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punemy-spotted · 4 years ago

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Of Blackbirds and Barons: Chapter 1

Chapter 1: You Make The Rain Fall Harder

Relationships: Mob!Helmut Zemo x Reader; CEO!Billy Russo x Reader; Mob!Helmut Zemo x Reader x CEO!Billy Russo

Warnings: Non-con/Dub-con; Dark!Fic; Mob and Mafia Elements; Character Death (Minor and Major); Threesome; Possessive/Obsessive Characters; Blackmail/Coercion; Kidnapping; Mentions of War; Human Rights Violations; Contract Killing; Mafia AU; Possible Dead Dove: Would Not Eat; Complete Disregard for Actual Rules of Journalism and Style Guides; Other Chapter-Specific Warnings May Apply

Chapter Specific Warnings: Non-con; Drugging/Date-Rape; Fingering (F-Receiving); Vaginal Sex; Unprotected Sex; Possible Breeding Kink; Kidnapping; Obsessive/Possessive Zemo; Dark!Zemo; Human Rights Violations; Discussion of Destruction of Novi Grad and Sokovia; Dead Dove: Do Not Eat

Chapter Summary: The problem with having sympathy for the Devil is that he will drag you down to Hell regardless.

Author’s Notes: Another series! Because I can’t get enough of Mob!AUs! Zemo makes his dark entrance. And this IS dark, so read at your own discretion. As always, all of my work is 18+ ONLY, MINORS DO NOT INTERACT.

Masterlist

The long tradition of the Duchy of Sokovia, that which once stood the test of time against the Tsars of Russia, began to crumble long before its borders did, its sweeping architecture and decadent mystery giving way to the sharp lines of Brutalism and the characteristic industrialism of the Eastern Bloc. Still, the Sokovian people managed to maintain their identity in the face of a new kind of empire, bringing greenery and art to a brisk, concrete world.

There is no Sokovia now, not the way one would think, but there are still Sokovians scattered around the world, clinging to the traditions of their once-home and searching for a banner to be united under.

A banner carried by a man like Helmut Zemo.

The caret blinks back at you with a mocking sort of finality, a metronome counting down the seconds to your ultimate frustration. Once. Twice. Thrice — you lose count, staring at the screen until your vision crosses and the words blur together, until only his name remains.

Zemo.

Baron Helmut Zemo.

Your notes are expansive, excessive, papers strewn about you and you look at each scribbled anecdote, each carefully dictated word, each photograph you have annotated until it is more red marker than actual picture and you are… frustrated.

Where do you put all that passion? He asked you over champagne and charcuterie.

You know this man.

You know this man like you know your own soul. You know this man who has bared his soul to you in turn and how are you supposed to impress upon the world that he has shown you the broken heart beating slow and painful in his chest in just a thousand words?

There is nothing. Nothing you can do, nothing you can saywhich could even begin to encompass the horrors which he has experienced and now as you painstakingly tap out word after word describing the grand beauty of his apartment, you wonder if this really was what your life was meant to be.

These are… fluff.

This is a man who has managed to unite an entire fractured country under his royal banner and yet the project wants to know about the indoor garden of his apartment, wants to photograph him in fine suits and know his haircare routine and this can’t be it. This can’t be the face of the man you see everywhere now, moreso since you picked up the assignment, purple-masked and surrounded by brass wings, over the homes of Sokovians all over New York.

And not just there.

I am a man, he told you with his hand on your thigh, But I can become an idea. And an idea is immortal.

You let your eyes skim over the photographs you took, a collection of banners and graffiti and billboards all proclaiming the need for the Sokovian people to come together and heal. To show that their small country — broken and divided in the wake of an attack by a rich megalomaniac’s private military — could not be taken down simply because its borders had been erased and its capitol turned to rubble.

We live in an age of information, and through information we are boundless.

It should terrify you.

It does terrify you.

But inside of that terror is a sick fascination with the man, isn’t there? That’s the trouble with you investigative types — peel back the layers enough and you find yourself capable of feeling sympathy for anyone.

He flaunts his power, and yet it’s innocent. Is it so wrong, then, to want to bring my country back to its glory?

No, you remember answering shakily, but not as well as you remember the pinpricks of heat his fingers left on your skin when that gloved hand brushed over you arm.

Breathe deep, hover fingers over your keyboard and try not to feel like you owe him the weight of the world. He approved of this, even suggested a word count and a topic of conversation — any chance to put his name out into the consciousness of the public, it seemed, to raise interest for the gallery by raising interest for the cause. Make it indulgent. My people, they enjoy art. They enjoy knowing that their leaders have preserved the past for them.

So do it.

… Baron Zemo’s New York penthouse is its own garden amongst a sea of steel and stone, a veritable museum of priceless artworks rescued from what remained of Sokovian museums and ministry buildings. It is, in its own way, an ode to the spirit of Sokovia, which lives on in the hearts and minds of its people around the world. He displays artworks of the many displaced Sokovians, gesturing broadly to a 3D model of an art gallery he intends to have built near the memorial at Novi Grad — with the consent of the Slovakian government — and speaking fondly of his intention to showcase the lost art of Sokovia as a reminder that loss of land cannot be the loss of an identity…

The artworks, they will be painful at first. But the gallery will showcase more and more, and eventually we will have hope.

He waves a gloved hand over the pieces he has preserved. Sokovian history. Scenic expanses, fields and flowers, a city skyline dotted with domed cathedrals. Each painting marred some way too, you can see when you look close. Patched canvas, the dusting of ash and rubble in the corner of an ornate frame, a trick of the light revealing repainting to cover up damage.

A stone hoof sits on a bookshelf, The attached horse and rider blown to rubble in the attack. I’m told it was of Emperor Ferdinand, but my archivists have not been able to confirm, he tells you as he stands behind you, his hand resting soft on the small of your back.

Come. There is more to be seen.

More to be experienced.

His living room is a garden.

It smells like fresh jasmine the moment you walk in, ivy climbing the walls and you swear you can hear birdsong from more than the pigeons cooing outside. Flower arrangement is an often looked down upon art, but the gardens in Sokovia were impeccable. My father won several awards for his pieces before his…

He trails off and you watch him, seeing the pain paint his face as openly as if he meant for you to watch the facade crack and then back to that placid, pleasant calm, a serpentine smile on his face as he extends to you a hand and guides you to the open air of his balcony and bids you Sitbids you Enjoy bids you I have looked forward to his meeting.

It is a pleasure to meet you, Baron Zemo, you begin politely, tucking a lock of hair behind your ear and trying to avoid the way his eyes follow your fingers, feeling seen, We’re grateful for the honor of your patronage for this piece, we know you could have —

Nonsense, he cuts you off with a wave of his hand, gesturing to his butler and then leaning back comfortably in his seat as champagne and various cheeses are brought forth, You are my guest, and I am grateful you agreed to come meet me here, to assist with my… project. Now. Please, enjoy, I do not want to treat this as strictly business.

Is that why he had you come alone?

Don’t.

Don’t dwell on it.

It happens all the time, right? It has to.

A somewhat reclusive man, not keen to be in the limelight, in need of public attention to achieve his goals — you are a means to an end and he is your means to an end, surely you can understand.

Is that why he wipes the honey from your lips and kisses it off his fingers?

This is going to be a difficult conversation and you know it. You can only gush over houseplants and rose décor for so long before it becomes… trite, before you’re a part of the problem, painting a shining veneer over a half-decade old injustice

But he is warm, warm and friendly and you cannot help but laugh to his response when you draw attention to the architecture to draw attention from your blush — Very modern, yes. We are in New York, after all, and the old ways are fine for country houses but not so fine, for sunny penthouse apartments —not noticing the way he looks like he’s just smelled blood at the sound of it, the narrowing of his eyes and the hiding of his inscrutable expression behind a sip of champagne.

Well then. Shall we get started?

Of course.

Why don’t we start with your plans for opening night?Your notepad is out, the recorder sitting in front of you to pick up the sound of your voice and his, ready to commit everything to memory.

Of course. We cannot deny the… elephant in the room, I think you Americans call it. There are many who took pictures of the aftermath of the attack, and not enough who have seen it immortalized…

… The tragedy of Novi Grad and the consequential absorption of Sokovia into its surrounding countries weighs heavy in the Baron’s living room, draped in ivy and jasmine and hanging vines but also in photographs of what was left after a private military corporation chose to turn human lives into a war game.

No one knows who Ultron is, only that he is dangerous, that his technology rivals that of the SHIELD Syndicate’s Tony Stark, that he is willing to ally himself to the highest bidder, and that he is fully capable of unleashing endless destruction upon the world…

You will never forget the photographs he shows you, all that death and destruction in the golden light of his balcony, all that warmth and all you can see is cold bodies bathed in concrete dust.

They call to you, when you close your eyes — answer for our crimes — and you remember the way his voice changes too, so soft and solemn, the brush of fingers against yours when you touch the bombed out shell of a country mansion My home, in Sokovia, to the gray-and-blood horror which forms the centerpiece of his display, and you remember your research too, that the Baron is a widow, that his title is inherited from the most tragic of circumstances, that his son was an innocent lost in the attack and you are furious too, at the senselessness of it all.

It is a tragedy yet unanswered for, more than half a decade since the dust settled.

That quote sits front and center on your mock-up, wondering if you could make whatever editor who would inevitably rip this piece to shreds — just before publishing its corpse alongside some glamour picture of the Baron his coat — finally see the error of ignoring the tragedy. You won’t, but it’s worth a shot, as you lean back in your chair and stare at the screen again.

Sometimes you think about it.

Watching Novi Grad happen from the comfort and safety of your living room, wrapped in blankets as open war broke out in the capital city of what had once been a crown jewel in an ancient dynasty. A playground, a show of force.

Sometimes you hear the screams.

The blinking carat waits for you to add more to this story, to decide where you want to go.

… The Baron plays a game with his interview, insists on knowing his guests just as we insist on getting to know the enigmatic leader who has risen up a beacon for the displaced people of his homeland. We will not be recreating our answers in this article, as they were of course of a personal nature, but we do thank the Baron for taking the time to get to know us just as he bared his soul, his sorrows, and his hopes to a gaggle of strangers seeking to make him known to the world…

Tell me of you, sweetling.

Me? This interview is about you.

And so I must tell all my secrets for free? No, I insist. A secret for a secret.

He watches you with a hunger, coal-black eyes an invitation. Slide your gaze away or fall and who knows what depths he will drag you into and what you will find there?

No.

Don’t look, don’t look as you sip the tea Oeznik brought when you politely declined the champagne — Another time, probably — and let it brace you with its bitterness, let it clear your head.

Breathe.

You’re in too deep now, trapped in this cave of wonders… and wouldn’t it be worth it? Know him as he knows you, follow the trajectory of the smiling man before you.

What would you like to know?

Tell me how you taste his eyes whisper.

Tell me what it would take says the curve of his fingers over your hand.

Let me put you on display hums the razor-blade of his smile.

Tell me what drives a woman to take on such a … dangerous line of work, is the final inquiry, innocent and curious and gentle and you sip your tea and smile.

Is it dangerous?

You must know how many secrets you uncover — and the lengths the keepers will go to in order to hide them.

If people get hurt, shouldn’t I bring that to light?

How noble of you, he tells you with another hum, with his fingers squeezing yours, with his eyes fixed on the gaze you refuse to send his way, It must be quite thrilling.

Let me thrill you too, sweetling.

Pull away.

Do it.

Pull your hand away, make an act of it, pick up a candied strawberry and press it past your lips, let the sweetness soak your tongue and wash away the bitter thoughts, let yourself be bright and chipper and pretend you are not afraid.

Because you’re not.

Of course you’re not.

You are in control here, you must be in control here.

This is nothing. This is a casual interview with a handsome man in his handsome penthouse, an interview about architecture and art galleries and you were a correspondent once and you are meant to be friendly here, not afraid, so what are you afraid of?

What is it about his coal-dark eyes and too-sharp smile that turns your blood, that sends you back into your hutch, little rabbit, what is it about the way he prowls at the corner of your thoughts that makes you shudder so?

What are you running from?

Who are you running from?

Your turn, sweetling.

Mmh?

Our deal, or have you forgotten already?

Yes. You have.

It’s his eyes, you keep insisting to yourself. They drag you in, so dark it feels like you’re drowning in the void of them, searching for the light at the end of the tunnel.

It’s a chase.

It’s what you’re good at.

Right — I’m sorry, I’m…

You blink.

Once.

Twice.

Thrice.

The fog in your thoughts doesn’t fade, confusion crossing over your features and ill delight crossing over his. All you had was tea, tea and some of the candied fruit his butler brought for your enjoyment, how can you feel so…

Hazy?

So…

Upturned?

Something clatters behind you and you realize it’s the chair you were sitting on as you stand, unsteady and abrupt, lost in the moors of your own frantic thoughts and there is his hand on your elbow, so careful and soft and there are his lips before yours, so…

Tempting.

Somewhere, a woman croons to you of falling rain and rushing blood and the room does spin round as you stand still in the open air of a desire that is yours and not your own all at once. Shhh, shhh, let me help you whispered in your ear, a hand to your cheek and you…

You blink.

Reality flows into view like a sudden bath of ice water. Jerk away from his iron grip, raise your hands and try to resist, shake your head and N-no, I think. I think I need to go, I’ll just call a cab —

I cannot let you do that, sweetling. Not when you are finally within my reach.

His hold is steady. Unbreakable, even, as he pulls you close and you might even be dancing with the way his arm wraps around your waist the moment you fall into his chest, Don’t look so afraid, sweetling. No one will hurt you, here.

I will protect you like a jewel.

Your mind is still yours — the dose was just enough — but your limbs? Your limbs are tied to his strings, lost as he guides you right back inside, lost as he gestures for Oeznik to close off the balcony.

Your place is somewhere else now.

You belong underneath me.

He guides you inside, jasmine intoxicating your senses and wisps of smoke seeming to float past your eyes. Reality blends into the fantasy, the Baron and his prize, the gentle touch against your soft cheek, the cradling against his form and he is…

Determined.

A door opens. A portal into another kind of decadence, with soft sheets and softer touches, the sliding of a mouth over yours as your escape clicks shut behind you and you are pressed between wall and man and you are consumed.

Curl your fingers into the lapel of his coat, lose yourself to the pressure of his lips, the sharp nip of teeth against soft flesh. He tastes of champagne and honeycomb and you are saccharine on the tongue, a mess of sighs and admonitions left unsaid.

My precious thing, whispered into your unfocused sighs, I will take such fine care of you.

And you want to protest, want to insist you are free you are uninterested you do not want this man and his hands under the cotton of your blouse but the words tangle on your tongue and instead all you can do is whimper.

Whimper, and hear him chuckle against your skin, a line of kisses drawn from your parted lips along your jaw until he’s found the thrum of your pulsebeat to draw a gasp the moment his teeth scrape against the delicate skin. He must mark you his, after all, and this he will gladly renew, over and over.

Over and over as he draws you to bed, lays you amongst soft cushions and softer sheets, indulges in the soft curves of you in the golden glow of the room. Your clothes — so conservative, so professional, so unnecessary — he makes short work of even with what mild resistance you manage, Shh, shh, do not fight me.

The heat is yours and not yours all at once, warming your skin and leaving you flushed, leaving a trail of burning want along your skin where his fingers trace over you and centering in your core You need this, sweetling, look at you…

Do you?

Is it you who needs this or he, he who has begun to kiss along your skin, he who presses himself between your legs so impatiently? The accusation lives in your thoughts and passes past your lips as a strangled Nnh-no, ignored without ceremony or appeal.

Protests are useless when your tongue can form no words and your limbs can do nothing but writhe, seeking structure in the grip of his sheets as he unravels you with a press of his lips to that soft center of yours, slick with a need you cannot own and yet all yours.

He maps you with a hungry gaze, fingers already tracing the plushness of your folds, gathering slick like he might have been collecting nectar and you watch him pull back, watch him bring his hand to his mouth, watch him wrap lips around his fingertip and drag the taste of you onto his tongue, One day I shall make you taste how sweet you are…

One day, after he has savored you so deeply.

You are so full of words they burst out of you on a normal day and yet nothing you say comes to light, just the bare whimpers and anxious mewls of your needy self as he returns to inspecting, to enjoying, to savoring the reactiveness of your body.

He touches. He touches as if he has owned your body a thousand times, he touches as if you are delicate, as if you are breakable, as if his fingers might lead you to shattering around him here and now and you…

Are so close, already.

So close, trying to find the strength in your muscles to pull away, to speak something beyond desperation with every curl of fingers against your cunt, with every pleased hum he utters in response to the flex of your sex. Shh… no more fighting, sweetling, I know you can be good.

He knows you can be good, he says, with all the innocence of a man trying to convince his cat to stop clawing the couch, not a man presently holding your legs open with one hand at your thigh and the other curling against your walls while you arch your back. It builds, the pressure, it builds and builds and builds and — Let go, sweetling. Let me see your ecstasy.

Is that what this is?

You keen. You keen softly, desperately, brokenly, as skilled fingers find the spot which makes you, which leaves you breathless and flushed and sobbing, a trickle of tears making their path down your cheeks as you bite your own lip to muffle the sounds you did not know you could make. Wordless and pleading and he notices with a cold smile the way you seem to succumb, hips no longer desperate to escape the curling, stretching assault of two — no, three — fingers preparing you for him.

Hips pressing back towards him now, a betrayal of your conscious-yet-barely-focused mind, that lustful sweetness in you taking over and he can only watch in awe. Awe not at your surrender but at your perfection, muttering in a language you do not understand and yet you understand perfectly what he means — he will have you, all of you.

Ah, I shall so enjoy playing with you more, sweetling.

But not now.

Now his impatience outpaces your need and both outpace his cruelty, his desire to see you beg and so instead he pulls back his hand — and hears the desperate N-no, please don’t — to bring a cruel gleam to his dark eyes and even barely conscious as you are you know he is beautiful.

Beautiful and cruel, as he frees himself and curls fingers around his cock, rubs your own slick onto that soft skin, hisses at the very feel of you like it must be a preview to how you will make him throb, and presses himself over you. Presses himself over you, absorbs the cry of pain or anguish or relief which pours from your plush lips with the punishment of a kiss just as he sinks, hips pressing against yours, stretching you with his full length and Now we are one, my sweet.

Now we are one.

He will take fine care of you but you, you take finer care of him, so plush and tight around his senses, so desperate as you cling, so lost and wanton and he kisses away the tears which continue to sting your cheeks and hisses half-sensible promises into your ear — You will always be mine — as he ruts his hips and practically shoves you forward with every thrust, dragging you back with a snarl and the pressure builds.

Builds and you moan, builds and you sob into his hungry mouth, builds and you hold to him as if he were the last thing which made sensein the world builds and you are consumed and he is consuming, and the release is both of yours, spilling deep inside of you and that too is the final shackle upon your soul.

You sit. In the darkness of your office and you remember, worrying the cuticle of your thumb and staring at the words you have typed while your memory drifts back to that hazy reminder.

… A discussion with the Baron about Sokovia reveals a country rich with history. Once a Duchy of the Hapsburgs during the era of the Holy Roman Empire, the deeply Catholic country clings to the Austrian and Italian tradition of ceremony and indulgence. Baron Zemo plays an example of the hymns sung in the many cathedrals which once filled the country, a mixture of Sokovian and Latin to raise the soul to divine heights.

The Baron speaks of the country’s culture with a warm fondness, of how even during Soviet occupation, the people managed to enjoy games like ice hockey, and football (the European, variant, the Baron would like to emphasize), and even spent time indulging in horse racing. Surrounded by Slovakia and the Czech Republic, it keeps a similar tradition, with a twist…

No, that cannot encompass all that you discussed, and yet that is what the recording shows, words traded back and forth which you do not remember, a conversation of laughter and warmth and none of it slots into what your mind tells you occurred.

You erase. You rewrite. It is the same passage, over and over, fingers acting unbidden of your frantic will and eventually you give in, demand to be done with these words and this screen, eventually you desire peace.

… Baron Helmut Zemo is many things. A historian, an ambassador, a politician, an activist. He is a widower, a man trapped in the past, a man with lofty dreams for the future. He wears his sorrow as well as he wears his happiness, and for those who still call themselves Sokovian, he is their shepherd into a new age.

And as the door to your office opens, your keeper.

#baron zemo x reader #helmut zemo x reader #dark!baron zemo x reader #dark!helmut zemo x reader #billy russo x reader #dark!billy russo x reader #helmut zemo smut #dark!fic #mob!AU #helmut zemo #billy russo

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talatomaz · 4 years ago

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crossing paths pt.ii | diana prince x lance!reader

a/n: reader has the powers of telekinesis. i’m not sure if I like how this went tbh but oh well

warnings: mentions of fighting

word count: 2.7k

masterlist | request list | request rules

pt.i | pt.ii

reader is sara & laurel’s younger sister who works with team flash. after her and cisco’s experiment goes sideways, she finds herself trapped on an unknown earth not unlike her own

i do not give you permission to repost or translate my fics on any platform - likes/reblogs are okay and are much appreciated

Home Sweet Home.

Exiting the train station, you exhaled a deep breath and took in your surroundings. Most importantly, the huge sign that had “WELCOME TO CENTRAL CITY” scrawled across the board.

After the events of the day, you’d decided that the best course of action would be to make your way to this Earth’s Central City.

You’d figured they had to have a Star Labs which you knew would hold the necessary equipment you needed to fix the extrapolator or at least the communication function so you could contact Cisco.

Luckily, whilst on your journey, you’d managed to hack into the train’s wireless computer so you could then erase the museum’s security footage from your phone. The footage of your fight with the robbers was the last thing you needed getting out.

Hailing a cab, you made your way to Star Labs, having pocketed one of the maps that detailed the route to the facility from the train station.

In little over 20 minutes, you had arrived. Paying the driver with what little cash you had left, you craned your neck to look up at this Earth’s Star Labs.

It was different to the one back home. Yes, it was modelled fairly similarly but this had a more...robotic feeling and was definitely a lot darker than yours.

Though you supposed that was because this Star Labs seemed to be more full, several employees walking in and out of the building.

Whereas the Star Labs back home, whilst full of technology, was only home to Team Flash and no one else. The risk far too great for ordinary people to see what you were doing.

Entering the building, you quickly donned a white lab coat and went in search for the equipment you needed to fix the breach device.

Finding a secure room, you put on your mask and used your powers to open the door.

As you walked in, you let out a small gasp. The room was larger than you’d expected; filled to the brim with computers and screens all hooked up to one another. Making your way to one of the larger ones, you began writing a line of code. Then you took out the extrapolator, placing it on the table and grabbed some tools that were on the desk.

You started to mend the broken device, remaining careful and alert incase someone was going to catch you. You were about halfway through when you felt a familiar rush of air and found yourself in an unknown area.

Not unlike Star Labs, it was filled with computers and the like but also held training equipment in the far side of the room. Then you felt yourself tied to the back of a chair, staring up at a group of men.

You recognised most of them, except the one that could only be described as a half-man, half-cyborg hybrid.

“Oh fuck.” You murmured to yourself.

This was all you needed.

To be captured by none other than Batman, Superman and the Flash.

“Yes, indeed. Who are you?” Superman asked, his arms crossed over his chest.

You narrowed your brows, analysing each of their outfits. This Earth’s Superman outfit was different to the one back home. Batman, you’d never really met before so you couldn’t comment.

But the most interesting was the Flash’s outfit.

It appeared to be made up of metallic materials whereas Barry’s was made out of intense heat-resistant and abrasion resistant polymer and some other stuff that Cisco had explained to you that you didn’t take note of.

“More importantly, where are you from?”

You heard a familiar voice say behind you.

You turned your body, as best you could since you were confined to a chair, and felt your jaw drop at the female who stood before you.

Not only was she the woman you’d met earlier at the museum but she was freaking Wonder Woman!

“Holy shit. Cisco is going to be so jealous he didn’t come here.”

“Who’s Cisco? And where did you come from?”

Not giving you time to answer, the brunette continued, “I saw you earlier at the Metropolis museum. You told me about the criminals.”

“We tried to pull the security footage but it had mysteriously been erased.” The man you nicknamed Cyborg said. “Why were you at Star Labs?” He asked.

“You know. You gotta let a girl answer before you continue asking questions.” You joked.

“This isn’t a joke. Tell us who you are.” Batman spoke for the first time, his voice coming out hoarse and rough. Probably from a voice distorter.

“I will. As soon as you untie me.”

When the five of them stared at you, you sighed.

“Guess I’ll do it myself then.”

With a flick of your fingers, the ropes that bound you came loose and you stood to face the group.

They immediately went into fighting stances, ready to take you down if need be.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” you scoffed, “I’m not going to hurt you. I just don’t like being tied up. Unless we’re in the bedroom.” You teased, laughing to yourself.

“You’re a meta.” Wonder Woman commented.

Placing your hand in your pockets, you were about to reply when you felt that they were empty.

“Wait, where the hell is the extrapolator?”

“Oh, you mean this?” The Flash said, holding the device in his hand.

“Give that to me.” You ordered, charging your way to the speedster before Batman stood in your way.

“I don’t think so.”

“Barry, that is not something to play around with. Give me that.” You repeated.

“Wait, how do you know my name?” He paused, everyone’s eyes trained on you.

“It’s a long story. Now please, put down that device.” You sighed when he placed it on the table beside him.

When he put it on the surface, he must have accidentally pressed a button because Cisco’s body popped up like a hologram.

“What on Earth?” You heard Wonder Woman say.

“Y/N! Where the hell are you? Woah, is that Batman?!” Cisco’s voice crackled through the device as the hologram glitched.

“Cisco, the device broke. Can you track what Earth I’m on using the GPS?”

“I can try. But I need you to fix the small chip that’s in the extrapolator first.”

The Cisco hologram glitched out and faded away.

“Shit.” You murmured to yourself.

“What do you mean ‘what Earth’? Who are you?” Batman said.

Sighing, you spoke, “I’m not from this Earth.”

“You’re an alien?” Barry exclaimed.

“What? No! The only alien here is Clark.”

You gestured towards the Man of Steel.

“How do you know who I am? Did Lex send you?”

“Oh, please. As if I’d work with that idiot. Besides, I like his sister much better. As I was saying, I’m from an Earth called Earth Prime.”

Then you gave them all a brief explanation of the rebirth of the Universe and how you’d arrived here.

“Ever heard of Everett’s many-worlds theory? Simply put, this Earth is not the only Earth that exists. I come from a parallel Earth where I work with the Flash and several other heroes, including Supergirl and Batwoman. Though no one’s seen Kate in a while.”

Looking into each of their eyes, you could still see apprehension.

Facing Wonder Woman, you held out your wrist, “Use your lasso of truth and you’ll see I’m not lying.”

“How did you-”

She started before you interrupted her, “Do it and then I’ll explain.”

You watched as she removed the rope from her armour and wrapped one end around your wrist.

Your eyes widened as the rope started to glow a bright yellow, the material feeling warm against your skin.

“What I just said was true. And I know about all of you. Your parallel selves are my family and friends back home. And Wonder Woman-”

“You may call me Diana.” She interjected, flashing you a kind smile.

“And Diana,” you corrected, “you’re somewhat of a Legend where I come from. I visited Themyscira once, it was beautiful.”

“My home is hidden from Man’s world. How did you see it?”

“My sister, Sara, travels through time with her team and when I worked with her for a brief period, my friend, Zari, and I, took Helen of Troy to your island to save her. Anyways, you do exist on my Earth but no one really knows of you.”

Diana stared at you for a few moments, her intense glare making you weak in the knees, if you were being honest.

It was as if she was looking right into your soul.

Whatever she saw must have pleased her because her gaze faltered and she removed the lasso from you.

“She’s telling the truth, guys.”

“Thank you. Now I need to fix the extrapolator or I won’t be able to get home.”

“So that little thing can make anyone travel between worlds?” Cyborg asked.

“Yes, exactly.”

“It’s like one of those damned mother boxes that almost destroyed our world.” Bruce said harshly. “We can’t risk having that here. We need to destroy it.”

“Don’t even think about it.” You spat out, your hands clenched at your sides.

You narrowed your eyes, watching for any indication of movement from the vigilante.

The only warning you had was Bruce’s muscle tensing before he reached for the table that held the device.

In a quick motion, you used your powers to throw the former into a pile of boxes to break his fall.

The playboy rose to his feet and charged at you, ignoring the shouts of his team.

You blocked his punch and deflected his kick. Ducking when he swung his arm, you used all your strength to throw him over you.

He reached into his cape and you flung whatever he was about to hurl at you into the wall. He swiped at your legs, making you stumble to the ground. You picked yourself up and when he ran at you, once more, you used your powers of telekinesis to rise in the air above him.

You extended your hand in front of you and lifted him in the air to face you. He struggled within your hold before you both looked down at Diana who’d shouted.

“Enough! Y/N, put Bruce back on the ground.”

With a crash, Bruce fell to the floor whilst you gracefully landed upright on your feet.

“Bruce, this device isn’t as harmful as the mother boxes. And it is her only way home, we cannot destroy it.”

Diana said calmly as Bruce huffed and murmured a curse.

“Listen, Batboy. I will kick your ass again if you don’t shut up.” You said, meaning every word.

“I’m not trying to be hostile here but I only came here to prove my theory which I’ve clearly done so now I just want to repair the device and go home.”

Walking over to the table, you picked up the extrapolator and inspected it. Your heart dropped when you saw a crack in the chip.

You knew that there was no way to fix the locator.

“Y/N, is everything okay?”

Your voice not strong enough to answer, you shook your head. Clicking the communication button, you saw Cisco’s hologram appear again.

“Y/N, have you fixed the GPS chip yet? Y/N, what’s wrong?” Your friend asked in concern.

“The chip’s broken. Majorly so. I’m going to need to replace it but the only replica of the chip is-”

“Here.” Cisco finished. “Is there a Star Labs near you?”

“Yeah, I went there earlier to fix the damage but there wasn’t any chip. I checked.”

“Okay, I just need to create another extrapolator and then somehow come and get you.”

“Cisco, you know that can take weeks.” You sighed.

“Y/N, it’ll be fine. We’ve been stuck on other Earths before. Including with a telepathic gorilla. I doubt there’s any Earth worse than that.” He said, trying to inject some levity in the conversations.

“You’re right. Look, don’t tell the team. You and I both know that they’ll just worry and I don’t need them telling Sara or Dinah either because they’re too protective. Just lie and say that I was missing Laurel and decided to take a vacation.”

“You got it. Stay safe, y/n. And keep this extrapolator with you so I can speak to you.”

“You got it. Bye, Cisco.”

Once again, the hologram faded away and you hung your head.

Cisco was right.

It was not the first time this had happened and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. You were damned if you’d let this get you down.

Clearing your throat, you straightened and faced the group, having forgotten that they were there for the entire exchange.

“Guess I’m going to be in your hair for a little while longer.”

***

It had been 3 weeks since the day you’d arrived on this Earth.

Diana had kindly invited you to stay with her whilst you waited for Cisco to arrive. You remained in constant contact with the latter; he wanted to keep you updated on his progress.

You were still on rocky terms with Bruce, him not appreciating you beating him. He was stubborn and irritating but reminded you of Oliver in that regard.

You helped the Flash with his speed, giving him tips on how to manage it and retain his strength which you’d learned from having closely worked with Barry all these years.

You also got on fairly well with Superman and Cyborg and even met Aquaman who tried to hit on you the moment he saw you.

But out of everyone, you’d grown close to the Amazonian warrior. The first night you’d stayed with her, you found yourself talking to her all through the night until the sun had come up.

She had told you about her family back home and you told her about yours. You supposed it was easier to tell her than anyone else since she’d endured so much loss and pain and understood what it was like to be separated from her family.

“Y/N, you ready to go?”

Interrupted from your thoughts, you turned to face the beautiful brunette who had a soft smile painted on her face.

She had asked you to dinner a few days before, telling you she wanted to give you both a relaxing evening. You had graciously, and rather, immediately accepted the invitation.

The truth was that, over these past few weeks, you found yourself hoarding a crush on the Goddess.

You could have disregarded it as a schoolgirl crush but the last time you’d ever felt like this, was when you were with Thea. But that had ended amicably after she found love with Roy.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

After eating outdoors at a small bistro, the two of you strolled down the street. Then your heart skipped a beat when she slid her hand in yours.

Looking up at her, you saw a gleam in eyes as she smiled at you which you reciprocated. You basked in the feel of her hand against yours, her warmth spreading through you.

Then you both jumped when her phone started to trill in her pocket.

“Diana Prince.” She answered her phone, humming in response before disconnecting the call.

“That was Bruce. He needs us at Star Labs. Both of us.”

She answered when you opened your mouth to ask just that. Closing your mouth, you nodded and ducked with her into an alley so you could both fly to the building.

“What is it, Bruce?” Diana asked as the two of you walked into the facility.

“The mainframe’s been going crazy. It’s as if someone’s breaking in here but no one actually is.” Cyborg answered instead.

Running up to the screen, you noticed the flashing alarms on the screen.

“Well, at least you guys have better security than we do.”

Pulling up the schematics of the building, you furrowed your brows at the thermal energy reading.

Parting your lips, ready to voice your confusion, you jumped back when a breach opened up in front of you.

When it closed, it left two people in its wake.

Barry and Sara.

“Y/N, Cisco told us what happened. We’re here to take you home.”

Glancing behind you, your eyes fell on Diana whose eyes flickered between you and your friends.

“God, I’m going to kill Cisco.”

<- Part 1

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bluegarners · 3 years ago

Note

“I have your loved one” with Dick and Jason?

heyyy, it's finally here haha! i'm slowly getting to each request lol

here it is on ao3

I Have Your Loved One

It’s Thursday.

Time: 23:47, or 11:47 p.m.

Bludhaven has hit a rough patch in its weather, a vicious storm battering against thin windows and overflowing gutters and drains. It’s one of those storms that brings in the water but no lightning, dark clouds blanketing the entire sky, remorseless and relentless in its pursuit of smothering any light from escaping. The clouds don’t muffle anything though, perhaps amplifying instead the downpour that floods through Bludhaven’s streets and alleyways. Its citizens like to think this is a New Jersey hurricane, freshly mutated and traveled from the east coast into their humble, mildew covered city.

Dick likes the rain. Likes the way it pounds against his apartment, screaming to be let in but just barely warded off by seven inches of concrete and steel. The blinds are closed against the windows, and he has towels pushed up against the sills just in case the sealing lets up. Even if they were open, Dick is sure all he would see is another wall of gray and black, dozens of delicate raindrops splattered against his windows.

Because of the storm currently wreaking havoc in his city, Dick has elected to stay indoors for the time being. Eventually, the rain will let up, its pattern being close to about 05:00, and then he’ll suit up and do a quick patrol before work. For now, he’s content with sitting on his couch and listening to the water smack against the old building and run rivers down the sides. He’d like to sleep through it, a free white noise service at the ready, but his mind simply refuses to allow him to rest just yet. In a few hours, he’s sure he’ll come to hate himself for not taking NyQuil or some other drug to help him fall asleep, but for now… Well, it’s nice. The rain is nice. It’s also very loud.

He misses the first call.

His phone is face down on the kitchen table, about eight feet away from where he lays on the couch, mindlessly staring up at the ceiling. It vibrates, buzzing for thirty seconds, before falling silent.

He misses the second call too.

Thunder rumbles through the black sky, its force shaking the windows and only encouraging the downpour. His phone buzzes again during it, quieting after another thirty seconds.

Dick hears the third call. Hears the tail-end of the buzzing, getting up from his position on the couch and padding over to pick up his phone only to miss the last few seconds. He unlocks his phone, checking the number, and feels something cold settle into his gut when he sees no caller ID. It’s the same person though, all three times, but no voicemail.

He’s about to call the number back, just in case it’s someone he knows and they’re ringing from a payphone or something else, when the no caller ID flashes across his screen for the fourth time.

Dick answers on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Is this Richard Grayson?”

“Yes, that’s me. Who is this?”

The voice is feminine, a slight, western accent, longer o’s and a faint drawl. Somewhere from Arizona most likely. Lower register too. Older woman, mid-to-late fifties. Smoker.

“That’s good. I was starting to think I had the wrong number, Richard.”

“Yeah, sorry, I just didn’t have my phone on me. You didn’t say earlier, but who is this?”

“That doesn’t matter too much right now. What does matter, though, is this.”

She pauses. There’s shuffling he can hear on the other side. A faint, second voice in the background. No, three voices. At least two others in the room with the woman. He can hear the sounds of an air condition unit rattling.

“I think you might’ve cut off there. What were—”

“I have your loved one, Richard.”

Lightning cracks through Bludhaven.

His stomach falls onto the floor, pooling around his ankles. The storm outside grinds to a halt, the quiet louder than any thunder it’s ever managed to produce, and there’s a high pitched ringing reverberating inside his skull. Dick thinks he might be sick.

“What?” he chokes, the air in the room suffocating and weighing down his lungs. “What did you say?”

“I have your loved one,” the woman repeats, calm and slow. “Your brother, actually. Then again, he tells me you aren’t related by name nor blood, so we’ll settle for a loved one.”

“What do you want?” Dick demands, already scrambling to get to his computer, find where they’ve taken Jason. Find his brother.

“He did say you weren’t one for small talk,” the woman carries on, unhurried and unconcerned. “Your brother isn’t either, hardly said a word all this time.”

“Can I speak to him?”

There’s a small huff on the other end of the call, exhalation and a sigh leaving the woman’s mouth. A cigarette. She’s smoking during this conversation, blowing the smoke into the receiver.

“I don’t know,” she finally answers. There. Dick has his general location. Still in Gotham. He needs the tracker to be more precise though. It’s taking time though. Too much. “Your brother here was pretty convinced you wouldn’t answer after his daddy didn’t pick up. Cried pretty hard about it too.”

“What are you talking about?” Dick grounds out, fearing his phone will crack with how tightly he’s gripping it.

“Well, you weren’t our first choice to call, Richard. I’m sure you understand.”

Dick says nothing, focused on the computer screen in front of him. He should contact Barbara. This would be faster with her. Faster to find Jason.

“We called about seven times,” the woman continues, blowing another puff of smoke out into the phone. “Isn’t that right, boy? We called and called and called. His daddy didn’t pick up once, went straight to voicemail each time. A shame, really.”

There’s a sniffle on the other side of the call and Dick’s heart seizes when he realizes it’s probably Jason.

Batman was currently off-world, all communication with him being strictly between Justice League lines. Bruce Wayne was somewhere in the Bahamas, partying with Italian models and Spanish actresses.

Of course he wouldn’t pick up.

“Can I please talk to him?” Dick asks for the second time, fisting a hand into the couch cushions. “Please, I just want to make sure he’s okay.”

More smoke. “I’ll ask him.”

There’s a muffled thud, the phone most likely having been put down, and quiet voices filter through the line. He can’t hear much of what they’re saying, short bursts of comprehensible syllables before fading back to unintelligible noises. His computer dings with a response from Barbara. She’s going to use one of the J.L satellites to better pin-point Jason’s location. She’s also in communication with the police, reporting a child-abduction.

Keep them talking, she writes. Everything is going to be okay, Dick.

It feels like his heart is beating in his throat and his tongue has swollen to the size of a bowling ball. The storm outside is unrelenting. Lightning hasn’t struck again.

There’s more movement on the other side, clattering and scattered noises. The phone’s been picked up.

“Alright,” the woman says, raspy and uncaring. “The boy says he wants to talk to you, Richard.”

Dick holds his breath, waiting. There’s more noises, a transfer he thinks, and another sniffle interrupts it.

“Hello?” a shaky voice asks into the receiver. Dick feels like crying.

“Jason,” he breathes. “We’re going to get you out of there, alright? You’re going to be okay.”

“I’m sorry,” his brother rattles, a sob latching onto the end. “I’m so sorry, Dick. I-I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s okay,” Dick shushes, feeling himself get choked up at the fear in the younger boy’s voice. “I know you didn’t, bud. Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

“No, not really. I didn’t think you were gonna pick up,” he admits, voice cracking. “B-Bruce didn’t. He didn’t answer, Dick, and I-I thought you weren’t gonna either. I-I thought—”

“I’ll always answer, Jason, I promise. I’m coming for you, okay? I’m going to come get you and we’ll both go home together. Does that sound good, Jay? You’re going to be fine.”

“Okay,” the thirteen year old relents. “You promise though, right? You’re not gonna leave me here?”

“No, Jay, of course not. I’m not going to leave you there, I’m coming to get you. Right now. I promise, okay? Jason, I would never abandon you. You’re my kid-brother and I love you. I’m not going to-”

“As touching as this is,” the woman interrupts, “I think that’s enough.”

“Put Jason back on the phone,” Dick snarls. “I swear, if you lay a hand on him, if you even touch him, I will end you.”

“Sure, honey,” the woman drawls, puffing into the receiver. “Here’s what’s going to happen, so I want you to listen to me.”

His computer dings. It’s Barbara. She’s got the location. It’s close. Not even twenty minutes away. Border between Bludhaven and Gotham. Motel next to the gas station connecting the freeways. Room 13.

He’s out the door and revving up his motorcycle before the woman has even taken a second drag from her cigarette. The rain is beating against him, gloomy street lights flickering through the shrouded dark of the storm. Thank god for Bludhaven sewers, only slightly better than Gotham’s. The water level is only a few millimetres high.

“Now, I don’t want to keep this kid anymore than you want him to stay here with me,” the woman drones. The streets are empty. Dick blows through every red light he comes across. The tires are new, the grip is fine. “So, I think we can make this simple.”

“What do you want?” Dick growls, transferring the call into his helmet. He prays she can’t hear the rain battering against it. “Just tell me what you want already and I’ll give it to you.”

“Don’t rush me,” the woman snaps, and it is then that Dick realizes that this is all probably by chance. This isn’t some criminal mastermind who plotted to find and kidnap the son of a billionaire. This isn’t a case of a rogue villain piecing together vague details and figuring out Batman and company’s identities. It’s simply someone desperate. Someone who saw the opening and took it. The poor planning is evident, practically spelled out in bold print that these people have no real idea what they’re doing.

“Sorry,” Dick bites out, veering through a short-cut that says, in neon orange, Danger. Construction Zone. “Please continue.”

The woman on the line is vindictive though, choosing to remain quiet as the sound of a lighter clicking open tinnies through the call. She takes her time lighting a new cigarette, taking a long, slow drag and holding it in for a few seconds. Dick jerks his bike to the right, narrowly avoiding a large pothole. A passing car blares its horn at him. Finally, the woman exhales. He can hear Jason cough in the background.

“What I want,” she starts, a new color of intrigue hitting the back of her throat. He’s barely ten minutes away now. Could probably half it if he took more backstreets and increased his speed. “Is for my son to be released from prison.”

“Who is your son?” Dick asks, cursing silently as his back tire skids, hydro-planing for a moment. Thunder crashes above him and the rain continues to pelt at his body. It feels like getting hit with a paint-ball gun.

“Landon Jennings. I want you to get him released. I know you have the access to lawyers, probably have debts owed to you from people in high places. I want him released tonight.”

Time: 00:14.

01:14 a.m standard time.

“I can do that,” Dick says, heart beating faster as he sees the sign for the motel, dim in the gray, “but I’ll need a few hours. I need to contact my lawyers. Where is your son stationed?”

An icon appears in the front of his digitized visor. It’s Barbara. She sees him closing in. Police are on route. Seven minutes out. He has the option to wait on them and keep the kidnappers on the line.

“Same place they all go,” the woman barks. “Use that head of yours and figure it out. I want my son out by tonight, or you’re not going to see your brother again. And,” she rushes, “I don’t want the police involved. If you call them, I’ll know, you understand? I don’t want to hurt the kid, but I’m not scared to. My husband is here with me too, so if you try and—”

Okay, so waiting isn’t an option. He’s going in.

“No police,” Dick interrupts. “I understand. Please, don’t hurt him.”

“If you just do what you’re told, then I won’t have to.”

“Thank you,” Dick whispers, gently getting off of his bike and leaving it on the side of the road. He can’t chance them seeing him pulling into the motel lot. “You said your son’s name was Landon? If you don’t mind me asking, what is he charged with?”

“Why do you need to know?”

Dick jogs towards the motel, careful to stay out of direct light. The general office looks closed. Most of the windows facing the lot are shielded by salmon colored curtains. There’s only one floor, thankfully. Dick sees door 13. He’s shaking. His fingers are numb.

“My lawyers said they need to know in order to file for a judge to repeal his sentence.”

“Is that so?” the woman asks, suspicion tailing her voice. She takes a drag from her cigarette, contemplating. Dick’s clothes are soaking wet and he cringes every time his shoes squelch against the concrete. He decides crawling is best, ducking under windows and avoiding peepholes. “Fine then. Landon got falsely accused of statutory rape and breaking and entering. Is that what your damn lawyers are looking for?”

“Yes,” Dick breathes. He’s at door 10. He can see a faint glow coming from behind the curtains of room 13. He’s so close. “Thank you.”

He taps on the side of his helmet, sending a series of numbers that he’s sure Barbara will understand.

23-26-8-37

E-N-T-R

He can’t wait any longer.

While crawling, Dick made sure to get a good look at the motel’s doors and hinges. They’re standard, and though both Gotham and Bludhaven tend to have better locks than most other cities, Dick recognizes the model of the door and the wood it’s made out of. They’re thin enough for him to ram through. The hinges on the sides are rusted over as well, and Dick thinks they might just be weak enough to break. The windows however. The windows are his best bet. He doubts this kind of motel invests in bullet proof glass, and on some of the sills, he can see water damage. They leak. Poorly made. Meaning, if he ran at them, he could break through pretty easily.

But, if that doesn’t work. Or if he’s not fast enough to get on his feet once in. Or if the window is directly in front of Jason and the glass breaks all over him. Or if—

Stop. He can’t think about the what-ifs right now. Dick knows he can do this. Knows how to do this. There isn’t any more time to wait. He promised he would get Jason out of there, and goddamnit, he’s going to keep his promise.

“You’re being really quiet,” the woman mutters. “What’s going—”

Dick takes a deep breath and tenses. The light behind the curtain flickers. He needs to move. Now. Now.

Lightning splits across the sky and Dick can’t tell if it’s the glass shattering or the thunder that makes the other-worldly crack but it doesn’t matter because Dick lands feet first and is tucking and rolling before the occupants have a chance to react.

“Oh my god!” someone screams, but Dick isn’t paying attention to them because his gaze zeroes in on his brother, tiny, thirteen year old Jason, who’s tied up on one of the beds and staring right at him.

He can’t linger long though because he hears the words, “Get the gun!”, and he’s up on his feet again, rushing the closest person. It turns out to be the husband, a balding man with a patchy neck-beard, and Dick bunches up his fist and swings, socking the man in the stomach. He doubles over, wheezing, and Dick can see the small pistol in the man’s right hand, and Dick strikes down on his shoulder, kneeing him simultaneously. The pistol drops and so does the man, groaning, and Dick turns to the woman, who is staring at him like an animal cornered.

“Don’t come any closer!” she yells, pocket knife trembling in her grip as she shoves it in Jason’s face. “I’ll stab him, I will!”

Dick holds up his hands, sidestepping the groaning man. “Put the knife down.”

“No!” the woman argues, a strand of black hair falling into her mouth. “Now I told you- stay there! Don’t fucking move or I’ll kill this kid, you hear! I’ll fucking slice his throat open!”

With how scared the woman is, and how precarious she holds the pocket knife, which Dick can see is dull even from where he’s standing, he knows it’s not an idle threat. Scared people will do anything to get out of the situation they’re in. Scared people are unpredictable and dangerous.

But so is Dick.

So is Jason.

“I’m not going to move,” Dick reassures, eyes flickering towards his brother, “so, please, drop the knife. We can talk this out.”

“Talk?” the woman shrills, jerking the knife closer to Jason’s jawline. “You just killed my husband!”

“I didn’t kill him,” Dick corrects. “He’s just unconscious. Come on now. It’s just you and me. Let’s talk this over. I can still get Landon out if you give me back my brother. It’s as easy as that, alright? Just put down the knife, and we’ll talk. Does that sound okay?”

The woman looks like she’s considering it, the hand holding the knife still trembling, when the first sirens enter the lot. Red and blue light flash through the broken window as rain seeps into the curtains.

“You rat!” she screams, furious and terrified and desperate all at once. “You fucking called the cops! You broke—”

She doesn’t get a chance to finish before Jason snaps his head back, headbutting the woman directly in the nose. He falls to the side, getting out of range of the knife, and Dick takes his cue, leaping forwards and gripping the woman’s wrist and squeezing, weapon falling from her grasp. There’s blood spurting from her nose and Dick throws her to the floor, getting her on her stomach and hands behind her back. He sits on top of her, his weight overpowering any strength she has left, and in the next few seconds, police are banging on the door.

“This is the GCPD! Open up and put your weapons down!”

“You can come in!” Dick shouts, holding the squirming woman in place. “We’re unarmed!”

Things happen quickly after the door bangs open, several officers pouring in like the Bludhaven storm. As soon as an officer handcuffs the woman he’s on top of, Dick is rushing to Jason’s side, another officer cutting away his bindings. His younger brother turns to him, about to say something, but Dick cuts him off with a crushing hug, cradling the back of Jason’s head to rest against his shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” Dick whispers, gathering his brother more fully into his arms. “I should’ve been there sooner. God, Jason, I’m so sorry.”

“I-I thought you weren’t going to come for me,” Jason confesses, hiccuping. “When Bruce didn’t pick up, I thought it was because he didn’t want me anymore. I-I told her that, I told her Bruce wasn’t coming but she wouldn’t listen and-and I—”

Dick wraps his arms more securely around the sobbing preteen in response, gently rocking back and forth as the mattress springs squealed under the pressure.

“I know I haven’t always been around,” he says, uncaring about the snot dribbling into his shirt, “and I’m sorry you thought you couldn’t rely on me to come and get you. You’re my brother, though, and I will always come running when you call. No matter what. I promise, Jay. Anywhere, anytime, I promise I’ll be there. Okay?”

“Okay,” Jason wheezes, the adrenaline from before slowly releasing its hold. “I trust you.”

Dick presses his face into his brother’s hair, relief washing over him as his heart slows. He’s never had a sibling before. Things were still tense with Bruce, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be a big brother. There isn’t a thing in the world he wouldn’t do for this kid in his arms right now.

“What’re brothers for, right?” he mumbles.

The rain doesn’t stop and pours and pours and pours. Dick just holds Jason tighter.

The real storm was over.

Five months later

It’s Thursday.

Time: 11:47 a.m.

The stone is nice. White marble. Shiny. Expensive.

There are fresh flowers. Roses and yellow daisies. The dirt is still new too. Evidence of freshly upturned earth. Dick reaches down and pulls out a weed that’s sprung up at the corner of the stone. Tosses it away.

He doesn’t have flowers. He has a newspaper in his left hand. Reads: Mourning billionaire sets off on trip to Europe.

Jason died a month before he got back from across the universe.

Anywhere, he had said. Anytime. I promise I’ll be there.

He crumples the newspaper into a tight ball and shoves it into his pocket. Stares at the stone. The sun is out. There are no clouds in the sky. It’s nice.

It’s a nice day.

“Fuck,” Dick mutters, a familiar burn in the back of his eyes. “Fuck.”

Anywhere, anytime.

Dick Grayson is an only child once again.

#bad things happen bingo #i have your loved one #dick grayson #dick grayson is nightwing #nightwing #jason todd #jason todd is robin #robin #hurt/comfort #angst #kidnapping #well the hurt/comfort didn't really work out in the end but eh #my fic

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sgtjbbhasmyheart · 4 years ago

Text

Drunk Texting Is(n’t) Bad for Your Health- Chapter Four

Series Summary: Talk about your unconventional meet-cute! Bucky receives a text by mistake requesting he prove he's not Reader's sister. The easy dialogue between Reader and Bucky sparks a natural friendship, but could it lead to more? Bucky still deems himself unworthy of any form of affection or love. Reader is hellbent to prove him wrong. With the help of some (meddling) friends along the way, Bucky may get his happily-ever-after after all.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Word Count: 2960

Warnings: Itsy bitsy amount of angst, bad language words, mentions of phone sex and masturbation

A/N: divider credit- @firefly-graphics

DO NOT copy or replicate without my permission

“James?”

You held your breath after you uttered the name into the phone’s speaker. Your heart galloped at the thought of actually speaking to him. You’d be lying if you had said you hadn’t imagined how his voice sounded. You pictured something deep and raspy but drawled and sweet.

In the last five days, you’d imagined many things about James. Not just the sound of his voice, but his laugh, too. Rich and soothing. And of his scent- distinctly his own or a fresh, citrusy cologne of bergamot and tangerines. You imagined his rough, calloused hands sliding over your skin in slow motion.

And how he kissed. You daydreamed about that, too. Often. You couldn’t count how many times you’d stared at his sorry excuse for a selfie. You found yourself drawn to it daily. It was only part of his face, but what you could see was ruggedly handsome. His lips looked soft and delectable. You pictured yourself nibbling on his bottom lip, deepening its color to blush pink.

A sharp sigh escaped through your nose as you waited for his reply. Maybe he hadn’t heard you the first time? “James?” you asked again. “Hello?”

No response.

You pulled the phone away from your ear to make sure you were still connected. The call-time counter ticked ominously second by second on the screen. You tucked the device back under your hair to find the call was still active.

Did he get cold feet and change his mind last minute? He hadn’t hung up yet, so you weren’t exactly sure why he was waiting. Maybe he was tongue-tied? Or hadn’t expected you to pick up?

“Did you butt-dial me, James?” you laughed, trying to dispel some of your anxiety.

You heard a muffled “ shit” and two beeps. You glanced at the phone’s screen again, and call ended flashed in bold white.

Ignoring the hang-up, you immediately re-dialed James. The line rang and rang. And rang.

You weren’t confident you were going to speak with James, the longer the rings continued. He wasn’t ready to talk to you yet, and that was okay. It had only been five days.

Five days wasn’t long enough to build a bond over stupid Would You Rather? questions or form a simmering crush on a stranger that made your stomach flip whenever he sent you a funny cat meme. Nope. Five days was much too short of time for anything.

A generic voicemail greeting clicked over and rudely beeped at you. You took a deep breath and quickly thought of a reason to be calling someone who didn’t want to talk. “Hey, James. Just calling you back. It’s (Y/N), by the way. I’m not sure if you meant to call the first time or if sneaky ninjas have accosted you and somehow did a crazy pocket dial. Y’know, because of the whole military-trained assassin athlete mchottie thing. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. And no pressure! If you’re not comfortable talking on the phone, I completely understand. I’m sweating bullets just talking to your voicemail box.” You chuckled nervously. You were starting to babble.

“Anyway,” you continued. “I hope you’re well. And don’t leave me hangin’. I really wanna know if you’d rather sneeze every hour or burp when you saw a pretty girl.” You laughed again. “Goodbye, James.”

You mashed the end call button and face-planted into one of the throw pillows on your couch. You groaned loudly into the fabric, chastising yourself in your head. If he didn’t want to talk before, he most definitely wouldn’t want to now. You shook your head in disbelief. Sneaky ninjas, seriously? What. The. Fuck?

Hours later, while in the middle of a Say Yes to the Dress marathon (dammit Robyn!) and a self-induced diabetic coma of ice cream and chips, your phone vibrated. You swat at it on the coffee table with a foot, only to realize you lack the limberness or the dexterity in your toes to retrieve the phone. As a result, it tumbled to the ground as you groaned in displeasure. Cursing your luck, you bent forward to pick it up. Awakening the phone’s black screen, a text popped into view.

James Sorry

Your heart lurched for a moment. With every second that had passed since you’d left your voicemail for James, the least likely you’d felt he’d call back or even respond. Hence the pity party with Ben & Jerry and Cool Ranch Doritos.

James My so-called “friends” grabbed my phone from me and led to accidentally calling you.

Ahh, the old “invade-your-friend’s-privacy” maneuver, you thought, shaking your head.

James I didn’t want to hang up on you, but I’m not quite ready to talk yet. I like what we have.

Your heart flopped. You liked what you had, too, but a small part of you- a dumb part- wanted just a little more.

Shaking off the feeling of longing churning your insides, you thumbed over the screen to reply.

You No worries, James. We can go at whatever speed you like.

It was weird to have the guy, for once, want to take things slow. Usually, it was always you pumping the brakes in the relationship. Was this even a relationship, though? Were all the texting and personal questions leading somewhere? Or were you bound to end up friends with an interesting story to tell your other friends?

Not allowing your negative thoughts to curtail the joy of finally texting James again, you quickly punched out:

You I’m just glad you’re okay and not being held for ransom somewhere.

James It would take a whole horde of ninjas to take me down.

You giggled at the confidence contained in this one text, but talking to a girl on the phone threw him for a loop. We are definitely back in junior high, you thought.

You You sound awfully confident for a man who wouldn’t talk to a friend on the phone.

James You don’t want to talk to me.

You pinched your eyebrows together in frustration to form a crease between them. Was he serious?

You Sure, I do. I have a bet going with myself on how your voice sounds. Is it deep and masculine or high-pitched like you sucked in helium?

James Which are you betting on?

You pulled your bottom lip in by your teeth, biting softly. You smirked as you thought of the two options. The former would be nice, but the latter would be pretty damn funny.

You I mean, deep and masculine is very desirable. Listening to the low timbre of a man’s voice is very relaxing for me. But, considering the ridiculous “selfie” you sent me, I’m placing my money on high-pitched.

James What was wrong with my selfie?!

Somehow, you knew that would get him worked up.

You Well, for starters: I can only see, like, part of your face! Did a blind person teach you how to take them??

You And secondly, there clearly wasn’t enough “Blue Steel.” With cheekbones and pouty lips like yours and a chiseled jaw, I’d be blue-steeling the shit out of all my selfies!

A wave of remorse washed over you once you hit send. Had you really compared him to Zoolander? Not only had you objectified him by mentioning how aesthetically pleasing he was (let’s face it- he’s really, really, really ridiculously good looking), but you may have criticized him for his terrible selfie abilities. At that moment, as you waited for the inevitable “fuck off” text to come through, you wished for a giant sinkhole to appear under your apartment and swallow you whole. What were you thinking?

James First off, I’m a selfie amateur. My past line of work limited my contact and/or exposure to the outside world. I didn’t learn what a selfie even was until recently. Remember, I’m also a man of mystery. I’m trying to keep up appearances and can’t reveal too much.

James What is “Blue Steel”? I’m not very pop-culture savvy unless it happened before 1944.

James Did you just call me pretty??

Your cheeks flushed with the heat of a thousand suns. He called you out as you expected him to do.

You Uh...

You Are we gonna talk about the fact you said you didn’t know about pop culture after 1944?? You are a grandpa!

James Nice try with the subject change! Admit it- you think I’m pretty.

You rolled your eyes. Of course, that would be the thing he focused on out of the whole conversation.

You I have no idea what you’re talking about.

If all else fails--deny, deny, deny.

James Right. Sure about that, doll?

Your pulse spiked.

You never did like pet names before you met James, but doll had a goo-ing effect on you for some reason. Everything seemed to turn to mush whenever he mentioned the word.

You Absolutely. I have no reason to believe that if you weren’t a military-trained assassin athlete mchottie, you’d be a male model. None what-so-ever.

James Uh-huh. I’m going to pretend that you aren’t lying through your teeth and getting back to our scintillating game of Would You Rather?

James I’d burp every time I saw a pretty dame, by the way. I wouldn’t want to take my chances with sneezing in my sleep. Would you rather eat only fruits or vegetables for one year?

Several nights after the voicemail incident, you were sitting in Penelope with Robyn after work. She wanted to meet up to decide which centerpieces worked best for the reception. Scattered across the table were three samples she and Kevin had narrowed it down to. With your thumb, while playing with a corner of the hand-drawn example closest to you, a sigh escaped your nose.

Your sister’s talent mesmerized you. Each storyboard showed the intricate detail of the flowers and candles themselves and what the tables would look like next to each other with every centerpiece. You were in awe.

“These are so good, Robbie! They must have taken forever to put together,” you said, admiring a different sample on the table.

“Nah,” she replied, brushing the compliment aside. “Just an afternoon’s time last week.”

“Well, shit. I hope they’re paying you the big bucks at work.”

She quirked an eyebrow devilishly as she reached for her drink. “You know it,” she jested before taking a sip.

You laughed at her cheekiness. Robyn had always been a go-getter. One of the many attributes you loved about her. Never took no for an answer.

“Soooo,” she drawled as she set her glass down. “How have you been?”

You looked up swiftly, eyeing her suspiciously before returning your gaze to the storyboard in your hands. “I’m still alive if that’s what you’re asking.” You set the drawing down to take a drink from your glass. “Haven’t been murdered yet, but the night is still young.”

Robyn rolled her eyes at your petulance. “You know I worry about you. Are you still texting James?”

You smiled sweetly. “Each day that goes by, you act more and more like Mom. You know that?”

Robyn scoffed. “I do not!”

She could deny it all she wanted, but Robyn was turning into the spitting image of your mother. You laughed again. “You do too. Even down to the eye roll.”

She folded her arms over her chest, waiting for you to answer her question.

Two could play this game.

You wiped the corner of your mouth with your napkin unhurriedly. “If you must know, yes, James and I are still texting.”

“Has he sent any dick pics or asked for nudes?” Robyn asked earnestly.

“Yup. We engage in wildly pornographic phone sex every night.”

Robyn glanced around the restaurant with eyes wide as saucers, making sure none of the other patrons heard you. “(Y/N), I’m serious! Has he propositioned you?”

You huffed a small laugh. “Nope,” you admitted. “In fact, he’s the one that wants to take things slow. He accidentally called me the other day and hung up from jitters.” Robyn didn’t need to know the full truth.

“The jitters?” Robyn queried.

“Yeah. I even called him back, but he let it go to voicemail.”

“Then, he must be weird or ugly.”

You grimaced at her assumption. “Ew, Robbie. Don’t be gross,” you chastised. “He’s the opposite of ugly. I might even go as far as to call him handsome.”

“How? You don’t know what he looks like,” Robyn questioned.

You took a quick sip of your drink, holding up a finger. “Au, contraire mon frère. He sent me a selfie in the very beginning.”

Robyn looked at you, perplexed. “You know you just called me your brother, right?”

You waved a hand at her to dismiss her accusation. “Ma soeur just doesn’t have the same ring to it.” You pulled your phone out to offer proof.

“You can barely see his face!” she exclaimed. “What if he’s horribly disfigured on the other side? Or missing an arm?”

You shrugged. “Then, he’s missing an arm.” You got a distant look in your eyes as you recalled the last ten days of texting with James. “He’s different, Robbie. He’s smart and funny and caring. Polite. It feels like he has an old soul. He calls me doll for chrissakes!”

“Are you sure he isn’t some crusty, old man?” Robyn gagged at the thought.

“No, I don’t,” you chuckled in response. The faraway look returned after a moment. “To me, he’s just James.”

Realization dawned on Robyn’s face, lighting her up like a light bulb. “Oh, my god. You like him.”

“Well, yeah,” you acknowledged, “he’s my friend.”

“No. You like him like him.”

Your face reddened quickly with the awareness of your feelings. They weren’t real, were they? Shaking your head, you replied, ”Nothing will happen, Robbie. It’s just a crush.”

Skeptically, she agreed, “Uh-huh.”

“What?”

“I believe that as much as I welcome a cold sore on my wedding day.” She scrunched her nose at the thought of a gross, red blemish on her face for her big day.

“Fine,” you acquiesced. “If I fall head over heels, madly in love with James by your wedding day, I’ll owe you a hundred bucks.”

Robyn raised a sculpted brow in interest. “I’m listening.”

“One hundred dollars. End of negotiation,” you stated. “I don’t have a spare hundred bucks, so it will be a motivator not to fall for James. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.”

She smiled smugly, shaking her head in disbelief. “Uh-huh.”

“Will you stop saying that?” you said, throwing a piece of lettuce at her face. “You definitely sound like Mom.”

Robyn huffed in annoyance, back-handing your shoulder softly. “Shuddup! I do not!”

You chortled heartily at the mini tantrum she was throwing about becoming Mom. You’d say anything at this point to get her to forget about you and James.

In all honesty, there was no you and James. Not really. You were friends, but could you move past that?

He was hiding something.

Something big.

And it wasn’t part of the whole “man of mystery” persona, either. James was holding back.

He had a hard time giving up anything personal to you that went beyond his likes and dislikes, which led you to believe he had found it difficult to trust.

It angered you deeply without really knowing why. Something in his past had sparked the inability. You only wish you knew what.

Deep down, you could really see yourself falling for James, and that scared you to death.

Breaking you from your reverie, Robyn piped up, “You know, James is probably jerking off to your voicemail.”

“Oh, absolutely!” you retorted, both of you dissolving into a giggling fit.

After leaving Robyn with a clear choice for centerpieces, you made your way back home. After a fifty-minute subway ride, you popped into the corner bodega for some essentials for the coming week.

Sauntering up the stairs to your third-floor walk-up, you steadied your armful of groceries with each step. It had been a long week, and now with the revelation of how you felt about James clouding your mind, a glass of wine, ice cream, and a bubble bath sounded good right about now.

You could barely see over the bags and juggled them precariously. As you stepped onto your floor, you recognized the voice of your next-door neighbor down the hall. He was talking with someone, but you couldn’t tell with whom or what about.

Blindly, you called out, “Hey, Peter? Can you be a lifesaver and help a neighbor out?” You heard the scuffle of footsteps over tile rush toward you.

Sighing in relief, you relinquished two bags to the arms reaching out. “Thanks, Pete! You’re a pe-”

You stopped mid-sentence when your view was finally cleared. Your sixteen-year-old neighbor wasn’t standing before you but a tall man with chestnut hair tied in a knot. Your lips parted slightly as your eyes widened to take in the figure’s full breadth holding your groceries.

Your eyes flicked to Peter as everything came back to focus. He was adjusting your other two bags in his arms.

“Miss (Y/L/N), this is Mr. Barnes from my Stark internship. He’s a friend. He was helping me with some history homework,” Peter explained, gesturing to the hulking man standing outside your apartment door.

“Peter,” you admonished, “how many times-” Last names weren’t meant to be spoken by friends slash neighbors.

Peter winced. “Right! Sorry, (Y/N)!” he apologized. “This is Bucky.”

Recognition crossed your face at the name. Smiling, you stuck out your hand in front of you. “Bucky Barnes, it’s nice to meet you.”

Bucky shifted one of your bags in his arms to reach out his hand. He smiled softly, “ Li-likewise.”

Chapter Three | Chapter Five

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exyrpf · 4 years ago

Note

best stucky fic recs pwease

Okay, disclaimer, these are all like five+ years old (which is the best Stucky era, imo) and definitely not the only ones I enjoy; these are just a few in my bookmarks on ao3.

In no particular order besides the order I bookmarked them and under a read more because there's a shit ton of them (really, it's a lot):

- hold me until we crumble; Not Rated, 23k

“Sam told me you were watching Antiques Roadshow,” Natasha says, shaking out her hair. “I assumed it was a national emergency.”

- despite the threatening sky and shuddering earth (they remained); Explicit, 72k

“They really didn’t want the mask to come off.” Hill thumbed through the scans, and pulled out a film that she then handed over to Sam, face mostly expressionless but for the flat line of her pursed lips.

Sam accepted the film and held it up to the light, angling so both he and Steve could see it, squinting at the outline of the Winter Soldier’s skull, and the blips of unnatural white that showed up, God, in his brain, not to mention about half his teeth, plus the mask, with its thin protrusions—

“Those are pins,” Steve realized. He looked over at Hill. “The mask—it’s nailed to his face.”

Hill’s face was as unmoved as ever. “Like I said. They really didn’t want it coming off.”

- family means no one gets left behind or forgotten; Teen, 11k

“Why did you think I wouldn’t like you for being gay?” Steve asks gently.

“You’re Captain America.” Eli’s got his teeth clenched and is resolutely looking ahead. “You stand for truth and justice and the American way. You stand for American morals. You stand for…” he shrugs awkwardly. “Not people like me.”

Steve blows the air out of his cheeks slowly, trying to figure out how to keep the anger out of his voice so Eli doesn’t think it’s at him.

Or, Steve comes to terms with his new world, and gains some children in the process.

- Mistake on the Part of Nature; Teen, 1.3k

Steve takes in Bucky's betrayed look and Sam's confusion, follows Sam's gaze to the pile of mangled fruit in the trash can. Sudden comprehension fills his face.

"Oh," he says. "Bucky found out about bananas."

In which an American icon is mourned. But probably not the one you're thinking of.

- Swear Jar; Teen, 1.5k

Bucky isn't the only troll in the future.

Steve has a Swear Jar and he makes the Avengers pay up every time they cuss.

- Barnes & Rogers and the Goddamn Truth; Not Rated, 19k

There are three well-known facts at Shield High:

1. The history teacher Mr. Barnes is a stone-cold terror, and it’s not even because he only has one arm. 2. The other history teacher, Mr. Rogers, is a mysterious enigma, and it’s something to do with the body of a Greek God and contradicting stories of his past. (They’re all rumours, anyway.) 3. Mr Barnes and Mr Rogers hate each other.

Bucky wouldn’t have it any other way.

- perfectly right wrong number; Teen, 32k

It all starts because Steve is too dumb to handle his smartphone.

A wrong number AU in which Bucky Barnes doesn't enter Steve's life (meaning: Bucky wasn't born until the eighties, but Steve is still Captain America) until Steve accidentally dials the wrong number. Wherein there is a lot of texting, some advice via Natasha and Darcy, a bit of pining, and a first date in an amusement park. Oh, and on top of being a disabled veteran, Bucky is a professional catwalker. Literally.

- The power of the right shirt (a.k.a. God bless America); Teen, 1.2k

"He just…" Phil trails off, mouth gaping. He is staring at the field outside the house, eyes glazed.

Clint sighs. "Yeah, he just ripped a log in two with his bare hands."

- To fill it up with something; Teen, 21k

A fateful encounter with Dr. Strange leaves the Winter Soldier transformed, and Bucky Barnes reunites with Steve Rogers in a most unexpected way.

“Steve brings the puppy inside, into the apartment that doesn't quite feel like home no matter how much he's been trying. He isn't used to being alone. Before the war, he always had Bucky, and his mother until her death. During the war, Bucky was there, too—and the rest of the Howlers, of course—but Bucky always meant home. (And well, maybe Steve's already got a name for the puppy in mind)."

- build it bigger than the sun; Teen, 10k

“Yeah, because nothing says heteronormative like living in Dupont Circle for two years and wearing skin-tight shirts to hit on hot airmen when you go running in the morning.”

“Look, I know you’re being sarcastic but I really don’t get how no one picked up on that.”

Steve and Bucky try to work out their relationship. The Avengers keep getting in the way.

- Memories Circle (Like Birds of Prey), Teen, 32k

Everything seems to be going right, Steve's fighting with his Commandos, they've saving lives-- until Steve falls from a train, is taken prisoner, and turned into the Winter Soldier. Meanwhile, Bucky takes up Steve's mantle as Captain America, and thanks to Zola's experiments, he gets dropped into a whole new time, only to cross paths with a Steve who doesn't know who he is anymore.

Essentially, the events of CA:TFA, mild mentioning of Avengers, and CA:TWS but with Steve as the Winter Soldier and Bucky as Captain America

- The Gentleness That Comes; Mature, 9k

Steve Rogers never really views the things he had to do to get by before the War with any sort of shame or embarrassment. People ask him for his opinions on modern issues in interviews, but Steve has gotten good at talking around those types of questions. Fury insists that there's no way to answer them without casting a shadow of controversy across the reputation of the Avengers, and that's the last thing Steve wants.

But then a sex tape is released featuring Tony Stark in bed with another man, and Steve can't stay quiet any longer.

- salt for the sea; Mature, 7.5k

Natasha comes home with intel regarding the fate of the Winter Soldier; Steve leaves to go and avenge Bucky Barnes.

“It's a list of everyone who was involved in his death, and a rough timeline of everything that happened beforehand,” she tells him.

“And the notebook?”

“I explained what they did,” Natasha says, “The blank pages are for you to explain what you do to them.”

- Lone Cat and Samurai; Teen, 8.4k

"We lost Kitten America sir!" Junior Agent blurted out. Then turned an unlovely shade of purple. "I mean, Captain America. Who’s a kitten. Because magic. Sir."

- Waiting To Prove You're Not Alone; Explicit, 41k

Months after he woke up on the banks of the Potomac, when a reporter mistakenly assumes Steve would disapprove of homosexuality being as accepted as it is in the modern day, Steve accidentally snaps and unleashes his real opinion on the matter... and with that, a secret he's hidden for over eighty years.

When that secret comes looking for him in New York, Steve can only hope that he can get a second chance at saving his best friend, even if it means keeping his heart in check.

“Yeah, back in my day it wasn't tolerated, and because of that I knew from the minute I figured it out, that I’d never get to tell my best friend that I loved him, and sure enough, he died without knowing that I’d been in love with him for a decade."

- I'm Not Sick (But I'm Not Well); Mature, 30k

Steve Rogers doesn’t meet Bucky Barnes in the 1930’s. Instead, Steve meets him April 17th, 2012.

Well…sort of meets him.

In actuality, Bucky had almost hit him with his truck.

Or: The fic where millennial Bucky Barnes nearly runs over a freshly thawed national treasure, and what Steve Rogers did to adjust to modern NYC during those two weeks before the events of The Avengers.

- pure as the driven slush; Explicit, 11k

He should have worked it out sooner. But then, Steve always was a sneaky little bastard—had to have been, just to survive this long.

For the SteveBucky Fest prompt, "Steve is quite experienced while Bucky's never gone beyond second base with anyone".

- Let's Be Exposed and Unprotected, Explicit, 5k

Bucky’s pretty sure he should be into getting fucked through the floor while walls explode around him like in that Mr and Mrs Smith movie that Clint loves. But he likes it like this. He likes being on his back with Steve looming above him, big and naked, blocking out the rest of the world.

- Man of Steel; Explicit, 6.7k

It’s like Steve looked at his metal arm and thought ‘Challenge Accepted.’

- 5 Times Steve Got Arrested and 1 Time They All Did; Teen, 4.9k

What it says, 5 times Steve Rogers ended up in jail (with and without Bucky) + 1 time all of the Avengers got arrested with him.

- the best of you; Teen, 16k

Bucky is on a mission when he gets the call.

They tell him that Steve has been compromised.

[The story wherein Hydra captures Steve to create a new weapon. Bucky, alongside the rest of the Avengers, come together and work through the fallout.]

- pull apart the dark; Teen, 79k

Steve's unending faith in his best friend was beginning to look less like hope and more like fantasy. When they'd caught the Soldier – in a fire fight that still gave Sam nightmares – the only thing the man seemed to recall was how to hit exactly where it hurt.

Four months later, Barnes still refused to speak English. Refused to heed anything but Steve's voice.

So, all in all, it was not a great time for Hydra to attack New York. All in all, Sam really wished they'd just killed him, instead of turning Captain America into a baby.

- Not Another Supersoldier Fantasy; Explicit, 8.9k

Bucky finds a popular sex toy modeled on Captain America's own anatomy. Well, isn't this just perfect? Because even after all this time, he still hasn’t seen Steve’s supersoldier cock. But apparently in this day and age anyone with $29.95 can get a decent replica. The unfairness of this is of galactic proportions.

- the blood of the covenant; Teen, 7.5k

Steve has a "thing" for hot water.

Or, Sam Wilson adopts Steve Rogers.

- Mighty like Love, Mighty like Sorrow; Teen, 19k

After freeing himself from the Russians' mind control, Bucky is left at loose ends, drifting through the decades. Still, he's in no hurry to take up Nick Fury's offer to once again fight the good fight -- especially not when Fury has the nerve to put some imposter in his best friend's old suit and send him out to fight against Chitauri.

- Read Me Like a Book; Gen, 1.5k

In which Bucky accidentally becomes a book collector, because when the universe gives you a million biographies about your boyfriend, you go bookcase shopping. And then he finds out about The Grenade Incident, and the boys actually talk about it like actual adults. (Somewhere, Sam sheds a proud tear.)

- the broadest stroke of color; Gen, 16k

Sarah Rogers always loved Steve's hands.

"Your hands will do a lifetime's work," she'd say. "Remember to do the work you can for those you love."

Almost a century later, Steve does just that.

[The story wherein Steve draws comics for Bucky to help him recover his memory. Through a series of events, the issues are leaked, and Steve finds himself reviving the Captain America comics. He still isn't sure how that happened.]

- If You're Loved By Someone (You're Never Rejected); Teen, 9.4k

You’re fifteen when you realize why you stare at Bucky’s lips more than normal when he laughs and when he says your name. You lean into his shoulder when you walk next to him and when you’re sick you don’t fight off his soft hands. You tease him, he teases back and being around him is so easy you forget what it was like to live without him. You can’t remember life pre-Bucky and it scares you.

- Unusual Weather; Explicit, 8.7k

Bucky’s been at the Avengers Tower for three weeks before he finally gives in to Steve’s gentle coaxing and Stark’s cheerful waving of fistfuls of circuits, and lets them scan the arm.

It doesn’t go well.

- this city bleeds its aching heart; Explicit, 35k

The one where Steve and Bucky pose as a happily married couple while on a mission for SHIELD, to catch an international arms dealer hiding in a suburban neighbourhood.

- Good Boy; Explicit, 13k

Bucky is still adjusting to life with the Avengers, and Steve is willing to do whatever it takes to make him feel comfortable. Increasingly, though, what seems to make him comfortable is strangely intimate.

Surprise, Steve! You're a gentle dom and Bucky wants to be your pretty pet!

- Brooklyn; Teen, 8.8k

"Captain America, what's your stance on gay marriage?"

Everyone knows that, by now. Everyone but Bucky.

#told you it was long as shit #fic rec #stucky #mcu #what do people have tagged #fsdjghk whatever

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luxekook · 5 years ago

Text

in too deep ☼ knj

☼ dedication: this fic is a bday present for the loml tay aka tay bay bay aka @interludemoonchild!!!! luv u long time <33 (sorry this isn’t about hobi skksksks)

☼ pairing: marine biologist namjoon x assistant reader

☼ genre: idiots to lovers, fluff, angst, crack

☼ summary: you had always grown up being told tales of terrible jobs with tyrannical bosses. but now, you’re left to wonder why you hadn’t heard more tragic stories of all-too-wonderful jobs with all-too-beautiful bosses... did falling for your boss only lead to heartbreak and a two weeks’ notice? or could it yield the possibility of romance?

☼ word count: 3.1k

☼ warnings: pg15, cursing, chaotic energy, pining, miscommunication, mentions of quitting, lots of sea nerd stuff, namjoon is smart af but an idiot in love, the reader isn’t any better, crabby bois, arguments, completely cheesy fluff, short make out sesh, mention of sex

☼ banner creator: heathy bby @shadowsremedy

☼ beta reader: the amazing and astoundingly talented phia @meowxyoong

“Kim Namjoon!” You cry, swatting the blue-clawed crab away from your feet with a broom, “What did I tell you about bringing your goddamn crustaceans into the office?”

The man in question hustles out of his office looking disheveled, “You’ve seen Carl?” He sinks right down to his hands and knees to peer under your desk. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you, little buddy!”

You stare disappointedly as your boss picks up ‘Carl’ from his hiding place and cradles him to his chest. “Namjoon,” You sigh exasperatedly, folding your arms.

He looks up at you and blushes, “Sorry, Star. I just feel so bad leaving them downstairs at the lab. It’s so lonely and dark down there.”

While your stomach flips at the mention of his nickname for you, your eyebrows furrow in confusion, “Well, why don’t you just stay down there with them?”

“Because you’re up here…” He mumbles something incoherent.

“What?” You lean forwards, your ears straining to catch the garbled syllables.

Namjoon clears his throat, looking everywhere but at you, “Because it’s nicer up here.”

“Don’t tell your investors that,” You laugh, thinking of all the fancy and shiny equipment housed in the aquatics lab a few floors below. Working for a top-tier marine biologist sure had its perks - namely the state of the art kitchen with a full espresso bar.

“Star, I would never!” He looks affronted by the mere mention of such a thing. “Now, apologize to Carl for scaring him.”

You scoff, but just one glance into Namjoon’s sparkling brown eyes makes you crumble instantly. “Fine,” You begrudgingly shoot the crab a look, “Sorry, Carl.”

“See, Carl?” Namjoon croons, “She’s sorry!” As he turns back to you, you can immediately tell he is about to launch into Marine Biologist Mode™.

“Carl is a blue crab - a Callinectes sapidus, to be precise. That scientific name literally means ‘savory beautiful swimmer’.”

“Savory, huh?” You quip, relishing in the scandalized look Namjoon shoots you.

“Don’t listen to her, Carl,” He whispers, stroking a finger gently down the crab’s shell. “Now, where was I? Ah, yes… He’s named for his pretty sapphire-tinted claws, and he’s one of the most harvested species of his kind. So, don’t even think about it.”

You burst out laughing as he eyes you, “Okay, Joon, I’ll leave my pot of boiling water at home.”

Namjoon splutters out a choked laugh, looking at you like you are the most exasperating thing he’s ever come across. And, you probably are.

When you came to work for the distinguished marine biologist four months ago, you found him literally buried beneath piles of research papers, files, and National Geographic magazines. Apparently, he had tripped into his filing cabinet and everything had fallen off of the shelves onto him. The man had been a right mess. It was no wonder he had put an ad out in search of an assistant.

In your new role, you slowly but surely introduced some structure and organization into Namjoon’s life as best you could. The first thing you did was update his office. The man still had an honest to god lava lamp on his desk. You were still baffled at how he had managed not to break the fixture before your arrival.

Swiftly following the disposal of the cursed lava lamp, you ordered new file cabinets - and had them nailed to the wall. Virtually, you did even more. You restructured his online platforms and updated his schedule to include more than just scattered notes like “Meeting at 10AM, i think? Or was it 10PM?”

To his credit, Namjoon adhered to most of your suggestions and changes, but apparently he still refused to grasp the ‘no creatures in the office’ rule.

Overall, Namjoon was a great boss - kind, understanding, sweet, and a tad eccentric. His love for all things sea-related shone through the gentle way he handled his specimens, the passionate tone of voice he used while speaking on any related topic, and the stars in his eyes at the mere mention of discovering a new species.

It had been all too easy to become infatuated with him. Especially when he called you “Star” and left you to interpret the meaning on your own.

You remember the exact moment that you fell in love with him so vividly. It had been last month, just three months into working for him. Namjoon had been going off about fucking sand of all things.

“…Sand speaks of history, of science, of travels. Each grain of sand holds thousands upon thousands of years of movement, of erosion. For example, the beach outside of this building is tan because of the iron oxide tinting the quartz and the feldspar to a light brown color. But, there are other beaches that are black, white and even pink in color! It’s fascinating! And to quote the goddess of marine biology Rachel Carson: "In every curving beach, in every grain of sand, there is a story of the Earth…”

Yeah, you are head over heels for your boss. And that’s why you needed to quit.

The end of the workday arrives too quickly - a common theme it seems when you love what you do and who you work for. Namjoon walks beside you down to the parking lot. You sneak a glance at his face and note that he seems deep in thought.

Your mind slips to the image of you and Namjoon going home together to a shared house overrun with fish tanks and models of sharks. It’s all too easy to picture, and all too painful to acknowledge the impossibility.

“Star,” Namjoon’s voice jolts you from your fantasy. You blink up at him, realizing you’re both stopped beside your adjacent cars. Namjoon smiles at you, “I’ll see you tomorrow? It’ll be Friday, finally...”

It seems like he wants to say more but stops himself for some reason. You pause, waiting for him to continue, but he just blushes and brings a hand to the back of his neck bashfully.

“Yeah, Friday,” Your tone is less enthusiastic. You planned to hand in your two weeks’ notice tomorrow. It’s a complete strategy on your part so that you can have the whole weekend to cry and shove at least one gallon of ice cream down your throat.

You wave goodbye to each other and enter your respective cars. You watch Namjoon pull out of the parking lot before you and pause to rest your forehead on your steering wheel. You were so screwed.

Twenty-four exhausting hours later, you find yourself with your fist poised over Namjoon’s wooden office door. Are you actually doing this? Are you really going to quit the only job you’d ever loved?

Yes, you are. You love Namjoon too much to stay here surrounded by his charisma and his beauty. You love him too much to try to complicate his workspace, his sacred ground. You love him too much to ask him to blur the lines of colleague and lover.

You need to leave - for his sake and for yours. It isn’t like he still needs you. He has been following your routine with vigor and always keeps his office organized now. Your tasks have been dwindling for weeks.

It’s time to move on. God, even the tension today had been off the charts with you and Namjoon skirting around each other like you were both walking on eggshells. Clearly, he is also feeling like you are in the way.

With that in mind, you straighten your shoulders and finally knock on the door.

Your ears strain for any sign of an answer. Your breath catches in your throat as you try to sustain the meager amount of courage you had mustered up inside you. Twisting open the handle, you push the door open and are immediately met with an empty office. Damn, he must be downstairs.

You chuckle at the sheer idiocy of your panicked state over knocking on an empty office door.

This is perfect anyways. You can hand Namjoon your two weeks’ and then evacuate the building in one sweep. Shutting down your computer and grabbing your things, you trudge out of the room and towards the stairs.

The journey downwards seems akin to walking the plank as you take each step slowly, dreading the inevitable.

Ciara has it all wrong: you do not love it when you One, Two Step.

The entrance to the lab looms overhead. The steel double doors look more like the gateway to hell rather than a nice entrance to a marine facility. You don’t break your stride as you march through the doors. If you had, you might not have kept going.

The familiar light humming of the tank filters meets your ears as you peer around the rows of shelves containing colorful fish and scuttling critters.

“Joon?” You call, the nickname slipping past your lips before you can stop it.

“Back here, Star!” His answer sounds from the very back of the lab. Of course, that’s where the crabs are housed.

You make your way past the tanks of clownfish and the pools of stingrays to where Namjoon sits hunched over the shallow tank containing four green-tinted crabs.

“That’s it, Nala.” Namjoon croons as the smallest of the four crabs swims around the tank, “You show your brothers how fast you are.”

“Talking to your subjects again, boss?” You can’t help but tease the man you've grown to love as he fawns over his work.

Namjoon blushes slightly and nods, pushing his glasses up to rest on the bridge of his nose, “Studies have shown that it helps them develop.”

“I thought that was humans?” You say, shifting your weight back and forth. The letter in your hand seems to burn more each second you hold onto it. You couldn't take it anymore.

As Namjoon opens his mouth to reply, you thrust the letter into his chest and say, “Never mind. This is for you. Please read it later.”

With that, you fast-walk your way back to the entrance of the lab. The sound of the envelope tearing open only forces you faster. Fuck, it had been idiotic of you to assume that he would actually listen to you and open it later. Namjoon is as impatient as they come. Of course he wouldn't wait.

“Star!” His strangled call startles you, “What is this?”

“We can talk about it on Monday!” You reply, somehow already close to tears. Why is this godforsaken lab so big? You pace down the aisles of tanks and breathe a sigh of relief as the exit comes into view.

Then, Namjoon comes barreling around the corner, cutting off your escape. The man looks baffled as he clutches your written resignation in his hands. His chest heaves as he holds the torn pages out towards you, “What. Is. This. Star?”

You bristle. I guess we’re doing this now, you thought. Stiffening your shoulders, you muster all the false bravado you can manage, “It’s my two weeks’ notice, Namjoon. I’m sure a smart guy like you can read.”

“Okay, allow me to rephrase,” Namjoon stalks towards you, tossing the crumpled letter over his shoulder. “Why did you give me this?”

“The letter explains everything,” Your eyes dart around, both in search of a viable escape and in avoidance of his intensity.

“Sure it does,” He scoffs, his eyes blazing with disbelief. “I want to hear it from you.”

Your back hits the cool glass of the tank behind you. You’re trapped between the contrasting temperatures of the water and Namjoon’s body.

“Joon,” Your voice shakes, “You don’t need me anymore. You’ve done everything I've asked of you and then some. You’re organized. You’re on time. You’re put together. I barely have enough tasks now to fill a day, let alone a week. It’s time to move on.”

“Time to move on?” Namjoon echoes before barking out a humorless laugh, “I don’t need you anymore? That’s really what you think, Star?”

“Don’t call me that.” The nickname snufs out any trace of fight left inside you, and you plead, “Just let me go, Joon.”

“Never,” He growls.

“I don’t understand what you’re not getting,” You sigh, exasperated and drained, “You’ve surpassed my expectations and erased the need for my position. I think the saying ‘the student has become the master’ applies here.”

Namjoon gapes at you before he snaps, “You’re the one who’s not getting it! Have you ever considered that the student might just be in love with the teacher?”

Joon rakes a hand through his hair as you become the one to gape open mouthed at the frustrated man.

He continues, “I wake up earlier every damn day because I can’t wait to see you at work. I organize all of my things because I just want to see you smile at me when you notice. I spend an hour each night picking out what to wear the next day because I want to impress you… Don’t you see? Everything I do is for you, is because of you. I want to be the best version of myself for you.”

Your mind struggles to compute the seemingly impossible notion that the object of your affections returns your love. “Did you,” You gasp out, “Just say that you loved me?”

“Yes, you complete jellyfish! I love you. I am in love with you! And it’s not like it’s not obvious! I call you ‘Star’ because you are my starfish, my sea star. You are the one who keeps the balance to my ecosystem of chaos. You are the key species that keeps everything afloat.”

“And you thought that was obvious?” You yell back at him, “How on earth would I immediately have known the intense analysis behind your nickname for me, Namjoon the science buffoon?” You huff, scrambling to process the amount of information that had just been thrown at you.

He needed you?

He loved you back?

He nicknamed you after a fucking marine invertebrate?!

Namjoon blinks in surprise, “Did you just insult me with a Bill Nye pun?” You don’t deign to give him a response. Namjoon chuckles before grinning sheepishly, “Okay, fine. You make a good point.”

“I know I do,” You pout. “You can’t just spring this on me, Joon. Why haven't you told me this before?”

“Because I was nervous that you would leave me, that you wouldn't return my feelings. Obviously, the first point is moot. What about the second?”

“You’re asking if I love you back?” Your body sags against the tank behind you, “How could I not, you crab-loving, walking mess of a—”

Namjoon captures your mouth with his, kissing you with fervor. His hands wind their way up to cradle your face between them like you are the most precious thing to him.

Pulling back slightly, Namjoon rasps out, “So, you’ll stay?”

“Hm, I don’t know,” You crack a wry smile, “What’s in it for me?”

“Well, let me show you,” Namjoon replies before whipping his shirt off. You gape open mouthed at the expanse of beautiful tan skin in front of you.

Was that a hint of a tattoo swirling over his left shoulder?

He reaches down to tug at the hem of your dress, insinuating he wants it off. A nice concept in theory; however, with one look around at your surroundings, you slap his hand away. “Namjoon! Not in front of the fish!”

“But, Star, these aren’t fish! These are squid, and they are classed as cephalopods—”

You put a hand over his mouth, “Allow me to clarify: I will only fuck in a creature-free zone.”

Namjoon murmurs something beneath your palm. You give him a warning look before removing your hand. He immediately repeats himself, “My office?”

Your eyes narrow, “I know for a fact you have at least three crabs in there.”

Namjoon pauses, looking suspiciously shifty, “There are only seven…”

You wait for it.

“...teen.” He finishes.

“Kim Namjoon!”

Two Years Later

The short walk down the aisle ends too quickly as you find yourself standing in front of a teary-eyed Namjoon. Five of his friends stand behind him in a row, while the sixth stands proudly as the officiant.

They really are out here looking like a whole boy band, you muse. But, you only have eyes for their leader.

Namjoon stands before you, all tall and handsome in his tux; and as Officiant Jin™ begins the ceremony, you can't help but wonder how you got so lucky.

Finally, the ring exchange is introduced dramatically by Seokjin who spouts something about circles and never ending love. “Let us now have the rings brought forward and presented by the ring-bearer!” He booms, raising his arms up like he is summoning a great force.

Ring-bearer? You rake your mind for a prior mention of a ring-bearer… You thought Yoongi as the best man would have the rings.

Suddenly, Namjoon produces a silver whistle from his pocket and blows it once. You stare at your soon-to-be husband like he has sprouted another head.

And then you hear it: the sound of legs and claws scuttling across the floor towards the altar.

“Tell me that is not what I think it is,” You whisper-yell over to Namjoon, who looks way too pleased for your liking.

Your fears and exasperations come true as Namjoon swoops down to pick up Carl who has two shiny rings tied to his shell with a ribbon.

“Oh, Kim Namjoon,” You sigh as you watch him remove the rings from Carl and hand the crab off to a disgruntled Taehyung, “What am I going to do with you?”

“You’re going to marry me,” Namjoon grins.

And marry him you did.

a/n: jellyfish have no brains, lolz. idk why making joon call the reader a jellyfish made me crack tf up but IT DID.

#bangtanhq #ficswithluv #btswriterscollective #btswritingcafe #hyunglinenetwork #kwritersworldnet #bangtanarmynet #btsbookclub #btsnoonanet #hyungsmutsociety #maknaesmutsociety #bangtanscenery #kim namjoon x reader #namjoon x reader #knj x reader #bts #namjoon fanfic #bts fanfic #happy bday tay!!!!!

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wordsfromthesol · 5 years ago

Text

Character Model

Author: @wordsfromthesol Pairing: Jason Todd x Reader Summary: You may or may not have been following Jason Todd around a bookstore so you could model one of your story characters after him. He may or may not have noticed. Warnings: Language? Word Count: 2k A/N: Just a story from my drafts folder. Sorry I haven’t been able to write any of the wonderful requests I have sitting in my inbox...work has been running me ragged. But they are coming! Love you all 💛

You had no idea where this man came from, but he was perfect. Exactly what you envisioned the assassin prince in your newest story to look like, and he just waltzed into the bookstore. First, you tried to ignore him…after all it would be kind of creepy to stare at this man while sketching him and jotting down little details about the way he walks, talks, runs his fingers through his hair. The more you thought about it, the more you couldn’t get him out of your mind. As you watched his mannerisms, he just became more perfect. Fuck it. You got up from your seat and moved closer to him, pretending to look at the books on the shelf. It wasn’t a very good cover story, as it was quite obvious you were drawing him. I will never see this man again, who cares.

You were never the best artist, but the image got the message across. Once it was complete, you continued following him awkwardly around the store jotting down notes. His interest in certain books, the way he seemed to survey the bookstore…Maybe he is an assassin prince? Those didn’t actually exist right? You ignored those thoughts as you commented on his gait. Wrapped up in your descriptions, you didn’t realize he was now watching you. That is until you looked up again and saw his steel blue eyes staring into yours.

“What are you profiling me for, doll?”

You spun around, hoping he wasn’t talking to you. No such luck. “Oh, uhm, I wasn’t?”

“Hmm, sure does look like it. Can I see that sketch?”

“Heh, you saw that?” He raised his eyebrows. Of course he saw it, Y/N, you are being creepy. “Okay, I swear I’m not stalking you! I just…gosh this is going to sound so stupid…you look exactly like how I envisioned this character in my head…for a story.”

“You’re a writer?”

“Some people would beg to differ, but I guess technically.”

“So what’s the character then?”

Okay now he’s going to be offended. “Uhm…an assassin? But he’s also like prince to the guild thing. It’s kind of complicated.”

“So I look like an assassin?”

“Kind of…?” To your surprise the man chuckled.

“Not gunna lie, I’ve been called so much worse.”

Why are you so awkward? “Well sorry for being creepy…” You turned to leave and didn’t notice the man following you until you nearly slammed the front door in his face.

“I think I deserve to see that sketch after you followed me around for an hour AND tried to knock me out with a door.”

“Oh my go – I’m so sorry, I figured I’d thoroughly…embarrassed myself, so I left…why are you following me?”

“Thought I’d return the favor?” You gave him a nervous smile, the thought of this very large strange man walking you home, at night, in Gotham, did not provide you with much peace. “Relax, you look just like a character I imagined…” He quipped, trying to ease your obvious discomfort.

“Not funny.”

“Really though, it’s dark and getting late and this is Gotham.” You eyed him suspiciously, this still probably wasn’t the smartest move on your part, but you relented and motioned for him to follow.

“Don’t make fun of it, I’m a writer not an artist. This is purely for research.” You commented as you passed him the sheet of notebook paper.

“It looks good, I especially like all the little notes about me. Ruggedly handsome? Piercing steel blue eyes?”

Shit. I forgot about those. “Uhm, yeah.” You tried to snatch the paper back, but he could easily keep it from you. “It was research!” Huffing, you remember some of the descriptions were not very complimentary. Watching his eyes scan the page, you tried to explain. “Some of them are just for the character, don’t take it…”

“No, they are all…pretty spot on I’d say.” His voice turned solemn, almost sad, as he passed the paper back to you.

“I’m sorry.”

“Nah,” he waved it off, picking back up his nonchalant timbre.

The two of you mindless chatted about your favorite books until you arrived at your apartment building.

“Well, this is me. Thanks again…” You had just realized the two of you never exchanged names. “My name’s Y/N, by the way.”

“Jason. I’ll see you around. Try not to stalk anyone else.”

“No promises!” You called out as you entered the apartment.

It had been nearly a week, and honestly you didn’t expect to see the stranger again. After all, how would you? No numbers or last names were exchanged. Yet there he was, sitting across from you at the coffee shop, face buried in a book. This man is actually reading in a coffee shop. He looked so out of place compared to all the usual suspects. It would be creepy if I remembered him, right? I’m just going to ignore him. Your plan didn’t last long, as Jason soon came up and sat beside you.

“Stalking anyone new today?”

“Oh, I uhm…no. Writing about you actually…the character! The character not you.” God, you’re so smooth. You thought as you brought your hand up to cover your face.

“So how is assassin me doing today?”

“Honestly? You’re kind of being a bitch. Like how am I supposed to know how you will react if you are refusing to tell me?”

“Uhm…isn’t that the part you’re supposed to make up?”

“No, I made up you…the assassin…now you’re…they’re supposed to tell me what they want to do.”

“Uh huh. Right. You know they aren’t real right? Like I’m not actually a killer prince.”

“Heh, yeah I know. Wouldn’t that be cool though?”

“I just think you’d be assassinated.”

“Ohh, harsh. Though, sadly, I would just be murdered.”

“No, I had it right.” Jason gave you a smirk as he got up from the table and walked out the door.

Did that actually just happen? You quickly gathered your things and threw them into your computer bag, racing after him. “WAIT!” You noticed he had stopped just outside the door and well before you called after him.

“Walking home?”

“Uhm, yeah. Can I ask you some questions first?”

“How about you can ask me questions until we get to your apartment building?”

“Deal.”

It was a short ten-minute walk, but you picked his brain. Giving him situations to see how he would react. This was way easier than you rewriting the scene, or going back and forth for hours before giving up and not writing anything at all. In fact, his reactions were eerily similar to that of your murderous character. You weren’t accidentally copying his life, right?

The next time you saw him, you were out with friends at some random bar. He sat there stoically on the bar stool, staring into space. This was so…like if your character had just murdered someone. No, he couldn’t have. Probably just a bad day. You excused yourself from the group of friends and slide in to the stool besides Jason.

“So, Jason, bad day?”

“Oh, Y/N. I didn’t…you’re here.”

“Yeah, I try to have a life sometimes. Albeit very rarely.”

“Hm, well, don’t let me keep you.”

“That’s alright, they are content without me.” You pointed towards a group of people. “And plus, you look like you need some company.”

“…”

“Man, riveting stuff. So, what are you drinking?”

“Whiskey.”

“Just…straight? Alright, spill. Remember I know you.”

“I…just had a bad day at work. I’ll get over it.”

“I’m sure whatever happened wasn’t your fault. Some situations are inevitable.”

“I guess.”

“So what do you do, exactly?”

A sad, solemn smile laced his lips as he got up from the bar. “Another time. Get home safe, Y/N.”

“That wasn’t an answer…” you mumbled as you made your way back to your friends.

Just the next day, you were mindless going aisle by aisle in the grocery store, when you feel someone slightly bump into you. You whipped your head around to see the culprit, when what you saw was Jason with a big grin on his face.

“I’m starting to think you never stopped stalking me.”

“If anything, you’re stalking me. This is the closest grocery to my apartment…which you know the address of. I have no clue where you live.”

“Fair enough.” He looked down at the assorted items in your cart, “got a plan for those?”

“Honestly, my version of cooking is throwing some things in a pan and hoping for the best.”

“Hm, well, I could come over and show you some things?”

“Jason, I don’t know your middle or last name, are you offering to cook for me?”

“Peter Todd, and yes, Y/N Y/M/N Y/L/N, I am.”

You looked at him with surprise, “See, now who’s stalking who.”

He started to trail off with a smirk, “I’ll be at yours at 6!”

Did that seriously just happen? How did he know my name? Once you were done you raced home to clean. You were so not prepared for guests, with your scratch paper and sticky notes strewn about the apartment. As soon as the clock struck 6, you heard a knock at the door.

Jason tried to show you what he’s doing in the kitchen, but you couldn’t care less. You sat on the counter, pretending to listen to the instructions, while sipping on the wine in your hand.

“You’re not retaining any of this, are you?”

“Hmm, not really. But I’m quite enjoying watching you do it.” You motioned for him to continue preparing the meal.

“Are you just trying to get a free meal?”

“Well, technically I paid for the food, I’m just after the free chef…that was…I meant like after the preparation of the food…not after you…” Shut up Y/N, you are making it worse.

“That’s alright, I’m just after the free writer.” He looked over his shoulder and winked at you before returning to the stove.

“Does cooking always take this long? It’s nearly 7!” You were trying to quickly change the subject and forget the embarrassment you had just endured.

“Calm down, doll, it’s nearly ready. Grab some plates.” You hopped off the counter and took two plates down from the cabinet, placing them next to the stove before sitting at your kitchen island patiently waiting to be served food.

“Okay, this is amazing. MAYBE worth the hour wait.”

“Oh well MAYBE I’ll take it back then.”

“Don’t you dare.”

Though both of your plates had been empty for hours, and the mess in the kitchen was staring you in the face, neither of you could seem to move. You found anything and everything to talk about, well almost everything. For some reason he still wouldn’t tell you what he did for a living. Which annoyed you because whatever it was clearly took its toll.

“Okay, fine! Don’t tell me, some big ole secret. I’m beginning to think you actually are an assassin prince and your consciousness just went into mine…so now you’re a character in my book.”

“I guess I’ll just have to read it and let you know.”

You side-eyed him, “You can read it when I find out what you do?” You knew at this point there was no hope in getting an answer.

“Tempting. Perhaps you can tempt me further Wednesday night.” Jason rose from the stool and traipsed over to the door. You quickly followed him, mainly out of sheer confusion.

“What’s Wednesday night?”

“Well, I figure those leftovers will last about two days. Can’t leave you without your free chef.” At this point his face was inches from yours. “I’ll be here at 6.” He whispered as he quickly spun on his heel and left.

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cutegirlmayra · 4 years ago

Note

May I request cute Tails and Amy friendship? You can choose which version just them being cute friends? Maybe they defend each other when someone tries to mess with them? Love your writing

Watch 18:19 of Pajama Blogs - Prompt Requests - Ep 1 for juicy first thoughts on this prompts! (I may divert away from it, but we’ll see :3c)

Thank you so much! I try hard to stay pumped with energy so that I can give you all reading material during these trying times, lol. So let’s hope and press our hands together in a prayer that I’ll entertain, satisfy, and bring joyful feels to everyone through my prompts and fanfiction updates :Db

Prompt:

“Still working on that observatory, eh, Tails?”

As Tails was about to hammer in on his half-finished ‘dome-effect’ he wanted for his upper-level room, he blinked a moment at the familiar voice and excitedly looked down.

“Amy!”

“The one and only.” She winked, grinning widely.

He had managed to get half the curve of the wall done, a dark, steel grey for it’s base color as it held a half-finished walled hole where the large glass would be for viewing the stars. He would insert a self-made telescope between there, and design a way to bring the view as though a holographic light performance right into his ‘black room’ when he wanted to personally ‘sit among the stars’.

“Permission to come aboard, captain?” Amy joked, placing a hand on the ladder and saluting him.

Tails’s twin namesakes wagged in joy, smiling and closing his eyes as he nodded, “Permission always granted! B-but be careful of the rickety-”

“Ah!” the ladder seemed to tilt as a piece of metal began to bend.

“Amy!” he was about to fly down but she summoned her hammer, wedging it into the place where the metal was bending.

“Phew~” she sighed out in relief, having some sweat trickle down the side of her face before climbing up again.

She removed her hammer and used it to place the metal back into the proper alignment again. “You might have given me permission, but did you consult your ship on that decision?”

The two laughed.

“Sorry about that. Everything is still a work in progress, and honestly, it’s kinda revolutionary if this actually works.” Tails scratched behind his head, then explained how new this technology and optical illusion trick really was.

“Yeah,... kinda amazing, Tails.” Amy admired the work already done to give Tails a space to mediate and enjoy the nature of wonderful night sky above him. “I remember when I first met you, that the dark used to be such a scary thing for ya.” She kid, looking to him kindly but nudging him with a tease.

He blushed slightly, looking away, “Well... then you and Sonic showed me how beautiful it was! A-an-and besides that, I’m too old for a night light.” he tried to seem so mature... but that pout made it obvious he just didn’t want to be looked down upon.

“Right. So a big sky-show isn’t the same thing?” She looked over to see he had already marked a place with some cushions, a reading-outlet to the side of the wall imbedded in with a shelf for the books, and a big fuzzy blanket. The tape read: Second Bed.

It all made her smile, “What a lovely little R&R space...” she lowered her eyes, wondering if he still got lonely like she did... and this was his way of coping.

He lived far away from the city, and although Amy lived down a winding road, she would visit the city often enough for groceries and other fun shopping sprees.

What did boys do to occupy their time?

“Heh, I wouldn’t say a 3D projected model of a precisely positioned magnifying glass and hyperized telescope make for a sky-light.” he tried to defend himself, and it was rather cute to Amy.

“Well, I bet Sonic’ll love to bunk here more often.”

The tone suddenly shifted as Amy and Tails both looked down, away from the other.

“Have you... heard from him lately?” Amy asked, almost worried that she already knew the answer to that question.

“No.” Tails sighed out, before dramatically leaning back and letting his head fall back on his shoulders, “Not since Eggman last showed up.”

“Yeah... he’s been rushing off more and more lately on some daring-dos that apparently don’t require any of us to come along...”

There was a quiet somberness...

“Yeahhhh...” Tails once again leaned properly back in place and dipped his head, scratching it softly...

He seemed friend-sick... and as Amy observed him more, he even looked starved for conversation.

“Hmph!” She puffed up the side of her cheek, “Well, we’ll have to give him the ol’silent treatment when he gets back this time too! Serve him right for all those times he’s left us behind on all the fun!” Amy rambled off, but Tails perked up a bit, looking over to her with a slight turn of his lowered head.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah! Just you wait! He’ll come back ready to tell us all his cool stunts on his new latest adventure, and we’ll be just chatting it up about your awesome star project!” She posed with her arm out and her hand upon her muscle, as though Rosy the Riveter. “That means we should wrap this little project of love up and really see what it’s made of!”

“Y-you mean it?” Tails looked thrilled by her offer. “I-I mean, if it’s not too much trouble... I could use your hammer for a few things.” He looked down at the metal that had bent out of place. “You’re strong arm means I could patch the rest of this in one hammer hit! It’ll remain sturdy if you’re strength! Ah...! Sorry!” he looked back over and saw Amy frowning embarrassedly, pushing her fingers together. He wagged his arms out to the side of her, apologetically. “I forgot... how you sometimes take the praise for your strength a little...” he felt awkward now, seeing her begin her usual spiel.

“But I’m... elegant... A-and lady-like when I do it... right?” She looked over to him as though pleading for his approval.

“O-O-of course, you are! I-I even remember Sonic saying something about it! Your hammer is super cute and only adds to your-! Uhh... c-charms!” Tails bundled his fists up and started shaking them profusely around, not sure how to convince her a ‘giant hammer’ was somehow ‘girlish’ but he did his best. “And besides, I don’t care what anyone else says, Amy! You’re super useful thanks to your strength! Just like I am with my brains.”

He was so determined to succeed in cheering her up that Amy couldn’t bear to disappoint him.

She took in a deep breath and got over herself, straightening up. “Yeah... well, I have to be strong, to look after and protect you and the others.” She ruffled up his hair and he laughed lightly, slightly moving away from her touch as a brother would to his older sister.

“I’m sorry that you’re sensitive to that.” He admitted, “You really are super cool when you hit a robot miles away!”

She flinched.

“I-I-I meant that in a good way!” he shook his hands out again, “Honest!”

Amy just laughed, “I can cook too, you know. Why don’t we finish building this thing and then I’ll make us something good to eat. We can turn it off with some smores and maybe crackers or something too later tonight!” Amy’s usual optimism was restored and Tails immediately caught on to it’s wave.

“Woah! You mean it! T-that could take all day...” His ears lowered just slightly.

“Pfft!” Amy turned with a proud look upon her face, placing one hand to her hip as she sat off the edge with him and then slammed her hand to the top of his head again, making him flatten slightly as he was sitting slightly on his knees. He looked uncomfortable, like her force had made him do an unwilling ‘split’ sort of with his knees being parted and he looked as though in strained pain. “Think nothing of it, Tails! As you said before, my hammer strikes are good on one blow! We’ll have this done in no time, so..? Can I stay the night?”

He continued to flinch and twitch in the pain, “S-sur-sure, I-I-I don’t mind... mmm...” he had a small tear forming at the right of his eye.

A few hours passed as the two worked hard, and finally, the dome was done and the telescope he had already completed for the room was successfully moved up to the upper-room... with a lot of back-strain and power from the two working together. Tails had to really test his twin-propelling tails’s weight limit on how fast they could twirl to lift something, and Amy’s powerful arms and back were put to their ultimate test as well!

But somehow, the two worked great together, though bickered and taunted the other at times...

“You can fly higher than that, Tails!”, “D-don’t act like I’m the only one lifting my weight here!”, “AH! What is that supposed to mean!? I’m as light as a feather! And this is... nothing... compared... to what I can lift!”, “Then push harder!”, “You fly harder!”, They both ‘ggrr’d and finally got the massive telescope up that ladder...

When everything was set up, Amy put on a movie for Tails to rest and started cooking up some dinner. She wanted to leave room for the late-night snacks, and coming back in, noticed Tails wasn’t watching the television.

“Huh?” She looked up the ladder to the room and smiled, seeing the computer light on as he must have been programming the telescope and other functions. “He works so hard... he must be excited to show it off to Sonic.” she felt a slight bit of envy. She sighed, “Not like girls and guys can have that strong of a bond... botherhood and sisterhoods are really exclusive, huh?” she frowned, not liking the idea that she could never be as close to Sonic or Tails as the other was with them.

She called down Tails though, and they had a nice dinner together, complimenting their success as Tails hoped it would all work, but Amy told him not to worry.

“You’re incredibly good at designing these technological masterpieces, Tails.” Amy scolded him for about to open his mouth to answer with food in it, and seeing her hand raised and her eyes closed while one opened slightly, he chewed and swallowed before continuing.

“W-well, that doesn’t mean that their isn’t going to be some error on my part involved...”

“I’m sure Sonic will love it. I know I’m excited to see it.” She picked up his finished plate, going to wash them and as she removed her apron...

“Sonic? I was building this for us to view it together, tonight.”

Her face shot up, touched.

Her heart seemed to rise up as though being elevated to a status it thought unattainable.

“R-really?” She always had felt a distance between the boys, and found it just seemed easier and less forced when interacting with Cream... but Cream was still so young too. She loved picking flowers! Don’t get her wrong! She had just gotten really, really good at making flower crowns for so... long...

She placed her apron that she had borrowed from him down, planning to wash it if needs be as well, but turned back to Tails.

He didn’t seem to notice how much that meant to her, already wiping his hands on his white fluff like he would if he was greased up in oil or gunk stains from working on his pet-projects like the X-Tornado and this Observatory. She puffed up her cheek, “I still need to teach you proper manners, huh?” she whispered under her breath, but smiled and touched her heart.

He was already racing up the ladder, and she immediately went into mother mode.

“Ah! Tails! D-don’t move so fast after eating!” she reached a hand up but he called down to her.

“Bring up the treats! I think it’s loaded all the settings in by now! ... Yeah! Yeah it has!”

His excited voice sprang her into an excitement, “W-well, hold on! I’m coming!” It was like he just called out that the fireworks were gonna start...

She rushed through the cleaning and threw the plates into the dishwater, a little rougher than she usually would like to and washed herself up before charging up the ladder. “Don’t let it start without me!”

“Hurry!” Tails called, and she immediately started to leap passed rings on the ladder to just reach out and jump pass a few steps.

“I’m here!” her quills looked a mess as she clung to the edge of the room, Tails rushing over and helping her up as she huffed and puffed in her strain to get there in time.

“Haha, and you tell me not to rush.” He teased her back.

“Hmph.” she blew up her bottom bang of the three quills on her forehead and then smiled to him, cheekily, “If I get stomach cramps, I’m blaming you!”

“Over here!” He laughed a moment at her response but was too excited to show her what he had set up.

“Ah... Tails...” Amy felt so important and loved then, seeing he had taken the large fuzzy blanket and got in it, opening a space for her to join him.

“S-sorry, is this too... um... close?” He squinted an eye, lowering his arm that was gesturing for her to intimately cuddle up within it and watch the show together.

She shook her head, holding back tears and hoping to not confuse him. “Absolutely! I-I mean, it’s perfect! Don’t change a thing!” she crawled down and got into the blanket, taking the other side as she felt Tails bouncing in his seat.

“Okay, good. Three... two... one... Ehem,” he cleared his throat, like a child about to press ‘liftoff’ on a rocket. “Computer! Activate Spatial Definity Mock 5 Advanced Overhead Project 3.2.7.”

Amy blinked her eyes rapidly at such a long line...

“What? You couldn’t have called it, Sky-light?” she teased again, “For nightlight?”

“Quit it...” He nudged her lightly, embarrassed she kept teasing him on that one. “It sounds cooler this way... and it reminds me how long it took to set up the program and make it run right. I haven’t tested this final version yet, so SDM5AOP 3.2.7 is a perfect name for-!”

“O-okay, as long as it makes sense to you.” she decided not to question it.

The whirling of a computer was heard and the two waited anxiously for the results...

“It has to take a second to go through all it’s processing. Lots of... kinda like doors to hurdle through and collect data for.” He explained.

“...Do you... wish Sonic were here instead of me?” she looked away from him for a moment. “I mean... not that you would have a preference b-b-but...” she thought this was a bad, killing the mood he had tried to set up and wish she didn’t say anything. “Nevermind.”

“No, I think you’ll appreciate it more than he will.”

She felt that ranking skyrocket again, as though her tiny significance in life was suddenly bumped up again to a higher sphere of importance in this little fox boy’s life.

“W-... What makes you say that?” she was trying so hard to hide the sparkles in her eyes, but her quivering voice gave away how happy she was to hear that. No, not happy, overjoyed to know she was considered such a special friend to him.

“You actually helped me complete it!” He spread his arms out as the first little light formed in the blackened room.

“Ah!” Amy saw it first, marveling as it faded and then grew brighter and brighter to show the actual dimensions of the star that was currently in the sky, or at least, the radiance of it.

She marveled as he continued to talk, not noticing multiple other little constellations starting to form over his literal head and scattered all throughout the room. Accurate and pronounced, their distance was a miniature diorama of the actual space of the universe...

“I knew you’d want to see it... I’m sure he would too, but Sonic would rather be in the stars then just viewing them... though he does all the time. Heh, I guess you’ll be able to brag about how you were the first to see it! I-if it works or not... It’s still a longshot, s-so... don’t get your hopes up too hig-”

His face was yanked towards the direction of the star, then Amy started shaking his arm. “Ah-AH-AHHHH!!!” she freaked out as a very distinct cosmic entity was defined in the space.

“AH-! AHHH!! IT ACTUALLY WORKS!” Tails flipped out as they both cried out-

“EARTH!”

Then, one after another...

“The Milky Way!”, “It’s the galaxy from Chris’s world... and look! Here’s our constellations!”, “Ohhh! It’s our solar system! Ahhh! It’s so bright!”

“...Do you think Cosmos seeds found good land to grow on?”

The two suddenly stopped gawking...

Amy couldn’t even look to him, and him the same.

Instead, she scooted closer to him in the blanket, felt his tails solemnly wrap around her for support and comfort, and placed her arm to his opposite shoulder to pull him into the gap of her neck.

He laid his head on her shoulder, tearing up.

“Is... is that why you made all of this?” Amy’s heart tugged on her vocal chords, making them choke slightly.

“...Yeah.” he admitted. “If this was Sonic, I don’t think he’d be willing to talk about it... not like you.” he looked down a moment.

“No, don’t look down.” Amy’s voice plucked up an octave. “Look at your amazing work, Tails. Look at how vast... how beautiful the universe is... I’m sure you’ll see evidence of Cosmo’s seed blooming all over the place. You know why?”

She ducked her gaze down slightly, moving her head to make sure she didn’t obstruct his view.

He smiled lightly through his tears.

“Because life never quits, that’s why!” She pulled him into a half-hug and continued to snuggle up in the blanket. “Hehe, because Cosmo would want you to look at these stars and know that she’s everywhere. Smiling just as brightly as any of these ol’stars and wishing you the best forever!”

She felt his shoulders bounce a little...

She knew Sonic would have done an alright job if he were here too, but...

She was so glad...

Holding him and tucking him in better into the blanket...

That she was the one he shared this whole project with.

That she was the one... who could dry his tears tonight.

-Author: And now I cry, wow, hands slapped together in a prayer really did wonders for myself in this prompt, how about you? lolol To those of you who actually did the gesture and wished me the best, this one’s for you.

#amy and tails #amy prompt #tails prompt #miles tails prower #amy rose #sonic x #cosmo #tailsxcosmo #cutegirlmayra #sonic x prompt #sonic prompt #cosmo the seedrian #cosmo prompt #tailsmo

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pettyprocrastination · 5 years ago

Text

Rip Out Our Seams and Stitch Us Together

Maxwell Lord x Valerie Lord x Black!Reader

Chapter Two

Word Count: 2.7k

Warnings: Profanity, slight sexual themes, description of the beginning of an anxiety attack, Max puts his hands on you for a hot second but then you rip him a new one lmao.

Chapter Summary: The Lord’s have a discussion while Max work’s from home and you meet the other half of D.C’s richest power-couple that you now work for.

Tag List: @ithinkhesgaybutwesavedmufasa @captainsamwlsn @zeldasayer @readsalot73

Chapters: 1/2

The Lord manor was silent, as it always was. Even when Max and Valerie were home, it was still lifeless.

Her heels clicked against the marble floor as she walked into her bedroom, which was larger than most living rooms. The steady click-clack echoed throughout the grandiose household and bounced right back to the source. Nothing else was heard; no laughter, no pitter-patter by the feet of excited pets or even children to see mommy come home. Not even the eagerly awaiting footsteps of her husband to welcome her back, take her bags, and ask her how her day went.

Maxwell was never the type for such idiosyncrasies, and never would be.

Cold, empty, fake.

A dollhouse meant for Barbie and Ken was more authentic.

I guess that made them no more real than the toys themselves.

Well, that is if Barbie and Ken secretly hated each other and slept with other people on the side all throughout their relationship. Valerie didn’t know much about dolls.

She set the plastic bag onto her bed and began unbuttoning her blouse, letting it fall off her shoulders and onto the ground before shimmying out of her jeans.

Valerie Lord wearing something that isn’t designer? She picked up the sundress that had first caught her eye, pressing it to her chest and marveling at just how soft it felt. That’ll be the fucking day.

She slid it on with ease, she couldn’t say that for half of her wardrobe.

Dresses were made to hug her figure and accentuate her curves. Constricting, suffocating, so tight she could barely breathe and the flashing of cameras so bright, nothing was there to ground here, nobody was. She couldn’t see it all was too-

Soft. Her fingers ran along the fabric, hips swaying slightly as she watched the long skirt flow with her movements. It hugged her chest like it was made just for her, but it didn’t suffocate her - not a choking grip on her lungs, but a gentle hand on her chest. Her hands drifted down to the pockets, where she slid them in and remembered the grin you had on your face when you told her.

“It’s sort of my signature.” You boasted, chest puffed out like you just won a gold medal. Valerie couldn’t help but notice the shirt you had been wearing, a button up with covered in different colored squares, so tacky and loud she could feel the migraine building just from looking at you.

She also couldn’t help but notice just how little buttons were actually used to close it. A wide expanse of your chest on display, smooth skin practically on show for her before stopping just above your belly button, the curves of your chest peeking through enough for her to wonder if you slipped, would you be completely exposed?

Valerie shook herself free from the thoughts of the ridiculous seamstress, with her ridiculous tattoos and that ridiculous nickname. ‘Stitches,’ give me fucking break. She scoffed, but then turned around to admire the dress from the back. You do good work though…

The idea was set in her mind, and Valerie Lord was as stubborn as they come. There was no turning back. Won’t be too bad, she reasoned with herself. I could count it as my charity work for the month.

Maxwell sat in his office, nursing a glass of scotch while going over a contract sent over to him late that afternoon. He could’ve easily stayed late at work, it wouldn’t be the first time. Valerie wouldn’t have worried, or cared at all really. She slept in a separate bed, in a separate room on the other side of the house.

She wasn’t his reason for coming home early. Christ, she wasn’t the reason he did anything.

The true culprit was his secretary.

Delilah Harris was a pretty young thing who must've thought that sleeping with the big man would get her a better job, better pay, or maybe a side job as his sugar baby. What she wanted exactly he wasn't too sure about, but if he had to deal with the pathetic woman cuddling up to him at his own company as if they were lovers moonlighting a secret affair? Oh, he was going to lose his shit.

So he found himself sitting at the mahogany desk in his office, glasses pushed up on his nose. Finally able to get work done without being distracted by some incompetent bimbo batting her eyes at him.

The door to his office creaked open. He didn’t bother looking up.

Spoke too goddamn soon.

“I've commissioned a seamstress to make me a dress for the gala in September.” Valerie’s voice was always so matter of fact. So condescending, as if her flimsy shrink degree suddenly meant she was smarter than him, the one who actually made money.

“I’ll be meeting with her tomorrow.”

“That sounds positively riveting, dear.” Max drawled, turning a page to read more of the agreements. He was only a quarter through the damn thing and he already knew half of these deals weren’t going to be made unless he was six feet fucking under. Somebody was definitely getting fired tomorrow.

“I’ll be a bit tied up at work. You know, since I actually have a job and all. But you go ahead and make sure to tell the sewing mice I said hello, Cinderelly.”

He heard his wife huff and put her foot down, Max didn't have to see her to know she had her arms crossed and a frown on her painted lips. Like she always did when she didn’t get her way, a petulant child with an endless temper tantrum.

“She’ll be making a suit for you as well, darling.”

The glasses slipped down his nose as his head shot up. “Excuse me? If you didn’t notice I’m a little busy running-” He stopped in his rant to take in the flowing white dress she wore that came all the way down to her shins. “Well that’s a bit too ‘Little House on the Prairie’, don’t you think?”

She uncrossed her arms, hands coming down to the skirt to bunch it around in her fists and swish it side to side. “Well I like it, and I’ll be damned if I don’t do something just because you don’t like it.”

Max snorted and set his glasses on the table. “Well that much is true, given how much you know I loathe that laughable model, yet you still keep him around.” He feigned thought and looked off in the corner. “What’s his name? Randy?”

“Robert.” She corrected. “And how’s the secretary, still drooling at your feet like the little lap dog she is?”

“At least she gets on my lap.” His eyes roamed her figure in the dress with a hunger she hadn’t seen in God knows how long. “What are you wearing under that?”

Valerie grinned, her hands slowly slid up her legs, dragging the dress along with them. “Well wouldn’t you like to know?”

Her husband sighed, head falling into his hand but never letting his eyes leave her form. “You know I hate games Valerie.” His tone was even as he spoke but she could see the tension in his shoulders like a steel wire ready to snap.

“Well that’s not true at all.” The dress passed her knees and slid up the silky skin of her thighs. “I know for a fact that you love games.”

Her hands released the skirt, letting it fall back around her legs.

“But only when you win.” She turned on her heel, fabric swishing around her as she did. “Wednesday afternoon, Maxwell, don’t be late!” Valerie slammed his office door shut behind her, leaving her husband alone once more.

Maxwell sighed, long and loud, before he pushed his glasses upright on his face and returned his attention to the stack of papers in front of him. For the rest of the night he did all he could to push away the phantom image in his mind of his wife’s supple thighs gripped in his hands.

Max looked to the building his driver parked outside of with great disdain.

“Check again.”

The driver, Daniel, sighed and looked through the mirror to meet his employer’s eyes. “I have sir, three times already. This is the address that Mrs.Lord gave to me.”

The shop was tiny, the name “A Stitch In Time.” on a sign above the door. A series of little figurines, mugs, and warrior knic-knacks lined the multiple window sills. It was quaint, homey, and the type of place many feel like a friend rather than a customer.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Max stomped out of the car, shutting the door with so much vigor it shook slightly.

“Wait here for me.”

“Of course sir.”

His first step onto the asphalt, was directly into a puddle of muddy water that splashed back against the end of his trousers. Even through the window he could hear Daniel cough to hide his laughter.

Max peered through the windows, looking for a sight of anybody within the store before grabbing the door using only two fingers and walking inside.

A small bell jingled against the door as his entrance, and a voice called out from the back of the store.

“I’ll be out in one moment!” A woman shouted, Max took the chance to look at the racks of clothing around him, picking up one particularly horrendous skirt with the tips of his pointer and forefinger with a frown.

This was the place that Val chose? Maybe he should sign her up for rehab, because she’s got to be smoking something to think-

“Welcome to a Stitch in- oh shit.”

Max turned his head to see you standing at the back door, mouth slightly agape. He took in your cheap jeans, your gold chain resting against your chest, a large expanse of skin left sinful on display due to the especially gaudy shirt you wore only being buttoned by the button three. Untamed curls framed your face like a halo as you stand shocked by the man before you.

“Son of a bitch.” You mumbled, your eyes raked over his blonde hair all the way to his designer shoes. “That lady was actually for real.”

“That Lady, being my wife I presume?”

Max's voice, though annoyed, was rich and smooth and shook you out of your stupor.

“That she is. She came in on Monday and briefly spoke about..a commission?”

“Yes.” He continued to walk around the store, looking at everything with a sour face, even you. “Why she did I’m not so sure.”

“Excuse me?”

Five minutes in and Max Lord was already proving to be worse than his wife.

“Is this place up to health code?”

“Excuse me?”

Five minutes in and it was confirmed that Max lord was definitely worse than his wife.

He waved a dismissive hand in the air before he stopped browsing judging your store.

“But what baby wants, baby gets.” He drew a hand to his heart in what could only be described as a sarcastic display of fake love.“Happy wife happy life and all that bullshit, right?”

You knew from the get-go that Maxwell Lord the Fourth was a load of shit. The moment you saw his dazzling smile in his commercials you knew that in real life he was probably like every other rich person in the world. Entitled, classist, and so judgmental they’d reject a glass of water in the Sahara if they knew it was tap.

You weren’t sure if it was satisfying or disheartening to know you were right.

Nonetheless, a job is a job and you’d having to be fucking insane to reject a giant payout like the Lord’s would no doubt offer.

But that didn’t mean you had to be happy about it.

“Timeline?”

Max blinked. Usually people who thank him for the oh so amazing chance to work for him, but you stood your ground. He tilted his head to the side, looking at you with a new inkling of respect.

“Four months.”

“Event?”

“The museum of Natural History is throwing a gala for it’s donors.” He adjusted his cuffs as he spoke to you, only looking at you in brief glances which pissed you off even more. “I’m the top one.”

You scoffed under your breath. “Of course you are.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said how charitable of you.”

The animosity of his glare dissolved into a smirk. “Of course.”

You stuffed your hands into our pockets so he wouldn’t see how tightly they were balled up into fists.

Think of the money, dumbass. You reminded yourself. Stomach the rich people bullshit for a little bit for a huge payout. You've got this.

“I’ll be able to do it, but it may be a time crunch.” His face fell once more.

“This is a job, honey.” He spoke slowly and moved his hands with each word as if you didn't understand what he was saying.

“I expect it to be done to the best of your abilities, whatever pisspoor standard that may be.”

Well, you thought before you marched forward until you were nearly nose to nose with the billionaire. You lasted this long, that’s reward enough.

“Listen here you glorified trust fund baby, I work hard and I work well. But keep in mind I have a multitude of people coming through that door every damn day that I also do work for. So don’t think that just because you and your trophy wife have matching silver spoons wedged up your-”

Max’s left hand lashed out and clamped over your mouth, his fingers digging into the plush skin of your cheeks. If you weren’t so fucking pissed that this mother fucker had the audacity to put his hand on you like that, you may have taken a moment to marvel at just how soft they felt against your skin.

You reared back, blood roaring in your ears before you finally found your voice. “You’ve got to be out of your goddamn mind if you think you can put your hands on me like that and not expect me to shove my foot up your-”

While you yelled, Max fished a slip of paper out of the pocket of his coat and handed it to you with a condescending smile. “Will that suffice?”

His manner, so calm and collective while you were about to wring his neck made you pause.

“Will what suffice?”

He sighed, wiggling the slip in the air. “This.”

You set your hands on your hips and stare at him in defiance. “Oh? What is it? A certificate for being the most pompous-”

“Just take a fucking look and you’ll see!”

While at first his sudden booming voice caused you to jump. You couldn’t help it, but your chest swelled with pride at seeing the great Maxwell Lord lose his temper at you. To know that you could get under the skin of the most powerful man in D.C. was almost enough payment in itself. Keyword being almost.

You snatched the paper from his hands, anger melting into shock when you realized it was, in fact, a written check and-

That’s a lot of zeroes.

Max picked some imaginary lint off his shoulder before he took in your gobsmacked form with a satisfied smile. “I trust that will be enough to cover the consultation fee?”

Christ on a cracker, this was just for the consultation fee?

Stand your ground, girl. You reminded yourself. Don’t give him power over you. Give this corporate ken doll a piece of your mind.

You cleared your throat as you tucked the check worth more than your car into your backpocket and crossed your arms. With squared shoulders and your head held high you spoke in the most impassive and neutral tone you could collect from yourself.

“It’ll do.”

Maxwell grinned like he was the cat and you the canary. You wondered what that made his wife. The sadistic pet owner most likely.

“Marvelous.” He all but purred. “Valerie will be in tomorrow to talk design with you. Until we meet again, Stitches.”

With a quick pivot on his heel, your richest client walked out of your store and into the car waiting for him outside.

You felt a bit of your pride return when you watched him step into the dirty puddle of gutter water for a second time that day.

#maxwell lord x reader #maxwell lord #valerie lord #valerie lord x reader #maxwell lord x valerie lord x reader #ww1984 #pedro pascal x reader #pedro pascal #Stitches

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harcourtholmesii · 4 years ago

Text

Friend And Enemy

Another story for @connor-sent-by-cyberlife. My intention is that this will be one part of a two part story, the second will be due for one of the future prompts.

Pairings: HankCon / Hannor / Hank X Connor

Warnings: - Swearing - Implied Sexual Situations, Drinking and Drugs - Referenced and Stated Murder - Depression and Self-Hatred - Bad Choices

Words: 2881

Enjoy!

The neon lights of the club flashed through the retinas of Hank’s optical units. For a human, they may have been blinding. A heavy pounding of bass music flooded through the club’s structure, the sound system stretched extensively across the walls. On the dance floor, human patrons were ‘dancing’, their bodies a stench of alcohol, sweat and smoke. Despite the anti-android sign on the door, it was easy for Hank to slip in, his model designed to blend in with the crowd. Few eyes trailed to the arm band on his right, or the gleaming, blue triangle, the obvious marks of an android, if only because they were all too inebriated to notice.

It didn’t suit Hank’s expectations. He was only present in the Eden Club to search for any sign of his partner-to-be. It was the third club he had entered in search of detective Connor Arkait, previously Connor Kamski. Hank had simply been informed by Captain Fowler that this detective had told her he was due out to celebrate some occasion, and would be at the Eden Club. That narrowed it down to three locations across Detroit, and Hank had been searching for him the past hour and a half. His phone was off it seemed, as Hank had been attempting to connect to it and had been reduced to simply leaving a voicemail.

His scanners were struggling with the mess of human faces, and whether they meant to, the crowd helped to siphon him through to the other side of the dance floor too quick for him finish his scans. His LED flashed a brilliant yellow in the android equivalent to frustration. As he leaned back against the wall of a booth, he allowed himself another look across the club. Finally, his scanners picked up on something; some loose papers beside a folder, marked with a stamp that read ‘DPD’.

He approached, skirting the edges of the dancing, grinding crowd, until he came upon a near empty booth. A dark haired human was stooped over the papers, eyes focussed on the work before him, pen rapidly dashing across paper. Hank cleared his throat, a human gesture to gain his attention, and warm, brown eyes flicked up to meet his own. It was easily enough time to scan the other’s facial features.

He had a 100% match.

‘Detective Arkait?’

The human seemed confused, looking Hank up and down as if scanning himself. Eyes flicked to the LED on Hank’s temple, his serial and model number emblazoned upon the breast of his grey uniform. His eyes turned back to Hank’s face and took in his artificially depicted age, and the addition of silver hair and trimmed beard.

The detective immediately started packing up his papers; it was an odd place for a human to attempt to work. It came across immediately as ‘workaholic’ behaviour, and with the lack of glass on the table or any traces of it against the detectives lips, Hank could only assume that his ‘night out’ was not one for relaxation. The detective stood, revealing him still in something akin to business wear or a uniform. The white shirt was open a bit by the collar, so that the human may not overheat in the 30 degree Celsius conditions.

The detective had finished cleaning up, and gestured vaguely towards the front of the club, as if insinuating an exit. Hank led the way, his size enough to form a path for the detective to follow. Once they had reached the exit, beneath the streetlights and neon signs, Hank could make out where blood had risen to the surface of Connor’s skin, creating a flushed look to his features. It was probably due to the heat of the club, or the embarrassment of being caught out.

They stepped away from the club, Hank patiently waiting to be addressed. By the time they stepped into a nearby, empty street, Connor’s face had lost some of its heat. But not all of it.

‘Sorry.’ Hank was not expecting an apology, nor the explanation that followed. ‘I was not expecting to be called out this evening.’ Connor adjusted one of the suspender straps, a light smack of elastic against his body a strange ministration to Hank. It confused Hank further that Connor would be explaining the circumstances to him; an android.

‘I am unfamiliar with the HK800 model.’

‘I’m a prototype android, assigned to you for a recent deviancy case.’ When Connor heard that, a pout came over his features.

‘So that is why Niles stole my phone.’ He huffed, blowing a stray, defiant lock out of his eyes. The same curl of hair returned to hanging just above his left eye anyway. ‘Sorry I couldn’t answer my phone. Do you have the details of the investigation, or are they still being compiled?’

‘The crime scene is still being investigated. Captain Fowler expressed his wish to have you there.’

Connor smiled at him, a gesture that Hank did not understand. Humans didn’t often smile at androids, whether it was because they were against them entirely, simply saw them as objects or even when they did smile at them, it was hardly genuine. To read the human features and see that his eyes creased slightly at the corners, and the pull of his lips created dimples, Hank determined it was a real smile. It was confusing.

‘Do you terribly mind calling a cab, then? We’ll head over right away.’ A flick of Hank’s LED and two minutes and forty-seven seconds later, a self-driving taxi had pulled up on the street curb. Connor stepped inside, followed by Hank himself, and the directions were inputted.

It was a quiet ride for the most part, but it seemed the detective was in some form of discomfort. His movements were agitated, and a coin had been removed from his pocket. He stroked his thumb over the quarter, and twirled it between the fingers on one hand, distracted. It reminded Hank of his own calibration technique, but he didn’t voice his opinion on the matter. His words only mattered once he had to detail what he could discover at the crime scene.

‘What should I call you?’ Hank turned his eyes back to the human, who seemed to have no qualms speaking with an android in such a casual manner. It seemed odd. ‘No offense intended, of course, but I was curious if I should simply refer to you by HK800 or if you have a name. It may be easier for me to say than ‘HK800’ all the time.’ His tone was soft, a joking inflection in his words.

‘Hank.’

‘It’s a nice name.’ There was a brief algorithm of words and numbers that faded in and out across Hank’s HUD, too quickly for him to immediately decipher. But something stirred within the android at those words; he couldn’t recognise if it was perhaps a glitch or minor malfunction in his biocomponents, but he felt his thirium pump briefly skip a beat. It threw off the rhythm for all of 2.09 seconds, but it was noticeable enough. What should have been a potential concern was ignored, if only because…

It felt… Nice…

~X~

‘Hank! Let’s go!’ Connor was on his feet and, alongside Hank’s own, heavy footsteps, the two of them had taken off after the deviant. The android had been hiding in an abandoned apartment building, caring for pigeons of all things, and had immediately gone to attack Connor when the detective had drawn too close to its hiding place.

The corridor was cramped, Hank taking the lead as he glided over several thrown obstacles. He heard a rough sound of either pain or exertion, but he could not wait. If he slowed down now, they would lose the deviant.

Hank bust through the fire exit door, the steel barrier colliding into the wall and near coming off its hinges at the force. Before him was the rooftop; the deviant leapt beneath the giant sign and onto the raised farm on the opposite rooftop. Behind him, Connor followed, only just keeping pace. His breaths were a constant reminder of his presence, and served to aggravate Hank further.

Through the wheat, Hank hurriedly climbed a brick wall, eyes constantly scanning and pre-constructing what paths laid out before him. He couldn’t afford to be slow or even careful; he would lose sight of his target.

Through greenhouses and across glass rooftops, Hank tracked the deviant. Connor’s progress had slowed behind him, to where he could no longer hear him breathing. He didn’t chance a glance behind him, not when he was so close. He could hear the South Detroit train on route, could see the drop off where the tracks created a large gap between the first rooftop farms and a rooftop orchard.

The deviant leapt, and Hank made to do the same.

‘Oh, fuck…’ The voice was so soft, or perhaps it was loud but simply muted by the heavy winds. Hank turned his head around, optical units scanning as he watched Connor’s form, a distance behind him, slip through an open skylight, hands gripping tight to the edge. Beneath him, there was a whirl of engines, the sound of many blades slicing and dicing through crops. Connor’s legs dangled several metres above the ground, his hands struggling to keep a hold of the glass roof.

From where he was, Hank could not see Connor’s face, but he could hear his ragged, exhausted breaths. He scanned Connor, watching with a strange, hollow feeling in his chest as the ‘survival chance’ read 68%. Beside it, the chance of following and apprehending the deviant was beginning to lower with every half second he spent weighing his options.

Finally, he could see Connor pull himself up, just enough that Hank could see his face. Wide eyes, filled with fear. Hank’s hands twitched, his HUD depicting the beginning of a red, security field between him and Connor. His programming, CyberLife itself, was telling him to go and continue his pursuit.

‘Hank…’ His voice was strained, and with a feeling like Hank’s own biocomponents were about to fall, he watched the other slip. His chances decreased by seven percent, but Hank shook his head. It had to be enough. He had to trust the detective could look after himself. The deviant was his number one priority.

He turned, and took off in the other direction, hot on the deviant’s trail.

As the HK800 left him behind, Connor sighed, hanging his head against his chest. Every moment, he could feel his fingers slipping. Beneath him, the tractor roared ominously, and Connor could practically feel the engine rattling his very ribcage. He should have figured the deviant was the priority, but he had hoped Hank would have…

What had he hoped?

That he meant something to a machine? It didn’t matter that they shared a car ride together, how Connor had noticed the android seemingly smile more whenever they spoke, how Hank had even protected him Ortiz’s own android. What mattered was the mission. He felt his hands slip, and with a cry, he landed in the wet soil below, the tractor nearly upon him.

~X~

He had heard about Connor’s condition through the Captain. Hank couldn’t care, he was a machine after all, but the more he heard about Connor’s condition, the worse he felt. It was as if every word twisted his thirium pump awkwardly around in the pit of his synthetic chest.

‘Broken ribs.’

‘Dislocated shoulder.’

‘Plenty of cuts and bruises.’

‘Mostly, however, he is still suffering from a bit of shock. He won’t be in tomorrow, as much as he may wish to be.’ Hank felt like ‘shit’; a term used, in this case, to mean that he felt less than subpar. He couldn’t imagine Connor, the one he was supposed to please and work with, would ever want to see him again. However, by CyberLife’s insistence, Hank would force himself into Connor’s life once more, once the workaholic detective could no longer stand to remain in his apartment.

He had been assigned to an investigation alongside detective Reed, in one of the Eden Clubs across Detroit. A murder, presumably committed by a deviant, but Hank had hardly been able to concentrate. By the time detective Reed had made his case that it was manslaughter, and the ‘fucking idiot’ had a little too much ‘fun’, Hank did not have the energy to argue.

It was as if stasis weighed on his biocomponents, near drowning him.

He wondered if this was how guilt felt to humans.

~X~

Hank stepped towards the park bench, the faintest, early snowfall gently floating down in a fine curtain of white. There, still bandaged and bruised, sat Connor.

A hand rested by his side, and with a scan, Hank could see that the three broken ribs had hardly healed since he had been ordered home to rest. Bruises and minor cuts were painted across the detective’s porcelain skin. Eyes downcast to the pavement beneath his feet, Connor paid him no mind when he approached. There was a crushing sensation in Hank's synthetic form, the same feeling he had when he had been working alongside Gavin. Once more, he noted a brief flash of numbers and letters in the top left of his HUD.

Once he was finally stood beside Connor, he noted that the other’s usually kind smile and bright eyes had turned cold. Distant. It didn’t suit him; he wanted those excitable questions about how he analysed samples, and the continuous, ‘friendly’ chatter, as if the other thought and acted like Hank was just another human.

‘Good evening, Connor.’

The other was silent, and the smile that pulled onto his face, was not a genuine one. He wasn’t surprised, but he didn’t feel any better or reassured. In fact, the strange pit in his body seemed to burrow uncomfortably deep.

‘Hello Hank.’

‘I…’ What should he say? He didn’t want to simply speak because that was what CyberLife told him to do. He wanted to say something, anything that might make the other feel better. He near scoffed at the idea. Yes, because there was an easy way to apologise to someone for leaving them to die.

‘It is alright, Hank.’ Connor hummed, slipping off the bench, his movements slow and stiff. ‘It made sense what you did. You did the right thing, going after the deviant.’

What?

‘I was the one that made the mistake of missing the danger. Hell, if I had just remained where I was, or had gone a different route, I would have been safe. It was my own doing that caused me to fall.’ The tone was shameful, and tears pricked the corners of Connor’s lovely eyes. Hank felt worse.

‘No.’ He stepped closer, raising his hands. Connor hurriedly stepped back, and Hank halted his movements. He didn’t want to scare the other off.

‘You… I don’t think I have seen a human with such little self-worth.’ Hank didn’t mean for it to sound as cruel as it did. Connor’s eyes flashed angrily, and though he opened his mouth as if to scream or berate, Hank was fearful to see that face morph to reluctant acceptance.

‘And?’ Connor tilted his head up to Hank, and didn’t move away this time when the silver-haired android approached him. ‘Is it wrong to accept that you are just not worth it?’ When Hank opened his mouth to speak, Connor hushed him gently. ‘I’m not trying to guilt you, Hank. I just… Your actions yesterday, they reminded me of how things work.’

Hank furrowed his brow, but he had the permission, it seemed, to rest his hands on Connor’s arms, even bring the small human closer.

‘Though we are not friends, Hank, I do hope you don’t see me as a problem. I do hope I am not a burden to you or your investigation.’

‘Why?’ Hank spoke before he ever realised he had formed the words. He didn’t pay any mind to the dialogue options his HUD provided him, and allowed his body the freedom to dictate his words. ‘If anything, Connor, I am the one that caused you trouble. I am the burden on you. If I wasn’t here, perhaps you would have been saved from, at least, your injuries.’

‘I… I wish I hadn’t moved.’

Hank didn’t understand.

‘I just… Sorry… I’m just being stupid.’

Hank finally brought Connor in towards his chest, feeling fluid beginning to leak from his eyes. He didn’t want Connor to see. He hid the other’s face in his chest, one hand in the dark curls and just listening for the sound of the other’s heart.

‘No. Never. You are not stupid, Connor, and please… Do not doubt yourself like this anymore. I... I don’t want you to lose yourself.’

‘I didn’t think androids could want anything?’ Connor half joked, but the laughter was half-hearted and weak.

‘Well, this one does. I want you to be safe. I want you as a friend, Connor.’

‘Just… Don’t leave me for dead again, okay?’

Hank didn’t have the words to agree. He didn’t have the ability to wrap his mind around that sentence. He couldn’t do it. However, he did nod his head.

‘Never again.’

#dbhlightandshadow #Detroit: Become Human #DBH #RK800 #RK800 Connor #Hank Anderson #HankCon #Hannor #Fanfiction #Fanfic #HarcourtHolmesII

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bexterbex · 5 years ago

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A Soul to Mend His Own | Ch. 58

Warning, PLEASE CHECK TAGS IF YOU SEE SOMETHING YOU DON’T WANT TO READ THEN DON’T READ. Tag lists are closed

Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Will tag as I go along, Will update tags, Slow Burn, Influenced by Star Trek and other Sci-Fi themes, References to We Happy Few, Tons of References and quotes to George Orwells 1984 see if you can find them all, The First Order is the new Big Brother, but who is really surprised, Blatant Nazi Symbolism, Interrogation Themes, Eventual Smut, Eventual Romance, Really just drawn out Slow Burn, Don’t repost without permission, Torture themes, Suggestive Themes, Execution themes, Disturbing Themes, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Verbal Abuse, Controlling Kylo Ren, Physical Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, Possessive Kylo Ren, A character shamelessly based on Zelda

A Kylo Ren x Modern! Reader in a soulmate au with canon divergence. —————————————SLOWBURN————————————–

He is already the Supreme leader, searching the universe to find you, his Empress. Your name on his wrist has been the only constant in his life, while you have doubts about his existence and his acceptance of you. He isn’t in the database and why did the name Kylo Ren cover Ben Solo?

MASTERLIST

Chapter 58: The Dinner Pt. 2

You watched as the first course was served. He was still somewhere inside your head. And you watched carefully as others were watching you, waiting for you to screw up, waiting for you to make a fool of yourself.

You looked ahead at Hux and followed his lead. Starting in on the salad that was served you mentally made sure to grab the right fork, the salad one. You watched as Kylo watched you, following your lead, as you did with the general.

You also watched as everyone’s eyes seemed to follow your every move. Watching. Waiting. You hoped someone would break the ice for conversation. You watched as Hux and Griss shared a look across the table before Griss turned to you, “How have you been enjoying the Supremacy m’lady?”

You shared a look with Hux and then a quick glance at Kylo before you turned to the admiral, “The Supremacy has been wonderful. It is amazing a ship this large can fly as it does.”

From across the table, Senator Apolin chimed in, “Yes it must be a true marvel for you when you come from a planet that has only had the ability of flight for a little more than the last hundred years. It’s a wonder why you’ve been so behind.” He was testing you and your anger.

‘Do not give in to his snide jests.’ You heard Kylo in your mind.

“I suppose that might be it? But rather I believe it is still an amazing feat in the galaxy to have a ship this large, the last one of comparable size was the Death Star which took 19 years to build? And it had less personnel onboard? I think this ship is a great feat of engineering and should not be downplayed.” You were testing him yes. Slightly ignoring Kylo’s plea of not giving in but you couldn’t help yourself.

You watched Apolin’s face turn into a sneer and his eye twitch before Hux chimed in. “You are right, m’lady. The Supremacy is a greater ship in many aspects. We are more capable to serve the rest of the galaxy with our resources.” You were thankful for his help, but that did not stop Apolin from trying.

“And what resources have you seen? Or have you not seen much outside the Supreme Leader’s bedroom?” He was really testing your limits now, but apparently it was not only yours that was being tested.

“If you wish to keep your life Senator Apolin, I suggest you hold your tongue,” Kylo was clutching the salad fork in his hand so tightly it was starting to bend.

“I was only questioning her, sir. If she is to be the role model for the First Order, she must see more of the galaxy than the ceiling of your bedroom.”

A bottle of champagne exploded somewhere near the bar. Kylo was barely holding on to his own temper. You placed a hand on his arm in an effort to calm him down.

“I hear your concern, Senator. Would you like to set up a time to observe my education with the Allegiant General? We would be more than happy to have your expert opinion on the matter,” you said, giving him a sickeningly sweet smile.

He sat back with an astonished but pleased look on his face. You were giving him the opportunity to look at how you were to be educated. An olive branch of sorts. He took the bait.

“That would be most agreeable. I shall get in contact with you in a few days as to when would work best for me.” And with that everyone seemed content to turn back to their salads and finish the course.

And the harsh silence breaker worked. Conversations sprung up all around the table, some involved laughter while others seemed to be deep discussions.

‘You did well, but do not disobey me like that again. I only look out for your safety.’ You looked at each other in the eyes as he spoke in your mind.

The main course was served. You could hear pleased murmurs all around the table as the pleasant looking entrée was set before you. You turned to the admiral to have a light conversation, but you could feel as though you were being watched. You glanced over at Kylo, who was in a three-way discussion with Hux and a senator you had been introduced with earlier. None of them were watching you. Your eyes quickly darted to Pryde whose eyes were locked on you as he discussed with three men he was seated near.

You tried to focus back on your conversation with the admiral. One of the few other females at the table, the only female that wasn’t someone’s spouse, a senator, joined in on your conversation. This made you glad. She seemed relieved at your presence as well.

Kylo had seemed to calm down in his conversation, but then the room got eerily quieter. The conversation between Pryde and his friends had ended. Their attention seemed to be divided between you and Kylo. You watched as Pryde made a quiet remark to Apolin and then Apolin repeated it with Slenic.

You absentmindedly reached for your glass of white wine when Slenic asked, “So when can we expect a baby?”

Your hand knocked into the glass causing it to tip, but no wine left the glass as it suspended in mid-air. Kylo was holding it with the Force as he stared directly into the eyes of Slenic. His breathing quickened, and his chin raised at the man. He looked as if he was going to devour the older man. His nostrils flared and his teeth clenched as he said, “That is information you are not privy to, Senator. I suggest that you and your dear friends keep your minds out of mine and Lady Ren’s bedroom. The next person to insinuate about such affairs will meet their death at the hand of my blade.”

The room was silent, and you could feel the buzz of the Force around you as you were sure that everyone could. Hux grabbed your attention. He gestured to the wineglass in front of you. You picked it up from where Kylo’s Force hold on it and had it frozen. You also carefully returned the suspended spilled wine back into the glass. Not a drop made it on the table.

Once you set the glass back down you rested a hand onto Kylo’s forearm. His head turned to you, as did his gaze. You could see the burning anger in his eyes. Like a deep fire that roared to devour anything in its path. You watched as his eyes roamed your face, and the anger dissipated slowly. As if you were rain slowly, putting out the flames. His breathing eventually returned to normal.

You took control of the situation as you turned your head back to the female senator to ask her more about her planet. Everyone took this as a cue to return to normal. You could feel Kylo’s arm relax under your touch. Eventually, he took your hand in his as you continued to finish the main course.

It didn’t take long afterward for dessert to be served. You could see many of the faces around the table lift at the presence of it. You did not know if it was because everyone was excited about dessert or if they were excited for the dinner to be almost over. Again small conversations continued around the table.

Once dessert was finished Hux invited everyone to have a digestif. You all got up from the table, Kylo wrapped his arm around your waist. You both then walked to the bar where you were handed glasses of wine. “Alderaan sherry wine, this one is particularly good after dinner,” he whispered into your ear.

Everyone seemed to mingle pleasantly for the most part. Kylo guided you to the large bay window, which jutted out slightly from the wall. You both stood there watching the stars as the rest of your guests mingled about. You rested your head on his shoulder, content with listening to his breathing.

Hux approached you both, “That went over better than I thought.” He sipped his wine as he looked out into the vastness of space.

You glanced over your shoulder to the rest of the room. Watching as people slowly started to depart. “How so,” you asked.

“Well, no one died for starters. And you may have figured out a way to pacify Senator Apolin. And the Supreme Leader and I were able to negotiate another deal with one of our biggest steel providers. All in all, tonight went well. You did very well, m’lady.” He bowed his head towards you.

“Thank you for the compliment, general. I am also glad no one died tonight. I would hate to have to explain to Adlez why there would be blood on my dress,” you joked. The general returned a small huff of amusement and a smile.

“If someone would have died, you would be the last person in the room with blood on their clothes. I would see to it,” deadpanned Kylo.

This caused a warm reaction from both you and the general. You leaned up to Kylo’s ear and responded with a velvety voice, “Yes, but I would also hate for there to be blood on your clothes. You look so good and knowing you if there were to be anything on you, that you would give it to me. Seeing as you can’t keep your hands off of me.”

Kylo pulled you fully against his chest and said, “You’re right, I can’t.” He then leaned down to give you a very passionate kiss, one that sent a spark through your veins.

“Now, now you two know the rules. Keep it appropriate or I’ll be forced to separate you two,” said Hux, laughing into his wine.

Kylo broke the kiss and glared at him silently.

Hux responded, “Don’t look at me like that, it is only until you get married.” You could hear his eyebrows lift in his voice as he teased Kylo, even if you couldn’t see his face as your back was turned to him.

Kylo just grunted in response as a waiter came and took your empty glasses away. His hand then came to your face as he chastely kissed you. “Shall we turn in for the night,” he asked you.

You simply nodded in response as he took your arm in his. You gave your goodbye and goodnight to the general as Kylo escorted you back to your chambers. You were once again escorted by the Knights of Ren. You felt safe.

Once inside the safety of your chambers Kylo forcefully drew you into a deep kiss. His hands digging into the meat of your ass, pushing you against him as he hungrily nipped at your bottom lip. You granted him entrance as his tongue explored the cavern of your mouth. But soon that wasn’t enough as his lips trailed down your neck and a hand came up to squeeze your breast.

“Oh, Kitten. You have no idea what you do to me,” he groaned into the crook of your shoulder as he left a deep dark mark there.

You playfully brought your hand to his clothed crotch. Here he vigorously bucked into your grasp. He let out a deep moan at the touch. “I think I have a pretty good idea,” you responded.

You removed your hand and brought it up to his lips and with just a finger you pushed him back, “I am pretty sure we have an agreement to wait.” While he was entranced you were taking hold of the situation.

He let out a frustrated groan as he ground his pelvis into your hip. Wanting more than what you were giving him. You gave him one last kiss to the lips as you pushed him off of you. You stepped around him and walked down the hall to get ready for bed. “It seems like there is another shower in your future,” you teased as you stepped into your dressing room. Just as you shut the door you heard a loud frustrated protest.

Adlez and Olivia-Rose were already waiting for you as you sat down to be carefully undone from the dinner. “I see you are willing to tease him until you get what you want. Good girl,” said Adlez proudly.

Olivia-Rose openly laughed along. It didn’t take them all that long to get you ready for bed. Adlez chose another rather demure nightgown, which you happily agreed with. Once finished you dismissed them as you took a few moments to moisturize yourself once more. Content at looking at your reflection in the vanity.

Once you were satisfied with your soft skin, you got up and stepped out into the hall. You made your way to the bedroom and you could hear the shower running from the open bathroom door. “Tease,” you muttered as you crawled into bed. A moment or two later you heard the water shut off. You expected him to appear with his towel around his hips like before, but you were wrong.

He appeared with the towel, yes. But it was in his hands as he roughly dried his hair. He wore nothing to cover himself. He flipped his hair back with a cheeky smirk as he dropped the towel to the floor. His smirk widened as he strode toward the bed. His full glory on display.

You let out a squeak as he climbed up next to you. Your heart rate racing and blush spread all over. “If I remember right our agreement was hands above clothes, but that doesn’t matter if there are none. And I have agreed to wait, to let you initialize when we will… make love, but nowhere in that agreement did I ever agree to be fully clothed. In fact, I rather enjoy sleeping naked. Don’t you agree, Kitten?”

You clutched your hands to your heart in an attempt to keep your hands where you could see them so they didn’t wander off on their own. His hands, however, roamed your body as they usually did, but your face was molten lava at this point.

You couldn’t help it when your eyes glanced down at him as it is a very large thing to avoid, but oh so prominent. He scooted in closer; it came to rest against your outer thigh. You squeezed your legs shut at the touch. You closed your eyes for a moment before letting your hands wander his wide bare chest. “Yes, you can be naked all you want but I would like to go to bed, goodnight.” You gave him a quick kiss before turning on your side and closing your eyes.

His hands continued to roam your body, and he sucked on your collar bone for a minute or two before you scolded, “I said goodnight.”

He let out a huff as he rolled his hips into your ass, abandoning your collarbone before he settled down. You slowly drifted off into sleep.

For the first time in a week, your dreams were different. Something new. This time you were able to fully see a face staring back at you. A woman.

#kylo ren x reader #kylo ren #kylo ren imagine #kylo x reader #kylo x you #kylo ren x you #star wars #first order #star wars imagine #Star wars soulmate au #sw first order imagine #a soul to mend his own #star wars first order

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rokutouxei · 4 years ago

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the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

ikemen vampire: temptation through the dark theo van gogh / mc | T | [ ao3 link in bio ]

The challenge seemed pretty simple: to try to befriend the university bookshop's most sour employee, Theo van Gogh. As a literature major with a boatload of book recommendations on her back, it ought to be a simple task indeed. But as she uncovers what lies between Theo's pages, the more she finds it harder to become closer to him without having to put the feeling directly into words. What can she learn from Theo about what it means to stay—and how can she teach Theo about what it means to let go? | written for ikevamp big bang 2020!

[ masterpost for all chapters ]

CHAPTER 2 OF 22

In a small house in the better neighborhood of the university, a young man is beginning to dream. He’s chasing the afterimages of a vision he’d caught, trying to see if he can get it down on paper. It’s scary, but it’s exciting. He’s prepared his materials—the canvas, the pen, the paint—and he’s closed the door, and opened the shutters, letting the morning light flood the studio-cum-library in their small, rented home.

Vincent holds the pen gently, like a prayer, in his hands, before beginning to sketch.

The thing with living in such a small university town such as this is that you cannot escape the inevitable.

And by inevitable, that means you know someone who knows someone, and everyone kind of vaguely knows each other in some way or another—through a club, or a shared favorite hang-out spot, or an extracurricular. Everyone is someone’s something by a degree or another.

She’s learned this in her first year at university, but the lesson’s about to be driven a little closer to home today.

She’s seated in the café as usual, annotating a book when Vincent approaches her, a small brownie in hand. It’s not the ones they serve regularly, cut on a smaller bit, and maybe it’s one of the edges or corners in the baking tray. “Can I offer you a little snack?” he asks, offering the plate in front of her.

Looking up at him through round-rimmed glasses, she blinks. “Oh? Thank you, but—what’s this for?” she asks, as Vincent puts the plate down on a free spot on her table. He takes a seat on the free chair next to her.

“Can I ask you a favor?”

Modeling isn’t exactly her forte, but Vincent insists that he doesn’t need a full-blown model for his project—besides, he couldn’t have afforded it, even if he did need one. He’s working on “something”—by the rumors in the art department, she assumes it’s for his thesis, his capstone project, but who knows?—and he needs a little help on the lighting. He’s working with some tricky fabric, draped down bodies, and he isn’t quite sure how it should come out.

“It’ll only take two hours tops,” he promises, “if you wouldn’t mind. It’s not nude or anything risque, I just need to be able to see how the fabric drapes accordingly to the light. I’ll treat you to dinner afterward?”

Here’s the thing—one does not exactly say no to Vincent. The university town is small enough as it is, and everyone knows Vincent because he’s a legend in the art department. You do not turn down the offer to be painted by a master, or at least that’s how the logic goes. But at the same time, Vincent is always sunflowers and soft smiles, and when he looks at her like that… the only thing that comes out of her mouth is “Of course I will!”

“I’m sorry this is all so sudden,” he says sheepishly. “I just had this idea a bit back, and I’ve been wanting to work on it…”

“No, it’s okay,” she replies instantly. “You’re always reserving my favorite seat for me anyway, and you’ve always been so nice to me. We’re basically friends now, and friends do this for each other, yes?”

Vincent’s eyes glow in a way you’ve never seen before, and it makes you flush a little. “Friends? Of course, yes, thank you so much.”

His shift won’t end in another hour and a half, so he treats her to coffee (“you didn’t have to!” “it’s on me, I swear!”) as she’s waiting for him. She picks up her beautiful, hardbound copy of 1800s English literature, now lovingly highlighted and with many flags at certain pages, and begins to read, scribbling notes on a separate notebook.

By 5:15 Vincent is ready to go, dressed out of his uniform and into his casual clothes, a sweater one or two sizes too big for him over a shirt and some pants. He calls out her name gently, hand leaning on her table.

And she stares.

Vincent isn’t her type—he’s a little too angelic for her liking, as she does prefer those on the more rugged side—but she won’t deny that he’s attractive. She had never seen Vincent in casual clothes before—she’d seen him hang up his barista apron at the end of shifts before, but never actually caught him go home—and she pauses for a moment when he arrives at her table.

“Are you okay?”

“Haha,” she says awkwardly, coughing her shock away. “Yeah, I almost didn’t recognize you, is all. Let me just pack up?”

She hadn’t expected it, but she should have—that her friendly local barista, the legend of the art department—is living smack dab in the middle of their small town, at the perfect distance to everything. In a house, too, not a small dormitory. It’s a beautiful one painted white with a small garden and a porch outside, a tree standing tall and providing shade on the house, and a small classic mailbox in front—it looked like a house that belonged in the suburbs instead of in the middle of this very schoolish town. She can’t help the small whistle of appreciation when they get there.

“Our father knew the landlord,” Vincent explains, as he unlocks the door. “So we get it rather cheaply. Careful of the landing.”

We? She catches the plural but doesn’t get to ask, as she enters the apartment and marvels at it. It’s not extravagant, but it’s still rather fancy, considering she stays in a small studio room. There are paintings hanging on the walls—Vincent’s, she assumes—and everything is in attractive, warm colors. What catches her attention, however, is the small framed photo on the side table by the sofa, of two boys on a swing, a blond one (Vincent?) pushing one with brown hair (a cousin?).

“Five and three,” Vincent says, by way of explanation. She’s about to ask him who the other child is, but Vincent interrupts her. “Do you need water? A break?”

They’d walked quite a bit from the café, after all, and while she had her bike with her, Vincent didn’t, and so she just rolled it next to her throughout the whole 30-minute walk. “No, I’m okay. Where’s your studio?”

Vincent beams. “Here, come.”

They walk down the hall and enter a door to the left, and the studio opens up to her. The wall on the right has a row of high bookshelves, all nearly filled to the brim with books on all sorts of different topics. The wall where the door is has a layer of corkboard attached to it, where a multitude of prints and photos and papers with scribbles and notes are pinned and strung together. Most of the room’s floor is covered in some kind of paper—newspaper, craft paper—to protect the wooden slats below. There are easels stacked at the far side of the room, but facing away, so she can’t exactly see what is on them. And then, there is the set-up for Vincent’s current project: an easel in the center of the room with the sketch of a woman’s figure; a white sheet draping from the ceiling to the floor, serving as a backdrop, in the far corner; a steel circle hanging by the ceiling, the kind people sit on; black craft paper laid on the floor below it; and on top of it, a small stool, a fabric in beautiful vermillion, and some fairy lights.

“Welcome to the studio,” Vincent says, guiding her inside. “Sorry for the mess, I was working this morning.”

“No, it’s okay,” she says, carefully stepping in. “It’s so interesting to see your studio, where all the magic happens.”

Vincent flinches at that, but doesn’t make any other comment about it. She contemplates if she has to apologize, but doesn’t know exactly what she’ll have to apologize for. “No magic here,” Vincent mumbles.

He asks her to get comfortable on the wooden stool and maybe get a feel for the fabric, as he sets up his camera. The plan was this: she’ll get into the poses he needs for his project, he will take a couple photos for reference in different angles, and then he will take her out to dinner.

The time passes rather uneventfully, and pretty quickly, because the poses aren’t entirely too tricky on her end. A raised arm here, a dangle of hair in this direction, a tiptoe towards this—Vincent is gentle in maneuvering her around and quick in taking his photos, and in an hour they’re ready. Vincent thanks her profusely for her help as he’s packing away, and she laughs as she says “Well, you’re treating me to food, so it’s paid work.”

“Dinner, yes, of course,” Vincent nods, putting the camera back on its place on the bookshelf. “I actually got my brother to save a spot at, erm, my favorite place, if you don’t mind? It’s Greek food.”

“Oh, that’s fine! I didn’t know you had a brother, Vincent.”

“I do, he’s the sweetest thing,” he answers with a beam of a smile, so much so that for a moment she falters about joining them for dinner. One Vincent was bad enough for her heart as it is, but two of them? That’s not good news is it?

Except, yet again, the rule of not saying no to Vincent applies, and so after a bit of tidying they’re already on the way to the restaurant. An actual restaurant, mind you, not some cheapo fast food that Arthur treats her to. (“This isn’t fair, you know? Just because I’m not in your menu of dateables and bangables doesn’t mean you treat me disproportionately to everyone else.” “Stop complaining and eat your McDonald’s.”) It’s a small one, admittedly, but most of the stalls in this town is, anyway. Vincent peers into the building and then pulls her in, inviting her inside.

Vincent pauses for a moment. “I’ve been told he has quite an… aggressive face, but don’t be afraid of him okay?”

“If he’s your brother, there’s no reason to be scared,” she says with a smile. For a moment she is looking for a twin puff of sunflower blond hair, but then, remembering the photos, she begins to look for an equally-fluffy brown mop of hair, and just at the exact moment she comes to the realization—

“Hondje?!”

“Theo?!”

The thing with living in such a small university town such as this is that you cannot escape the inevitable.

It’s a silly thought. She even finds it rather ironic that that is the wise saying about making friends and getting to know other people in this university because running away is the one thing she wishes she was good at.

See, the first time she saw Theo, she thought, wow, this guy looks so insufferable. I can’t believe he works here, and I have to see him every week. This is the worst.

Until it isn’t.

She knew, the moment she made eye contact with Theo across the table in that homey Greek restaurant, that that event would change her life in ways she wouldn’t have—and couldn’t have—imagined. She just didn’t know how yet. Vincent was surprised that he didn’t need to introduce the two of them to each other, and with an irritated grumble, Theo had explained that she was a frequenter of the bookstore, taking a jab at her having no other friends and spending so much time around books instead. She quips back and says the reason they don’t have customers is that Theo’s face is enough to sour anyone’s day, and so no one but her comes anyway.

But Vincent is not the kind of person to have this happen, so instead, with a truce, his kind insistence, and irresistible smile—dammit!—she and Theo, instead, become friends. Good friends. Wait, no—they become begrudging friends.

But they don’t talk.

Theo doesn’t even give her his phone number.

No, they’re not friends. Not yet, anyway. Theo makes a show of only putting up with all of this for his brother, as he continues to ignore even the most cordial of texts like “thank you for putting a rush-order on my book!”, throwing insults back and forth with her in the bookshop. But eventually, both of them find a rhythm, a little liminal space of friends by circumstance and not by desire that they’ve agreed on.

That is until they begin the book exchange.

#the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart #ikemen vampire #ikevamp theo

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mollymauk-teafleak · 4 years ago

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baby you’re like lightning in a bottle (chapter three)

Sorry it’s been so long since I updated! Teaching during cover times doesn’t leave much time for fic writing. Thanks as always to my amazing betas who keep me motivated @spiky-lesbian and @minky-for-short

Please reblog and leave a comment on Ao3 if you’d like to support my writing!

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Chapters: 1, 2, 3

Peter Nureyev is stuck undercover in Oldtown High for a week longer than planned. Another week of boring lessons, feeling the pressure of an entire panel’s freedom on his shoulders and having to deal with his growing attraction to one Juno Steel...

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After one lesson of Earth History, Peter found himself glad that he wouldn’t be taking any real examinations at this school. How a teacher could make the home planet of their entire species, the epicentre of their system spanning civilisation, now half ravaged by millenia of pollution and half the playground of the galaxy’s richest trillionaires, sound painfully dull, he didn’t know. But between a teacher that napped in between paragraphs of his monotone lectures and textbooks that were illegible behind layers of graffiti older than the students, they had managed it. Mag’s lessons had been nothing like this.

And it didn’t help that someone up there had decided to really screw with him. In between taking long sips from a coffee cup that definitely didn’t have coffee in it, the teacher sat this new kid in the only available empty chair. Right next to Juno Steel.

If the look on his face was anything to go by, Peter’s new friend wasn’t happy about it either. He was scowling so hard throughout the whole lesson, it was a wonder he didn’t have wrinkles at eighteen. Peter felt every blistering wave of hostility, whenever he dared do so much as breathe, shift his pen, edge his elbow even a centimeter closer to Juno’s.

And the cherry on the top of this almost unbearably painful hour of mind numbing, pointless fact retention and being stared down by a set of suspicious, angry eyes was the part of Peter’s mind still just stuck on how attractive Juno was.

Sometimes Peter wished he could reach into his own body, stuff his hormones into a very cramped box, lock it in chains and throw away the key.

But finally an ear splitting bell rang out and the students lurched to their feet with a communal groan of relief, not waiting for any kind of dismissal. Peter sweeped his notebook and pen into his rucksack, grateful to finally be able to get his mission over with and get off this planet with it’s suffocating schools and confusingly hot kids his age who hated him. Then he could remind himself that he was a thief with a cause and no other concerns beyond that cause.

Certainly not soft golden brown eyes and painted pink lips that still had dried blood smudged on them and hands that he bet would be soft underneath the split knuckles and calluses.

Peter stamped down hard on that thought, reminding himself of one of Mag’s more joking rules that he hadn’t taken seriously until now.

First rule of thieving, a pretty face is the most dangerous thing in the whole damn universe.

Nureyev made as swift an exit as he could manage, made easier by the fact that the hundreds of other kids in Oldtown High were as eager to get to the doors as he was. As he lost himself in the crowd filing down the stairways, he went over the plan.

He would go to the apartment Mag had acquired for him under the name of Peter Ransom’s non-existent father, go over his tools until dark fell and then come back to the school once the coast was clear. From there it would be easy. Break into the principal’s office, find the incriminating files on his computer, the ones that proved the school was being used to launder money by corrupt government officials, upload the malware that would snatch the files and carry them back to Mag on Brahma. Then call him and hear the pride in his voice after Peter announced his first off planet, solo mission had been a complete and total success.

Then leave and never feel the ever present dust of this damn planet on his skin ever again.

Peter’s imagined elation at the thought of it lasted until he walked out of the doors. At first the bright sun, unfiltered by any atmosphere, was all he could see but once he adjusted, he saw the line of vans parked on the front courtyard of the school. The ones with a large, garish cartoon of a giant bug on its back with crosses for eyes all plastered on the sides.

And the second he took to stop and consider this was all it took.

“Ransom! There you are!”

Peter jumped and turned to see Ben just skidding to a halt next to him, his face still split into the wide grin that was starting to seem like his trademark. And, of course, slouching and scowling behind him, his brother.

Dredging up Ransom’s innocent, grateful smile at seeing his friends was hard in that moment but he managed, “Hi! Sorry, I didn’t know you’d be looking for me…”

“Just wanted to say bye!” Ben grinned, bouncing slightly even as he stood in place like he just couldn’t help it, “Unless you walk our way? We’re going over in that direction.” He pointed hopefully, off towards where most of the cheap housing was in this part of the city, apparently immune to the exasperated glare from his twin.

Mercifully, Nureyev didn’t have to lie, “No, sorry. I live above one of the stores off main street. Other end of Oldtown.”

“Aw,” Ben’s disappointment was disarmingly genuine, so much that Nureyev felt a genuine pinch of regret, “We’ll see you tomorrow though!”

“Yeah!” now that lie felt strangely uncomfortable on his tongue, the regret not shifting, “Um...what are those vans, sorry? Just wondering.”

Ben looked over at them, “Oh! Right, you missed morning announcements. The school’s got a hell of a bad rat problem, they’re all in the walls. So the exterminators are locking the school down overnight, flooding the place with gas and trying to get them under control. Must be a hell of a job, they’re gonna be doing it for the rest of the week. ”

Nureyev’s stomach sank to the bottom of his shoes, “Wait...overnight? You mean all night? Every night? For a week?”

“Yeah,” Ben cocked his head, a little confused at his reaction, “Don’t worry, the rats don’t come out during the day. Good thing too, with those six eyes and teeth the length of your arm, they’d pick off the freshmen for lunch.”

Nureyev shook himself, realising he was behaving like an ameture, “They, ah...they don’t get that big on Brahma…”

“Welcome to Mars,” Juno grunted, scuffing the toe of his boot against the step.

Nureyev sleep walked through their goodbyes, letting his feet trace the already memorised route between the school and the apartment, not knowing what else to do. He couldn’t get into the school for a week without choking on rat poison.

So he was stranded. With nothing to do but attend high school. He could have screamed.

Remember the first rule.

Peter carried those words as he walked to school the next morning, feeling them the way a necklace that was just a little too big would rest lightly against his chest. Not a weight but noticeable. Enough that he couldn’t put it from his mind.

It was all the reply he’d gotten from Mag after he’d made his first nightly report, updating him on the disappointing turn of events last afternoon. The only way he could message his mentor without any kind of traceable risk was through the burner comms he’d been sent to Mars with, an old, clunky model that could only send the most basic text signals, no more detail than was absolutely necessary. Short messages were harder to track, especially across so much empty space.

He knew that but, still, it hadn’t been an awful lot of comfort, only getting a handful of words printed in eye aching green on the too small screen as he’d sat alone in the barren apartment on his thin fold out bed. He’d tried to read them with Mag’s gruff, friendly voice in his mind but it wasn’t the same and Peter had fallen asleep with the same bitter, disappointed hollow in his chest that had opened up when he’d realised he wouldn’t be going home for far longer than he’d imagined.

But this morning he’d called himself a childish fool and reminded himself why he was here. No matter what it took, Peter Nureyev would do the job he’d been sent to do. Would his father have spent an unprofitable evening sulking because the cause had asked for a few more days? Would Mag?

So he’d shouldered his bag, checked his disguise twice over in the mirror and set off for Oldtown High with those words carried in his heart. He hadn’t needed to ask which rule the message had been talking about, it was the one Mag had repeated the most, the one Peter struggled with more than any other.

First rule of thieving, be patient.

Hyperion City never seemed to slow down. It was the same in Brahma’s capital but there was still something staggering about seeing the same busyness, the relentlessness, the noise played out with hundreds, maybe even thousands more people than could even fit on the whole of his tiny home planet. The air was already thick with sharp tastes of smoke, the roads crammed with cars, raised voices echoing on the streets from open apartment windows and shop doors as Peter walked to school at only eight in the morning. Past the slight shimmer of the dome miles above his head, the sun was already baking the city, red dust moving past his legs with every gust of wind. It was going to be a cloudless day, one that smelled of hot sand and the reek of a city.

Before long, his glasses were smudged, his shirt was stuck to his back and he had a headache. Clearly the main streets weren’t the best way to get to school, even if they were the most direct route. Consulting the map of Oldtown firmly embedded in his memory, Peter cut down one side street and then another to reach the network of back alleyways, wanting at least a few buildings between himself and the relentless honking, smog and cursing that was apparently a feature of the early morning Hyperion commute. He’d take any scrap of peace he could get right now, even if it meant hopping fences and skirting piles of choking garbage to get it.

Be patient. Be patient. Be patient.

He repeated it to himself again and again, making it a command. It absorbed his thoughts so completely, the way things tended to do when he focused all his attention on them, that he didn’t see the figure walking through the alleyway just in front of the one he was in now until he’d been about to jump the chain link fence between them drop right onto their heads. Fortunately, at the very last second, he was able to stop his momentum and instead roll soundlessly behind a pile of full to bursting trash bags, hand clamped over his mouth and silently thanking his lucky stars that he moved so silently.

There was a heart stopping moment of waiting but no pursuit or angry shout followed him into his hiding place. The other person mustn't have seen him. Peter risked a glance, sure it was just some employee of the cafe next door or just a random passerby, someone wrapped up in their own inconsequential morning routine and that he’d soon be feeling very silly for his over reaction. It was just so hard to shake off the instincts of a hungry orphan who’d had to survive in a place where just around every corner could be a guard who’d kick him in the ribs for fun.

And where death could come from the sky above his head.

But, as he leaned out and looked, Peter realised he was very glad that he’d hidden. Because it wasn’t just some nameless citizen of Hyperion. It was Juno Steel.

He was different today, in jeans that were probably ripped both for aesthetics and with wear and a hooded sweater cut just under his ribs so his stomach showed. The combat boots were the same, as were the scabs and bruises from his fight yesterday. In fact they looked worse now they’d had a day to settle in, the one over his eye an especially nasty kind of deep purple. A smudge of eyeshadow in the exact same shade sat on the other, unmarred eye, as if Juno was deliberately trying to make a joke of his injuries. As if he was daring anyone to care.

Even after only knowing them a day, it was strange to see him without Ben. Peter actually found himself waiting, certain the other Steel twin would appear soon, perhaps out of the store Juno was loitering behind. But he didn’t. Juno was only waiting until the coast was clear before continuing on, moving in pretty much the same direction Peter had been about to head himself.

Peter waited, breathing shallowly into his palm. Well...he’d been going that way anyway? It wasn’t as if he was deliberately following Juno?

He used all the skills of moving unseen that had been drilled into him by Mag and, before that, the simple need to survive. He made sure to let Juno always be a building’s span ahead of him, using the muffled noises of cars passing on the street beyond to hide the rattling of fences and the thump of his feet on the ground, his eyes never leaving the back of the other kid’s head.

Before too long, Juno stopped, ducking though a hole in some railings into a narrow alleyway. It appeared to be empty, just steam from an overhead grate and a strong, sour metallic smell. But Juno had the look of someone who’d found exactly what he was looking for. Curious, Peter found another hiding spot behind some very optimistic, scrubby plant, managing somehow to grow in between the railings on goodness knew what. It was easy to disappear into the long, thick shadows of the morning.

After all, he couldn’t pass until Juno moved on, could he? And if he just so happened to see what he was doing then it was an unintended consequence of simply keeping his distance.

The scraping of metal took his attention away from his justifications. Juno had hunkered down in the alleyway and was prying up a sewer grate of all things. Like everything else in this part of the city, it must have been old and poorly maintained, Juno barely needed to strain to get the heavy steel disc standing upright.

Was he going down into the sewers? Peter wrinkled his nose at the smell coming up from that grate, heavier in the warmth of the sunny morning. What could be down there that he’d want?

After a moment, a small pink nose poked up from the circle of reeking darkness. Peter saw Juno smile and reach into the backpack he’d been wearing, bringing out a small parcel wrapped in a paper towel. Peter’s sharp eyes saw the leftovers of a breakfast, toast crusts and the rind of bacon, a little bit of apple. Smiling wider than ever and murmuring gentle hellos that sounded so jarring coming from the young lady who’d been so harsh to him, Juno began to feed whatever creature could make it’s home in sewers that must have been near toxic given the state of this city. Peter could see a set of tall ears sticking out now, notched and matted with filth.

Rats in the walls and rabbits in the sewers. What kind of planet had he landed on?

Peter could have moved on, gone back to the main street now his curiosity had been satisfied or over the roofs even. But something made him stay. Something about how Juno’s eyes looked when he smiled, a sight he’d never seen before. How it softened their colour to almost a gold, how they crinkled in the corners in a way not too unlike when he scowled. They just looked so gentle, a kindness in them that didn’t look out of place on his face, the way it should have. It seemed to have always been there, just hidden until now.

Suddenly, Peter felt a stab of guilt. He didn’t want to be stealing a sight like this, taking it without permission like a thief.

The irony of that unexpected feeling was something he’d have to file away for now and deal with later. For now, he would slip away silently, braving the noise and stink of the main streets, and try and remember what Mag had told him. Though it seemed to be sitting less heavily in his chest than it was before.

Same as yesterday, Ben came looking for Peter and found him sitting on the school steps, pretending to read a book on his comms to mask the fact that he was casing the front of the building and trying to decide if the drain pipes would take his weight in a pinch. Effortlessly, with no effort from him, he was folded back into their little group of four, being pulled over to the bench they’d claimed to laze and smoke on and deliberately turn up late for first period.

Juno seemed as surly and scowly as ever though it was hard to take it as personally, after seeing him spare what had looked like more than half his breakfast for hungry baby rabbits in the sewer.

Peter found himself stealing glances at him all the way through the day, in the lessons they shared, walking through the corridors with Ben or Mick chatting away between them, back in their little hideaway for another long lunch. Whenever it happened, he’d admonish himself and turn his attention back to something useful like memorising the rotation of the guards outside or seeing which classroom doors had broken locks. First rules of thieving ran through his head, trying to tug him back to his mission with Mag’s fondly stern tone.

And it would work, for a time. But then there would always be Juno’s earrings catching the light or a wry smile softening his face when Benzaiten made a joke or Mick’s story took a particularly absurd turn or Sasha made a particularly cutting sarcastic comment, his focus as they escaped the school again like he took his task as seriously as Peter had ever taken one of his own. And Peter would find his mind wandering.

It was like having a puzzle box he couldn’t solve. Peter was so used to reading people at a glance, in being able to arm himself with their insecurities and weak points, weaving his shield out of the strings he could pull to bring them down. Even if they were people calling themselves his friends or strangers who’d never give him a second glance, it made him feel better to have that knowledge just in case. He’d learned a long time ago that people could lie, that danger could come from clear skies.

But Juno was the only person who’d ever insisted on surprising him. On being more that Peter could tease out of his clothes and mannerisms, everything plain on his face and everything hidden underneath. He was a problem he’d been unable to solve at first glance, a lock that was refusing to open under his clever fingers.

Peter told himself that was why, when Benzaiten threw an arm around his skinny shoulders as they were walking back to the school after another long lunch and reminded him about the party he’d talked about yesterday, reminding Peter he’d promised to come and jokingly warning him there was no backing out, he only smiled, nodded and said, “Sure. I’d love to come.”

He told himself it was because he wasn’t leaving Mars while there was a puzzle on it that he couldn’t solve. He told himself it was because he was stuck here for a week anyway and he needed something to occupy his brain while he waited, Juno Steel was as good an exercise as any, like the tasks Mag used to give him when he was younger.

That was what Peter told himself. But it was the look Juno gave him over his shoulder when he heard him say those words, the look that could have been sour and exasperated, could have been surprised and maybe impressed and could have been all of those things at once, that Peter would be thinking about for the rest of the afternoon.

After less than an hour at his first party, Peter realised that Mag had prepared him to survive so many dangerous, almost apocalyptic situations, how to save his own skin at the very last moment, how to save a planet, how to play the parts of a hundred different people he wasn’t, down to the bone.

But he hadn’t taught him the first thing about how to be the kid he was.

At first, Peter had felt a little foolish when Ben had offered to meet him halfway to the kid’s house so they could all walk in together. He knew he was supposed to be playing the shell shocked, anxious new kid and should be gratified that it was clearly convincing but still, something about someone assuming he needed his hand held rankled him. It always had.

But from the moment they’d stepped over the threshold of the tiny apartment halfway up a rather badly slanting block, into a world of throbbing music, bodies pressed close together, the heady smell of sweat, sweet smoke and spilled alcohol and next to no light, Peter was glad he had some familiar faces to cling to. It was immediately overwhelming, the sheer wall of noise he couldn’t pick apart into useable information, the way people kept bumping into him like he was too insignificant to be worth noticing, how it was too dark for him to get a clear idea of where the exits were or get any handle on what sort of people were currently surrounding him like a tide.

And it was even worse when, inevitably, the constantly shifting gravitational pull of the drinks table, the small space that had been cleared as a sort of dance floor and the loose knot of kids smoking something that gave off a distinct sickly smell dragged all of his temporary friends away from Peter, leaving him hugging one of the far walls like it was a raft adrift in a choppy sea. Completely alone.

He told himself he was being foolish. He knew Mag had attended all kinds of balls, galas and events in a hundred different stolen tuxedos and stolen names. Peter knew how to charm people, he knew how to move through social circles effortlessly, he even knew which fork to use first if he ever found himself dining with Venusian royalty. But this kind of party was a different beast entirely, something he wasn’t even sure Mag would have been able to navigate. It was loud and oppressive, the outfits were sparing and caught the moonlight in distracting ways, people were shouting and moving in ways he didn’t understand. And it felt like everyone was looking at him with judgement in their eyes. Not that he cared.

Peter looked around for Benzaiten and Mick with their reassuring way of putting their arms around him, for Sasha’s comforting, unflappable presence. But Ben and Mick were clearly very preoccupied, apparently drunk without even needing a drop of the many varieties of mind altering substances laid out on the far side of the room, dancing together in a way that Peter definitely didn’t want to interrupt and wasn’t even sure he should be looking at. Sasha had been pulled into a game of spin the bottle with her debate team friends, another thing Peter didn’t want to even approach.

He stifled a groan, pretending to check his comms just for something to do with his hands and to try and put off the strangers who kept coming up and yelling in his ear to offer him beers he didn’t want. But all that gave him was a depressing look at the time on his screen. Just past eleven pm, they’d been here for no more than five minutes. Clearly coming here had been a disastrous idea; he hadn’t planned for it, he’d let his mind stray off the task at hand yet again and he was paying the price.

You let Juno distract you, a chagrined voice murmured in his mind, somehow making itself heard over the music rattling the floorboards.

Mouth twisting, Peter shoved his comms back in his pocket and made for the door before any more thoughts could arise. He definitely wasn’t going to be putting tonight in his report to Mag, that was for sure.

Why this particular voice stood out when everything else was just a wall of incomprehensible, pulsing noise, Peter couldn’t say. Why it made him stop, when he was just a few steps from the door, a few steps away from peace and distance from the humiliation settling heavily in his chest, he couldn’t say either. But it did.

“Hey Steel, looking for someone you haven’t hooked up with yet? That’s got to be like, what, two people?”

Peter stilled, his eyes drawn over to the drinks table where a kid their age was leaning, a taunting smirk visible on their face even with what little light there was. And their eyes, sharp and mocking, were fixed on Juno.

Juno had been the first one of their little group Peter had lost track of in the chaos, something he’d been a little relieved about. The other three had been wearing slightly nicer, skimpier versions of their usual clothes, it wasn’t like any kid who went to Oldtown High could afford anything of ridiculously high quality. Peter himself had just exchanged his thrift store t-shirt for one that fit him slightly better, still with the same faded jeans and oversize trainers, something that wasn’t making him feel any less out of place.

But something about Juno’s outfit had been particularly...distracting. The same fishnets and combat boots as the first day they’d met, the same excessive jewellery and make up but now paired with a black miniskirt dress in some material that shone with a kind of iridescence, cut so the hem of it barely skated the upper third of his thigh. Looking at him dressed like that had brought a blush to his cheeks it had been very hard to keep at bay. So seeing him disappear into the crush of bodies, an expression like this was his element on his face, had been something of a relief.

But here he was now, looking just as distracting even with a dangerous look on his face aimed directly at the person who’d spoken.

“What’s wrong, Jones, sore I’ve never come to ask you?” he shot back, taking a long drink from the bottle of beer he’d just picked up, “Sorry, I just didn’t think we’d have a lot of chemistry what with you being a raging asshole and all.”

Something clicked in Nureyev’s mind, a memory slotting into place. This was who Juno had been fighting with on the day he’d come to Oldtown High, the person who’d blackened his eye and split his lip.

Something similar looked like it was brewing, from the way the kid stalked closer to Juno, until they were toe to toe. They were bigger than Juno by a good few inches, most people were even with the thick soles of his boots, but something flashing in Juno’s eyes made it not matter.

“I think I should finish what I started the other day,” Jones snarled, “Your face isn’t looking busted up enough for my liking.”

“You’re really welcome to try,” Juno’s lip curled, “See what happens.”

Peter’s eye caught movement at the kid’s side, just another shadow in amongst a room made up of them. They had a bottle too, hanging in a loose grip, Juno mustn’t have seen it and, nose to nose with them, he also didn’t see how it was rising, how their grip was tightening around the neck, how they were about to swing it’s full weight into the side of Juno’s head.

Again, Peter moved on instinct, seeing danger rising and snapping to attention with no thought other than to act. He surged forward, gripping the back of Juno’s dress and yanking him away, so the bottle missed his face by an inch. Carrying forward with the same momentum, taking advantage of the split second where they were trying to redress their balance, Peter palm struck them right in the nose. He had no muscle to speak of so everything Mag had taught him had been focused on using his opponents movements against them, turning their strength back on them when he couldn’t provide his own. So as Jones reeled back, blood flying from their nose in an arc that caught Peter across the face, he swept their feet out from under them, sending them crashing back so their head thudded heavily on the floor, dizzying them.

For a long, drawn out second, the whole party had their eyes fixed on Peter, completely stunned, Juno, Ben, Mick and Sasha included. If the music hadn’t still been pounding through every surface, it would have been deadly silent, the whole world shrunk down to this one kid, panting heavily with blood hot on his face.

What broke it was Juno, reaching forward and seizing Peter’s hand, murmuring, “Run.”

So they did.

Sheer adrenaline carried them forward as they fled down the stairs, out onto the street and away. Peter’s pulse was a racket in his ears, like the beat of the music was still following them even as they put blocks between them and the party. All he could do was follow Juno, their joined hands as unbreakable as an iron chain, as he pulled him along. The streetlights, the faces of pedestrians, the store fronts around them blurred into insignificance as they ran, he was only aware of the salty taste of blood on his lips and the heat of Juno’s skin against his own. He seemed to know where they were going and Peter was content to follow.

Finally they burst through some iron gates and were suddenly surrounded by trees, shoes pounding over pathways covered in leaves, the smell of rich earth and damp wood around them, so different from the smoke and stink of the city. When they skidded to a halt, it was in the dead centre of this park, beside a dry fountain, it’s grand curves and sweeping spouts looking strangely sad and barren in the night.

Peter’s lungs were burning in his chest and he spent some time doubled over, hands braced on his knees, painfully pulling in air. He could hear Juno doing the same beside him though, after a while, his gasping turned into rough, wild laughter.

Peter straightened up, frowning uncertainly. It sounded like Juno was losing his mind, laughing so hard he couldn’t stand up, sinking down with his back against the basin of the fountain. But after a moment, he found himself grinning too, thin shoulders shaking with his own manic giggles as the mad rush of their escape ebbed away and left them only able to cackle at the absurdity of it all.

“Did you see their face?” Juno finally managed to gasp out, voice raw, tears actually in his eyes, “You must have broke their fucking nose!”

Peter winced ruefully, sitting down on the gravelled ground beside Juno, “They’re going to be out for my blood tomorrow, aren’t they?”

“Doubt it, it’s me Jones really hates. Sad thing is, it is actually because I wouldn’t fuck them which is pretty damn ironic. Besides, if they do, you can just pull more of that ninja shit out of absolutely nowhere,” Juno snorted, “Where the hell did you even learn to do that? It was like the fence thing all over again, you keep doing the strangest, coolest shit with no warning...”

Peter swallowed, not sure what to say that wasn’t going to affirm Juno’s suspicions about him or reveal more about himself than was ever going to be a good idea, “I just...I just know how to take care of myself.”

Juno coughed roughly into his fist, finally getting control over himself, “Clearly. Jones was about to brain me with that bottle before you swept in and saved the day…” his expression changed then, something in it tightening, “Why did you even do that? Why not just let me get a face full of glass? I’ve been enough of a dick to you to deserve it.”

Peter dropped his eyes, “You have. But that could have seriously hurt you, they were going right for your eyes. And, well, Jones seemed like slightly more of a dick than you.”

“Slightly?” Juno chuckled roughly, his face softening again, “Well...thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

There was a moment of awkward pause before Juno leaned over and rubbed some of the blood off Peter’s cheek with a thumb, “Hey, uh...I do kind of owe you an apology. For...being the way I am. Ben and Sasha, hell even Mick, they’ve been giving me shit about it.”

Peter had to force himself to listen, so much of his brain was laser focused on that tumb against his skin, that touch, “I...I think I get it. You have a really good thing going with your friends and I just showed up out of the blue and changed things.”

Juno looked taken aback and suddenly the blush on his cheeks could have been his make up or it could have been something else, “Uh...okay. Fair. That’s pretty close to the mark.”

Peter cleared his throat quickly, realising he’d shown a little more of his hand than he’d meant to. He hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol back at the party, or ever for that matter, and he hadn’t smoked anything beyond what already hung on the air but something about the split second fight, the running and something about being sat here with Juno now was giving him a similar buzz in his blood and lightheadedness he’d always assumed came along with that sort of thing.

First rule of thieving, always keep a clear head he thought and felt guilty. He was trying.

“But Ben basically adopted you, it’s not your fault,” Juno frowned, picking at his nail polish, “It’s not an excuse for me being a dick. Yeah, you’re strange and you know how to do weird stuff and there’s things you’re not telling us...but hell, that’s basically everyone.”

“Thanks?” Peter said with an unsure smile, making Juno laugh again. The lightheadedness got worse then.

Juno shrugged, leaning far back enough so he was looking up at the stars. They reflected back in his dark eyes, pinpoint sparks in what looked like nothingness but was so much more. For the first time since he’d met Mag, Peter got the sense that someone understood him. That if he told them everything about himself, his fears and hopes, the planets he wanted to walk on some day, the world he wanted to make for himself and why, Juno would understand. Maybe even in a way Mag didn’t.

And he couldn’t say a word to him. He didn’t even know his real last name.

At that moment, Peter Nureyev could have cried.

“Bet Benten’s already texted me a million times,” Juno sighed, “Worrying about where I am’s probably really cutting into his making out with Mick time.”

Peter forced a smile, “We could go back.”

Juno paused then shook his head, voice softer and quieter than before, “Nah. Not yet. Five more minutes.”

Relief poured through Peter’s chest, even with the sadness still smouldering like embers in his stomach that wouldn’t go out. He wasn’t ready to go back either.

“Hey, huddle in, would ya, it’s freezing,” Juno grunted, suddenly drawing right up close until his side was flush against Peter’s, even going as far as to rest his head on Peter’s shoulder.

Despite what he’d said, his skin was so warm and he smelled of pot smoke, cheap beer and some flowery perfume. His head was heavy on Peter’s thin shoulder and his curls tickled his nose. But Peter couldn’t have moved away if his life depended on it.

Because even if he couldn’t have that understanding, even if he couldn’t let Juno really see him, he could have this. He could have these bitterly cold five minutes in a darkened park by a broken fountain with uncomfortable gravel under his ass, blood drying on his cheek and another boy’s head on his shoulder.

And if that was all he’d ever get, then Peter Nureyev was grabbing it with both hands and never letting go.

#tpp #the penumbra podcast #jupeter #high school au #peter nureyev #juno steel #benzaiten steel #mick mercury #ben/mick #sasha wire #fic #pweeeease reblog and comment

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warsofasoiaf · 4 years ago

Note

Have you played Fallout 4? What did you think of it?

Joseph Anderson had a phenomenal video on Fallout 4. Although it is enormous, so be careful. Overall, there were things to like and things not to like about Fallout 4. I’ll start with what I liked first. Throwing a cut in here because it’s long.

Combat in the first-person Fallout games has always been clunky, and enemy AI relatively largely consisted of straight charging or shooting from as maximum range as possible. Difficulty came primarily from enemy quantity, high damage output, or incredibly enemy hitpoints. The last of these has been a particular Bethesda problem in their games, with enemies being incredible damage sponges, making late-game fights a boring slog as you slowly whittle down their health while being impossible to damage in any meaningful capacity. While enemy variations aren’t nearly as high as the game’s fans would have you believe if you conceive of them as AI patterns, the AI activity did have some nice variations. Human enemies used cover, ghouls bobbed and weaved as you shot them, mole rats tried to ambush you. It’s got nothing on games with fully realized combat system, but it does make the combat that you do engage in much more enjoyable.

All of the random crap you can pick up in a Bethesda game having a purpose is another positive. It is a true nuisance to find out when playing a game that I hit my encumbrance limit only to find out it’s because I’ve picked up a bunch of brooms, bowls, and other garbage accidentally while grabbing coin and other worthwhile treasures. Actually having these things mean an object is worthy mechanically, aside from level design; typewriters are useful as items as opposed to something that shows you that the ruined building you’re in was formerly a newspaper. As crafting is a big portion of the game, having these things provide component parts that you use for crafting on their own creates more utility in these elements of clutter which still require modeling, rendering, placement, etc. Now if you need aluminum, you’ll try to raid something like a cannery because it will have aluminum cans, which is an excellent way to create player-generated initiative. It also reinforces one of the primary themes of the game which is crafting and design, where even the trailers of the game suggest building as a key idea of the game. Certainly sensible for a post-apocalyptic game to focus on building a new society upon the ruins of the older one, and given what the game was trying to do with their four factions mechanic, it’s clear that this was their intent, and good job for trying to ensure that things factor back into their principal intent.

Deathclaws look properly scary, the animations with Vault Boy were funny, there’s some pretty window dressing. The voice work wasn’t bad, the notable standout being Nick Valentine. The Brotherhood airship was an impressive visual. I had a little fun creating some basic settlements, particularly in Hangman’s Alley where I tried to create a network of suspended buildings and Spectacle Island where I had room to grant every prospective settler a shack. Bethesda clearly looked to create a game with mass market appeal, and I believe the metrics bears out that they succeeded in that regard. The robots in the USS Constitution quest were very funny, the writers were able to make the absolute ridiculousness of the situation work (curse you Weatherby Savings and Loan!) and framed it well as a comedic sidequest, with a final impressive visual if you side with the bots and the ship takes flight.

Now that this is out of the way, I think that a lot of what Fallout 4 did was not the right move.

The quest design was particularly atrocious in this regard. Most of the radiant quests boiled them down to a simple formula - go to the dungeon, get to the final room where you need to either kill the boss or get an item from the boss chest, return. In this game though, the main story quests often were boiled down to just this simple formula. You need to find a doodad from a Courser to complete your teleporter? Go to the dungeon, kill the boss, recover the item. The Railroad needs you to help an escaped synth! Do it by going to the dungeon and getting to the final room. This really hampers the enjoyment of games because the expressiveness of the setting and elements of an RPG is often explored through quests. Quests are meant to get you out into the world and give you an objective, but they are also meant to connect you to the people that you’re dealing with. If every quest is boiled down to the same procedure, that hurts the immersion, but the bigger sin is that when you return you have another quest waiting for you. That robs the player of the sense of accomplishment because there is no permanent solution to problems, even for a minute. There is no different end-state for the player to see the transition from one to the other and feel accomplished that they were the ones who did it. Other RPG’s always understood this - a D&D game might have a party save a town investigate an illness dealing with a town, take out an evil druid who has charmed the wildlife into attacking supply and trade shipments, slay goblins who are raiding cattle, there are a lot of possibilities that might even feel samey: if you’re killing charmed dire wolves or goblin cattle thieves, you’re still going to the dungeon and fighting the boss, the usual flair and variation came from encounter design. After you’d do that though, the NPC’s might say “Hey, Mom is feeling better after you cured that disease, she’s starting to walk again,” “Hey, we were able to send a shipment of wine from the vineyards out to the capital, here’s some coin for the shipment as reward for your service,” or even just a simple “Hey, thanks for taking out those cattle thieves.” There’s a sense of accomplishment even if it’s a fleeting “we did a cool thing.” Computer RPG’s are tougher in this regard, part of the sense of accomplishment in tabletop gaming is also with your friends, it’s a shared activity, but usually in that the reward was some experience and character growth and going to new content. There isn’t new content here in Fallout 4 though, because of the samey quest design and lack of progression.

The conversational depth was also ruined, with so much of the voice choices mangled by the system of conversation they designed. By demanding a four-choice system, they limited themselves to always requiring four options which completely mangled interactivity. The previous menu design allowed for as many lines as you wanted, even if the choices were usually beads on a string. The depth and variation, however, are even lower than what could be found in games like Mass Effect 3, and the small word descriptions were often so inaccurate that it created a massive disconnect between myself the player and the Sole Survivor, because they weren’t saying what I thought they would be saying. That prevented me from feeling immersed, because a “Sarcastic” option could be a witty joke or a threat that sounds like it should come out of a bouncer. The character options were already limited, with Nate being a veteran and Nora being a lawyer, but this lack of depth prevents me from feeling the character even moreso than a scripted backstory. You get those in games, but being unable to predict how I’m reacting is something that kills character.

Bethesda needs to end the “find (x) loved one” as a means to get people motivated to do a quest, or if they don’t want to rid themselves of that tool in their toolbox, they need to do a better job getting me to like them. More linear games can get away with this, but open world games encourage the sort of idle dicking around that doesn’t make any sense for a person who is attempting to find a family member. Morrowind did this much better, where your main task was to be an Imperial agent, and you were encouraged to join other factions and do quests as a means to establish a cover identity and get more acquainted with combat. Folks who didn’t usually ended up going to Hasphat Antabolius and getting their face kicked in by Snowy Granius. Here though, what sort of parent am I if instead of pursuing a lead to find my infant son I’m wandering over east because I saw what looked like a cool ruin, and I need XP to get my next perk (another gripe, perks that are simple percentage increases because they slow down advancement and make combat a slog if you don’t take them, depressing what should be a sense of accomplishment). By making us try to feel close with a character but by refusing to give us the players time with them, there is no sense of bonding. I felt more connection to James in Fallout 3 than I did for Sean, but even then, I felt more connection to him because he was voiced by Liam Neeson than because of any sense of fatherly affection. The same goes for the spouse and baby Sean, I feel little for them because I see them only a little. I know that I should care more, but I also know that I the player don’t because all that I was given is “you should care about them.” You need time to get to know characters in game, along with good writing and voicework. I like Nick because he quoted “The Raven” when seeing the Brotherhood airship and I thought that was excellent writing, I didn’t have any experiences with Sean to give me that same sense of bonding.

They’ve also ruined the worldbuilding. The first-person Fallout games have always had a problem with this, with Fallout 3 recycling Super Mutants, the Brotherhood of Steel, and other iconic Fallout things into Washington D.C. Part of this is almost certainly the same reason that The Force Awakens was such a dull rehash of the plot of A New Hope, they wanted to establish some sort of continuity with a new director to not frighten off old fans who they relied on to provide a significant majority of the sales. The problem of course, is that this runs into significant continuity problems, now needing Vault 87 to have a strain of FEV and having a joint Vault-Tec/US Government experiment program there on the East Coast, so we can have Super Mutants. Jackson’s chameleon isn’t native to Washington D.C., but we need to have Deathclaws because they’re the iconic scary Fallout enemy, as opposed to creating something new with the local fauna, which is only made worse because they did do that with the yao guai formed from the American black bear (the black bear doesn’t typically range in the Chesapeake Basin near DC these days, but it’s close enough and given the loss of humans to force them back they could easily return to their old pre-human rangings). Some creatures are functions of the overall setting and can be global, ghouls are the big one here since radiation would be a global thing and fitting considering Fallout is a post-apocalypse specifically destroyed by nuclear war. Others though, are clearly mutated creatures and so they would be more localized. Centaurs and floaters were designed by FEV experiments and collared by Super Mutants, they should really only be around Super Mutants. Radscorpions shouldn’t be around, there would probably be instead be mutated spiders. Making things worse are that the monster designers do develop some excellent enemies when they think about it. Far Harbor has a mutant hermit crab that uses a truck as a shell (a lobster restaurant truck, which is passable enough for a visual joke even if it falls apart when you think about other trucks that they might use) and a monster that uses an angler lure that resembles a crafting component - these are good ideas but the developers needed to awkwardly shoehorn in iconic Fallout things that have no place there. This isn’t to say that I’m in love with a lot of Fallout’s worldbuilding, a lot of the stuff in Fallout 2 I found to be kind of dumb particularly the talking deathclaws, but as the series went on it took objects without meaning. The G.E.C.K in Fallout 3 was pretty much a magic recombinator which makes no sense as a technology in a world devastated by resource collapse, something similar can be said about the Sierra Madre vending machines.

Fallout 4 though, had a lot of worldbuilding inconsistencies that really took an axe to the setting. The boy in the fridge outlasts the entire Great War, but apparently never needed to eat or drink water. This is, of course, stupid, because ghouls have always been shown to need to eat and drink - Fallout 1′s Necropolis section has a Water Chip but if you take it without finding an alternate source of clean water, the ghouls will die. Ghoul settler NPC’s that flock to your player-crafted towns require food and water. The entire thing was ruined from a complete lack of care, to build a quest where you reunite a lost boy with his still-alive ghoulified parents. I think this one bothers me not simply because of the egregious worldbuilding which isn’t even consistent in the very game it’s written it, but it’s done so frivolously for a boring escort quest. It feels scattershot, and that’s the problem I think with a lot of Fallout 4′s quests. They feel disconnected, like every writer worked in a cubicle without talking to any of the other writers. Same with things like the Lady in the Fog.

Are we done with that? Good, because now we’re going into the parts that I really dislike - the main quest and the factions. These are just awful. The developers took what folks really liked when it came to Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas (Fallout 1 did have interesting factions but they were largely self-contained, more towns than anything else) and completely botched it. New Vegas was the clear inspiration for these factions, with the four faction model of NCR, Legion, House, and Indepenedent meaning that there were four different ways to go forward into the future, so we get three factions that fight each other and a fourth more player friendly faction that roughly resembles the Independent Vegas where you can pick and choose which factions you bring in with you and which you get rid of. Thematically, this fits in with the core of the game, crafting is a big portion of what you do and so crafting what sort of world the Commonwealth would be is simply a logical extension of it. The factions aren’t presented well though. The Railroad are impossibly naive and don’t demonstrate any rougher edges like denying supplies to humans in order to fuel their synth effort, even though such a thing should be evident if the post-apocalypse of the Commonwealth is to be believed. The Institute are sinister murderers and replacers without bringing any of the advanced technology that could provide some benefit such as the gigantic orange gourd that can grow. So much of their kill-and-replace mentality seems to be done for no great overarching purpose. The Minutemen are basically blank, pretty much just a catch-all for the player-built settlements, though the player as the leader of the Minutemen ends up getting bossed around by Preston to the point of the faction rejecting your commands to proceed with the main quest, a significant problem with Bethesda factions where you are the leader but never get any actual sense of leadership. There doesn’t appear to be any addressing of the failures of the previous Minutemen whether that be the previous summit, or new problems such as settlements feuding with each other requiring the general to intervene and mediate. The Brotherhood come the closest to a real faction with advantages and drawbacks if you squint, they are feudal overlords with the firepower to fight Super Mutants and other mutated nasties, but also violently reject ghouls and synths as part of their violent dogma except for seemingly not caring when you bring a companion around or killing ghoul settlers in settlements they control. But even then, we don’t really see the Brotherhood providing protection to the settlements that they demand for food, the typical radiant quest to destroy a pack of feral ghouls or super mutants is directed from a Brotherhood quest giver to a randomly determined location, hardly a good way to illustrate whether or not the Brotherhood is actually protecting settlements that they administer. We see little change in the way of the Commonwealth save that certain factions are alive or not because the game needs to stay active in order to perform radiant quests, so not even the signature ending slideshows can give us the illusion of effects building off of our actions. This is contrary to the theme of building a better world in the Commonwealth because there is no building.

Special notice must be given to the Nuka-World raiders because they show the big problems with the factions. You can be a Raider in Nuka-World but only after becoming the Overboss, which is fair enough. But you’re already a Minuteman, but the Minutemen don’t activate any kill-on-sight order and Preston still helps you out. The game is so terrified of people losing out on content that they make permanent consequences rare, and when you do something like order an attack, it can be rescinded automatically if one of your companions is there. As an Overboss, you do grunt work in the Commonwealth, and the factions get mad and pissy if you don’t give them things despite even if you only give one section of the park to one of the factions, that’s more than they got from Colter. It’s like they don’t exist until the player shows up, which is exactly how a lot of modern Bethesda character and faction building seems to be. While in most computer games a sort of uneasy status quo is the desired beginning state because it gives the protagonist the chance to make ripples while justifying the existence of a status that allows the player to change it, it has to be applied consistently.

The main quest itself is silly. There’s a decent twist with Sean becoming Father that sort of works, which would have worked much better if we had actually gotten a chance to bond with him, although the continuity of everything gets wiggy quick. When he said that he looked over the world and saw nothing but despair, I was wondering if they were going to actually bring a big question up and a debate between Father and the Player, the idea of what worth the people on the surface have, but it goes nowhere, it’s a missed opportunity. The main quest is just a means to meet all four factions and it’s a barebones skeleton at best. There are some interesting concepts they try, but what they do often falls flat. They try to establish some sort of empathy for Kellogg in the memory den, but it’s lazy and cheap because he kidnaps a baby and wastes your spouse, a wasted effort of empathy only made worse when you get criticized for not showing any sympathy. Kellogg then shows up in Nick’s memory for one second and then that little story nugget is ignored. The half-baked nature of the story keeps being brought back up, which is a pity because we actually saw them do a competent job in Far Harbor. The Followers of Atom are crazy and they really aren’t sympathetic in any way, but some of the folks inside the sub aren’t so bad that it might prevent you from wanting to detonate the sub, or at least you might think enough that you look for another solution. DiMA did some monstrous things, and if you bring him to justice, the game actually takes the time to evaluate whether or not you helped out Far Harbor, with meaningful consequences being taken if you took the time to do the sidequests which imparts far more meaning to them.

While there’s a lot of problems that show up in terms of binary completion, the question of whether to replace Tektus and turn the Children of Atom to a more moderate path is a good question, it actually gives a lot more merit to the Institute if they were ever to have been shown to enact the same level of care. That only makes the Fallout problems stand out more, because it shows that they were capable of it but didn’t. This isn’t the only missed opportunity, synths themselves become a big problem. The goal was to create a very paranoid feeling but it was so sorely under-utilized that I never grew suspicious of folks because the game never gave me enough incentive to be suspicious of them. I didn’t think that Bethesda made synths that would give you false information or ambush you because that would have been potentially missed content. The idea of whether you are a synth or not is clearly an attempt to give the game more depth than it is presenting. You’re not a synth, Father’s actions make no sense if you are one, and DiMA attempting to make you think you are is silly because you know you aren’t one.

I think the game would have been much better if they had dropped the notion of Fallout entirely. If they had instead looked to create an open-world post-apocalyptic game focusing on crafting and building towns, perhaps with an eventual goal state of building many towns, establishing transportation networks, and rebuilding a junkyard society as a decent place (or going full Mad Max Bartertown complete with a Thunderdome for players looking for an evil and over-the-top option). That might have been an interesting game for Bethesda to potentially develop a new IP, even contracting with smaller studios for those who wish to tell story-heavy games in the setting. Instead, they applied Fallout like a bad paint job, cobbling together weak RP elements and story that made the game feel like a hydra that couldn’t recognize it was one being with multiple heads, constantly tearing the other parts of itself to ribbons.

If I wanted to further improve it, I think I would have instead made the spouse a synth. It would require some serious reworking, but I would have made it so that Sean did believe that synths were people, or that they were real enough that the difference was negligible, they had free will. During the initial grab, the Institute took the entire cryopod where Sean was, baby and parent both. They used Sean to create the next generation of synths, but something happened with the parent, and they died during defrost. Sean hates the Institute for what they did, but what happened was truly a medical complication, not malicious in any way. When he learns that the player character is active, he creates a synth programmed to believe they are the spouse. He believes that exposing who he really is to the surviving parent would be traumatic, and as he hears that the player character is thriving, he wants to give them a chance at a normal life, and to alleviate the loss that he had in his life with the loss of his own parents. So the spouse is sent to you, and for a long time, you and the spouse have no idea. You adventure together, you build settlements together, the game encourages you to have a good relationship. It doesn’t have to be hunky dory, and I’d argue it’s actually better if it’s not. Have the spouse be programmed with some rough experiences in the Wasteland, so they’re nervous, skittish, maybe even a little resentful that the player character snoozed their way through everything, but slowly rebuild the relationship. That way, when the quest eventually comes where you find the truth, the player character has to confront that reality. Then when you confront Sean, Sean explains himself and the player is given the choice to forgive him, be understanding but still angry, or be hugely pissed at the manipulation. That’s drama that uses the core theme of what synths are about with the whole kill-and-replace motif the Institute does. There’s a plot twist that batters the player, there’s one that’s just messy and gross and tough to reconcile. There’s one where the conclusion the player comes to is valid because it’s the player themselves deciding what the meaning of it is.

So overall, I see Fallout 4 as a bunch of missed opportunities and clumsy writing wrapped up in the popular shallow open-worlds that triple-A games end up having.

Thanks for the question, Jackie.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

#fallout 4 #fallout #video game reviews

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