to scratch after an hour or so of belting out your favourite lyrics. You hadn’t wanted to risk losing your spot right at the front just to get a drink, especially when you knew the set was nearly over, so you’d persevered. 

Your eyes drifted shut as you felt the familiar euphoria wash over you, the same feeling you got every time you got lost in one of these underground shows. Even in the dim lighting, your skin was glistening with the sheen of sweat, the small venue meaning that, even at a limited capacity, the audience was forced to be in even closer proximity than they would be at a normal gig. While you would normally be a bit wary of being so close to so many strangers that contact was unavoidable, there was a sense of security in the fact that everyone else was here because they were into the music as much as you were. If this was a normal nightclub, you’d be stood with your back to the bar and a wary eye on anyone who so much as blinked in your direction.

This wasn’t a normal nightclub, though. This was a strict, word-of-mouth-only gig, a rarity now that the band above you was becoming more and more well known, but it meant that the only people who knew about it were from the scene the guys themselves had grown from and, despite the bad press underground music seemed to get, you’d never met a more respectful group of partiers in your life. Sure, you got jostled and nudged and bumped into, but there was nothing untoward in any of the contact you experienced. No wandering hands or unwanted touches, just the consequences of people getting as lost in the music as you were. 

Besides, they all knew who you were, and so they subsequently knew that any bad word from you would lead to Namjoon banning them for life. You’d repeatedly told him it was too extreme a punishment, but he was adamant. No one touched his girlfriend except him, and that was the end of it. 

Your teeth sank into your lower lip as you imagined Namjoon being able to see you from the stage. You knew that the sight of you amongst the sea of writhing bodies must have been driving him crazy, especially when he’d repeatedly told you that you could watch the gig from the wings of the stage so that he didn’t have to suffer for the whole two hours. But making him wait rather than letting him steal kisses during the breaks in the set was all part of your fun, knowing that the pent up frustration would pay off to both of your benefits before the night was over. 

Another part of your fun was pretending to watch everyone but him. You spent most of the gig watching him, always enthralled by the performer he was, but whenever he looked over to you, you would enjoy letting your gaze linger on Hobi’s hips the few times he would dance freestyle or following Jimin’s hand every time he pushed his hair back from his face. If Namjoon didn’t know it was all part of the game you both played, you wouldn’t do it, but there was something about the way his jaw got tighter every time he caught you watching one of his bandmates that caused a heat to rise from within you. Not to mention the thought of how he would insist you needed reminding who you belonged to afterwards. 

Just the thought of what was to come was enough to let your head drop back onto your shoulders, crooking the arm raised above your head at the elbow to push your own hair away from your neck in a vain attempt to get some cool air on your skin. 

When your eyes finally opened, they were magnetically drawn to Namjoon’s sunglasses, the red frames a stark contrast to the silver hair he was currently sporting. You were close enough to see the beads of sweat at his temples and the way his eyes were locked onto you through his dark lenses. You held his gaze just long enough for him to register that you were looking at him before shifting your focus to Taehyung. You smirked at the way Namjoon’s jaw muscles clenched in your peripheral vision and, knowing that the next was their last song, you decided that tonight was as good a time as any to up the ante in your teasing. 

As Namjoon stepped forward to make the announcement to the crowd that confirmed that this was, in fact, going to be their last song of the night, you took your chance while he was distracted. Looking down as you untucked your top from your shorts, you let your hair fall back over your face to hide the cheshire grin you could feel pushing against your cheeks. The loose material billowed up slightly as it was freed, reminding you why you’d tucked it in to begin with, but you gathered it up in your hands to tie it across your chest. The simple knot rested just under the swell of your breasts as a result, which, combined with the low neckline, left little to the imagination. If it wasn’t for your inherent trust in the crowd around you, you’d never dream of showing so much skin at a gig, but you felt safe enough here to do so. 

You stifled a giggle when you caught Jin watching you, sending a cheeky wink his way that made him shake his head with a playful roll of his eyes. You watched him subtly lean in to Yoongi and murmur something in his ear as Namjoon expressed his thanks to everyone who had turned up. You saw the older rapper’s eyes shift to your face, drop down to your exposed midriff and then shoot back up to your eyes again. You shrugged and feigned a pout, fanning yourself with your hands to show you were making the heat your excuse, but Yoongi simply laughed, wiping a hand over his face as he looked away. 

They knew as well as you did that this would be more than enough to distract Namjoon, maybe it was even verging on being too distracting, but you couldn’t find it in you to care all too much. Your opportunities to play with your boyfriend’s patience during performances were now few and far between, and not only because the front row at a stadium concert was much further away than the front row at a 250-person gig; Namjoon didn’t let you in the crowds at their bigger concerts for your own safety, especially since your relationship had become public just over a year ago. No, when they toured and you were lucky enough to make it, you watched from the wings with the tech crew. But here, you had insisted that he let you be part of the crowd again, telling him you wanted to see him in his element just as you had when you’d first met and fallen in love with him. When he’d relented, you’d known you were going to milk it for all it was worth.

By the time Namjoon was wrapping up his speech with a shout of ‘불타오르네!’, the news of your plan had spread through the other members on the stage. Jimin and Taehyung had both shot you grins as wide as your own, grinning at the back of their leader and laughing between themselves, no doubt making bets on how long it would take for two things to happen: first, for Namjoon to notice you, and second, for Namjoon to drag you away from the rest of the band when you went to meet them backstage. Hobi, just like Jin and Yoongi, had shaken his head only to be betrayed by the smirk on his mouth before imperceptibly sending a sharp dig into Jungkook’s ribs with his elbow, the maknae seemingly frozen to the spot with a water bottle halfway to his lips. Startled, Jungkook’s face flushed red as he turned away, much to the delight of his hyungs despite the wary glances he was shooting at Namjoon. You felt a small twinge of guilt, knowing how much Jungkook respected your boyfriend as his leader and you as his noona but, given that he could also be incredibly cheeky towards you when he’d let a few glasses of soju pass his lips, you felt you were well within your rights to still be able to make him blush.

The cheer of the crowd brought your eyes back to Namjoon as he stepped back from the front of the stage. As they got ready to perform, you saw Jimin lean over and speak right into Namjoon’s ear, and for a second you thought he might be ratting you out, spoiling your fun. However, when all Namjoon did was nod and rearrange his shirt on his shoulders as he turned back to the crowd, a small sigh of relief relaxed your shoulders. 

You watched as Namjoon let the rising tempo wash over him, tipping his head back and breathing deeply as he waited for the beat to drop, and you felt a shiver creep up your spine as you waited for him to notice you. Despite how much you’d enjoyed teasing him all night, you now found yourself unable to take your eyes off of him. You couldn’t look away if you tried, desperate to see the exact moment he noticed you and your newly arranged outfit, though, if you had, you would have seen the way Jimin snuck a glance at you with a grin. Even as you let yourself get swept up in the crowd jumping around you, your eyes stayed firmly on Namjoon. 

All throughout the opening chorus, he jumped about with his bandmates like they always did, throwing arcs of water over the crowd and joining in with the rhythmic bouncing on his feet. Even during Hobi and Yoongi’s verse, he seemed to stay over on the other side of the stage from you, and you could feel yourself growing frustrated. As much as you tried to remind yourself that Namjoon was nothing if not a generous performer, wanting to interact with as much of the audience as he could, you couldn’t help but feel that he was purposefully ignoring you. Maybe you had gone too far with your game, even though you were sure you hadn’t been any worse than normal. 

If they were performing the choreography, you’d understand Namjoon’s distance, but considering they’d decided to forgo the routine for their last song, it meant Namjoon was purposefully avoiding coming near you. The image of Jimin whispering in your boyfriend’s ear flashed up in your memory and you began to think maybe, just maybe, Jimin was trying to sabotage you. After all, you knew he’d most likely made a bet with Taehyung and you also knew Jimin was not against trying to sway the odds in his own favour. 

You called it cheating, he called it being strategic. 

His pink hair seemed to glimmer under the stage lights as he sang his part of the hook alongside Jungkook at the front of the stage, holding out his mic to the crowd for the recalls, his grin as wide as it always was when he got to perform so closely to his fans. He caught your gaze as the chorus kicked in but quickly looked away. Given the playful flirtiness you and Jimin had always had as a part of your friendship, both before and after you and Namjoon had started dating, his looking away from you without first sending a cheeky wink your way had you wondering if there wasn’t something more going on. 

You found it hard to keep up with the energy of the crowd as they bounced in time with the music, feeling like your thoughts were coming too quickly for you to hear them properly as you tried to figure out what was going on. As your feet came to a stop on the hard floor below you, you noticed that none of the seven men on the stage would meet your eyes in return. Not even Jungkook, who seemed to be able to sense it if you looked at him for longer than a few seconds.

It’s probably nothing, a small voice in your head made its way to the forefront of your conscious mind. It’s the last song, let them give the crowd what they want. 

“Hey, burn it up-” Namjoon’s voice cut through your thoughts, his verse bringing him to the front of the stage with a rise of cheers to meet him. He was just a few people across from you, leaning out over the first row of the crowd, and even this sudden increase in proximity after watching him on the stage all night was enough to bring your heart rate up. Your eyes darted around his face like you hadn’t seen him in weeks, taking in the sharp line of jaw, the damp hair at his temples, the way his lips formed around his words right up against the mic… 

You could also see his eyes behind his sunglasses from this angle and, with a hitch in your breath, you realised that he was watching you out of the corner of his eye. His dark gaze languidly drifted down your body as his deep voice continued to rumble out of the speakers, lingering at what you guessed must be your exposed waist before snapping back up to look you straight in the eye. You let your smile return as you gazed up at him from under your lashes but, rather than seeing any sort of approval cross his face, Namjoon’s brow seemed to furrow briefly before he turned away just in time for Hobi to join him, the two of them slinging their arms around each other’s shoulders. Being the subject of Namjoon’s attention never failed to spark a tingling sensation in your spine and this game of pushing each other to the limits in public was one you both enjoyed, regularly discussing where the borders of fun and actual frustration laid. The shivers that spread from your spine outwards to the tips of your fingers and all the way down to your toes was a confusing, heady mix of fear that he was actually unimpressed and arousal that he was trying to exert his dominance even from the stage. Even you couldn’t tell, despite how well you knew Namjoon, and it was a situation you hadn’t been in since you’d first started playing this game, back before you were publicly dating and you first tested the waters of trying to tempt him while he was on stage. 

The crowd continued to pulse and swell around you in time with the music like waves crashing up against a cliff and, in the same way a cliff withstands the waters, you were unmoved by the energy around you. All you could do was watch Namjoon, waiting for him to give you another dose of the attention he had just given you a taste of so that you could figure out what he was thinking. Pressing your thighs against each other as you felt the heat in your abdomen spread lower, you tried to repress the shiver that crept up your spine at the conflicting feelings you were experiencing. 

But it seemed as if a taste was all Namjoon was willing to give you as he went back to either dancing around the opposite side of the stage or purposefully looking out over and above you to the rest of the crowd. Arcs of water once again flew out across the crowd, their cheers reaching fever pitch as Jimin, Hobi and Taehyung indulged the crowd, performing small snippets of the dance break.

It wasn’t until the final chorus began to fade out that Namjoon met your eye again, this time simply nodding his head towards the door that led backstage as you saw the telltale twitch in his jawline. 

Fuck. 

As subtly as you could, you stepped back from the very front to make your way through the crowd to the left of the stage, ducking your head as you went. You cast one last cursory glance before turning down the small corridor that led to the backstage door, only to see that no one was watching you leave. Namjoon was back in among his bandmates as they lined the front of the stage, jumping along with the crowd before them.

Your heart was hammering in your chest as you made your way down the side of the stage, hastily pulling the front of your shirt free from the knot you’d thought was such a good idea not five minutes earlier. You weren’t sure if it was fear or just finally being away from the mass of bodies, but a chill ghosted over your arms as you fished your pass out of the small cross-body purse you were wearing (a gift from Hobi, of course) and held it up for the man stationed by the door. Seemingly satisfied after a very brief glance, he pushed the door open for you and let you through, pulling it shut behind you. 

As you passed the small steps that led up to the wings, you could hear the music fading out despite the renewed cheering that echoed down the hall in front of you. You’d never been here before, but you had been to enough venues of various sizes to find your way to the lounge area quite easily. Slipping inside, you smiled at the few members of BigHit staff that were waiting to help out post-performance, a few of the make-up eonnis waving you over to give you brief hugs. Just as they were asking you how the show had been, the echoes of loud footsteps and laughter started to come down the corridor and it became evident the boys had left the stage. Flashing a smile at the women beside you, you made your way over to the sofa on the other side of the room as they readied themselves for the organised chaos that always followed a gig.

Jin and Yoongi were the first ones to come through the door, unsurprisingly, both immediately finding their chairs and handing off their jackets to the waiting pairs of hands from wardrobe. Jin’s gaze locked with yours in his mirror. You didn’t miss how his eyes darted down to take in your smoothed-out shirt but, before you could ask where Namjoon was, he simply smirked and turned his attention back to Yoongi, who was talking beside him. 

Jimin and Jungkook tumbled in next with Taehyung close behind them, Jimin bent over in giggles and Jungkook talking rapidly with Taehyung, every back and forth between them bringing a fresh wave of laughter from their hyung. As he straightened up, Jimin was immediately ushered over to another of the make-up stations while Jungkook wandered over to wardrobe to hand over his jacket and begin taking off his outer shirt. Taehyung, the only one seemingly not bothered with removing his clothes or his make-up, came over to your side of the room with a feigned nonchalance that you could see right through. You knew him well enough by now to know that his barely-concealed grin meant he was dying to tell you something, but he had clearly sworn his secrecy as, instead of talking to you, he simply grabbed a bottle of water from the table beside you and winked as he turned away again, twisting the plastic cap open.

You weren’t sure if you were imagining the growing tension in the room as each of the present members seemed to catch each other’s gazes, none of them putting any effort into hiding their glances at you. Nervous energy was now thrumming through you, your right leg bouncing on the ball of your foot and your hands tightly interlocked on your lap. Before he could move away, you took a shot at trying to weaken Taehyung’s resolve.

“Taehyung-ah?” The man in question simply raised an eyebrow with a hum of acknowledgement. You looked up at him with widened eyes and a hint of pleading in your tone. “Where’s Namjoonie?” 

You’d stopped using ‘oppa’ for your boyfriend not long after you’d started dating, feeling a little bit uncomfortable with using the term for the man you were sleeping with as well as his older bandmates. Besides, he was more than happy with you using his nickname as a substitute for the honorific; at least, he was when you had company.

Taehyung glanced around with an exaggerated look of confusion, as if he’d only just realised Namjoon wasn’t yet in the room, before turning to you with what you could only describe as a mischievous smile, “I’m sure he’ll be here soon, Y/N-ah.”

Low and behold the door opened then for the final time, Hobi and Namjoon seemingly in deep conversation with one of the managers as they came into the room. You shifted in your spot, tucking a leg under yourself to refrain from running over to him and interrupting, and your hands started turning white as they gripped each other even tighter. Everyone else in the room tuned out of your senses as you watched Namjoon in conversation. It seemed the way he could enrapture you without even trying was never going to fade, your body sitting up straighter and your heart beating faster as your eyes drank him in, in all his post-performance glory. His sweat-dampened hair and flushed face made you subtly adjust the foot beneath you to put pressure against your core through your jeans, the sight so remarkably close to how he looked after sex that it almost made you whimper. 

Namjoon’s brow furrowed slightly as he carefully listened to the conversation around him before a smile lit up his features once more, Hobi’s laughter following immediately afterwards. When Hobi wandered over to talk to Jungkook, Namjoon finally looked up at you, his dark eyes immediately finding yours without hesitation. He held your gaze for what felt like an eternity, your heart hammering so fast inside your chest you were sure he could hear it even 10 feet away, until his eyes dropped to your clothes. You noticed the slight tilt of his head as he took in your untied shirt, an eyebrow rising slightly as he looked back up to your face, a question clear in his eyes. Feeling the opportunity to play arising once more, you tipped your head to the side in response as if asking what he was looking for, the small action making him smile with a glint in his eyes as they unabashedly roved over you once more. 

He turned as his name was suddenly called out, your eye contact breaking briefly before he gave you one last glance. The darkness in his eyes that vanished as soon as his attention was elsewhere made you know that look was only for you, and the thought sent a tantalising shiver through your body. He dropped into the make-up chair Jin had just vacated, Taehyung dropping into Yoongi’s just seconds later, and kept his gaze down towards his phone, his fingers already tapping away rapidly. You continued to watch him for a few seconds before realising that you were full-on staring at him and, while he was your boyfriend and you had every right to look at him as much as you wanted, it probably looked a little bit scary to other people in the room. 

You settled back into the sofa once more with a sigh, diverting your attention to the other people in the room. You took these few moments to catch your breath, trying to calm your heart for the inevitable moment you would have to stand up to leave. You knew the boys weren’t stupid, but stumbling out on shaky legs would only add to the teasing they already loved to throw at you. You watched the rest of the band joke around with each other as they went through their normal post-show routines, although you couldn’t ignore that they normally would have come over to talk to you by now. The tension you’d felt building earlier was still there, a discreet undercurrent that made your shoulders tense slightly.

“Ahem.” The sound of Namjoon clearing his throat beside you made you jump, turning to see him standing over you with a hand outstretched, almost close enough to touch your cheek. You looked up to his eyes only to find them almost black as they stared back down at you. “Come with me,” he said, his voice was quiet but firm. “We need to talk.”

The sudden dryness of your mouth made it difficult to swallow as you carefully put your hand on top of his upturned palm, his fingers immediately closing over it to pull you up. As soon as you were on your feet, he turned to lead you out of the room with a determination that almost made you stumble as he pulled you along behind him. 

“Joon?” You struggled to find your voice as you entered the cool corridor, the sudden change in temperature after the warmth of the lounge making you shiver. “Is everything okay?”

Silently, your boyfriend turned right and led you further away from the stage and the rest of the club. Despite his silence, the squeeze he gave to your hand reassured you that he wasn’t angry; you knew that he wouldn’t even be holding your hand right now if he was. You passed another door, your eyes just able to read ‘Maintenance’ written across it before turning around the corner, the door to the parking garage in sight at the end of the corridor. Before you could fully form the thought that Namjoon was going to drive you both home, he suddenly stopped and turned back to you, twisting his hand to link his fingers with yours. 

“You sure do like to push my buttons, don’t you, princess?” If it wasn’t for Namjoon’s left hand pushing your hips back into the wall, you’re certain your knees would have given out when you heard his voice, deep and rasping as he leant to put his face against the crook of your neck. A whimper stopped short in your throat but your body didn’t let you down, flushing with heat as your back already began to arch into him. Namjoon’s body covered yours, your eyes drifting shut as his lips brushed against your neck under your ear. 

“I- I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you whispered back, your free hand fisting the hem of his shirt, your intertwined hands pressed up against the wall where he held them.

“No? Are you sure?” The hand on your hip drifted up slowly, pushing your shirt up along the curve of your waist as Namjoon took your earlobe between his teeth with enough pressure to send a jolt of pleasure through you. The warmth of his skin on yours made you shiver, the firm pressure of his hand making you lean your body into him. ”Do I have to remind you?” His hand left your ribs to grab the hem of your shirt, lifting the material and bunching it together just under your breasts, the cold air of the corridor hitting your skin immediately and contrasting the heat of his hand against your breastbone. “This ring any bells?” Namjoon pressed his mouth to your neck, lips parted slightly to let his warm breath heat your skin even more.

“Maybe,” you breathed out with a slight shake to your voice that you couldn’t conceal, pushing your hips forward to meet his before pulling them away again. “What about it?”

The rumble of Namjoon’s chuckle sent vibrations down your neck, his hips following yours to press against you, your slight height difference allowing him to push his hardened length right against your abdomen.

“Do you not think it’s hard enough for me to concentrate when I can see you in the crowd?” He pulled back to put his forehead against yours, eyes open and dangerously dark as they stared into yours. “Watching you in amongst all those bodies, watching people touch you while having to act like nothing’s wrong? Not able to come down and make sure everyone knows you’re mine?”” His words ghosted over your lips and he nudged your nose with his. You could feel his grip on your shirt tighten as the straps started to pull against your shoulders. “And on top of all that, you think it’s fair to do this to me?” He pushed the material up even further, dangerously close to exposing your chest entirely, your breath stuttering as you bit into your lip as your hips began to slowly roll against each other.

You could feel your blood pump faster as you squeezed his hand in yours, Namjoon answering the action in kind. You had yet to feel his lips on yours and it was driving you crazy, a small whine slipping past your lips as he moved his attention back to your neck. 

“Joon…” Your voice was barely above a whisper but seemed to cut through the silence of the empty corridor, your desperation clear in your tone. You loved that no matter how much power you seemed to be able to wield in the build-up, you always ended up completely at the mercy of Namjoon. He let you play with him, let you have your fun, but he was always the one to take control in the end. He decided when to give you what you wanted from him, and you wouldn’t get it a second sooner. And he was proving that now.

“It’s bad enough that you flirt with the others to make me jealous,” he continued to murmur against your neck. “I even told them to ignore you tonight to give you a taste of your own medicine, but it seems like you can’t cope with not being the center of attention. Isn’t that right, baby?” The hand that was holding yours slipped from your grasp to instead hold you by your wrist, the edge of authority hardening his voice making your knees weak. “Seems like I need to remind you who you belong to,” he mused, teeth grazing the column of your neck before planting a kiss just above your collarbone. A sigh escaped you as you shuddered, your body held between the wall and Namjoon’s chest. 

“Please.”

His eyes bore into yours, that dark playfulness that you craved glinting under the fluorescent lights. Your eyes drifted shut as Namjoon came even closer, your bodies touching in as many places as he could manage without having you wrapped around him. In the same second that you finally felt Namjoon’s lips brush against yours, their softness drawing a whimper from your mouth, a cacophony of voices, laughter and footsteps echoed down the corridor. 

Your eyes shot open, panicked, but Namjoon simply grinned, seemingly in no rush to protect your modesty as the voices slowly came closer. 

“Joon.” Your voice was firm, eyes rapidly going between his as your breath grew rapid from panic rather than arousal. 

“I can’t wait to get you home.” He stated simply and then, with a blink, the glint in his eyes disappeared and he stood back, his hands releasing your wrist and smoothing your shirt down against your tummy once more. He placed a kiss to your forehead just as the band came round the corner, the innocent act giving you mental whiplash. 

“Okay, guys, c’mon, keep it in your pants in public, please,” Hobi laughed as he walked towards you both, your back still up against the wall as Namjoon tucked your hair behind your ear with a chuckle. 

“Am I not allowed to talk to my girlfriend in private without being accused of being a pervert?” he joked, his other hand tucked in his pocket to try and subtly try and adjust himself in his jeans. 

“You two never ‘just talk’ in private,” Yoongi drawled without looking up from his phone as he made his way towards the parking garage, laughter rippling through the rest of the group behind him. You felt your cheeks flush, but not out of embarrassment; you were still catching your breath, the close call with being caught exciting you more than it ever had before. 

You and Namjoon were left behind the band, a few members of staff waiting behind you to make sure you both made it to the car waiting for you safely. Namjoon took your hand gently this time, smiling down at you and tugging you to fall into step beside him before draping his arm across your shoulders, leaning down to whisper in your ear.

“Let’s get you home.”

[waywardnerd67]

Winter Wonderland

Summary: Jensen takes (Y/N) on a writing retreat in order for her to finish her novel. Characters: Jensen Ackles, Reader Pairing: Jensen x Reader Warnings: Fluff/Implied Smut Word Count: 1954 Square Filled: Free Space Bingo Card: @spnchristmasbingo​ A/N: Set after SPN and before The Boys in a fantasy world without COVID because well… I say so.

Check out: SPN Christmas Bingo Masterlist

Blink. Blink. Blink.

(Y/N) growled before laying her head down on her desk gently banging it repeatedly against it. A pair of strong hands slid over her aching shoulders. A sigh of relief slipping her lips as they began working the kinks out of them.

“Honey, you need to relax or you’re going to blow a gasket.”

His tender, deep tone blanketed her body in warmth and comfort, “I know, I know. My deadline is quickly approaching and I’m kind of freaking out.”

She turned her head to one side when she felt his hands move from her shoulders. She stared into the olive eyes of Jensen Ackles. Her best friend, her confidant, her boyfriend, her everything. The main source of her inspiration and focus of her current book series. In a whirlwind affair, they met in an Entertainment Weekly interview when her book was released five years ago. Inspired by his show Supernatural and specifically his character Dean, he asked her to dinner that evening and the rest was history.

His hand cupped her face, “I think we need a getaway. I’m on hiatus until The Boys starts shooting and a change of scenery could jump start your creative flow again.”

“I could be convinced to go off with you to a beach somewhere.” She chuckled sitting up once again.

“Let me plan it out. Now, what don’t you call it a day on cursing at your laptop and come watch a movie with me.” He held his hand out to her which she happily took leaving any thoughts of her unfinished manuscript behind in her office.

A week later, (Y/N) stepped off a plane in Toronto in December, “Definitely not the beach.” she muttered as they grabbed their bags.

Jensen chuckled, “Just trust me, the inspiration will be flowing from you in no time and you’ll finish your book like that,” He snapped his fingers.

A driver waited for them, taking their bags as they climbed into the back of the black town car. Fresh snow had recently fallen blanketing the city. Even though she hated winter, hated snow, hated the cold even (Y/N) could not deny the beauty passing by her as they merged onto the highway. An hour later, they turned down a private drive leading to a beautiful cabin surrounded by snow covered forestry.

“Wow…” was all she managed to say as the car parked outside the front door.

“I told you. Head inside and I will help bring in our stuff.” Jensen pressed his lips against her temple before opening the door and helping her out of the car.

The inside of the cabin was nearly as beautiful as the outside. With an open floor plan, the front entrance led right into the living room. A large fireplace, the central focal point surrounded by couches and loveseats. Two doors led to the back deck and a large open backyard fading into the forest. To the right was a long, wooden dining room table then a break bar behind it. She peered into the kitchen with all modern appliances and an old wood burn stove. The rich mahogany wood cabinets matching the rest of the decor.

To her left, were stairs leading to a second floor. She noticed a door beneath the stairs ajar and beckoning her. Pushing the wooden door open, she stepped into a small den/library. Every wall had floor to ceiling bookshelves except one that was all windows giving her an exceptional view of the forest. In the center of the room, facing the windows, was a beautiful mahogany desk with a plush chair pushed under it. Walking over, she ran her fingers over the smooth desktop with only a few items on it.

“When I saw this room, I knew it would be perfect for you.”

Jensen’s voice startled for a moment before a wide smile spread across her face, “I should have never doubted you. This place is beautiful.”

He walked up behind her wrapping his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder. “Wait until you see the Master Bathroom and the large clawfoot tub.”

His eyes shined with mischief as they explored the rest of the cabin. Eating an early dinner and christening the king size bed, (Y/N) fell into a deep sleep.

The next morning, she awoke alone in bed with only a note on her nightstand.

Went out to grab breakfast for us. Be back soon. Love, J

(Y/N) stretched her body out before getting up and walking into the master bath. If she had ever dreamed of the perfect bathroom this would be it. A spacious standing shower with jets on all sides. His and hers sinks already with their things spread out along the counter top. Finally, the clawfoot tub he spoke of the previous day. It was beautifully crafted and calling her name. Running the water as hot as she could stand it, she poured some of the apple scented bubble bath sitting beside it. Emerging her body completely within it, her muscles singing praises of relief and comfort.

Once she completed her soak in the tub, (Y/N) showered then put on her favorite comfy clothes of leggings and one of Jensen’s Zeppelin shirts. Running her fingers through her hair, she left it to air dry and made her way downstairs. On the breakfast bar sat a cup of steaming coffee and an array of assorted fruits and pastries. Grabbing the cup and plate, she walked over to one of the couches closest to the fireplace.

Halfway through her breakfast, she spotted Jensen outside. His head covered by a thick beanie covered in snow. He had on a long sleeve shirt with an undershirt peeking out from the collar, sweatpants leaving very little to the imagination of what was beneath them and boots laced up over his pants. A shovel in his hand, he began to scoop away the fluffy snow dumping it over the deck.

It was such a normal, simple chore that stirred many feelings within (Y/N) all at once. Watching his muscles bulge and relax with each move he made. Snowflakes kissing his lashes and hair peeking out from under his hat. The way his tongue darted out the corner of his lips as he tossed another mound of snow over the edge. The way his sweats stretched over his perfect, round, bubble butt and hung on his hips.

(Y/N) bit her lip, setting her forgotten breakfast on the table beside her. An all new hunger sweeping over her body making her press her thighs together as Jensen walked out of sight around the side of the house. She could hear him kicking his boots on the floor of the garage before the door creaked open. He was brushing off the remaining snow from his shoulders. His hair a spiky mess from snow and sweat. The scent of pine and his natural musk piercing her nose as he sat next to her.

“Good morning beautiful, enjoy your breakfast?” He slung his arm on the back of the couch, his cold fingertips brushing against her scorching skin.

“Mmhmm.” She hummed before straddling his hips, leaning down pressing her heated lips against his cold ones, “I also enjoyed the morning entertainment.”

She slowly moved her hips against him, “I can tell.” He groaned before flipping her over pinning her to the couch.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing and enjoying one another’s company. (Y/N) was lying in bed watching Jensen sleep reflecting on the last couple of days. Her mind drifting to the future and what that looked like for them. She ran her fingers through his hair gently rewarded with a deep sigh from him. Watching him sleep, thoughts of the future had her squirming uneasily. Everything was perfect, too perfect and perfection was usually followed by devastation.

Inspiration struck her like lightning jolting her out of bed. Jensen stirred briefly before turning over falling further into his slumber. Quickly putting on the clothes she had on earlier, (Y/N) grabbed her backpack and headed down to the den beneath the stairs. Running on autopilot, she set the desk up to her liking and her laptop hummed to life. As it ran through the normal start up routine, she pulled out her notebook flipping to the next blank page feverishly writing down the ideas flowing from her mind. Once they were written and her laptop ready to go, (Y/N) placed her fingertips just over her keyboard. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she began weaving the newest adventure for her characters to tie together the beginning and ending of their story.

The final words appeared on the screen just as the sun pierced over the horizon. The snow glistened as the orange and yellow rays spread across it. The forest in front of her playing a crucial part within her manuscript giving it the perfect setting. (Y/N) sat back in the chair allowing a breath of relief to escape from her lips.

“Did you finish it?” His groggy voice made her smile.

Turning around, she found him leaning against the doorframe. Her eyes traveling the length of his firm, beautiful, naked body. She nodded, turning back around to her desk saving her manuscript one last time before shutting her laptop placing it back into her bag. Standing, she crooked her finger for him to come sit on the chair. Jensen rubbed his eyes before sitting and pulling her onto his lap.

“I did and all because of you.” She kissed him raking her fingers through his hair.

He moaned, “Happy to continue being your muse.”

Two words were burning the tip of her tongue, “Marry me.” She whispered against his lips.

Pulling back, she stared into his dark orbs as the words pushed through the early morning fog, “Aren’t I supposed to ask you that?”

“Were you going to ask me?” She questioned her stomach fluttering with nerves.

“Yes.”

“Yes to marrying me or yes you were going to ask me?” Her stomach churned as silence filled the space between them.

He stood up lifting her with him placing her feet on the ground. Lacing their fingers together, he led her back up to their room walking over to his suitcase. She could not help to admire his bare butt as he bent over retrieving something from the bag.

“I had planned on asking you tonight when I took you out to dinner, but since you beat me to the punchline,” He paused kneeling in front of her, “(Y/N) (Y/L/N), will you marry me?”

The simple band and diamond sparkled as the morning sun kissed it, “Yes… YES!”

He slipped the ring on her finger before scooping her up and tossing her onto the bed hovering over her. His smile took her breath away while tears slipped down her face. He was leaning down to kiss her when she stopped him.

“Wait, I need to write something down before I forget.” She scrambled off the bed grabbing the nearest piece of paper and pen.

“Really? Right now when I’m about to make love to my fiancé and inspiration strikes.” He grumbled laying back on the mattress.

Writing as quickly as possible, she stripped out of her clothes before climbing over his body and kissing him, “That’s the life of marrying a writer. You’re proposal was way better than the one I wrote and I want to make sure I change it when I make revisions.”

He chuckled, rolling her onto her back then slowly pushing within her, “Shut up and let me love you.”

If you enjoyed this story then check out my Masterlist!

For updates please follow #waywardnerd67fics

[tonystarkbingo]

TSB MIV Week 26 Roundup!

IT’S THE LAST ONE, Y’ALL!  And there are so many amazing fills that came flooding in this past week!  We’re in the process of getting badges made and sent, so please be patient with us.

We are taking the rest of the month off, but in May and June we will be doing month-long flash bingos!  We’ll keep you posted about those, and in the meantime go give some love to these wonderful content creators!

Title: Double the Pleasure, Double the Fun Collaborator: Politzania Card Number: 4007 Link: AO3 Square Filled: Adopted: KINK: Threesome Ship: WinterIron Rating: Mature Major Tags: dimensional shenanigans, fluff, fade to black smut Summary: Thanks to some multiverse experimentation, Bucky now has two genius billionaire boyfriends (and their libidos) to deal with. Word Count: 717

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Title: A Good Date and a Bad Idea Collaborator: gottalovev Card Number: 4077 Link: AO3 Squares Filled: Chapter 1, R5 - Winteriron Chapter 2, A4 - Justin Hammer Ship: WinterIron Rating: Teen Major Tags: Attempted kidnapping Summary: Chapter 1: Tony is on what he hopes is a first date with Bucky. He didn't expect it to be so rudely interrupted. (Tony POV)  Chapter 2: Justin has waited for his moment, and this is it. (Same events, Justin Hammer's POV) Word Count: 7918

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Title: Adjust The Pecking Order Collaborator: camichats Card Number: 4049 Link: AO3 Square Filled: R5 - AU: western Ship: Clint Barton/Laura Barton/Tony Stark Rating: Teen Major Tags: polyamory Summary: Tony knew that he wasn't the most adjusted man in the world, but there was something hot about a woman in a pretty floral dress confidently pointing a shotgun at him. There was nothing wrong liking a woman with a gun. The messed up part was where she was surely Laura, Clint's wife. He shouldn't be eyeing his friend's wife, no matter how sure her hands were on that gun. "You with the bank?" she asked. "No, ma'am," he said. Since his hands were already up by his head, he took his hat off, tipped it in her direction, then put it back on. "Name's Tony Stark. I believe your husband sent for me?" Word Count: 1211

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Title: Finals Collaborator: hereandnowwearealive Card Number: 4085 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: R4 - James Rhodes/War Machine Ship: Gen Rating: IronHusbands Major Tags: art Summary: An image of Tony and Rhodey studying for finals, long overdue for a break

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Title: Something like fate Collaborator: Gottalovev Card Number: 4077 Link: AO3 Square Filled: Adopted - Sent to a Different Dimension Ship: Stony Rating: Teen Major Tags: Universe hopping, getting together, CW fix-it but no discourse Summary: Tony and Steve go alternate-reality hopping by accident (Fine. It's Tony's fault: he touched something he shouldn't have in Reed Richard's lab). It's an eye opening experience. Word Count: 8411

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Title: DtP —> DtF - Chapter 1 Collaborator: Politzania Card Number: 4007 Link: AO3 Square Filled: A3 - free space Ship: WinterIron Rating: Explicit Major Tags: dimensional shenanigans, eventual smut, threesome, selfcest, oral sex, anal sex, Tony POV, First Person POV, Present Tense Summary: Thanks to a bit of dimensional travel, Tony takes the chance to find out if he really is as good a lover as his Bucky says (as well as get another Bucky’s opinion on the matter).. Word Count: 681

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Title: The Courtship of Death Collaborator: MagicaDraconia16 Card Number: 4019 Link: AO3 Square Filled: K2 - Tony Stark/Loki Ship: FrostIron Rating: Teen Major Tags: Crack treated seriously, AU canon divergence, courtship and rejection thereof, canonical character death, BAMF Hela Summary: ...goes a lot easier when you do some research first. Otherwise entitled: "Why Torturing, Brainwashing And Murdering The Father Of The Person You're Trying To Court Is A Bad Idea" (trade mark pending, by Tony Stark) Word Count: 2351

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Title: Things Develop (in the Darkroom) Collaborator: 27dragons Card Number: 4027 Link: AO3 Square Filled: R4 - Photoshoot Ship: WinterIron Rating: Teen Major Tags: AU: No powers, photoshoot, photographer!Bucky, lingerie, budoir photoshoot, oblivious!Bucky Summary: Bucky was happy to agree to a private photoshoot with his favorite client... at least, until he realized what kind of photoshoot Tony wanted. Word Count: 775

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Title: The Heartbreaker Collaborator: fightingforcreativity Card Number: 4004 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: R2 - Au: Hydra won Ship: none Rating: Teen Major Tags: AU: Hydra won, Hydra Iron Man, Angst, Mark 17 (Heartbreaker) Summary: Red Skulls voice resonated from everywhere, “Oh might I have the honour of introducing you to Hydra’s newest and strongest agent? Say hello to ‘Heartbreaker’. I’m sure you’ll find the name befitting.” And just like that, the Avengers came face to face with the one man they had hoped to free, wearing an armour they’ve never seen before. “Tony?”, Rhodey’s voice was broken, just as his heart and he could bet everything he had, the other’s weren’t faring better. “Been a while, Rhodes. Nice of seeing you all again, sadly you can’t stay for the party~” replied Tony, voice cold and devoid of emotion.

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Title: Family Date Night Collaborator: JehBeeEh Card Number: 4058 Link: AO3 Square Filled: A1 - Drive-In Ship: Stony, Superfamily Rating: Gen Major Tags: fluff Summary: Date night plans get changed at the last minute. Word Count: 714

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Title: The Supplicant Collaborator: 27dragons Card Number: 4027 Link: AO3 Square Filled: R1 - AU: Royalty Ship: WinterIron Rating: Teen Major Tags: AU: historical/fantasy, warlord Tony, tribute Bucky Summary: Bucky wondered, sometimes, if King Alexander had not intended Bucky to stand at the throne’s right hand as the kingdom’s general, or at its left hand as chief counselor, why the king had even bothered to sire another child after his first had proven hale and of sound mind. He rather suspected that the king, too, wondered that same thing. But as it turned out, there was a reason for the king to have sired a second child: to be given as tribute to the terrifying warlord threatening the entire kingdom. Word Count: 2966

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Title: They didn't cover this in the Academy - Chapter 1 Collaborator: camichats Card Number: 4049 Link: AO3 Square Filled: T2- “Damn it, Stark!” Ship: Gamora/Tony Rating: Teen Major Tags: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, marriage of convenience Summary: Tony might be a pain in his captain's ass, but he never goes out of his way to make problems for her. And really, how was he supposed to know that the engineer he spent all last night talking to was a princess? Gamora wants to get off planet, and Tony is willing to help. While heading back towards Federation space, they pick up a distress call from inside Romulan space. Word Count: 10,206

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Title: Anything for you Collaborator: Gottalovev Card Number: 4077 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S3 - Pining Ship: Steve Rogers/Natasha Stark (universe 3490) Rating: Explicit Major Tags: Getting together, porn with feelings Summary: Steve has one certainty: he has a crush of epic proportion on Natasha Stark, and it's becoming quite a problem. Word Count: 4083

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Title: The Futurist Collaborator: periwinklepromise Card Number: 4053 Link: AO3 Square Filled: T2 - Edwin Jarvis Ship: Tony & Edwin Jarvis Rating: Gen Major Tags: Implied Child Abuse, drabble Summary: Perhaps it is time to look to the future. Word Count: 100

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Title: untitled Collaborator: chel Card Number: 4011 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: Adopted - Wrong Number/Booty Call Ship: IronHusbands Rating: Gen Major Tags: None Summary: Moodboard-ish Word Count: N/A

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Title: Takin’ What They’re Givin’ (‘Cause I’m Workin’ for a Livin’) - Chapter 2 Collaborator: PoliZ Card Number: 4007 Link: AO3 Square Filled: K3 - Kink: Sex Compulsion Ship: Stucky Rating: Explicit Major Tags: Phone Sex, Identity Porn, Anal Fingering, Dildo Play Summary: Bucky's little camboy sidegig - where he plays 'Special Agent Jay' -- gets him attention from an unexpected quarter. Chapter 2: Bucky's one on one chat with BrooklynBorn heads in a very different direction than he expected; offering instruction and support as well as release. Can he keep his emotions in check? Word Count: 3912

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Title: Save My Soul, Spare My Heart Collaborator: summerpipedream Card Number: 4045 Link: AO3 Square Filled: A3 - Free Space Ship: Pre-Stuckony Rating: Teen Major Tags: Angels and Demons Summary: “Are you hurt?” “The jury’s still out on that. Who exactly are you and why the hell are you in my apartment?” An angel and a demon walk into Tony’s apartment. Supposedly, both of them were tasked to protect him. Whether Tony can survive their bickering is another question entirely. Word Count: 2242

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Title: The Perfect Solution Collaborator: Fighting_for_Creativity Card Number: 4004 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: T4 - Kink: Cuckolding Ship: IronHusbands, Rhodey/Carol Rating: Mature Major Tags: AceTony, bisexual Rhodey, friends with benefits, Carol knows what she wants, caring boyfriend Rhodey Summary: Tony never really enjoyed himself during the more intimate moments in bed. Naturally Rhodey had figured him out and after meeting Carol the perfect solution came to be. Word Count: 482

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Title: Time Loopy Doopy (Fake News already in 2009 Collaborator: Fighting_for_Creativity Card Number: 4004 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: S5 - Paparazzi Ship: (Hinted) WinterIron Rating: M Major Tags: timeline- what timeline?, Avengers, Kid bucky(?), fake news, time trouble Summary: Despite what the News tweet says, Tony and the Avengers all knew the truth and that was Tony trying to protect his current boyfriend’s kid self from the past. Now he just needed to find a way back into his own time with his own Avengers. Word Count: N/A

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Title: My Darling, you are my poetry Collaborator: Sagana Rojana Olt Card Number: 4046 Link: AO3 Square Filled: T4 - AU: Artist/Muse Ship: WinterIron Rating: Explicit Major Tags: NSFW art, nude modelling Summary: Bucky absolutely didn't plan to go to art classes, but his therapist insisted. So here he was creating nude art of the young Stark heir, while blushing furiously. Word Count: N/A

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Title: This light that I hold, speaks to you Collaborator: Sagana Rojana Olt Card Number: 4046 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: R1 - Kink: Candles Ship: WinterIron Rating: Mature Major Tags: Candles Summary: A quiet night spent together, playing with supersoldier senses. Word Count: N/A

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Title: The Wrong Dress Collaborator: cami-chats Card Number: 4049 Link: AO3 Square Filled: T1 - Kink: Interfemoral/Intercrural Ship: IronWidow Rating: Teen Major Tags: None Summary: Natasha's dress might not be good for events, but that doesn't mean she looks bad in it.  Word Count: 933

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Title: They didn’t cover this in the Academy - Chapter 2 Collaborator: cami-chats Card Number: 4049 Link: AO3 Square Filled: T3 - Kink: Messy/Dirty Ship: Gamora/Tony Stark Rating: Teen Major Tags: Major Character Injury (not fatal) Summary: Lieutenant Commander Tony Stark of Eden and the continuing adventures of having a ship that’s falling apart around him.  Word Count: 7385

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Title: Nighttime Shadows Collaborator: Khentkawes Card Number: 4091 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S3 - Pepper Potts/Rescue Ship: Pepperony Rating: Gen Major Tags: vague discussion of PTSD (very vague), emotional hurt/comfort, nightmares, angst and fluff, Tony Stark/Pepper Potts Summary: Tony’s nightmares never fully went away. But over the years, Pepper likes to think she’s gotten better at helping him cope with them. She doesn’t always have the right words to say, but she can at least be there for him. And usually, that’s enough. Word Count: 1555

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Title: Status: Iron Man dead/Tony Stark alive (it’s complicated) Collaborator: Khentkawes Card Number: 4091 Link: AO3 Square Filled: A3 - Free Ship: Pepperony Rating: Gen Major Tags: discussions of possible death/funerals, Endgame Fixit, funeral, fake funeral, Tony Stark/Pepper Potts, Canon divergence Summary: The Avengers ‘accidentally’ fake Tony Stark’s death. And Tony finds it hilarious. Word Count: 4749

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Title: Spin Me Out Collaborator: 27dragons Card Number: 4027 Link: AO3 Square Filled: K2 - AU: Sci-Fi/Futuristic Ship: WinterIron Rating: G Major Tags: AU: Sci-Fi, space opera Summary: Tony keeps his head down, working on the ships that come through the station, trading on the grey market, listening to the gossip, and quietly planning to reclaim the technology that was stolen from him years ago. His chance may finally have arrived, but is immediately complicated by Winter, an impossible fugitive from a galactic empire that controls its people with forbidden Old Tech. Word Count: 1391

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Title: Secret Identities and Super-dads Collaborator: Khentkawes Card Number: 4091 Link: AO3 Square Filled: A2 - Futurefic Ship: Pepperony Rating: Teen Major Tags: Minor violence, post-Avengers Endgame, not Avengers Endgame Compliant, BAMF Tony, BAMF Pepper, Rescue!Pepper, not-dead Tony Stark, Morgan Stark, family, attempted kidnapping Summary: When armed men attack an elementary school in New York, attempting to kidnap eight-year-old Morgan Stark, no one expects that “Roger the chauffeur” will be the one to take out the bad guys—with some backup from Morgan Stark herself and a very pissed off Pepper Potts. The public have believed Tony was dead for the past four years, and Tony never expected his big secret would get out like this. He didn’t mean to blow his cover as “Roger the chauffeur.” But when people try to mess with his family, they get what’s coming to them. Word Count: 6104

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Title: Celebration Collaborator: Ducky Card Number: 4013 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S1 - Victorious Ship: IronFalcon Rating: Gen Major Tags: Paintball, First Dates, Fluff Summary: After a victorious paintball exercise, Tony and Sam celebrate on their first date Word Count: 835

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Title: A Look Into the Mind Collaborator: Ducky Card Number: 4013 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S3 - Sent to a Different Dimension  Ship: ThunderIron, one-sided Amora/Thor Rating: Teen Major Tags: Alternate Dimension Summary: Thor and Tony are sent to the Enchantress’s consciousness. Word Count: 323

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Title: The Stars May Not Accept Us Collaborator: PoliZ Card Number: 4007 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S1 - Hot Water Ship: WinterIron Rating: Teen Major Tags: Non-Powered AU, Space AU, amputee!Bucky, fade to black smut, Summary: People come and people go -- that’s the way a spaceport works. Especially one out on the edge of known space; some stay a few hours, some a few years, but everyone moves on eventually. Bucky knew that going in, but he fell hard anyways. Word Count: 2790

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Title: Visions, Not Reality Collaborator: JehBeeEh Card Number: 4058 Link: AO3 Square Filled: K2 - Nick Fury Ship: Stony Rating: Teen Major Tags: None Summary: Tony's conversation with Fury at Barton's Farm leaves him second guessing his relationship with Steve - which no one was supposed to know about. Word Count: 1915

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Title: What, Like It’s Hard Collaborator: JehBeeEh Card Number: 4058 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S1 - Movie Retelling Ship: Stony Rating: M Major Tags: Omegaverse, Asshole Ty Stone, Even more of an asshole Stane (in future chapters) Summary: Omega Tony Stark has it all, until his alpha boyfriend breaks his heart. In an effort to win him back, he follows the alpha of his dreams to Harvard Law School, where he discovers there might be more to being the first omega at the prestigious school. He also meets another alpha that might just make him forget the one he drove across the country for. Word Count: 1629

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Title: You Should Date My Boyfriend Collaborator: JehBeeEh Card Number: 4058 Link: AO3 Square Filled: Adopted - Sharon Carter/Agent 13 Ship: Stony, Sharon/Steve Rating: Teen Major Tags: None Summary: Sharon makes sure Tony knows her boyfriend might be interested in someone else. Word Count: 1090

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Title: Heart jewel Collaborator: Sagana Rojana Olt Card Number: 4046 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S3 - Sucker Bet Ship: None Rating: Gen Major Tags: Magical Jewels, Ravens Summary: Loosely based on the Cornelius Sigan episode of BBC Merlin. Word Count: 100

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Title: The Persistence of Memory Collaborator: Sagana Rojana Olt Card Number: 4046 Link: AO3 Square Filled: T3 - Art Format: Cubist/Surreal Ship: none, implied past Stony Rating: Gen Major Tags: Reincarnation, Grief Summary: Stephen Grant, art student and docent at the Smithsonian is doing the last of his rounds, when he meets a wealthy gentleman who looks very familiar. Word Count: 300

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Title: Would Robot Eyes Rust if They Cried? - Chapter 6 Collaborator: JacarandaBanyan Card Number: 4064 Link: AO3 Square Filled: A3 - Free Ship: Stuckony Rating: E Major Tags: Established Relationship, Sexual Content, Angst, Robot Bodies Summary: Steve tries again with Tony. It doesn't go a whole lot better. Word Count: 2376

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Title: What, Like It’s Hard? Collaborator: JehBeeEh Card Number: 4058 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S2 - Evil Exes S4 - First Kiss Ship: Stony Rating: M Major Tags: Omegaverse, Asshole Ty Stone, Even more of an asshole Stane (in future chapters) Summary: Omega Tony Stark has it all, until his alpha boyfriend breaks his heart. In an effort to win him back, he follows the alpha of his dreams to Harvard Law School, where he discovers there might be more to being the first omega at the prestigious school. He also meets another alpha that might just make him forget the one he drove across the country for. Word Count: 20,611

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Title: Short Drabbles - Chapter 5: Hand holding Collaborator: Card Number: 4046 Link: AO3 Square Filled: K1 - Holding hands Ship: WinterIron Rating: Gen Major Tags: summer heat Summary: Tony enjoys the metal arm keeping it's cool at all times. Word Count: 100

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Title: Daisies on Your Nightstand Collaborator: raslbecket Card Number: 4056 Link: AO3 Square Filled: T2 - showoff Ship: Stony Rating: Mature Major Tags: Rough sex, exhibitionism, choking Summary: Tony Stark's exhibitionist streak rears its head when he's in the middle of rearranging Steve Rogers' guts. Word Count: 1462

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Title: The Eye Of A Spy - Chapter 2: Interlude - How Everything Began Collaborator: Fighting_for_Creativity Card Number: 4004 Link: AO3 Square Filled: A3 - free space Ship: IronFury Rating: Mature Major Tags: IronFury, movie retelling, MIT Era, Mostly Fury Pov Summary: Fury gets his mission. Word Count: 869

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Title: A Fairytale, This Is Not - Chapter 2: All Pieces But No Solved Puzzle Collaborator: Fighting_for_Creativity Card Number: 4004 Link: AO3 Square Filled: K1 - shared trauma Ship: WinterIron, Merlin/Arthur, Merlin/Morgana, Merlin/Gwaine Rating: Mature Major Tags: Reincarnation, dreams, visions, canon typical violence, ok Howard, kidnapping, (HYDRA in later chapters), team as family, trauma Summary: Tony makes some friends, is being betrayed, and keeps dreaming of a man named Merlin, who apparently has magic and that fact isn't known to his friends until he tells the black-haired woman about it. Somehow everything works out ok for them all though. Word Count: 3584

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Title: Five Tuesdays and a Wednesday  Collaborator: LBibliophile Card Number: 4090 Link: AO3 Square Filled: Adopted - Fortune Telling Ship: WinterIron Rating: Gen Major Tags: Time Loop, Groundhog Day, Coffee Addict Tony Stark, 5+1 Things Summary: Bucky is stuck in a Groundhog Day loop. He has many things to achieve, to make right, to try and end the loop - but top of his list is saving Tony from the dreadful fate of terrible morning coffee. Tony appreciates his efforts. Word Count: 2820

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Title: body getting tense (nothing like the others) Collaborator: starksnack Card Number: 4073 Link: AO3 Square Filled: K5 - Dressing Room Ship: Stony Rating: Explicit Major Tags: None Summary: Steve and Tony steal a quick moment in their dressing room before their next shoot. Word Count: 1000

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Title: Half of Love’s Duet Collaborator: ralsbecket Card Number: 4056 Link: AO3 Square Filled: T1 - Height Difference Ship: Stuckony Rating: Explicit Major Tags: Threesome, Age Difference, Art Summary: A glimpse of college student Tony and his married professors, Steve and Bucky. Word Count: N/A

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Title: Clint Gets A (New) Job Collaborator: celtic Card Number: 4035 Link: AO3 Square Filled : T1 - Occupational Hazard Ship: Tony Stark & Clint Barton & Bucky Barnes Rating: Gen Major Tags: Modern Day AU, No Superpowers, Mild Angst, Canon Character Death Summary: Stane Industries has taken over Trickshot Incorporated, which means Clint is out of a job. Until he meets a third player, the man who will build Stark Enterprises with what remains of his father’s legacy. Word Count: 4236

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Title: Girl’s Night Collaborator: celtic Card Number: 4035 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S2 - Darcy Lewis Ship: Pepperony Rating: Gen Major Tags: None Summary: Tony and Pepper need a babysitter for Morgan for date night. Word Count: 1635

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Title: Double, Double, Toil and Trouble, Evil Clones Are Such a Struggle - Chapter 2 Collaborator: Cinna Card Number: 4060 Link: AO3 Square Filled: A3 - Free Ship: Tony/Bucky/Winter Rating: Teen Major Tags: Selfcest (Bucky/Winter) Summary: When taking down a Hydra base, you should probably avoid touching anything weird-looking and potentially magical. (Or, Bucky and Winter both have the hots for Tony, and a newly-embodied Winter decides to finally do something about it.) Word Count: 2695

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Title: No Pets Allowed - Chapter 4 Collaborator: Cinna Card Number: 4060 Link: AO3 Square Filled: R4 - Team Bonding Ship: background Pepperony Rating: Gen Major Tags: Minor warning for non-graphic mention of off-screen animal death. Summary: Tony Stark is not a cat person. (this is a lie.) Word Count: 894

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Title: Trouble with a Capital T (And That Stands for “Tiny”) Collaborator: Cinna Card Number: 4060 Link: AO3 Square Filled: T2 - Precognition K5 - Deaged (Tony) Ship: background Pepperony Rating: Gen Major Tags: featuring Actual Good Dad Howard (not really a warning, but you should probably be aware or you might be confused  ) Summary: Tony gets de-aged by magical fuckery, and five-year-old Tony and gets to meet his future self, in AI form. AI Tony thinks this is a hoot. Everyone else is less convinced.  Word Count: 19082

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Title: Six Months Earlier - Chapter 7 Collaborator: Cinna Card Number: 4060 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S1 - Canon: Armoured Adventures Ship: None Rating: Gen Major Tags: Grief, Medical Trauma Summary: Tony recovers from the plane crash that damaged his heart and took his father from him, and struggles to come to terms with the aftermath. Word Count: 1044

[flydotnet]

Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where you send me requests according to this marvelous card! (Red cross is the completed prompt, character headshots are prompts I’ve already filled. I don’t have any request left, so feel free to send in suggestions for this card!).

Just so you know how bad I tried to make this be (and failed), I was watching Run with the Wind's infamous 20th episode.

Wassup BTHB crowd, it's ya boi Fly, back at it with a new hit piece. I'm glad to be taking part in this challenge, because it"s always fun to match characters/pairings to some tasty prompts and go wild with them. This one is fairly simple vecause it's a warm-up round and I didn't have that much to say (rip my insp, I'll never be able to match that level of pain), but it's always so fun to write Tsunami and Tachimukai being bros. I feel like we just don't have enough of them as platonic bros. We need more of that and I guess I'll be providing.

It's also only my second time writing in Tsunami's POV, I'm realizing (the first being a crack fic I posted earlier this week). It's a shame, really, because he's really cool to write, and coming up with all sorts of things about his siblings is a ton of fun. I hope to be able to shove some more of that into my card because I need to feed myself.

Also, yeah, I know: "gee Fly, you're writing about the abandonment issues you've slapped onto Tachimukai again?". Yes, yes I am. I've got no excuse, I just find that shit interesting to write. It be like that sometimes.

---------

Feverish Reflections

Summary: Tsunami struggles to break a fever in the middle of the night.

Fandom: Inazuma Eleven (OG continuity/college AU)

Wordcount: 3K words

Event hosted by @badthingshappenbingo​

AO3 version available here.

------

Truth be told, Tsunami is used to taking care of people. How couldn’t he? He’s the oldest of six, of course he’s learnt to take care of an oopsie or two. He’s helped his parents with sick brothers and hurt sisters countless times before, when he still lived in Okinawa. He’s still giving advice to his younger siblings whenever they text him the wacky hijinks they got into and their consequences to this day, so you can bet he knows what he’s doing when he sees someone is in trouble, no matter what people may think.

He’s been in situations where he’s saved some close calls. A teammate twisted an ankle? He’d be the first on the move upon realizing. Norika got a concussion after someone on the team accidentally shot a little too strongly and she got it in the face? He knew what to do because Etsuko was a wild child, even wilder than him actually, and had done that to herself once. Being the eldest (or damn near so) in so many of his social circles along the years helped him become like that; a fact he’s prided himself in a little.

Tonight is… a bit of an exception to that rule, though.

.

There’s actually one thing he’s never been familiar with, and it’s fever spikes. Illnesses didn’t hit his family had enough for that case to ever rise up and, even during the few training camps or school trips he’s been on, the worst it’d get would just prompt the teachers to intervene while he’d be trying to keep someone in check. Usually, he’d have brushed it off as the sort of things that he’d be a bit careful about would it happen to him or, if it was about others, to make sure to get someone qualified to deal with it alongside him.

It’d have been all fine, would have it been any other day. He’d just make sure the sick person wouldn’t try to struggle against help or just help around as someone else would take care of what he didn’t know. Sure, he did have the occasion to side-eye some of their deeds; but saying he managed to see much before being kicked out of a bedroom or taken away from a scene by a doctor or a nurse would be a overplaying his competence and knowledge on this.

 The thing is, right now, he’s on his own trying to deal with whatever his roommate let himself get possessed by.

 It’s not even that he hadn’t seen it coming. He may not have, before university, gotten the occasion to know Tachimukai that much, especially since they had both changed since their golden middle school days (they were fifteen and thirteen – you can’t blame then for having at least been through some things in five years); but until now, despite what had happened during their high school years, he was pretty sure he had a firm grasp on his roommate’s personality and habits. Living with someone for a couple months does that to you.

He had seen coming, to some extent, the very thing he’s facing right now. If there’s one thing that’s always been clear about Tachimukai, it’s how much of a hard worker he is, even to the point of self-destruction at times. He’s the kind of guy who only half-listens to you when you tell him that he’s getting tired and should probably get some rest just because he hasn’t finished what he’s doing. He’s also the kind to be dumb enough not to sleep a cold off because he’s got that work shift he’s got to take and that assignment he needs to give back and that book he needs to read and write a report about for whatever class whose name he couldn’t even remember – that kind of guy.

That kind of guy who, right now, is scaring the shit out of him.

It didn’t need to get to this point, but it did, because that’s just how things are in his life: stuff happens and he’s got to deal with it, even if he doesn’t like it. He can wish all he wants he could’ve stopped his best friend from literally burning himself out and getting sent to bed jail, but that won’t break his fever and that sure won’t make the night go by any faster to sulk in both of their guilts. He’ll just do what a good big brother does and scold him once he’s conscious enough to know what he’s being told without it entering from one side, getting garbled, and leaving by the other.

Actually, what scares him the most about their current situation is that Tachimukai is barely coherent… that is, when he’s even trying to speak. Most of the time Tsunami attempts to start a conversation so he’s sure he’s not having a comatose roommate on his hands, a situation to which he really has no solution except calling an ambulance and praying, all he gets in return are some unfinished sentences and words he can’t even understand – if they’re words to begin with and not just a mishmash of syllables strung together by the loosest thread in town. It gives him that sensation that he’s losing someone to the claws of something he doesn’t know.

 He could be calling for an ambulance or for any sort of help (he believes Nosaka – who’s got some medical knowledge since that’s his major and all – lives only three or four buildings away and could at least give him a tip or two, he’d say), but that’d mean he’d have to leave the room and, well… He may be awake in the middle of the night and hunched over a bed like his mother would be when either of his siblings was sick and he’d try to get a sneak-peek of what was happening to them, it still doesn’t mean he’s willing to abandon this for some semblance of comfort.

Or, at least, he can’t leave the room for longer than a minute or two. He’s wanted to grab his phone that he left charging in his room for a little while, but that’d mean having to leave, and that’s… really not something he wants to do. Not when he’s seen what Tachimukai can somehow pull even when he’s sicker than a dog and afflicted with temperatures only heaters should be allowed to reach. Not when he’s… been the elder brother of five.

 Tsunami has seen some of the worst things happen to his siblings. Tetsunosuke has always been sickly and would often fall to the latest strain of the flu circulating at school, then spreading it to their other siblings while himself getting put through misery by the virus. Shinjuko would hallucinate the spirits of the dead and hear voices that weren’t there. Yoko would pull away from their own parents, clawing her way out, scratching herself away from their embrace because she was suffocating and scared the spirits of her nightmares would strangle her.

It’s all coming back to him now. The sand-pale skin, the laboured breathing, the half-closed foggy eyes – it’s all here. He’s seen them all on his siblings’ desperate faces, reflected in his father’s glasses, reflected by the mirror as little Jousuke tried to get a look at what was happening while, unlike them, he’d never waver, never fall sick. He managed to forget it all until now; but now, he’s helplessly watching his own best friend go through the same incarnated nightmare. It’s a horrifying display of what humans can get through and… he wishes it on nobody, not even on his worst enemy.

 He can’t get that damn fever to break. He’s been refreshing the cloth on his friend’s forehead continuously, making sure it’s as cold as possible without seeming like it’d cause frostbite (he’s gotten it before – he’d rather avoid it as much as he can, thank you), but it doesn’t do anything: the symptoms don’t weaken and he wonders when the spike is going to finally end, if it’s going to end. He’d usually try to be more optimistic than that, but he’s in very unfamiliar territories and the flashbacks from his childhood keep coming back when he tries to shove them away and focus on what’s at hand.

He knows he won’t be able to reduce it with just some cold water: he needs to get the medicine in the bathroom. Sure, it doesn’t seem like Tachimukai is conscious enough to even drink water, but just having the medicine will make him feel a little safer. Plus, he’d like to grab his phone so he can call someone in case things get extra bad (though, honestly, he doesn’t know who he’d call considering it’s like three in the morning and he hasn’t been hearing any party nearby), and he’d rather have medicine on hand for other things. Maybe give himself a pillow so the chair is more comfortable…

 As soon as he gets up, however, something grabs his shirt and tries to pull him back down and into his seat. He looks back down to see the slightly horrifying vision of a hazed, cloudy-eyed boy who suddenly looks far younger than he usually does, as if slipping back into his past self, clearly in pain but trying to say something nonetheless. A wave of cold sweat goes down his back from the vision alone… but it does mean his friend may now be the right amount of conscious to know what he’s doing or where he even is.

But that’s when Tachimukai says the first understandable thing he’s said since their hell of a night began and it’s one whose tone Tsunami doesn’t like much. It’s said in a weak, raspy tone that’s so unfamiliar to his ears, slow and almost detached, with syllables that have trouble forming because the poor guy must be dehydrated beyond what both of them can imagine at the moment; but what he can’t doubt is that it’s a cry of despair.

 “Please…” He sucks a hitched breath in, eyes wet and tears pouring from them. “Please don’t leave me…”

 Jousuke knows that tone, that expression, that feeling he gets overwhelmed with. Ryuunosuke’s face flashes before his eyes for a moment before he’s sitting back down, hands cupping his friend’s shoulders, watching unfocused irises desperately try to adjust. Even through his hair, he can sense the fever raging under the skin. He doesn’t mind the gross sweatiness of a sick person’s hair, especially when he finally has the hope to communicate. It feels like it’s been days.

“Tachimukai, can you understand me?!” He shouldn’t be yelling, but it’s stronger than him.

“Why’re you l’vin…?”

That accent is… Is that Fukuoka dialect? He’s not sure if he’s ever heard Tachimukai speak in it. He may have kept a lot of his Okinawan accent himself, but his friend? He’s spoken like a Tokyoite as far as he’s known. It’s such a weird thing to hear him relapse into a dialect. He can’t remember that happening even five years ago. He has a vague memory of hearing it at his graduation ceremony, though.

“I’m just gonna fetch some things. I ain’t leaving you like that.”

 The grip on his shirt loosens a little as the fog in his friend’s eyes disappears a little, not letting up entirely, but clearing just enough to finally look like he’s back to some extent of reason. It’s his one chance, he’d say.

“You mind if I just go grab my phone and some medicine for you? I promise I’ll be back in seconds.”

“A-ah, no, go for it, I…”

“I’m also bringing you a glass of water, dude. You sound like you’ve just gone through the desert.”

 He holds his promise and runs outside the bedroom into his, almost dropping his phone as he grabs it from his nightstand, then rushing to the bathroom to get a box of medicine that looks like it could be useful in their current situation and, finally, get a full bottle of water and a glass. He must have run it all in less than twenty seconds considering he’s somehow a bit out of breath from the ordeal; but it’s fine. It’ll be all fine.

When he comes back, nothing has changed much, aside from his friend’s eyes who have finally cleared from most of the smog. The latter is sitting up, breathing still heavy and shuddering under its own weight, skin tone still pale with red splotches on the cheeks; but man, he seems conscious, and that’s more than enough for now. After what he’s just been through (he checks on his phone: he was there for at least a very long half an hour), he can’t ask for much else than some sort of relief.

 Tsunami sits back down on the chair, pours his friend a glass of water and hands it to him.

“You must have a throat drier than the desert, so here you go, pal.”

As if starving for anything to drink (which he probably is, let’s be real here), Tachimukai anxiously takes it, hands trembling. Yeah, he may look less like he’s dying; he’s still not looking good by any means.

“I’ve also got you some fever reducers in case this happens again because, man, you scared the crap out of me.” Tsunami pours a second glass and hands his flatmate a pill. “Let’s spare us the trouble, okay?”

“Sorry for the trouble. I didn’t think it’d… get this bad.”

Okay, second good sign: the Fukuoka dialect has gone away too. He’d have usually not minded it, but if it mostly appears when Tachimukai is hotter than a furnace and hallucinating whatever he was seeing earlier, he’d rather not see it come back for a while – or ever, actually.

“Don’t stress it. I’m pretty sure you didn’t ask to be in that state.” Actually… “Just don’t get yourself that sick, next time. That’s all.”

“…You should go back to bed, Tsunami. I’ll be fine.

Too bad he doesn’t feel like he can go back to sleep, not when it was interrupted by this fiasco.

“That’s bold of you to say when you were the one begging me to stay, Tachi.”

 His friend stares back at him, at first confused, then anxiously. He looks down almost right afterwards, hair hiding most of his face.

“…I said that?”

“You don’t remember?” Well, come to think of it… “Ain’t really a surprise, actually. You looked like you had seen death.”

“N-no, I don’t remember much… All I can guess is that I’ve caused you some problems.”

“Do you just… get that sort of fevers often?”

Tachi (the new nickname flows better on his tongue, Tsunami must admit) takes a little while to reply, as if thinking his answer through.

“It’s been a while since the last one, I think? They only happen when I’ve been tired for long periods of times. I should be fine by tomorrow.”

“You’re sure?”

A little smile. What he wouldn’t do for that little one to stay on…

“The fact you’ve helped me makes me sure, yes.”

“I suppose that’s a good sign, then! Still, can I ask you something real quick, Tachi? I’m sure you want to sleep and all, but… There’s something that’s been on my mind.”

“What’d that be?”

“For a while, you only said incoherent things, but at some point, you clearly asked me not to leave you. You seemed desperate, so…” His voice trails. “…Tachimukai? Is there something wrong?”

 His friend has shrivelled on himself, almost like a hurt animal. He doesn’t like it a single bit, but… there’s no use in rushing, as much as his instincts want him to jump ahead and fix the uneasiness that’s settling in.

“I think I’m… so scared to be left alone again at times like that, that my fever started to speak for me. It must’ve felt weird for you to hear me say such a childish thing all of a sudden, but…”

“But what? It’s not childish to ask for someone to stay by your side while you’re having a terrible time. Hell, you’ve not seen yourself while you were in that state, but I’d have never left you alone for more than a couple seconds.”

“But—”

“What makes you think that asking for company is a bad thing, Tachi?”

“…I’d assume the fact I was left on my own for so long that I started to think I was automatically a burden. It hasn’t left yet. I just… expressed it when I’d have usually kept it to myself. Again, sorry for all the trouble, I’m not easy to deal with when I’m that sick and—”

“If you apologize one more time, I swear I’ll knock you out so you get some sleep, dude.”

 Tachi recoils back, but chuckles right afterwards.

“Dude, you’re sick. It’s time you think about yourself and realize I don’t mind helping you out. I’ve never minded, in fact, ever since we were in Raimon.”

The smile he gives him is a genuine one and, even if it’s a little pained and very much tired, it’s still the highlight of his night.

“I suppose that’s true… I should’ve known you of all people wouldn’t leave me, Tsunami.”

“That’s more like it! Now get some sleep. I…” A yawn escapes from his mouth, almost unhinging his jaw in the process (that may be dramatizing it, but it’s not that far from it). “I need my beauty sleep too. If you need help, text me, ’kay? G’dnight.”

“Works for me. Goodnight, Tsunami.”

 Before he can truly leave, though, Jousuke feels one last pull on his shirt.

“Oh, and… thank you for sticking with me. Really.”

Time to give his best (tired) teethy grin.

“I could tell you the same, you know!” He ruffles his friend’s hair with his hand. “See you later.”

On that, Tsunami finally leaves, heart lighter than in the evening, holding onto his phone like a necessary timeline even as he goes bad to bed.

[firebrands]

skkssjjaja OkAy so. Steve's stealth suit, Tony loves it alright? And they're in a relationship but it's the first time he's seen it ok and he's comPLETELY whipped because what the fuck his boyfriend just got hotter and... how is that even possible???? Also 'your fingerless gloves are doing so many things to me rn please keep them on while we have sex thanks' basically Tony just thirsting over Steve because we can never have enough of that now can we 👀

steve rogers/tony stark, explicit, 1.7k of pwp

fill for my marvel bingo card for “steve rogers/tony stark” 

i hope you like it, ash!! 

***

tony’s thirty pages into his merger when steve steps into their bedroom.

“did you just ‘harumph’?” tony teases, not looking up from his paperwork. he offers up his cheek for steve to kiss, eyes continuing to scan the page littered with legalese. steve harumphs again before pressing a quick kiss to tony’s cheek, then he sighs and sits down on tony’s desk. tony hums in response and pats steve’s knee. “gimme a second, i’m almost done,” he murmurs. it’s hard enough to get into the headspace to read contracts like this, so he’s doing his best to make the most of it.

steve makes a soft, plaintive noise, and rests his hand on top of tony’s as he waits.

tony notices the difference in texture and looks down at steve’s gloved hand, then gives his boyfriend a once over, his mouth going dry at the sight: steve’s hair is a bit mussed from the helmet he’s just taken off, his eyes are shut and eyelashes are dark against his cheeks, and his lips are parted open as he takes steadying breaths. but the suit–that’s what makes all the blood rush out of tony’s brain and down south. tony slides his hand up steve’s thigh, watching the way the material moves under his fingers. he sets the papers aside and slides his other hand up steve’s arm..

steve blinks at tony. “done reading?” he asks, smiling a little. tony’s head snaps up to meet steve’s eyes and tony melts into the deep blue of them.

“guh,” he says, eloquently.

steve cocks his head, and he raises a hand to gently cup tony’s jaw. the mix of leather and skin makes tony’s head spin. tony lets his gaze drift down from steve’s face and back onto the new suit. “you’re hot.”

steve chuckles softly. “thanks, tony.”

tony stands, but keeps his hands on steve’s thighs, spreading them open as he situates himself between them. he leans forward, hands sliding up to rest on steve’s hips, and presses a quick kiss to steve’s lips. tony peppers kisses against steve’s cheek, and slowly licks at the short strip of exposed skin of steve’s neck.

steve shivers against him, breath coming out quick and short.

“i want to suck you off while you’re wearing this,” tony whispers, before nipping on steve’s earlobe.

“yes, please,” steve moans.

tony sinks down onto the floor and steve shifts forward, barely even sitting on the desk at this point. tony palms steve’s thighs and presses his face against steve’s cock which is straining against the material of the suit. tony presses kisses up steve’s thighs, smiling at steve’s sharp intake of breath when tony gently cups steve’s balls through the suit.

“god, you’re so fucking hot,” tony says, letting his hands roam everywhere he can reach: steve’s legs, steve’s ass, steve’s stomach and chest. tony reaches for steve’s belt, fumbling only for a few seconds until he figures out the zippers and velcros of the suit. tony lets out a soft moan of appreciation when he finally gets steve’s cock out. “so fucking big,” he murmurs, taking steve’s cock in his hand and licking a stripe of spit up the length.

tony is momentarily distracted by the sound of something breaking.

steve raises his hand and dusts off flecks of wood from his suit. “sorry,” he mumbles, looking embarrassed.

tony looks at the hand-sized gap in his desk. “holy fuck,” he says, and takes steve’s cock in his mouth.

he never really expected himself to love sucking cock the way he does, but god, it feels heavenly to have steve’s cock heavy against his tongue like this, steve’s musk invading his senses, making him lightheaded with pleasure. he angles his head forward and continues to move until the tip of steve’s cock is pressed flush against his throat.

tony startles, but keeps his mouth on steve, when he hears the same sound of wood breaking, again. “christ, tony,” steve moans, voice low. “you’re so good at that.”

tony preens at the praise, and looks up at steve.

steve’s breath stutters when their eyes meet. “fuck,” he says.

tony closes his eyes again and continues to suck steve’s cock, reaching out blindly for steve’s hand and placing it on the base of his skull. he lets his tongue trace along the thick vein on the underside of steve’s cock as he slides up until he’s only sucking the tip of steve’s cock, letting his tongue run over the slit and tasting steve’s precum.

steve moans, breathy and deep, and tony smiles a little as he lets steve’s cock fall out of his mouth with a soft pop.

“pull my hair?” he asks, smiling sweetly, knowing full well how he looks–how his lips are swollen and glistening with a mix of his spit and steve’s precum.

steve nods jerkily, and tony presses a quick kiss to steve’s hip before taking steve’s cock back into his mouth.

tony takes all of steve into his mouth, taking him so deep that he has to hold his breath. steve’s fist tightens in his hair, and tony moans around steve’s cock. the world always gets quiet and small when tony’s sucking steve off like this, his focus honing in on steve’s breaths, steve’s pleasure.

steve tugs hard on tony’s hair, and tony knows what it means. he stands up on shaky knees and presses up against steve, kissing him messily.

steve’s hand trails down the front of tony’s suit, stopping at tony’s belt.

“let me,” tony whispers against steve’s lips, and pushes steve down onto the desk. he quickly shucks off his pants and underwear, searches around his drawer for some lube, and climbs onto the desk to straddle steve.

“didn’t expect this reaction when i came in,” steve says, laughing a little.

tony shakes his head. “you’re gorgeous,” he says, “but this suit… god, steve, who should i send a christmas basket to?”

steve laughs, loudly now, and pulls tony down for a searing kiss. steve makes quick work of tony’s tie and the unbuttons his shirt, pushing the clothes off tony’s shoulders and onto the floor. “that’s better,” steve says, letting his hands roam around tony’s naked chest.

tony shudders at the contact, surprised by the feeling of steve’s gloves, of skin, and leather, and heat.

steve reaches over and clicks open the bottle of lube, spreading some on his fingers. with his other hand, he pulls tony down for another kiss, his hand warm on tony’s nape.

tony moans into steve’s mouth when he slides two fingers into him, rocking back against steve’s fingers in anticipation. “more,” he begs, and steve obliges him, slipping in a third finger.

tony keens, breaking away from the kiss and throwing his head back with pleasure at the feeling of being stretched open, surprised by the sensation that steve’s gloves bring.

“like it?” steve whispers against tony’s skin, pressing open mouthed kisses against tony’s neck.

“y-yes,” tony stammers out, his mind blanking out and bursting into stars at every movement of steve’s fingers. “let me fuck you,” he grinds out, and it’s taking all of his concentration to say words and not just groan gutterally.

steve slides his fingers out of tony’s hole and tony whimpers softly at the loss. he takes a steadying breath, feeling overwhelmed in the best possible way. he lifts himself over steve’s hips, and slowly guides steve’s cock into his ass, hissing a little as steve’s thick cock stretches him open.

steve’s moan starts low, and soft, and he likely doesn’t even realize he’s making any sounds as tony’s sliding down onto his cock, which is probably one of tony’s favorite things about steve, and there are so many, and tony’s thoughts all stutter to a halt when finally, finally, finally, steve’s cock is fully inside him.

tony takes shallow breaths, pleasure zinging around him like a wild current. he rolls his hips forward slowly, and steve slams his head back onto the desk sending a loud bang reverberating through the room.

“you okay?” tony asks breathlessly.

steve is breathing hard. “fuck me,” he whispers.

tony smiles and moves forward to press a quick kiss on steve’s nose, before sliding back down on steve’s cock and rolling his forward more forcefully now.

steve’s hands snap to tony’s hips, aiding in the motion, and only then does tony realize that steve’s still fully clothed.

“you look so fucking good in this suit,” tony moans, hands braced on steve’s chest, grabbing uselessly at the fabric of the uniform.

steve nods, swallows, opens and closes his mouth, and moans.

tony can’t help but be proud of himself, getting steve to react this way. he snaps his hips against steve’s, shifting a little until he finds the right angle and - oh.

“oh, god, oh, yes,” tony groans, his mind nothing but sparks of pleasure as the head of steve’s cock rubs against his prostate.

steve tightens his grip on tony’s hips, fucking tony against him, and tony’s hands move uselessly from steve’s arms, steve’s shoulders, steve’s chest, not really thinking about why, only knowing that he needed to be holding on tight.

“right there, right there,” tony chants, his mouth just needing to move, pleasure requiring verbalization. beneath him, steve is breathing hard, small, soft moans spilling from his lips.

tony’s hands slip from steve’s shoulders to rest on either side of steve’s head. he raises his hips up as steve fucks him, and he can feel beads of sweat sliding down his back, down his forearms, down the tip of his nose. steve turns his head and sucks at the skin on the inside of tony’s wrist just as he wraps a hand around tony’s cock.

tony comes almost instantly, stuttering and shuddering against steve as the orgasm rocks through him. steve’s other hand, still on tony’s hip, continues to rock tony forward on steve’s still-hard cock.

tony takes a few seconds to catch his breath, feeling dazed, then he wipes the sweat off his brow and presses a quick kiss to steve’s lips.

“i want to make you come for me,” he says, as he straightens up, and begins to ride steve’s cock in earnest. he knows that steve’s close, which is why he’s confident in going hard, and true enough, steve comes after a few strokes, groaning tony’s name as he does.

tony rests against steve’s chest as he feels the last of steve’s orgasm pulse through him, humming a little as he feels steve go soft, and feels steve’s cum leaking out of him.

“tony,” steve says, sounding more lucid, now. he doesn’t have to say anything else.

tony smiles against steve’s chest. “welcome home, steve.”

[spnfanficpond]

Pond Diving - Katelynw93

Welcome to today’s Pond Diving Spotlight! We hope that you enjoy this little insight to our members and perhaps even find some useful tips for your own writing. Happy reading!

Want to volunteer, send us an ask! We’re looking forward to learning more about all of you! Not sure what PD is, you can learn more here.

“Don’t Be Koi About It” - All About You

Name: Katelyn, but most people call me Kate, Katie or sometimes even Kat.

Age: 27

Location: Originally from Kansas, but have been located in Upstate NY for the last six years.

URL: @katelynw93​

Why did you choose your URL: It’s usually the username that I use for everything and if I’m being honest, I’m not very creative when it comes to titles or names. Lol. I’ve been meaning to change it; I just need to decide on what.  

What inspired you to become a writer: Well, when I was in middle school (maybe seventh or eighth grade), my best friend and I decided to write a story together and post it on a fanfiction site (Can’t remember the site name, though.) And I just loved it. We never did finish that story. Lol. But eventually I started branching out and found some roleplay writing sites.  

How long have you been writing: Started writing in middle school (2006/2007), but really got into it in 2009 with RP. However, September of this year (2020) was the first year I started really writing fics by myself and opening posting them. 

What do you do when you are not writing i.e. Job/Hobbies etc? I work a lot, usually an average of 40+ hours a week; I am a manager at a popular food chain restaurant and on the weekends, a cashier at a gas station to provide a little extra cash for my family. When I’m not working, my time is spent with my two kids; Alekzander (Zander) who just turned five this past November and Lincoln (Link) who will be two in February. Outside of work and my family, I’m usually writing. Sometimes if I’m feeling extra creative or inspired, I’ll create a few crackships for couples I really enjoy. Lol. 

How long have you been in the SPN Fandom? I actually found Supernatural around the same time I started writing, so back in ninth grade, so 2008/2009. It was honestly an accident too, because I was searching for Smallville episodes (I have an unhealthy addiction to Superman and DC/Marvel.) and stumbled upon an ad for Supernatural. Was instantly intrigued and fell in love. Seasons 1 - 5 (the Kripke era) are my favorite. 

Are you in any other fandoms and do you write for them? Oh yea, I love TV shows and movies, and as I’ve already stated above, I love DC and Marvel. I’ve also written for Grey’s Anatomy and am willing to write for more, but SPN, DC and Grey’s are currently the only ones I’ve written for. I love The Vampire Diaries, One Tree Hill, Private Practice, Station 19, 9-1-1, Game of Thrones, The Witcher, Merlin, Dexter, Psych, and so, so many more. There are too many to list. Lol.  

Do you do any writing outside of fanfiction? If so, tell us about it? Other than RPing, not really. I mean, I did try to do an original story with my friend when I was younger, but it never went anywhere. But I am willing to try someday. 

Favorite published author: Other than the really big authors like; J.K. Rowling, George R.R. Martin, Jim Butcher, Nicholas Sparks, Suszanne Collins, I really like (and maybe it’s cliche) Stephenie Meyer. The Twilight Saga made me fall in love with reading and eventually, that love led me to writing. Those books hold a special place in my heart.  

Have you ever read a book that made an impact on your life? Which one and why?: Well, I guess I sort of answered that one already. But there truly are so many amazing books out there and still so many more to discover. 

Favorite genre of fanfic (smut, angst, fluff, crack, rpf, etc): Oh man, I’m not gonna lie, a majority of what I read is probably smut. But I am particularly fond of angst. I want you to make me cry. Really dig and stab into my emotions. Lol. And then come back in with some fluff. Haha. 

Favorite piece of your own writing: Well, that would have to be Sweet Cherry Pie because it was really the first piece I’ve ever finished and published online. It was inspired by an RP that I am currently involved in and they are my favorite couple in said RP. It got so much positive feedback after I shared it that it inspired me to keep writing. I was so nervous about posting it, but I am glad I did. 

Most underrated fic you have written: Oh I’m not sure. Maybe Love Bites. I am a sucker for Supernatural and The Vampire Diaries crossovers. I really loved writing this fic and am eager to write more. 

Story of yours that you’d most like to see turned into a movie/tv show: Oh damn, um, it’d be cool to see any of them like that. But maybe Sweet Cherry Pie or Out of the Fire (my firefighter!Dean series).  

Favorite Tumblr Writer(s): There are so many, but I usually find myself reading work from; @impala-dreamer​, @katehuntington​  @deanwanddamons​, @muchamusedaboutnothing​.  

Favorite Fic from another writer: This one is tough because there are so many amazing fics out there, especially ones that I adddddore; but if forced to choose, one story that will always stick with me would have to be Treacherous by @idkhaylijah​ OR The Sullivan Series by Kate Huntington 

Favorite character to write: Dean Winchester. I adore Dean and he’s probably the easiest for me to write. I have written the most fics with him and I portray him often in the RPs that I do. 

Favorite Pairing to write: Dean with anyone, but my favorite would be Dean x Caroline. 

Least favorite character to write (and why): That’s a tough one, cause there’s not really any that I’m uncomfortable with or dislike writing. Maybe characters with accents, because I don’t really know how to capture that in writing yet? I’m pretty open with my writing and am willing to try mostly anything. 

Do you have anyone you consider a mentor? Oh definitely. When I first started RPing, there was another girl (Jocelyn) that I used to write with and she influenced a lot of my writing. She was older than me and had more experience and gave me a lot of tips on how to get better. She is an amazing writer and had the potential of going far with it, but life happens and unfortunately, she doesn’t write anymore. But she is booming on Youtube, so that’s pretty impressive. It’s pretty cool to see how far she’s come. 

Do you have any aspirations involving your writing? I used to want to be a journalist when I was younger, but other than that, not really. I just want to have fun with it and write something meaningful for someone, and always improve and get better.  

How many work-in-progress stories do you have: I have a few ideas jotted down, maybe ten, but I haven’t actually started any of them. I have so many bingo cards I need to finish, but with my work schedule, it’s been pretty crazy. 

What are you currently working on? My main project is Out of the Fire.

“Pond Diving” - All About The Writing

What/who has had the biggest influence on your writing? Definitely the RPing that I’ve done and am currently doing. My friend Alesha has been the longest RP partner that I’ve had and her writing is phenomenal - and it helps a lot too when your mind's work in similar ways; her and I always seem to be on the same wavelength when it comes to writing. I love it. But like me, she has a very busy schedule and writing is limited. 

Best writing advice you've been given: Have fun with it, write what you want to write and always be open to helpful criticism. And don’t stress about it, either. Write in your own time. It’s meant to be fun, not stressful. 

Biggest obstacle you’ve faced in your writing: Just finding the time to write and getting over being so self conscious about my writing. I don’t let anyone in my real life read what I write.  

What aspects of writing do you find difficult when you write fanfiction? Just capturing the personalities of the canon characters sometimes; if it’s a character I’m not used to writing, I worry about portraying them the right way. And I have trouble individualizing the characters (separating them from myself/my own personality), like when I create an OC for an RP, sometimes when I have too many, their personalities all become the same in ways (if that makes sense?). And accents. I have trouble with accents. Oh, and fight/action scenes. They take me a bit.  

Is there anything you want to write but are afraid to (and why): I am always going to be afraid, no matter what it is that I’m writing, because I worry about it succeeding. I want to write for other fandoms though, I guess, but like I said, I worry about capturing the characters right and having a decent storyline that is unique. 

What inspires/motivates you to write: Honestly, positive feedback. I love hearing what people think about my writing and it motivates me to continue. 

How do you deal with self-doubt: That’s a tough one. I guess I just look towards my writing friends or beta’s for reassurance or I go back and read the positive comments and likes on the fics I’ve already shared. It encourages me to continue. 

How do you deal with writer's block: I usually listen to music and I’ll look up gifs of my favorite characters, create stories in my head with those gifs or I’ll create gif sets of specific scenes. If that doesn’t work, I’ll take a break and watch one of my favorite TV shows for inspiration. 

Do you plan/outline your story before you start: For my RPs, I have a group chat with those I’m writing with and we usually shoot ideas back and forth, but mostly we wing it. For my fics, I normally just wing it, but with Out of the Fire, I have a rough idea of what I want from each part. With that said, my ideas or plans often change as I’m writing. These characters have a mind of their own sometimes. Lol.  

Do you have any weird writing habits: I don’t know about any weird habits, but I always have music on and I guess I have to do it in spurts. I’ll write a few paragraphs or sentences, pause and scroll tumblr or facebook or gifs, and then go back, reread what I wrote and then write a few more. Rise and repeat. 

Have you ever received hateful comments on your fic and how do you deal with it? So far, no I haven’t, and I hope I don’t ever have to deal with that. But I know it’s bound to happen. I guess if I were to ever encounter that, I’d like to say that I’ll take it as a learning experience but I honestly don’t know I’d feel about that.  

Conversely: what’s been some of your favorite feedback on your fanfic? Oh man, I guess my favorite would have to be ellewritesfix05 reaction to the secret santa fic I wrote for her; Dean Fucking Winchester. And all the positive feedback I’ve gotten for Out of the Fire.

If you could give one piece of advice to a new and/or struggling writer, what would it be? Have fun with it. Write what you want and what you’re comfortable with. Don’t be afraid of constructive criticism and most importantly, don’t stress. Writing is fun.

[fanfic-scribbles]

Trade Up

Fandom: MCU Captain America/Avengers

Summary: You always thought meeting your soulmate would be a humdrum affair, but he does what he does best and saves you.

Quick facts: Romance – Sam Wilson/Reader – Nondescript Reader

Warnings: Fluff, soulmate fic where your soulmates words are on your skin, jumps POV momentarily from Reader-focused perspective to a wider perspective ((marked like so)), they/them pronouns for Reader

Words: 1667

A/N: This story is interesting in that I wrote it and lost it and found it and lost it again and I just found it again so I typed it up real fast so at least I don’t have to tear my belongings apart just to know where it went. I like this one; it is pretty by-the-numbers but sometimes you just wanna grab a glass of Sam-Wilson-saving-you-from-a-terrible-date and sink into a warm bath of and-they-were-soulmates. Cheers.

     You think the people who say they’ll never date again are incredibly valid. After tonight, you might become one of them.

“I know you won’t understand, but I’ll try to simply it for you…”

You understand that, with soulmates and all, some people find dating to be a waste of time. You don’t expect those people to be on a website for ‘frivolous’ dating. And yet here you are, with a man who had seemed nice in emails and a brief phone conversation, but who currently cannot seem to care less about making even a decent impression.

God; you’re pretty sure someone at the table to your left is live-tweeting this, from how they’re snickering over their phone with their friends, and looking at you and your date every now and then. They’re not the only table stealing glances, but they are the most blatant about it. It’s telling that you’re pretty sure that you’re pretty sure that’s Captain America sitting a couple of tables away and yet no one is talking about him or his group of equally attractive friends. Even they are focused on you, especially the really cute guy on his left, which just figures, doesn’t it.

Your date is still talking and you trace the condensation on your glass of mostly-untouched water. You’ve moved past the stage of embarrassment where you want to crawl under the table and die. You’ve tried your excuses, they’ve all failed, and you’ve accepted this is your life for the evening and you’re just waiting for it to end. Hopefully without much more notice.

  ((Meanwhile…))

  “I've never heard someone talk that much,” Natasha mutters under her breath. “And I’ve sat with Tony while he was on the verge of a panic attack.”

Sam frowns and Steve’s jaw clenches even tighter. Bucky and Sharon trade long-suffering looks. “Stop it,” Bucky says when Steve’s arm tenses.

“That guy’s a dick,” Steve says, not taking his eyes from you. “I’ve gotta do something.”

“And embarrass them more by causing a scene?” Sharon says.

“You're not a skinny little nobody anymore,” Natasha adds. “You go over there and it’s going to be a story. Worse, it might make that asshole sympathetic. Does it look like that poor person wants that sort of attention?”

Sam watches as you hunch under the attention already given and look longingly at the black screen of your phone. “I’m with Steve on this one,” Sam says.

Bucky rolls his eyes and takes a drink. “Of course you are; you’re just like him.”

“Look,” Natasha says. “If he gets up again I’ll go ask if they want help. Until then, you two sit your asses down. Am I clear?”

Sam and Steve both frown deeply but they nod. Natasha sits back and watches them shrewdly. Sharon nods at Bucky. “At least self-preservation seems to have kicked in.”

“For now,” Bucky says, mirroring Natasha almost exactly.

Sharon hides a smile in her glass, but a look meant to evaluate ‘the situation’ is caught by Natasha, who gives her a sharp glare as well.

“Three of them,” Bucky mutters in Russian.

“God help us,” Natasha says and downs her drink.

  ((Back at the table…))

  “Everybody’s too damn focused on soulmates these days.”

You think he’s about to go off on another rant that will inevitably turn offensive, but he’s actually quiet. You’re so startled by the prospect of actual engagement that you trip over your tongue. “Not– not any more than they have been, I think. In fact–”

“I’m seeing a lot less people on the dating scene these days,” he says. “And so many people are all–” he goes into a mocking falsetto, “‘I’m waiting for my other piece.’ Ugh.” He takes a drink. “Or ‘pieces’ depending on whether they got the ‘harlot’s mark,’ you know?”

You haven’t heard that term from anyone other than really old bigots and you actually flinch. “That’s a gross–”

“I mean, it’s like nobody knows how to have fun anymore,” he says. “The whole point of having a soulmate is that someone’s always going to take you no matter what. Why doesn’t everyone do that?”

From ‘harlot’s mark’ to ‘why doesn’t everyone fuck around.’ You wish you could be surprised by this shift in attitude, but he’s spent almost the whole date justifying why he’s fine and the rest of the world is wrong. Still, you have a bad feeling as to why he’s bringing this up. “Um…not everyone is cool with it, I guess,” you say cautiously.

“Doesn’t matter.” He knocks back his drink and flags for yet another. “If they’re your soulmate they’re stuck with you. That’s fate.”

That’s not true and as sorry as you feel for his soulmate, you hope he learns that lesson the hard way (if only for their sake). But then he smirks at you. “It’s good that some of us do know how to have fun.”

The way he says that last part makes your skin crawl. “A different kind of ‘fun’ I guess,” you say, trying to sound as bored as you can. Rude, sexist, racist, so many types of phobic, obnoxious to everyone around him without even trying, and now creepy– if you had a bad date bingo card you’d have a blackout right now.

Earlier he had tried to skip out on the bill by excusing himself to the bathroom, but your waitress and the host had blocked the front and loudly instructed him as to where the restrooms were. Now you wish they’d had your back a little less. You’d take the hit to your wallet if it meant you could crawl home. But now if you get the bill would that be sending the wrong signal; would he take that for an invitation? Not that you care, you just don’t want to deal with it right now.

He keeps drinking, and you keep rebuffing his attempts to get you to do the same. You’re not sure what you’re going to do with him as he gets drunker and drunker, but it has the unintended benefit of shutting him up, which means all the onlookers slowly get bored and stop paying such close attention to your disaster date. Even the people recording this for posterity stop, and after a little while you can breathe again.

Until, when you’re reaching for a napkin, he suddenly grabs your wrist and grips. You try to yank it back, but he’s got a surprisingly strong hold. “Hey,” he says. “I think I’m just about ready.”

“Ready for what?” You wince. “Please let go; it hurts.”

“Sorry,” he says but he barely loosens a centimeter. “You take care of the bill, and I’ll take you to my place. It’ll be great.”

The one problem with no longer being the center of surreptitious attention is that it’s hard to find help that you can discreetly ask for. You’re about to damn all dignity and raise your voice to demand he let go, when someone bumps into your table hard enough to topple the glasses. You barely catch your water, but your date’s half-full drink goes right into his lap. He hisses and lets go of you to mop it up.

You look up at your savior, who even under normal conditions is probably one of the most beautiful men you’ve ever seen. Right now, the lights give him a very appropriate halo and your angel smiles at you. How fitting for a man who uses wings to save people.

“I’m really sorry to interrupt, but have we met before? You look awfully familiar.”

Your heart stutters. Your words. It could be a coincidence. It could be, but it might not be. “I– I don’t think so; I’m a hundred percent sure I’d remember a face like yours.”

His eyes go wide and his mouth drops open and shit, you’re actually thankful for that asshole now. “Those are my– did I say–”

You scramble up and pull up your sleeve to show him your words. His words. He gently touches the skin and the way he smiles at you–

“Do you know this asshole?” your ‘date’ gripes.

“I do now,” you say, not looking away from the man. “He’s my soulmate.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Nope,” your soulmate says and, appropriately, doesn’t give the douchebag a single glance.

“Fuck it; this was a shit date anyway,” he says and stumbles out. He doesn’t leave anything for his half, of course, but you don’t even care anymore; he’s gone and you’re standing in front of your soulmate, who looks as happy as you feel.

He extends his hand to shake yours. “Sam Wilson.”

You introduce yourself and he repeats your name like he already loves it. “I know you’ve had a hell of a night, but uh, do you wanna go get some coffee or something?” he says.

“Your friends won’t mind?” you ask. Just to be polite, if you’re being honest; you’re ready to yank him out the door and never look back.

“No way,” he says. “Besides, I see those jerks all the time.”

“Okay. Okay.” You can’t stop smiling. Talk about an upswing. “Let me just pay the bill and–”

A wad of cash lands on the table. “The gentleman was kind enough to leave enough cash to cover the bill and a generous tip,” a woman with red hair and even redder lipstick says as she sidles past. “We’ll see you later, Sam.”

“Thanks Nat,” he says and they trade a small hug. As Sam helps you with your jacket he tells you, “I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner.” He straightens out the lapel. “We weren't sure if we’d make it better or worse. If it’s any consolation, Steve wanted to throttle the guy.”

“Well, as much as I appreciate the thought–” you hold your hand out, “–I’m glad it was you.”

Sam grins and slips his hand into yours, and you lead him out into the best night of your life.

[tinalostgirl]

Chocolate Factory | Tauna

Who: Tina Cohen-Chang & Fauna Flanagan @faunaflanagan

Where: Hallway of Main Building

When: Tuesday; In between classes 9.8.20

What: Bingo - Threaten Someone + Role play as Willy Wonka/Oompa Loompa

Fauna had a feeling this orange face paint was going to be a bitch to get off. But if she managed to complete her bingo card then it would be worth it. She looked out for Tina, ready right feel threatened.

Tina felt ridiculous. Not to mention, it was hot as balls outside. The wig was hot on it's own but mixed with the hat and the overcoat, she was sweating buckets. But she didn't really mind it as she searched the halls for Fauna. At least other people around them seemed to be doing things that were just as weird as them, but not as noticeably weird. She spotted the orange face paint and knew that's the direction she needed to be going in. At least pretending to threaten someone was far better than actually threatening them. At least Fauna was in on it. She marched up to her, grabbing her by the shoulders and slamming her into some lockers. "I thought I told you to clean up the factory before leaving!" Tina yelled at her in the best Willy Wonka impersonation she could muster.

It took everything in Faunas entire body not to burst into laughter when she saw Tina. She was so glad that she had mostly been filling Rorys ridiculous card with her friends as there was no way she could have taken it seriously from a Dom. When she hit the lockers she let out a little squeak of surprise. “I’m so sorry Mr Wonka, I had to meet my Lompa family for a meeting.” She responded, making something up on the spot.

Tina was fine when she was on her own, but getting to Fauna and finally locking eyes with her friend had her breaking character in minutes. It was a good thing this didn't have to be perfect. She didn't see any other reason while doing this particular scene other than it was fun and ridiculous. And she needed fun and ridiculous right now. When she finally pulled back her laughter, she furrowed her eyebrows. "You had to meet your Loompa family, huh? Tell me why I shouldn't drown you in a chocolate river or turn you into a blueberry right now, huh?"

Faunas lip wobbled as she struggled not to giggle, especially since both of them had gone all out with their costumes, she supposed that was the theatre kid in them both. When Tina laughed she also laughed, having to look away to compose herself. “I’ll work double as hard Mr Wonka, we’ve all been composing some amazing new songs for you and Mr Bucket. Please don’t drown me!!”

This really was going to be a struggle of they both kept laughing but she wasn't going to complain about the fun they were having. "But did I ask you to do that? You had one simple task, Oompa. How many times have I told you to CLEAN UP THE FACTORY BEFORE YOU LEAVE!" Her screaming came out as more shrill than threatening, but it did the job. "So I won't drown you, but what if I throw you into the trash shoot instead. Or better YET, I could just force you into the t.v. Then you'll never get to see your Loompas again."

“No Mr Wonka, you didn’t ask me that.” The currently orange girl replied, biting her lip as Tina continued to yell at her. “Mr Wonka I swear I’ll scrub the floors until they run orange. Just don’t separate me from my Loompas, they need me! They shall surely starve if I am gone!”

People were starting to stare and she could hear a bunch of 'what the fuck's' being murmured which made her façade really start to crack, but she was determined to get to the threat before they were through with this. She had to give it to Fauna for being just as committed as she was. Tina slammed her fist into the locked behind the Oompa Loompa. "If you pull a stunt like that again, you will never see your Loompas again, you understand me? I'll stuff you in that glass elevator of mine and shoot you through the roof. Got it?"

If you were going to claim that your favourite kink was roleplay then in Faunas book you had to be the best at roleplay. So despite the urge to start laughing again, she persisted with her terrified act raising her arms in surrender. “I understand Mr Wonka, I’ll never ever leave early again. I’ll stay late in fact. I’ll stay as late as you want.”

It was easy in her costume to see the scene through to the very end. As the other girl cowered and begged for another chance, Tina (as Willy) stepped back and brushed down her suit. "Alright, Loompa. One more chance. I'll give you one more chance. But that's it." Tina tipped her hat and pointed towards the end of the hallway. "Get out of here before I change my mind."

Fauna pretended to heave a sigh of relief when the other girl moved back from her. “Oh thank you Mr Wonka, you are so very generous. All Loompa kind are so very lucky to have you.” She called, and then scurried away when Tina realised her. Finally letting out a further set of giggles that she was sure were going to stop anytime soon

As Fauna ran away, the crowd started to disperse and she made like she was going to go the opposite way, but she just ended up chasing after Fauna. She had already broken down into a fit of giggles by the time she reached her. She scooped her up from behind and lifted her into the air. "You were amazing, you crazy girl and your costuuuume. Amazing." Tina fell to the ground and took off her hat, but left the wig on. "High five, we killed that."

Fauna squealed in a delighted manner when Tina lifted her up. “I was amazing? No you were amazing. That performance was straight Tony winning. I can already see you as the first female chocolate factory lead.” The brunette giggled, raising her hand for the biggest high five. “That was too much fun.”

"How about we were both amazing. This was so worth it, even without the points." Tina couldn't believe she was saying that, but Fauna really made this enjoyable for her. "And at least I've got one of my Halloween costumes already. I'm gonna wear the hell out of this little number." And looked down at herself, swinging the hat in her hand. "And I'm definitely keeping this on for the rest of the day." Tina stood up and held her hand out to Fauna. "C'mon. I'll walk you to your next class."

“It was 100% worth it, we’ll need to get a selfie together in this ensemble.” The Irish girl agreed. “You know what I’ll stay orange for the day too, can’t wait to see what Sawyers lips look like when he kisses me.” She giggled taking Tinas hand and letting her take her to class.

[lady-divine-writes]

Kurtbastian fic - “Dreamscape - Chapter 5″ (Rated NC17)

Summary:

Snarky, conceited Sebastian Smythe is "recruited" by the U. S. Government into a project that uses psychics like himself to enter people's dreams and cure them of their nightmares. The scientists running the study are Dr. Kurt Hummel, himself an empath, who's not at all impressed by Sebastian's abilities, and Dr. Jesse St. James, using this project more to further his own ambition than to actually help people. Kurt hopes his research will help soldiers suffering from PTSD overcome their nightmares so they can better readjust to civilian life, but someone else has an eye on Kurt's project, an interest in using 'dream therapy' for a far more nefarious purpose.

Inspired by the movie 'Dreamscape'

Read on AO3.

(6140 words this chapter)

“Subject: Parapsychology at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) 1. The intent of this memorandum is to briefly describe the OTS - SRI parapsychology project including a listing of the American citizens tested … fucking shit! This is what I hate about places like this,” Sebastian murmurs. “All the Goddammed homework!” He blinks at the white lines and black typeface bleeding into impressionist beetles before his eyes. “This is gonna put me in a coma. I guess that’s how they’re going to get me to succeed with all this dream link nonsense. By knocking me out permanently.”

He squeezes his eyes shut till bursts of color snap behind his lids. He takes a deep breath in, lets it out, counts to ten, and opens his eyes again. He adjusts the page in front of his face and tackles the paragraph again from the beginning - the same paragraph he’s read about fifteen times already. But none of it makes sense. He chuckles at the irony of that. “So much for my propensity for medicine, huh, Dr. Hummel? Kurt …” He gives the name a try, lets it roll off his tired tongue in his husky voice, a stone’s throw from his after sex voice.

It sounds good, he has to say that.

Scholastic papers on any topic have never been his cup of tea. Technical jargon and inflated science speak? Pompous and unnecessary. Or maybe he’s struggling with reading this encyclopedia of parapsychology because it’s … Sebastian checks his watch and groans. He thought it was creeping up on midnight, but it’s well past two in the morning.

“Great.” He closes the prospectus and tosses it to the foot of the bed. He wants to get some frickin’ sleep and have this disaster of a day be over already. A couple of hours, that’s all he asks. But he’s never had luck sleeping in places that weren’t his own home, his own bed. As a kid, his parents could take him on the best vacation to the funnest place in the universe, and he’d be miserable because he couldn’t fall asleep in a hotel bed.

Thinking about his apartment doesn’t help – his own spacious room and his nice, cozy bed now under surveillance by the federal government and three hired guns in black suits, probably all named Vinny. He can get as pissed as he wants for Jesse tipping them off (since he’s determined he’s the mastermind behind that set-up) but, truthfully, they were bound to catch up with him sooner or later. He can admit to himself that he was getting too cocky.

Lucky he ended up here instead of prison.

Or wearing cement shoes and sunk to the bottom of Lake Huron.

His mom used to say that people are where they’re meant to be at any given time. Maybe his ending up here has nothing to do with him or the choices he made. Maybe this is fate. This facility isn’t a bump in the road to somewhere else, it’s where he was supposed to end up.

…

Nope. Fuck that.

If he had been thinking with his head and not his dick, bypassed Satan-tana and headed for the car in his vision … he’d still be here. But he might have spent the night with Kurt instead. Would tapping Kurt be an even exchange for what he’s going through now? What he might potentially go through?

Again, one of many questions he might never get the answer to.

Before Kurt left Sebastian to his own devices, he gave him a stack of paperwork to peruse – a detailed breakdown of the project, the outreach programs it currently serves, the trials, and the supporting documentation that goes along with it.

It was Kurt’s first step at keeping his transparency promise.

Sebastian thanked him for it, but dumped it on his bedside table, determined to glean the CliffsNotes version from various unsuspecting brains around the facility. But the document, chock full of classified(ish) information that Kurt gave him willingly, mocked him. Kurt was making good on his part of the bargain.

Sebastian, on the other hand, was being a stubborn ass.

He glances out the door into the hallway. He’d left it open on the off chance Kurt ended up down his way during one of the walks Sebastian suspects he takes at the facility late at night. Sebastian discovered, entirely by accident, leaving the door open formed a rift in the barrier that keeps psychic powers contained. He can’t actively read anyone’s mind, but it allows Sebastian to get an impression of Kurt in the building. But with his walls up, Sebastian has no idea if he’s awake or asleep, out and about or in his office.

If he ever crosses Kurt’s mind.

He probably does now that he’s participating in Kurt’s study, even if it’s in a purely clinical way.

That’s better than nothing.

“Mason …”

A woman’s voice echoes through his ears from the inside, and Sebastian stops breathing. He sits up, looks around, eyes searching out the corners of his room for any place someone could hide, but there’s literally nowhere.

“Hello?” he calls, then waits for a response.

“Mason … be careful! Don’t do anything stupid …”

“Mason?” Sebastian swings his legs over the side of his bed. Isn’t that one of the incest twins?

Sebastian rises from his bed and walks to the door. He leans out into the hallway, looks left and right, but he sees no one. He half expected armed guards stationed outside his room or at the end of the hallway, but it seems deserted. The facility probably relies on cameras to keep their assets from running off.

Or on Kurt’s memory.

And whereas he wants to remain bitter about the whole ‘big brother watching him’ thing, the thought of his vitals, his brain wave patterns, and his heat signature locked inside Kurt’s brain makes that impossible.

“Mason!”

The urgency in that voice forces Sebastian to take a step back. He definitely hears it louder out in the hallway. But it’s not aimed at his brain. It sounds like it’s traveling through the walls. Sebastian presses his palm against the wall and closes his eyes, waiting until the next wave hits. There’s a chance he can pinpoint the voice’s location if he can absorb its impact.

“Mason? Mason, please, be careful. What’s going on? Why can’t you answer me!?”

Sebastian smiles.

Bingo.

With his hand on the wall, the path to her location lights up in his mind. He starts walking, getting as far as he can before the image fades, then stops to wait for another one. Luckily for him, this woman can’t seem to stop talking. Sebastian hurries along the corridor the way he and Kurt came, in the direction of one particular room. A room he saw earlier on his tour.

A room behind a metal door that technicians needed a keycard to enter.

As curious as he is, Sebastian isn’t cool with the idea of hanging out in this hallway, in the open, waiting for someone to come out. If he isn’t on anyone’s radar yet, he should be soon. But as luck would have it, help comes his way, rounding the corner at the far end of the hall. The technician doesn’t see Sebastian duck out of sight, too caught up in a message on his phone. Sebastian watches the man cautiously, waiting to see if he’s heading for the room. He could blow past it, round the end of the hall, and run straight into Sebastian.

No one told Sebastian if there’s a curfew, but he’s certain stalking the halls at two a.m. is frowned upon.

Five feet from the door, the technician stops. He looks up from his phone straight in Sebastian’s direction. Sebastian is sure the man sees him, but he goes back to his phone. He locks his screen and shoves it in his pocket. Then he approaches the door. Sebastian barely blinks as the man pulls his keycard out of his pocket and sticks it in the keypad. With a click, the door unlocks, swinging open by itself. He slips the keycard back into his pocket and walks through the door. Sebastian visualizes the keycard before it disappears from view. He reaches out for it with his mind, holds onto it, and locks it in place. The man walks through the door but his keycard stays behind. After the door swings shuts, Sebastian rushes forward and plucks the card out of the air. He lets go of the breath he’s holding, his heart racing with adrenaline. Buzzing from this victory, he has to consciously calm down before he goes any further.

With his heart pounding in his chest, even an empath with less honed skills than Kurt’s should be able to sense him from a mile away.

Sebastian presses an ear to the door, listens for the sound of footsteps to grow distant, counts to five when they stop entirely, then inserts the keycard again. Sebastian takes a gamble that a safeguard on the keycards could keep them from being used twice in a row, and trigger security to boot, but the door clicks and swings open. A lengthy hallway stretches out before him, lit a blinding white, making the end barely visible. Is there a corner at the end that leads to a different room? Another door? An elevator? With the absence of shadows, he can’t tell. He tiptoes inside, trying not to make his presence known, but the linoleum floor amplifies the sound of his footsteps no matter how softly he treads.

The hallway turns out to be part illusion, and not as long as it seems when he first enters it. It ends at a corner but not a door, funneling directly into a dimly lit control room, reminiscent of the one he saw with Kurt, when he met Sam - the young man who has fantasies of an intimate relationship with Kurt. A wash of jealously rushes over him, especially considering the way Kurt scolded him for not showing respect, and he realizes he doesn’t do a good job at masking his thoughts too well. It’s a wonder Kurt can’t sense that he’s out of his room at this point.

Sebastian sneaks in, sticking close to the wall until he finds an area beside a vertical console away from the available light. From this vantage point, he can see the whole control room in front of him, plus the hall he entered to his right, with no fear that someone will sneak up behind him. Flat screens cover the walls from floor to ceiling, each displaying a series of images from various angles of two people - a young man and a boy, asleep on padded tables. Wires from electrodes attached to their heads lead to a console between them. In this way, they’re connected.

That must be the conduit that links one dreamer to another, Sebastian deduces. He risks a step out in search of the man and boy and finds them at the far end, separated from the control room by a glass partition, the walls surrounding them covered in grey, sound dampening panels. Outside the partition, a row of technicians sit, eyes glued to screens displaying pulse readings, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, and other vitals of both boy and man.

Kurt’s voice cuts through Sebastian’s thoughts and pulls his focus.

How did he not know Kurt was in there? Probably a side-effect of the tech they use to inhibit psychic powers. He’d better not be slipping …

“Myron’s vital signs are increasing.” 

“What else is new?” Jesse St. James mutters, twirling his pen between his fingers. “Is it serious?

“They’re escalating.”

“That’s normal. He always has a tough time. How’s Mason?”

“Showing signs of extreme agitation.”

“You should have let me go in with him!” a woman pacing behind them scolds, her fingertips pressed to her forehead so hard it creates a halo of white around them. That must be Madison, Sebastian notes. She looks almost exactly like the man lying on the table – the same lightly tanned skin, the same wavy dark hair, the same narrow, steep-sloping nose. Which would make the little boy Myron.

Sebastian looks at Myron’s sleeping face on the closest screen. He’s young, probably around eleven? Twelve? He looks frightened. There’s not an inch of peace on his face. His eyes shift behind his eyelids; his cheeks twitch; his lips, chapped and indented from being bitten, tighten in a grim line. His head jerks back and forth, beads of sweat gathering on his forehead.

He looks like he’s fighting for his life.

“The point of this exercise is to use the dream link machine and not your powers,” Jesse explains, monotone, as if he’s done it a dozen times already.

“That’s not the way we work! If you want to put someone under with your machine, pick a different guinea pig! We didn’t sign up for this!”

“Blood pressure?” Kurt asks one of the technicians, shifting the focus back to the two people who need it.

“200 over 174 and rising.”

“Pulse?”

“145. 147 now.”

“Brain waves?”  

“Erratic.”

Kurt turns on Jesse, a storm brewing in his eyes. “I told you we should have tried a different vessel for his first time out! Myron’s dreams are dangerous! I need to get them out of there!”

“Give him a few more minutes,” Jesse says, waving Kurt’s concerns away. “How’s the boy?”

“Pulse rate extremely rapid and rising fast.”

“Something’s wrong,” Kurt says, half out of his chair. “I’m bringing them out.” He doesn’t wait for permission, launching himself from his seat and heading towards the sleep chamber with Madison on his heels. “Sam! Disconnect them! Quick!”

“Right away, Dr. Hummel!”

Kurt reaches Myron in three strides and shakes him. Curled into the fetal position and hugging his knees, Myron cries out in pain. “Myron? Sweetie? Wake up. I need you to wake up now.” He puts a hand to Myron’s forehead and shuts his eyes. This fascinates Sebastian out of hiding. What is he doing? Searching for Myron’s conscious mind trapped inside the dream? Can he communicate with him that way?

Myron’s eyes fly open. Sebastian can see them through the glass – wide and frantic. They lock on to Sebastian’s and, in an instant, he finds himself inside a dark, spiraling void; a whirlpool spinning so fast, Sebastian feels suspended, with no air left to breathe. He hears a growl to his right, to his left, above him and below him. It’s low and sustained but steadily it grows, vibrating his ribcage, threatening to separate his vertebrae. He doesn’t see the creature so much as get an impression of it - tremendously large; scaly flesh boiling, pulsing, peeling from its bones; long razor sharp claws with skin caught underneath; rows of ragged teeth stained in blood.

Mason’s blood.

Bright lights and sharp noises flash inside his skull and those drawings on Kurt’s desk make all the sense in the world.

His body goes cold, the primitive parts of his brain switching to high alert, overriding reason in their effort to keep him safe. Whatever that thing is, he feels it in his mind and in the room with him, prowling around the shadows; its sinister, toothy grin widening as it prepares to make Sebastian its next meal.  

He’d bolt from the room if he wasn’t too scared to move.

Myron whimpers, scrabbling to grab hold of Kurt. He latches onto his arms, fingernails digging in as he squeezes tight.

“It’s alright, Myron,” Kurt whispers, rocking him in his arms. “Everything’s okay. You’re back. You’re going to be fine. I promise.”

“Mason!” Madison blows past Kurt and races to her brother’s side. “Are you alright? Mason, speak to me, please!”

But Mason doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t move, he doesn’t blink. Sebastian doesn’t know if he’s breathing. Sam runs his fingers through Mason’s hair, searching for the last of the electrodes, and shakes his head sympathetically.

“What’s going on in that kid’s head?” he asks, peeling the last of the electrodes from Mason’s scalp. “What’s he so scared of?”

Sebastian doesn’t see Madison glare at Sam in disgust because he can’t look away from Mason’s glazed eyes. Mason finally blinks and Sebastian gets another vision - one much crisper, less chaotic, the interpretation of this boy’s nightmare by an adult who is working to comprehend it but not quite there. But even this image, more fleshed out, simpler to conceive, more logical in form, less dictated by emotion, frightens the shit out of Sebastian.

Mason closes his eyes, and the image disappears.

Madison cradles her brother’s head, sniffling as she protectively pets his hair. “You have no idea.”

“Well, I’d say that was a bust,” Jesse groans, getting to his feet and heading for the white hallway. He passes within a foot of Sebastian but doesn’t see him standing there. “I trust you can follow up, Dr. Hummel. I’m tired. I’m heading to bed.”

“Absolutely, Dr. St. James,” Kurt says, but Sebastian hears Dr. St. Sucks! and he snickers in spite of himself. The expression on Kurt’s face changes. He becomes aware, lifting his head and peering into the room. He finds Sebastian in the shadows, stares straight at him. He looks anxious … and exhausted.

‘Go to your room. I’ll meet you there,’ Kurt projects into his mind. Sebastian nods. He heads for the hallway, leaving without question. But Kurt’s command reads like a compulsion, as if Sebastian didn’t have a choice.

And it was strong.

For the first time since meeting Kurt Hummel, Sebastian is wary of him.

***

Knock-knock-knock.

“Sebastian? Are you awake?”

Sebastian is definitely awake. He’s been staring down the door to his room since he returned, and now he’s debating whether he should answer or not. He doesn’t know why he shut his door in the first place. Didn’t he want Kurt to end up in his room? Why the freak out?

The further away from the sleep chamber he got, the clearer he began to think. Kurt didn’t compel him to do anything. What Sebastian read as a compulsion was more of a suggestion – one that Sebastian wasn’t in a frame of mind to reject. He was acting on instinct, frightened to his core. After getting a glimpse into Myron’s mind and the terrors that lurk there, Sebastian felt vulnerable. Kurt’s suggestion tapped into that.

Kurt was taking care of him. Sebastian should be grateful.

Sebastian has to admit, as often as he uses his skills, he abuses them more than he strengthens them. He’s taken for granted that he’s always been the big dog.

Kurt bruised his ego … but unintentionally so. In no way does he read like the kind of man who would take advantage of his abilities.

Kurt knocks again.

“Sebastian? Are you in there? Are you alright?”

“Yes.” Sebastian clears a lump from his throat. “I’m here. And I’m fine.”

“Can I talk to you?”

“Yeah. Sure. One minute.” Sebastian hops off the bed but he doesn’t hurry to the door. Unintentional or not, bruised ego or not, he may have underestimated Dr. Kurt Hummel, and that feeling of being wary refuses to go away.

“Man up,” he mumbles to himself. He takes a deep breath and opens the door. There stands Kurt – as fresh and glowing as if he just stepped out of the shower and not a child’s worse nightmare.

“Hey.” He smiles at Sebastian as if he’s picking him up for a first date. It’s a smile that disarms Sebastian, lowers his defenses without any of Kurt’s power applied.  “Can I come in?”

“Sure,” Sebastian says, mildly concerned that tonight’s experience may have left him with only a four word vocabulary. If he says sure one more time, he’s going to punch himself in the throat. “I don’t have much in the way of furniture, but there’s a chair …”

Kurt walks in, bypasses the straight-backed wood chair Sebastian indicated and takes a seat at the end of the bed. “I’m certain you have some questions about what you saw tonight? Concerns?”

“No, not a lot of concerns,” Sebastian admits, closing the door behind him. “I guess I’m more confused. To tell you the truth, I’m excited by the work you do here. It’s intriguing.”

“But …?”

“But …” Sebastian joins Kurt, dropping on the head of the bed “… I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m the right guy for this job. What went on that room … it looked intense.”

“Our sessions with our clients don’t normally play out like that. Believe it or not, Myron is one of our most extreme cases right now.”

“Why? What’s wrong with him?”

Kurt leans one hand on the mattress, a few cracks beginning to show in his cheerful façade. “He’s a troubled little boy with a lot of anxiety. His father was in the military, on his final tour of duty in Afghanistan, terrified of coming home and re-assimilating to civilian life. A week before his discharge, he’d been part of a convoy that came under attack. He and his team defended themselves against an unseen assailant. In the process, he was injured – the kind of injury that gets you sent home even if you’re not already on your way out. During his hospital stay, he found out that their attackers were children. Five of them – the eldest thirteen, the youngest eight. And they’d killed them all.”

“Jesus.” Sebastian’s mind fills with his last memory of Myron – wild eyes searching for protection, clinging to Kurt with hands and nails for dear life, and that whimper of total defeat. How did Myron know? Who would lay that information on a kid? If that’s what Myron is going through, Sebastian can’t begin to imagine how his dad’s doing. “So, what happened to him? Is he in your program, too?”

Kurt’s eyes leave Sebastian’s face. They don’t focus on anything in particular – a space behind Sebastian’s left shoulder that’s as uninteresting as the rest of the room. But what’s left of Kurt’s veneer disappears. “No. The day after he got off the plane, after he was reunited with his wife and son, he put his service revolver in his mouth. Myron walked in on his father when he did it.”

Sebastian tries to swallow, but the weight of that reveal is too much to get down. “And … the monster? With the teeth and the claws and the …?”

Kurt’s smile returns, and with it, hope. “You saw that?”

“Yeah. What’s that all about?”

“Myron doesn’t know how to put into words what exactly that monster is to him, but I have a few theories.”

“And those theories are?”

Kurt surprises Sebastian by reaching out and putting a hand over his … the hand with the scars on the back. “I don’t want to keep you up any longer. I really need you bright eyed and bushy tailed when we start working together tomorrow.”

“I’m pretty much ‘0’ for one when it comes to sleep tonight, so if you want my eyes bright and my tail bushy, please answer my question. Because otherwise my imagination is going to go off on a bender, and I might not sleep again till January.”

Kurt sighs. It takes an unexpected amount of effort. “If I tell you, do you promise you’ll go to sleep?”

“The only real way to ensure that I’m going to get any sleep is to bed down with me, Doc. But yes. I promise.”

Kurt chews the corner of his lip, deliberating over what to tell, how much to tell. “I don’t think Myron believes his father shot himself. Even though he saw it with his own eyes, he can’t. His father was his best friend. His hero. How could this man who meant everything to him do something like that, especially if it meant leaving Myron and his mother alone? So, in order to cope with the pain, he created this monster. He lays his blame on it, believes it killed his father. Or has him trapped somewhere. It seems to switch from nightmare to nightmare. His brain wants to rectify the situation – let Myron come to terms with the truth and grieve. But it’s gone on for so long, this monster has become real to him. It terrorizes him every night in his dreams.”

“That’s … that’s just awful.”

“Yes. It is. Myron needs help. Specialized help. He’s suffered through this far longer than any kid his age should have to, as have hundreds of adults and kids like him.”

“What do I do, Doc?” Sebastian asks, the words slipping out of his mouth before he’s aware of them. “How do I help him?”

With his hand still on Sebastian’s, Kurt squeezes gently. “Get some rest. I want you in peak condition when we start working tomorrow.” Kurt moves his hand away, and when he does, Sebastian longs for it to return.

“There’re those words again, Doc,” Sebastian says, walking Kurt to the door when he makes to leave.

“What words?”

“You want me.”

Kurt stops outside the doorway. He shakes his head, that disarming smile making a comeback. Sebastian humors himself by thinking it’s because of him.

And that Kurt can’t bear to leave just yet.

“I’ll have someone come get you around noon,” Kurt says. “We’ll start with some exercises to sharpen your skills.”

“Ooo, what did you have in mind? Are you going to toss balls at me and make me stop them mid-air? Or do you want me to extinguish fires with my mind?”

“Not exactly. But I’m sure you’ll find them riveting.”

***

“Red,” Sebastian says, blowing a frustrated breath through pinched lips.

“Good.” Kurt nods in approval when Sebastian correctly predicts the color of the circle printed on the card he’s holding. Hidden behind a low partition, Kurt puts that card back inside the pile and chooses another.

Sebastian stares at the partition painted the same dull eggshell color as most everything in this place and does his best to keep from falling asleep.

“Green.”

“Good.”

“Blue.”

“Excellent.”

“Yellow.”

“Magnifique.”

Sebastian perks up. “Parlez-vous francais?”

“Oui. Concentre.”

Sebastian props his elbow on the table and rests his head in his hand. His mind begins to wander. So many questions, they keep piling up. So many thoughts clogged his brain while he slept.

So many nightmares that were and weren’t his.

“Green.”

“No.”

“Purple.”

“No.”

“Brown.”

“I don’t even have any cards that color. You’re not concentrating.”

“Why should I? I’ve done this a thousand times! It’s boring!”

“I know this seems mundane after having used your skills successfully all these years, but this is where we need to start. You need to hone what you’ve got and work up from there. Entering someone else’s dreams is a delicate process. When you enter the dream state, you’ll be interacting with different thought centers, sensitive thought centers. You’ll need to adapt, conform. We don’t want you lobotomizing anyone because you’re too full of yourself to take this seriously.” Kurt’s tone drifts, becomes somber. Without giving Sebastian space to ask what’s up, he lifts another card. When Sebastian doesn’t acknowledge its presence, Kurt clears his throat. Sebastian rolls his eyes. He stares at the wall intently. And then he grins.

“Yes.”

“Yes?” Kurt flips his card over, revealing the blue circle on the opposite side. “There are no words on these cards.”

“I mean yes, I think you’re hot. Isn’t that what you were thinking?”

“Not in the slightest.” Kurt puts the card on the bottom of the pile and puts up a new one. “You’re grasping at straws. Stop trying to read my mind.”

“Should I? I mean, the point of this is to link my brain with someone else’s. Isn’t that what I should be practicing? Wouldn’t that be the easiest way to read the cards? By looking through your eyes?”

Kurt looks past the partition, meeting Sebastian’s smirking eyes with his own steely glare. “No.”

***

Hot water covers Sebastian’s shoulders and races down his back, but it does nothing to relax his muscles. He hadn’t recovered from the morning’s right hook to his pride, but he got to spend over two hours getting it stomped again … and at the hands of Kurt Hummel. Sebastian was rusty. He used his skills daily, but mostly to cheat at card games and pick up ass. The things Kurt asked him to do, things that were easy for Sebastian as a teenager, weren’t quite so simple anymore.

He hadn’t wanted to be a part of this project to being with – not another psychic study, not again. But now he worried that Kurt would regret bringing him on board.

Sebastian dunks his head under the spray and lets the water fill his ears. Kurt. He just met the man 24 hours ago and he occupies Sebastian’s every waking thought.

That’s got to be unhealthy.

Sebastian doesn’t know which of his three motivations for staying are the strongest – preservation of life and limb, doing good for others, or getting underneath Kurt’s skin.

Nah, he knows. It’s definitely getting underneath Kurt’s skin. But that’s because Kurt has already gotten underneath his.

Hence the shower. After their training session, Kurt told Sebastian to go back to his room and prepare to give the dream link machine a try. Take a nap, he recommended. Grab a bite to eat. Meditate. He has five hours before Kurt hooks him up to the tech he’s devoted so much of his time to developing. He’ll be covered in electrodes, lying on a leather chair while Kurt watches over him – silently hovering at the outskirts of his mind, monitoring his emotions.

The thought has given him a tremendous hard on for the past thirty minutes.

Thwak!

Thwak-thwak!

Sebastian lifts his head out of the water. The off-kilter twang of a guitar playing outside his bathroom door jolts him to reality. Sebastian turns off the water, throws on a towel, and storms into his bedroom. The only person he can think of who would come into his room without an invitation is Jesse St. James, and Sebastian is in no mood to deal with that asshole’s crap.

“Hey! Douche canoe! How the fuck …?” Sebastian stops short when he sees the man sitting on the end of his bed, hunched over his guitar, picking out a tune.

“Oof!” The man grimaces when he plucks another sour string. “When’s the last time you got this thing tuned? You could shatter glass with some of these notes.”

Sebastian swears he’s too tired for this shit - for this intruder messing with his things, and for his eyes playing tricks on him. Because the man he’s seeing, sitting on his bed, is a ghost. He has to be. There’s no way he can be real. Sebastian rubs the heels of his hands into his eyes to erase him from his corneas, but he doesn’t go away.

Holy and shit! It’s actually him.

“Jesus Christ! Blaine Motherfucking Anderson!” Sebastian chuckles. “Well, I’ll be. How long’s it been?”

Blaine scoffs. He doesn’t look up from the instrument on his knee. “Not long enough. You still play?”

“Not really.” Sebastian edges forward as Blaine attempts to tune the guitar. He never expected to see Blaine Anderson in his room of all people, and even if he had, this isn’t the stiff and chilly reception he expected to receive. Suddenly, he has an overwhelming urge to get Blaine out of his room. “It’s more of a relic. The facility brought it over when they grabbed some stuff from my apartment. I guess they thought it was important to me or something.”

“Fascinating.” Blaine abandons his attempts at tuning, stands up and shelves the guitar.

“What are you doing here?” Sebastian asks, aware that he’s confronting this man wearing nothing but a towel around his waist. “I don’t remember you being a part of the psychic skills project back in high school.”

“They were pretty elitist back then - not just looking for talent, but for kids with parents that could fork over thousands in donations. At the time we were tested, I was marked at having half of your psychic ability, but my trust fund was only a third the size of yours. But things change.”

“I guess they do.” And in the case of Blaine Anderson, boy, do they ever! He looks every inch the same dapper young man Sebastian remembers from Dalton. Sebastian even had a minor crush on him at the time. But there’s something odd about him. Wrong. “Hey, why don’t I throw on some clothes and we can go grab a pizza? I hear there’s a fairly decent place here on campus. We could shoot the shit, reminisce about the old days back at Dalton.”

“Why?” Aside from that response, Blaine disregards him, taking a slow, unsolicited tour of Sebastian’s room that makes his hair stand on end. Admittedly, Sebastian doesn’t have much in the way of stuff. He has his clothes and shoes, his toiletries, and a handful of books. But he also has the pictures from his walls. And Blaine examining them makes Sebastian uncomfortable.

“Isn’t that what people usually do when they bump into an old friend?”

“Were we friends?”

“I don’t know. Were we?”

“As I remember it, the great Sebastian Smythe was pretty much out for himself at Dalton. I wasn’t. I tried to be the good guy – everyone’s best bud. But that didn’t get me where I wanted, where I deserve to be. So I took a page from your playbook and guess what? I’m a success. This might not be Carnegie Hall or Broadway, but I’m a rock star here, and I did it by looking out for the only three people in the world I care about - me, myself, and I.”

Are you sure it’s not your sparkling personality? “What do you mean rock star?”

“That dream link stuff? I’m the only one here who can do it. I’ve got it on lock. That’s why Dr. St. James gives me free reign of this place.”

“Oh yeah? What about The Wonder Twins?”

“They’re not around anymore.”

“Why? What happened?”

“You haven’t heard?”

“Obviously not if I’m asking you.”

Blaine smiles at Sebastian’s growing irritation with the warmth of a venomous snake. “They had to carry Mason away in a basket.” He pauses for dramatic effect, letting that one sink in. When Sebastian’s face drops in shock, he continues. “Yeah. Seems his ordeal in Myron’s dream fried his brain. He’s completely catatonic. And his sister … well, his sister is pretty much useless without him. She didn’t have any real skill anyway. Astral projection? I mean, what use is that?”

Sebastian grits his teeth, seething over Blaine’s remark about Madison. He can still feel her in his head, her constant begging and pleading with her brother a scar on his subconscious. But he plays it cool. Blaine is trying to rile him up. Sebastian refuses to give him the satisfaction. “Dr. Hummel seems to think I can do it.”

“I had a one-on-one training session with Kurt this morning …” Blaine drops Kurt’s name in a way that skewers Sebastian straight to the bone. “He tells me you want to help Myron. That’s sweet. I, for one, don’t give a shit about that kid and his daddy issues, but it’s nice that someone does.”

Daddy issues, huh? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. “You’re a regular humanitarian, aren’t you, Blaine?”

“Absolutely. In fact, I’m going to do you a solid, for old time’s sake. Warbler to Warbler.”

“Yeah? And what’s that?”

“I’m going to go down to the lab right now and order up your basket.” Blaine backs away, heading towards Sebastian’s door, smile growing so wide it splits his face in two. Like the monster in Myron’s nightmare. “You should lock your door, you know,” he says, jiggling the knob. “You wouldn’t want just anyone walking in here. Never know who’s around, day and night. Oh, and about Dr. Hummel … you may wanna back off with the flirting and the inappropriate remarks. You’re only embarrassing yourself.”

“You think so?” Sebastian says, a searing hatred roiling in his stomach and shooting up his neck.

“You’re punching way above your pay grade. You know it … and he knows it.” Blaine winks and clicks his tongue – a habit from back in high school Sebastian found conceited … and obnoxious. Apparently some things don’t change. “See ya around, Smythe. It’s been a blast seeing you again.”

“Likewise,” Sebastian says as he watches Blaine Anderson slip out his door and disappear into the hallway.