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sirowsky-stories · 5 months ago

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Forward Luxation

Summary: You're recovering from a dislocated shoulder and have to go to a physical therapist. But getting there, you find nothing at all is what you'd expected, least of all the man in charge of your training.

Requested by @bilibiche

Rating: Mature 18+ONLY Warnings: Marcus Moreno x female reader, reader is not described at all, and yes, we're taking liberties with the fact that any visit to an expert in human functionality requires one to take their clothes off. Lots of sexual tension here. Word Count: 2750

The waiting room is surprisingly cozy for a physical therapist’s office. Although you’ve never been to one before, so you don’t really have anything to compare it to. You’d just sort of imagined it being a bit like a dentist’s office, with the cheap magazines, plastic plants, beige curtains which haven’t been changed in five years, uncomfortable chairs and squeaky linoleum floors. But this is nothing like that.

You’re sitting in one of the four available really nice armchairs, each with a little coffee-table to the side, on top of which are no magazines but instead a selection of pamphlets with useful information about the most common muscle injuries and treatments, and phone numbers and websites to other reputable establishments where people can find help for all manner of problems, from yoga studios to psychologists.

The wallpaper is cream white with a discreet floral pattern in the same color, but glossy against the matte base, and the curtains are a deep green which together with the wallpaper somehow gives the impression that you’re sitting in a park. Especially since the chairs have exposed wood along with the soft cushions, which are the same color green, with embroidered flowers in pale yellow. And you’re pretty sure they’re made entirely of silk.

Even the coffee is fucking excellent.

If not for the fact that you had to sign in at the front desk, confirming your appointment and even having to show your ID, before being shown in here, you would’ve thought for sure you were in the wrong place. This all seems so much more expensive than what you could ever afford. You’re here courtesy of your insurance, so you don’t need to worry about the cost, but it still feels way too fancy for you.

“Good morning,” a soft and pleasant voice interrupts your thoughts, and you turn your head to find a tall, fit, brown-eyed, ridiculously gorgeous man smiling at you.

“Uh… g-good morning,” is all you manage in response, because he’s literally taken your breath away by just standing there.

“My name’s Marcus, welcome to my rehabilitation center. If you’ll please follow me, we’ll get started with a quick exam,” he continues, giving no indication he’s noticed your flustered reaction as he politely steps to the side to indicate which direction you’ll be heading.

Air floods back into your lungs when you start to move, getting up from the chair and falling in behind him, at which point, your brain starts working again.

“You own this place?” you ask, jumping at the first topic to come to mind.

“I do. I started this business eight years ago,” he replies, before reaching a room with a door already standing open, where he stops just outside and beckons for you to enter. “Does that surprise you?”

“Well, no. I’m just a bit confused overall,” you admit.

“Oh? How come?”

“It’s just… My insurance company made it seem like it was a big deal to even get a spot here. That this is like, the best physical rehab center in the country. And then I get here and the only person I’ve seen is the receptionist.”

“I see. You thought that such a prestigious establishment would have thirty employees and patients constantly coming and going?” he guesses, and you nod, feeling slightly embarrassed.

But he’s smiling when he gestures for you to take a seat on the large examination table in the middle of the room, while he closes the door and then takes a seat on a mobile stool in front of you. You note that the temperature in here is higher, and a moment later you realize that it’s probably because people need to undress for him to examine them properly, and suddenly you’re flustered again.

“The reason why we’re considered one of the best, is precisely because we don’t take on more patients than what we can effectively handle, both from a managerial standpoint, and from a practical one. Since it’s just me and David here, that means our slots are usually limited to five people per day. Obviously, I’m in charge of the actual therapy, while David handles the charts, bookings, contact with hospitals, insurance and so on. These limitations enable us to work entirely stress-free with our patients, allowing each session to take almost however much time it requires, whether due to physical restrictions, or mental ones.”

“Mental ones?” you repeat, getting slightly caught on the notion, since it seems misplaced to you.

This is physical therapy, not psychological, right?

“Bodily injuries often result in emotional distress, most of which only comes out when people are confronted with the consequences, which is essentially the heart of what we do here.”

“So, you’re like a jack-of-all-trades kind of therapist, then?”

“I suppose I am,” he agrees with a small chuckle. “Now, if you’re satisfied with our business model, we should get started.”

“Sure,” you say entirely without confidence, feeling the hairs on your arms prickle with nervousness at the mere thought of potentially having to undress in front of this man.

“Dislocated right shoulder. Forward luxation, if I remember correctly,” he recalls without looking at any charts or notes. “May I ask how it happened?”

“Oh, I have horses,” you sigh, knowing he’s probably not gonna need much more explanation than that.

And sure enough, he mirrors your sigh.

“Ah, yes. That’ll do it. So, how long did you wait before calling for help?” he asks, crossing his arms over his waist with a knowing, although friendly, glare in his eyes.

“About an hour.”

His eyebrows shoot up at that, but he can’t seem to find the words at first. And as always, the moment you feel the slightest bit judged for your passion for horses, you get defensive.

“I couldn’t just drop everything, I had two horses who were panicking because of a fucking snake, I had to get them into the stables.”

“Yeah, okay, fair enough. How long did that take?” he prods, and you hesitate.

Because you’ve had both of your horses since they were foals and you’ve trained them well enough that they always trust you, even when they’re scared, which is why it had only taken you a couple of minutes to get them into the stables that day.

“I don’t have anyone who can help me,” you quietly explain. “I had to make sure they’d be okay if I had to be in hospital for a few days.”

His expression softens then, but he’s not done investigating.

“So, you went around hauling hay, probably some buckets of water, checking fences and gates… I assume you also made sure to get rid of the snake, only calling for help once you’d double-checked that you hadn’t missed anything.”

“I didn’t call. I drove myself to the hospital,” you conclude, at which point Marcus seems to give up any notion that you’re a reasonable human being.

“As impressive as it is that you were able to endure that kind of pain for so long, you do realize by delaying getting this injury corrected, you probably added another month to the rehab you’re gonna need? Which is only gonna keep you from working with your horses that much longer,” he admonishes, but he sounds concerned more than anything, which tugs at your heart because no one ever concerns themselves about you.

“I know, but I was… scared,” you admit, surprising yourself, since you haven’t even admitted this to yourself yet. “I’ve never been seriously injured before, and I hate hospitals. I knew I had to go, I just… had to convince myself of it.”

Unexpectedly, he smiles at you then.

“Thank you. For being honest with me. That’s always a good start.” He looks so grateful and earnest as he meets your gaze, you struggle not to look away.

“I know it might not seem like it, but I do want help. I’m just really crappy at asking for it or accepting it.”

“Well then, you’ll be happy to know I’m stubborn as hell, and I don’t take no for an answer when I know I’m right. Chances are, you’re gonna get amazingly irritated and sick of me before we’re done, but if you can trust me despite all that, I’ll get you well again,” he offers, and you struggle to believe you could ever get sick of such a wonderful person.

“I’m not great with trusting people. But I’ll try.”

“That’s all I can ask for. Now, I’m gonna need you to take your shirt off so I can assess the mobility of your shoulder.”

Well, that went from sweet to nerve-wracking in one fucking sentence… Suddenly your pulse is pounding in your ears, but it’s not like you can refuse. At least, not if you want to regain full mobility. Internally cursing yourself for wearing a t-shirt and not a top with thin straps of some sort, you start fumbling with the fabric, trying to get it off without causing yourself too much pain.

He notices that you’re having a bit of trouble and steps around behind you to lift the shirt at the back, which is nice of him. Except that when his warm fingers brush against the bare skin of your neck, you involuntarily shiver, which he of course also notices.

“Is it too cold in here?” he wonders. “I try to keep it warmer than the rest of the building, but if you need me to turn it up further-…”

“No, no, I’m fine,” you interrupt him, feeling absolutely ridiculous at how strongly his mere presence affects you.

“Alright, but just so you know, it’s no trouble. If there’s anything I can do to make this more comfortable for you, don’t hesitate to tell me,” he says, as he carefully starts to prod and examine your shoulder now that the shirt is off, and you’re abruptly having trouble breathing again with the sensation of his skin exploring yours.

“Oh, you don’t want me to do that…” you think to yourself, while doing your best not to be self-conscious about your choice of bra for the day.

“Why is that?”

His mildly bemused and curious question makes you freeze, and as the realization hits you that you’d actually spoken out loud just now, panic floods your every cell in no time flat. Wishing the ground would open and swallow you, or that lightning would hit you right now, you let your torso fall forwards and then brace your good elbow against your knee so that your hand can catch your head as it drops so heavily into your open palm that it feels like you’ve just slapped yourself.

“I am so sorry,” you mumble, seriously wondering what the fuck is wrong with you, you don’t even know if the man’s single. “Please ignore me, I don’t get out much.”

He’s quiet for a moment then, and in that short space of time, you manage to imagine several scenarios for how he’s probably about to scold you for behaving inappropriately.

“Ah… You didn’t mean to say that out loud, did you?” he finally replies, and he still sounds only bemused, but it does nothing to rid you of your shame.

“I’m sorry,” is all you can think to say, because that’s how you feel.

“Hey, don’t feel bad, you haven’t done anything wrong. You’re allowed to think whatever you want.”

“Even if it’s totally objectifying and unethical?” you counter, and there’s another pause before you hear a low chuckle behind you.

“Okay, now I’m really curious. What were you thinking?”

“Never mind, just… continue your exam,” you hurriedly try to deflect, even more mortified by the prospect of having to own up to your completely premature infatuation with him.

But instead of leaving it alone, he rounds the table until he’s in front of you again, taking a seat on his stool so he’s at your eye-level.

“As previously discussed, I’ve got time. So, please, do tell me what you think would make you feel the most comfortable with me,” he grins, clearly fully aware that it’s gonna be something juicy, and almost childishly excited to know what it is.

For the most part, humiliation runs off you relatively easily. But that’s also because you rarely stray out of your comfort zone, which revolves around horses, dogs, driving tractors and using power tools. Still, on the rare occasions when you do manage to get yourself cornered, you generally suffer for a minute and then you find a way to shake it off.

And on the super-rare occasions, such as this one, when you’re so far beyond mortified that you don’t even know how to get out of it, something else happens. You become kinda angry and a bit feral. The last time it had happened you’d ended up spending a night in jail, and you hadn’t even been drunk.

You can feel that anger take control of your brain and you know you’re about to say something ill-advised, but there’s no stopping it. Raising your head, you lock gazes with him and see him flinch at the abrupt shift in your expression.

“Basically any scenario in which you’re butt naked and in my bed,” you hear yourself almost snarl, and somehow, there’s no shame accompanying the words.

As crude and inappropriate as they are, it’s the truth, and it wipes the sweetly crooked little smile off his face in a hurry. Although his eyes remain alight and curious.

“Somehow that’s not what I was expecting you to say,” he slowly observes, and you can’t help how your face falls, hearing that.

“You and me both, darlin’,” you exhale, feeling the anger fade as the air leaves your lungs, and in its wake, only regret remains. “Maybe I should just go.”

Standing, you reach for your shirt at the top of the table, but he stops you with a hand on yours, and when you turn to see what he’s doing, he’s suddenly very close.

“I told you that if you can trust me, I’ll help you. It might’ve been unintentional, but you were honest with me just now, even though you didn’t want to be, which is a good sign.”

“Not really,” you protest, starting to feel smaller against his large frame, “I get like that sometimes, when I’m overwhelmed. I blurt things out with no filter, it’s not a choice.”

“It was still the truth, wasn’t it?” he persists, and you can’t deny it, so you nod. “Okay then, we have a baseline, so let’s build on it rather than abandon it. I suggest we start with today’s session, and when we’re done, we make dinner reservations for this weekend.”

You’re so unprepared for that last part, your mouth falls open and your mind goes completely blank for way too long. Like a damned fish, you just stand there, staring at him while his hand still holds yours, gently prying your shirt from it before he motions for you to take your seat again. Grateful to be guided, since you still can’t think for yourself, you follow his directions and before long, the exam is done and he’s helping you get dressed.

From there, he shows you out into the gym where he meticulously instructs you on which exercises to do and how often, making you swear not to overdo them. And you might be imagining it, but you feel like he jumps on any excuse to touch you, holding your waist to make sure your core musculature doesn’t move when it’s not supposed to, or physically redirecting your hips when you’ve unknowingly turned them, even though he could’ve just told you to correct it yourself.

When you’re done for the day, he takes you back to the exam room where he makes a few notes about how the session went and what you’ve agreed on.

“Again, no lifting hay, grain, or heavy buckets,” he reiterates for what has to be the tenth time, and you can’t help but roll your eyes at him.

“I heard you the first nine times.”

“And you’re still not gonna listen to me, are you?”

“I live alone with two horses and two dogs, I make no promises, one way or the other.”

“I’m just gonna have to tie you to the bed then,” he says without a hint of a joke in his voice, before he reaches for a calendar on his desk. “But, dinner first. How does six o’clock on Friday sound?”

THE END

#sirowsky's birthday writing challenge 2024 #happy birthday to me #marcus moreno fanfiction #marcus moreno x female reader #marcus moreno x reader #we can be heroes fanfiction #we can be heroes au #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal character fanfiction #sirowsky stories

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sirowsky · 3 months ago

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The Flowers Always Know

Chapter 20 - But You Were Never Normal

Description: After receiving some extremely unexpected news, you were suddenly forced to confront certain things from your past.

**Beware! Author chooses NOT to display warnings on the individual chapters of this story. Read at your own risk!**

Rating: Mature 18+ONLY Word Count: 3859 (2263 words added) Masterlist (this story)

Over the next two days, your mood consistently got progressively worse. As your strength returned, you were allowed to move around freely, but you weren’t allowed to leave the med-chamber until you’d completed a full assessment of your abilities. And because of how quickly your powers drained you, the Science Department wouldn’t agree to do that until they’d come up with an acceptable alternative to regular foods.

Which meant that people were constantly running in and out with pieces of experimental nutritional little cubes they wanted you to try, not to check if they were actually edible, just whether or not they had the intended effect. Flavour and texture would be added later, so it was basically like chewing cardboard. On top of that, you were still struggling with the fact that you were lying to Marcus, getting more and more anxious for some answers so you could go ahead and tell him everything.

And to make matters worse, Missy was allowed to visit you as much as she wanted but your partner was kept on a strict once-a-day regimen, and only with staff present, courtesy of your continued inability to keep your hands off each other. It felt a bit excessive, but you’d accepted that things needed to be like this for the time being, since the two of you weren’t exactly harmless together.

Over the weekend he’d opted to just bring Missy during his “visitation”, where the three of you had hung out for a few hours, and it was the only thing keeping you from going stir crazy with the isolation. Your doctor was much more lenient about him being there while Missy was present, and especially since Amaire took turns watching you, so you were never alone. But being confined to one room and not getting to chose when you wanted company, or from who, was starting to feel a lot like a prison.

But on Monday, Marcus showed up without his daughter, and the moment he walked through the doors, you could tell he wanted to talk about something important, or unpleasant. There was a hard set to his jaw and a slight hesitation in his stride. And since you were already in a mood, after having about a dozen cardboard cubes shoved down your throat before dinner, none of which had produced the desired results, you weren’t looking forward to any serious talks.

“What is it?” you snapped before he’d had a chance to say anything, and your tone was unfriendly enough that it made him stop and tilt his head to the side, with a mildly shocked huff.

“Well, hello. How are you today? I’m fine, thank you for asking,” he shot back with a hefty dose of sarcasm, and although there was a laugh brewing somewhere in the back of his throat, it did nothing to lift your spirits.

“I’m so not in the mood, babe,” you cautioned, sharply enough that he knew not to try and push any buttons. “Just tell me.”

But he didn’t start talking right away. Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest and took a little stroll through the room. You’d been pacing when he first walked in, but stopped to find out what he wanted, and now he was the one who didn’t seem to be able to stay still.

“Um… I got an e-mail last night, from an address I didn’t know, and they were asking about you. So, I looked into it, wanting to make sure it wasn’t anything potentially dangerous,” he finally started, while coming to a stop next to the bed, on the opposite side to where you were standing.

“Okay…” you said after he’d paused for a little too long, hoping to spur him into explaining further, but he still hesitated.

It was extremely rare for this man to ever be fidgety, so seeing him like this, constantly looking for something to busy his hands with, whether it be your sheets or one of the machines attached to the bed, made you seriously nervous.

“Well, it turns out… the e-mail is from your brother. Daniel.”

You flinched so hard that it offset your balance and made you take a step back. Of all the people you’d heard say that name, a part of you had hoped to never have to hear it from Marcus’ lips. A part of you had hoped he’d be kept safe from that darkness forever.

“Fuck,” you breathed, abruptly more nervous than your partner.

You started pacing again, unknowingly wringing your hands and running your fingers over the scars which were no longer there on your abdomen. It had been a bad day from the start, but this was somehow the worst thing that could possibly have happened, turning it from bad to horrendous in one sentence.

“Hermosa?” he tried, hoping to get your attention, but your mind was already a thousand miles away, swirling back towards memories you wanted anything but to revisit.

Danny had no right to ask you for anything, ever. It didn’t matter why he’d reached out, or how he’d even known he could find you through Marcus, you weren’t going to listen to anything he had to say.

“He wanted to kno-…”

“Shut up!” you almost screamed at your partner, who jumped involuntarily at the unexpected panic in your voice. “Sorry… I’m so sorry, I just… I don’t wanna know. Don’t tell me.”

Turning away from him, you continued pacing, faster and faster, from one wall to the next, trying desperately to keep the flood of images out of your head.

“What the hell did he do to you?” Marcus wondered quietly but with emphasis, unaware that the question sparked a giant surge of memories, not one of which would allow itself to be bottled back up.

You closed your eyes against them, but once they started, they kept coming. They always did. Except this time, there were new parts of you reacting to what you were experiencing, and those reactions stood in direct proportion to the severity of the memories. The last time you’d fallen into this pit of despair it had made you curl into a foetal position on your boyfriend’s lap. Now, it flooded the room with your shield, hopelessly trying to protect yourself against the past.

It was so powerful it sent the bed careening into the opposite wall, forcing Marcus to quickly jump on top of it to avoid being crushed by it. One of the twins was in the room, as always, and she had to duck and take cover under the desk when equipment came flying at her, hard enough to shatter against the walls, or leave big dents in them.

“Okay, honey, I think you need to take a breath now,” she hurriedly suggested, but you barely even heard her.

You were trapped by the reality of what had happened to you, and there was no way out. You’d always had to go through the flood to free yourself of it. Trying to avoid it had never worked. Marcus scrambled off the bed the moment it came to a stop, so he was already on his way to you when Amaire spoke. Once he reached you, he took your face in his hands and kissed you, softly and lovingly enough that it managed to break through the surge and let you come back to him.

“Sweetheart are you with me?” he asked, and he sounded so scared for you.

“Yeah, I’m here…” you managed in between strained breaths, shaking like a leaf while he repositioned his hands to your upper arms, making sure you met his eyes so he could see that you really were back in the room before he pulled you into a hug.

But he couldn’t see or feel how much of your shield was still floating around you, filling the room with its strange density, and reminding you that you were still guarding yourself, which meant you didn’t feel safe yet.

“Please, talk to me,” he begged, and he was in tears now, you could hear it in his voice. “Whatever this is, it has so much control over you… It’s never gonna let you go until you talk about it.”

“I have talked about it. Just not to you,” you returned, verging on tears now yourself. “Not you. I don’t want this to touch you.”

“But it already is. It hurts you, and therefore it hurts me. You know that,” he persisted, and you knew he was right, but it still felt wrong to put something so awful in his head.

“Fuck. I hate this…” you cried, so ambiguous about the whole thing, it was making your head hurt.

Of all the bad days you’d had in the past six months, this one was turning out to be one of the worst, just from the sheer weight of the past. It almost felt like a living thing, doing its damnedest to crush you and everyone you loved, for no other reason than that it could.

“Let me tell you what the e-mail said,” Marcus kept going, apparently determined not to let this go, “and then you can decide if you wanna elaborate.”

You thought about it for a minute. There were any number of reasons why Danny would try and contact you, but not one of them would be of any benefit to you. Such a thing simply wasn’t possible. The main reasons you imagined were either him asking for your forgiveness, or more likely, needing money, neither of which you had any interest in giving him.

“Fine,” you eventually agreed, not because you wanted to know, but because it dawned on you as you stood there in your partner’s arms, that he was the one who was being hurt worst by all this, and you couldn’t let that continue.

He pulled back just enough that he could look at you, and he looked so pained it made you wish your family had never existed, just to spare him all this shit.

“He wanted me to deliver a message to you… from your mother,” he started, and the sudden hatred which flooded your blood was so strong it made you jerk out of his arms and step back, so you wouldn’t accidentally harm him. “She, uh… is hospitalized and dying, and she wants to see you.”

You froze. For what felt like minutes your body wouldn’t move with the shock you experienced in that moment. But inside, you were boiling.

“Those sons of bitches… Those motherfucking sons of bitches!” you all but screamed, well and truly done with all of it.

If your brother was a sore spot on your mind, your mother might as well have been a tumour in your brain. In your thirty odd years of life, you’d gone through phases of desperately wanting to love her, pitying her, truly hating her, and finally just not able to care anymore. She was the fucking devil, as far as you were concerned, and she had long since lost the right to call herself your family.

The fact that she would even attempt to reconnect with you after everything she’d done sparked a fury within your heart the likes of which you’d never known. But it was a dark and horrible rage, bringing out the very worst parts of you, so when the floor, ceiling and walls all buckled as your power crammed even more energy into the room, you didn’t even realize that if you kept going, you could end up killing the people in there with you.

All you could see, all you could hear were the memories, burning through you like a wildfire being whipped by a gale force wind. And all you wanted was to let it all burn. Until Marcus’ hands fell heavy onto your shoulders, reminding you of where you were and what was actually happening. But your power didn’t deactivate, because suddenly you needed him to know.

You’d tried to protect him from this for as long as you’d known him, but now, for the first time, it dawned on you how wrong you’d been. You should’ve told him from the start, not due to any difference it would’ve made to the power the memories had over you, but simply because it was these moments, these horrible moments, which had built you. And despite all the pain and fear, they hadn’t managed to blacken your heart or turn you cold or uncaring.

These memories were the ultimate testament to your character, and the man who loved you deserved to know them.

You weren’t sure how, but experimenting with and manipulating the unknown energy you had access to, you managed to bring colour and texture into the unseen atmosphere of the room. As if merely a thin veil sat between your power and the air around you. And like a stroke of magic, the images inside your eyes were suddenly playing out before all eyes present, as though there were a dozen little movie screens in there.

Marcus let go of you, turning in circles as he tried to understand what he was seeing, as well as keep up with the story as your memories weren’t appearing in a linear order. Each one played on repeat on its own little screen, but once he’d seen them all, the story came together by itself. Amaire was still huddled underneath the desk, but you could hear her reactions as she too managed to work out your story.

--The happiness you’d had in your life while your father had been alive. The wisdom, joy and sense of adventure he’d poured into your soul--

--The moment you’d found out he’d died--

--The day you’d buried him and said goodbye to happiness--

--Your mother’s abuse, starting the day of the funeral and only getting worse as the years passed, blaming both of you for her inability to find a new man because you’d ruined her perfect body--

--Trying so hard to protect the two-year younger Danny, antagonizing her so she’d focus on you and let him slip away while you took the beatings and the degradation--

--Remaining loyal to the family when teachers questioned your wounds and bruises. Lying and evading their prodding because you knew she’d only get worse if she felt threatened--

--Trying to keep Danny away from the bad kids he started hanging around. The drugs and the guns and the violence, drawing him in with the promise of one day being able to exact revenge--

--Protecting your mother from Danny once he’d tipped over the edge of what he could take, only to have her turn around and abandon you--

--Trying to protect yourself from Danny when he started using you as a surrogate for your mother--

--Calling the cops on him after he almost choked you to death, only to have him scream the same vile and horrible things at you as she had, even as they dragged him away--

--Crawling over the kitchen floor, reaching the house phone and managing to call an ambulance just before you lost consciousness, after he’d stabbed you eight times in the chest and abdomen and left you for dead--

--Defending yourself when he’d tried again, and then calling an ambulance for him--

--Going to see him at the hospital, saying goodbye and then leaving town, walking away from that life for good--

The images faded away as your strength failed, and just before your legs gave out, Marcus reached you, but sort of fell with you, landing you both in a pile on the floor in the middle of the room. You were so tired, but you stubbornly stayed awake for him, because you could see a sorrow in his eyes you couldn’t compare to anything you’d ever seen before. He seemed to be holding on to you as much as he was trying to just hold you, while he cried as hard with you as he did for you.

Over his shoulder, you could see Amaire sitting on the floor, holding onto one of the legs of the desk, as if she’d needed to ground herself while watching the memories. She was a mother, and your friend, so seeing something like this must’ve rocked her to her core, as it would any decent person. You knew her and her sister well enough to know that theirs had been a loving, safe home, so she could only imagine the pain and fear you’d lived with. But she was also incredibly empathetic, so that imagination could take her quite far.

All that aside, she was a professional caregiver. She’d seen and experienced a lot, and therefor knew how to compartmentalize when she was on the clock. So, after a few minutes, when people appeared on the other side of the buckled and broken doors, she got up, wiped the tears away and went back to work. There was noise and shouting as they worked to get through, but eventually Crushing Low was called in to simply rip the doors down, since they were beyond all hope of salvaging.

Still, even after they’d gained access to the room again, no one approached you or Marcus, not even any doctors. You suspected you’d have to thank Amaire for that later, since no one else could’ve convinced both the Medical and Science departments to leave their newest project alone after such a significant event.

There was no telling how much time had passed when the tears finally started ebbing out and you and Marcus began to let go of one another, finding the room around you empty. It felt like a long time, though, and you were only more drained as a result. But while you had started feeling better almost immediately after the flood of images had ended, your partner was the one who’d needed time to process, and you’d felt very strongly that you couldn’t have asked him to put his feelings on hold simply because you were tired.

“I get it. I understand why you didn’t want me to know,” he finally croaked, with a voice made hoarse and raspy after so many tears.

“Nothing good comes from it. All it’s ever done is taint the way people look at me, with pity or sorrow, making me feel like some broken trinket,” you admitted, and he immediately objected, just like you knew he would.

“No, you’re not broken. If anything, this proves you’re practically unbreakable…”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, because I realize now that I always knew you’d see it that way. I knew you wouldn’t treat me any different, I just… needed to believe it before I could take the risk.”

“It’s okay, I understand,” he reassured you, putting a warm hand on your cheek for a moment.

“I left it behind,” you continued, needing him to hear everything you’d wanted to tell him from the very beginning. “I know it doesn’t seem like it because of how I react to the memories, but I did. Especially after Prince. Because his so-called treatments healed all my scars from those days, helping me to let go of them. Falling in love with you is what brought these strong reactions to the memories back, but only because of how different I am with you. Because where I used walls and shields to keep everyone out before, you make me want to share everything with you, and that’s really fucking scary at first.”

“Of course… I can only imagine. You’re so brave to let me come so close to the things that scare you the most.”

“I’m sorry that I needed you to see it, I know those images will never leave you.”

“Don’t worry about it, I can take it. So long as I know you’re still with me, there’s nothing you can do to me that I can’t recover from,” he smiled softly, but then something worrisome stole the comforting warmth from his eyes. “I see now why my actions after the prison hurt you so badly. I left you alone with all that pain and fear… just like she did.”

“Yeah. But if I’d told you about it sooner, you might’ve acted differently, so let’s not get caught up in blame. You’ve earned my trust back, and my love was never in question. We made mistakes and we’ve learned from them, all we can do now is move on, right?” you posed, and it brought his smile back.

“Thank you, Hermosa.”

You leaned your forehead against his and just sat there for a minute in comfortable silence, absorbing the new understanding you had for each other now. Until he decided you couldn’t put off the reality of what had brought you to this point, anymore.

“So, I guess the only thing we have left to sort out, is the e-mail,” he sighed, and you mirrored him.

“Last I knew, he wasn’t any closer to her than I was, so I don’t know why he’d even care if she really is dying. He was only fifteen when she bailed. Although I suppose it’s possible that the hospital reached out to him. I changed my name and scrubbed all records of my relation to them, but he never did, so they might’ve been able to track him down. But why he’d agree to do anything on her behalf, I can’t even guess at.”

You shook your head with equal parts confusion and fatigue, truly starting to feel the drain on your energy reserves now.

“Maybe in his own way, he’s still looking for her approval,” Marcus suggested, and while it did sound plausible considering the person you were talking about, the places your thoughts went with that idea told you it was time to leave this subject, and not let your screwed-up family steal any more of your energy.

“You know what? It doesn’t matter. I’m not interested in meeting either of them. I don’t owe them a god damned thing,” you firmly stated, meaning every word.

“Good,” your partner approved with a little smile. “Then I think we should get some food into you before you pass out, mama bear.”

“Hey, she hasn’t even growled yet,” you played along, because it was nice to return to some light-hearted banter after so much heaviness.

“I know, but she will,” he hummed with amusement while getting up from the floor and then pulling you to your feet.

Which was good, since your legs were so weak they barely held your weight. And just when you started heading for the broken door, as if on cue, your stomach growled, much to Marcus’ delight.

“Don’t say it,” you cautioned, although without any actual warning in your voice.

He apparently decided you’d been through enough for one day, and just smiled wider before he kissed you. The kind of kiss which wasn’t long or passionate, but still told you that he’d be there tomorrow, and next week, and next year. No matter how much weird shit or painful drama you threw at him.

#marcus moreno fanfiction #marcus moreno x female reader #marcus moreno x reader #we can be heroes fic #we can be heroes au #au fic #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal character fanfiction #sirowsky stories #superhero stories

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backtothefanfiction · 28 days ago

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IT’S COMING!!!!

To mark reaching 600 of you following me now, I’ve decided to come back to this and get it done and out there finally!!!

I Will Always Find You will be 7 interconnected short stories playing on the idea of reincarnation with some of the Pedro and Oscar boys. I was originally going to do this a few years ago with each “lifetime” being a full fleshed out story but I just could never dedicate the time to do it. Instead I’m going to try and do them like my late night one shots so the event of the story is the pinnacle of that lifetime and in a way I can reference the other things that would have happened so you can still have an idea of what the whole stories would have been.

I am going to write these out and then choose 1 week in November to post all the stories 1 per day, Monday to Sunday. Below you can find the full list of characters and story themes. Please put in writing on this post if you want to be tagged!

Monday- Oberyn’s story

Tuesday - Poe Dameron & Din Djarin (Western Au)

Wednesday - Agent Whisky (60s Secret Agent Au)

Thursday - Blue Jones (Part 2 of 60s Au)

Friday - Javier Peña

Saturday - Santiago ‘Pope’ Garcia & Frankie ‘Catfish’ Morales

Sunday - Marcus Moreno

———————————————————————————

Once again, thank you so much for 600!!! You guys are amazing!!!!

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patternedlantern · 10 months ago

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Keep You Safe - A Marcus Moreno Statesman!AU

Pairing: Statesman Agent Marcus Moreno x Statesman Agent Reader x Agent Jack "Whiskey" Daniels

What’s this? Pat’s writing fanfic now? Well… no, not exactly. 😅 Consider this a loose concept for a fic that I’d want to write if I had a knack for writing, inspired solely by Pedro’s Emmy’s look. As soon as I saw it, it reminded me of Marcus Moreno and the costumes from the Kingsman movies. My brain’s been unable to think about anything else for the last couple days so I'm hoping that setting some of my headcanons free will help free up some brain space haha

Not really any warnings, it’s all pretty brief anyway. Highlights include: pining/unspoken feelings, fake dating, a love triangle dynamic that evolves into polyamory. The Boys keep their canon backstories for the most part. Reader is gender neutral.

The set up:

After sustaining an injury during his last mission, Heroic-turned-Statesman agent Marcus Moreno finds himself on temporary desk duty. He’s promised his daughter that he’ll stay out of harm’s way until he fully recovers. Desperately needing to feel useful while stuck behind the scenes, he's excited to receive his next assignment - as your new handler.

You have been a Statesman field agent for a few years now and have gone through your fair share of handlers - this isn’t your first rodeo. Nonetheless you appreciate Marcus’s unique experience and perspective as a former superhero. He’s kind, patient, and respectful, and the two of you become close rather quickly (while still keeping things professional).

While you’re away on missions, Marcus spends most of his time with Ginger, monitoring mission statuses and tech needs. His powers and weapons knowledge make him a good fit for the tech specialist team. Marcus and Ginger get along so well that their coworkers begin to joke that Ginger is his work wife. And yeah, they’re good friends, but she’s seen how he gets when you’re gone, steadfastly studying the wall of screens. He only has eyes for you.

Eventually, you get assigned to an undercover mission where you’ll be posing as one half of a romantic couple. Your lucky partner? One Jack “Whiskey” Daniels. You’ve worked with Jack a couple times before and while you find him to be a bit much sometimes, he’s charming and thoughtful under all the bluster.

Marcus, on the other hand, is apprehensive. He hasn’t met Jack yet but he’s heard the gossip around HQ about our flirty, larger-than-life cowboy. Ginger’s not-exactly-glowing comments about him certainly don’t help either, but she assures Marcus it’ll be fine.

Cue the mission with all its potential for tension and pining:

from Marcus having to watch the person he secretly has feelings for “fall in love” with someone else. Seeing the mission unfold and realizing that Jack’s not quite what his reputation suggests

to you actually slowly falling for Jack throughout the course of the mission (because it’s a fake dating story after all) but also having Marcus’s voice low and steady in your ear, always reminding you of his presence and the task at hand

to Jack knowing this is a fake arrangement (and that you and Marcus kinda sorta have a “thing” going) but wanting it to be real anyway, feeling his heart stirring for the first time in a very long time.

And obviously there’d be all the classic tropes. Couple practice. First kisses. One bed. A fancy gala. You know.

Maybe at one point, Jack becomes briefly incapacitated and Marcus has to step in and take his place for a moment to keep up ✨the ruse✨ Because they do look awfully similar from afar and who’s gonna notice really...

Something something the bond between two men, who’ve both experienced the loss of their previous partners, unexpectedly finding new love. The both of them witnessing the lengths the other is willing to go to to protect that love.

And then eventually the three of them work it all out and get together and fuck nasty. the end :)

#marcus moreno x reader #agent whiskey x reader #marcus moreno x reader x agent whiskey #Pat makes moodboards #and headcanons now I guess #headcanons? plot points? idk what to call them or what to do with them. I just need to get them OUT lol #no fic just vibes #possibly art or more moodboards at some point idk #keep you safe au #x reader

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604to647 · 8 months ago

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Ok… I definitely shouldn’t be cracking any more eggs/thinking up WIP ideas but…

Soulmates AU with Marcus Moreno, but where a powered person’s soulmate neutralizes their powers 🫣

GIF by @tankredbarton

#nope not doing it #too many wips #but for real soulmate aus are my fave #Marcus moreno #marcus moreno fanfiction #Marcus moreno fic #pedro pascal characters fanfiction #pedro pascal characters

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wardenparker · 1 year ago

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If you were to classify all of your Soulmate AUs into movie genres (i.e., romcom, drama, etc.), which would you categorize each as? I recently discovered your blog and wanna binge them but t trying to figure out which one I should start with based on what kind of genre they would be. Sorry if this is confusing.

This isn't confusing at all! Or, at least, I hope that what I understand by it is what you meant to ask 🧡 It took a little while to think over with @absurdthirst, but here we go... They are all romances, but here are the other genres that we feel each story fits into: The Alewife - Drama Down the Rabbit Hole - Drama/Thriller Killer Writing - Thriller Sassenach and the Spaniard - Fantasy/Supernatural/Historical fiction The Viper's Bride (current story in progress) - Fantasy Wish You Were Here - Fantasy *because superheroes* You're So Vain - Drama

#Pedro Pascal #Pedro Pascal fanfic #Soulmate au #Soulmate Sunday #Frankie Morales #Jack Daniels #Agent Whiskey #Dave York #Pero Tovar #Oberyn Martell #Marcus Moreno #Dieter Bravo

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artemiseamoon · 2 years ago

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You can get excited 💕 I’m wrapping up damage control in December (hopefully by the second week) then this one is up next. I already have chapter two and most of three written (rough draft) 💕

Fic: Tell Me No Lies

Marcus Moreno x Deianira (Nira)

Chapters

Prologue || One , two , three , four , five , six

Previews & teasers

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Drabbles & oneshots from this universe

When the clock strikes midnight

Am I the Villian

Picking Sides

Fic Inspired by this prompt

…

Cast

Marcus Moreno

Deianira aka Nira our supervillain

Lucas “one-eye” Thorne - Villian (yes my bb Mads)

Miracle Guy

Etc

Marcus x Nira gifs

x , x , x , x

#mid December wip #marcus moreno #superhero x supervillain #fic: tell me no lies #marcus moreno au #wcbh

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sirowsky-stories · 9 months ago

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The Lost Island

Chapter 20 - Found

Recap: After saving the world by sacrificing yourself to allow a matriarch tree to grow impossibly fast, you've managed to use the last remaining strength of your soul to send Marcus back in time to when he first met you. And as the two timelines begin to merge, you and Marcus are left trying to rediscover each other, just as the island once again beckons for you.

Author’s Note: It's been a year and a half since I abandoned this poor thing with just one chapter unfinished. But thanks to @scorpio-marionette I've finally been able to finish it! Hope it won't disappoint!

Rating: Mature 18+ONLY Warnings: Cursing, comfort, fluff, reference to smut. Word Count: 5130 Masterlist (this story) Author’s Masterlist

Unsurprisingly, things got somewhat awkward after that impromptu reunion. Your clothes were scattered on the ground, some of them even lightly torn due to the sudden urgency of your need for each other, so once you’d both regained your breaths, it was a scramble to recover them and make your way inside. Thankfully, Missy had clocked what was going on out back and opted to hide in her room, hoping that none of the neighbours would’ve heard the two of you. But it wasn’t until you and Marcus climbed into his bed and just held one another, that you really began to grasp everything that had happened.

Again, it wasn’t as simple as memories. It was strong emotions and a lot of sensory input which was suddenly just there, as clear and real as they would’ve been to the version of you who had lived them. But after your rushed and bewildering coupling, you began to feel less like she was this other being which couldn’t be more than loosely connected to you, and more like you might actually be the same person.

Something which became a tad unsettling when you were getting ready to leave the following evening, and realized that both you and Missy had acted like old friends from the moment you’d walked into the kitchen that morning. Also, you knew where everything belonged in the entire house, which foods were the seven-year old's favourites, and even what Marcus’ morning mood was gonna be. And it was only after you’d stepped outside to fly the helicopter back to HQ, that any of this felt at all strange.

You’d had dinner with the two of them, chatted, cracked jokes and laughed, cleared the table and helped with the dishes, all without once noting that this was the first time you’d set foot in there, the first time you’d hung out with them. Hell, it was the first time you’d socialized with anyone other than what had been absolutely necessary, ever since you were sixteen. And it had felt completely natural and easy.

It was only when you stood there, by the aircraft, turning back to say goodnight to Marcus, that it even occurred to you, and you could see the sudden uncertainty in his eyes as he read the confusion in yours.

“I… wow… This is so weird,” you tried, failing to find words to describe the feeling.

“Are you okay?” was all he could manage, clearly unsure of what was going on with you, but unwilling to pressure you or do anything which might jeopardise your rekindled relationship.

And then it hit you how this had to be just as strange for him. Suddenly having you back, presumably exactly as it had been in the time he’d lived, and you were abruptly worried that he’d fall apart if you left again. He loved you like nothing you’d ever seen in anyone before. Like you’d never even believed possible.

“Are you?” you countered, and then watched him suck in a deep breath.

“I don’t have a clue…” he started, before it all came flooding out as if he’d been sitting on this all evening. “But I’m so scared. This all felt like before, and god, I missed it so much… feeling like a family again. But I’m so fucking scared that this was just a random thing and that you’re gonna fly off and everything will fade, and I’ll be alone again, and I can’t do it, Pita… I can’t fucking do it again. Please, don’t go.”

He was all but sobbing towards the end, and it tore at your heart to see that pain in him. You stepped away from the machine and hugged him, and the feeling was right there. That same desire and affection and devotion, telling you how much you loved this man, how you’d do anything for him. And suddenly it seemed impossible that you’d even contemplated leaving him just to return a helicopter that was unlikely to be needed during the night anyway.

You let him lead you back to the house, no longer sure what you’d been so confused about before. And when you fell asleep in his arms a little while later, it was with a feeling of comfort and familiarity, free of all doubts or troubles. This was where you belonged.

<><><><><>

Marcus woke up the next morning to a phone that simply would not stop ringing no matter how many times he ignored it. Which he did because his arms were still around you, and he wasn’t gonna let you go until someone forced him. Eventually, he got annoyed with the insistent disturbance and used his threads to move the device away to the kitchen, not even glancing at the screen to see who was trying to reach him. All he wanted to see was you.

He’d lost this. He knew what it felt like to have to give this up, to know that he’d never again get to feel the warmth of your body against his, or the steady rise and fall of your chest, the rhythmic beating of your heart and how his own body synchronized to match. If this was really happening, if you really were somehow merging with his version of you, then there was a chance he’d never have to give you up again. But if it wasn’t… then he’d have to suffer that pain all over again, and he knew now he couldn’t survive that. So yes, he’d hold on to you for as long as he could.

The day was still young, and you showed no signs of waking up yet, so he just laid there, enjoying every second and trying not to think about the fears which still lived in his heart. But of course, it wouldn’t last forever.

“Dad! Will you please answer your phone!” Missy called from further away in the house, apparently having gotten up already.

It was a Friday so that wasn’t surprising, she was good at getting up in time for school, sometimes getting some reading done during breakfast, or just sitting outside in the morning sun, listening to her favourite music. Where his phone hadn’t bothered you, Missy’s voice instantly made you stir, which made a wonderful sort of warm softness spread through him. You cared about her, as much as he did. Reacted to her as readily as a mother would.

“What time is it?” you sleepily grumbled, clearly fighting against having to get up, but also clearly fine with waking up in his bed and arms.

“Early. You can stew for another half-hour if you want,” he answered in a whisper, to keep from fully rousing you and let you slip back into sleep if you wanted.

“Mmm…” was all you responded with, which he interpreted as you feeling much too good to get up.

But he still had to. He squeezed you just a little tighter, pressing a light kiss to your head, just behind the ear, and then carefully pulled away, hating how the sudden loss of contact made him feel cold as he padded barefoot to the bathroom and closed the door.

You’d only gone to bed and slept last night, but the few heated minutes out on the patio would never leave his memory for as long as he lived. Because it had been you. He’d seen it in your eyes, the exact same expression as you’d had that one and only time the two of you had been together prior to this one. It didn’t matter that that was all the experience he had to go on with you, because there was so much more to your relationship than the physical, and in those few minutes, everything had been just as he remembered.

Standing there, staring at his own reflection in the bright vanity lights around the mirror, he could clearly see the fear that still held him in a tight grip. The crippling fear that even after everything that had happened, everything he’d been through, he might still lose you. But he couldn’t live under the constant weight of that fear without turning into a wreck of a human being. So, he tried not to think about it, tried to focus instead on getting the day going, planning the morning out in his head while he did his morning toilet, before sneaking back out into the bedroom, somehow still relieved to see you there.

Taking a breath, trying to keep himself levelled, he left the room and headed to the kitchen, where the fucking phone was still ringing incessantly. He picked it up, noting that the caller-ID said Granada, but whatever she wanted, it couldn’t be good, and he wasn’t in the mood for bad today. Could he not get to take one day off from bad stuff?

“It’s work, right?” Missy wondered, already seated at the table with her cereal bowl.

“Yeah,” he replied simply, still just staring at the phone.

“Then you should answer, it might be really important.”

“I know, I just don’t wanna be the Heroic right now. Not today.”

Technically, both you and Marcus had been a bit awol for the past day and a half, seen as how you both still had a job to do, which you’d completely ignored in favour of just being together.

“Because of Ace? She stayed last night, right?” she probed, trying not to sound overly interested, but not quite succeeding.

Apparently, the same melding process which seemed to be happening with you, was happening with Missy as well. Suddenly she too appeared to know about things that had occurred in his timeline, as though she’d lived them herself, which only increased his hopes of this being a permanent displacement.

“She did, and I really wanna focus on her right now. Things have happened lately, that… well, it’s complicated,” he tried, but it was a poor choice of words.

“You guys aren’t like… having problems or anything?” she sounded worried now, which in a backwards kinda way made him happy, because worrying meant she cared about his relationship with you.

“No, not like that. We just, uh… need to figure some stuff out.”

“Dad, that’s exactly what grown-ups say when they have problems,” she said, starting to sound genuinely concerned now.

“And I’m also saying that you don’t need to worry, she’s not going anywhere as long as I have a say,” he reassured her, which appeared to be enough to calm her down.

But then that took her focus back to his phone.

“Gosh, just answer her already. She’s not gonna stop.”

He sighed again, deeper this time, but reached for the device all the same.

“Moreno.”

“God damned it, Marcus, I was about to send a tac-unit to your house!” Granada shouted in his ear, making him twitch his head away from the speaker for a moment.

“Well, good fucking morning to you too, Boss…” he snapped back, earning a snicker from his daughter in between bites of cereal.

“I need you to come in as soon as possible, we’ve got a major problem,” her tone was enough to get his blood going, and he threw a worried glance at Missy, who had now buried her nose into one of her textbooks.

“What is it?” he questioned, trying to keep his tone casual.

“It’s the island. And since you’re the only one that knows what might be going on, I need you to get your ass over here.”

Shit. He should’ve known something would happen to disturb his chances at a quiet week. It wasn’t like he’d had more than a moment’s chance to relax and recover ever since that damned plane crash. How long ago was that now?

“I’ll be right there,” he promised, and then ended the call.

“Should I call Abuela to come drive me to school?” Missy asked, still looking at her book.

“Yeah. I’m sorry, kiddo.”

“You’re not going back to fieldwork, though. Right?”

“I might have to,” he admitted, not wanting to lie to her. “To stop something really bad. I don’t know yet.”

“What about Ace?”

The chopper was still in his backyard, and he didn’t know how to fly it, whereas you did.

“She’s gonna take me to work and return the helicopter she borrowed in the process.”

“So, you’re gonna go together?” she puzzled, sounding quite pleased with the idea.

“Like I said, she’s not going anywhere unless it’s with me.”

It took you no time at all to get up, get dressed and get the aircraft warmed up, once Marcus had made it clear that you were needed at HQ. Not that Granada had said anything about needing you. He did, though. It was amazing to observe how you kissed the top of Missy’s head in passing, both of you acting as though it was the most ordinary thing, wishing each other a good day before you left the house with him.

The flight was also dealt with in record time, meaning that the two of you stepped into Granada’s office just twenty minutes after the call. She didn’t look surprised to see you walk in behind him, and just asked you to close the door before her focus landed on Marcus.

“Ah, the runaways return,” she remarked, but then got straight to business before either of them could mount a defence. “The island has become visible to our satellites since yesterday. Do you know why that might be?”

“I’m not sure,” he pondered, genuinely surprised by the news. “Our theory in my time was that the island itself was responsible for the cloaking, since it vanished when I killed it.”

“You killed what? The island?”

“Yes. But so far as we know, it’s still very much alive right now, so I really don’t know. Although… it is possible that the portal has something to do with this.”

“How so?”

“It created the time-displacement which started when we arrived there, probably because it sensed my powers. So, maybe our recent visit was enough for it to react the same way, or perhaps it actually remembered me. Either way, that thing is a lot more powerful than we can ever fully grasp, and considering that it’s been a prisoner there for a long time, I’m prepared to believe that it could’ve disrupted the island’s cloaking capacity, if it somehow figured out how to free itself without our help.”

“From what you’ve described, I don’t think we want to get up close and personal with that entity again. But we obviously don’t want the island to develop or distribute deadly spores either, which is what I gather will happen if the cloak stays down. So, any suggestions?”

“Yeah. We figure out how the tree produces those golden particles and try and bring some of it to the island, so we can kill those spores and then send the Ozsha home without destroying their world.”

“And you’re sure you could convince the portal to cooperate?”

“Actually, I don’t think I have to. In the future, I was able to pull it to me and control where and when it opened, and since my powers don’t seem to have changed by coming here, I’m pretty sure I can still do that. But I also think that the portal kind of wants us to help the aliens get home.”

“Wait, wait… Did you just say you can manipulate space-time?” she sceptically questioned, to which he shrugged.

“To some degree. If I’d been able to assert complete control over it, I would’ve found a way back to Pita much sooner, but I couldn’t create a permanent displacement on my own.”

“Then how do you know if you can put the Ozsha back on Eqlo’e permanently?”

“Because I know that this isn’t their original time either, and the cosmos wants things to be in their correct time and place. That much I’m certain of.”

“Right. Well then, I’ll get the departments working on those particles.”

<><><><><><><>

It took two weeks for the science department to crack the puzzle of the matriarch, and in the meantime, the line between you and Marcus’ Pita kept on blurring. Until you could usually not even recall how you’d only known him for a fraction of the time it felt like. You really were merging though, because you could still recall the events that had happened in your own time, as well as his, which meant you weren’t being erased or replaced with her. It was more like she was being added to you.

Your lives were identical up until the moment of Mo’s transition into this time, so it was really just those three years which were being imparted to you, but they sure left behind some massive impressions. Going back to the island once again only strengthened your experiences from there, helping you to recall every detail, and leaving you incredibly grateful that it had somehow not ended in utter failure, because holy shit had there been a lot of close calls.

Six canisters of golden spores had been prepared for you to set up on locations around the entire island, before an automatic trigger would open them and disperse the shimmering particles evenly across the small patch of land. And since this felt more personal to the two of you than anyone else, you’d opted to do this alone, although a ship carrying the entire Heroics team was anchored nearby, just in case.

One canister was to be placed right on the forest line of the beach where you’d first washed up that day after the crash, so you left it for last. When it was done, you walked down further onto the beach and just stood there, looking out at the ocean in silent remembrance. Not about anything in particular, just the fact that you’d survived all this crap. You made a mental note to call Chris as soon as you got a chance, because the spores reminded you of the painful goodbye that day. The regrets you’d felt.

Then you registered a movement in front of you, and refocused on the present only to find the Ozsha having appeared in the waves as far as your eyes could see. But they weren’t behaving threatening, and it took you a moment to realize that it was probably because Marcus was talking to them. Letting them invade his mind so he could show them his memories and help them understand that this was all an effort to save them.

“It’s okay, Pita. You can press the button, they’re gonna stay right there and let the spores infect them,” he reassured you, and you did as he asked.

The canisters performed their function as intended, and within minutes, the entire island and the surrounding waters were covered in gold, sparkling under the sun. Mo then nodded at the Ixo, before turning away from the water, heading up the beach and towards the west side of the mountain.

“That just leaves the portal,” he said while he took your hand and settled in for the trek.

“Do you think it’ll come out swinging like last time?” you pondered, remembering your first trip to their home-planet, and how cataclysmic it had been to your relationship with this man.

“I don’t know. I’m kinda curious to find out if it somehow knows about all that. It seemed to know absolutely everything before.”

“Yeah, but if memory serves, that was only after it first emerged from its hibernation.”

“So far as we knew, you mean. It could’ve understood everything from the start, manipulating us with its every move.”

“Hm. I guess so. Did we ever figure out why it plopped us out with a three-month delay after we’d sent the Ozsha home?” you asked, and saw him smile a little, probably at the way you expressed these past events as your own experiences now.

“I believe that was related to us learning that the island could still destroy us. Although, why we needed to be that far into the future after destroying it to understand it, I still don’t know.”

“Maybe the goo got it wrong. No one’s infallible.”

He chewed on that for a minute, while you made your way through some thicker underbrush, but then he grumbled quietly, like he’d been arguing with himself internally.

“No, I don’t think it did anything at random. We might not be able to suss out why it did such a thing, but I’m certain there was a reason.”

“Like what?” you wondered, not challenging him, just curious about his reasoning.

“I think it might’ve looked at every conceivable way to avert the disaster of this planet being destroyed, finding just one viable solution. And I think that everything it did was with surgical precision, specifically to get us to the places we needed to be in the exact moments we needed to be there.”

“Which would mean my sacrifice was the only solution, all along. And nothing we did differently could’ve changed anything for the better.”

“True. But what if it also saw this?” he pondered, lifting your joined hands to indicate your restored closeness. “What if it knew that you are so fucking powerful, you’d find a way back to me, even after death?”

You just smiled at that. There was every chance it was true, just like there was every chance it wasn’t. But either way, however strangely and complicatedly you’d gotten here, you were together. Against all odds, you’d found a way to each other across space and time. How could you ever argue against that?

Reaching the black lands, you were once again met by the portal’s defences, but Marcus easily averted them as you made your way to the center of the area, and the large flat rock. You stood silently in the middle of it, waiting and watching the surrounding rocks, until that same screech could be heard from somewhere to the north. It quickly multiplied until it was coming from all directions, and then hundreds of little black pools of liquid were converging around you.

But unlike that first time, they didn’t try and engulf you now. They gathered into the black gateway between all of the cosmos, right in front of you, and you felt Marcus laugh lightly beside you.

“What?” you asked, and he looked at you with a puzzled brow.

“You can’t feel it?” he responded, smiling wider, but you had no clue what he was talking about, so you shrugged, and he threw a thumb towards the portal. “Don’t be afraid of it, cariño. You know it, just like it knows you. Let it show you.”

Still not clear about what he meant, you turned your focus on the thing, feeling ambivalent about whether it really was a friend, after everything it had put you through. But then a feeling started to creep up your spine, and suddenly, images flooded your mind. Like a movie being played out inside you, Marcus’s entire life was shown to you, from his childhood to his marriage and the birth of Missy, all the way to everything the two of you had been through, including all the lost time you couldn’t remember.

The three months you’d mentioned earlier, now revealed to you in full, as you’d been brought to the Hawaiian Islands back before Akela’s party had left. You’d lived with them in their time, gotten to know them, shared in their joys and sorrows, for no other reason than that your fates were linked, and it was important that you’d always know each other, even if the memories were no longer there. That was how Akela had so easily read you. How he’d known you even when you’d been brought before him three years prior to the events which had supposedly been your first encounter.

From there, the black liquid took you to the memories of Marcus’s Pita as she’d been merged with the matriarch tree. How she’d spent an entire year conserving energy, refusing to grow while she’d waited for the right moment, knowing she could do it. That she could give him everything back. That she could give you both everything you’d ever dreamed of.

When the images faded, you and Mo both dropped to your knees, crying with the overload of sensations, the months and years of emotions you’d experienced in the space of mere minutes.

“Oh, god… I saw your life,” you started, still squeezing his hand while you tried to stop trembling. “I saw everything we missed.”

“Me too,” he panted, struggling to get his breathing under control, having clearly experienced something similar. “I saw your parents, your birthday… your career. And then…”

“Hawaii,” you filled in when he had to pause for a moment.

“Yeah. I finally know what Kahele means,” he breathed, smiling despite the strain to his system, and you mirrored him.

“The home,” you whispered. “The most fitting name I’ve ever heard for anyone. You’ve been my home all my life, I just never knew it.”

He pulled you to him then, embracing you as you both sat there on your knees before the giant black door, finally able to understand everything, and therefor, finally able to let it go. Akela had asked you to deliver a message to his daughter after he’d passed, but now you knew that it had always been meant for you, since the Chief had always been meant to live on. That the message had actually come from the portal itself, taking the shape and sound of a man you trusted so that you would always remember it.

‘Eha ke ola – Life hurts

He’d said that she would know what it meant, and you did. You knew it wasn’t about pain, but about the struggles of life making you impossibly strong. That the real message had been for you to believe in yourself, because every day of your life had prepared you for this battle. Every moment of self-doubt and fear had been there to teach you just how much you could endure. And how much you could give.

The portal vanished then, and a moment later, so did the island and the Ozsha, leaving just a barren piece of rock under your feet. A dead volcano, completely natural to this world, not cloaked by any alien lifeforms or sprouting any blood-sucking trees. Your work was done.

<><><><><><><>

You agreed to marry him just a few weeks after your return from the island, and the wedding was one for the books. All the Heroics and their families were there, your brother, and some of the senior staff, and it was mostly just a lovable kind of chaos. It hadn’t ended until the following morning, after the last bouts of games and wrestling matches had finally drained your guests of their energy, leaving you and Marcus to drive off into the sunrise together.

But you hadn’t travelled anywhere for your honeymoon. You’d been away for long enough already. Instead, the time off work had been spent in an oceanside cabin not far from your now shared home, in the throws of affection and unbridled passion, resulting in the arrival of Missy’s little brother, nine months later. She adored being a big sister, doting on the baby boy every chance she got, insisting that you name him Kal, after Superman’s real name, because she had decided that any kid who had managed to get born in spite of spacetime displacements and interdimensional warfare, had to be the most superpowered kid to have ever existed.

Needless to say, you’d both caved. Baby Kal it was. But he soon earned his own nicknames as well, such as Mini-Ace, MM Junior, and Kaliber, all based on his large and utterly charming personality. Surprisingly, just like his big sister, he never developed any abilities. And Marcus was actually glad for it, because it meant that Missy would never feel excluded. That the two of them would always be equals, and therefor, hopefully develop a strong and lasting bond.

Not that you would’ve allowed them to drift apart even if they’d been in danger of it. That was where your experiences of a shattered childhood turned you into supermom, because whatever they did, you always knew how to keep them together. How to keep them united against the struggles of life, so they would always have an ally and a safe place to run to if things got difficult.

Marcus often sat and just watched you teach them these invaluable lessons, marvelling at how naturally you’d taken on this role which had seemed so impossibly difficult and frightening to you at the start of this relationship. He remembered how you’d panicked at the mere mention of your childhood during that first dinner, and how scared you’d been of somehow ruining Missy by just being in her life.

It all seemed so far away now. But he also remembered how it had felt when you’d died in his arms. First on the island, then with the tree. And whenever those images and feelings gripped him, he understood every nuance of the panic you’d suffered. The crippling fear of knowing that you could utterly destroy those you loved, simply by loving them.

The rewards of that love, however, would always outweigh the fear, which was why those memories never darkened his spirit or made him doubt anything about his life. He would go through it all again, a hundred times, if it meant he’d get to see you play with your children, cheer at their successes, share their burdens and carry their pains. He would never take it for granted and he would never stop thanking your soul for the strength it gave him, every single day, to know how hard you’d fought to get to be with him.

The island was always doomed to be lost, a mere footnote in history, the scope of which most people would never even understand. But to the two of you, it would always be the place where your lost souls had found their way to each other. So, every year, on the anniversary of the plane crash, you went back there and planted a tree, leaving it to the elements with the hope that it would survive until the next year. And by the time you’d grown old enough to have grandchildren, an entire forest covered the island once more.

No one had wanted anything to do with it after it had been deemed safe, so you and Marcus had claimed it. Not to be turned into a resort or even your own private vacation spot, but simply to keep it alive, as a monument to your story. And together, you’d named it Loa’a.

Found.

THE END

—————

If anyone has come back to finish this with me, just know that you're amazing! I'm letting the taglist tag along since this story pre-dates my writing blog, so my apologies to anyone who didn't wish to be notified about this anymore.

Beyond that, I'm just so pleased to have this finished, and a huge THANK YOU to anyone who gave or gives this crazy story a chance!

@deadhumourist @idreamofboobear @dornish-queen @ladyphantom96 @sarahjkl82-blog @shsoba05 @cannedsoupsucks @toomanystoriessolittletime @tintinn16 @nolanell @prostitute-robot-from-the-future @myfavpedrothings @generalfoolish @tanzthompson @harriedandharassed @spishsstuff

#the lost island fic #marcus moreno fic #marcus moreno x female reader #marcus moreno x reader #we can be heroes fic #we can be heroes au #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal character fanfic #sirowsky stories

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sirowsky · 3 months ago

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The Flowers Always Know

Chapter 19 - New Normal

Description: While you were recovering from your ordeal in Florida, there were some hard truths you had to come to terms with about yourself, but fortunately, your poorly planned rescue meant that Marcus was still there to help you.

**Beware! Author chooses NOT to display warnings on the individual chapters of this story. Read at your own risk!**

Rating: Mature 18+ONLY Word Count: 5540 (3062 words added) Masterlist (this story)

Marcus came back after lunch, several hours later than you’d expected, finding you in Amaire’s capable hands, as they supported your sides while you went for a small walk around the bed. It did feel a lot like you really had stepped back in time, when you were suddenly dependent on them just to move around again, but happily, you steadily felt stronger the longer you were awake.

And the more you ate. You’d already gone through three breakfasts and a lunch, and you were almost getting hungry again. Healing people was apparently vastly energy consuming.

“Hey, Amanda, I’ll take that side for a bit, if you don’t mind,” your partner announced after walking in and smiling at the sight of you already up and about.

“Sure,” the twin to your right replied, stepping away as Marcus took her place, placing his strong hands around your waist and under your arm.

“What the actual fuck?” you exclaimed, feeling both peeved and stupefied. “There is no way you can actually tell them apart. No way in hell… You just said a name and went to whichever side became available.”

They all laughed at your piqued reaction, but you didn’t much care. You were certain you were right about this, no matter what your boyfriend might try and make up as an explanation. You’d die on that fucking hill if you had to. But you also didn’t much care because of how warmed and serene it made you feel, seeing Marcus smile with such joy again. How long ago had it been since you’d last seen him happy? Considering you’d been unconscious for a while, that was a very difficult question for you to answer, but then you also had a generally poor perception of time passing overall.

“If that was true, do you really think I’d ever own up to it?” he playfully winked at you, but your pride wouldn’t let you play along.

“Just get me back to the bed, before I start chewing on you,” you huffed, not really all that peeved anymore, but sticking to your guns anyway.

“You’re hungry again?” what you had to assume was Claire, almost coughed out, staring at you incredulously from her position at your left shoulder.

“Um… maybe. A little,” you quietly admitted, although the truth was you could easily have gulped down an entire Thanksgiving meal.

“Unbelievable. How much is that now?” Claire asked her sister, now sitting at their desk where she was documenting your little walk.

“After your lunch meal you’re up to… six thousand calories in the last two and half hours,” Amanda calculated by reading from your chart, where every aspect of your physical and mental health were being recorded.

“Just another Tuesday then,” Marcus chuckled heartily, instantly bringing your irritation back.

“Hey, I do not eat that much ordinarily.”

“Close enough,” he joked, and you couldn’t deny that his levity was a nice change from how serious and grim things had been ever since he’d left for this latest mission.

You’d reached the side of the bed at that point, so you sat down slowly before scooting further up the mattress and pulling your legs up. Marcus was about to help you, but Claire cautioned him to let you try on your own first, which you appreciated. Because you wouldn’t have pushed yourself as hard as you did if there was always someone there to offer you an easier way out. You did let him tuck the covers over your lower half before he took a seat a little further down the mattress, facing you, and his smile was still there when he started talking.

“So, the inquiry went well. I don’t think they’re aiming to punish you for your actions, so much as try and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Don’t worry, it won’t. I feel horrible about it,” you confessed, suddenly feeling a little less light-hearted.

But your partner’s good mood remained, even growing more sparkly, which seemed odd considering he was usually more prone to letting himself be affected by your emotions.

“They showed me the security-footage and I’m mighty impressed. I had no idea you could fight like that. I mean, Mitch and Gavin are big guys, but you took them down with one and two moves each,” he pondered, reminding you that you’d never actually told him about the training you’d done leading up to your exams.

“During my rehab, when I asked for more physical exercises, one of the things I was most eager to do was learn some self-defence, and it was the one thing he was only happy to let me do. So, we ended up sparring a little bit almost every day. I’m not saying I’m a trained fighter, but I can pull some moves if I need to.”

“I noticed. And I have to say I like it.”

“Thanks…” you tried to smile, because you did appreciate the compliment. “But it sure didn’t help me against The Inventor.”

His joy began to fade at that, recognizing why you weren’t letting him comfort you.

“We all failed against him. You were the only one who was able to circumvent his gadgets.”

“Only because he didn’t know how to apply them to my powers. It was just a fluke.”

“No. I refuse to believe all that’s happened to us was random,” he firmly stated, locking eyes with you. “The Inventor was our perfect adversary. Someone we never stood a chance against. And then you show up, somehow having the perfect ability to protect not just yourself, but all of us from him. I can’t believe it was all just happenstances. That you could come into our lives right when we needed you the most.”

There was such conviction in him when he talked about this, it was almost like it floated through the air around him. It made you want to believe him, and he could see it.

“Hermosa, you have no idea how big of a difference you’ve made,” he continued, and something else crept into his features then. Something a bit sad. “The day you turned up and became my mission… was the day I was getting ready to announce to the team that I was gonna leave.”

You felt yourself suck in a sharp breath, and you wanted to say something, to object maybe, but nothing came out. It was too shocking to hear.

“I had a whole host of excuses lined up. Wanting to focus on helping Missy, wanting to be around more for her, to keep my promise of staying alive for her… To let the team out from under my shadow and start to come together on their own, not always rely on me to work out their spats and remind them how much they mean to each other. I was ready to combat any argument they might’ve come up with to get me to stay. But then I saw you, and suddenly it didn’t matter. Because seeing you like that, fighting against the impossible and somehow beating it, even though you were all alone… made me realize I’d already given up.”

Something thick and heavy was settling in your heart, but it wasn’t a bad thing. You’d always known that day had been impactful for him, but you never could’ve imagined it had actually changed him. You were so focused on his eyes, on taking in every syllable he spoke, that an elephant could’ve walked through the room, and you wouldn’t have noticed.

“I felt like I’d been fighting for years, like I was exhausted and therefor entitled to walk away. But the truth is, I was just scared. Of losing someone else that I cared about, no matter who it might be, I just couldn’t face the possibility of having to bury anyone else. I wanted to crawl into a safe little hub and stay there, where the world couldn’t hurt me anymore. But it was a delusion. A wish that could never have come true.”

“That doesn’t mean you were wrong to want it,” you whispered, scarcely able to speak at all, you were so enraptured by his honesty and vulnerability.

“No, but I was wrong to think living in some imaginary perfect world would make anything better. I was wrong to give up just because things got difficult. Especially because they weren’t all that difficult. Yes, the team gets on my nerves when they get childish and petty, but so what? It makes no difference in the end. They’re still good people and the Heroes the world deserves. Walking away from that wouldn’t have made my day any easier. Just… emptier. And Missy… She’s already stronger than me. The only way I could ever fail her is if I stopped being the person she can always rely on.”

You had to admit, it seemed unlikely all these events would’ve unfolded randomly. It was all so delicately connected, from the timing of your first meeting apparently changing his mind in a major decision, to the fact that your powers had tipped the scales of destiny for all the most important people in both of your lives. But you didn’t believe in destiny.

“So, you think we were meant to meet? That the cosmos made Prince pick me so that I’d end up at that hospital in that exact moment?” you sceptically challenged, but it just made him smile again.

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. My point is simply that whether you fight with your fists, your wits, or your powers, you are already the most powerful person in the world, because when the rest of us cave… you keep going. No matter what.”

The quiet of the room seemed almost electric for a moment, as if his powers represented this unshakeable faith he had in you, by not allowing themselves to be limited to his frame.

“I’m with Team Leader on this one,” Amanda suddenly added, breaking the silence and the static, before her sister lightly slapped her shoulder.

“Damned it, I was just about to say that…”

It made you and Marcus chuckle warmly, breaking the slight tension of the sheer seriousness of what had just transpired, bringing you back to a lighter note.

“Just don’t put me on any impossibly tall pedestals, guys,” you cautioned, albeit with a genuine smile on your face this time. “I’m still just a person, like you, capable of the same failures and mistakes.”

“Oh, we weren’t the ones who put you there, honey,” Claire answered. “You did that all by yourself. We’re just the baffled crowd watching the magic, scratching our heads and trying to figure out how the heck you’re doing it.”

“But that’s my point, I don’t know any more than you do.”

“And yet, you consistently manage to succeed where we fail,” Amanda shrugged.

Looking at them one by one, you found the exact same expression in their eyes, and while it made you feel a tad uncomfortable, the foundation you could see underneath the more superficial awe and incredulity, was love. And there was no reason to argue against that.

“Okay, but just don’t try and hold it against me when I eventually fuck up,” you shot back, thinking of all the times you’d already failed at your job and disappointed people around you.

And before anyone could object, something else on the topic of your less than perfect qualities occurred to you, and you turned to your partner.

“Wait, is it actually Tuesday today, or were you just playing?”

“It’s Friday. Why, do you have somewhere to be?” he joked, knowing full well you didn’t have any appointments while you were recovering.

“Ha ha, very funny. No, I just realized I had no idea which day it is, as usual. Why am I always such a mess?”

“Hey, you’re not a mess. Shit just keeps happening to you,” he offered, to which you couldn’t object.

“So it seems,” you softly replied, looking down at your right hand and the tendrils of melted skin across your palm, wondering if there really could be some unseen reason behind these impossible trials you seemed to have been put through lately.

It was the only scar you had, despite the severity and multitude of injures you’d suffered in your life, and somehow, that made it special.

“I’ve been wanting to ask you about that,” Marcus interrupted your thoughts, and he sounded unsure now. “Because they told me those are electrical burns. Did I do that to you?”

“No. That fucking cage did. If I’d touched Lavagirl’s cage I would’ve gotten burned from heat instead. But that’s what I meant when I said your power seemed to recognize me. Because later, when I was… projecting… or whatever, I could feel your current in the frame of that cage without touching it, and it was like it welcomed me. Like it wanted me to touch you,” you explained, seeing his smile return and this time, it was an adorably sheepish one.

“I always want you to touch me.”

Rather than answer him in words, you reached your left hand towards his face and gently stroked your fingertips against his cheek. Letting his eyes fall shut, he leaned into your touch and hummed somewhere deep within his chest, just like he did in the mornings sometimes, when he was still half asleep but incandescently happy. He really did mean that any touch of yours was welcome and wanted, no matter the place or circumstance.

“Ditto,” you lovingly returned, to which he opened his eyes and met yours for just a second, then turned and glanced over at Amaire by the desk.

“Could you guys give us a minute?” he politely asked, and without pause, they both got up and headed for the door.

“Sure. Gotta get some more food for this bear anyway.”

They walked out together, and you scowled a little at the food-joke because it wasn’t like you had any control over your current insatiable hunger. But you were also being overly sensitive about it, since you felt strangely vulnerable after discovering your abilities. It was as though you suddenly didn’t know yourself, or at least, a giant piece of yourself, and as amazing as it was to be powerful, it was equally terrifying to suddenly not know what damage you could potentially do.

And on top of that, you felt horrible about not telling Marcus the whole story. In fact, you hadn’t told anyone. Not the nurses, the doctors, the scientists who had been there earlier to take samples and tests in order to study your powers. And you weren’t even sure why. Strangely, Anita didn’t seem to have told anyone either. Not even her son. Maybe because she felt it was your responsibility, or maybe because she just didn’t wanna get in the middle of it. But whatever her reasons, you weren’t sure how you felt about any of it.

“Hey, where’d you go, Hermosa?” Marcus’ voice reached through your thoughts, and when you momentarily looked up at him, you felt like he could see the secret you were keeping from him, and shame sent a trail of acid through your gut.

“Um… Just worrying about how this is gonna change things,” you said, which was true, just not in that particular moment.

“How do you mean?”

“I mean everything. My job, our relationship, my everyday life… Because somehow, I don’t think HQ is just gonna gloss over the fact that I didn’t get these powers naturally, and simply treat me like any other super. And honestly, they shouldn’t.”

“Okay, first of all, our relationship is gonna evolve, nothing more. You have to know by now that nothing is gonna break us, and least of all something entirely beyond our control. And second, HQ might wanna study you, but they don’t own you. No one does, and no one gets to make any decisions for you, no matter how you became a super,” he reminded you, which did set your mind at ease, but did nothing to cleanse the shame within you.

“Why did you ask Amaire to leave? Was there something you wanted to talk about?” you asked, hoping to change the subject before you’d feel compelled to spill your guts, which you did want to do, but not until you’d had a chance to understand your abilities better so you might be able to reassure him it wouldn’t kill you to use them.

“No, I was actually hoping for a little less talking…” he trailed off suggestively, and he couldn’t have picked a better moment to distract you, although he obviously didn’t know that.

Before you could even react, his lips were suddenly attached to yours, devouring you like he was starving too. Just not for food. The heat which flooded you within just a few seconds was enough to chase away the acid, letting you get lost in your desire, grabbing at him and pulling him down on top of you, while he searched blindly for the bed-controls to lower the head-section.

He found them after you’d already relieved him of his shirt, and while he worked to flatten the bed, you reached down towards his belt, wasting no time in trying to free him. And the moment his hands were available, he ripped your gown to shreds and then stroked you, growling as he found you already gushing for him. You bucked into his hand, needing more, needing him to fill you, and he could feel your need as clearly as he felt his own, which drove him wild.

He kicked his shoes off with such force you heard each of them hit the ceiling before bouncing several times against the floor. You then both heard and felt his frustration at having to actually take his pants off rather than just rip them, so desperate to feel you that a part of him would gladly endure the embarrassment of having to ask for a pair of scrubs to wear until he could get to his office.

Knowing the strength of your desire would already have you clenching internally, he took a few breaths before he began to push into you. And as he did, with both of you trembling at the still so overwhelming sensation, his current washed off him and into you, through every inch of your bodies which were in contact with each other. He’d never done that during sex before, and it didn’t seem like he was doing it voluntarily right then either. But what shocked you about it wasn’t that it happened, but that your own power responded to it.

You had no idea what was happening or how, and you couldn’t have stopped it if you’d wanted to, which you kinda didn’t, even though it was jarring. The air around the two of you became thicker, just like it had when you’d shielded yourself, but this time, it seemed to act as a conduit for his powers, helping them reach deeper into your system, setting your entire body alight with pleasure. Literally.

Your skin started to shine, and after another minute, so did his. Just a glimmer under the surface, but somehow connecting the two of you in ways beyond the physical, multiplying your raptures as they combined and fused with one another. Marcus was gasping for air with the force of his pleasure, throwing his head back as he strained to push himself deeper inside you, needing more even though this was already beyond what either of you had felt before.

His current increased until his body couldn’t contain it anymore, and all the machinery started going haywire, including the bed, which he quickly short-circuited to keep from disturbing you, sending it crashing down to its bottom setting. You took the opportunity to kiss his neck while his head was still pulled back, and then nibbled at his collarbone, trying to get him to come back to your lips. It worked, and as his mouth slotted over yours once more, he slipped a hand under your head and grabbed your hair, gently pulling your head back which forced your throat to open wider, letting more oxygen in.

For a moment, it confused you, thinking that maybe he was concerned about you fainting again, or not feeling confident in your overall recovery, either of which would’ve made sense. But then another jolt of his power hit you, and it was so strong it actually took your breath away, before your body sent it back to him, adding your own distinct flare to it along the way.

It was more than he could take, and he drove his pelvis into yours with as much force as he could muster with the limited movements that your internal musculature allowed. He grabbed your ass and lifted you up onto the fronts of his thighs as he drove into you one final time, reaching his peak with a growling scream. Every piece of metal in the room was thrown against the walls, even the bedframe crumbled underneath you, when he lost control and spilled into you.

Feeling that was all it took to bring you over with him, and you curled in on yourself as your arms lost their grip around him, falling limply down to the mattress instead. But your power was still active. You could still feel him on your skin, and under it, as though every inch of him was somehow in contact with you. And judging by his reaction to your orgasm, he could still feel you too.

You both collapsed a minute later, when the waves finally ebbed out and you were completely spent. Panting and shaking with adrenaline you just held each other for a long while, and it wasn’t until you started feeling cold with the sweat you hadn’t even felt until then but which was now rapidly cooling your skin, that you found the strength to speak.

“I think… we broke some things…” you tiredly observed, glancing over the part of the room you could see without having to move your head.

“I’ll pay for it. Happily,” Marcus grumbled into the pillow he’d crashed into over your shoulder.

But then you shivered, and he reluctantly rose to his elbows, barely even managing it with how unsteady he still was.

“Is it terrible of me that I’m a bit proud of how badly your arms are shaking right now?” you asked, smiling tiredly at his generally dishevelled state.

“Nothing about you is terrible. I love that you can reduce me to a trembling mess, just as much as I love that I can do the same to you,” he grinned, blossoming into a giant smile when he saw you respond in kind.

But then he pulled out of you, which instantly brought a frown to your face.

“Wow. I have never known a woman who loves to have a guy inside her as much as you do. It’s a constant source of wonder for me,” he huffed with a little laugh, and although you were still disappointed, you wanted to make sure he understood why.

“Well, you’ll be pleased to know I didn’t used to. That honour befalls only you.”

“Oh, that does please me. A lot,” he proudly replied, before kissing you again.

His sudden jump out of the bed once the kiss was over brought back your frown, though. You pouted as you watched him gather up his clothes, suddenly feeling freezing and alone without him, so you grabbed the covers and pulled them up to your nose before somewhat arduously turning on your side and curling up to warm yourself.

“Shit… Did you happen to see where I threw my left shoe?” he wondered, scratching his head and turning in circles.

“Knowing you, probably down a staircase,” you muttered, which made him stop in his tracks and turn back to look at you.

“Wait a minute… Are you pouting right now?”

“I’m cold. The bed suddenly isn’t very warm anymore.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, mi amor,” he smiled apologetically, “but if I’d stayed there any longer, I would’ve had to go again. And with the twins probably on their way back with the food by now, I’d rather not be caught with my pants down.”

“Well then, you’re out of luck, cause I’m pretty sure they heard you, anyway,” you grumbled, feeling a powerful shiver travel down your spine.

“I wasn’t that loud,” he declared, sounding confident about it until he saw you raise your eyebrows at him. “…Was I?”

“Honey, I think the whole building might’ve heard you,” you countered, which would probably have been a stronger statement if right then, your stomach hadn’t decided to join the conversation, growling louder than you’d ever heard it before.

And even if you hadn’t seen the delighted and slightly cocky smile on his face, you still would’ve known exactly what he was gonna say in that moment, and you were absolutely not in the mood for it.

“Marcus. Don’t even start.”

“I was just gonna say that apparently I have some competition in the noise department,” he grinned, feigning innocence without any success.

“You wanna have a competition? Sure. You go ahead and scream as loud as you can and let’s see which noise brings the entire medical department running in here…” you sourly challenged.

But if he was about to retort, he didn’t get the chance, because right then the doors opened and Amaire walked in, holding four trays of food, the smell of which made your stomach growl again, even louder.

“Please… please tell me you brought all of that, just for her?” your partner giggled through the words, until one of the twins gave him a reality check.

“Well, let me put it this way. Judging by the sounds earlier, someone seems to have depleted what energy-reserves we’d been able to restore. Which means we now have to start all over again, so that your girlfriend might actually get to leave this ward at some point in her life.”

Her tone was harsh and precise, clearly stating her disapproval that their efforts to help you were being destroyed for something as trivial as carnal pleasures, and Marcus instantly sobered up.

“That was not my intent,” he quietly admitted, struggling to hold eye contact with her as his idiocy caught up to him.

“I didn’t exactly try and stop him,” you cut in, wanting him to know you were fully aware that this wasn’t just his fault, but the twins weren’t having it.

“It doesn’t matter which of you did what, this is a medical chamber, and you’re confined to it for a reason,” one of them chided, before turning back to Marcus and gesturing to all the broken equipment, some of it lodged into the walls while the rest was piled up against the edges of the room.

“I suppose all of this ruined equipment wasn’t your intent either?”

“No. We, uh… had a bit of an overload.”

“You don’t say. And you don't think there’s anything wrong with one of our most powerful supers completely losing control in a building filled with hundreds of people?”

“Now, hold on, I wasn’t that out of it. I would’ve known if there was a risk I’d hurt someone,” your partner defended himself, but Amaire was adamant.

“There’s no way to know that until the day you happen to go too far, and I know you’re not stupid enough to be that reckless with your abilities. You’ve been down that road before and you know where it leads, so don’t make me remind you.”

Abruptly, he looked as though she’d just slapped him back in time, and it worried you to see her words affect him that deeply. He’d never mentioned any problems with his powers to you, recent or otherwise, but there was clearly something serious in his past he’d left out. Which he was entitled to do, especially if it hurt him, but it made you wonder what had happened.

Taking a breath, the one of the twins who had just verbally slapped him, allowed herself to calm before she continued.

“My point is, we still don’t know all that much about powers when they’re natural, and we know practically nothing about artificial ones, so just… try to think with your big brain from now on.”

Still looking like a ghost had just walked through the room, Marcus merely nodded, treading nervously on the spot for a moment before he came to your side, suddenly reluctant to even touch you.

“I should get back to Missy, school’s out in an hour,” he said with a tremble to his voice, then he leaned down and kissed your temple. “But she’ll wanna see you, so we’ll come by later.”

“Are you okay?” you asked, digging a hand out from under the covers so you could take his.

“Yeah. We can talk about it when you’re feeling better,” he offered, but in his eyes, you could see he was hoping you’d just forget about it.

“Sure,” was all you said, and then he left.

“What is wrong with you, girl?” Amaire startled you out of your own head with just as sharp a tone as she’d used on your partner a minute ago.

“What?”

“Look, I get that you love him, like crazy, but you just woke up from another coma and you’ve barely even begun to restore your energy-reserves. Honey, don’t you see that it’s dangerous for you to do certain things right now?”

“Of course I do. But I can’t help it,” you started, feeling just as defensive as you had when she’d gone at Marcus. “When he touches me… I’ve never been able to control what that does to me, not even from the very first time we kissed when I literally attacked him. And now, with what my powers allow me to do… I wish I could describe it in a way that someone else could understand, but I can’t. It’s beyond words.”

“Try,” she insisted. “Because when it comes to you, every little detail of your experiences might prove crucial to understanding just what you’re capable of. Which means you can either tell me, or you can share these intimate details with the scientists who are in charge of deciphering the physical mechanics of what you’ve become.”

She wasn’t wrong. If they were ever gonna figure out how to help you, you’d have to give them as much information as possible. The problem was, that on this subject, you really didn’t know what to say.

“It’s… like we become a part of each other. His power courses through me, amplifying everything I feel, and somehow, mine does the same for him. Like they blend, like we… become one being in spirit, or something.”

She didn’t know what to make of that, apparently, so she turned to her sister, who merely shrugged, equally perplexed.

“Alright, I’ll put it in your charts. But I already know your doctor is gonna order you to steer clear of sex, for now. At least until the geniuses in Science finish developing the nutritional supplement we’ve asked them to create for you, to keep your energy up without you having to eat for ten people in every sitting.”

You didn’t know they’d requested something to help with your accelerated metabolism already, but it made you feel better to hear it.

“Thank you.”

“Thank me by heeding my warnings. I don’t get this worked up over details,” she reminded you, and then unceremoniously placed the first plate of food on the bed in front of you. “I’d raise the head-section of the bed but unfortunately, someone broke it. And what do you know, the integrated tray table is also busted.”

Unable to keep from smiling, you coaxed your limbs into cooperating and sat up, trembling from the loss of strength, earning you a disapproving shake of her head even as she helped pile pillows behind your back to help you stay upright.

“I swear, you’re worse than teenagers,” she tutted, before stepping over to the desk to handwrite in your journals, since the pad had also fallen victim to your partner’s overload.

When you’d finished every crumb from all four trays you were still hungry, and it made you wonder about the future. Because if just one tumble among the sheets was enough to bring you to the brink of starvation, what did that mean for your life in general? You’d never thought of food as anything that could become a restriction to your happiness, but it seemed likely to happen now.

Another four trays were brought to you within minutes of you telling your nurses you were still not full, and it made you feel almost sick to your stomach to have to consume so much just to not feel starving. But for the time being, there was no other solution. There was nothing else to do, but to put your trust in the specialists of all things super and hope that they could come up with a way for you to live a normal life. Albeit a strange, new and unfamiliar kind of normal.

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