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burnyouwithacigarettelighter · 2 years ago

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(4) TENDER LIKE A BRUISE ─── ethan landry 𖦹

ೃ⁀➷ “The heart is the toughest part of the body. Tenderness is in the hands." — ‘The Country Between Us’, Carolyn Forché

pairing. spiderman!ethan landry x reader

warnings. swearing, mention of blood, death, alcohol, and sex

summary. after that stint with the spidersuit on halloween, quinn’s getting suspicious… (1) (2) (3) (4)

a/n. sorry for the long wait everyone! also sorry that this is such a short chapter, i sprained my ankle the other day LOL

iiii.

The night after you save Ethan in the Spidersuit, you and your entire friend group are crowded in the apartment, ready to watch a shitty indie movie Mindy got from her uncle, who was as big a movie-geek as she was.

First, however, Quinn had flicked on the news. She coursed through every channel, until she stopped on an opinionated broadcast by the name of the Daily Bugle, some obscure network that Ethan had worked at for, like, a year while he was still in highschool.

“He’s kind of, like, the devil,” Ethan told you one time at a diner, a place you landed in since you two couldn’t choose which place you wanted to order at.

“J. Jonah Jameson seems like a very interesting creature. Devilish for sure, though,” You said, scrolling through the man’s miniscule Wikipedia page, alongside a handful of tweets using his biased shaming as reaction videos.

Ethan held the plastic-lined menu in his large hands, turning it over to see the other side. “He was big on work ethic, meeting your quota, having to show him every article before it was published, stuff like that. It was really efficient, actually, but he was just… insufferable.”

“Worst boss ever?”

“Worst boss ever,” Ethan said, shaking his head and taking a sip of his drink - a chocolate milkshake.

So, it really was a surprise that Quinn was itching to watch his news, practically vibrating out of her skin. Even in general it was uncharacteristic of her, as she always seemed bored to death by the news Sam watched in the morning.

“Quinn, I thought you hated the news.” Tara said, mild mannered and sitting down next to Mindy.

“Especially this bald head-ass,” Mindy said, scooching over to make room.

Quinn waved off everyones protests. “Someone I know is in this.” She then sat on the floor close to the television screen, “I just need to watch this one bit, ‘kay? Then we’ll get to whatever epistolary movie you want, Minds.”

“It’s not epistolary, it’s a mockumentary about—“

“Yeah, yeah, we get it, Uncle Randy’s got you all educated.” Chad walked in with a pillow, pushing his sister over and plopping down right in between her and Tara.

You were in the kitchen with Ethan, heating up bags of popcorn in the microwave, when Quinn cranked up the volume of the news way high. You could now hear it from there, and you both caught the segment's tagline.

“Spiderman’s New Sidekick: Menace, or Martyr? Just last night, the attention-seeking “hero” was seen causing more mayhem in the city of New York. The troublemaker was accompanied by a similar web slinging partner - though still suspiciously hiding their identity. The following clip has been sent anonymously to us.”

The tv network then played a clip of you, fidgeting with the web slingers, clumsily making your way through New York and hitting several garbage cans over in the process. Your suit, however, was encapsulated in darkness, and all anyone could see was that white hood and those big curved eyes the mask had — tell-tale spiderman features.

Your eyes darted to Ethan’s own, who was wide-eyed and pale.

Ethan had long grown inured to the media’s attention on him, seeing as he had been doing this spiel for two years now - but you being in the news was a whole other story.

The boy leaned over, presumably to whisper pretend sweet nothings in your ear (truthfully completely panicked thoughts about you in the suit) when Mindy interrupted your thoughts.

“Oh my god, Quinn, don’t tell me you’re watching Jameson bash Spiderman because you don’t like him?” Mindy groaned, sinking into the couch.

Quinn was quiet, which was really just an answer.

Mindy leaned over from her spot on the couch. “Give me —“ she and Quinn wrestled for the remote, “the remote, I can’t listen to this entitled senior citizen bash Spiderman any longer—“

“He’s informing the public about a troublemakers misdeeds—“

“He should be informing the public he’s getting admitted into a senile care home—“

Then the two of them landed on the floor with a thud, the microwave went off, and Chad took over Mindy’s space on the couch, artfully “yawning” and placing an arm on Taras shoulder, who gave him a look but didn’t shrug him off.

Well. So much for a peaceful night. You can see why Sam spent so much time at Danny’s place.

The majority of you were sporting hangovers, and had wished to experience a relaxing evening, falling asleep to the droning of a Meeks-Martin Movie Recommendation (a name Chad protested everytime you said it, saying, “it’s associating me with Mindy’s movie-geek bullshit”) whose philosophical points generally flew over your head.

(Hangovers excluding you and Ethan, who had spent the rest of the night patching eachother up, in which you were privy to Ethan’s nursing skills - or more accurately, the lack thereof.

You had found yourselves once more in the apartment's cramped bathroom, except this time you were getting bandaged up for the scrapes on your elbows.

You were squirming under Ethan’s touch, his hands in a heavy grip on your forearms. At some point, Ethan had enough of your movement, used his large hands to pull you close by the waist, and continued his idle work on your arms there.

The manhandling had you so flustered you dared not move for the rest of treatment, turning your head away from the mirror so as not to reveal the terrible blush on your face.

On the other hand, Ethan was completely oblivious of the nature of his actions, focused on bandaging your wound correctly.

In the end, despite all the fuss, he forgot to use rubbing alcohol, and didn't know how to tie the bandage, leaving an articulate bow to finish the wraps off instead. Still, you appreciated the effort.

He had done it in his awkward, stilted way, which was incredibly endearing in its own right.)

Silence flooded the room, until you pulled the popcorn out of the microwave, and you and Ethan poured the bags into their respective bowls for each person.

Mindy and Quinn then untangled themselves from each other, getting up and wiping the dust of their clothes like nothing had ever happened.

“So,” You said, trying to play it cool, “what’s the deal with Spidey, my boyfriend's boyfriend?”

Ethan followed from the kitchen, pushing you playfully (and hoping this fake nonchalance was convincing enough). “Turn that nonsense off, Q. Don’t you remember Jameson’s outburst when I quit?”

The man had had a tantrum when Ethan quit the poor summer job he was working in their offices.

Ethan got the job in the first place because his dad was part of the NYPD, and Jameson thought Ethan might be able to spill some incredibly confidential “juicy” details about ongoing cases. When Ethan failed to deliver, Jameson forgot about him, and he spent two months doing miniscule tasks, like sorting paperwork or going for coffee runs.

Suffice to say, it wasn’t the office experience Ethan was hoping for, so he promptly quit. There was also the awkward matter of Jameson’s increasing hatred of Spiderman, wherein Ethan was forced to regularly voice his “irritation” toward the hero.

(Which was kind of hard to put his heart into when, well, he was the hero.)

And although it was a proper quitting, too, with a two weeks notice and everything, Jameson didn’t care, and berated seventeen-year old Ethan in front of the twenty something workers he had under his feet. But Ethan hadn’t cared too much either, and went to the theater to watch a movie right after.

You and Ethan waited for Quinn’s familiar jabs at Ethan’s old job (in which Quinn had laughed for a solid ten minutes when he came home from quitting, in utter shock that her little brothers first job ended with a 60-year-olds toddler tantrum), his “love” of Spiderman, or even just Ethan in general - but nothing came. She merely shifted her gaze from you to him, before shrugging, and handing the remote back to Mindy.

So movie-night was back on, but a certain feeling was creeping up both your spines, twin looks being traded between you and Ethan.

What exactly had prompted Quinn to watch a broadcast about Spiderman? No matter how much she ranted about the hero, she equally hated Jameson and the news.

You wracked your brain for a single solution throughout the entire movie, and it had only clicked when Mindy began her routine film-analysis, bringing out the small, rollable white board you all had tried to hide from her, just so you wouldn’t need to listen to any more movie essays.

You got up, and pulled Ethan along with you, Mindy shooting you two a disgusted look, and Chad throwing you a thumbs up.

(You hadn’t noticed, but Quinn’s eyes trailed after you with a glint of suspicion.)

“She knows,” you said, hushed and ducking in the dimly lit apartment hallway near your bedroom.

“What?” Ehan said, brows furrowed.

“She knows. Quinn.”

“Quinn knows what?”

“Oh my god,” you refrained from hitting him, “Quinn knows you’re Spiderman.”

“What?”

“Quinn knows y—“

“No, I mean, what as in what the fuck?! Are you sure she knows?”

“I just - she was looking at us weirdly during the Spiderman broadcast, and through the entire movie, too—“

“That doesn’t mean she knows, right? She could be looking at us because we’re “dating”, or because — ‘cause I’m her stupid Spiderman geek brother, or—“

“Okay, but she could also be looking because she knows you’re Spiderman, knows I’m the weird sidekick on the news—“

“[Name]! Just,” Ethan pressed two fingers between his eyes, “can we let this go? Just for tonight?”

You sighed, leaning your head against the wall. “Fine! Let’s just… pretend none of this ever happened. That she, like, probably doesn’t know.”

“[Name].”

“Okay! Okay, you win. But just for tonight, because I swear, if I wake up tomorrow and my mom’s blasting my phone because Quinn told someone about it—“

“She doesn’t know!” Ethan repeated, before sticking his fingers in his ears and walking away like a little kid.

You shook your head at his immaturity, but stuck your tongue out at him when he wasn’t looking, anyway.

After that isolated incident of suspicion, you and Ethan kept a particularly close watch on his sister's actions, reactions, and movements.

How she reacted when Ethan raved about how much he “adored” Spiderman, the faces she made when Sam passed The Daily Bugle channel on TV, how guarded her body language was when you walked around Central Park and someone called out from afar that Spiderman had just swung by.

And she was so fucking suspicious.

Quinn’s eyes would thin, looking at Ethan and you when he talked about Spiderman, she’d watch intently when Sam passed Jamesons channel, if even for a second, and she’d look to the skies every time somebody shouted “Spiderman” in the park or the streets.

Ethan countered your every thought, however, constantly reminding you of her previously mentioned hatred for the hero, using that as an excuse for her every move.

You two find yourselves arguing over the matter again, this time while walking across campus to your next classes, having to hold hands as you did so just so people wouldn’t think your arguing was actually you two in the process of breaking up.

“E, she knows. I mean, for gods sakes, what person who doesn’t know sends their brother nasty looks when someone talks about Spiderman?”

“Well, maybe, I’m her little brother who she’s made fun of every moment for the last nineteen years?”

“Oh my god, Ethan, we can’t keep pretending she doesn’t know you’re Spiderman!” you whisper shouted in his ear, pretending to pick something out of his hair.

“Well, I was just suspicious, but you two have gone ahead and confirmed it for me.” Quinn suddenly appeared beside you, walking in tandem with your paces.

Then, you and Ethan both stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, shock still, jaws dropped, almost getting hit by a bike in the process.

“What?” She said, tilting her head to the side.

“What?” Ethan said back.

“What -“ You began, but the irony sunk in rather quickly. “No, fuck— Quinn, how the f— how did you find out?” you whispered low, pulling her by the sweater sleeve as you began walking again.

Quinn looked back to make sure nobody was listening secretly, like she had done just moments prior. “Again, I was just suspicious. Knowing was all you two. But… you guys are kind of, like, really obvious. Like, on movie night, you were fighting in the kitchen about the popcorn, and when I turned on the news you went quiet. When me and Mindy argue about the better heroes, you look at eachother like you’re about to burst out laughing every time I say I hate Spiderman. And your Halloween costume,” she pointed at you, “had a hood that looked a lot like the one on TV.”

You scratched your cheek sheepishly, considering the facts against you. “Okay, we are… more obvious than I thought.”

“We?” Ethan said, incredulous. “I’ve hid this for years.”

Quinn snorted, stifling a laugh. “Ethan, you’re fucking terrible,” she punched her brother, “at lying. I just never brought it up. Honestly, what the hell is “I’m going out for patrol — no, I meant I’m going on a date with [Name]” supposed to mean to me?” She mocked Ethan’s nervous stuttering.

Ethan went red. “I— well, — I mean, dad doesn’t even know, and he’s like a bloodhound.”

Quinn shrugged. “Sure, he doesn’t say anything, but he also never reports any unnatural cobwebs he finds on the criminals either.”

“I’ll be damned,” Ethan said, starstruck. You patted his shoulder pitifully.

“Does anyone else…?” You gestured lightly to the general population on campus.

Quinn shook her head. “Not that I know of. And I won't tell anyone, if that’s what you mean.”

The three of you stopped to sit at a water fountain, the conversation becoming much more serious by the look of Quinn’s face.

She had bit her lower lip, suddenly looking far off, a mix of melancholy and fury shining in her brown eyes. “As long as you don’t get yourself killed, Ethan, I won’t tell anyone.”

Ethan gulped, probably remembering all the times he did exactly that. “I promise, Quinn, I—“

“Because I know you will, Ethan. And I will fucking dig our brother out of the earth if you dare to—“

All of a sudden, this didn’t feel like a confrontation between friends — it felt like a heartfelt conversation between family, and you felt very out of place.

Just seeing how furious Quinn looked, but how her lip trembled, how fists clenched with the memories of their brother, how Ethan leaned away, trying to escape any confrontation in relation to their brother, how his expression tensed - it made you feel icky, like you were interrupting that which was none of your business.

As you were about to leave, step away from the incredibly private situation and duck into your school building, Quinn grabbed you by the hand. “[Name], promise me, please, keep my brother safe. You’re in this way deeper than I am, so…”

She waited for confirmation. When you didn’t respond, Quinn continued. “You love him, I can tell, so please, just… keep him alive, for me, okay?.”

Your mouth opened and closed. She still thought you two were—

You considered telling her the truth, but - but her gaze was so desperate, tone so heartfelt, the only thing you could do was nod.

From there, you could feel the guilt eat at you, simultaneous to the burning you felt in your heart. You wanted to protect Ethan, you wanted to keep him safe - you did not want to lose him, for that would be like losing a limb.

And then Quinn’s words echoed in your ears once more: you love him, I can tell—

You breathe, in and out, conscious coming back to the Earth, and you slip away from the pair of siblings, Quinn’s words ringing in your ears, Ethan’s gaze lingering on you as you stepped into Blackmore.

taglist: @iloveneilperry @backtotheshitshow @hazehepburn @powowowy @ifilwtmfc @oscarisdaddy69 @al1v3cvp1d2@bloodyeverything @diamondci1ty @l5bryinth @gojosbucket @volturi-girl-imagines @sflame15-blog @thatoneembarrasingmoment @bajadotcom @cerealzzz @elynk @theapulidooo @solaceinwritings @1horrormoviewhore1 @anthemabby @mia-luvs @dont-get-upset @knxv1lie @verveta345 @im-in-a-pansexual-panik @xyzstar @ihearttokissboys

strikethrough = wouldn’t allow me to tag, sorry!

#spiderman #spiderman!ethan landry #jack champion #ethan landry x reader #scream vi #mcu #scream 6 #jack champion x reader #spiderman!ethanlandry #spiderman ethan landry #ethan landry

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prof-ramses · 9 months ago

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Hollow Sorrows Trailer Breakdown LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOO

Obviously, if you don't want spoilers, scroll away. If you've already seen the trailer, LET'S GO!!!

So when we first see possessed Patty, she looks mostly normal, you can't even see her demon teeth through the mask yet. John and Jack probably only came in since they heard a scream and/or struggle coming from the morgue.

So we get a shot of the boys being too chaotic, something Gregor points out and what will likely cause the "bad character development" Pelo ahs mentioned.

Also, since it's 100% what Pelo would do, Costume Bob is the guy in the HF suit. Mark my words.

The scene with the hatz is really interesting to me, since Skid and Pump just annoys Roy for a moment and leave. I think this might be all we get of the hatzgang this time, similar to how Frank only had a brief Appearance in Tender Treats. If my theory that episode 7 will focus on Roy is true, this little scene will be very interesting to dissect when the full episode drops.

We actually get out first proper glimpse at a new character and I think this old man is the very last character in the line up teaser

And there's also a pretty good chance he Roy's grandfather and given the way he reacts to the boys antics here, I can definitely see him being a another reasons Roy's the way he is.

If he actually is Roy's grandpa, then @crossover-enthusiast and I's Roy discussions are going to get really fun pretty soon.

Here, Skid is clearly holding a framed photo, meaning this will almost certainly be the first time his father is brought up directly.

Also, yeah, with Pump's line about "hangover spooky month", it seems my theory about Lila in this episode was at least half right.

Yet more proof that the boys' absent parents will be more of a focus. The trailer as a whole gives me some ideas regarding the Wonder parents, but I feel they're best saved for another time.

The boys get into trouble with the cops and I have 2 theories regarding when, either Gregor tries to get them sent home before going to the hospital, but they talk their way out of it, or they actually do get sent home at the end of the episode.

John's expression here immediately makes we think that something Skid or Pump said reminded him of his daughter. Another plot thread that has yet to be directly acknowledged.

Ignacio watches Gregor lead the boys away, maybe he lives down the street from Skid and Lila to keep an eye on them for the cult?

Either way, I'm surprised his appearance won't take place in the hospital as I previously predicted.

"I will be your guide. And I know your parents would be proud of you."

There's something undeniably sinister about this line, but how sinister hinges on whether Gregor is a cultist or ex-cultist. Whatever the case may be, he definitely knows more about or sees more in the boys than he lets on.

A great title card, and thought the blood everywhere is definitely concerning, I don't think there's anything to really say here, just wanted to get a screenshot of it.

And it would appear the character I've referred to as the cat lady will have the unenviable role of a hapless victim to the episode's villain. But honestly, I'm more surprised by her being at the hospital in the first place and why that never occurred to me before.

The actual progression of Patty's possession confirms to she's possessed by something other than Moloch. And what seals it for me is, fittingly, the eyes. The white of her eyes becomes a more vivid yellow, yet her pupil snot only don't form Moloch's typical spirals, but they're a more vivid shade of baby blue, a color that has never had any significance in the series before. Moloch will mostly be trapped in Dexter before eventually possessing Gregor, I will die on this hill.

AND THE FUGGIN' RELEASE DATE!!!

Alright, that's all, only a month now. We're so back!

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wheredostarsgowhenyoudie · 9 months ago

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Once upon a Monday night after patrol...

Peter (swinging in through the window in the spidey suit, taking his mask off): Mr. Stark! Mr. Stark! Guess what! Guess what! Guess what!

Tony (who is in the middle of fixing Dum-E paused his tinkering at the whoosh, lips twitching to a smirk which he hid by drinking coffee): What, what?

Peter (beaming so wide): I made three friends today! Well four if you count the elusive one who approached me but shied away from the others. I named them Stephy, Stacey, Gwen and Michie!

Tony: Aha, and what are they this time? Birds? Bees? Iguanas?

Peter (still smiling, brings out a phone to show him a photo): They're cats Mr. Stark! And they're so cute, I love them so much! See. One white, one cream, one grey, one black. They're all cat colors!

Tony (shuffles the kid's hair): Hm-hm. Nice going Underoos. Looks like a menagerie.

Peter (suddenly goes shy): Uhm, could we- I mean if it isn't too much, sir, and only if it isn't! Err, could we maybe, if it's alright with you, go to the petting shop for my birthday?

Tony (felt his eyebrows rising automatically, looking at the camera, knowing Friday is already making a list of pet stores he could acquire): You want a pet? Is that your wish?

Peter (looks down): Ahm, no, I just...ahm, I just thought it'd be fun to pet some cats and dogs with you. It'd be a memorable experience, but uhm, you don't have to if you're busy or if...if you'd rather not. No pressure Mr. Stark! I mean, I just thought I'd ask.

Tony (face softening into a smile): Of course. Tell you what, meet me outside your apartment 10AM tom. We'll get breakfast, go to the pet shop and then the other three places I planned to take you to.

Peter (eyes widen): Really? You'd spend the day with me Mr. Stark? But aren't you busy or something?

Tony: Nope. Not at all. All free for my favorite spiderling.

Peter (is unable to hide his excitement and went for a hug): Thanks Mr. Stark!!

Tony (finds himself squeezed by his favorite half arachnid child, not really complaining and patting his kid in return): There, there, Underoos. There, there.

Later, several people will receive a meeting cancellation and request to reschedule.

President Elis, Nick Fury, Steve Rogers and the entire board of Stark Industries.

And when they reach out to Pepper Potts to ask what the heck, her polite and professional answer would be simple and concise.

"Code S," she would say, and they would all perk up into a knowing smile, understanding and accepting the code for what it is.

Code S. Reserved for one specific boy from Queens who happens to be Friday's, every Stark employee's and every affiliate's and partner's top priority over everything as per the mandate from Tony Stark himself. Everything else will be put next in line if the code is triggered.

There's even a video/threat attachment to the email to discourage anyone who dares disobey or violate the terms and agreement.

Officially, it stands for Code Superior. In front of Tony and Peter, the avengers sometimes call it Code Spider-man, even if Peter has no idea about the mandate and signed agreement that anyone who needs Tony Stark/Iron-Man to work with or for them has to sign. But they all knew it meant something else anyway.

Code S, in Friday's coding and among Tony's closest relations, could only stand for one thing. Code Son. A spot unofficially but exclusively reserved for one clueless Peter Benjamin Parker.

#irondad & spiderson #avengers #irondad #spiderson #peter parker #tony stark #peter parker & tony stark #stark industries #mcu #tom holland #spider-man #iron man

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s4tvrnsays · 24 days ago

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Hero lineup!! Featuring some extra cigognelles bc shes too pretty not to draw

I originally planned on doing both the hero and civilian designs and then posting, but im too lazy and impatient so here u go

My longggggg thoughts and extra doodles down below, as always :333

OKAY!

So here are some things i kept in mind while designing them! Its nothing extraordinary but i like hearing people talk abt this stuff so i thought others would enjoy it too

While designing the three of them, i didnt exactly keep any inspiration for their designs (other than cigognelle, sorry lb and cn…) but there were some things i DID want, ill go through them here.

It was also pretty important for me that they look cohesive, because they DO have the big three miraculouses (i do like the idea of the other heroes joining, no zodiac miraculous tho)

I also pointed out some parts of the design that might be missed bc im obsessed

Ladybug:

One thing i wanted to incorporate was LESS SPOTS!!! Movie chat was right she DOES look like a watermelon

I also remembered mr bug’s suit and how he had armor on, and i really liked that idea! In my mind, the shoulder pads and breastplate are made of some sort of hard material, something synthetic.

And i also made her look more like a ladybug, with antennae. The little spikes are similar to the little hairs on insects, though ladybugs themselves dont have them (the little segments on their legs are joints, and i didnt rly like the look of them on a suit). This is mainly so she looks more insecty

The lines on her suit are inspired by spiderman!! As another insect themed hero, it was fun to make ladybug similar to him in that aspect. Expect to see her in spiderman poses in my art lol

Cigognelle:

Her look is inspired by ballet, because is there truly anything more graceful and crane-like than that?

I had my eye on specifically 1920s theatre and ballet costumes. Her hair, her hat (yes its a hat lol), her heels, etc

I thought it really fit her style, and her mostly black and white color scheme

Speaking of color scheme, i was REALLY surprised when i found out how perfect her colors were. The black and red are both colors that chat and ladybug have, and i thought it fit really well, considering her role :)

The little daggers she has are in the shape of a crane beak

And of course, heels. Because she slays

Chat Noir:

Now, chat’s suit didnt really change much. Im in love with his actual suit, but i’d still make a few changes

Same as ladybug, i wanted to add in more elements from a cat. Again, his suit does this really well (the PAW TOES!!!!!! Im literally obsessed) so i only added some fur on his shoulders, wrist, and on his boots.

The little cat buckle on his concept design is far too cute, so i added it back, this time as a solid silver one for simplicity

I added some little silver studs around his suit, like his arms and mask and also his ears (it doesn’t show tho)

And lastly, i brought in more green into his design, cuz its more fun that way!!!

I feel like my throat is dry somehow from all that typing

Anywayssssss here are the doodles :3

Theyre so precious to me u dont understand

#one thing about me is i will YAP #but anyways #hope u likeeee #oc #cigognelle #ml ladybug #ladybug #chat noir #ml chat noir #élodie desrosiers #miraculous ladybug #miraculous tales of ladybug and cat noir #mlb #oc art #my art #artists on tumblr

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muiitoloko · 4 months ago

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Oh my god I just finished watching Nobel son like 20 minutes ago and i thought to myself I NEED a fic that has the reader as a superhero AND YOU HAVE IT live saver omg

Title: Web of Desperation.

Summary: Eli's attempt at bravery against the Green Goblin nearly ends in disaster, until Spider-Man steps in to save him.

Pairing: Eli Michaelson × Fem! Reader

Warnings: Fighting, chaos, anger.

Author's Notes: I’m honestly blown away that you guys liked the idea so much! When I started this, I didn’t really plan on continuing—it was just a way to clear my head. But I’m thrilled that some of you enjoyed it! Now, you’ll just have to wait a few more centuries for the next chapter. 😅 Thanks for sticking around!

First and Second part here.

Also read on Ao3

Eli swore as he sat in the traffic jam, drumming his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. He glanced at his watch, realizing he was going to be late for his lecture at the university. The lines of cars stretched as far as the eye could see, barely inching forward.

"What the hell is causing this?" he muttered under his breath, his frustration mounting. He noticed people getting out of their cars, craning their necks to see what was happening. With a resigned sigh, Eli did the same, stepping out of his car and wondering what fresh hell was unfolding.

The scene was chaotic. People were pointing and shouting, their faces twisted with fear and confusion. Eli pushed his way through the crowd, his curiosity piqued despite his irritation. As he reached the front of the mass of people, he saw the cause of the commotion.

Hovering above the street was a figure clad in a dark green, armored suit, a grotesque mask with a manic grin covering his face. The figure cackled maniacally, riding on a glider that emitted a low, sinister hum. Eli's blood ran cold as he recognized the villain from news reports: the Green Goblin.

"Good morning, citizens of New York!" the Green Goblin's voice boomed through the street, dripping with mockery and malevolence. "I hope you're all having a fantastic day because I plan to make it a memorable one!"

The Goblin raised his hand, revealing a pumpkin-shaped bomb. He tossed it into the crowd, sending people scattering in terror. Eli's instincts kicked in, and he dove to the side, narrowly avoiding the explosion that followed. The blast rocked the street, leaving a crater where the bomb had landed.

Eli scrambled to his feet, his mind racing. He needed to find cover, to get away from this madman. He darted into a nearby alley, his heart pounding in his chest. He could hear the Green Goblin's deranged laughter echoing through the street, punctuated by the screams of frightened civilians.

Peering around the corner, Eli saw the Green Goblin swoop down, grabbing a woman by her hair and lifting her into the air. "Let's see if anyone here can play hero," the Goblin sneered, dangling the woman over the edge of his glider.

Eli's mind raced with anger and fear. He was no hero, but he couldn't just stand by and watch this madness unfold. He glanced around, spotting a length of pipe lying among the debris. He grabbed it, his knuckles white with tension.

"Hey, Goblin!" he shouted, stepping out into the open. "Why don't you pick on someone your own size?"

The Green Goblin's head snapped around, his eyes narrowing behind the mask. He dropped the woman unceremoniously onto the rooftop below and turned his attention to Eli.

"And who might you be?" the Goblin taunted, his glider drifting closer. "A brave little lamb come to the slaughter?"

Eli's grip on the pipe tightened, his heart pounding in his chest. Why did he get himself into this? Why didn't he just run for his life and let the others fend for themselves? Eli cursed himself, but his pride wouldn't let him back down now. He did what he did best: act arrogant and belittle others.

"Listen here, you tin-can reject from a Halloween store," Eli snarled, trying to mask his fear with bravado. "Why don't you take your second-rate theatrics somewhere else? Or are you too scared to face someone with an IQ above room temperature?"

The Green Goblin's eyes flashed with rage. "You dare mock me, you insignificant worm? I'll crush you like the insect you are!"

Goblin advanced towards Eli on his glider, the mechanical wings slicing through the air with a menacing hum. Eli’s grip on the pipe faltered, and he let go in surprise as Goblin's clawed hand shot out, seizing him by the throat. The cold metal pressed into Eli's skin, and he gasped as he was hoisted into the air.

"Not so arrogant now, are we?" the Goblin jeered, his voice a venomous hiss. Eli clawed at Goblin's arm, his eyes wide with fear as the ground fell away beneath him. They soared higher and higher, the city shrinking below, until the skyscrapers seemed like mere toys.

"Please, wait! Let's talk about this," Eli stammered, desperation clear in his voice. "You don't want to do this. You're a genius, a real visionary!"

Goblin's laughter was a dark, grating sound. "Flattery won't save you," he sneered. "But it's amusing to see you beg."

Without warning, Goblin released his grip. Eli's scream tore through the air as he plummeted, the wind whipping past him in a dizzying rush. Panic clawed at his mind, and he braced for the impact that would surely be his end.

Just as Eli was about to meet the ground, a firm grip caught him, halting his fall. The air was knocked out of his lungs, and he clung desperately to his savior. Eli's heart raced as he looked up, squinting against the sunlight.

"Looks like I caught something more annoying than a cat in a tree," quipped Spider-Man, his tone light and teasing. He swung effortlessly through the air, his web shooters propelling them both to safety.

Eli's relief was quickly replaced by fury. "You!" he spat, recognizing the red and blue suit. "I didn't ask for your help!"

"Well, excuse me for saving your life," Spider-Man shot back, a smirk evident behind his mask. "Next time, I'll let you become a street pancake."

Spider-Man landed gracefully on a nearby rooftop, setting Eli down with a flourish. "There you go, safe and sound. Try not to get into any more trouble, okay, Professor Michaelson?"

Eli's face twisted in rage as he glared at the masked hero. "I don't need your pity," he snarled. "And I certainly don't need you to play the hero for me."

Spider-Man shrugged, unfazed by Eli's outburst. "Hey, just doing my job. But seriously, maybe leave the hero stuff to the professionals. You’re better suited to scaring undergrads with pop quizzes."

Eli's fists clenched, his pride burning at the indignity of it all. How dare Spider-Man save him? How dare he humiliate him in front of everyone?

He stared after the masked hero, watching as Spider-Man launched himself with a web to go deal with the Green Goblin. Something Spider-Man had said lingered in Eli's mind. Wait, how did Spider-Man know that Eli was a professor? Eli opened his mouth to shout after him, running to the edge of the rooftop.

"Hey, Spider-Man!" he called out, his voice tinged with frustration. "How did you know I was a teacher?"

But Spider-Man was already swinging through the air, ignoring Eli's question as he pursued the Green Goblin. Eli's anger boiled over. He shouted after Spider-Man again, his voice echoing through the city streets.

"Come back here! I'm not done with you!"

Spider-Man paid no heed, his attention focused on the chaotic scene below where the Green Goblin continued to wreak havoc. Eli watched, seething, as Spider-Man closed in on the villain, deftly dodging the Goblin's attacks with acrobatic finesse.

The Green Goblin threw another pumpkin bomb, and Spider-Man quickly webbed it up, tossing it skyward where it exploded harmlessly. The Goblin screeched in frustration, his glider dipping and weaving erratically as he tried to shake Spider-Man off his tail.

Eli's anger turned to a mix of fear and awe as he watched the battle unfold. He could see the Green Goblin's eyes glowing with madness, his laughter echoing through the city. It was like a scene from a nightmare, the kind of chaos that could only exist in a world where supervillains and heroes clashed in the sky.

Suddenly, the Goblin's glider malfunctioned, sputtering and losing altitude. He careened towards the rooftop where Eli stood, and without thinking, Eli dove out of the way, barely avoiding the crashing glider. The impact sent a shockwave through the building, shaking the very foundations.

Eli scrambled to his feet, his heart pounding. He saw the Green Goblin rising from the wreckage, his mask cracked but his malevolent grin intact. The villain's eyes locked onto Eli, and a chill ran down his spine.

"Ah, the brave insect," the Goblin sneered, advancing towards him. "You thought you could challenge me? Pathetic."

Eli backed away, his mind racing. He had to get out of here, but there was nowhere to run. The Goblin raised his arm, a menacing blade extending from his gauntlet, and Eli's life flashed before his eyes.

"Not so fast, Gobby!" Spider-Man's voice rang out, and Eli turned to see the hero swinging in at the last moment, kicking the Green Goblin square in the chest and sending him flying backward.

Spider-Man landed in front of Eli, his stance protective. "You okay, Professor?" he quipped, glancing over his shoulder. "Maybe next time, stick to grading papers and leave the bad guys to me."

Eli's pride flared up again. "I don't need your help, Spider-Man," he snapped, though his voice trembled with the remnants of fear. "I can handle myself."

"Yeah, you were doing a bang-up job of it," Spider-Man shot back, his tone dripping with sarcasm. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a lunatic to deal with."

Spider-Man turned his attention back to the Green Goblin, who was already getting back on his feet, ready for another round. The two clashed again, trading blows and quips as they danced through the ruins of the rooftop.

Eli watched, a mix of horror and fascination playing across his face. He couldn't deny the skill and bravery Spider-Man displayed, even as he resented the hero's presence. Despite his hatred for the masked vigilante, a small part of him was grudgingly impressed.

The Green Goblin let out an angry scream, realizing he was not going to win this battle. Desperation flashed in his eyes as he grabbed a pumpkin bomb from the wreckage of his glider. With a wild swing, he hurled the bomb, missing Spider-Man by a mile. But Spider-Man quickly realized the bomb's true target: a nearby news helicopter, hovering to film the fight.

As the bomb struck the helicopter's tail, the aircraft spun wildly, its balance lost. Spider-Man's eyes widened in horror as the helicopter spiraled out of control, descending rapidly toward the ground.

"Not today, Gobby!" Spider-Man shouted, leaping into action.

The Green Goblin seized the opportunity to flee, jumping from the building and disappearing into the cityscape below. But Spider-Man had no time to worry about the escaping villain; the people in the helicopter needed him.

He swung into the air, webs shooting out with precision. "I always wanted to be on the news, but this is ridiculous!" he quipped, trying to lighten the tense atmosphere as he approached the helicopter.

Spider-Man landed on the helicopter's skidding tail, the wind from the rotors whipping around him. He shot web after web, anchoring the aircraft to the nearby buildings, trying to slow its descent. "Hold on tight, folks! Spidey Airlines is here for a safe, but bumpy landing!"

The pilots and the reporter inside the helicopter were pale with fear, clutching their seats as Spider-Man fought to stabilize the aircraft. His muscles strained as he pulled against the force of gravity, his webs stretching but holding firm.

"Just another day in the life," Spider-Man muttered to himself, shooting another web to the rooftop of a nearby skyscraper. The helicopter's descent slowed, but it was still spinning out of control.

"Okay, new plan," Spider-Man said, his mind racing. He leapt to the front of the helicopter, gripping the nose tightly. "Time to play tug-of-war with gravity!"

Using every ounce of his strength, Spider-Man pulled the helicopter's nose upward, trying to level it out. The aircraft wobbled precariously but began to steady. He then shot more webs to nearby buildings, creating a complex web network to catch the helicopter.

"Come on, baby, you can do this," he grunted, his muscles burning with effort. "I've got you!"

Finally, the helicopter's spinning stopped, and it hovered, tangled in Spider-Man's webbing. The crowd below erupted in cheers as the pilots regained control, safely lowering the helicopter to the ground.

Spider-Man landed lightly on the street, his chest heaving from the exertion. He turned to the crowd, giving a mock bow. "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you catch a helicopter!"

The pilots and the reporter emerged, visibly shaken but unharmed. They approached Spider-Man, gratitude shining in their eyes. "Thank you, Spider-Man. You saved our lives."

"Just doing my job," Spider-Man replied with a grin.

Someone then shouted for Spider-Man, and you turned around to see Eli running up to you, looking a little out of breath. As he reached you, his face was a mix of frustration and curiosity.

"Spider, wait!" he called out, his voice tinged with urgency. "How the hell did you know I was a teacher?"

You froze for a split second, feeling the weight of his question. Your mind raced, trying to come up with a plausible explanation. Quickly, you responded, your voice steady but a bit nervous. "I read a lot of newspapers, Professor Michaelson. I saw that you won the Nobel Prize, so I did some research about it."

Eli's expression shifted from suspicion to surprise, his eyes widening slightly. "Research, huh?" he muttered, clearly caught off guard.

Sensing the opportunity, you launched a web to a nearby building. "Yep, just a curious web-slinger," you quipped, giving him a quick salute. "Stay safe, Professor."

As you swung away, a crowd began to gather, cheering and clapping for you. "We love you, Spider-Man!" they shouted, their voices filled with admiration and relief.

The police, firefighters, and paramedics arrived on the scene, adding to the commotion. You knew it was your cue to leave before anyone else could ask more questions. You launched another web, swinging gracefully into the air as the crowd's applause followed you.

Meanwhile, away from the chaos, the Green Goblin landed on the balcony of his mansion. He dismounted his damaged glider with a heavy sigh, exhaustion evident in his posture. The grand balcony doors opened to his opulent bedroom, the heavy curtains fluttering in the breeze. As he entered, he tore off his grotesque mask and flung it aside, the metallic clank echoing through the room.

He approached the large, ornate mirror hanging on the wall and stared at his reflection, his eyes dark and weary. He rubbed his face, the reality of his dual life pressing heavily on his shoulders. "Why do we do this?" he muttered to himself, his voice a mixture of exhaustion and despair. "What's the point if we can't even get rid of that damn meddling spider?"

The Green Goblin's reflection seemed to shift, contorting into an image of pure rage. His eyes darkened, and a sinister grin spread across his face as the Goblin within him took over.

"Failure is not an option," the Goblin hissed, his tone dripping with venom. "We will destroy Spider-Man, one way or another. He won't stand in our way forever."

The man in the mirror clenched his fists, his anger simmering just below the surface. "We'll find your weakness, Spider-Man," he vowed. "And when we do, you will beg for mercy. I won't fail."

The reflection seemed to respond, its eyes gleaming with malice. "You better not, Shahbandar. We can't afford any more failures."

The man, now revealed as Lionel Shahbandar, turned away from the mirror, his jaw set with determination. "I won't fail," he vowed quietly. "Next time, Spider-Man won't be so lucky."

He paced the room, the tension in his body palpable. The weight of his ambitions and the constant pressure of his villainous alter ego were taking their toll. His mind raced, plotting his next move, even as doubts gnawed at the edges of his thoughts.

"Goblin," he muttered, almost as if addressing his darker self, "we need a new plan. Something that will finally put an end to that meddling spider once and for all."

As he continued to strategize, the mask of the Green Goblin lay discarded on the floor, a symbol of the madness and chaos that defined his other life. The mansion's opulence contrasted sharply with the turmoil within its walls, a stark reminder of the duality that plagued Lionel Shahbandar.

Back in the city, you swung through the air, the adrenaline of the day's events still coursing through your veins. As Spider-Man, you reveled in the freedom of the sky, the wind rushing past you as you zipped from building to building. The cheers of the crowd were a distant memory now, replaced by the familiar hum of the city below.

"Another day, another psycho with a bomb," you muttered to yourself, shaking your head at the absurdity of it all. "Seriously, do these guys ever take a day off?"

As you swung past a skyscraper, you spotted your reflection in the glass. The familiar red and blue suit clung to your form, a second skin that hid your true identity from the world. No one knew that behind the mask, Spider-Man was a woman. It was a secret you guarded fiercely, knowing that it added an extra layer of protection to your double life.

"At least the Green Goblin's out of commission for now," you mused, your thoughts drifting back to the fight. "But something tells me he won't stay down for long."

You landed gracefully on a rooftop, taking a moment to catch your breath. The city stretched out before you, a sprawling landscape of lights and shadows. It was a beautiful sight, one that reminded you why you did what you did.

"Alright, time to get back to class," you muttered, glancing at the time. "Better make up a good excuse."

#alan rickman #alan rickman x reader #eli michaelson x reader #eli michaelson #spider reader

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ask-kindergarden-and-others · 3 months ago

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HELLO TO THE PEOPLE, I AM DONE WITH THE DESIGNS!!.

So I did go a little bit much with some details (but I think they are fine) here they are in their full glory and I will also give a small rundown of the theme I went for each (mixed with some small headcanons of my Au, so that you guys can get to know them a bit) :)

Here is all four of them together, to let you know Nugget and Lily are together on my Au and Billy is together with Kid!. All 4 are young adults at the age of 23, all of them are in college.

With Lily, I went with a flower design, (lilies just like her name), mixed with a navy blue color that reminded me of her hoodie in Kg2. Lily in my mind also was one of the more elegant one I guess and this dress screams it to me! (Fun fact, Lily really likes the color pink but doesn't normally wear it)

With Nugget though, I went with the anubis theme as he is part egyptian in my Au (I do have another sketch of him which I made for practice, maybe I could show that in another post) with the anubis theme, of course, I went with a black and gold color pallet with some slight dark blue accents on the mask. The red lining was done for me to separate the colors.

With Billy I decided to have him in a black suit and a mask that most referenced the cthulhian type monsters from Kg1 as it would be fun to kind show case that with his white marks ( which most are covered except the ones on his neck!)

With Kid i kinda went more of a mythical being type theme and for some reason the dragon stuck to me. The dragon mask design is actually inspired by one sketch of a tattoo I was thinking of giving him (which he might still get, I just haven't finished it, maybe upload it sometime soon!)

I think they turned out pretty good ( I have never done a masquerade them on characters before btw)

I am excited to interact with all of you and i can't wait to see you, I have already seen some of the designs and they look fantastic!

#kindergarten lily #kindergarten nugget #kindergarten kid #kindergarten 2 #kindergarten billy #kindergala #themes #i can not wait for the interactions

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jpitha · 6 months ago

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Between the Black and Grey 47

First / Previous / Next

Fen Dreamed.

She dreamed she was sitting on the Throne that she saw with Melody at the old Builder station. The green fractal throne vibrated with potential energy as she sat fidgeting. Standing it no longer, Fen tried to stand, but found she couldn't get up from the throne.

"I'm stuck! Help!" She shouted. The empty arena gave no reply.

She struggled more and more and then the scene changed.

She was on a beach. The sand was white, the sky was blue, and the water was a deeper blue. Foamy waves crashed against the shore, giving a regular rise and fall of sound. White birds wheeled overhead, riding the thermals from the warm sand.

Fen, being raised in space marveled at what she saw. She was on the beach in Melody's memory, but this was somehow more. The sun was brighter, the wind, saltier, the waves larger. Earth maybe?

"Yes, this is Earth." Melody appeared in front of Fen again.

"How do you know what Earth looks like? Neither Melody or you came from here?"

"True, but do you think she never visited? That no builder ever went down to Earth? This is a memory of a beach that someone went to. We're just tapping into it."

"Why though?" Fen strode down the beach, her feet sliding on the hot soft sand. Melody trotted behind her to catch up.

"Because we like beaches. The border of the land and the water. The transition from one place to the next. Fitting, isn't it?"

"You mean the transition of me from an individual to your tool."

Melody shook her head. "The transition from you into Empress."

Fen stopped and crossed her arms. "But I don't want to be Empress. I already made that clear. You are forcing me."

"Only for now, Fen. In time, you'll acquiesce. In time, you might even grow to like it. If nothing else, we're sure you'll tolerate it. Remember, you'll be the leader of Humanity. Perhaps in time, leader of the whole Galaxy."

"So that you can leverage us to build Gates for you to enter our dimension and consume us."

"No, Fen." We are going to use your dimension to search for other dimensions, and we will consume them."

Fen stopped and stared out at the ocean. The horizon seemed far away, and blended with the sky until she could barely discern where one ended and the other began. "What happens when you run out of dimensions? What if you don't find another?" Fen didn't look at Melody.

"You'll be long dead by then." She said, staring at the ocean with Fen.

Fen's head turned sharply. "But humanity won't. If I agree to work with you then somewhere down the line, centuries, millennia in the future, you'll come back and consume us. I will have doomed everyone in the Galaxy.

Melody turned to face Fen. Where Melody's features - so like hers - were supposed to be, it was only a faceless mask of grey. "No matter. We already have what we need, and you will do what we say."

Fen woke up with a start. She gasped and tried to slow her breathing and her heart. After a few minutes, she looked around the room.

She was in a stateroom - a really nice one - in a large, comfortable bed. There was a thick carpet, - a rarity in space - overstuffed chairs, a bureau made of real wood and a large screen serving currently as a window. Fen got out of bed and padded around the suite. There didn't seem to be any locks on the doors, or any other kinds of restraints. The bathroom was large, private, and well equipped, with even a large bathtub. Such extravagance! Water was not free, who would think to use so much just for bathing. An image flashed in Fen's mind of Melody enjoying a hot soak after a long day. Fen shook her head to herself and continued to explore.

The suite was just three large rooms. The cabinets were all well stocked with clothing, - all her size - and entertainment of all stripes. She took a shower and got dressed. It was more elaborate than her usual jumpsuit or shirt and pants, but it still wasn't a ball gown or anything. Fen approached the door.

She paused for a minute looking at it. Once she touches the pad and tries to open the door, she can find out if she's a prisoner or not. It was a nice suite, but if that door doesn't open, it's still just a prison.

Taking a breath, she reaches out and touches the pad.

The door opens silently.

Fen exhales a breath she didn't realize she was holding and steps out.

As she steps out two marines on either side of the door snap a smart salute, and return to attention, their armored pressure suits polished to nearly a mirror shine. Fen opens her mouth to speak, and then closes it, almost as if she's worried speaking will break the spell, and she'll wake up in a cell.

At the end of the hall is another pressure door, with two more marines. Again, as she passes through they salute smartly. This happens three more times as she walks, wandering aimlessly. Eventually she makes her way to a large room - one of the lounges. As she enters the crew stop their conversation and games, and as one, stand and salute her. Not knowing what else to do, she nods to them. "As you were." and the crew returns to what they were doing.

Backing out of the lounge, Fen starts walking with more purpose. She follows signs to the Command Desk, and makes her way forward. After a few minutes - the Super Dreadnought really is large - she reaches the door to the bridge. Again she pauses and touches the pad. With no fanfare at all, the door slides open.

"Empress on the Bridge!" The XO calls out clearly the moment her feet pass the threshold. Once again, everyone stands and salutes. The Captain turns and smiles warmly. "Empress, you grace us with your presence. Please, how can we assist you?" Her uniform is sharp and well fitting. Her hair in a tight ponytail under her cap. Her eyes bright and sharp.

"Uh, thank you, Captain." Fen blinks and shakes her head just once. "Please, can you tell me where I can find Helen Raaden?"

"Of course, Empress, I will take you to her."

Fen took a step back, unconsciously. "No, no, that's not necessary, Captain. Please attend to your duties. I can make my way if you let me know where she is."

"As you wish. She is in the map room. Down the hall, two lefts, then a right, third door on your right."

"T-Thank you, Captain. Please return to your duties."

"Empress." She smiles and turns back to the crew, who attend to their stations with renewed vigor.

The map room is an anachronism. Filled with real wood tables, cases filled with - Fen peers - paper? and smelling of ancient knowledge, Helen is standing over a large holographic table, peering at a map of the galaxy. When Fen walks in, she is zooming in on a quadrant. Points of light glow red. She looks up and smiles warmly. "Ah Empress! You are awake. I'm so pleased."

"H-Helen, what is going on?"

"I'm sorry, what do you mean?" Helen closes the map, and the table powers down with a whirring whine.

Fen looks back towards the open door and then back to Helen, her eyes wide, her nostrils flared. She looks like she's about to panic. "Everyone is just... treating me like the Empress."

"That's because you are the Empress." Helen's smirk shows she's clearly enjoying this.

"But, I'm no-"

"What you believe" Helen interrupts, "and what is, are two different things, Fen. I told you. You are the Empress. The Nanites agree, I agree, and now Sol agrees. I received the beacon right before you woke up. They accept your ascension. Coronation will commence once we return to Venus."

"Fen is stunned into silence." She stares at Helen's cool face, willing her to burst out laughing, telling her it's some joke, or for her to wake up out of this horrible dream.

All that happens is the thrum of the HVAC in the room.

"So... then what?"

Helen holds her hands wide, palms out. "What indeed Fen. The galaxy is yours. You only have to take it." She holds up one finger. "So long as you keep building Gates."

"That's it?"

"That's really it, Fen. I promise. There is no secret agenda, no conspiracy, no shadow council that really rules. It's you. For good and for ill, it's you."

"But why?" Fen's voice is strained, like she's trying not to whine.

"Because you're Empress." Helen says simply. "Now you already met Captain Valerian, yes? Why don't you direct her to link us home. You can see the palace and being the preparation for your coronation." Helen turns away from Fen and walks over to a large wooden case. She unlatches it and opens a glass cabinet, revealing a series of leather bound rectangles. Books, Fen thinks. She's never seen them in person before. They must be ancient. Helen notices her staring. "Do you want to see? Here, this one is supposedly a book of naval tactics."

Fen looks at the book, and realizes with a start she can't read a word of it. "Of course," she says, feeling silly. "It's not written in Colonic."

"No, this is an ancient language from Earth, French." Helen strokes the book with a light touch. "I'd like to learn it some day." She closes the book with a snap. "Go ask Captain Valerian to link us home, please." Even though she said please, it was not a request.

Fen made her way back to the bridge. "Captain Valerian, please link is back home. I... need to begin preparations for my coronation - apparently."

Captain Valerian smirked and saluted sharply. Aye Empress, we obey. Please, sit Empress. You can ride with us here as we link home."

Fen sat in a seat next to the Captains. The crew bustled with preparations as a steward sidled up to Fen and offered her a mug of tea. She took the tea and nodded thanks. Just as quickly as he arrived, the steward disappeared.

After not much time at all, the Captain sat next to Fen. "We're ready Empress. Would you do the honors?"

Fen looked forward, the bridge crew staring back at her, with something in their eyes. Reverence? Excitement? It was odd whatever it was. "Link us home."

Fen woke up on the grass. She sat up and saw Ma-ren. "Oh Ma!" Fen broke down, her tears large and heavy. "I'm Empress"

Ma hugged her tightly. "I know hon. I'm sorry. This is quite a thing to be thrusted upon yourself."

"Ma, what am I going to do? The Nanites are watching me all... the... time... Fen looked around in shock. "I can't feel them here!"

Ma-ren nodded. "That's right. You're here. They're not a part of you, so they wouldn't arrive when you linked."

"Holy shit Ma! That means I have a chance. You need to be my memory for me. I can't even think about this when I'm alive."

"Whatever you need, love. I'm always here."

#humans are deathworlders #humans are space orcs #sci fi writing #humans are space oddities #humans and aliens #jpitha #writing #humans and ai #humans are space capybaras #humans are space australians #Between the black and gray

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swagmagussupreme · 5 months ago

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@whiterose-fans-blog White Rose in Bloom, Day 1: Hobbies

"Stay in the lines, don't let me hit you."

Simple enough rules, just two things. That was all she had to do. Stay between the two lines that they'd chalked across her backyard— the space was about two or three feet, so that wasn't a struggle— and don't get let her girlfriend hit her.

"Uh, hit me with what?"

Weiss rolled her eyes and reached into her white duffel. "The épée, dumbass," she said obviously, pulling out one of the skinny swords with a ball for its tip. One of her densely-meshed fencing masks followed after, flying from her hand and tumbling between Ruby's, who nearly fumbled it to the grass before she collected herself. She slipped it over her head and held her hands out.

"Hey, where's your helmet?" Ruby asked after a second.

Weiss shrugged. "Don't need one."

"You're that cocky?"

"Ha!" the duelist barked, shaking her head imperiously. "No, not at all."

"Then where's your mask? And my épée?"

Weiss snapped her fingers. "Bingo!"

"Huh?"

"Ruby, baby, sweetie, my perfect, beautiful, sexy-hot, stupid, dumb idiot darling dumbass," Weiss cooed, tipping her hips left and right in the way she did when she was trying to get Ruby flustered (which always worked, including now). "You are not fencing. You've got two left feet."

Ruby huffed. "I'm a leftie, dude."

"Did I say two left feet? I meant two peg-feet. Like a shitty pirate."

"You're a shitty pirate."

Weiss tapped her chin with the épée, faking pensivity. "I won't deny that I am after yer booty, yarr."

The fencing mask was a little awkward, but it had the benefit of hiding Ruby's stupid blush. "Sh-shut the fuck up."

"Shuh-shuh-shut uuup!" Weiss mocked, stepping closer as she tauntingly wagged her sword. She came within arm's length, her chin high, her blue gaze brimming with pride and expectation. "And why would I? What reason would I possibly have to deprive the world my angelic tones?"

Ruby took the mask off to glare down at the shorter girl, her lips curled into a warning scowl. "Weiss..."

"I mean really! You expect me, your perfect and incredible girlfriend, to not mock you? You, my own sweet, stupid girlfriend, my own heart which couldn't possibly rebut the skills of my swordsmanship?"

She knew what she was doing. Ruby growled, "Babe..."

Weiss affected perfect, innocent ignorance. She continued to declare, "Oh, it's not your fault your blood is so bereft of talent and skill, so absent of mine ethereal beauty, my siren-song of being! What's a poor thing like you to do? Really?"

"Last chance."

"And you are so, so stupid and so, so inferior that it'd just be wrong to put such a gentlemanly tool in your rough, mannish palms!" Weiss sauntered closer, raising one of Ruby's hands to display its calloused interior. She tutted. "It simply isn't done, darling. It isn't done."

Ruby stared, her grey eyes dead. "Are you done?"

Weiss grinned up at her, knowing and confident. "Did I mention you're basically my trophy wife?"

"Your trophy wife."

"Because you're pretty. More or less, though a bit... homely. Maybe more of a housewife."

"Uh-huh. Homely."

"Oh very, like you belong in the home. Cooking and cleaning and such."

"Progressive."

"It suits you."

"For sure."

"You can walk around my home all naked with just an apron, maid outfits on Wednesdays, nun outfits on Sundays for Jesus."

"You know me, big for Jesus. Bless up."

"And you'll get to bear all my heirs like some... broodmare."

"Oh broodmare, holy shit. You just said that in real life. Incredible."

"And they'll be giant babies, but it's your job as my wife."

A pause. Weiss smirked up at her girlfriend, chin high, pale neck exposed.

Ruby dropped the mask and pursed her lips. "I'm gonna choke you out now."

Weiss beamed. "You think you could?" She wiggled the skinny blade between them. "I'm armed."

Ruby blinked, unimpressed, and grabbed the épée around its dull blade with one hand, her other hand shooting up to clutch Weiss' wrist. She squeezed the latter, and the fencer was smart enough to drop the sword before Ruby could apply any real force. She let the épée fall and wrapped Weiss' waist in her arms, lifting her bodily so bring them both to the ground. Ruby landed mostly on her own side so she didn't hurt the smaller girl, then twisted around her back to pin Weiss' captured wrist between her own sharp shoulder blades, her other arm going around Weiss' pale neck and fitting the trachea into the crook of her elbow.

"Tap," Ruby commanded, wrapping her legs around Weiss' waist to finish her hold.

Weiss struggled, her free arm flapping uselessly. "Never!" she whined.

Ruby flexed her bicep.

Weiss stiffened and started pawing at her girlfriend's chokehold. "Harder mommy," she squeaked thinly.

"Jesus fuck, dude."

"Jesus won't save you!"

Ruby wrenched the girl's wrist up, just a tiny bit, barely enough to—

"Okayokayokay!" Weiss spluttered, her horny clawing turned to frantic tapping. "Tap out!"

Ruby snorted, but relaxed her hold with a kiss to the fencer's snow-white crown. "Good girl."

"Fuck you."

Weiss was pressed close against her girlfriend's martial-toned body, the chokehold now a warm hug that wrapped across her chest. "You still wanna swing that gay thing at me?" Ruby teased.

"You don't swing in fencing," Weiss muttered. "But yes. I do."

#fanfic #my writing #ruby rose #weiss schnee #whiterose #White Rose in Bloom #cw: suggestive

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janksfatass · 1 year ago

Text

Pt. 1

Warnings: Tumultuous marriage, nothing spicy… yet.

Word Count: 1700

F!Reader x OC, F!Reader x Jake

Plot: Reader is in a loveless marriage and attends a charity event at a mansion for her husband’s new job. She decides to explore and ends up meeting the owner of the home. He then takes her on his own tour. Was she getting in over her head?

“Y/n what the fuck are you doing? We were supposed to leave 10 minutes ago!”

You sit up from fastening your heel and take a deep breath before responding, “I’m coming down now!” You grab your clutch off the bed and take one last look in the mirror to preen and check for any imperfections.

Tonight was some sort of charity ball that your husband was invited to by his coworkers at a new consulting firm. You had met Steven in college and from the beginning your relationship was never built on passion or love but rather logic. He was smart, getting a degree in something admirable and not to mention easy on the eyes. After graduation you had the picture perfect wedding and bought a house with the proverbial white picket fence. That was a year ago. Now your days mostly consist of going running your boutique and coming home to make dinner (which you more often than not eat alone). Then winding down with a glass or two of wine and your trusty rose. Sex wasn’t really a component of your marriage anymore. With Steven’s long hours you hardly spent any time together at all and when you did it was mostly spent screaming at each other. This isn’t the life you had pictured for yourself at 25 but it is what it is.

You make your way down the steps and there is Steven waiting for you in his all black suit with a silver mask covering half of his face.

“Let’s go, we're already late.” He grabs your arm and practically drags you out to the car that’s been waiting on you. You wince at his touch, “Why is it so important that we’re exactly on time anyways? Isn’t it just a party?”

“It’s not just a party, it's THE party. Everyone important will be there and it’s a prime opportunity to network, you couldn’t possibly understand.”

“Ok then…” you climb into the car and place your clutch in your lap.

The ride there was uncomfortably silent but not unusual. Steven pulls onto a side road that leads up a mountain. The road begins as gravel and then becomes paved about halfway up. At the very top sits a large white brick mansion with black trim. The mass of a driveway is lined with Bentleys, McLarens and the like, meanwhile you’re sitting in a 5 year old Mercedes C class.

“Who’s house is this?” You ask.

“Don’t worry about it, come on.” He grabs your hand and leads you out of the car up to the double doors which are being guarded by a large bald man.

“Password?”

“Luna.” Steven replies in a semi hushed tone.

The man opens the doors and you both walk inside. You’re greeted by a massive foyer with a double staircase that looks like it belongs in a vampiric film. The interior of the home almost takes your breath away. Charcoal walls, black marble floors, silver accents adorning the room and crystal chandeliers half the size of your car hanging over your head.

Soft jazz is coming from a room nearby. You follow Steven to the ballroom where you see about 200 people. Some standing in groups talking and some gliding with one another across the floors.

You turn to Steven,“Can we get a drink?”

“You go ahead I’ll be over here.”

You roll your eyes and make your way to the bar. You greet the bartender, “Hi, can I get a glass of champagne please?” He acknowledges your order and you turn around to scope the room. Middle aged men and their too young wives. Decrepit Vanderbilt types that resemble walking corpses. The amount of money in this room could probably end poverty for the whole country. Doctors, lawyers, philanthropists, businessmen, and a few that you wouldn’t be shocked if they were involved with organized crime, all mingling amongst each other.

You finish your drink and spot your husband across the room and walk over to him. He continues his conversation as though you weren’t even there, not even taking a moment to introduce you. After 20 minutes of conversations about new businesses and architecture, you grow increasingly bored.

“If you’ll excuse me.” You give the group a polite smile and nod then go back into the foyer to ask the doorman where the bathroom is.

“Up the stairs, to the left and then it’s the first door on your right.”

You walk up the staircase and enter the bathroom. You’re immediately drawn to the giant mirror encased in an ornate frame of delicately carved flowers and foliage. Jesus this guy is ridiculous. As you sit, you look around and your mind starts to drift thinking about what kind of man would have a home this extravagant. ‘He probably has a trophy wife with big fake tits and a bbl. Maids and chefs to do all the work while she sits and looks pretty. What a fucking dream.’ You finish up and wash your hands. When you re enter the hallway you decide to explore a little. Steve won’t even notice you’re gone honestly.

You begin to peek into the rooms down the hall, noting the spacious bedrooms and also a theater room. What really grabs your attention is the study. You step into the room and the walls are top to bottom shelves filled with books. You notice a few familiar names, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, The Alchemist, etc. You walk around the desk and see out on the balcony there’s a small seating area and a large telescope pointed at the sky. You step outside and begin looking through it, searching for constellations.

“Lovely night isn’t it?” You jump at the raspy voice coming from behind you and quickly spin around.

“Y-yea it is. It’s very clear tonight. Not a cloud in the sky.” Your throat is dry as you eye up the man.

He’s small in stature but appears fairly sturdy nonetheless. The top half of his face is covered with a black mask but you can see a neatly trimmed mustache sitting above his heart shaped lips. His long hair pulled back into a bun. Very well dressed. Donning a gray suit. He has on black button down with what appears to be only the bottom two buttons secured, revealing a smooth chest that he’s decorated with a few necklaces that hold coin pendants. He has an Italian leather belt around his waist that matches the loafers on his feet.

“This is my second favorite room in my home. Especially on nights like tonight.”

“This house is YOURS?!” You choke out.

“You seem surprised. Why?”

“I guess I expected an old crusty bastard to live in something like this. Something so… over the top.”

“Well that’s one thing about me. I tend to have a habit of enjoying the more lavish things this life has to offer.” He takes a sip of what appears to be whiskey in his glass.

“I can see that… You said this is your second favorite room. What is your favorite?”

“I could tell you.. but I think I’d rather show you. Would you like a tour?” He asks and you notice he’s now returning the favor of eyeing you up and down. Seemingly taking a few extra moments on your curves and specifically the neckline of your dress that cuts just below your sternum.

He extends an arm towards you. You look down at his hand as you reach for it. The voice in your head is screaming at you. Telling you that you shouldn’t go with this stranger but there’s something about him. Something Alluring... Dangerous... Sinful even. ‘Fuck it.’ You place your hand in his and instantly electricity shoots through you. It feels as though you’ve just sealed a deal with the devil himself.

He walks you through the maze that is his home, showing you a billiard room with a bar, an indoor pool, his office space, numerous guest rooms and finally, the master bedroom. Each space was decorated in a way that you’ve come to realize is very on par with his personality. Dark and luxurious. His bedroom was no exception.

He lets go of your hand and snakes his arm around you with his hand resting on your lower back. His thumb gently strokes your exposed skin. He guides you through the doorway and flicks the light switch. The room illuminates in a red glow. In the center of the room sits a four post bed with an extravagant wrought iron headboard. You notice above the bed, there’s a circular mirror on the ceiling. ‘Strange.’

“Why is there a mirror up there?” You question innocently.

“Why do you think there’s a mirror up there?” He gives you a look that immediately connects the dots in your brain and you feel your cheeks begin to flush.

“Oh right... Naturally. Okay.” You feel your throat becoming dry once again.

“Well go on, take a look around.”

You follow his instructions and begin to explore the huge room. Another bookcase that reaches the ceiling. His closet could be another bedroom in itself, filled with designer suits and Italian shoes, silk ties and rows of shirts. The bathroom contains a freestanding tub that could probably hold 4 people and the shower about 8.

“Wow. This is absolutely…” You stop yourself as your eye catches an… elevator? You walk over to it and look at him. “Where does this go?”

“The basement.” He replies matter of factly.

“What’s down there?”

“Would you like to see?” He quirks an eyebrow.

“Tell me what it is first. Is it like a dungeon or something?” You laugh.

“Well…”

Your laugh instantly ceases.

He smirks at you, watching the wheels begin to spin in your head. He can tell he’s piqued your curiosity.

“Well? Well what? Is it a dungeon or not?”

“Why don’t I show you and you can be the judge of that.”

You stop for a moment to think of what awaits you. “As long as you promise not to murder me.”

“Cross my heart, hope to die.”

‘If I die, I die.’

He takes your hand again as the elevator dings and opens. The inside is wall to wall mirrors. You notice there’s only two buttons. One for his bedroom and one for wherever he’s taking you.

#greta van fleet #gvf #jake kiszka #jake gvf #jake kiszka smut #jake kiszka x reader

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coopigeoncoo · 1 year ago

Text

Pairing: Todoroki Shouto x Gender Neutral Reader

Rating: Teen+

Tags: Reader-Insert, Stalking, Kidnapping, Attempted Kidnapping, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Psychological Torture (There is a plot for a character to get kidnapped and assaulted, but it doesn't actually happen), Sex Toys, Happy Ending

---

A late night meal delivery to Pro Hero Shouto goes terribly wrong, leaving you trapped in a room together with no obvious means of escape. You find yourself holding out hope not just for a rescue, but also for Shouto to somehow stay oblivious to the massive crush you've had on him for months now.

With the outlook for you future growing increasingly hazy, one thing becomes pointedly clear:

You can't keep things bottled up forever.

---

"It's true we don't know what might happen to us," Shouto admitted, his mismatched eyes locked onto yours; intense and mesmerizing. "But we'll face it together, okay?"

"Okay," you swallowed thickly. "But I think you definitely pulled the short straw as far as teammates go."

"Really?" Shouto asked, his eyes shining as he stared at you. "I don't think I could have chosen anyone better if I tried."

---

Continue reading below or follow the link to Ao3!

Society is built on a series of white lies, little untruths we tell ourselves to make life seem more bearable. Things like how good will always prevail over evil, that hard work equates to success, and that your Quirk didn't dictate the direction your life took.

You had some increasingly strong suspicions about those first two platitudes, but the fact that you had a teleportation Quirk and had only ever been hired for courier work left you feeling very certain that the last one was absolute bullshit.

Last month your boss had commemorated your third year of employment at Über Munch, a meal delivery service for Heroes, with a mesh bag half-full of dollar store candy and a keychain with the company logo on it in lieu of something you would actually appreciate.

Like a raise. Or a day off once and a while.

So you were feeling pretty unenthusiastic about work these days now that you knew how little your effort was actually valued by the suits down at the corporate office. You had never been this tempted to quit before and knew it would likely be a smart move to start sending out resumes and have something else lined up for when you eventually snapped, but it was hard to actually put forth the effort when you didn't totally hate your job most days.

Your Quirk, Revisit, allows you to instantaneously travel to anywhere you've walked before. It made some aspects of your job easier, like quickly delivering meals directly to Hero agencies in the major metropolitan area; but it didn't make it effortless. Some orders were just more difficult to fulfill than others.

A call from Fat Gum always requires multiple trips from a handful of different restaurants to fulfill, a task that left you winded and lightheaded from both the quantity of food you had to carry and overusing your Quirk. But he always tipped generously, which was more than you could say for other Heroes. Accepting an order from Vine would guarantee that you would end up dumped on the edge of some overgrown forest with a bag of vegetable samosas in one hand and a compass in the other, rewarded for all your trouble with an evangelical comic tract once you'd actually managed to track her down.

But then there were the clients you didn't mind getting calls from. Mt. Lady never ordered meals, she just wanted someone to drop off a bottle of her favorite bargain brand rosé on her days off so she could focus on relaxing. She'd answer the door in an old pair of sweatpants with a clay mask pasted thickly across her face, a rom-com blaring in the background as she accepted her delivery. It was a charmingly domestic view of a woman most often seen splashed across the covers of beauty magazines.

And then there was your favorite client of all, Todoroki Shouto. Every Tuesday and Thursday the same request would ping across the screen of your work phone: cold soba with extra ginger to be delivered to his agency precisely at eight thirty, which was when he took a break from his nightly paperwork. You'd started to become friendly over the course of your routine interactions, sharing courteous greetings and anecdotes from your respective work weeks. Shouto's stories were always more engaging than yours, but he was polite enough to laugh and offer commiseration at the appropriate points as he unpacked his dinner.

You tried to appreciate Shoto's companionship without interpreting his gentle smiles and welcoming demeanor as anything other than what they were; a show of kindness from a good man. But every time Shouto gifted you with a glimpse of his pearly whites you couldn't stop the sudden hitching of your breath, mind racing with snippets of impossible dreams you couldn't help but crave.

It was easy to let yourself imagine being with him; waking up in a tangle of limbs as early morning light streamed across your bedspread from between the too-wide gaps in your blinds. Knowing your breath was sour from sleeping but kissing him anyway, too needy for his attention to wait until after you'd brushed your teeth.

But you know life isn't like it is in the fairy tales. Princes don't marry peasants and pedigree Heroes don't end up with minimum wage service workers. You'd keep on delivering Shouto's noodles twice a week until inevitably, a year or two down the road, the tabloids would be saturated with news of his engagement to some super model or socialite. That was what was expected; what he deserved.

But you could, and would, fantasize about what could have been if things were just a little bit different. If you were richer or more successful. If you hadn't been too scared to take the entrance exams for placement at a Hero School. If you existed in the same social stratosphere as each other.

They were nice, those little flights of fancy you allowed yourself; the small sprinkles of sweetness that made the bitter taste of reality more palatable. You made time for one more brief daydream; a vision of gentle sighs and entwined fingers, before you dug your phone out of your pocket. Thumb swiping across the screen, you bring up your work app and see a new notification light up your screen: a request for cold soba with extra ginger.

With a weary sigh, you clutched your phone to your chest, screwed your eyes shut, and disappeared in a shower of sparks.

You'd become a regular feature around Shouto's agency, recognized on sight by the security guards and night cleaning crew. So the sudden appearance of a new receptionist next to the doors to Shouto's office was a jarring change in an otherwise predictable delivery routine. A sharp looking woman had replaced his usual assistant, the round-faced and rounder-bellied Mrs. Yamori; a devastatingly friendly and heavily pregnant woman with a heteromorphic gecko Quirk.

Customer service smile firmly in place, you approached the desk, checking the gleaming name plaque set in front of her.

"Hello, Ms. Yokubou!" You greeted cheerily, startling the receptionist who had been focused on sorting through a small pile of mail. "Did Mrs. Yamori go on maternity leave already?"

"How am I supposed to know?" The woman snapped, carefully placing a small box at the top of the stack. "I'm here to help Shouto, not spread office gossip."

"Right," you coughed nervously in the face of her hostility. "Well, I have his dinner. So I'll just go ahead and knock."

"Dinner?" She hissed, swiveling her chair to face the monitor on the left side of the desk. "There isn't any mention of dinner on his schedule and I certainly didn't call you."

"I don't know what to tell you. I deliver Mr. Todoroki's dinner every Tuesday and Thursday at this time," you sighed, pleasant demeanor slipping as this conversation eroded what little was left of your patience after a long day.

"Well, not today you don't," Yokubou sniffed, waving you away with a dismissive hand. "Shouto is simply too busy this evening. You may go."

"Listen, even if I wanted to go, Über Munch guarantees delivery to Heroes. That's sort of their entire business plan."

"I told you that your services won't be necessary!" Yokubou screeched, reaching her hand towards the receiver on her desk. "Don't make me call security!"

"Would you, actually? They know me down there and it seems like getting a third party involved might help speed things up a bit."

Yokubou's brow twisted as she pulled the desk phone up to her ear, but whatever sort of retort she had poised on the tip of her tongue evaporated the moment Shouto's office door opened and he stuck his head out curiously.

"Shouto!" She crooned, rolling her shoulders back to push her chest further out, the top buttons on her fitted blouse struggling under the added pressure. "I'm so sorry to have disturbed you! But I have everything under control and-"

"There you are," Shouto sighed in relief as his gaze landed on you, pointedly ignoring the antics of his receptionist. "I was starting to get worried."

"Sorry I'm late," you said, holding the bag out for him to take. "This is normally the part where I would apologize for your food getting cold, but it was already cold to start with, so I'm just going to skip that bit."

Shouto accepted his dinner with an amused huff, fingers brushing yours as the bag changed hands.

"Would you like to come in?" Shouto asked, pushing the door to his office open wider. "I need some help on today's crossword puzzle. There's a lot of pop culture questions that I don't know the answers to."

"You can't, Shouto! Not tonight! You're far too busy!" His receptionist said, shooting to a standing position and grabbing the pile of mail into her arms. "There's something important here that needs your immediate attention."

"Is there, now?" Shouto hummed thoughtfully, shifting the bag with his soba into the crook of his arm so he could accept the towering stack of mail.

"And I'm sure you need privacy to open classified mail," Yokubou insisted, squeezing herself into the space between you and Shouto.

"It'll be fine," Shouto assured her with a tight smile. "I'll just save all the top secret letters until I'm alone."

"But-!"

"That will be all for today, Ms. Yokubou," Shouto dismissed, reaching around her to place a palm between your shoulder blades and guide you into his office.

"No! You don't understand!" Yokubou wailed, clawing at the stack of mail Shouto held securely to his chest, trying to pry the missives away from him.

"I understand that it has been a very long day and you must be exhausted. Go home and rest and we'll talk about your lack of professionalism first thing in the morning," Shouto said sternly, shutting the door quickly behind him and engaging the lock with one swift motion. He ignored the pounding knocks that shook the door in its frame and the repeated frantic cries of 'Shouto!' as he made his way across the room, depositing the contents of his arms down onto his desk before collapsing into his office chair with a bone weary sigh.

"Well she sure is…something," you offer diplomatically.

"Fired is what she is," Shouto laughed dryly, scrubbing his hands furiously across his face. "That woman has been an absolute menace since day one. I tried to give her a chance to settle in, but it's beyond obvious that this job isn't a good fit for her."

"She only started on what? Friday?"

"Saturday," Shouto corrected, prying the lid off of his dinner and happily sniffing the ginger-covered noodles. "And since then she's thrown away all my fanmail, canceled a joint interview I had with Creati, and she keeps finding excuses to barge into my office. I've had to start locking my door."

"Yikes," you said, wincing in sympathy and a fair amount of second hand embarrassment. "How long is Mrs. Yamori supposed to be gone?"

"Too long," Shouto groaned, pulling out a set of disposable chopsticks and snapping them neatly in half. "Do you think I could convince her to come back to work early if I hire her baby too?"

"I'm fairly certain that's illegal. Child labor and all that," you laughed, pulling one of the guest chairs up to the front of Shouto's desk and spinning the abandoned crossword around to glance at the clue columns. "Plus, babies cry a lot. It would probably be pretty disruptive."

"It couldn't be worse than my current situation," Shouto grumbled, the faint sounds of Yokubou's wailing still audible in the background.

"I suppose the dental coverage for a baby would be pretty cheap," you muse, penciling in the answer for number thirty-two down. "They don't have any teeth."

"I wonder what's in that mail pile that had Ms. Yokubou so wound up," you pondered, tapping the pencil eraser against your cheek thoughtfully.

"Good question," Shouto said, using the cheap paper napkin to dab primly at his lips even though you were fairly certain he didn't get a single particle of food on his face with how carefully he ate. "I thought she had slipped a confession letter into the stack, but all that's here is official mail and a couple of packages."

"Maybe one of those then?"

"Maybe," Shouto mused, separating out the parcels in question. "But I am expecting some deliveries. My Mother's birthday is coming up and I'm having her gifts shipped here so she doesn't stumble upon them when she visits my apartment."

"I guess the only way to know for sure is to open them," you say, tossing your pencil down in defeat and refocusing your attention onto Shouto as he picked up an envelope mailer and ripped open the tab. Reaching into the envelope, Shouto pulled out a small paperback novel.

"It's the next volume in her favorite book series," he explained, setting the book aside with a smile. "I pulled some strings and got her an advanced copy."

"The ladies in her book club are going to be so jealous!"

"I know," Shouto grinned fiendishly in delight, the mischievous glint in his eye making your stomach muscles clench wickedly.

"And uh, what's in the last box?" You ask, trying to focus on anything other than your misplaced desire for the man in front of you.

"Let's see, shall we?" Shouto said, slicing open the packing tape with a large set of shears from his desk drawer. Carefully reaching in through the layers of tissue paper, Shouto pulls out a long glass bottle. It's overly ornate, with pink tinted glass and gilded edges, the sort of thing your grandmother would have proudly displayed on her vanity while smacking your small hand away for trying to touch it without permission.

"It's lovely," you say, only half-lying as you watched the golden tassel tied around the middle sway back and forth. "What's it for?"

"Perfume, I think?" Shouto guessed, face scrunched up as he examined the bottle closely. "I ordered the type Fuyumi told me to, but I don't remember it looking like this on the webpage?"

"Maybe it's a limited edition?" You suggest. "Or they noticed who was ordering and upgraded you to the deluxe version with like, extra ambergris or something?"

"I hope not. That would throw the fragrance completely off balance," Shouto winced, viscerally imagining the perfume you described. "Better check and make sure this isn't the deluxe edition."

And with those words, Shouto grasped the stopper on the bottle and pulled; a plume of thick yellow smoke billowing out from the mouth of the bottle. Gasping in surprise, you accidentally inhaled the spreading vapor; skin prickling painfully as you lost control of your limbs and tumbled to the floor. The last thing you saw before your vision blurred and unconsciousness claimed you was Shouto reaching out across the floor towards your prone body; shirt pulled over his nose and mouth in an effort to filter out the unknown gas.

Untold minutes passed before the smoke finally dissipated. And when it did, there was no trace of you or Shouto left. Just a shiny pink bottle with it's stopper wedged firmly in place, glimmering cheerily in the warm light of Shouto's office.

You woke up suddenly, contorted into an uncomfortable position on the floor with your clothes clinging to your clammy skin. Head pounding and stomach churning, you take in a deep breath and then promptly regret it as you inhale a lung-full of incredibly potent incense smoke.

"Ugh," you coughed, nose twitching as you got hit by another low-hanging cloud of patchouli. With one last sputter you shifted your focus to examine the room around you. The walls were an eye watering bright pink and every horizontal surface, from the tables to the numerous book shelves mounted to the walls, were stuffed full of flickering candles and arrangements of waxy-petaled lilies.

"Are you okay?" Shouto asked, voice calling out from behind the other side of the circular bed frame you were laying next to.

"I dunno'," you mumble, pausing to let out a tiny belch that seemed to help settle your stomach. "I think so?"

"Good," Shouto stated, voice still commanding despite its breathy quality. "Can you walk?"

"Let me try," you said as you went to roll over onto your side, only to discover that your body wasn't responding the way it should; your limbs dragging and heavy. Panic flooded your body, blood thrumming hotly in your ears as you once again tried, and failed, to roll. Exerting more concentrated effort than you ever had before in your life, you managed to slowly rock over onto your shoulder; body now facing towards the bed.

Whatever gratification you felt from your accomplishment was quickly forgotten as you realized that your heaving gasps of exhaustion were slowly pushing you off balance, sending you toppling face first into the shiny wooden bedframe. Your forehead landed with a dull thunk; the shock of the impact intensified by the headache throbbing sharply behind your eyes.

"Ouch," you hissed through your teeth, sucking up the pain as best you could. "Moving appears to be beyond me at the moment."

"That's okay," Shouto said, his voice dropping a decibel or two into a more comforting timbre. "Wait there. I'll come to you."

The one good thing about your fall was that it positioned your head closer to the foot of the bed, so you could watch as Shouto grasped handfuls of the carpet in his fists, pulling himself slowly into view with great heaving breaths. His strength finally gave out an arms length away from you, his fingers creeping along the floor until they collided with yours.

Tears prickled in the corners of your eyes, the embarrassing result of too many big feelings fighting against each other to be felt first- sadness and frustration and fear and utter relief when Shouto's fingers curled around your own.

"You don't need to cry," Shouto soothed, his thumb rubbing small circles into the back of your hand.

"I don't think I can stop," you sobbed, sucking in huge lungfuls of the incense-spiked air.

"That's okay, too."

"Yeah?"

"Mmhmm," Shouto hummed. "I'm told that crying can be very therapeutic. Do you feel any better?"

"No," you snorted, trying to downplay the telltale blubber of mucus collecting in the back of your throat.

"Do you need to cry some more then?"

You nodded as emphatically as you could with the feeble muscles in your neck, and then opened your mouth and let out a piercing wail; tears streaming down your face and soaking quickly into the plush carpet fibers.

"Can you use your Quirk?" You sniffed, tears dried and tacky on your skin. You'd tried to wipe them away but only managed to poke yourself in the eye instead. "Because mine isn't working."

"No," Shouto growled in frustration, eyes narrowed at his hands as though they had personally betrayed him. "I'm hoping we'll regain control of them once our bodies recover."

"If we recover," you mutter dismally, shifting your gaze reluctantly towards Shouto when you felt him squeeze your hand tightly to gain your attention.

"It's true we don't know what might happen to us," Shouto admitted, his mismatched eyes locked onto yours; intense and mesmerizing. "But we'll face it together, okay?"

"Okay," you swallowed thickly. "But I think you definitely pulled the short straw as far as teammates go."

"Really?" Shouto asked, his eyes shining as he stared at you. "I don't think I could have chosen anyone better if I tried."

At Shouto's insistence, you began doing little exercises in an attempt to kick start your muscles back into working order. You started small, with toe curls and rotating your arms in little circles. Everything was slightly numb and hard to control, a little like how your cheeks felt after you had a cavity filled at the dentist.

"I'm scared, Shouto," you whispered as you lifted your forearm a paltry couple inches off of the floor. Shouto had already graduated to doing floppy bicep curls, but that was the difference in athletic ability between a Pro Hero and someone who's preferred marathon experience involved popcorn and a handful of movies. "Where do you think we are?"

"I don't know," he grunted from exertion, sweat beading at his temples. "But I have a couple of theories about how we got here."

"What're you thinking?"

"It's obviously some sort of Quirk at work," he gasped. "You're a Teleporter, right? Could it be something like that, do you think?"

"No. It's not teleportation," you groaned, arms collapsing limply onto the floor as you burned through the last of your energy. "I'm in an online chat group with a bunch of other Teleporters and we all have the same basic experience. And this is not it."

"Really?" Shouto said, pausing in his exercises to join your brief respite. "That's fascinating."

"Yeah. I guess rearranging all your atoms is a complex enough process there's just one way it works correctly."

Shouto huffed, staring up at your reflections in the large mirror that covered the entire ceiling. "What's it like? Teleporting, I mean?"

"I- it's sort of hard to explain," you say, wrinkling up your nose in thought. "So, like, imagine if people were made entirely out of sand."

"That sounds awful," Shouto grimaced. "Can you imagine what it would feel like if your tongue was made out of sand? Everything would taste gritty."

"It isn't literal," you huff. "You can imagine anything small. Rocks, sugar-"

"Rice," Shouto interrupted, nodding resolutely.

"Yeah, sure. Rice. Imagine people are made out of rice. Teleporting is like, if every single one of those grains just scattered," you try to wave your hand around for emphasis but only succeed in making it flop on the ground like a dying fish. "But they aren't lost. I know where every single last one is, no matter how far away it wandered. And I can just pull them all back together again, wherever I choose."

"And it doesn't make you feel like all your muscles have atrophied?"

"No, not at all," you say, letting your head loll from side to side in an exaggerated shake. "I'm just- letting myself fall apart. I'm like ice when it starts to melt; shifting and warm."

"Oh," Shouto said, a sudden ring of clarity in his tone. "That's a nice feeling."

"Yeah, it is."

Eventually, you and Shouto progressed to being able to move around on the carpet. Shouto had worked himself up into a crawling position while you had adopted the much less elegant solution of wiggling around like a worm. You could tell by his puffed up cheeks and pointedly averted stare that he was barely holding back laughing at your expense.

"Don't you dare laugh at me," you warned him, butt stuck up in the air as you wiggled your shoulders from side to side to achieve forward momentum.

"I'm- I'm not," Shouto lied, wheezing with every inch he crawled towards a distant dresser.

"Please," you scoffed. "I went to middle school. I know what it looks like to be laughed at. You could at least have the decency to do it to my face."

"Right, sorry," Shouto apologized, turning his head to look at you and promptly losing all composure; crashing to the ground as his laughter wracked his body and threw him off balance. He landed hard on his shoulder, still too uncoordinated to break his fall well.

"Ow!" He snorted out between guffaws, body shaking as he rubbed at his shoulder with limp fingers. "That- that hurt."

"Serves you right," you mutter peevishly, pushing your derriere further into the air to power your next creep forward. "I'm going to beat you to the dresser. That'll teach you to laugh at me."

"No," Shouto gasped, stumbling back onto his hands and feet. "I'm gonna- gonna get there first."

"Oh yeah?" You countered, summoning up your go-to school yard taunt like the paragon of maturity you were.

"Yeah," he shot back, the call of competition doing a lot to sober his demeanor as he rocked on his hands and took a shaky shuffle forward.

"Hey, Shouto!" You called, waiting until he was looking at you before you wiggled your butt from side-to-side as much as you could without toppling over. Shouto, not anticipating your underhanded maneuver, collapsed face first into the shag rug, the long fibers muffling his delirious cackling.

"Cheater!" He cried out.

"Winner!" You laughed, sliding forward onto your belly and making a good headway towards the dresser, steadfastly ignoring Shouto's calls for a do-over.

Shouto had predictably rallied and beaten you to the dresser like the finely tuned muscle machine he was, but you were proud to say you had given him a run for his money. The two of you now sat propped up against the dresser, bodies slumped against each other for an additional layer of support. You'd passed a fair bit of time by guessing how many flowers were crammed into each vase and then counting to see who came the closest.

"Aaaaaand that's another round to me!" You proclaimed, nudging Shouto sharply. with your elbow when you heard him grumble discontentedly.

Todoroki Shouto, it turned out, was a very sore loser.

"One more time," he pouted, looking around the room for another cluster of lilies to tabulate. "Best fourteen out of twenty-seven."

"Yeah, I can agree to that. Because I've already won fourteen times," you reminded him smugly.

"This game is silly," Shouto grumbled, managing to cross his arms across his chest petulantly on the second try. "I don't want to play anymore."

"Fine by me," you yawned, only slapping yourself in the face a little as you tried to cover your mouth. "I'm getting tired anyway."

"Go ahead and sleep," Shouto said, nudging your shoulder with his own until your head slid down into the cradle of his neck. It was wildly uncomfortable and far too intimate for your level of acquaintance, but you'd sooner eat your shirt than complain about it. "I'll take first watch."

"Watch for what?" You grumble, already well on your way to being unconscious. "There aren't even any doors."

"Or windows," Shouto added with a frustrated sigh as he dropped his head down onto yours, smushing your cheek into the hard edge of his clavicle.

"Righ'," you mumble as your eyelids droop shut. "No win'ows."

"And I suppose if anyone was going to come in and kill us, they would have done that while we were lying defenseless on the floor."

Your eyes shoot open, all traces of exhaustion banished as you pry yourself away from Shouto and scramble into a more upright position.

"What's wrong?" He asked with genuine concern. "I thought you were tired?"

"I was, until someone started talking about us being killed," you laughed dryly, eyes darting around the room suspiciously, cataloging all the places a person could be laying in wait. There weren't a lot, but the privacy screen next to the chaise lounge was looking a little too sinister for your liking.

"No, I specifically said that we likely wouldn't be murdered."

"Yeah, but you still mentioned the killing part! And now I can't stop thinking about it!" You babbled anxiously, trying to calm your rabbit-fast heartbeat with a couple of deep breaths. "This is probably the closest I've ever been to being murdered before, so a little bit of panic feels justified!"

"There is a strong correlation between kidnapping and murder," Shouto nodded.

"Do you- do you think that's comforting?" You screech, hysteria ratcheting up another few notches.

"I- no?" Shouto said, voice pitching high in uncertainty. "But it is statistically significant!"

With a pitiful whine, you drop your head down into your mostly stable hands, doing your best to hold back another round of water works. Shouto, at a loss about what to say, drops his hand onto your back.

"There, there," he says, rubbing his palm slowly down your spine

"Now this- this is comforting," you sigh, arching your spine against his trailing hand.

"I'm glad," Shouto smiled. "This is how I pet stray cats, too. It's good to finally get some feedback on my technique."

"Now that we're back on our feet-," Shouto began, watching anxiously as you stumbled and were forced to grab onto a floor lamp for support. "-mostly, anyway. I think it would be a good idea for us to look around the room more thoroughly."

"Sounds good," you say, glancing at the lamp cord and wondering how far you explore while keeping your makeshift crutch plugged in. "Is there anything in particular we're looking for?"

"I'm not sure," Shouto said, setting his sights on the dresser drawers. "We know so little about our current situation that any information at all would be helpful."

"Right," you said, still unsure about what exactly to do, but not wanting to hinder Shouto's progress any further. You decided to inspect behind the privacy screen that had made you uneasy earlier. It was a tall thing that stretched far over your head, white wicker edges nearly scraping the mirrored ceiling.

"Finding anything interesting," you panted over your shoulder as you took another baby step towards the screen, dragging your support lamp along with you.

"No!" Shouto yelped, slamming the top drawer he'd been staring into shut. "I mean, yes. There are things. But they aren't important. They're uh-," he paused to cough uneasily into a loose fist. "They're- intimacy supplies."

"Ah, sex toys," you nod, turning back to face your destination and give Shouto what little privacy you could to work through his embarrassment. "Say no more."

"I- yes. Thank you."

"But that opens up an entirely new realm of possible explanations," you grunt, tired but excited by your continued progress across the room. "Like, did we get knocked out by the gas from that bottle and dropped into a love hotel or something? As a joke?"

"A love hotel?" Shouto screeched.

"Yeah. They're normally all schmaltzy and themed like this," you explain, gesturing vaguely to the abundance of bright pink decor. "Normally that theme isn't Barbie Escape Room, but I'm not here to kink shame."

"I think you maybe should have taken on the dresser inspection. I'm completely out of my element here," Shouto lamented, holding up a large paddle for you to see. "I can't even begin to imagine why there's a cutting board in here."

"Oh, that's not-"

"Actually," Shouto interrupted, holding up a hand to halt your explanation. "I don't think I want to know."

Shouto continues to rifle through the drawers, utterly befuddled and horrified in equal turns when you finally reach your destination.

"Alright," you said, mustering up the courage to peer behind the screen. "Let's see what's going on behind here."

You push the right side of the screen back slowly with your still weak arms, panels buckling at the hinges as it folded itself up like an accordion.

"Any murderers tucked away back there," Shouto teases, weighing a comically large steel buttplug in his hand.

"Not a murderer, no," your voice trembling with mounting horror as you step out of the way, allowing Shouto to see around you for the first time. The wall behind the screen was full of pictures of Shouto, hundreds of them pieced together into a collage of obsession. Magazine covers, promo pictures, and selfies from Shouto's official social media accounts were all present in the mashup; but far more distressing were the inclusions of what had to be candid shots of the Hero.

Blurry and over processed snapshots of Shouto shirtless that had been taken through his apartment window, spoon hanging from his mouth as he ate a cup of yogurt.

A far away street shot with him and a friend- you couldn't tell who it was exactly because they had been scribbled over with a pen so many times they had worn a hole in the paper; the bright pink of the walls visible through the missing space where a person should be.

Classified photographs detailing the injuries sustained in the line of duty that had been copied from official Commission files; terrible, gruesome things of Shouto bruised and bloodied and at his most vulnerable.

"You have a stalker, Shouto," you whispered.

"Oh," Shouto said numbly, the butt plug falling from between his fingers and hitting the top of the dresser with a loud thud. "Then this isn't a love hotel then," he paused and swallowed thickly, eyes glazed with an emotion you couldn't recognize as he stared at the wall behind you. "This is supposed to be my prison."

Things had only gotten worse from there. Now that you realized the purpose of the room, you were unable to unearth all sorts of hidden features that made your skin crawl. Hooks carved into the delicate filigree on the bed frame that were obviously made for handcuffs, a box of truffles with tiny syringe marks poked into the bottom, and a set of menacingly sharp sewing scissors tucked away in the bedside table drawer.

Your stomach was churning painfully, but you couldn't tell if it was from hunger or fear.

Not really knowing what else to do, you fumbled over towards the bed and collapsed onto it, nearly sliding off the slick satin duvet cover. A frantic scramble had kept you from dropping onto the floor, but it was a near thing. You watched as Shouto slid down onto the ground, a blank look on his face as he positioned his hands by his ears and began doing crunches.

"Are you- are you okay?" You ask from your sprawled out position on the bed. You'd tried to make eye contact with him through the mirror ceiling, but his gaze remained stubbornly averted to a blank spot on the wall you couldn't understand his interest in.

"I'm fine," he grunted through clenched teeth, forcing his shoulders up off the floor.

"You don't have to be."

"Yes I do!" Shouto bellowed, startling you as he threw himself down onto the floor, hands fisting in his hair in frustration. "You're trapped in here because of me! It's my responsibility to get you out safely and I can't do it if I'm like this!" He said, waving a hand down at his sluggish body.

"None of this is your fault," you assure Shouto, sliding to the edge of the bed and peering down towards him. "You're just as much a victim here as I am."

"You shouldn't even be a victim in the first place."

"Yeah, me being here obviously wasn't what your stalker had planned," you said, suppressing a shudder as you stared briefly at the collage of photos before reaching down and taking Shouto's hand into your own. "But I'm glad. I'm glad that it's me here with you, instead of- instead of them."

"I'm glad it's you, too," Shouto whispered, squeezing your hand tightly. "And not just because you don't have any plans to torture me."

"Being trapped in a room with me is torture enough," you joke, lazily swinging your interlocked hands back and forth in the air. "There's no need to overdo it."

There are faint memories of some long ago humanities class echoing in the back of your brain; something about needing to have your basic needs met before you're able to consider any other, arguably more important, matters. So while you understood that you were likely waist-deep in mortal peril and should be very worried about your long term health and wellbeing, you were far more concerned about the fact that you really had to pee.

Like, right now.

"Hey, Shouto?" You clear your throat nervously, not entirely sure how to broach the subject of bodily fluids with the top-ranked Hero laying on the bed next to you. "I, uh- have something I need to say. But it's sort of embarrassing?"

"Oh?" Shouto asked curiously, turning his head to face you, your noses nearly brushing. "What is it?"

"Well, I just- I know that a lot is happening right now, and I don't want to burden you anymore than I already am, but I just don't think I can hold it in any longer."

"Tell me," Shouto whispered breathlessly, his eyes wide as he watched you nibble on your lower lip nervously.

"I-"

"Yes?" He said imploringly, face inching closer to yours.

"I really need to pee!" You cry out loudly, sending Shouto reeling back from the force of your sudden screech.

"Oh- uh," he stammers. "That's, hmm."

"God," you whine, covering your face with your hands. "This is so embarrassing!"

"There's no need to be embarrassed," Shouto rushed to assure you, grasping your wrists gently to pull them away from your face. "I'm sorry, I should have reacted better."

"It's fine," you mutter sheepishly as you peer up at him from under your lashes. "It's gross and uncomfortable and I shouldn't have just blurted it out like that."

"No, it's not that- I was just caught a bit off guard. I thought you were going to say something different," Shouto admits with a wistful sigh.

"Like what? That I need to poop?"

"No," he snorts, pushing himself to the edge of the bed and standing with relative ease. "Don't worry about it right now. Let's just focus on finding a place for you to relieve yourself."

"I'd suggest just picking a corner like animals do, but that doesn't seem like a viable option in a round room."

"We'll just have to get creative then, won't we?" Shouto smiled, lifting up one of the largest vases of lilies and flipping it upside down; water and flowers spilling onto the floor at his feet in a soggy clump.

Shouto had originally set up your makeshift chamber pot behind the creepy stalker screen to give you some semblance of privacy, which was incredibly thoughtful of him. But the idea of peeing in front of one Shouto was hard enough, there was no way you could ever possibly bring yourself to pee in front of hundreds of little Shoutos pasted onto the wall. So the two of you combined your minimal strength together and managed to pull one side of the tall dresser away from the wall, creating a triangular little hidey-hole you hurriedly wedged yourself into.

"Don't look!" You called out over your shoulder, already pulling your zipper down before he could spin around fully.

"I won't," Shouto promised, staring dutifully across the room. With nothing more engaging to stare at, you join him in spectating the wall you were squeezed against. The pink paint had some sort of iridescent sparkles mixed into it that caught every flickering candle flame and created a hazy sort of glow that did nothing to help alleviate the headache you'd been nursing since you first woke up. The effect wasn't any less assaulting up close, so you were in the process of averting your eyes when the light behind you suddenly shifted; Shouto's dark shadow passing over you and catching on some strange divots on the otherwise smooth surface of the wall.

Hesitantly, you raise your hand and run your fingers across the wall, watching the route your fingertips take as they follow the nearly invisible grooves.

"Letters!" You gasp in excitement. "Shouto! There are letters on the wall!"

"Where?" Shouto demands, appearing over your shoulder in a flash, heedless of the fact that you were still mid-piss.

"Ahhh! No peeking! NO PEEKING!"

"Sorry! I'm so sorry!"

After you had emerged from your commode and dunked your hands into a bowl full of lily water to cleanse them, you and Shouto set about moving the dresser further from the wall to accommodate both your bodies as you squinted thoughtfully at the letters.

"They're really hard to make out through the shimmery paint," you grumble, waving a candle around to see if a different light position would make it any easier to read.

It didn't.

"I think that's the point," Shouto hummed thoughtfully. "They used paint and a dresser to hide the message, so they really didn't want us to discover what's written here."

You both stared at the shimmery wall for a moment longer before inspiration suddenly struck.

"I have an idea," you said, wobbling away to the other side of the room on stiff legs and returning moments later, the box of drugged chocolates tucked underneath your arm.

"Take one," you instructed Shouto as you pulled the lid off the box; selecting a dark chocolate truffle for yourself.

"I know things seem bad, but poisoning ourselves isn't the answer. Yet," Shouto added grimly, staring down into the box with a deep frown.

"I'm not gonna- ugh! Just watch!" You huff, placing your truffle onto the wall and smearing it over the letters with firm strokes. The chocolate transferred easily onto the wall, leaving brown streaks across the pink paint but skipping over the recessed grooves of the letters.

"Clever," Shouto smirked proudly, a sight that you stared at for longer than was strictly appropriate; permanently etching every last detail of this moment into your memory.

Chocolates in hand, you and Shouto began scribbling across the wall like two poorly supervised toddlers, the message slowly coming into focus as the number of truffles in the box quickly dwindled. The message was much larger than you had originally anticipated and you were a bit worried that you were going to run out of chocolates before the message was fully revealed. But in the end you were left with half a truffle and a bit of doggerel poetry outlined in cocoa:

A love confession you must tell,

If you wish to break the bottle's spell.

Sweet nothings alone just will not do,

You're trapped until your words are true.

"Well, I don't know what I was expecting but it certainly wasn't rhyming couplets," you admit, rubbing your sticky hands onto a nearby tufted throw pillow.

"The bottle," Shouto stated confidently, following your lead and wiping his hands on a decorative curtain. "The one I opened in my office earlier. The poem leads me to believe that we're inside of it."

"I- I suppose that makes sense," you admit, thinking back on the bottle you'd briefly seen. "You opening that bottle is the last thing I remember before waking up here."

"Removing the stopper must have been the trigger for the Quirk that trapped us to activate."

"That's why Ms. Yokubou was so insistent about getting into your office! She knew about the bottle!" You gasped, spinning to face Shouto. He didn't look too surprised by the revelation.

"She knew what the bottle did and likely intended to be here in your place," he nodded somberly. "Ms. Yokubou is definitely the most likely suspect."

"Really?" You scoff incredulously. "'The most likely suspect?' It's blatantly obvious that she's the one behind all of this."

"I took an oath to uphold the presumption of innocence. Ms. Yokubou isn't guilty unless she's proven so in a court of law," Shouto insisted with a sour look on his face, his morals at war with what he knew was true.

"Well, I didn't take an oath," you informed him proudly, puffing out your chest and resting your hands on your hips. "So I'm free to say that she's a creepy, rotten, low-down, guilty, bitch."

"Yes, you certainly can say that," Shouto grinned brilliantly. You tried to return a smile with similar intensity, but considering how rough you looked in the ceiling mirror after a full day of work and captivity you're positive it's no match for Shouto's natural radiance. But from the small sparkle you saw appear in the corner of his eye, it seemed that Shouto appreciated your efforts just the same.

"Are your hands starting to tingle?" You ask worriedly, staring down at the sharply prickling skin on your fingers.

"We need to wash the remaining chocolate off. Now," Shouto ordered, shoving the vase you had rinsed your hands off earlier into your lap; dunking his hands into the water after yours.

"I wonder what was in those truffles," you mutter in concern as Shouto's fingers worked defly over your skin, doing his best to scrub the chocolate residue off with firm strokes. You tried to return the favor, poking at the back of his hand with your clumsy digits, but it was growing increasingly difficult to will your fingers to bend.

"Likely just a tranquilizer," Shouto assured you, pulling one of your hands out of the water to check on how clean it was before lowering it back into the vase with a frown. "Whoever put me in here-"

"Ms. Yokubou," you filled in.

"-seems to have wanted me docile, not dead."

You tried to focus on the muted feeling of Shouto's hand on yours instead of the red hot anger roiling in your belly. It was a testament to the strength of your ire that you barely registered Shouto's gentle caresses.

Shouto had taken it upon himself to push the dresser out of the way so you could more clearly see the poem on the wall from a more comfortable position on the bed. The dresser had tipped in the process, drawers falling open and spilling their contents out across the ground; shiny new dental tools and lacy-edged corsets mixing together in a heap on the carpet. You had thought it had been an accident at first, Shouto simply underestimating his returning strength, but then you had seen the malicious glee spread thickly across his face and understood it had been a calculated act of wanton destruction. He dropped down onto the bed beside you, glaring at the mess he had made on the floor.

"Oops," he said unapologetically, kicking the pile of lingerie with a sneer. In a show of solidarity, you swept your arm across one of the bedside tables, sending an oil diffuser and a copy of the Kama Sutra crashing to the floor.

"Oh nooo," you said flatly, swiping at a teetering wine glass that escaped your first attack. "Clumsy me!"

Shouto's smile was a forced thing, too-fast and insincere compared to his normal grins. You watched as his shoulders slumped, head hanging down towards his chest as he ran his hands through his hair in frustration.

"I hate it here," he admits after a long moment of quiet. "I can't stop thinking about what could- what would have been happening to me. And I- I just-"

His foot jostled one of the hooked dental probes laying on the carpet, both your and Shouto's eyes locked onto it as it skittered across the floor and hit the baseboard with a tinny clang.

"We need to get out of here," you swallow thickly, hand blindly reaching out for Shouto's across the bed. He squeezed your fingers too tightly, your joints aching in protest; but you didn't tell him to stop.

"So, if we're interpreting this poem correctly then Ms. Yokubou-"

"The unconfirmed suspect," Shouto corrected.

"-the suspect intended keep you trapped in here and torture you until you were convinced you loved them."

"That seems to be the case, yes."

"That's so fucking awful, Shouto."

He didn't respond, staring thoughtfully at the words on the wall with a furrowed brow instead.

"Ms. Yoku- I mean, whoever did this obviously has some sort of feelings for you, but not really? They want you, but not the actual you," you ranted, the bubble of rage you had kept pushed down inside had finally built up enough pressure that it was spilling out against your will as you stomped around the room. You took a special sort of pleasure in grinding the discarded lilies down into mush with every lap you took.

"They don't care about what you think or- or feel, they just care that they get what they want, even if it destroys you. I just- I don't understand? How can they believe that they love you when they're so willing to hurt you?" you whispered brokenly, furious and devastated on Shouto's behalf.

"And I know that is an emotionally charged situation for you, but could you please say something?" You beg, sagging down onto the bed beside him, exhausted from your outburst. "If you don't, I'm pretty sure I'm just going to keep talking until I drive us both crazy. Which, admittedly, doesn't seem like it would be a very long trip at this point-"

"It can't be that simple," Shouto suddenly blurts out, putting an end to your rambling.

"What's not simple? Driving you crazy? Because I have some high school teachers with stories you wouldn't believe."

"No, not that," Shouto said, waving a hand dismissively. "I'm talking about the poem."

"What about it?" you asked, squinting at the rhyme inquisitively.

"It says that only a true love confession will break the bottle's spell and, presumably, set us free."

"Yeah, and that's sort of a huge issue? A forced love confession is just coercion," you explain. "You can't create genuine affection like that."

"Exactly," Shouto agreed, "And that would be a problem if the kidnapper was the one stuck in here with me. But instead, by some incredible stroke of luck or karma or kismet; I'm in here with you."

Between your persistent headache, bone-deep exhaustion, and the thick fog of panic blanketing your mind there was no possible way that you were interpreting Shouto's words correctly.

"What do you mean?" you said, swallowing thickly as you braced your heart for the let down you knew was coming; the walking back of his words, the incredulous laughter once he realized what he was mistakenly insinuating.

"I had a plan for this," Shouto sighed, a melancholy sort of sound. "There was supposed to be dinner. And music. And flowers. Not lilies, though," he rushed to assure you.

"Thank goodness. I don't think I ever want to see another lily again for as long as I live."

"Same here," he laughed dryly. "But we would have had a good evening together. Better than this one, at least. And at the end of the night I would take your hand in mine, just like this," Shouto said, cradling your hand between both of his. "And I'd finally tell you what I've been too scared to tell you for weeks now."

"Which is what?" you whisper breathlessly, precariously hanging on his every word by your fingertips; moments away from slipping and plummeting down into something- some feeling that couldn't possibly be real. You weren't that lucky. You weren't that anything, really.

"I'd tell you the truth," Shouto promised, his eyes shining with a soft sincerity that made your chest ache with longing. "That I am totally, irrevocably, head-over-heels in love with you."

You opened your mouth to respond- how exactly, you weren't entirely sure. Cheer, maybe? Cry? Ask him if he was serious? But the actual sound that came out was a prolonged scream as every muscle in your body twisted and burned.

And then, all you saw was darkness.

You woke up suddenly, contorted into an uncomfortable position on the floor again. But there was one immediately noticeable difference between waking up in the bottle and now, and that was the fact that your limbs were hopelessly tangled up with Shouto's; the two of you twisted together like a fleshy pretzel.

"We have to stop meeting like this," Shouto smiles down at where your head is pillowed on his chest, his heart thumping quickly beneath your ear.

"Nope, not allowed," you mumble in complaint, trying to push yourself off of his chest. You weren't able to make much protest with how loudly your muscles were protesting, so you just settled back down and tried to ignore how your heart skipped a beat when you felt his arm squeeze you tightly into his side. "I'm the funny one here. You're not allowed to have better one-liners than me."

"Apologies," Shouto said, your body rocking gently along with the quiet laughter that shook his chest. "I did have a bit of time to think of it though. It's taken you a little while to come around."

"You didn't move me?"

"No? Why would I?" Shouto asked, tilting his head to the side easily; obviously less inhibited by the soreness of his muscles than you were.

"Well, we're out of the bottle now so I thought…" you trailed off uneasily, unsure of what words you could put together to push this conversation along. It wasn't like you really wanted to talk about what happened; to pop the bubble of happiness that was filled to almost bursting inside of your chest. But you knew that the longer you drew it out the harder it would be to face reality; to acknowledge that Shouto discovered a loophole, a convenient lie he could believe just enough to free you both from that bottle.

Maybe he just loved you like a friend? Or worse, like a sister? Maybe that kind of affection was enough to have met the nebulous requirements for the Quirk to deactivate? The poem didn't have any footnotes that you could see, so maybe it wasn't quite as strict as you and Shouto had theorized. Maybe you could have gotten away with professing your love of Rock and Roll or sleeping in on the weekend?

You wish you would have experimented a bit more inside of the bottle and maybe saved yourself the devastating experience you were currently thrust into: staring literal heartbreak in the face as you gazed helplessly up at Todoroki Shouto.

"Thought what?" Shouto asked, the edges of his sweet grin slowly dipping down into the start of a frown.

"Well, we're out of the bottle now. So I don't expect- I won't hold you to anything you said. I know it was to just get us out. So, uh- thank you for that. But you don't have to keep pretending. It's okay," you assure him with a watery smile. You'd never been particularly skilled at lying and were even worse at it when you were emotional, and right now you were feeling very emotional.

But instead of looking relieved like you had expected him to be, Shouto looked positively exasperated; his face creased into a deep scowl.

"You don't believe that I have feelings for you?"

"Well, I mean, not like you said- not romantically," you explain, panicking internally as his expression grew even more displeased. "Just- like a friend?"

"I see," Shouto huffed. You could practically feel yourself withering under the intensity of his disappointed stare. "Is that how you see me? As just a friend?"

"I mean, we are friends, right?" You laugh nervously, growing increasingly concerned that this conversation might just torpedo your entire relationship into smithereens.

"Yes, of course. Very good ones I think," Shouto said, his hand coming up to cradle the side of your jaw gently to keep your attention firmly on him. "But is that all we are?"

"I wasn't aware there was any other option," you whisper honestly, your gaze jumping between each of his eyes, trying to see if one color was less intimidating than the other. But both gray and green burned with a deep intensity you couldn't fully comprehend.

"Really?" Shouto deadpanned. "I've been inviting you to stay with me in my office alone, after hours, for months now, and you didn't take that as a hint that I was interested in you?"

"I just thought you wanted some company while you ate," you admit quietly, still staring at Shouto much like a deer caught in a set of headlights. "And that you were like, really bad at crossword puzzles."

Shouto groaned miserably, closing his eyes and letting his head fall back onto the floor with a loud thunk.

"I didn't want just anyone's company," he sighed. "I wanted yours, specifically."

"Oh," you replied, stunned. "Then why didn't you, you know? Ask me out? Let me know that you were interested?"

"I thought about taking a more direct approach," Shouto says, staring up at the ceiling despondently. "But my friends told me it was inappropriate to ask someone out while they're working."

"That's true," you conceded. "So what was your plan then, exactly?"

"I was trying to make you relaxed enough in my presence where you would feel comfortable asking me out,"

Shouto said, shifting uncomfortably at your incredulous expression.

"You could have waited one thousand years and I still wouldn't have been able to muster up enough courage to ask you out," you laugh dryly. "But even if your plan had worked, I still signed an employee code of conduct when I started working at Über Munch. I'm not allowed to flirt with customers."

Shouto hummed thoughtfully, tightening his arm around you once more. "I guess maybe it's a good thing we got stuck in that bottle together then, huh?"

"Too soon," you chastised him immediately, eyes wide as you shook your head quickly from side-to-side.

"Right. Of course. Sorry."

Once you were able to move without crying in pain, you and Shouto had reluctantly pried your bodies apart and started acting like responsible adults. Shouto did his official Hero thing and reported your bungled kidnapping attempt to the police while you called in to work.

You'd ended up needing to use one of the Personal Victim Leave days you'd been accruing, which was fine. This was the exact sort of scenario you were supposed to use them for, but you still felt a little bitter because you had been hoping to cash all of them out at the end of the year to pay for holiday gifts for your family.

The next few hours were a blur of commotion as you were interrogated by so many detectives you were pretty sure they had to be bussing them in from the surrounding precincts just to have the opportunity to interview Shouto. But the attempted kidnapping of a high-profile hero was likely a large enough case to elevate someone's career into the big leagues, so you couldn't fault them for their efforts; as self serving as they likely were.

Eventually, you and Shouto had been escorted out of his office so they could start photographing the crime scene; officers delivering you down to a line of ambulances waiting to take you to the hospital for an After Quirk Exposure check-up. All you really wanted to do was go home and sleep for a week, but everyone had a story about some second cousin's friend who skipped the routine examinations and ended up turning inside out or something hours later.

Most of those stories were probably urban legends or some sort of Hero Commission propaganda, but either way they made you just wary enough to agree to climb onto the gurney and accept a juice box and pack of cookies from the paramedic without raising a fuss.

You and Shouto were separated at the hospital, the attending physicians swiveling your gurneys off into separate wings. Shouto was whisked away to the private Hero section of the hospital while you were shuffled into the ER with the rest of the civilians, shoved into a curtained off nook and left to your own devices with a small cup of ice water and a dwindling phone battery.

It was a testament to your exhaustion that you were able to fall asleep even with the cacophony of sounds from the ER filtering in behind your privacy curtain, waking only when the nurses arrived to wheel you around the hospital for one screening or another.

You were on your way back from your third exam, some sort of organ scanning thing you had never bothered to learn the name of, when you noticed that the nurse had pushed you past the corridor that led back to your shrouded nook in the emergency department and towards the elevators.

"Am I going for another test?" You asked in confusion, watching as she swiped her key card across a scanner mounted next to the elevator control panel, selecting one of the numerous unmarked buttons after the scanner accepted her ID with a high-pitched beep.

"No, you're all done for now. We're just waiting for final results to come in," the nurse explained, pushing you out of the elevator doors the moment they opened far enough. "It's been requested that you be moved into a room for security reasons."

"I don't understand. Am I in danger-," your query was cut off as you were pushed into your new hospital room where Shouto was awaiting your arrival, neatly tucked into his own hospital bed. You could tell from the overcrowded cluster of monitoring equipment that they had shoved his bed closer to the far wall to make room for your gurney to be positioned next to his.

"Ah, there you are," Shouto smiled in relief as the nurse engaged the locks on your bed wheels. "Thank you so much for your assistance, Nurse Yamamoto."

The nurse blushed tomato red under Shouto's direct attention, doing her best to hide her burning cheeks behind her clipboard.

"It- ah, it was nothing. Just um, ring the buzzer if you need anything and I'll be back to check on you in an hour?" She stammered nervously, the end of her sentence pitching up into a questioning tone.

"That sounds perfect. Thank you again," Shouto beamed, flashing his teeth in a wide grin that stunned the poor dear so severely she attempted to exit the room by pushing on a door that had to be pulled to open. You grimaced internally in sympathy for her, knowing full well that she would replay that fumbled exit over in her mind every night before she fell asleep.

Once the nurse was safely down the hallway, the squeak of her rubber soled shoes far enough away that you knew she wouldn't overhear, you spun to Shouto with a disbelieving look carved deeply into your face.

"Did you just charm a nurse into letting us be roomies?"

"Please. I didn't just charm a nurse," Shouto scoffed, crossing his arms defensively across his chest. "I also lied a little."

"I can't believe you're this big of a menace," you laugh, flopping back as far as the stiff hospital pillows would allow. "Your PR team must be incredible."

"They better be, for how much I pay them."

You hummed in acknowledgement, looking around his room with a critical eye, noting the immaculate condition of all of the decor and medical equipment, as well as the humongous TV mounted on the wall opposite you; a muted nature documentary flashing across the screen. A large bouquet of blue and yellow flowers were laid next to Shouto's bedside, as well as a carafe of some hot beverage; likely coffee based on the small mountain of tiny creamer tubs stacked up next to it.

"So there's no actual security risk then?" You mumble quietly, fiddling with the edge of your thin knit blanket, doing your best to swallow down the worried lump in your throat. "No sign of Ms. Yokubou or anything?"

"Nothing yet, I'm afraid," Shouto admitted, his face pinching tight with guilt as he examined your anxiously twisting hands. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to worry you unnecessarily."

"It's alright. I've just never been someone's potential target before. It's got me feeling sort of jumpy."

"Understandably," Shouto was quick to assure you. "I guess I'm so accustomed to this sort of thing I didn't really stop to think of how scary it might seem to someone less used to it."

Shouto averted his gaze to the TV for a few moments, flipping to the programming guide channel to allow you the illusion of privacy to collect yourself while you discreetly dabbed the tears pricking the corner of your eyes with the edge of your top sheet.

"So, uh- what was your motivation for moving me in with you then?" You ask, trying to set the conversation back on track after your emotional derailment. "Did you already miss being stuck in a room with me that much?"

"Not quite," Shouto huffed in amusement. "I came to the realization that this was the first time that you and I were both off the clock in the same building. I thought it would be a shame to not make the most of this opportunity to legally fraternize."

"I'm…not sure I'm entirely following your line of thought here," you say, brow furrowed. "You want to what, exactly? Have a date in the hospital?"

"That was my intention, yes," Shouto admitted, rubbing at the back of his neck bashfully. "But hearing you say it out loud makes me realize how silly it sounds."

"No!" You say quickly, shooting up stalk straight in bed, startling you both with the ferocity of your cry. "It's not silly at all! It's kind of sweet, actually. That you can't wait to spend time with me."

"It's just- things are going to get really busy for the both of us now that we're tangled up in a criminal investigation. And I'm not sure when we'll eventually get the chance to be together again,"

"You're right. We should make the best of the time we have together," you nod, rolling onto your side to face Shouto more directly. "And I can say with full confidence that this is the nicest place you've ever taken me. There's a bathroom here and everything!"

"There is!" Shouto laughed excitedly, reaching over to pull the flowers at his bedside into his arms. "And I got these for you, too."

"Really? They're beautiful, thank you," You beam, tugging the collection of blue blossoms into your arms, running a finger softly across a fuzzy green leaf. You notice a card tucked in amongst the blooms and pull it with a quick tug; snorting in amusement at the cartoon stork carrying a blue-bundled baby printed on the front.

"Ughhhhh," Shouto groaned when you showed him the card, scrubbing a hand down his face in frustration. "I asked the gift shop for any bouquet without pink flowers or lillies and this is what they sent. Give it to me and I'll throw it away."

"No!" You cry, pressing the card against your chest away from Shouto's wiggling fingers. "It's mine now, you gave it to me. I'm going to scrapbook it."

"Please don't," he begged, leaning over the rail of his bed to make a closer swipe at the card.

"Or maybe I'll laminate it. Keep it in my wallet for good luck," you muse with a hum. "Would you sign it for me? That would really increase its sentimental value."

"You want my autograph?" Shouto asked, arm paused mid-grab as he stared at you searchingly- for what, you weren't entirely sure.

"No. I want you to sign the card you gave me," you clarify, pulling the card away from your chest and sliding it into his hand. "That's just good manners."

Shouto pulled his hand back, eyes softer than they were just a moment ago as he opened up the side table drawer and pulled out a hospital issue pen.

"You're right. I apologize for my oversight," he said, quickly scrawling on the inside of the card with a speed born from years of practice. You snatched the card back from him as soon as he held it out, excited to see the message he wrote.

'Congratulations, it's a boy!

(The boy is me)

Love, Shouto'

"I'm definitely laminating this," you whisper to yourself, cheeks aching from the force of your smile as you tuck the card safely back into the bouquet and clutch it to your chest protectively.

"So, what else do you have planned for our date?"

Dinner was up next, not because you were necessarily very hungry with the swarm of nervous butterflies you had fluttering around in your stomach; but because a member of the kitchen staff had let themselves into your room to take your meal requests.

"You know, I sort of thought by how much fancier the Hero rooms are that you guys would get better food too," you say, spooning another mouthful of the thin vegetable broth into your mouth.

"All the hospital food comes from the same kitchen. The meals for Heroes aren't any better in quality, but we are permitted to have as much as we want," Shouto explained, prying the lid off of a pudding cup and giving it a tentative sniff. You decide to follow his lead and shift your focus to your dessert, a parfait that was mostly yogurt with a bit of granola sprinkled on top.

"This is actually turning out to be a pretty good date," you say when the TV starts showing a commercial for a local refrigerator repair service.

"You think so?"

"I do," you assure him. "We've even hit two of the major date features you mentioned before. We're having dinner together and you got me flowers. The only thing missing is the music."

"I can fix that," Shouto says as he reaches for the TV remote and punches in the code for a music channel. A music video starts playing; starring a man with bright green skin wearing sunglasses on the beach, flanked by a line of women in bikinis.

"Girl, I think your Quirk must be Twerkin', because your booty really knows how to work it-," The man sang, slapping the right buttcheek of the dancer closest to him.

"So romantic," you sigh, holding a hand to your chest dramatically.

"I'm changing the channel," Shouto grimaced as the camera panned away from the singer and zoomed in on the background dancer's wobbling butts.

"You can't! 'Twerkin' Quirk' is officially our song now, Shouto!" You laugh in delight, soaking in his misery like sunbeams on the first warm day of Spring.

"Everytime I think something else couldn't possibly go wrong, it does," Shouto lamented, a pained look on his face as they began spraying the bikini dancers with champagne while they gyrated next to a sports car with spinning neon rims.

"It sure does seem that way," you agree, fishing out the lone blueberry from the bottom of your parfait. "I'm probably going to have to reevaluate my opinion of this date now."

"Has it finally sunk low enough to earn the 'Worst Date Ever' award?" He sulked, flinging the remote down onto the end of his bed irritability.

"It's definitely cinched the nomination for 'Most Memorable'," you tell him with a smirk, putting your dessert cup down so you could reach across the space between your beds to offer him your hand. The feel of his hand in yours was already a familiar thing; your fingers at home twined together. "But I don't think any date could be bad, so long as you're with me."

"I think you're giving me too much credit, but I'll take it," Shouto grunts softly, deflating down into his pillows to watch the finale of the music video.

"I'll let you take as much credit as you want so long as you take me on another date."

"Agreed," Shouto replied instantly. "And I promise, it'll be better than this."

"I don't think you'll ever be able to top this," you laugh brightly, heart thumping happily as you bury your nose into your flowers and watch as the singer on screen smears oil across his chest while a confetti cannon fires behind him.

"But I can't wait to see you try."

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