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weirdstrangeandawful · 2 years ago

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Part IV – All In a Day’s Work

TW: sex mention (implied), gun mention (artillery)

Word count: 1395

<-Part III – Safekeeping

Table of contents

Part V – Kite->

A clatter from outside. Quinn startles awake and clambers to their feet, squinting in the sunlight leaking through the window.

“Easy,” Rowan mumbles, placing a hand over his eye to defend it against the glaring of spot sunlight inconveniently glancing his face, “How are you feeling?”

“Hungover. Shut up. I know.” Quinn’s speech comes out stilted, inefficient. They trail off, squinting as though it will make the fuzzy, largely inexistent, memories of last night clearer. They turn to Rowan, looking him up and down. “You didn’t– I mean– we didn’t…?” They trail off, leaving Rowan’s groggy brain to piece together the implication.

“No,” Rowan assures them, raising his head slightly so as to move his eyes out of the sunlight, “You were far too drunk.”

“No need to rub it in…” Quinn grumbles under their breath, snatching their shirt off the floor and fixing their hair and clothes just enough to prevent strange looks in the seconds-long walk home. They depart abruptly, leaving Rowan to unceremoniously plop a pillow over his face.

Carroll tries to gently move his arm out from under Kyte. The fabric of his shirt catches on Kyte’s oversized jumper. Kyte stirs as Carroll pulls free.

“Shh, it’s okay,” Carroll hushes.

“Are you going back to your ship?” Kyte mumbles, his eyes too sleepy to remain open.

“I’ve got to work, so yes,” Carroll answers regretfully, “Feel free to stay here.”

“I should go to work too,” Kyte responds, stoic.

Carroll doesn’t buy the façade, his brow creases as he presses gently, “Are you going to be okay?”

The façade stays up, “Of course.”

Conceding, Carroll continues, “Okay. It’s unlikely you’ll end up with a repeat of yesterday but if something does happen – I know this is a longshot – maybe try using my name. I’ll do my best to vouch for you. Captain Carroll, HBMS Resolute.”

“You’re very kind,” they turn their head away, shy, a question resting on the tip of his tongue, “Can I find you later?”

A smile tugs at the corners of Carroll’s mouth, betraying his carefully muted excitement. “If I don’t find you first.” He gets to his feet, limping heavily on his stiff leg.

“You okay?”

“What?” Carroll’s eyes flit about for a moment in confusion before understanding Kyte’s question. “Oh. My leg. Yes. It’s like that,” Carroll clips out between steps.

“Hey, Carroll!” Ethel, hard at work, greets Carroll as he arrives. Her curly hair is tied back away from her face in a loose plait, a hairpin between her teeth as she fights with the flyaway ringlets. It is not unusual for Carroll to arrive slightly later than the rest on account of his leg. Ethel simply picks up command each morning, handing it off seamlessly to Carroll once he shows up.

“What’s going on?”

A mischievous glint enters Ethel’s eye, “How was your night?”

Carroll raises a single eyebrow ever-so-slightly and cocks his head slowly. These were not the words he expected from Ethel first thing in the morning after a rough day. It was certainly not an update. “What?” Carroll asks, simply.

Ethel wastes no time explaining, “Well, you had your pretty sailmaker over. So how was it? Is he any good?”

Piecing together the rather thinly veiled implication all too quickly, Carroll sighs and composes himself. “Lieutenant Chisholm, if you think I–”

Ethel cuts him off, her head tilted downward and her eyes wide. “I wouldn’t dream of suggesting anything improper, sir.” Ethel’s voice is mockingly high-pitched with feigned innocence.

Sighing, Carroll brushes off the comment that he had honestly expected more from Helen. “Good.” He continues, pointedly playfully but sternly emphasising her rank, “Anything relevant, first mate?”

Ethel nods, back to work, her lips slightly pursed as she tells her captain, “You had better talk to Sinclair, sir.”

Thanking her curtly, Carroll makes his way across the deck to go see Rowan, turning back fleetingly to wink at Ethel. Rowan is discussing with one of his mates below deck when Carroll grits his teeth and grapples his way down the hatchway. Rowan notices him as he sends his mate off to work and steadies him when he hops the last rung, landing rather less than gracefully on one leg.

“Thanks.” Carroll says with a flustered sigh, quickly composing himself. “Everything in order?

“Not really.” Rowan grits his teeth slightly, more displeased at having to give the news than Carroll is taking it. “We’ve sustained quite a bit of damage from yesterday between the corsairs and the storm, and we’ve still got one gun out.”

Carroll looks vaguely confused, “What do you mean ‘out’?”

Realising he hasn’t yet had the chance to report, Rowan hastily explains, “Won’t fire reliably. I would hate for it to backfire.”

Rowan falls silent and Carroll doesn’t pick up the discussion. They share a moment within the constant movement aboard the ship. Their stillness is loaded with memories of the Bellona. Rowan had been a gunner on that ship too and he had been good at it. The guns had had a fault and they had backfired on multiple occasions, killing the crewman firing and, several times, injuring Rowan. Carroll, barely outranking him as a nineteen-year-old acting lieutenant – the highest rank he’d achieved thanks to his own injury – had had to fight to get him taken off duty.

Carroll breaks the silence as swiftly as it had begun, “Yes, so would I.” He pauses, giving Rowan a moment to reorient himself as well. “Is she seaworthy?”

“Barely, sir,” Rowan responds, back in his element, “She could get us across the Channel and back if you need to, sir, but she would be no good in a confrontation.”

“Well, that certainly ruins the purpose of an escort vessel,” Carroll quips, implying the obvious – that they would have as much luck evading corsairs in the North Channel as the ships they plan to escort. “Why didn’t we see this yesterday?”

“We thought the damage was superficial, sir,” Rowan defends slightly, knowing it was at least in part his error to have not immediately ordered an inspection, “We couldn’t see anything substantial until first light.”

“Okay. Lucky we’re off to-day. Can you get her ready by tomorrow?”

“I’ll do my best,” Rowan assures, already mentally inventorying the damage.

“Thank you.” A note of hope creeps into Carroll’s voice despite his best attempts to suppress it, “Any sail damage?”

Rowan bites his lip to hide a creeping smile, “Minimal. Why? Were you hoping for some?”

“No,” Carroll replies, the pitch of his voice kicked up by his forced nonchalance, “Why?”

“Oh I don’t know,” Rowan’s voice jumps pitch too, deliberate and with brotherly mocking, “an excuse to see your pretty sailmaker again?”

“I don’t need an excuse.” Carroll fights for the upper hand and, with the practice of siblings who’ve grown up together, he finds it, “Besides, something tells me you and Snowball spent the night in bed.” He glances pointedly across the deck at Quinn.

Rowan ducks his head with a disgruntled rumble, “No need to rub it in!”

Satisfied, Carroll leans back with a smile, “Okay. Carry on.” Rowan begins to walk off, “And Rowan?” Carroll pronounces Rowan’s name the Irish way, not the Scottish way as Rowan himself does – a habit he formed the moment they met and a habit Rowan quickly grew to find endearing.

Rowan turns back at Carroll’s call, sensing the change of tone.

Carroll’s eyes are concerned, “Tomorrow’s convenient, not a hard deadline; don’t hurt yourself.”

Rowan smiles sweetly at his captain and kid brother, “I won’t, sir. Listen to your own advice too, laddie.”

Sending him off fully this time, Carroll turns back to the hatchway ladder with a resigned sigh. Firmly grabbing the ladder, he hauls himself up to the upper deck. He fixes his clothes as Ethel helps him to his feet – the human equivalent of a dog shaking its ears after a great excitement.

“Our spare gaff sail is still damaged,” Ethel points out, “we should get that fixed… You know, if you wanted to take a trip to the sail loft.”

Carroll’s eyes light up slightly, a smile creeping over his face. He hands command to Ethel and disembarks, a spring in his step as he navigates the port. They aren’t at sea anyway. Ethel and Rowan have things covered and he may as well make himself useful.

Edit: missed word, contemporary spelling, historical accuracy

#a good man's heart #whump #navy whump #weird strange and awful writing

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makeste · 4 years ago

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BnHA Chapter 303: And What, Pray Tell, Is a “One For All”

Previously on BnHA: The Todorokis (really just Enji) looked at their children and went “how can we screw up all four of them in uniquely different ways” and proceeded to do just that. Touya was all “just because practicing how to set myself on fire better hasn’t worked to win my dad’s affections YET doesn’t mean it will NEVER work”, because child logic. Turns out setting oneself on fire real hard isn’t so effective at winning affections, but is actually incredibly effective when it comes to burning oneself to death, so there’s that. Back in the present day, the Todorokis basked in their various misplaced (again, except for Enji) feelings of guilt, and were all “anyway but get over yourself already Enji, you still have to do something to stop this kid”, and Shouto was all “I’ll help too”, and Enji was all “(╥_╥)”, and Hawks and Jeanist were all “[surreptitiously listening in from outside the door]”, and that’s basically where we left off.

Today on BnHA: Hawks and Jeanist are all “mind if we join you on this family journey?” and proceed to stroll in uninvited with their puns and their perceptive insights. Hawks is all “so to sum everything up, we’re fucked, but at least you have us here to help you out! by the way, no clue why I’m the first person to ask this in three hundred chapters, but wtf is One For All.” We then cut to Deku, who’s still all “[(－－)]z”, and All Might, who is all “I’m just going to ignore the extremely loud racket going on right outside this room.” Which, btw, is happening on account of Bakugou, who is all “(╬◣Д◢)” as Satou, Tsuyu, and Mineta cart him away. Anyway so that’s a lot of antics, and also it looks like Hawks has gotten tired of the Todorokis refusing to put the pieces together on their own about OFA and so he is fast-tracking that shit. And meanwhile Deku is chatting it up with the Vestiges exactly like we all thought. And now we have to wait another whole week for updates on all of this. This really is not fair.

omfg lol

“our bad, we were kind of accidentally listening in on purpose.” like I said last week guys, no fuss. it’s a tradition

OMG

I am absolutely fucking floored. Hawks literally said that so casually that it’s impossible for me to rewrite it so as to be even more casual. that’s literally what I would write in the “today on bnha” section. in fact I probably will write that

(ETA: just for laughs I tried it and it really worked.)

a couple more things to point out about this panel:

“TOP 3” omg yes. more like “top only” at this point, honestly. interested to see how that goes

Hawks’s phone is freaking the fuck out about something, calm down there

I know this is a standard Jeanist hair-fixing gesture that he does all the time, but I can’t help but form hypotheses about this being a stress reaction because Hawks’s hair is making him internally freak out. Hawks, if this man tries to get you alone with him and some hairspray and a comb, please for the love of god do not listen to him. get out of there and call the authorities

omg Shouto’s face

okay confession, I wasn’t really sold on the whole “Shouto has a schoolboy crush on Hawks” thing until exactly now, when I became 100% sold on it. that is adorable

and heck with it, gotta show Enji and Rei’s reactions here as well because lol

“omg my son who’s not my son, and he just overheard everything about me being a terrible shitty father and person overall, oh and plus my actual-son set him on fire and called him out on a national broadcast. I’m just gonna stare at him baffledly.” versus Rei, who is all “hmm, who are these people”

so Hawks is all “I got released from the hospital after one day for some reason so I made Jeanist drive me around places while we talked about life” but uh, heyyyyy, what’s Rei doing

okay, uh

SO FUCKING FORMAL OMFG. “SORRY MY KID TRIED TO BURN YOU TO DEATH, APPARENTLY HE DOES THAT” REI NO IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT

HAWKS IS ALL “I’M JUST GONNA LAUGH SINCE THAT’S MY DEFAULT RESPONSE TO BEING PROFOUNDLY UNCOMFORTABLE”

let me tell you a secret Hawks, it’s my default response too. ahahahahahahaha oh thank god Jeanist is helping her up -- AND MAKING A JEANS PUN, OF COURSE. IT’S BEEN ALMOST THIRTY SECONDS. MY MAN WAS DYING

“WTF IS ILLEGAL DENIM” he’s talking ‘bout them counterfeit jeans, Rei. Antoine Bugleboy knows

THANK YOU JEANIST!! OUT HERE ASKING THE RELEVANT QUESTIONS

damn straight. we’re not gonna sit around waiting another 300 chapters for this information on this man’s watch

now Hawks is telling Endeavor he used to watch videos of him all the time, and calling him his “childhood obsession” I can’t

OH MY SWEET STARS AND MOONS

1000% CANON. “SO CLOSE...” ARE YOU SERIOUS. YOU REALLY PUT THAT THOUGHT BUBBLE THERE AND EVERYTHING. “GOOD MORNING EVERYONE, SO JUST IN CASE YOU WEREN’T ALREADY AWARE, TODOROKI SHOUTO IS NOT ACTUALLY STRAIGHT.” HORIKOSHI KOUHEI I AM LITERALLY DUMBFOUNDED. THIS IS AMAZING

and meanwhile that look on Hawks’s face while he casually-but-not-really-casually-at-all asks this question. that phone app better be using his actual voice. I’m not sure I could take this scene in the anime at this point if it was like Alexa talking or something

that look in his eyes is basically saying that so far, based on the information he has absorbed up until this point, Hawks is prepared to view his former childhood obsession as a flawed but changed man. however I get the distinct feeling that depending on Endeavor’s answer now, he would be willing to drastically shift some of his opinions on him

(ETA: this is maybe my favorite panel in the entire chapter. the fact that his question isn’t addressed to anyone in particular, but his eyes are zeroing on on Endeavor. and the way his leaning-on-Shouto pose manages to be simultaneously nonchalant and yet ever-so-slightly protective. there’s so much going on in this one question and gesture and I’m mildly obsessed with it.)

however, Rei is all “that was me” and ONCE AGAIN WITH THE FACES IN THIS CHAPTER holy shit

Hawks definitely did not see that one coming sob. it’s so fun watching him frantically recalculate his ideas about this family every two seconds

DAMN IT HORIKOSHI I UNDERSTOOD THE PARALLELS ALREADY, YOU REALLY DIDN’T HAVE TO DO THIS

yes, Hawks, you get it. it’s not exactly the same, but it’s close enough. though unlike your shitty parents, Rei and Enji are at least trying

OKAY I SERIOUSLY CANNOT WITH ALL OF THIS

fljkdlaskfjlwkjl okay we’re doing the bullet-points breakdown here

first of all, the fact that poor little Shouto’s heart is still thumping away at this proximity and all he can think is “CLOSE” all intelligently as he stares at him with that face omg

and meanwhile Horikoshi has these STRATEGIC BANDAGES WRAPPED AROUND HIS CHEEKS TO HIDE ALL OF HIS SHOUJO BLUSHING omfg. SENPAI NOTICED YOU SWEETIE!!!

HAWKS YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY ZERO OBLIGATION TO WASTE ANOTHER SECOND OF YOUR LIFE WORRYING ABOUT THESE TWO ASSHOLES WHO NEVER SPARED YOU THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF REGARD OR CONCERN IN THEIR ENTIRE LIVES. THE NICEST THING YOUR MOM EVER DID FOR YOU WAS BUY YOU A $2 ENDEAVOR PLUSH FROM THE DISCOUNT BIN TO KEEP YOU QUIET, AND YOU WERE SO AWED BY THAT ONE ACT OF SORTA KINDA APPROXIMATE KINDNESS THAT YOU SHAPED YOUR ENTIRE WORLDVIEW AROUND IT. PLEASE LET ME PICK YOU UP IN A BIG HUG FOR JUST A SEC, YOU DESERVE THE WORLD AND YOU WERE ONE THOUSAND PERCENT JUSTIFIED IN LEAVING THEM IN THE DUST THE SECOND THAT YOU COULD

but all that said, he immediately recognizes that Shouto would also have had cause to do the same in his situation, and yet hasn’t. and so he has that much more admiration for him all of a sudden, which is just super sweet, and fully appropriate. Shouto does deserve props. I’m choosing to take this as an “it takes a lot of strength to be able to forgive, and people who choose to do that even though they’re not obligated to are really amazing" type of thing, as opposed to “people who don’t forgive other people who severely wronged them are bad.” and if I’m wrong and Hawks’s line here is meant to be seen as actual failing on his part, well then fuck that, but we’ll move on

SO NOW, DOWN TO BUSINESS!

I am so, so curious as to what kind of strategy Hawks has for this (if he even has any), so I’ll just be quiet now and read

so Hawks is summing up basically what we already knew -- that Tomura and his inner circle (curious that there’s no mention of AFO, because if Hawks doesn’t know about him, that implies almost no one does) are still on the lam with a few PLF stragglers and some High Ends; that a bunch of prisons have been “liberated” (I assume this means all of the inmates escaped, so if that’s the case then where’s Kurogiri??); that the HPSC is fucked; and that heroes are resigning all over the place, and so civilians are taking matters into their own hands

OH DAMN!?

does this mean we’ll actually see some international heroes?? I will LOSE MY DAMN SHIT omg

(ETA: apparently people who paid more attention to the first BnHA movie than I did recognized the silhouettes as belonging to some background characters from Two Heroes. so maybe they were just cameos and they’re not actually new characters who are soon to join us lol. oh well.)

anyway so Hawks agrees with the other Todorokis that Endeavor has no choice but to fight

awww

DON’T WORRY ENJI THEY’VE GOT YOUR BACK. WITH YOUR FLAMES, AND JEANIST’S PUNS, AND HAWKS’S BOYISHLY GOOD LOOKS, THE THREE OF YOU CAN DO ANYTHING YOU SET YOUR MINDS TO

so Enji is very pertinently asking why they’re standing by him in spite of the... [gestures vaguely to everything]

oh my lordy lord

Shouto you had better do something to combat this soon, or this man will sneak past you on my favorite character ranking after all. his face. his cheeky lil finger gun. the fact that he sums it up so fucking simply. “if someone is trying to do the right thing, I want to support them.” exactly. exactly

(ETA: and one last thing I love but forgot to mention, which is the fact that Hawks calls it a team-up despite the fact that he is clearly in charge.)

meanwhile Jeanist is all “as for me, at this point I just straight up don’t give a fuck”

I can’t handle how fucking cool this chapter is you guys

so Hawks is all “you good?” at Enji. and Enji...

if anyone needs me, I will be building myself a discourse-proof fort made entirely out of problematic characters. I don’t even care. I will go on living my life very happily in here

lol at Natsu being all “BUT DON’T THINK THIS MAKES US FRIENDS”

I’m living for this weird and no-doubt entirely unintended implication that Natsu and them all are gonna join in the fight with the rest of them. I mean, they do presumably all have very powerful ice quirks. and Natsu has medical training on top of that, and Fuyu is skilled at getting eight-year-olds to behave which could be a useful talent for dealing with Tomura hahaha I kid, but I’M JUST SAYING. who needs hero licenses anyway

OH SHIT FINALLY SOME DISCUSSION OF AN ACTUAL STRATEGY. even if it’s just a PR strategy

WHAKLHL

and now for some reason we’re flashing back to Natsu and Fuyu’s attempts to navigate through the media crowd outside the hospital

well I guess this is why I’m not the mangaka. if I were writing this I would have done something trite and predictable like using that “One for All” line as an excuse to cut to Deku!! as opposed to this entirely unrelated scene!!

seriously though why do we need to see this lol

no one in this crowd has ever heard of Alexander Dumas huh. or even the popular 2007 Disney Channel original movie, High School Musical 2

so now there’s an entire page of Hawks saying they need to know what One for All is, and Endeavor having one of those patented Todoroki WHOOSH realizations lmao look at this

just wait until this man figures out that one of the scrappy new interns he took on three months ago was actually the main character all along

SKDFIOHWIERLKSJGLWLK!!

NOW IS PROBABLY A GOOD TIME TO ASK MYSELF WHY I CHOSE THIS CHARACTER WHO KEEPS DISAPPEARING FOR SIX OR TWELVE OR FORTY CHAPTERS AT A TIME TO BE MY FUCKING FAVORITE. WELCOME BACK SON PLEASE DON’T SCREAM YOURSELF TO DEATH YOU STILL HAVE A HOLE IN YOUR TORSO

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

(ETA: can we just take a moment to appreciate how Bakugou even got so close to Deku’s room in the first place though. in this giant hospital with no idea of where to even go. does he have Deku Radar or something.)

YOU SIX ARE OFFICIALLY ON MY HIT LIST!! SPARE ME YOUR GOOD INTENTIONS!! MY BAKUDEKU REUNION KEEPS GETTING POSTPONED WEEK AFTER WEEK!! YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE HEROES WHERE IS YOUR CONCEPT OF MERCY

(ETA: btw just to be clear, I’m not actually angry lol; it makes total sense that they don’t want this rampaging feral toddler who was still in his own coma all of fifteen minutes ago to come and start screaming at the other coma child until he tears all his stitches out. if there’s anything we Bakugou fans should be familiar with by now, it’s being patient.)

also, Tsuyu wrapping her tongue around Bakugou’s still-healing torso wound absolutely can’t be hygienic at all. also wait is that Inko??

(ETA: pretty sure it is her. she got all of one line smdh.)

Iida is all “thank god Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight pulled through, I thought for sure he was a goner back there”

for the record this is actually really sweet to see how relieved he is. he’s one of the few people who saw the original injury close up, back when he was still at the battlefield and unconscious, so I imagine it really did freak him out quite a bit

JIROUUUUUU

“sometimes I just like to stand here and tug on my imaginary suspenders, what of it”

how come you guys get to loiter around Deku’s room but Kacchan doesn’t. god fucking dammit. AND WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN

I BET KACCHAN COULD WAKE HIM UP FROM HIS COMA WITH THE POWER OF RIVAL INTENSITY!! BUT NOOOOOOOO, [is dragged away back to my fort]

OH MY GOD!?!

"this seems to be an entirely normal and above-board situation that we have just stumbled onto”

I see Jeanist comes from the Iida Tenya school of respectfully using people’s full names

Jeanist becoming one of the main characters is the best thing to ever happen to this series

EXCUSE YOU, IIDA

BUT I’M SURE HE’D MAKE AN EXCEPTION FOR KACCHAN THOUGH!! [elbowing my way back out of the fort] HAWKS, PLEASE --

DON’T GO ALL OMINIOUSLY PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER ALL ON YOUR OWN GODDAMMIT

“there’s absolutely no way this angry wriggling shoulder burrito kid here could answer literally all of my questions, so I’ll just ignore him”

OH MY GOD WE’RE FINALLY CUTTING BACK TO HIM BUT THE CHAPTER IS ENDING

[jumps up, throws a folding chair at Iida and the rest of the gang, and then runs]

oh my god. actually this chapter was awesome. but I’m so fucking mad at this cliffhanger though lol

at least we got a couple of answers! and some hints and teases! poor Deku looks so worn out even though he’s asleep dlwkjl my little green baby. and is it just me or is his quirk activated?? All Might’s all “I can feel it” as if it isn’t obvious just looking at him, why are you trying to be all mysterious dude

anyway! so at least we finally have confirmation and a date for those vestige antics at long last. looking forward to meeting Mister The Fourth next week so we can finally ask him “hey dude, what the fuck”

#bnha 303 #takami keigo #hawks #todoroki shouto #todoroki enji #endeavor #best jeanist #todofam #bakugou katsuki #class 1-a #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha

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mandoalorian · 4 years ago

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Pain Is For The Living [Javier Peña x F!Reader] - Chapter 3

Summary: Sex work in the heat of 1980’s Colombia was never going to be a walk in the park. Especially not when you had a crush on your number one client, agent Javier Peña. You’d been warned about him and his reputation, but after one very specific incident that would change your life forever, you find yourself attached to him like never before and you’d do anything to make him yours. Even if it means endangering your own life.

Rating: 18+

Warnings: Javier being kind of an asshole, allusions to sex, a ~moment~ in the bathtub, mention of PTSD and trauma, food mention, drink mention, ...feelings?

Word count: 4200

Author’s Note: It’s been so long! I’m sorry. It’s been pretty hectic and I’ve been doing my best to wrap up my other series’ and complete requests. I appreciate you all for sticking around and asking for updates on this chapter. I’ve mentioned it a few times, but PIFTL is very difficult to write. It deals with very sensitive issues and so not only can it be mentally draining to write, it takes a lot of time to research and edit. I won’t give up on this series though. I adore this story and can’t wait to share it all with you.

Pain Is For The Living Masterlist

* Reblogs appreciated and my ko-fi is linked in my bio if you wish to support my writing!

Nina pushed off Javi quicker than a bullet leaving a gun, grabbing a blanket from her bed and wrapping it around her naked body. “What the fuck Javier?” she spat.

Jesus Christ -- Javier had never made that mistake before. Moaning someone else’s name? He was better than that. It took him a moment to just process what happened, Nina’s yelling and accusations only a blur in the background. “Who is she, Javier?” Nina questioned, her tone venomous. That was enough to snap the agent out of his thoughts. Her cold eyes burned like wildfire as she glared at him. “Who. Is. She?”

“Uh…” Javier racked his brains to try and figure out a way he’d be able to save this situation. But the longer he took to answer Nina’s question, the more infuriated she got. “Informant.”

That wasn’t exactly a lie. You’d agreed to help him. But whether or not you’d actually be able to provide Javier with any relevant information was a different ordeal in itself.

“You’re still sleeping with your informants?” Nina gasped a little, clicking her tongue and shaking her head in disappointment. “Why am I not surprised?”

Javier sighed and rolled his eyes, pulling himself off Nina’s bed and grabbing his denim jeans that had been previously discarded on the floor. “C’mon Ni, don’t get jealous now. We haven’t been together for like, a year.” Javier hummed, zipping up his pants. His eyes darted around the room as he tried to locate his shirt. Maybe there was no fixing this. For a split second, he’d forgotten why things had ended with Nina, but now it was becoming clear again. He just had to get outta there. He needed air, and a smoke.

“I let you cum inside of me and you moan out another woman’s name!” Nina exclaimed, shaking her fists in the air. “Javier Peña I fucking hate you!”

Javier offered Nina a small shrug of his shoulders before finding his shirt and buttoning it up. “I’ll see you around Ni.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“Called him seventeen times Con, he’s taking the piss.” Steve grimaced, aggressively flicking to the next page of the Bogotá local newspaper.

“Will you just calm down? He’s our friend. We’re doing him a favour. He'll be back soon,” Connie sighed, glancing back over to you, where you had been sleeping on the sofa for the past two and a half hours. “She sleeps better than our Liv,” Connie noted. “Wish we could sleep as well as that.”

Steve hummed in agreement. “I’ll go check on Liv.” He announced at the mention of his daughter. He’d put her down for a nap about an hour ago in Javier’s bedroom.

“No honey, I’ll go. You keep working on your crossword,” Connie giggled before pointing her index finger into one of the blank squares. “Fourteen down: Los huevos revueltos.”

“I would’ve got that,” Steve huffed, scrambling to write the answer down. He definitely would not have. The Spanish puzzle was made for infants and yet he was still struggling.

“Whatever Murph.” Connie rolled her eyes, leaving the table where they were both sitting at.

The second she left the room, you woke up in a cold sweat, feeling dizzy and shaking from a nightmare you didn’t want to remember. Your cheeks were wet, tear stained and goose pimples pricked at your arms. You checked your surroundings in a fluster, not recognising the brown leather couch you were laying on, or the oak wood coffee table in front of you, or even the television pushed against the cream coloured walls. A man with blonde hair and mustache raced over to you, and dropped to his knees, holding you by your shoulders.

“Are you okay?” The man quizzed, his blue eyes searching to meet yours. You were horrified, the feeling of an unfamiliar man grabbing you like this. You screamed in terror, and defensively dug your fingernails into his skin. The man yelped out and stumbled back from you, hitting the coffee table in the process. “Fuck-- shit-- ow--” He gasped. “Connie!” he called. “Connie, she's awake!”

The way he yelled and screamed your name... it was like you were some kind of monster. You hated it.

The sound of footsteps padding into the living room alerted you, and a woman, not much older than you, knelt down in front of you. But unlike the man, she knew well enough to keep her distance. “Hi sweetheart, are you alright? I’m Connie, don’t be afraid. You’re okay.” she assured you, her voice sweet like honey.

“Where am I?” you choked out, tears filling your eyes.

Connie hesitated for a moment. “She doesn’t remember where she is?” Steve asked Connie with concern, scratching the back of his neck as he pulled himself together and shuffled over to you. Taking a note out of Connie’s book, he kept his distance. Connie briefly explained to her husband how your behaviour right now actually made a lot of sense, and how victims of PTSD can often have ‘memory blanks’.

“Darling, I’m Connie Murphy. I’m a nurse. And this is my husband Steve. Steve is DEA. He’s friends with Javier Peña. You know that name, right? Javier Peña.” She repeated his name slow and steady, allowing you to take your time to process the words. Javier Peña. Just like that, a wave of calmness washed over you. His name felt like home. It felt like safety.

“I know Javi.” you whispered in admittance, shuffling around on the sofa. You could feel your lips trembling. It was strange. You were new to Bogotá, and you didn’t really have any friends, other than the late Rosa. And well, Javier too. He was a client, sure, but he was always kind and gentle with you, unlike your other customers. You’d like to think of him as a friend. Right now, he was the only person you had.

“This is Javier’s place. He’s going to watch over you for a little while, okay?” Connie explained. “We are your friends and we’re not going to hurt you. I promise,” the lady soothed. She turned to Steve. “Bring over Olivia.”

“What-- why?” Steve quizzed, his eyebrows furrowing together in bewilderment.

“She needs to know she can trust us. Bring over Olivia,” Begrudgingly following his wife’s instruction, a wary Steve stood up and padded into Javier’s bedroom where Olivia had been left to sleep in a small, transportable crib. He picked up his daughter and carried her into the living room. “This is my daughter Olivia,” Connie told you quietly, smoothing out Olivia’s black hair. “She’s one year old. Would you like to hold her?”

“Connie are you fucking crazy?” Steve snapped.

“I’m a fucking nurse Steve, I know what I’m doing.” Connie hissed back, taking Olivia from her father. She looked back over to you and her deep frown turned into a comforting smile as she slowly handed you the baby. Connie’s hands never left Olivia, and she made an effort to support her head as you cradled the sleeping baby in your arms.

Holding Olivia Murphy gave you a feeling of responsibility. If Steve and Connie were dangerous, they would never have shown you their daughter, let alone allow you to hold her in your arms. You contemplated everything and although it was hard, you decided that you probably could trust them. Still, it raised the question: “Where is Javi?”

Steve shook his head incredulously and stood up, grabbing the phone from one of the side tables and dialling his partner’s number again. You didn’t know what was wrong with the blonde haired agent, but you got the impression that he did not want to be here.

“Steve is going to call him, again. He went to get groceries. I’m sure he won’t be long.” Connie informed softly, and you nodded your head.

“Your baby is adorable,” you announced quietly and Connie smiled, thankful you were beginning to talk a little more. Seemingly, you’d calmed down, which meant Connie’s comforting approach had worked.

“She’s a real gem, isn’t she?”

Javier was just a couple of blocks away when his carphone began to ring. He eyed up the display and read the ‘17 missed calls’, cursing under his breath. He clicked the accept button and continued to drive.

“Javier Peña. You prick.”

“Hi bestie.” Javier grinned, shaking his head at Steve’s introduction. Typical.

“You left us here for three fucking hours with some random girl -- who, by the way, is incredibly unstable, Javier. I don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, but I’m not here for it. Where the fuck have you been? No, forget that. You better be home in the next ten minutes and you better have the ingredients for my fucking paella.” Steve growled before angrily slamming the phone down on the hook.

Javier couldn’t help but chuckle. Steve Murphy was ever the drama queen.

As he drove down the street, he made one final attempt to shrug off what had happened with Nina. Okay, yeah, saying your name was a little uncalled for. But she always got so needy and possessive -- even when she had no reason to be. Nina and Javier weren’t exclusive and hadn’t been for a long time, so, what was her deal?

What was even more concerning to Javi, was the fact he said your name in the first place. Nina looked rather similar to you. Not identical, but from a distance, there was a chance she could’ve been mistaken. Only, when he was pounding into her from behind, he wasn’t at a distance. In fact he couldn’t have been any closer, and yet he still said your name. He was really struggling to justify it.

Sure, he’d been thinking about you when he was inside of her. But was that really so bad? You were clearly on his mind, and Javier just pinned that down to the fact he’d been out all day investigating the crime scene at the brothel. He’d been with you, he’d held you and comforted you. Fuck, even before noon he had been fucking your mouth. It wasn’t exactly unreasonable…

But moaning out your name… shit, could Javier really get past that? Was there any way to justify that -- other than the blatant and glaring honest reason that Javier refused to admit. He wouldn’t even let his mind go there. Whatever, it was fine. He was home now. The end of a long day.

Javier grabbed the groceries from the back of his car and buzzed himself into the DEA apartment block where he and Steve were living. Making his way over to his apartment, he opened the front door and set the brown paper bag of ingredients down on the kitchen counter. When he got home, Connie was just finishing up painting your nails a beautiful sea blue gel colour. She turned around and she looked up at Javier. Your eyes, however, were already fixated on him the second he entered the room.

“Where’s Steve?” Javier asked, diverting his gaze from the two women and continuing to unpack the food.

“He went home. He’s pissed, Javi.” Connie admitted, shaking her head in annoyance and placing the pot of nail polish on the coffee table. She walked into the open space kitchen and nudged the agent.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Javier muttered, stacking the canned goods into a cupboard.

“I’m going home, but don’t think we’ve forgotten about the paella. Steve wants that fucking paella,” Connie chastised. Javier nodded his head but remained silent as he emptied his bag of shopping. “Unbelievable.” Connie scoffed incredulously, and opened the front door before slamming it behind her.

“Thanks Con!” Javier called, but there was no telling if she even heard.

Javier was half way through putting his shopping away when he heard your meek and softly spoken voice call his name in a questioning tone. His dark eyes looked over at you. You were sitting upright on the sofa and his face softened. Stopping what he was doing, he neglected the bag of groceries and padded into the living room to sit down next to you.

“Hi.” Javier murmured, crossing his legs and adjusting the crochet blanket that was covering your lap.

“Hi.” you replied, feeling somewhat shy and slightly nervous, for a reason you couldn’t quite place.

“How are you feeling?” Javier asked, bringing himself to look at you.

“Um,” you fumbled at the blanket and thought for a moment. It was a loaded question. Other than the overwhelming feeling of distress and helplessness, you decided to give the agent a simple answer. “Well rested. A little thirsty.”

Javier nodded. “How would you feel about taking a bath?”

You swallowed back a knot in your throat that you hadn’t even realised was there in the first place. “...Do I smell?” you asked, You stretched out and gave your underarms a sniff, prompting Javier to burst out into laughter. Shit, had you always been that adorable? Your nose scrunched up at the distinct smell of dried up blood on your clothes and your shoulders slumped sadly. Javi, noticing your change in demeanor, gently lifted up the blanket and wrapped it around your body.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he cooed. “Believe me, I get stinky too. It happens. Let me help you take a bath. Come with me.”

Taking his hand, Javier navigated you towards the bathroom. It was a small boxy room with barely any space to move around, and yet, to your surprise, it fit a bathtub. Javier twisted the faucet, and the tap began to run warm water. He picked up a bottle of bubble bath and a tub of salts. “I have a bad back,” Javier told you. “These salts really help me relax. And the bubbles are nice too.”

You nodded with a smile. As he emptied the contents into the tub, you watched the products swirl into a colourful abyss. “It smells like you.” you uttered, without really thinking about the weight of your words. Javier said nothing, and you both sat by the side of the tub in comfortable silence, watching as it filled up. He occasionally dipped his hand in the water, checking the temperature.

“Will you be okay?” Javier asked you, taking out a towel and folding it up on top of the toilet seat.

You weren’t really sure, but you nodded your head anyway. Just as he was about to leave, you spoke up again. “Actually, Javi, could you stay?”

Javier fumbled a little but smiled. “Yeah, of course.”

Javier had seen you naked countless times due to the nature of your job but for some reason, this time, it felt different. He’d never had a woman use his bathtub before, let alone be requested to stay in her presence as she got undressed and stepped inside. You slipped out of your sultry, blood stained dress and let it pool to the floor. Javi’s mouth parted as he took in your naked form under the amber tinted bathroom lights.

You stepped inside the tub and almost slipped over, but Javier, as quick as lightning, grabbed your arm and steadied you. “Sorry,” he muttered, and your hand slid into his. As your fingers interlocked, you felt something. It was like a bolt of electricity, running up your arm, and judging by Javier’s reaction, he could feel it too. “I should’ve warned you. It can be a little slippery.”

You giggled and tried to tear yourself from Javi’s grip, but he didn’t let go of you once. Instead, he helped you sit down comfortably amongst the bubbles and aromatic hot water. You moaned, feeling your body become indulged and your muscles soften. You smiled and laid back, the bubbles fizzing around your neck and chin, and Javier felt his heart swell in his chest as he noticed your lips curl into a smile. It was the smile he would kill to see, and he hadn’t even realised how much he missed it.

“Just relax,” Javier soothed. “I’ll be back faster than you can count to ten.”

Javier ran into the kitchen and took a glass from one of the cupboards before racing back to the bathroom. Kneeling down by the side of the tub, he dipped the glass into the water, filling it up, and gently emptied it down your hair.

“Close your eyes,” he requested, continuing to wet your hair ample enough until it was ready to be shampooed. Taking the bottle of his musky scented shampoo, Javier squirted the thick liquid into your scalp and began to massage it in. You couldn’t believe how gentle he was, and how he was taking his time with you. You’d never in a million years imagine Javier Peña being like this, or acting this intimate, with any woman -- especially not you. To be honest, his own behaviours were even coming to shock Javier. But he just let his instincts take over. He wanted to protect you and make sure you knew just how safe you were. That was the most important thing on his mind.

Once he rinsed your hair, he grabbed some soap and a sponge, handing them to you. “Do you uh-- uh-- do you think you can wash your own body?” He asked, his dark eyebrows knitting together. “If not, that’s okay. I can help. But--”

You smiled and rested a wet hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay Javi. I’ll be fine.” you promised, taking the sponge from him.

“I’m going to find you some clothes to change into.” He told you. “Shout if you need me. I won’t be long.”

And he stuck by his word. Javier raked through his drawers and picked out a pale yellow button down shirt that he hadn’t worn in a few years and a pair of boxer shorts. Padding back into the bathroom, he presented you with them. “It’s not much but it’s all I have,” he told you. “I’m sure Con will take you out shopping at some point. Or we can hop on back to your place tomorrow to grab some of your stuff,” You smiled and stood up, making sure to be careful not to slip this time. Javier held out the towel for you and wrapped you in it. “I’ll leave you to get dried.”

When Javier went back into the kitchen, he figured he should put the rest of the groceries away, only to notice that the once frozen paella ingredients had become defrosted and been rendered completely useless. “Shit.” Javier cursed, pushing them to one side and running a hand through his hair. Looks like after all of this, he couldn’t make paella tonight. He knew he was about to get an earful from Steve at work tomorrow.

“Do you like pizza?” Javier called, rummaging around for a take-out menu and grabbing his phone from the counter.

“I do!” you called back, buttoning up Javier’s shirt and wrapping a towel around your head.

When you padded into the kitchen, dressed in Javi’s clothes, the agent felt his throat dry up. You were a sight to behold. You smelt distinctly like him, but you already looked one thousand times better now that you were clean and comfortable. You felt better, too. It was amazing what a bath could do to you. You shimmied onto one of the bar stools Javier kept by the counter and rest your elbows against the laminate. Javier passed you the menu so you could look over the dishes.

You agreed on a simple chilli pizza, which was one of Javier’s favourites anyway. Javi called the deli and asked for a large, planning on sharing it with you. Remembering that you’d mentioned you were thirsty, he poured you a glass of water and handed it your way.

“Steve is gonna be so mad at me tomorrow,” Javier chuckled, rubbing his temple. You peeked up from the glass that you nursed and looked up at him through your eyelashes. “I promised him paella and I’m not gonna be able to make it tonight. Not only that but he’s gonna ask me where I’ve been. He’ll know I wasn’t out getting groceries for three hours.”

You furrowed your eyebrows together and tilted your head. “Three hours? Where were you?”

Javier paused and absent-mindedly brushed a finger along his mustache. “I bumped into an ex at the store. Went back to her place and-- you know.”

Your eyes fell back into your glass of water. “Oh.”

Javier picked at his short fingernails and another sigh left his lips. “Shit, I just--” he shook his head. “Made a mistake. A very big mistake.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Yeah, that would probably be for the best but how could he even begin to tell you what happened, when you were part of the problem? Javier figured it might even scare you away. “It doesn’t matter… she’s just…” Javier scratched his head. “She’s fine. It’s a ‘me’ problem, I think.”

The doorbell rang and Javier was grateful for the interruption. He paid the pizza delivery guy and sent the stone bake on the table.

“It looks good,” you smiled. “I’ve never had Colombian pizza.”

Javier’s jaw dropped. “You--?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Dulzura, how long have you lived here?”

“A month,” you grinned, with a mouthful of pizza. “Tastes good.”

After you’d finished eating, it had gotten pretty late. You and Javier exchanged small talk, learning little things about each other. You liked it a lot. He had always been an enigma to you, and even though he offered little information, it was still something, and you appreciated that a lot.

“It’s been a difficult day,” Javier noted, folding the pizza box and throwing it away to be recycled. “You should take my bed.”

“No,” you insisted. “I’m fine on the sofa. Honestly.”

Javier sighed. “I’m not going to let you sleep on the sofa any longer. You’ll get back ache.”

“Then I’ll just use your bath salts.” You smirked in retaliation. Javier laughed and you relished the way small crinkles appeared in the corner of his honey coloured eyes.

“Please, take my bed.” Javier said, staring at you pointedly. His eyebrows were raised and his strong arms were crossed over his chest.

You were about to argue further but truthfully, sleeping in a bed tonight sounded like exactly what you needed. You took a few steps closer to Javier, a pool of butterflies swirling in your stomach as you broke any distance between you both. You wanted to kiss his lips so desperately, taste him once again. It was only earlier today you’d had your lips wrapped around his cock, and yet, so much had happened in between then and now. You wondered if Javier was thinking about it too.

“Get some sleep, hermosa.”

Your eyes were completely trained on his soft pink lips. You wanted to kiss-- you just wanted to kiss him. Just one kiss. Just one-- you leaned in and shut your eyes, and neared him, closer and closer... but Javier stepped away.

And you felt your heart shatter in your chest.

“Nothing personal,” he told you. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Nothing personal? How were you meant to accept that? You had literally sucked him off just a few hours ago and now he wouldn’t even grace you with a kiss? Maybe Rosa was right; you shouldn’t form crushes on clients. Especially not Javier Peña. You’d only get hurt. You tugged on the sleeves of his button down shirt and balled your fingers into a fist, trying to ignore the pain in your chest.

Without uttering a word, not even a ‘goodnight’, you sulked away and into his bedroom.

Javier wanted to shout out. He didn’t want you to be mad at him, or even upset. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt you. It took him all the strength he could muster to deny you of that kiss. Your perfect lips looked so soft and delicate and if Javier could have it his way, he would’ve taken you in that very moment.

But you were more than just a sex worker now. You were a compliance in the hunt to catch Escobar -- and he had to be careful. No matter what, he couldn’t risk losing track of the bigger picture.

-—-—-—♡—-—-—-

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elen-aranel · 3 years ago

Text

Golden/Alone

The Engineer’s Adventures

1-1 • 1-2 • 2 • 3 • 4

For: @autumnleaves1991-blog Writer Wednesday. I am aware that today is Thursday; this was longer than I expected! Pairing: Captain Christopher Pike x F!Reader (no Y/N) Warnings: violence, references to violence, drug use (kind of), minor character death WC: 7.3k words Tag list: @jusvibbbin - to be added to my Pike x Reader Taglist please let me know <3 A/N: The Engineer is back! And why does she go on away missions? WHY? I genuinely had so much fun writing this. I hope you enjoy!

“If I were piloting, Number One, I would have flown us through the eye of that storm cell. We would have gotten here quicker,” Chris jokes to Number One as they unstrap themselves from the co-pilot and pilot’s seats, respectively.

“And that is precisely why I was flying and not you, Captain. We may have been slower, but I got us here in one piece.”

“Lieutenant, back me up here. My flying was great in that speeder on Eloma.”

“You kept us ahead of our pursuers, yes sir,” you say with a smile.

“And staying ahead of pursuers is not a valuable skill in an atmosphere like this one where we are not being pursued,” Number One states with some finality, as she presses the control to open the back of the shuttle and extend the ramp.

You are on Caylara, for what you hope will be a boring mission. The captain and Number One, along with security officer Ensign James, are here to open negotiations for Caylara to join the Federation.

You are here because of the atmosphere – it is notoriously difficult to traverse. You can’t transport living things through it, unless you want them to be merged, dead, or both, and even flying through it is a challenge because of the electrical storm layers. There are windows of time when it’s safer, when shuttles and communications can get through, and windows when they can’t.

At Louvier’s instruction you had prepared a shuttle (and a backup – you don’t like to take chances) to travel through the atmosphere. Standard procedure for Caylara was to have an engineer accompany the shuttle to perform any repairs needed on the ground. You had tried to argue your preparations were good enough that you wouldn’t be needed, but Chris had seen straight through you.

“You find diplomacy boring and you don’t want a repeat of Eloma. That’s what’s really going on here, isn’t it?” His mouth had twisted into that smile you found irresistible, and even though you pouted, adopting your best puppy-dog expression, he had just laughed. “It’s all right. I won’t make you go to the reception. I won’t even make you wear your dress uniform. You can stay with the shuttle.”

You hang back as the captain and Ensign James pass you, Chris brushing his hand against yours as he passes. You smile a little, and get your tricorder out – you need to check to make sure the shuttle didn’t get damaged and will be all right to make the return trip. You look down the ramp as you scan, seeing the Caylarans for the first time as their delegation greets the away team.

They are very tall. You estimate the shortest is well over two metres and they tower above the away team, even over Ensign James who is tall for a human. But given the slightly lower gravity of Caylara their height isn’t surprising, you think. They have skin varying from very pale through to olive toned. Their faces are smooth but they have scales around their hairline extending down to the rest of their bodies. Well, their hands, at least. They are wearing long robes.

Your tricorder beeps as the away team starts to move away; there seems to be a charge buildup in one of the EPS controllers, but that’s all and it’s an easy fix. You pop the relevant panel and discharge it, without shocking yourself for once, and replace the panel.

Then there’s nothing left to do but wait. The reception is due to last two, perhaps three hours – short enough that you’ll be able to make your return trip through the atmosphere with time to spare before the current window closes.

You’ve brought some reading, of course, but first you want to get to the bottom of why the EPS controller picked up a charge. You take it as a personal insult, really – you were sure you had accounted for everything from the data you were given to prepare. However, when you compare the preliminary data with the scans the shuttle took as it went through the atmosphere you can clearly see the discrepancies. You’re puzzled for a moment – but of course you had enhanced the sensors to the latest specs when you adapted the shuttle, and you don’t know how old the original readings you were working with were. You almost wish Chris had piloted you through the storm cell; then you would have more data to work with.

You busy yourself combining the shuttle’s readings with your existing model, and calculating how much it was off by. After some time you are pretty sure you’ve got to the bottom of where the charge came from, and you modify the shuttle so that it doesn’t happen again.

You also think you may be able to make predictions with your new model, and perhaps refine your timings for the atmospheric windows. The Caylarans know the timings pretty accurately, but you aren’t at the stage of sharing data on that level as yet.

You run a new set of scans, and frown – there’s only ninety minutes until the window closes. You compare with the original estimates and—

Hang on. When did it get so late? You were supposed to be on the way back by now.

“Shuttle Hubble to away team? Come in please?”

Silence.

“Shuttle Hubble to Captain Pike?”

More silence.

Silence when you try to call Number One and James, too.

“Enterprise to Hubble. Come in, please.”

“Shuttle Hubble here, Lieutenant Spock. I was just about to call you – I have lost contact with the rest of the away team. They should have been back here by now, but they aren’t.”

“I have also tried to contact the captain but to no avail. Three unknown craft have appeared in the system, and have locked weapons on to us and the planet. They are not responding to hails. I have placed the Enterprise on yellow alert and raised shields. We cannot get a sensor lock on individual life signs through the atmosphere, and—”

“They’re firing some sort of energy weapon!”

“Taking evasive action!”

“Lieutenant, I—” Spock sounds uncharacteristically strained as he’s interrupted by what sounds like an overloading console.

“I understand. I’ll look for them. I’ll keep you updated.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. Enterprise out.”

That’s it, you think.

You’re on your own.

You take a deep breath: what do you need? Communicator. Tricorder. Emergency medkit.

Phaser.

You put the medkit in a backpack, and since there’s space you add a water bottle and some emergency rations. You clip the tricorder to a utility belt, and holster the phaser, set to stun. Your communicator goes in your pants pocket; you’ve got your usual tools in your jacket.

Then you remember your terrible luck with communicators, so you grab a spare and shove it in your backpack. That should do it. You can’t carry the kitchen sink and you don’t have time to keep second guessing yourself.

Okay. Plan: find the away team, bring them to safety.

You exit the shuttle and shut the ramp – you don’t need strangers damaging it.

You take in your surroundings next. The shuttle has landed in the grounds of a large building, elevated on a hill in the middle of a city. It’s only three or four storeys high, but quite wide, and you think it extends back a long way. There are decorative metal accents spaced at regular intervals – lightning conductors, you realise, as you head toward the most important looking doorway – you see burnt grass at their bases. This building isn’t tall, but it is the tallest around; the atmosphere must affect Caylaran architecture, you think.

There’s no one around, which surprises you; shouldn’t there be guards?

You push the door and it opens with a whisper. Inside is the most ornate room you have ever been in. The walls are gold coloured stone, there are dozens of columns in mottled golden marble, and there are decorations finished with real gold leaf everywhere. There are bronze statues and hundreds of warm coloured lights. The ceiling is as decorated as the walls, and the whole effect is beautiful. Imposing. Stunning. Overwhelming.

But again, no one is here. You get your tricorder out, but you can’t resolve anything. Perhaps something is blocking the scan? You look at the stairs. The steps are high, designed with Caylarans in mind, and go up before dividing. There are flights down, too. There are corridors to the left and right, and you have to take a moment to weigh all your options. The largest doors are ahead, though, up the main staircase and over. Perhaps that’s where you would take guests that you wanted to impress?

You think back to what you read on Caylara in your mission briefing as you climb the stairs. Their head of state is Crown Princess Nanren, but although the title remains the same, a princess many generations ago passed laws to end the hereditary monarchy. Now a new crown prince or princess is elected for life when the previous one dies, and you think they have an elected senate too.

Beyond that, you don’t really know anything, you think as you reach the top of the stairs. You cross the landing, trying to stay aware of your surroundings. And as you look down the stairs, you lock eyes with the first person you’ve seen.

A guard is sitting on the ground next to the doors. He’s armed, and the stairs in front of him show signs of having been fired on. But he’s slumped back, his green-blue swirled eyes staring up at you.

“Why’s it so dark? I can see you in the dark. Why did you bring the dark with you? You shouldn’t—” he tries to lift his weapon, and you draw your phaser, but his head lolls and he closes his eyes, dropping the weapon in front of him.

That was unsettling.

You proceed slowly down the stairs, but he doesn’t move again. You kick his weapon away and get your tricorder out. You’re not a medic, this isn’t a medical tricorder, and you don’t know much about Caylaran physiology, but you do have field medic training and you can see that something is terribly wrong. You scan him, and then the air. It seems like there are traces of a molecule around that your tricorder program flags up as having features in common with known hallucinogens. It didn’t flag up on your general scan so it’s probably dissipated enough that it won’t affect you, but still you wish you’d put on an EV suit. There’s no time to second guess yourself now, though.

You put the tricorder away in favour of the phaser, and you gently push the next door open.

If you thought the foyer was large, this room is even larger. It’s all gold again, and should be as beautiful, but it looks like there’s been a fight in here and furniture is in haphazard piles on the floor. It makes you think of playing forts with your cousins in your grandparents’ house as a child. You’re not a strategist but you can easily see that these piles aren’t much better than that – they provide barely any cover.

You pick your way over gilded chairs and past carved wooden tables inlaid with gold, keeping an eye out. About a quarter of the way into the room, under a table with two chairs on top you see a Caylaran. She looks young, wearing what looks like it could be a staff uniform – it’s a plain warm toned brown dress with an embroidered hem, far less fancy than the delegates who had welcomed the others of your team. She’s staring straight ahead, hugging her knees to her chest, rocking back and forth. She pays you no attention as you kneel down by her.

“What’s your name?” You ask, softly.

“My name is Lararen and I’m going to kill the queen, going to kill the queen, going to kill the queen. My name is Lararen and I’m going to kill the queen, then the Genai are going to kill me.”

She smiles broadly as she finishes her little song, still staring vacantly straight ahead, and you shudder. You shake her shoulder and she blinks, slowly, but she doesn’t move.

You straighten up, thoughtfully, wondering what the Genai are. Some sort of bogeyman, or an alien race? Not that it matters.

Next you find a pair of guards, asleep, holding hands. You move their weapons out of sight and continue through.

But then you find a dead Caylaran. He looks like someone important, but his red robe embroidered with a golden floral patten has a scorch mark right in the middle of his chest. You’re not sure if that killed him, because there’s a pool of blood beneath him too. Either way, you think as you close his grey-purple eyes, he probably didn’t deserve whatever it was. You take a moment to pay your respects before moving on.

You don’t find any more dead bodies in this room, but you find several more Caylarans, either sleeping or talking nonsense. One male asks you where your flowers are, and tries to give you some from a fallen flower arrangement, but most of the rest are just scared.

You think they probably have good cause, as you push another door open. You pick it because the largest number of guards were close to it, so you figure it probably leads somewhere important.

It leads on to a stair well, small but lavishly decorated with tapestries, depicting Caylarans standing in outdoor scenes, sometimes with animals you don’t recognise. They deaden the sound of your footsteps as you climb the tall stone stairs.

Then two things happen: you pause as you notice one of the hangings is moving a little at the bottom, as though in a breeze. And then you hear voices above you.

“She’s not up here,” says a female voice, annoyed. Lucid.

“Well she’s definitely not down there.” The second voice is male. Defensive. “I’ve got a message from Alara. She wants us to look again.”

“Fine. But I want it noted for the record that this is a waste of time,” the first voice says, sounding suddenly quieter – she’s probably passed through a doorway.

“Like anyone cares, Nerela,” the second voice says. You risk a peek up the stairwell. You don’t get a good look as the second person disappears through the door, but they are definitely not Caylaran – he has blue skin.

You lean against a tapestry. There are aliens here, separate from your away team. There are aliens in orbit, too. The odds are good that they’re the same species. And “she” must be the crown princess. But what are they planning?

Regardless, you still need to find your people. It’s been half an hour; you could get back to the shuttle faster if you went straight there, but there isn’t much time left in this window.

You eye the tapestry again. You’re definitely not going to follow the aliens, and this breeze must be coming from somewhere. You push it aside.

This door is the first plain thing you’ve seen in the building. It stands slightly ajar – hence the breeze – and it’s painted beige to match the stonework, but otherwise it’s featureless. It swings as quietly as all the other doors when you push it, but it has some kind of bolt on the other side. Interesting. You try to work it, but you can’t. You think of the tools in your jacket; you could probably figure it out, but no. There’s no time. You push the door to, making sure it’s as shut as it can be, and continue.

You must have entered the service part of the building, you think, as you walk along a corridor. This is functional and plain, like the door. You feel a little more comfortable here; if you’d been interested in fancy, you would have joined the command track. Or Diplomatic Corps. You get your tricorder out again, but it doesn’t show you anything still and you didn’t expect it to. But then you approach a door, and hear whimpering from the other side.

You have your hand on your phaser as you push the door open. It’s dark compared to the rest of the building; there is a small window but there’s not much light coming through the Caylaran atmosphere right now. You take a moment to let your eyes adjust, then head toward the whimpering.

The room is small; some kind of office, perhaps? There’s a desk in the room, and behind it—

“Number One?” She’s crying. Number One is sitting on the floor crying, hair a mess, dress uniform dirty, cradling Ensign James in her lap.

You can barely believe it, but you squat down, reaching for your tricorder. You can see James breathing, at least. You look around, but Chris isn’t anywhere to be seen.

“Number One?” You scan them both. They both have traces of the drug in their systems, but a lot less than the guard you scanned earlier. As your eyes adjust you can see though that James has hit his head; there’s blood in his hair and on Una’s uniform. He’s also been hit by a energy discharge, but to the side.

“Una? What’s wrong?”

“I failed everyone. I didn’t protect my captain. What first officer doesn’t protect her captain? They’re going to throw me in the brig. They’re going to court martial me. I lost my captain, and he’s dead, I—”

Suddenly you’ve had enough. You slap her, hard. “Number One!”

“Lieutenant! What did you just—”

“Oh my goodness! I’m sorry, I—you—” You breathe. “Are you all right?” You strip your backpack off for your medkit. You’re going to need to try to bring Ensign James round.

“I—I’m not sure. I don’t know what happened; everything was normal and then suddenly it wasn’t. I was so scared, Lieutenant. It was—I can still feel it. But it doesn’t feel like me.” She shakes her head, eyes still a little wide, and you pass her the water bottle. She takes a drink as you inject Ensign James with a hypospray. He starts stirring immediately, which is good, but you still think he needs a proper exam to rule out any brain problems.

“Una, you’ve got fifteen minutes to get back to the shuttle with Ensign James. There are alien ships attacking the Enterprise, and I’ve seen aliens here too. I think they may be called the Genai. You go down the corridor, down the stairs, through the big room, through the foyer, and out. Do you think you can do that?”

“Back to the shuttle. Genai.” She shakes her head again, blinking a few times. She squares her shoulders. “Yes, I think so. I can. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to find the captain. You can tell the computer to run on autopilot, if you need to – I updated the climate model, so the computer should be able to handle it.”

Together you help Ensign James to his feet.

“Do you have your communicator still?”

“I don’t,” James is still groggy as he pats himself down.

“I do,” Number One brings her communicator out and opens it. “Number One to Enterprise, come in please.”

Static.

“I think there’s a blocking field throughout this building. The tricorder isn’t working for some things either. You’d better get going.”

“Good luck, Lieutenant.”

“Thanks. You too, Commander.”

You put your medkit away as Number One and James leave. You’re relieved that they’re both okay, and you’re confident in Una, now she recognises her fear isn’t hers.

Back in the corridor you check the door to make sure Una shut it. You push it, but it’s locked. Weird. You could probably unlock it, but you don’t want to go that way anyway.

You turn your back on the door and continue along the corridor. Number One had said the captain – had said Chris – was dead. But he can’t be. She wasn’t, and you think she only had blood from Ensign James on her uniform. But... what if he is?

If he is, you do your duty as a Starfleet officer first. Find his body. Survive. Get out of here. Then mourn him second.

You pass three locked doors on the corridor, but the last opens to more stairs. Still functional, but just going down this time. You go down, listening, hand on you phaser.

Back on the ground floor – you think, but it could be a mezzanine level – there are several rooms that are open.

You go into the first one, hand still on your phaser. It’s a bedroom, and there’s a Caylaran male cowering in the corner, wearing the service uniform.

“Have you come to end it?” He asks, staring past you. You don’t answer, but your heart aches; you think he means his life. The next room is empty, bed neatly made up.

You listen at the door to the third room, and you think you hear breathing. You push the door open slowly. You don’t see anyone at first, but as you head into the room you see the edge of a gold robe, protruding out of what must the en-suite. You think you’re getting a feel for Caylaran fashion, and this is easily the fanciest thing you’ve seen so far. The robe is made of gold fabric, whereas all the others you’ve seen have been colours embroidered with gold. This one has gold and silver embroidery, and multicoloured gemstones picking out the centres of the flowers.

“Crown Princess Nanren?” Your pitch your voice low. Gentle. You remember how Chris spoke to you on Earth in the past, when you were panicking, and try to convey that calm, that confidence, to her. And in that moment you know you can no longer focus on looking for him. If this is the crown princess, more hinges on you looking after her.

“Crown Princess? I’m a Lieutenant from the Enterprise. From Starfleet – the Federation. I’m not a dream or a nightmare. I’m here to help. Will you come out?”

“The Genai are here. They’re going to kill me. I—I can’t—”

“We will find somewhere you can call your people. I will look after you. We will call in your people and they will deal with the Genai.” General Order One doesn’t apply here, you think. Not if the Genai are already interfering. Not that you care about diplomacy anyway. You’ll do what’s right now, and face the consequences later.

“I don’t—Why aren’t they here already?”

“I don’t know, Crown Princess. But we will figure it out. Please trust me.” You put all your belief into your tone, all the hope you still have left... and she steps forward.

She looks every bit the princess. She is tall, even compared to the other Caylara you’ve seen, and her dress is as exquisite as you expected from the tiny part you’d seen. You wonder, briefly, how many she has like that and how many months, perhaps years, it took to sew. She has a gauzy golden cloak hanging behind her, also embroidered, and her dark hair is braided and pinned up into an elaborate style. The only things that are not Princess-like about her are her purple-blue swirled eyes. They are wide, and anxious.

You recall your briefing notes, and bow. “Princess,” you say, staring at the floor.

“Arise,” she replies, and there’s the ghost of a command tone there. Good.

You straighten, looking up at her again, and pause. This is not how you dress if you might need to make a run for it.

You exhale, surveying the room. It’s a bedroom – a staff bedroom.

“Princess, I can get you out of this, I think. But first... you need to change.”

You find staff robes in the wardrobe that fit her, even if they’re a touch short. And sensible shoes. You have to sit her on the bed to take her hair down, but, you reflect with a little smile that she can’t see, taking her pins out is not unlike taking tiny components out of a circuit board.

“You get used to it, you know,” she says as she stands after you’ve finished. “The pomp and ceremony. The robes. People expect it of their princess, and you get used to it.”

“They are lovely,” you say, following her gaze to where her robes are hung up. “But we should get moving. Where can we call your people?”

“That sort of thing is in the wing on the other side of the Room of State,” she says. Right. The other side of that big room. Of course. And there’s a locked door between you and it.

Even so you retrace your steps. She’s much faster up the stairs than you, and you think bad thoughts about differing alien physiologies. But then, she would find the chairs on the Enterprise a bit small, you think. And the beds.

Soon you’re on the corridor with the door at the end, and you finger your jacket’s zipper as you get closer – it’s time for you to brush off your lock-picking skills. You hope the lock is easy like the ones on Eloma.

But the princess pushes the door and it opens with a whisper.

You can’t say anything. But you thank your lucky stars for small favours.

“Let me,” you say, as you approach the bottom of the stairwell. “If anything happens, go back the way we came.” You look the princess in the eye and she nods.

You crack the door open the tiniest bit, and you hear a voice.

You turn back to the princess, reach out and take her hand. You know it isn’t protocol but you squeeze gently, feeling the scales on her skin and a ring round her finger, hoping the touch will keep her calm.

You push the door open again.

“—everywhere. Yes. Me personally. I don’t care what you—yes I know scanners aren’t working. I wish you hadn’t got voice comms back. But she’s not here; she must be on your floor. Fine, Nerela. She could be in the south wing. No don’t come down here, you idiot. Go round. Ugh. Put Yaima on. Yes tell Nerela she’s being a pain. No, they’re still with our vessel, so she can’t be in the garden. It’s the storm cycle; of course we can’t—To the East, yes. I’ll see you there. But tell Nerela she’s done after this. No I don’t care. Alara out.”

You hear footsteps stalking down the room, getting closer. Your heart is in your mouth, one hand on your phaser, as you hold your breath. The steps falter slightly... and then they continue. You stay frozen until you can’t hear them anymore, then you give it a minute after that before you move the door.

The Room of State has changed since you saw it last; almost all the furniture has been pushed to the sides of the room, apart from a chair cushion in the middle of the floor; that’s what made Alara miss her step.

You take a step forward, and the princess follows, still holding your hand. She gasps, and you follow her gaze; at the end of the room are rows of Caylarans, lying on the floor. You look around, but the coast seems clear. You take your tricorder out one-handed, and you scan them. From here you can pick out their life signs – they may be unconscious but they’re still alive.

“They’re okay. They aren’t dead. Probably stunned with an energy weapon.” You feel the princess relax, and you drop her hand. “We can take care of them later. You need to show me where to go.”

She nods, and you follow her across the room and through the door on the other side. You have time to check on the way across: Number One and James aren’t there. Neither is the captain.

The stairwell on the other side is like the first, except this has paintings rather than tapestries, and your footsteps are louder as you climb.

“I don’t know who any of them are,” the princess says, looking at the paintings on your way up. “I suppose I should, but... they’re not my ancestors, I suppose. Just... predecessors. In a way.”

You resist the impulse to shush her.

On this stairwell a painting opens to the service corridor. You take the lead going through, but the corridor is empty. And when the princess shuts the door, you hear its lock click.

You walk along the corridor, listening carefully, but you can’t hear any signs of life. You have to hustle to keep up with the princess, but you push a couple of doors as you pass them. They’re both locked.

The stairs down at the other end of the corridor carry on further than they do on the other side, and your calves are beginning to ache when you reach the bottom. Your discomfort doesn’t matter, you tell yourself. It’s cooler down here, and you think you must be underground. Some kind of bunker.

“My real office is in my suite. My ceremonial office is downstairs, but this”—she opens the second door you reach—“is for emergencies.”

The office is dark as you go in, but she presses a control and it lights up. You close the door behind you and look around. Unlike the other rooms off the service corridors, this one is lavish once again. The wallpaper has gilded highlights, and the desk is made of a golden brown hardwood and is intricately carved. There’s no window since you’re underground, but the light fittings are made of bronze and remind you of the statues in the foyer. You realise the room is probably this nice in case the princess needs to do an emergency broadcast – her surroundings will still look the part.

The princess sits at the desk, pressing her palm to a sensor. A computer apparatus lifts up, and she enters some commands. You walk round the desk and stand a little way to her side, as a Caylaran man appears on the screen. His expression is blank, confused.

“Is this some kind of joke? At such a time? Using Princess Nanren’s—wait—”

He frowns, tips his head to one side.

“Your highness, is—is that you? The Genai—we were sure they’d killed you. That’s what they said. And the blocking field is on so we couldn’t scan—we had no idea—I—” He closes his eyes and bows his head.

“I am so sorry, your highness. I didn’t want to risk your people on a dangerous mission with no intelligence if you were already dead. But I should have trusted in you, and not believed the Genai without proof.”

Staff robe or not, Crown Princess Nanren straightens up and looks every bit the princess once again.

“Arise. Guard Leader Daymen, I am glad to see you. Please do not apologise; the time for analysing our decisions and learning from this situation is not yet here. First I must survive, and you must take back the palace. The Genai are still here; they have a vessel in the garden and people throughout the palace. Our people have been drugged; most are in the Room of State, but there are likely others dispersed through the palace.”

“They have three vessels in orbit too, I think,” you say, quietly.

“They have vessels in orbit too, although”—she presses a control, and a little data window appears—“they won’t be able to send any reinforcements through the atmosphere for a few more hours. What do you need to retake the building?”

“I will bring my guards now, highness. If you could turn the blocking field off it would make things safer, but—no. You are the most important. Enact the safe-room protocol, and remain where you are until we secure the building.”

“I may be able to lower the blocking field. But I shall keep safe. Do you have any news of our Federation guests?”

“Their shuttle left before the window closed. I was unable to talk to their ship at that time, but...” his expression goes thoughtful. “We use a limited range of communication frequencies. The Genai in orbit could have blocked them.”

You nod to yourself; the Caylaran frequencies had been in your briefing, and they were very different to Federation ones. The blocking field in the Palace was wide-band, but it would take too much power for a block like that over a bigger area. Much more sensible to just block the Caylaran frequencies.

“Thank you. May the skies protect you, Guard Leader.”

“May the skies protect you, highness.” He bows once again and cuts the connection.

“Lieutenant, thank you for all you have done for me so far. May I ask this last favour?”

“To take down the field? Of course, your highness. What do I need to do?”

She slides a ring off her finger and hands it to you. It’s a very narrow band of gold with a small red stone set on it. It’s big for you, though, so you slip it on to your thumb.

“You can use that to gain access to the systems. The security office is down the corridor to the right.”

“Lock the door behind me, your highness.” You smile as you turn to go.

“May the skies protect you, Lieutenant.”

“And you too.” You go through the door, closing it behind you. You hear a loud thunk a moment after you do; it sounds like more than a lock – probably blast doors. At least she’s safe, you think. Even if that means you’re alone.

You wonder about Chris, and where he could be. You have to hold on to hope, don’t you? You can’t think... no. You mustn’t. Instead you think about what he would do in your place. You think he’d be cautious. You’re nearly at your goal, but if you don’t succeed people could get hurt if the Caylaran Guard can’t tell who is who, or where they are. You’ve heard people complain about security officers being trigger happy; you think it’s probably the same for the Guard.

And you’re in a strategically important part of the palace; you don’t know how many Genai there are but they’ll probably find this area eventually. You draw your phaser, and make sure you walk quietly.

There is only one door left between you and where the corridor splits, when you hear a voice. The door opens a little, and you freeze. The voice is familiar – one of the Genai.

“—last time, no. I genuinely, and I am completely sincere on this, do not care what Alara thinks. Not even a tiny little bit! She missed this entire section! Yeah whatever, Yaima, you go tell her what I said. But when I find the Queen—Crown Princess, whatever, and she doesn’t, she’s the one that’ll get fired, not me! Nerela out!”

The door slams open, and Nerela stomps out. It’s her or you, but you are ready and she is not. Her black eyes widen as she sees you, and her weapon is in hand, but before she can aim you shoot. She grunts as she falls back, stunned.

Happily, Genai are shorter than Caylarans, although Nerela is wearing high heeled boots which make her look taller. You drag her back into the room she came out of, take her weapon and communicator and leave her lying in the recovery position. You shut the door behind you and it clicks a second later.

You shake your head; the doors are one mystery too many. You put Nerela’s weapon in your phaser holster, and tuck her communicator into your belt. Then you head to the right, toward the security office.

The first thing you notice as you push the door open are the screens. Dozens of them. The second—

“Chris?” He’s frowning, pointing a phaser at you. He looks at you like he can’t believe his eyes. Like you’ve stepped out of a nightmare.

“Chris it’s me. I’m real. I’m really here.” You take a careful step through the doorway, keeping eye contact with his bloodshot blue eyes, letting the door close behind you.

“You don’t need to be afraid any more.” You think about what Number One had said. “This fear... it isn’t really you.” You stoop down and put your phaser on the floor. You take Nerela’s weapon and put that on the floor too. And as you do, something clicks into place in your mind.

“Chris, you’ve been helping me, haven’t you? Locking doors to keep me safe? To help me get where I needed to go?”

“I’ve been so... afraid. I—I needed to keep her—to keep you safe.” He relaxes his grip on his phaser a little, and you reach for your tricorder.

“You were drugged, Chris.” You scan him. “Number One and James are safe, they got a lower dose than you.” A much lower dose, you realise, looking at the numbers. “I sent them back to the shuttle and they returned to the Enterprise. I’m going to end all this, get us home. But I need you to stop pointing that phaser at me.”

He looks at his hand, holding the phaser, then back at you.

“But is she—are you real?”

Your heart melts for him. You haven’t said these words, but you’ve felt it for a while. And—you worried, you genuinely worried, that you would never get to say them. This may not be the moment you planned, but he has to believe you.

“Chris, I love you. I’m real.”

“I—” he drops the phaser, and it clatters to the floor. The next thing you know you’re in front of him, arms around him, holding him. You can’t think; you can speak. You just hold on, letting your body feel his warmth, his solidity. You may not have been drugged, but you had been so afraid

. After a moment he puts his arms around you, too, and you just stay there for a moment more. Holding him. Letting him hold you.

As much as you’d like to forget everything else right now, you still have a job to do. You pull back, take hold of his hand, and look at the security console. You can see feeds of the Room of State, the foyer, the other rooms you’ve been in, and other places, too. Beneath the monitors is a schematic; this is how Chris was locking and unlocking the doors, you realise. But how did he have the credentials to do so?

You look at the desk and see a ring like the one the Crown Princess gave you, nestled in a groove.

“How did you get that?” You ask.

Chris frowns. “I was in that big room, but I was so afraid. I came through the door. Went upstairs. Along the corridors. Looking for somewhere safe enough. I got here and the Caylaran... we struggled, he tried to shoot but I took his weapon.” You follow his gaze to an energy weapon on the ground. “Then he ran. And I stayed. I could see everything. Not get caught out. And then I saw you.”

You squeeze his hand, and work the controls with your other hand. There is a glyph that looks like a shield; you turn it off. You check your tricorder – finally you can detect life signs. Both Caylaran and Genai. As you do, Nerela’s communicator chirrups to life.

“Nerela? I swear, if this was you—! You have the worst timing! The Caylaran guard are here. Put the blocking field back up immediately. That’s an order! Nerela? Nerela, answer me! Ne—”

It lapses into static for a moment. Then silence.

“The Guard are here, Chris. As soon as the atmosphere clears we can go home.”

When you return to the Enterprise you go to the captain’s quarters. You know he won’t be there, but you need the sense of his presence. His smell.

Chris had to stay on the planet to complete the original negotiations and help deal with the Genai; the drug’s effects had faded by the time the atmosphere was passable again, and you’d got some water and rations into him. Spock came down and stayed, but you had only left Chris because he ordered you to.

You have a shower, put on one of his sleep shirts, and curl up on the sofa under his throw blanket to write your report.

“Sweetheart?” You wake up to Chris kneeling in front of you, hand on your shoulder. His hair is damp and he’s out of his uniform. Your brow creases for a moment – you don’t remember him using that endearment for you before.

“Chris,” you say, stretching. Pushing the throw away, and leaning into his touch. “You’re back.”

“I am.” His mouth quirks into a smile. “There was a lot to sort out; it seems the Genai and the Caylara have a dispute over a world on a system between them. The Genai thought if Caylara joined the Federation, we would take their colony from them. They thought if they disrupted the negotiation and killed Crown Princess Nanren, either we would give up, or the Caylarans would be too afraid to continue.” He moves his thumb along your shoulder.

“Spock put the fear of God into the Genai in orbit. I’m not sure how,” he adds, at your incredulous look, “but they and the Caylarans have requested mediation. And now the Genai want to work towards joining the Federation, too.”

“I wish they’d chosen to talk to us first,” you say, frowning. Thinking of the dead Caylaran. “These breakthroughs always seem to come at such a cost.”

“They do,” he says, gathering you into his arms. Holding you against him.

You stay in his arms for a while, just breathing. But eventually he pulls back, and moves to sit beside you.

“You were amazing today. You’ll be getting a commendation, but Crown Princess Nanren wanted me to convey her thanks, too. You saved her life.” He reaches into his pocket, then leans forward and fastens a chain round your neck. It’s delicate, golden, and from it hangs the ring that she had lent you for the computer. That you had given back before you left. “She wanted you to have this. But she thought a necklace might work better.”

You shake your head, taking hold of the ring. “Saving her was as much you as me, Chris. Locking those doors.”

He looks at you, thoughtful. “I don’t think so. I—I have never felt fear like I did today. Now I look back at it I can tell it wasn’t real, but at the time, seeing you on those screens, moving with purpose, helping our people and the Caylarans... you gave me hope.”

He pauses, blue eyes meeting yours. Hand reaching out to touch your face.

“When we were down there... I remember what you said to me. I love you too.”

You lean forward, meeting him for a kiss, gentle at first but it goes passionate almost immediately, both of you pouring your feelings for each other into the connection between you. You didn’t know it could feel like this, you think, before he pulls you into his lap and thoughts flee away.

“Lieutenant, I want to thank you.” Number One says, sitting at her desk. “I was not myself down on Caylara, but you did yourself proud. You saved us.”

“You’re welcome, Commander.” You smile. “I’d say any time, but right now I’d be happy if I never left the ship again.”

“That being said, if you tell anyone—”

“If I tell anyone you were crying, I can expect to spend the next month of duty shifts degaussing the transporter with a microresonator?”

“Oh that’s a good one. I must remember that. Yes. You will be degaussing, Lieutenant.”

“Understood.”

#writer wednesday #Christopher Pike #Christopher Pike x Reader #Captain Pike #writings of the girl from outer space #fanfic #fanfiction #Star Trek Discovery #Star Trek Strange New Worlds #The Engineer's Adventures

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thoushallnotfall · 4 years ago

Text

God Bless the Children of the Beast - Part 8

Previous // Masterlist

Pairing: The Dirt!Tommy Lee x Reader

Word Count: 3.1k

Notes: Ugh, this one was a chore. I had to rewrite a chunk of it since I changed my mind about some stuff…it was a whole thing.

I am playing chess with so many plot elements right now and some of them are like so freaking long game; like hang with me this is gonna be one of those updates that makes sense 8 updates later. Like I am laying the ground work for the bigger picture I swear it’s all relevant and my narrative choices will make sense later. (probably)

1984 is almost over… 🙃

Warnings: N/A (I don’t think anything majorly bad happens in this update?? So used to them at least doing drugs…)

1984

After your fight with Nikki, the atmosphere on the set of the video shoot had been less than stellar. It’s a wonder you all had managed to finish filming at all.

You were angry at Nikki for what he’d done and for putting you in an awkward position with Tommy, and in turn Nikki was trying to avoid you as much as possible. Then, you felt guilty about keeping the whole thing a secret from Tommy, which made you feel awkward around him; so it was easier for you to just try and avoid him all together if you could.

Tommy was trying to calm Roxy down after meeting his parents, and he was kind of pissed at you for laughing at the whole ‘groupie’ comment his mother had made. Normally you’d be upset about this, but it actually worked out in your favor, since you were trying to avoid him anyway. Still, how long could you keep this up? How long could you keep your distance from your best friend? How long could you lie to him, even if you knew it was for his own good?

The shoot done, you’d all retreated back to the hotel. After a long, hot shower, you called Razzle. You talked to him most nights now; some days it was only a few minutes, just to check in, see how the tour was going, make sure everyone was doing okay before he and his boys went out to party and you and yours did the same. Other times, the two of you stayed on the phone for hours, talking through the night. You had seen the long-distance bills from the hotels when you helped Doc with the paperwork–they were outrageous; but you didn’t care. It was worth it.

You had debated whether you should tell him about what was going on with you and Nikki, just so you could get it off your chest. Normally, if you had an issue like this, you would go straight to Tommy, or in the past Nikki; the fact that they were both at the center of the problem meant you had no one else to turn to. You could talk to Vince or Mick–under normal circumstances you would trust them enough to confide in them, but this issue was delicate; what if something happens and they accidentally told Tommy? You couldn’t risk anyone else close to you finding out and telling him. But then trusting someone new was, for lack of a better word–scary–and you weren’t sure if you were ready to put that level of trust in Razzle yet.

When you called him, you hadn’t really planned on telling him; you were just going to have a normal conversation. But he’d picked up on it immediately; he could tell something was wrong just by the tone of your voice. When he asked you about it, you realized you wanted to trust him, and you decided to take a chance and open up to him.

It felt good to talk. Not just to tell him about the situation, but to tell him how you felt about it. Razzle listened, telling you he honestly wasn’t sure what the right thing to do was, but that he was there for you, and you only had to call if you ever needed anything. Just listening was enough; just being there was enough.

And you really did love him for that.

—

After the shoot, there had been a noticable change in the dynamic of your group. No one wanted to talk about it, but the difference was obvious. You could barely stand to be around Nikki; between your anger at his actions with Roxie and his increasingly rude and inconsiderate behavior towards everyone, you found yourself fighting with him more and more each day.

Then there was Tommy. He and Roxie broke up, so that was one problem solved; but just like he always did after a breakup he was extra clingy with you now that she was gone. He wanted to hang out all the time, and that had caused some problems. For starters, while Roxie may be gone, you were still dealing with the weight of the her secret sex with Nikki, and knowing about it made being around Tommy awkward for you. You tried to suck it up and act like nothing was wrong, but it was obvious something was on your mind, and you wished Tommy would just give you some space so you had more time to process everything.

Then, there was the other issue that had come up between you. You had made it clear to Tommy you needed some time to yourself every once and awhile, and he seemed to agree, in theory. Then, in practice, would still bug you whenever he felt like it. Sometimes, he came to bother you in the middle of your phonecalls with Razzle. The few times this had happened, things had not gone well.

Tommy would insist you hang up and spend time with him. You would of course tell him no, saying you would hang out with him later. Usually, he would leave, pouting like a child. Later, he would spend the whole time complaining about Razzle; which annoyed you to no end–and you made sure to tell him so. That would only pissed him off more, and you two of you would both leave angry.

The last time he came in while you were on the phone, he’d been high, or drunk–or both–and when you refused to hang up he’d come over and done it for you. You’d gotten into a huge argument–something that had never happened before–and you made him leave, locking him out of your room.

Ever since your fight, Tommy had been walking on eggshells around you. He knew he’d fucked up, but he didn’t know how to fix it. You knew he couldn’t do anything; he’d apologized, but you were still upset. You just wanted to get away from all the drama–from Tommy, from Nikki–where you could relax and you didn’t have to worry if someone was going to yell at you for something or if you were going to get into another argument.

You weren’t essential to the band, it had occurred to you that maybe you could just go home for a week or two; take a little break? The guys wouldn’t love that idea, but no one could argue that things weren't strained right now. You could use some time apart. You hadn’t been away from them since they’d become a band–you’d all been living together the whole three years since they’d formed Motley Crue. It would be strange to be away from them after being together for so long, but then again some distance was starting to seem like exactly what you needed. And they do say absence makes the heart grow fonder; maybe taking some time apart would help heal the rifts forming in your most important relationships. Even if you didn’t love the idea of being alone, it would be worth it to get away for awhile.

As you drop your bags in yet another empty hotel room, you spot the phone on the nightstand, and an idea suddenly occurs to you. A crazy idea; maybe a great idea, or maybe a totally stupid one. Either way, the boys will absolutely hate it.

You pick up the phone, dialing the number and giving instructions to the receptionist on the other end as you sit on your bed.

“'ello beautiful.” Razzle greets you, and you smile.

“Hey Nic, how’s it going?” You ask, twirling the spiral cord around your finger.

“No' too bad; the boys and I jus' go' back.” He answer.

“Oh, that’s good.” You say, biting your lip, unsure of how to proceed.

“Is everythin' awlrigh'? You sound upset again.” He asks. “More trouble wif your brofa? Or is it Tommy this time?” You sigh, grateful he brought it up so you didn’t have to.

“Um, well I mean yeah, sort of, but, that’s actually not what I called about.” You say.

“Oh?” He asks. “Do tell.” You take a deep breath.

“I was wondering what you would think about me maybe coming to stay with you?” You ask, nervous. “Just for a little while.” You add hastily at the end.

“You wan' to come wif me? On tou'a?” He asks, clearly surprised.

“Yeah; I, I mean if you and the band don’t mind.” You reply.

“Of course I don’t fuckin' mind!” He says, clearly excited; and you let out a breath you didn’t realize you were holding. “But wha' about the Crue? Won’ they be angry you’re off tourin’ wif another band?”

“I’ll handle the boys.” You assure him, smiling into the receiver.

—

“The fuck do you mean you’re leaving?” Nikki asks as he looks at you, your bags at your feet.

“Exactly what I said; you need it in writing?” You snap.

“Would you stop being a fucking bitch for five seconds and explain to me what the hell you think you’re playing at?” Nikki spits back. “You can’t just fucking leave!”

“Newsflash Nikki; you don’t fucking own me! I can do whatever the hell I want!” You shout, throwing your arms up.

“Okay, okay can everyone just chill out for a second please?” Vince asks.

“Stay the fuck out of this Vince.” Nikki sneers as he looks over at the blonde. “This isn’t any of your fucking business.”

“Don’t fucking yell at him!” You say, scowling at Nikki as he looks back at you.

“We’re gonna get kicked out of the lobby soon.” Mick comments absently.

“Y/N please don’t go.” Tommy begs. “We can talk about this.”

“I’ve made up my mind Tommy.” You say firmly, crossing your arms.

“Where you gonna go, huh?” Nikki asks. “Back home? You live in my house y/n! You can’t go home–I won’t allow it!”

“'Allow it?’” You repeat in a mix of anger and disbelief. “God you have been such a fucking asshole lately! What the hell is wrong with you?” You yell back at him, exasperated. “And for your information no, I’m not going home; I’m going to stay with Nic.”

“Nic?” Nikki looks at you confused. Then, realization spreads across his face. “Oh hoho! You’re going on tour with Razzle and the rest of those fuckers in Hanoi Rocks!”

“What?” Tommy scowls. “You’re going on tour with another band?”

“I’m going to stay with my boyfriend, who is currently in a band that is touring.” You try dodging the question with a half-truth.

Technically Razzle wasn’t your boyfriend yet–but that was only because the two of you didn’t have time to talk about it over the phone before you had to leave to catch your flight. You expected that’s where things were headed though, since you were going to be touring with him now, so it wasn’t a total lie.

“Boyfriend? Since fucking when?” Tommy shouts.

“That’s none of your fucking business.” You snap, taken aback by his sudden change in tone. He had been so desperate and kind a second ago.

“So what? You a fucking groupie now y/n? Huh? You just gonna hop from one band to another whenever it’s convenient for you?” Tommy asks, clearly pissed. You look back at him like you’ve been slapped in the face. You clench your jaw as tears start forming in your eyes.

“Fuck you Tommy.” You whisper, tears sliding down your cheeks.

“Y/N–” He calls out to you, but you ignore him; grabbing your bags and heading out the door.

—

You stand outside waiting for your taxi as the tears continue flowing down your face. It was all too much, and as much as you hated people seeing you cry, you just couldn’t hold it in anymore.

Nikki was changing. It had been happening for awhile, but you had tried to ignore it; made excuses, played it off. Now there was no denying the truth: the brother you knew, who hurt himself to save you from your mother and her shitty boyfriends, who went hungry so you could eat, who took beatings to protect you–he was disappearing. This new Nikki was someone else, someone dark, and controlling. Someone who didn’t care about hurting the people he cared about–even you. You saw less and less of the Nikki you knew everyday, and you worried one day you’d look at your brother’s face and see a stranger staring back at you.

Then there was Tommy. That sweet, simple boy you meet three years ago. Your best friend. There was more to Tommy than that now–maybe there always had been, and you just never saw it. You didn’t understand how Tommy could be so sweet, then act so cruel. You didn’t understand why he got this way about Razzle; it’s like ever since you’d started seeing the other drummer, it had brought out the worst in Tommy.

As you stand under the awning waiting for your taxi, tears still staining your cheeks, you hear the doors to the lobby open behind you. You turn and see Vince and Mick walking toward you. You quickly wipe your face on the back of your arm and smile up at them.

“Hey, sorry you guys had to get stuck in the middle of that.” You say, doing your best to sound cheerful.

“Not the first time we’ve been in the center of a public shitshow; though usually there’s more nudity involved.” Mick says, the corner of his mouth turning up slightly. You know he’s trying to cheer you up, and honestly it works. A small giggle escapes your lips.

“We can still fix that if you want to y/n.” Vince says, winking at you. “I’m always down for a little public nudity if you’re involved.”

“I’d like to not get arrested tonight; but thanks anyway Vince.” You say, smirking at him. He shurgs.

“Your loss.” He replies, looking away. After a moment, he looks back at you, a more sincere expression on his face. “By the way y/n, I wanted to say…” He trails off, rubbing the back of his neck as he looks down at the pavement awkwardly.

“What?” You press. It was unusual for Vince to be at a loss for words. He sighs, then looks back up at you.

“I just wanted to say you shouldn’t listen to Nikki and Tommy–they were being real assholes, and they were wrong.” Your eyes go wide as you stare back at him in shock. You knew Vince and Mick felt bad for you, but you hadn’t really expected them to openly take your side against their bandmates.

“Look, you’re not a bitch, and you’re definitely not a fucking groupie, okay? I mean if you were then I think I got fucking jipped.” He says with a laugh. You’re too surprised to laugh at the joke, not that it was that great to begin with.

“With jokes like that it’s amazing you ever resisted his charms.” Mick comments, and that manages to get a laugh from you. “He is right though; those two were total shitheads and I don’t blame you for wanting to split. You deserve to be happy, and if that frilly English shit makes you happy, then I say go for it.” You’re taken aback by the sincerity in Mick’s words. Vince comes over and puts a hand in your shoulder.

“Look, try not to worry about what Nikki and Tommy said, okay? They’re just pissed because they’re used to having you all to themselves, and they don’t like the idea of having to share you. So go have fun with your English boy toy, and just know we’ll be here if you ever get homesick.” You look back at the two of them, and you feel your heart swell so full it aches.

Nikki and Tommy had been the people you were closest to since the band formed; Nikki was your brother, your rock, your oldest friend. Tommy had quickly grown to be your best friend, your closet companion, the person you trusted most. But you couldn’t forget how much you loved Vince and Mick; they were your brothers just as much as Nikki and Tommy were. You had been through so much with both of them, and just because you were having problems with Tommy and Nikki, you didn’t want to punish Mick and Vince for that.

You feel tears well up in your eyes as you grab hold of Vince, hugging him tightly as you bury your face in the crock of his neck.

“Thanks Vinny.” You say as you squeeze him tighter. “I appreciate it.” You let him go, and his cheeks are flushed as he looks away.

“Yeah, whatever.” He says, and you laugh, whipping your eyes. You move over to Mick and wrap your arms around him.

“Give us a call every once and awhile so we know you’re not dead.” He says, and you laugh as you pull away.

“Yes dad.” You reply sarcastically, and he scowls. You smile, moving to give him a quick kiss on the cheek. His eyes go wide as he stares back at you in surprise. “I promise I’ll call as soon as I get there, okay?” He looks away.

“S'all I’m asking.” He mumbles.

“Hey, why does the old man get a kiss?” Vince whines, and you laugh.

Just then, the taxi pulls up to take you to the airport.

“Well, looks like my ride’s here.” You say, trying to mask your sadness by turning away from them. You move to get your bags, but Vince grabs them before you can. He winks at you, and silently moves to toss them in back of the taxi.

“It’s not forever; I’ll see you guys again in no time.” You say cheerful as you look at Mick, who just nods in response, looking lonely. You take one quick glance back at the lobby doors, before turning to the taxi.

“Thanks for grabbing my bags Vince; maybe there’s a gentleman buried in there somewhere after all.” You say, smirking.

“Don’t hold your breath sweetheart.” Vince jokes, smiling; though you both feel the sadness behind it. As you pass him, you lean in and give him a quick peak on the cheek. You smile as Vince laughs.

“There, now you’re even.” You say, before getting into the taxi. You shut the door, waving out the back window as you watch the two of them get further and further away.

#tommy lee x reader #the dirt!tommy lee x reader #mgk!tommy lee x reader #the dirt x reader #the dirt #tommy lee

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bookishbarnowl · 4 years ago

Text

“I’m a person!”

The intimidation technique didn’t seem to phase the cocky teen. He smirked. “Techno, you gotta show me what’s wrong,” he goaded.

Break his leg, the AI suggested, but he blocked that out. He refused to play charades with the pint-sized terror.

In a post-apocalyptic world where the remaining survivors live in secure underground bases, Techno is a metal heart among dozens of warm, beating ones. That doesn't stop him from embracing his humanity, but it also means he has a few weaknesses others don't.

Warnings: Mild dehumanization (resolved)

Relationships: Technoblade & Tommy, Techno & Tommy & Wilbur

Word Count: 1,849

Ao3 Link: Here

Here’s a Wingdings translator if anyone wants to follow what Techno’s saying, but don’t feel like you need to, it’s not really plot relevant. Almost all of it is him threatening Tommy. :)

https://lingojam.com/WingdingsTranslator

Technoblade stormed down the hallway, mechanical limbs pounding against the floor of the bunker with resounding clangs as he stopped bothering to lighten his footsteps. Stealth was not a priority right now. He cranked up the volume on his voicebox, uncaring that no one could currently understand him. He was sick and tired of his Tommy’s ridiculous pranks, and changing his language settings while he was recharging was the last straw.

“❄︎□︎❍︎❍︎⍓︎!” he roared in his default android language, slamming doors open and shut as he searched. Other personnel quickly caught on to his current temper and promptly got out of his way, retreating to the parts of the base he’d already searched.

Yeah, faster, the broken AI jeered in the back of his head, spurring him on. He growled and tried to ignore it, but picked up the pace anyway. He was done.

He finally found Tommy and Wilbur in the latter’s bedroom, playing a video game together and bickering happily. He flung open the door with a bang and grabbed the remote, turning the TV off as they both yelled indignantly.

“✡︎□︎◆︎🕯︎♎︎ ♌︎♏︎⧫︎⧫︎♏︎❒︎ ♐︎♓︎⌧︎ ⧫︎♒︎♓︎⬧︎ ❒︎♓︎♑︎♒︎⧫︎ ■︎□︎⬥︎,” he snapped at Tommy, positively radiating anger.

The intimidation technique didn’t seem to phase the cocky teen. He smirked. “Aww, Techno, I can’t understand you. What exactly is the matter?”

“👍︎◆︎⧫︎ ⧫︎♒︎♏︎ ♍︎❒︎♋︎◻︎📪︎ ♓︎⧫︎🕯︎⬧︎ ■︎□︎⧫︎ ♐︎◆︎■︎■︎⍓︎📬︎ ✋︎🕯︎❍︎ ♎︎□︎■︎♏︎.” he replied, his face darkening. He wasn’t going to negotiate.

“Techno, you gotta show me what’s wrong,” Tommy goaded.

Break his leg, the AI suggested, but he blocked it out.

“✋︎ ❒︎♏︎♐︎◆︎⬧︎♏︎📬︎ 🕈︎♏︎ ♌︎□︎⧫︎♒︎ 🙵■︎□︎⬥︎ ⬥︎♒︎♋︎⧫︎🕯︎⬧︎ ⬥︎❒︎□︎■︎♑︎ ♋︎■︎♎︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎ ♋︎❒︎♏︎ ♑︎□︎♓︎■︎♑︎ ⧫︎□︎ ⬧︎⬥︎♓︎⧫︎♍︎♒︎ ♓︎⧫︎ ♌︎♋︎♍︎🙵 □︎❒︎ ⬧︎□︎ ♒︎♏︎●︎◻︎ ❍︎♏︎-” he broke off, gritting his teeth and distractedly registering the AI trying to convince him to commit a war crime. He crossed his arms, resentment and fury pooling in his stomach. He was not playing charades with the pint-sized terror.

Wilbur was looking back and forth between the two of them, observant enough to piece together the situation. He was also partially fluent in the android tongue, enough to probably pick up one or two keywords in Techno’s rapid-fire speech.

“⬧︎ ◻︎ ♏︎ ♏︎ ♍︎ ♒︎ ⬧︎ ⧫︎ ◆︎ ♍︎ 🙵,” Techno enunciated clearly in his direction, slow enough that he could pick it up, then switched back into his regular talking speed. “❄︎□︎❍︎❍︎⍓︎ ✋︎ ♋︎❍︎ ♎︎♏︎♋︎♎︎ ⬧︎♏︎❒︎♓︎□︎◆︎⬧︎📬︎ ❄︎♒︎♓︎⬧︎ ♓︎⬧︎ ■︎□︎⧫︎ ♐︎◆︎■︎■︎⍓︎.”

“Voice… trapped? Stuck?” Wilbur translated. “And something about death? I heard the word Tommy…” He rounded on his brother. “What did you do to him?”

Tommy was trying hard not to laugh, which only made Techno feel worse. “It was just a prank,” he defended. “Isn’t it hilarious? Go on, try and say something else,” he prodded.

Techno didn’t move, mouth stubbornly shut. Some of his anger was eating away into humiliation, which he was sure was the worst emotion in existence. He quashed the feeling and tried to get back to being infuriated.

Oooh, someone’s embarrassed, the AI mocked. Scared, even? Ah, and there’s the helplessness.

Sometimes the voice cut deeper than it had any right to. Techno growled again, the sound rumbling menacingly through his entire body as he determinedly refused to dwell on those statements. He fixed Tommy with a glare that would have most people in the base quivering in fear, but he had the audacity to grin back at him.

“Techno, you’ve gotta ask me for help if you want it fixed,” he taunted, standing up with a hand on his hip as Wilbur looked torn. “The great Blade’s gotta admit he needs help.”

That was the tipping point for Techno.

“G̵͙͊ẽ̷̮t̵̜̽ ̶̬̆r̵͉͐i̸ḑ̴͂ ̶̧̂ō̷̜f̷ ̵̼͘t̷̑h̶̽is ̵͎̾n̸̠͑o̷̦͘w̸̠̃,” he snarled, brute forcing his way through the sloppily installed language blockers in sheer rage. His eyes flashed red and the claws stored in his finger joints slid out against his will, the voice in his head cackling as oily tears started leaking from his eye sockets.

Wilbur’s eyes widened and he jumped up, grabbing a screwdriver off of the desk and cautiously approaching the crying android. Tommy looked taken aback, his expression dissolving into something more sheepish.

“⚐︎ ■︎ ❍︎ ⍓︎ ♌︎ ♋︎ ♍︎ 🙵,” Techno instructed Wilbur carefully, directing him to the detachable panel on his lower back. He closed his eyes and tried to get a grip on his emotions, retracting his claws and silencing his snickering commentator.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Tommy sputtered, backpedaling.

“Then get over here and fix it,” Wilbur told him severely. The teen hung his head and came over to help Wilbur get the panel off, revealing the computer screen embedded into the metal there that Tommy had used to hack into Techno.

Techno shivered as he felt the two of them start going through the code looking for Tommy’s software, exceptionally conscious that they literally had his entire being at their fingertips. A few malicious clicks, and he could be altered in any number of ways.

Phil had tried to help him update the security on his data so things like that wouldn’t be possible, but his system seemed to vehemently reject any permanent alterations to his code and always did a system reboot afterwards to purge the new protections. He suspected the busted AI he shared a headspace with was behind it. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to care about short-term add-ons like the one Tommy had undoubtedly used.

He trusted both of them. He did, and no amount of pranks would change that. If he didn’t they wouldn’t be behind him right now, painstakingly removing the last traces of the language blocker. But sometimes they went too far. He felt used and taken advantage of. And that was not okay with him.

As soon as they got his back panel reattached, he left, ignoring their worried questions about if he was okay or not. He needed some time alone, and there was only one place no one would want to follow him.

He made his way to the airlock and grabbed a pack, slinging it over his shoulders and grabbing a blaster off the rack on the wall. Pulling a shield down over his face, he punched his code into the computer by the exit and signed himself out, then allowed the airlock to seal behind him.

The huge door slid open with a hiss in front of him, letting him out into the wasteland. The face shield protected him from the dust particles the inexhaustible wind dragged across every surface, and his metal body meant he didn’t have to deal with an oxygen tank or protective suit like the rest of the residents in the base. He scanned the area around the base with a keen eye, clipped his blaster to his hip, and set off into the desert.

He didn’t go far, barely beyond the next hill, but it was enough to make him feel like he was the only one in the world, which was what he wanted.

Lonely, lonely, lonely, the AI chanted in his head, and he pushed it away. Solitude helped him think.

But his peace didn’t last very long. The sound of clumsy footsteps stumbling through the dirt reached his ears, and he bowed his head and internally groaned. Someone had come after him, and it sure didn’t sound like Phil. A few more seconds of waiting would tell him which of the two less tolerable options he’d gotten. He considered running farther away, certain he could outdistance whichever it was, but if it was Tommy he’d just doggedly follow. And Wilbur would feel hurt. So he stayed put.

Leave him behind, the voice commanded. Shut up, he told it.

Sure enough, a moment later Tommy all but tripped over the crest of the hill and joined him at the bottom with a little help from gravity, breathing hard through the oxygen mask and making a vain attempt to brush the sheen of sweat off a brow covered by his helmet.

“These suits are so awkward to walk in,” he started, voice coming through the speakers in the aforementioned suit with a slightly tinny distortion. It was obviously an attempt to break the ice, though a pretty terrible one since Techno had no need for the bulky garments. He took the bait anyway, might as well get this over with.

“You were still pigheaded enough to come after me in one,” he replied.

“Well, uh, Wilbur put me up to it, y’know, and Big Man TommyInnit’s never one to back down from a challenge, eh?”

“Did you at least sign out a firearm before you left?”

“Nah. Who’s gonna mess with these guns?” he cracked, flexing non-existent arm muscles. Not that you could tell through the suit. The thick fabric made even someone like Phil, one of their best scouts, look like they’d rolled in marshmallows. The corner of Techno’s lip twitched in spite of himself.

Heh, Lonely Man thinks the Stupid Child is funny- He shoved it back again. Get some more creative insults, he thought.

“If you get jumped by a monster I will laugh at your corpse,” he warned.

“You wouldn’t, you love me too much,” Tommy sniggered, punching his shoulder.

“You’re right, I do,” he responded, unexpectedly serious.

The change in mood was not lost on Tommy, and his laugh quieted. “I love you too, man,” he returned. “I’m, um, really sorry about earlier. That was too far.”

“It was,” Techno agreed noncommittally.

“I shouldn’t mess with your code.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“I’m not going to stop playing pranks on you.”

He sighed. “I knew my expectations were too high.”

“But I won’t hack you again.”

“Thank you,” he said, accepting the apology. “Messin' with living code is a serious invasion of privacy.”

“Yeah,” Tommy whispered, guilt heavy on his tone. “But I wouldn’t hurt you, you know that right?”

“Of course I do,” he reassured him. He was rarely the one to initiate physical contact, but this time he made an exception, leaning over for a one-armed hug. Tommy leaned into him, but his personality wouldn’t let the silence continue for long.

“So whaddya say we go back and make Wilbur wish he’d never sent me out to reunite the dream duo?” he blurted, grin wide and looking like it had never left.

Techno didn’t bother hiding the upward quirk of his lip this time. “Let’s go beat up a nerd.”

#mcyt #dsmp #fanfic #technoblade #tommyinnit #wilbur soot #hurt/comfort #family dynamics #mobpocalypse au #first of two fics in this au #also on ao3

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painted-crow · 4 years ago

Text

Submission Time #12

Another submission from me! I’d meant to put in answers from the quiz… or really, my perpetual arguments with the quiz. But then I got distracted by writing out my thoughts and forgot to do that.

Oof, I’m afraid I don’t know who you are just from this–you sent it in with anonymous on! Hopefully that’s okay.

I get different answers from the quiz at different times. Last time I took it in earnest, stoned out of my mind, I came up Snake/Snake. This time I intentionally hatstalled to get as many questions as I could.

If this is too many words on top of too many words… I am sorry.

I see that lol! I appreciate that there is no lack of information here 😉

However, this post as it came in was VERY long, even by my standards, and for the sake of readability I've done 2 things:

1) Switched to desktop long enough to put in a cut. It broke the blue color I usually put over my replies in order to make these easier to skim, but I'm not putting it back because it's kind of a huge pain to redo.

2) Trimmed out some of the question/answer pairs. You have plenty, so although I read them all, I just kept those I deemed most relevant. I also skipped a few where my responses would have been repetitive. Just an editing decision I hope you'll be okay with.

That said, let's get on with the Sorting.

Primaries

• If people in your family or community disagree with you, is it hard to act against their wishes?

I’m not sure that I have a community, but yeah, if my SOs think something is a bad idea, I’ll listen and consider. I’m more likely to be the person disagreeing with and trying to convince someone else, though. Also, sometimes it’s plain easier to go along with things to keep life smooth. But if it was something important… I think I’d have to go with what I think is right, regardless of disagreement. I’ll listen to others, maybe I’ll change my mind, but I won’t not do a thing JUST because of the disapproval of my family.

Suggests internal primary, Lion or Snake.

• What’s your top priority?

I kind of hate this one because I want to answer all three. I want to make the world a better place for the sake of me and mine, and that’s one of my goals. Not one I imagine I can accomplish, but it’s something that matters. My kid will probably see a pretty rough world in the future and I wish I could do something to alter that, beyond trying to be an ethical consumer as much as I can.

This answer feels very grounded and practical. I want to say it feels Liony, partly out of process of elimination but mostly because it just does.

• When you’re making a decision and you’re stuck, what should you do?

Idk, panic? No, not really. I seek advice if relevant, don’t if not, seek out any information I can, think about it… make a decision… and proceed to worry about that decision for the next millenia because what if it wasn’t the right one? I usually go with my my gut choice but 1) sometimes I have to go hunting for that, and by sometimes I mean a lot, and 2) I still research the hell out of it.

The way you’ve answered this says more about your secondary than your primary, imo. You might be a Bird secondary.

• Do you listen to your intuition?

I’d like to, but I don’t trust it. I’m too afraid of everything.

Ooh, interesting. It’s worth noting, people who write to me are often Burned at least somewhat, because Burned Houses are always harder to sort; everyone reacts differently to trauma and comes up with different coping mechanisms. Wonder if you’re an at least somewhat Burned Lion who’s pivoted into Snake, perhaps because it fit with your old value set.

• Someone points out a flaw in your logic. Their argument makes sense, but there’s something about it that just bothers you. Do you change your ways because of what they said?

This one always bothers me. It’s not a thing that happens to me often, but I can’t understand not changing your mind in this situation. If someone points out that you’re wrong… well… you’d better go look into that, hadn’t you? Maybe because I’m constantly seeking to understand myself, and I don’t and that frustrates me, but… I don’t know. I agree with and disagree with all the answers.

This seems Bird at first glance, but it seems you’re too conflicted about it to be straight up unburned Bird (and Burned Birds are usually easier to spot because they tend to be wrapped up in the problem/s they’re struggling with). You might have a model or performance, too early to say.

That line about being frustrated that you don’t understand yourself is also a good hint toward an Idealist primary.

• Does disagreeing with your closest friends about something important to you make you love them less?

No, but I might think less of them, and I will probably argue my points at them in the future. Sometimes I change their mind, sometimes they change mine. I turned my SO into a social liberal, he caused me to adjust my stance on gun control. There’s always give and take.

Sounds healthy. That model’s sounding a bit more likely here. I’d be very curious if you turned out to be a burned Lion who actually had a healthy Bird model–that would be rare o.o

• What if everyone you loved left you? They betrayed you, abandoned you, or died, and you’re hurting. What keeps you moving forward?

This question makes me want to tear my hair out, because those are all different things.

If everyone I loved died, I would probably have a massive breakdown, spend a year laying in bed, and then use whatever money I inherited or insurance payouts I got to go try and live the life I’ve always vaguely wanted, traveling. I wouldn’t seek out relationships but I imagine I would, eventually, form new connections. It would hurt, but I would rebuild.

If they abandoned me, or betrayed me, which is… kind of the same, I guess, because abandoning me without cause is a betrayal… well, I would probably be confused, and angry, and curl into a ball and want to die, and then turn into a lifelong curmudgeon the likes of which I swore I’d never be. It would hurt, and I would probably be loathe to trust again.

This doesn’t feel Loyalist, at least.

• What if you realized that absolutely everything you thought was true was wrong? The authorities you’d trusted, the beliefs you’d held, the wrongs you’d fought against?

Another that trips me up. I doubt someone is ever going to convince me that punching down, bullying, or causing unwarranted harm is good. I don’t trust any authority without cause anyway, and I trust no authority to be right on every topic. I trust NASA about space but I’d be more interested in what the forestry service has to say about ecology, in a silly example. I’m not religious so I don’t have any authorities there. My parents were authorities once but it turns out they’re human and sometimes wrong, so…. I feel like I don’t know how to answer this question, because I can’t fathom what someone could tell or convince me of that would be that kind of a gut punch?

So, you don’t really have a system per se, but you do have a set of core ideals. You could call this a Bird model (and… a really healthy one if it is?) or you could call it partially unburned Lion.

• You can’t help everyone in the world who needs it, but you wish you could.

Nah, it would be nice to help everyone and I’m down to eat the rich and redistribute wealth and I firmly believe the point and purpose of society is to care for its populace, so definitely the world should be designed better to make sure everyone has a fair chance at what they want…but it’s not my responsibility to fix it for everybody, nor am I capable of it. I can do a small part, and I try to, but I’m not the savior of humanity.

I think we’ve established you’re not a Badger, although Badgers don’t always fall into this trap.

• You’ve changed your mind about an old belief or moral stricture that you used to value. You got new information and you’ve tried to update your way of thinking, and you think (hope?) you’re a better person for it. Do you feel guilty about the old belief you’ve abandoned?

Do I feel guilty for abandoning it? Not if I realized it was wrong! Do I feel guilty for having had the belief? Sometimes. I was raised in an unthinkingly classist household, and I still feel bad about my instinctive assumptions about people. I’ve worked on it a lot and unpacked a lot of shit, but I was definitely an ass and I regret that.

You have a lot of healthy Bird happening. I’m starting to wonder if your Lion is the model.

If you are a Bird primary, you’re one who builds your system much more than one who adopts it. You also seem very confident in your own perceptions, not unwilling to change but not impressionable.

When it comes to less major parts of your ideals, such as the gun control thing you adjusted your stance on, do you feel satisfied after puzzling things like that out? Or do you kind of hate that you need to?

• The next one is “If I’ve decided to stand by the people I love, it’s a choice. I could make a different decision.” Vs “At the end of the day, some things are right and some things are wrong. You don’t turn your back on the people you love.”

And my problem with that is… both. It is a choice, I could, theoretically, make a different one. But I don’t think it would be right to do so. I think that I would have to have an overwhelming reason to turn my back on my people. Someone cheating one me, or coming to hold beliefs antithetical to me (like if one of my SOs suddenly went TERFy or something), yeah, I would probably turn away, but it would hurt. But it’s still a choice I’ve made, either way.

I don’t think you’re a Snake.

• When you sit down and consider the terrifying lack of objective truth in our reality, how do you feel?

But what is truth? Does this mean truths about the universe, reality, physics, etc? I surely believe there is objective truth and structure there, though I doubt if humanity can discover it all. We are clever little apes, but its a big, weird universe.

Does it mean moral, philosophical truths? Moral relativism all the way babe! I mean, I’m an atheist, and I dont believe there’s one objective truth out there laid down by something supernatural, and I think it has to be something everybody comes to on their own as an accumulation of life experiences. I’ve got a few core things I think are important and the rest just… flows. I went with “the model in our heads is good enough,” because we’ve all got to settle for that in the end, I suppose.

It’s an interesting question and none of the answers quite fit for me. I think part of my trouble with the quiz is how abstract the questions are. “Do you like shortcuts?” Well, I dont know, quiz, what on earth is the CONTEXT? I understand why it’s written that way, but I do wish it was a bit more choose-your-own-adventure, handing me scenarios instead of philosophical abstraction.

You could be a Bird primary.

• When you’re not sure what’s the right thing to do, what do you turn to?

Research, and talking to my people, and then I think about it a bit. Or I just go with my gut and try to figure it out later. Either way I will spend a lot of time thinking about it, either trying to choose or trying to parse the choice I made.

Yeah, you might have to puzzle out which of these is the model yourself. This is a pretty subtle distinction. @wisteria-lodge and I both have posts about this. The appropriate tags on my blog are #ravenclaw primary and #gryffindor primary –if you can get Tumblr to function as intended (mobile search is very very flaky), those should get you the info you want, along with lots of accounts from other people Sorting themselves.

I’m starting to lean towards Bird for you, actually. But again, this is one pair that can be hard to tell apart, and sometimes it gets harder the closer you look at it. Maddening.

• Would you feel worse abandoning a stranger in need or turning your back on your closest friend?

Another one where I want context. If we’re talking identical scenarios – say, they’re drowning – I’d save my friend over someone else, except for maybe a small child… maybe? Honestly I’d probably try to save both and end up dying. But I do prioritize and I’d help my friend over a stranger, sans specific extenuating circumstances on the part of said stranger.

Once again, I don’t think you’re a Snake. I think you’re a Lion with loyalty baked into your intuition, or a Bird who’s picked up some Snakey philosophy.

• After spending some time trying to decide between two options, you are convinced that A is the right thing to do. The people around you, though, are just as convinced that it’s B. How do you feel?

Like I haven’t explained well enough, because they’re not getting why my opinion is the best one. Seriously though, it would make me wonder if I missed something, and I’d probably spend more time talking and researching to compensate. On the other hand… context… am I choosing colleges here (yes, folks, give me your input!) or whether or not to get an abortion (where I would value the input of those directly connected to me, but in the end it’s 100% my choice and those who disagree can eff off.)

When you’re choosing a college, you’re making a tactical decision, not a moral one. Gathering information from others is a Bird secondary thing: you’re doing research.

When you’re making a moral decision, that’s where your primary is involved, and here your answer is strongly Lion.

[I’m skipping a few of the next questions because they don’t give strong information for you specifically. Mostly what they get at is, you’re not a Badger, especially not an unhealthy Badger.]

• Does your internal moral compass know something you don’t?

Well… maybe? I feed a lot of stuff into my brain, and I don’t always know what I think until the words have fallen out of my mouth.

I gotta say, I’m a Bird primary and this sounds terrifying to me. Sometimes I need to write about something before my opinion fully forms, but I write and think so much because I don’t trust myself to talk about it until I’ve poked the issue a bunch on my own.

The only exception is that there are a few people who will take me at my word if I say I haven’t made up my mind about an issue yet, and will listen to me debate it with myself, without judging me for not immediately agreeing with the stance they’ve already taken.

Not everyone is the same, of course, but this answer is a very Lion one.

• If you get a chance to make the world a better place, you have to pursue it– even at the expense of your happiness and personal relationships. Do you think this is a true statement?

If I could throw myself into a volcano to fix everything that is wrong with the world, I would cry and hug everybody I love and regret the hell out of what I was about to do to them and then chuck myself in the damn volcano. I think not doing so would be more selfish.

That is... a totally different thing than this question asked! 😂

However, you've established in previous questions (some of which were cut for length) that you don't feel responsible for fixing/changing the world as a moral imperative, so your answer to this is actually more interesting, lol.

I don't know what it actually says about your Sorting, but I'm leaving it in because it made me laugh.

• Do you think you’re a good person?

Another easy one. Define good! I try to be, within my own belief systems. But I know a lot of people who would not think I’m a good person, because in their belief systems I’m not. I think some of those people are good people, I think some are bad people. Life is complex. I do my best.

This is a pretty Birdy answer. You keep going back and forth! :p I'm probably going to end up leaving you with an ambiguous answer, huh?

If you're a burned Lion, you sound awfully chill about it and you use your ridiculously strong Bird model in an unusually healthy way, for a Lion. Lots of Lions with Bird models really struggle to reconcile the different priorities.

If you're a Bird, you have a ridiculously strong Lion model that seems to actually override your Bird sometimes--but Bird systems are complex and can include weird recursive rules like "in this situation, this other Primary is more right so we use that." Also, your understanding of your system seems more hands-off than a lot of Birds.

• It’s important to do the right thing, even when it feels wrong.

…yeeeeeees…. but. Why does it feel wrong? I would want to investigate that before doing the thing, because if it feels wrong, maybe I’m missing something that my subconscious caught. If I investigate that and am sure about the right, I think… I don’t know. I’m not sure I could do something I felt super icky about even if it was quote-unquote right?

Oh hey, that's my approach to Lion primary too. One point for Bird + loud Lion model?

By now I bet you either have a strong feeling about which of the options I've narrowed down is you, or you'll think about it and go back and pore over the archives here and on the other Sorting blogs. And then you'll think about which approach you took and what kind of a hint that is, which is basically meta-meta-analysis. Except now I've written this and you've read it, so you'll be wondering how reading this will affect your judgment, so it's meta-meta-meta-analysis now.

...I'll stop. 😉

Secondaries

Future Paint here. Tumblr discarded the ENTIRE second half of my response to this post, because I saved it and then hit post without refreshing the page, so it posted the old version, because of course it did.

The tl;dr is that I believe anon to be a rapid-fire Bird secondary with a Lion model.

Brb while I reconstruct this post.

• Do you like going into situations with a plan?

• When you spot a metaphorical obstacle in your path, what do you do?

I would love to, and some situations I do– job interviews, for example – but sticking to a plan is not my strong suit. I can follow a schedule, to some degree, and I can kind of make plans… but then I trip up because how can I account for all contingencies? So I usually end up chucking the plan and YOLOing my way through something on a wave of accumulated knowledge and practice experience.

Not all Birds are big planners. The defining thing is preparation, and that can mean hoarding skills, knowledge, tools and contacts, not just making plans and decisions in advance. A Bird might, for example, decide not to schedule their vacation, and instead read a couple travel guides before they go but wing it when they're there.

This question is one of those where I’d love a less abstract scenario. Because… it depends. In a video game I’ll usually go around. In real life I’ll stop and panic for a minute or a day, then get up and deal with whatever needs dealing with. Unless its a super immediate issue, and then I’m in the middle of it already and have to put off my existential crisis until later (see prior example of “breaking up a dogfight by sticking my arm betwixt them,” see also “i spent much of my teens rolling out of bed at 3am and getting dressed to go help with a foal delivery and I didn’t really start thinking until like twenty minutes after we arrive and start dealing with shit.” Like, I was making decisions and thinking about things, but… its different. They’re not reasoned choices, they’re “this has to be dealt with NOW so do what you can and sort it out later.”)

• Do you like to gather all possible information before making a decision?

I guess I land on needing to understand your problems. You can’t put them off forever, but if you’ve got the time to do some research and contemplation aforehand, that seems like the better choice.

I need you all to know that I didn't cut this dogfight story--I'm not depriving you of whatever wild ride anon had, it's just as much of a Noodle Incident to me as it is to you. However. I don't think I need to argue *too* much that anon has a Lion model.

• Is knowing things or knowing people more useful when solving problems?

Another tricky one, because I think all the answers are correct. I do like to know what’s going on, but at a certain point that IS just stalling. But! It’s true that making decisions without understanding the full picture CAN really mess you up! But it’s ALSO true that, in many situations, I can change my mind if I learn more. I think I lean towards doing All the Research before making a choice, but I’m pretty sure that’s largely a procrastination tactic.

Birrrrd.

Both. Ideally, one would know a range of People who know/have many Things. I’m a big fan of bartering my own skills and knowledge in return for those of other people – for example I am the go-to research person, because I’m pretty good at sourcing info and condensing it into “here’s what you ought to know, here are your options, and here’s where you can go for more information,” a thing which I do freely for my family. In return they do things I can’t or don’t want to, like my taxes or getting things off high shelves or making travel plans or whatnot.

• When your plan fails, what do you do?

I’m better at accumulating knowledge than connections, but I think the right connections are more often useful than said knowledge.

As @wisteria-lodge has said before, some Birds accumulate contacts the same way they gather other tools. They like the be the person to say, "I know a guy."

You're VERY clearly not a Badger. I've cut all the questions that were like "do you do [Badger Thing]" and you were like "NO" so. I don't think you'll need convincing on this point lol

See above… panic then act, unless I don’t have time, in which case act and then panic. Solve the immediate problems, clear some space to breathe, then deal with the rest.

• Do you collect things? Facts, objects, hobbies?

……. do links full of interesting things I fully intend to get around to reading and understanding someday count?

…yeah, this is where I take a look around at my books, games, Interesting Facts, various half-compentent hobby activities, and enduring rage that I cannot possibly know All The Things because I am a mortal subject to the finite bounds of my life and acknowledge that yes. I hoard the SHIT out of both physical and intellectual stuff.

• Do you ever study or plan excessively for things that aren’t useful? Just for fun?

I’m torn between yes, and yes but they have a purpose. I do enjoy learning, i was always good in school, when I could be bothered to care. There are a few topics I enjoy for their own sake – language and history and anything world-building, really, anything to do with who we are and how we got there. But I won’t usually go in depth; most things I skim enough to understand the basic concept and move on, leaving those things as cocktail facts. “Oh, you’re an astronomer focusing on the moons of Jupiter? I read $JupiterFact a while back, what are your thoughts?”

• Do you act differently in different groups? Does it bother you, if you do?

Like, I dont care about the moons of Jupiter unless Titan or Europa or whichever turns out to have life, but space is neat and I’d be excited by that conversation and I’m intrigued by the concepts even if i don’t have the inclination to deep-dive the topic.

These 3 question/answer pairs explain pretty clearly why I think anon is a Bird secondary...

Not very often, and not much. I absolutely utilize code-switching, but I’ve felt bad about not opening my mouth at times when I worked at a place that assumed I was a good little Christian white girl… I’m usually too afraid of repercussions to say anything, but I remember my supervisor saying an atheist billboard was “too much” and I just said “no, of course it isnt” and we gave each other a look like “… well this isn’t good…”

• When solving problems, is your first reaction seeing what “tools” you have in your pockets?

In general though, I’ll use a mask when I need to but I’m just kinda… me.

...and this was what cleared up the Lion secondary model for me.

• When you are deciding how to react to a situation, are your choices most affected by internal (how you feel, what you think, what you want) or external inputs (what’s happening around you)?

…I’m really not sure. I don’t think i actively assess the tools, physical or mental, that I have to hand? I generally know if I DON’T have the resources to deal with something, but if i do have them, I just do the thing and don’t think about it.

That's normal. You just know your toolset well enough that you don't have to think about it. Some Birds don't, or their toolset is eclectic enough (or even granular enough; try remembering all the books you've read that are relevant to a given research paper topic) that they forget what they have.

I think if I knew what I felt, I’d be happy deciding based on internal things, but I don’t know that I trust myself enough.

This answer seems more relevant to your primary. Might be Burned Lion primary peeking through.

And that puts me at a hatstall again.

Sorry for the bombardment, but it seemed like this would be relevant. I know I prefer more info to less, when I’m trying to help someone figure things out, so… words. Many, many words. Thrown at you. Mea culpa.

Hope you don't mind my cherrypicking! This must have been a ton of work for you to write, and I threw a bunch of it away 😭

(Only sort of, I did read it all first.)

In conclusion

Primary: either burned Lion + healthy Bird model, or Bird + loud loud Lion model.

Secondary: rapid-fire Bird with Lion model.

Hope that helps!

#sortinghatchats #paint speaks #submission #gryffindor primary #ravenclaw primary #gryffindor primary model #ravenclaw primary model #burned gryffindor primary #ravenclaw secondary #gryffindor secondary model

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buckyreaderrecs · 5 years ago

Text

Bucky Barnes and the Girl With Too Much Power: Chapter 4/?

Summary: Nobody knows about your power. You’ve never really wanted to use it, let alone hurt someone with it. But, someone has figured you out, and now they’re following you. There’s only one place you can go for help - The Avengers. Good news is they’re good people. Bad news is your power is entirely relevant to soft, sad, recovering, broody Bucky Barnes. Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3.

Chapter 4: You have to leave behind the life you knew.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes/Reader Characters: Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov, Sam Wilson, Tony Stark, Wanda Maximoff, Peter Parker Additional tags: Bucky needs a hug, recovering Bucky, mostly canon compliant (Infinity War and Endgame didn’t happen, Stark Tower still exists), angst, possible future smut (who knows, not me), mutual pining, reader has powers / enhanced!reader, she/her pronouns, more tags/characters to be added with future chapters

Notes: I haven’t updated this fic in months and monthssss. Let me know if there are any continuity errors, and if this is still a fic worth me plugging away at. Thank you for any and all support! xo Rhi

Bucky Barnes and the Girl With Too Much Power Chapter 4/?

There was nothing comforting about having Stark-employed agents tailing you. Logically you knew that besides maybe a well-placed and patient sniper, nobody would be able to get close enough to hurt you. Not with spiders and witches and falcons watching over you. Certainly not with the last remaining Howling Commandos on your side.

Although you couldn't see him, even when you tried to covertly spot him, you could feel Bucky. You could feel him watching you and you knew it was him because it wasn't like before. It didn't make you feel sick with dread.

All of that was probably in your head though.

More tangible aspects of the situation were the beads of sweat rolling down your spine and pooling in the small of your back. Very real was the awkward pace you were keeping - definitely faster than a casual walk but a solid attempt to appear calm and normal.

It had been decided that you would walk the entire way home. It was doable, but you'd usually catch the bus. The people who wanted you would have to see the future to know when and where you'd catch a bus, but that wasn't outside the realm of possibility. Not anymore. So, you walked for 40 minutes.

…

Unless he wanted you to see him, Bucky Barnes was invisible. He'd always been good at camouflage, but programming by Hydra included 'how to disappear 101.' And under your power, it was like that again. Not a single soul saw Bucky as he followed you block by block. There wasn't even a gust of wind left in his wake to alert people that someone… something, had gone by.

Entirely focussed and keen eyed, Bucky watched your strange gait. If there was no power clouding his mind, he would have smirked a little; even Hydra couldn't take the sass out of him.

After he climbed through an unlocked bedroom window and landed on the floor behind you, Bucky stood up straight at attention. You were on your hands and knees, pulling things out of the bottom of a closet. There was a duffle bag in there somewhere, you were sure.

"Yes!" you whispered to yourself, standing and spinning around. The yelp that escaped your mouth sounded through Bucky's earpiece to the other Avengers situated in, on, and around your apartment building.

"Buck?" Steve asked, muscles already poised to move.

"Package is safe," Bucky replied, no emotion in his voice. The lack of it went unnoticed by Peter Parker - who was still too new and in awe to know Bucky beyond reputation and limited interaction. He didn't mean to, but Bucky had avoided Peter; he reminded him too much of pre-serum Steve. However, Wanda, Sam, and Steve all heard the tone, and all frowned to themselves from their respective positions. Nobody did anything though.

"You scared me," you said as soon as you yelped. When he didn't move, speak, or even shrug it off, you were reminded of your spell. A small, sad, "Oh," was uttered. "Stop. You can stop your… mission," you ordered him.

It didn't work. Maybe it wasn't specific enough. Without a lot of practice, you really weren't good at using your power when you actually needed to. You realised that you shouldn't have given Bucky a complex and prolonged order in the elevator.

"Ah… Relax. Be yourself…?" you tried. Bucky's blue eyes simply remained fixed on you and he went to speak, but you cut him off. "Oh! Ignore my previous order. Do not… feel compelled… to… Fuck. What did I tell you to do?"

"Make sure I get to my house safely. Help me get what I need, and bring me back here," Bucky said, repeating your command word-for-word. It was unnerving.

"Yeah… Don't… Don't do that. Unless you want to. Only do that if you want to."

When his posture gave (by only the slightest amount), you breathed out. It had worked, but you weren't sure exactly which part.

"Bucky?" you asked gently. Bucky smiled and it felt like rain in a drought. "You okay?"

He nodded, being much more used to giving non-verbal responses. Sam's voice was in his head though, encouraging him to speak, pushing his recovery forward faster than Steve's love alone could do. "Yeah, I'm fine…"

You could hear it in his slow drawl- that slight cognitive lag people sometimes experienced after your power left their minds and they were free again.

"I'm sorry,"

"No, darling', you don't have to keep saying that. It's alright,"

"But-"

"Please," he interrupted. He shook his head slightly, but it was enough for you to see he didn't want to talk about it. "You did good,"

"I just… walked," you replied.

"Yeah, but that isn't easy when you think someone's about to kill ya,"

"Wow. Reassuring. Thanks," you said sarcastically, moving around him to put the bag on the bed.

Bucky chuckled, then sat down next to the bag.

"Aren't you gonna, like, check the cupboards and stuff?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Christ, how unprofessional do you think we are?" From the dresser you were digging through, you looked over at him and shrugged in confusion. "Stark had people in here as soon as he figured out where here was,"

"Guessing that was pretty quick?"

"Yep," Bucky replied, popping the P sound purposefully.

"So, random people have been going through my stuff?" Looking around, nothing seemed out of place. It was unnerving, actually.

"Not random. People Stark trusts,"

"Do you trust them?"

But he hesitated and he saw that you'd seen. He couldn't but smile a little. "I don't not trust them."

Thinking for a couple seconds, you decided on, "Probably fair…"

Bucky nodded, and you continued to pack. He decided it wasn't worth telling you that in the very early hours of the morning, after the city was asleep and just before the sun woke up, he'd gone to your apartment too. Clues in the cupboards. Secrets under the seats. Anything really. Steve had been awake when Bucky slipped out. He'd thought maybe Bucky was checking for Hydra. Or possibly, Steve hoped, his best friend was driven by the fact that you looked a lot like a couple of the girls Bucky had charmed before the war meant anything to them.

Bucky followed you as you went room by room, filling the duffle, then a backpack, then an empty shopping bag.

"You planning on never coming back here?" he asked, mostly joking. When you stopped, moving like a deer in the headlights, Bucky realised. "Oh…"

"Am I? Am I coming back?" you asked, on the cusp of hopeful. The glimmer of it in your eyes killed Bucky.

"I don't know," he answered, voice a little too soft to be comforting.

Looking around your apartment, you tried to look brave. "I guess… it doesn't really matter. Hadn't really built much of a life anyway,"

"Of course it matters, Y/N."

Before you could say anything else, there was a loud knock on your door, followed by the shrill voice of your neighbour. "Y/N?! Did I just hear ya come home?! Where've ya been?!"

You and Bucky turned to each other at the same time, both expecting the other to do something.

"She's not gonna go away," you whispered.

"Make her," Bucky said.

"I don't want to use-"

"No," Bucky interrupted. "Just talk to her…" His tone implied the 'obviously.'

As soon as you swung the door open, Barb went to step in.

"Ah, sorry, Barb. Bit of a mess in here… Did you need… something?" you said, stopping her.

She eyed you suspiciously, tried to look past you. "You didn't come home last night,"

"Stayed at a friend's,"

"That's lovely… Which friend? That nice Lisa girl?"

"No, um, new friend. James."

Bucky almost laughed.

"A boy? I didn't realise you were dating." She emphasised the last word like it was taboo.

Normally, you'd be better at dealing with Barb; she meant well, but was incredibly nosey. Normally, you didn't answer all her rapid-fire questions immediately, but you were nervous.

"It's not like that. He's just a friend,"

"That you spent the night with,"

"Barb, it's 2020. We can be friends with guys now,"

"So defensive, Y/N! Must really like him," she said with a knowing smile.

"I'm just on my way out, actually,"

"Such a social butterfly all of a sudden. I was just coming over to see if you're alright,"

"I'm alright. And I appreciate it. I really do. I'm just… a bit busy right now,"

"Alright, alright," Barb said, holding her hands up in surrender. "I know when I'm not welcome-"

"No, Barb, it's not-"

"No, no, it's fine." She took a step backwards.

"Barb-"

"When will you be home then?"

Fuck.

You tried to look over your shoulder into your apartment as casually as possible. Glancing at Bucky, all he could offer was a shrug. You realised then that you would have to lie, really lie.

"Actually… Might be gone for a while. Got family upstate that need me."

Barb was quiet for a second, searching through everything she knew about you. "I hope everyone's alright," she settled on. She wanted to say that she didn't know you had family upstate… or any family at all, for that matter.

You'd lived in the apartment complex for five or so years. Barb had always looked out for you, especially since her kid went off to college. She'd met a couple of your friends, heard about work, but never once had you spoken about family. Barb hadn't pressed, although she very much wanted to. Something inside her was keeping her from doing so.

"Yeah, yep… They will be," you replied, nodding.

"Okay… Well, you'll have to come over for tea when you get back?"

"I will. Thanks, Barb."

She left.

Bucky watched you close the door, lock it out of habit.

Your eyes were full of tears. "I can't come back here," you whispered to him. "If someone is after me, I can't bring them here,"

"They probably already know where 'here' is," Bucky replied, almost immediately knowing it was the wrong thing to say. "But," he quickly added. "If they were gonna do anything, they'd done that already."

Bucky didn't believe that to be true at all. More likely, the people following you, upon discovering your sudden disappearance, would try to draw you out. If they knew Barb was a friend - it could make her a target.

You watched Bucky's expression. You read the lie. You didn't need to force the truth out though. You let the fact that he was trying to reassure you, reassure you.

"We'll keep surveillance here."

You nodded, moved slowly to continue packing.

Bucky stayed quiet, watched, tried to remember all the details of your apartment. Maybe they'd come in useful at some point.

"Okay, I'm ready," you announced.

"There's a car downstairs waiting for you," Bucky said.

"You're not coming?"

"I'll go out the way I came," he answered. When you didn't move, he added, "You'll be okay… Steve and everyone… they'll look after you." He wasn't lying that time. "Go."

Slinging bags over your shoulder, you nodded and left Bucky Barnes in the apartment you would never return to.

What would happen to the rest of your stuff? Would Stark pay for a storage unit? Pay your rent? What about work?

By the time you got to the car, you were again, on the verge of tears.

Upstairs, from a window of your apartment, Bucky watched you leave. He made a note to tell someone to teach you not to get into cars without checking if it was safe first. You hadn't even asked to see the driver's ID.

"She's aboard," Bucky relayed into coms.

"Copy that," Steve's voice came back. "Buck?"

Bucky was in his head.

For longer than Steve liked.

Chapter 5 is coming soon...

Tag list for this fic (open): @animegirlgeeky @brighteyedmichelle @howthehellisbucky @bitterstar88 @thatweirdwalangpake

Tag list for all my work (open): @bubbabarnes @browngirlmagic @lookalivefrosty @aynaraxas @vibraniumwitch @the--sad--hatter @fairislesheets - still won’t let me tag you?

#mine #Bucky Barnes #Bucky Barnes fanfic #Bucky Barnes imagine #Bucky Barnes x Reader #Bucky Barnes/Reader #Bucky Barnes x You #Bucky Barnes/You #Bucky Barnes x Y/N #Bucky Barnes reader insert #Marvel #Marvel fic #BB and the Girl w Too Much Power

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hurt-spock · 5 years ago

Text

Enforced Rest

McCoy had thought once they got Jim back and were back on the ship everything would be okay.

He was wrong. Jim had experienced a whole new life while he'd been there. And it hadn't been a matter of days, he had lived it for months. A new life, a sense of happiness and completion that he hadn't felt before. He told McCoy it was the happiest he had ever been.

So when Jim had asked McCoy to let Spock know he needed some time and to continue as he was, McCoy's heart dropped. He couldn't tell a grieving Jim that he was needed on the bridge right now, that Spock had run himself and the ship to breaking point, literally in the ship's case.

Instead, he nodded and told his friend to let him know if there was anything he could do for him. Jim had merely walked away, not saying a word. Not wanting to let any of the crew know that Spock wasn't at his best right now, McCoy called Spock down to sickbay. He arrived quickly, looking a little stricken and McCoy noted that he looked around the room before settling.

“I'm sorry, Jim's fine,” he said, realising his mistake.

Despite the distress it had caused, Spock nodded in understanding. “That is quite alright. How can I help you, Doctor?”

“Jim's quite upset as you can understand. He wants you to stay running the ship for the moment. Honestly, he's not fit for duty right now.”

“Of course,” Spock replied understanding.

“I don't think he even noticed we're on impulse power,” McCoy said. He looked over Spock surreptitiously while the Vulcan was distracted by a nurse passing by. Jim wasn't the only one not fit for duty, in McCoy's opinion. If it hadn't been for the ship's vulnerable state, he would have ordered Spock to stand down too.

“Grief will do that to a person,” Spock lamented. “Was there anything else?”

“That's it,” McCoy said. There was nothing he could do for Spock. No adrenaline boost that he'd have been able to issue had it been Kirk in the same situation. He just had to hope that Spock's amazing stamina held out.

Spock heard the door to the turbo-lift open and turned his head slightly.

He recognised the Captain's footfall and knew it was him without turning. The footsteps came beside him and waited.

“Captain,” Spock said.

Kirk was watching from the viewscreen at the ship lazily sailed along. He frowned, confused for a moment.

“We have only impulse power, Captain.”

“Well, is Mister Scott sorting the matter?” Kirk demanded.

“Yes Sir, he is doing all he can to rectify the situation.” Spock insisted. “Mister Scott was well aware of the dangers and consequences of the actions of my orders while in command. He did well to inform me of those dangers, however, I-”

“You did this to my ship? And didn't even think it was worth mentioning?” The gentle fury in those words silenced everyone on the bridge as they all stayed alert to Kirk's mood, working diligently so his ire didn't end up directed at them.

“I believe I just mentioned it, Captain. This is the first time you have returned for duty for me to mention it.” Spock wasn't wrong but the tension in the room seemed to increase dramatically with the words. Spock vacated the Captain's chair as Kirk loomed over him more than ever. When the science officer at Spock's station went to give up the seat, Spock beckoned them back in place.

“My door wasn't locked, Spock,” Kirk spat out, reclaiming his seat. It was a power move as much as anything. To remind everyone who was in charge.

Kirk never liked to be challenged and Spock knew that Kirk would want to prove his relevance and command position after having been absent for so long. Spock would rather that be directed at him than the more sensitive human crew members.

“Seeing as you caused the issue, Mister Spock, why don't you report to engineering and assist Mister Scott in fixing it,” Kirk ordered.

Spock knew, as well as Scott, that there was no fixing their issue. Kirk, despite wanting to regain his authority over the crew had still neglected to ask what the issue was. If he had asked, he too would have known the issue was not one that could be fixed. In Spock's opinion, and given his overtly emotional displays, Spock did not think Kirk was fit to return to duty. However, that wasn't a matter to discuss currently. “Yes, Captain,” Spock said and left the bridge.

The crew on the bridge remained tense and a few of them shared concerned looks to themselves. Uhura was the one who felt the need to say something in Spock's defense. “Captain Kirk, with all due respect Sir, I believe that Mister Spock should not-”

“Lieutenant, when I ask for an opinion from my Communications Officer, it will likely be about a communication issue. Not about how to manage your crew. Understood?”

“Yes Sir,” she replied. She knew there was no sense arguing with Kirk when he was like this, but that didn't mean she had to like it.

McCoy didn't expect Spock to stop by sickbay.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“I have just encountered the Captain on the bridge. I am unsure that he should be on duty. He seems overly emotional and looking for conflict,” Spock informed him.

“Chew you out did he?” McCoy asked and Spock nodded. McCoy sighed. He didn't want Spock to be Captain's punchbag but on the plus side, Spock could get the rest he needed now and that was something. “Don't you worry about it, and get some rest, I'll keep an eye on him. In fact, I'll head up there in a few minutes.”

Spock knew McCoy misunderstood the situation and thought that Spock was relieved of duty and was heading to his quarters. If he told McCoy what Kirk had ordered, the Doctor would make matters worse and he didn't think that was what Jim needed right then. He nodded at McCoy and left, reassured that at least help was on the way for Kirk. He felt the full exhaustion hit him for a moment as he let his control slide for the briefest moment before he got himself back under control.

Engineering was next for him and he headed straight there.

McCoy went to the bridge in the guise of boredom.

He noted how prickly Kirk was and even McCoy's own attempts to tame Kirk's bad mood fell flat. It resulted in Kirk ranting about how the ship was a sitting target, powerless as it was and that he had expected more of his crew. He let the whole bridge revel in a large dose of shared guilt before he called Scotty in engineering to ask for an update.

Scotty was casual about the whole thing. There was nothing he could do and he knew it. Kirk mistook this for a bad attitude about it and demanded that he run every test he could think of in order to get the ship running again. He tried to object but Kirk cut off communications with him, ending it with wanting to only hear from him once they had exhausted every possibility he could think of, no matter how long it took.

McCoy was disturbed by Jim's behaviour but excused himself and decided he would pay him a visit after his shift finished in private. Things might go a little better that way.

Spock didn't know what was happening, just that everything seemed a little foggy to him and Mister Scott was walking him down towards his quarters as though escorting an intoxicated friend home from a much regaled 'earth night out'.

Despite himself he could not resist and had to endure the odd looks that the pair received walking along as they were.

Spock felt as though he were walking against a flow of water, each step seemed to be hard work and he couldn't understand what was happening to him.

“Come on, Mister Spock,” Scotty encouraged brightly. “Not much further to go.”

When they turned the last corner before getting to the officer's quarters, McCoy spotted the pair and came over to them. “What's going on here?” he asked, instinctively reaching out to assist Spock who was clearly the one who was struggling.

“Not exactly sure, Doctor. Mister Spock was helping me in engineering-”

“What? You were supposed to be resting,” McCoy interrupted, jabbing a finger into Spock's chest despite himself.

“Aye, and the Captain ordered him to assist me in trying to fix an issue that we can't fix! But he won't listen,” Scotty explained. “Anyway, he fell down and didn't seem like he could get up so well. Or.... speak. So I thought I'd bring him to his quarters and call you,” Scotty finished.

McCoy shot an apologetic look to the engineer. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I'll take it from here.”

“You sure. He's heavier than he looks that one,” Scotty said.

Despite his condition, Spock shot what he hoped was a glare at the engineer. But he was too tired for words.

McCoy helped Spock as they made slow progress towards Spock's quarters. “Is this what happens when a Vulcan reaches its limits?”

Spock's answer was for his legs to buckle underneath him, and McCoy couldn't stop him from falling to the ground. A couple of ensigns walked past and gave an odd look to their First Officer sat on the floor. One of them looked back, guiltily and addressing the Doctor asked: “Do you need-”

“It's fine, I've got this under control, thanks,” McCoy said. He gave Spock a few moments to sit before he asked “You think you can make it the rest of the way?”

Spock gave a tug which McCoy assumed was him attempting to get back to him feet. It got Spock nowhere and McCoy heaved him upwards with great effort, muttering how right Scotty had been.

Spock felt a new sense of guilt hit him but his pragmatic self told him there was nothing he could do about the fact that he had much greater bone density. He put on more of an effort to support himself and soon enough they were inside his quarters. Spock grasped onto furniture to assist him over to the bed where McCoy helped him lay.

Without a word, Spock allowed himself to be sucked into a deep sleep.

Kirk had expected McCoy to ask him to come to Spock's quarters, but he quickly guessed why.

He'd called down to Engineering a short while ago and found out that Spock wasn't down there any longer. He was pretty sure that Spock had gone to visit McCoy to tell him what Kirk was doing and they were going to ambush him in private. He was ready for it. He went in ready to fight and it was knocked out of him the second he got there.

McCoy had a chair pulled up beside Spock's bed, monitoring the Vulcan. He couldn't be sick or he'd be in sickbay, Kirk knew that much. “What's going on?” he asked, keeping the harsh edge to his voice.

“Why don't you take a seat,” McCoy offered.

Kirk relented and took another seat without moving it closer to Spock. “Is this going to take long?” Kirk asked.

“I know you're upset Jim. That's why I've left a lot of this slide. I can't imagine how hard that was for you down there, but we went through something up here as well. We didn't know where you were Jim. You could have been dead for all we knew, and because of the asteroid, we had to leave you. Spock had to choose to leave you.”

“I would have done the same thing,” Kirk said.

“Of course, but it doesn't make it easier, does it? The guilt. He pushed so hard to try and stop that asteroid colliding with the planet. He pushed the ship as much as he could desperate to try and solve the issue as best he could. And he failed. We were virtually stranded, low power. It took 59 days for us to get back to you. He wouldn't eat or sleep because he was trying to figure out how to save that planet, but he did it. He worked out the symbols, saved you and the planet. But what did it cost him?”

“He was fine on the bridge earlier.”

That was it. McCoy was through being nice. “No, he wasn't! He was holding himself together so that you had the time you needed to heal despite never once looking outside of your self to see if your crew was okay. Well, he wasn't okay. He needed you. And you failed him.”

Kirk was taken aback by McCoy's harsh words. The anger. “Bones, I-”

“I have nothing else to say to you right now, Captain. If you don't mind, I'm going to monitor my patient.” McCoy turned from Kirk and let him know that for now, the conversation was over.

Spock slept well for two hours before waking confused and groggy.

He wasn't sure why McCoy was in his quarters and, honestly, he couldn't remember why he was in his quarters but he knew this wasn't right. Engineering. He was supposed to be helping Mister Scott. The Captain had ordered him to help. He sat up swiftly, McCoy barely being able to stop him but Spock was weak and only managed a few steps before he found himself fighting a losing battle. McCoy wrestled him into a chair rather than having to lift him off of the floor again.

“I- I should be in engineering,” Spock said. He had got out of the habit of resting and now he'd had a little, he thought he was ready to go again.

“No, you're fine,” McCoy said. “But you can eat. It'll make you feel better.”

“I'm no-”

“And don't say you're not hungry! You haven't eaten in two months pretty much. Of course you're not hungry. Your body is used to you starving it.” Spock looked at McCoy with confused brown eyes. “Look, I can understand the need to keep going when your stressed and that for a Vulcan, the lack of sleep and food is a reasonable sacrifice for you. But that stress is over now. You can relax. You did your job and you did it well. Reset that brain back to normal.”

Spock stood up. “I need-”

But he didn't know what he needed. He needed to do something, to be useful. He couldn't just relax. There was always something to be done.

“Lay back down, okay?” McCoy insisted and guided Spock back to the bed. Spock let himself be led to the bed and sat but didn't lay.

McCoy's communicator sounded and he pulled it out. “McCoy,” he said. He was silent for a few seconds before he asked. “Is it an emergency?” He was quickly told about a medical emergency and knew he needed to attend to that first. “I'll be there in a minute,” he said and closed the communicator. “Spock, I have to go for a short while. I'll be back as soon as I can. Just get some rest, okay?”

Spock nodded and watched McCoy go. He stays there a moment before his brain latched onto what McCoy said. There was an emergency on the ship. There was no time to rest.

McCoy realised he had a problem with Spock when he returned after his trip to sickbay and found Spock had gone.

He used the ship computer and located him to an empty meeting room. Inside, he found Spock attempting to use the table to get himself up off the floor.

“What part of 'stay here' did you not understand?” McCoy asked.

“You never told me to stay, you told me to get some rest.”

“Well besides from being pedantic, Spock, this is not getting rest,”

“I could not rest,” Spock admitted.

“Then let me help you,” McCoy said. “Let's start by getting you off the floor, huh?” He grabbed hold of Spock under the arms and helped him sit in the chair. “This is what we're going to do. I'm going to get you something to eat. It'll give you a boost of energy. Your exhausted and at least for you, you're weak. That'll probably give you enough energy to be able to get you back to your quarters. Then, we can have a nice discussion about what it is I can do to help you, okay?”

Spock nodded even though McCoy knew he was reluctant. Spock never wanted to be in need but shit happened. He struggled and strained to help Spock up before he left to get something for Spock to eat. He grabbed the only sedative that he knew worked for Spock from sickbay and then headed back. He half expected Spock to have left but was pleased to see he had remained in place this time, although the thought crossed his mind that maybe Spock couldn't move right then.

Spock ate with all the enthusiasm of someone who was eating the last part of a six-course meal. McCoy encouraged him to eat what he could but didn't pressure him to eat any more than he was comfortable with. When Spock pushed the dish away slightly, McCoy knew he was done. He disposed of the bowl of food. “Okay, so, we just need to get you to your quarters and then you can get the rest you need,” McCoy said.

Spock went to answer but was interrupted by the door opening and Kirk stepping inside. He looked at the pair of them in turn and his expression went from remorse to confusion and then anger in quick succession. He scoffed loudly. “I actually believed you,” Kirk said, directing the comment to McCoy. “I actually thought you were being honest with me and I'd been a jerk and then I catch you have clandestine meetings? Maybe you preferred Spock's leadership to mine, huh Bones? Out with the old, in with the new?” Kirk ranted.

“You're ridiculous, Jim! Can you even hear yourself?”

Jim laughed in McCoy's face. “Oh c'mon Bones, you told me he was exhausted, and a few hours later he's looking fit as a fiddle about as far from his quarters as he can be. I'm not that surprised with you Bones, but I am with you, Spock. I thought you had some sense of decency.”

Spock didn't try and defend himself against Kirk's tirade, but once he was finished Spock merely said: “The doctor did not lie.”

“I want to know what's going on,” Kirk demanded.

“I understand now,” Spock said standing. He supported himself on the table as he stood up but did his best not to look weak. It was a matter of pride. “Your anger is with yourself. For what you lost, for the loss of an ordinary life over an extraordinary career. The loss of love, a woman, and a child. A family that you craved. Despite all that loss, it is easier for you to direct your anger out at us than carry it yourself. I understand, Jim.”

McCoy stepped towards Jim. “We're here for you, Jim. You can talk to us.”

“Are you staging some sort of intervention here?” he asked, exasperated.

McCoy's temper flared as quickly as Jim's at the Captain's inability to grasp the fact that this was about Spock and not him. “What is wrong with you Jim? There's no secret agenda here. Not everything is about you and quite frankly, I'm sick of explaining it to you. If I see more of this paranoid behaviour I'm going to-” But McCoy didn't get to finish that thought as Spock went crashing to the ground behind him.

McCoy and Kirk had carried Spock to sickbay. McCoy said that although he wasn't greatly concerned about Spock's condition, he did just need rest and food, sickbay was a lot closer than Spock's quarters.

McCoy could see guilt plainly visible of Jim's face and he insisted on staying with Spock while McCoy got some rest. He had three short hours before he relieved Jim, telling him that he needed his own rest to tend to the ship's needs. Kirk nodded sadly as he headed out, pausing at the door. “Do you think it would be okay if I stopped by after my shift?” he asked.

“Sure,” McCoy said. “But he'll likely be sedated. I want to make sure he gets the rest he needs this time. Sometimes that means taking drastic measures.”

Kirk nodded and hesitated. “He did this for me?”

McCoy knew what Jim was asking. “It's his job and he would die to carry out his duties to the best of his abilities, you know that.” Bones considered it a little more. “And besides from you, there was a planet of people that would have died.” McCoy sat down beside Spock's bed. “I don't think I helped much. I was on his case all the time. About leaving you on that planet about the asteroid. Scotty was pretty miffed about what he did to the ship, too. We all pushed him in different ways. And he did his best. He made the only decisions he could have made.”

“I just hope that he ends up understanding that,” Kirk said.

“He does. He was logical as ever. It's just when things aren't going how you'd hoped, you doubt whatever motivates you. Logic, love, fury.”

Kirk looked at the peacefully resting First Officer. “I'll sign him off duty for a week. If you need longer, you've got it.” Kirk turned to leave.

“Oh, and Jim? How about you come down to my office after your shift tomorrow and we can have a proper discussion about what happened to the two of you over the last couple of months. I think it might do some good.”

Jim smiled. “I think so too.” This time he left.

McCoy turned back to Spock checking the fluids were working correctly. He picked up the hypo ready to administer it.

“Really Doctor, is that quite necessary?” Spock asked.

McCoy pressed the hypo against Spock's neck. “You bet your ass it is.”

#Fanfic #star Trek #oneshot #Bones #McCoy #Kirk #Spock #friendship #hurt/comfort #sortof #hurt!Spock

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xmxisxforxmaybe · 5 years ago

Text

Decryption_Error: “Darlene”

Summary: Amidst an unsettling arrest at CIStech, Elliot decides it’s time for Y/N to meet his sister, Darlene. He’s also ready to acknowledge his feelings, and afterward, Y/N takes it a step further to offer Elliot some more consistency in his life.

Story Summary, “The Server Room, Part I”, “The Server Room, Part II” “The Long Weekend, Part I”, “The Long Weekend, Part II”, “The Aftermath”, “Undecided”, **“Decided”, “Spooked”, **“Fourth of July, Part I”, *”Fourth of July, Part II”

Word Count: 7600

Tags: @sherlollydramoine @rami-malek-trash @teamwolf2411 @limabein @txmel @alottanothing @ouatlovr @backoftheroomandnotbelonging @moon-stars-soul @free-rami @ramimedley @hopplessdreamer @sweet-charmie

*Updated tags--If you want added or I’ve missed your request, let me know.

Warnings: Mild sexual content, mild description of a panic attack

“How could this have happened?” I asked more to myself than to Alison Shaye, head of HR, as I rubbed my temples and looked over the substantial brief one more time.

It was mid-August and the summer heat had reached a sweltering climax. It hadn’t rained since the day Elliot and I drove back from my parents’ house in Greenwich, and the city was collectively frustrated by the hot weather.

Everyone except Elliot and me—we had been wrapped up in one another, running our new daily program which now included seeing each other almost every night. Even though Elliot hadn’t yet returned my pronouncement of love, I could tell there was something different in the way he looked at me since that night on the floor of my closet.

As promised, I didn’t push. I never asked for more from him than he was willing to give. I still told Elliot how I felt when I felt it, and he answered me with a smile or with a head shake of disbelief.

And I let it be enough.

“He’s been selling our data for over two years—ever since he had to split the custody of his son with his ex-girlfriend,” stated Alison, yanking me back to the madness of my current situation.

“But it’s Colin. He’s an asshole, not a criminal.”

“Apparently he’s both,” Alison said in her colorless tone, showing for the first time I had ever seen, a less than professional impartiality.

“And the police were just sent this file? A neat little package of all that Colin’s been doing? This had to take months to put together—bank transactions, meeting dates, cell phone records, IP addresses, logins, everything.”

“So it seems. About a month ago, an attorney called to confirm Colin’s hire date, our company’s pay dates, and a few other simple employee identification questions. I didn’t think much of it because I assumed it had something to do with a custody suit. When I met with a detective last week for more thorough questioning, my confirmation of dates must have been the last thing they needed to make an arrest. Colin lawyered up, confessed, and took a deal. Didn’t even try to fight the allegations.”

“Damn,” I breathed, still in disbelief.

“Ms. Y/L/N? You need to head upstairs for your meeting.”

I stood up and thanked Alison. As she left, I steadied my nerves and gathered up my files. Since Precision Machining was our host company, its Board of Directors controlled us as well. Miles said I would occasionally be called in for meetings with them as the highest person at CIStech, but who knew my first meeting would be one about an employee caught committing insider trading?

I swiped my badge and rode the elevator to the second to last floor of our building. The vibe at the top is always different in any office building. Things are quiet, sterile, and there’s a general feeling of ill-ease, like no one wants to talk too loud or draw too much attention to what they are doing. Even the phones ring quietly on the top floor.

I checked in with the receptionist and she took me straight back to the board room. My father still retained his seat on the board, so I knew there would be at least one face in the room I could focus on as I faced the inquiry.

My eyes scanned the room and I couldn’t help but inwardly sigh at the sea of white, grizzled faces, only two women amongst them, and none of them with a welcoming expression.

I lifted my chin and walked quickly to the open seat at the end of the table, the chattering continuing as most of the members hadn’t noticed my entrance. Only when I was settled, my hands folded on the table and my breathing even, did I risk looking up to find my father’s face—his features etched into a mask of indifference until I locked eyes with him.

He was watching me, and when I met his gaze, his handsome face filled with concern.

“Oh—CIStech’s here,” the president of the board said when he noticed the addition of a body to the table.

The other board members grew quiet and turned in their highback, expensive leather chairs to face me. The table was steel, possibly something that had been done in one of the machining shops to add to the sterility of the room which contained nothing remarkable except for the window-lined walls that opened up to a glorious view of the city.

I looked around, making eye contact, knowing I had to project confidence. They were looking for someone to blame, and I was their best choice until I convinced them otherwise.

The president began the meeting by summarizing Colin’s offense. It was then that I learned Colin took a deal that sentenced him to six months in jail for securities fraud, plus a year and six months on probation. He defrauded Precision Machining of $450,000.

“I guess my question for Ms. Y/L/N, is how the hell did this happen?”

I explained my understanding of the police report, adding in relevant tech details. To finish, I added, “The truth of it is, Colin Greene used his position at CIStech to gather sensitive information he then sold on the dark web that resulted in his own financial gain.”

“How do we get that information back?”

Christ, I thought as I fought not to roll my eyes at the outdated question from someone who had no clue how the internet worked.

“There is no such thing as ‘getting back’ information once it’s been propagated online.”

“The more important question is,” spoke up the baldest, loudest man to my right, “how you stop this from happening again. Isn’t that what you do? Isn’t that what you have a whole company doing?”

“We work very hard to keep your information secure—”

“Damn good job, you did of it, too, tootsie,” spoke up an equally bald, but less loud board member who then shot my father a scathing glare before saying. “I don’t care that your dad’s sitting across from me. 450k is nothing, a drop in the bucket, but what happens when techs like you and yours get greedy?”

“Colin’s arrest has proven there are consequences for this sort of crime—”

“Yes, if someone outside of your company reports them.”

I looked at the woman who spoke up, her mouth set in a firm line, her eyes staring at me with an unrelenting gaze.

“I understand your frustration, but I assure you we prevent far more—”

“That’s supposed to reassure us? It’s not an exaggeration when I speak on behalf of the board to say that we see your charts, your data analysis, and we have, until now, assumed it all correlates to the near-perfect record of cybersecurity this company has maintained. But this event casts serious doubt on your ability to protect us against . . . ourselves.”

She had a point, and for the first time I faltered, looking down at the thick police report, realizing I did indeed fail to stop something dire from happening within the company. I glanced to my father and he gave me a small nod of encouragement, looking at me with eyes the exact shade of mine.

I took a deep breath and began again. I fielded questions for well over an hour, answering every concern and theoretical potential fix the board members threw at me until I had sated them. Though they were all wealthy, many of them far worse people than Colin and with even less regard for the stockholders they served, they were no different than anyone else who wanted to have their voice heard. They felt vulnerable, something people in their position had the luxury of rarely feeling. Their reactions were out of fear of that vulnerability, so I tried my best to alleviate it.

And this time, it worked.

“Thank you for your time, Ms. Y/L/N. We will expect an update on your aforementioned new protocols at next month’s board meeting. You did say you’d have data by then?

“Yes.”

“Thank you.”

I gathered my files and left the board room, only to be greeted by Miles who had been waiting to see me.

“How’d it go in there?”

“Well, appalling to start, but I think I brought them around.”

“We need to talk about Colin’s replacement.”

“Talk or tell?”

“Tell,” Miles said, walking me to the elevator, getting in, and selecting his floor.

We rode down the few floors in silence and I followed him past his secretary and into his office, a corner office with a perfect view—just what Miles had always wanted.

“Nice digs,” I said, smiling a little.

“Damn right.”

“This is going to be painful, isn’t it?”

“Certain individuals within the company feel it would be best to put someone of a particular pedigree and integrity in Colin’s office. They want to send the message that everyone is replaceable . . . with someone better.”

“Okay?”

“Ali Olayan.”

I snorted, surprised, but not actually. I moved to sit down in one of the comfortable chairs across from Miles’ desk and I crossed my legs before tossing my files onto the seat next to me. I rested my hands on top of my knees and looked up.

“And if I say no?”

“You can’t say no. Not if you want this company to continue to take you seriously as Y/N Y/L/N and not just as daddy’s little girl.”

“You remember what Ali did?”

Miles rolled his eyes before continuing, “You made the choice to get involved with Alderson knowing the possibility of a move like this. When we kept Corey and Ali, it would only be up or out for them. It was a 50/50 chance, Y/N. You bet the house, and you lost.”

I looked to the side to look out of Miles’ magnificent set of windows. For the first time, I wondered what it would be like to leave this world, to leave Wall Street and to never look back.

* * * * *

Elliot watched from the sofa as I stormed around my apartment, slamming the refrigerator door for the fifth time having not pulled a single thing out to eat or drink.

“I just can’t fucking believe this! How could I not have known Colin was selling off our data, fucking Martha Stewart insider trading horseshit right under my fucking nose!?”

I walked back the hall, turned around and came thumping back into the living room, circling the couch, ignoring Elliot’s alarmed expression. I slammed my hands on the counter and he jumped, finally tired of twisting to watch my movements, so he used the momentum to stand up.

Elliot was still dressed in his work clothes due to the forcefulness of my invitation to come home with me. Rarely, did we leave the office together, but I gave Elliot little choice today. Everyone on the floor, including JaLeah, watched with interest as I damn-near yanked him out of his chair and told him he was done for the day.

“Why—why are you so angry?” Elliot asked, his face filled with concern. “I thought you didn’t like Colin?”

I took a deep breath, glanced at Elliot, and decided to finally open a bottle of wine to take the edge off. I moved around the counter and fished out my corkscrew.

As I chose a bottle of wine from the little wire rack on my counter, I started to explain. “It’s not about Colin. Well, it is. But it’s more about who they want me to have replace him.”

“Oh,” Elliot said quietly.

“Yeah,” I said, sticking the screw into the cork of the wine bottle and twisting.

“Ali Olayan.”

“Oh,” Elliot said, his voice a lower and darker.

“And I wasn’t given a choice—it’s Ali . . . or me, essentially. Do you want any of this?” I asked as I reached for a wine glass.

“No.”

I pulled a single glass out of the cupboard and began to pour.

“If I comply and make it a smooth transition, I’ll keep the respect I’ve earned, the name I’ve made for myself. If I refuse, if I complicate this promotion, I may as well resign because everything I’ve worked for will be made into a mockery—daddy’s little girl, does exactly what she wants because she can. Because she’s so fucking privileged.”

I took a long drink and continued as Elliot’s eyes flicked between the counter and my face. “You should’ve seen the file this tipster compiled on Colin. It was a detective’s wet dream. Literally everything tracked, everything monitored, times, dates, transactions—everything. Whoever put it together is a fucking genius. Even better than you,” I said with an eyeroll and a snort into my glass as I took another drink.

Elliot looked at me, his eyes oddly focused this evening. Normally, if I was overly emotional, he was unsure how to proceed and kept as much distance as he could. But tonight—something was different. He was much more sure of himself.

“Maybe it needed to happen?” Elliot offered.

“What do you mean?”

“How much longer could he really have gotten away with it? You can bet he would’ve fucked up soon enough—it’s Colin, after all. And you’d be in this exact same position a month or two months from now. If—if it weren’t for me, would you go along with it without protest?”

I looked at Elliot for a long time and felt like I was being tested as his gaze remained fastened on mine.

“I don’t know,” I sighed.

“You’ve made it personal, Y/N. Well, I’ve made it personal.”

“I’m afraid of breaking your trust by not pushing back.”

“Is that the only reason why you want to push back? For me?”

“No—it’s, it’s not the right thing to do, to promote someone because of their connections, their wealth and status, it’s not the right thing to do. I got into tech because I wanted to protect people, people like my dad—good people, not just rich people—who pour their souls into their businesses. When people are that invested in their business, they’re going to be that invested in their employees.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Yes,” I said with a conviction.

“You’re a good person,” Elliot said as he moved closer to me. “The best person I know.”

“That’s not saying a lot considering you know maybe five people, including me,” I teased.

Elliot laughed softly, his face set in a sweet smile.

“I guess you’re right.”

I turned to face him, my hand still resting on the stem of my glass as it sat on the counter.

“So what do I do now?”

“You play their game. You protect yourself, gain their trust, and bide your time until you can enact change.”

“That’s not what I want to hear.”

“But,” Elliot continued, moving so close he was now a breath away from me. “You’ll still be a good person. A good person caught in the machinations of corporate greed—you had to know something like this would happen if you stayed on Wall Street.”

I looked into Elliot’s face, his grey eyes filled with concern and also with a confidence I rarely saw—he was right and knew he was right.

“You’re right. Unless I just walk in and quit in a fiery rage,” I finished, remembering the feeling I had in Miles’ office as I looked out of the window.

“You’re not a quitter,” Elliot said, his hands coming to rest on my upper arms. “Places like that need people like you in positions of power. It’s all about balance.”

“I’m vastly outnumbered.”

“All the more reason to stay and fight.”

“Who are you tonight?” I asked with a huff of a laugh.

Elliot’s face turned serious and he gripped my arms a little tighter.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re just . . . so sure of yourself.”

Elliot shook his head.

“I’m sure of you,” he said before pressing his lips to mine, kissing me with purpose until I almost forgot the horrors of the day. I was enveloped by him, quickly lost in his citrusy scent that curled around me so totally that I nearly forgot I needed to ask him something important.

I broke the kiss, pulling away and causing Elliot to start stammering out an apology before I shushed him as I waved my hand.

“I almost forgot! Can you do something for me? Can you see if you can figure out who tipped off the police? I don’t have that kind of skill set.”

“Are you asking me to hack? I thought we lived by the rule of, ‘Don’t hack, ask?’” Elliot said, his lips twisted into the perfect curl of a grin again.

“I’m being serious—can you just see what you can find out? I don’t ever want to be blindsided like that again. Dad said the first time the board put Miles through the ringer, they had to call the meeting short so he could collect himself. I get why. It was brutal, and I never want to feel that unprepared again.”

“I can look into it,” Elliot said as his hands slid up my arms to rest on either side of my face, his thumbs settling on the outer corners of my mouth.

“Thanks, El,” I said before his lips were on mine and I let myself go, lost in that citrusy-grey darkness that was Elliot, the day’s events fading away until they were barely visible in my mind’s eye.

* * * * *

A few days after Colin’s arrest, I was sprawled out on Elliot’s bed, answering emails I hadn’t gotten to during the day. It was 8 pm when he walked into my office, the building long emptied, and told me it was time to quit. Once again, he was right, and he knew he was right, so we went back to his place for some takeout.

I had moved to his bed to stretch out after eating, loving the way I could just snuggle in and be surrounded by everything that was him. Elliot was in the kitchen finishing up the dishes when he asked, well, stated that he’d like me to meet his sister.

I stopped reading and stared at him, unsure if I heard him correctly.

“What? Are you sure?”

“It’s been over a month since I met your family. It’s time for you to meet mine.”

“If you’re sure?” I said, my heart picking up its pace a bit as I finally tossed my phone aside, officially quitting work for the day. I could always count on Elliot to provide a thorough distraction, on purpose or not.

Elliot laughed, “Are you nervous?”

“Yes!”

“Darlene is not someone to be nervous about meeting. Buy her dinner and her loyalty is yours,” Elliot said as he toweled off his hands and walked toward his bed.

“She’s not a stray cat! She’s your sister—the only person, well aside from Angela, that you really seem to give a shit about. What if she thinks I’m bad for you? That would be it. You’d be gone. And—”

“You’re babbling,” Elliot said, cutting me off as he crawled onto the bed, moving to sit beside me and to take my hand.

He lifted my palm to his lips and pressed a kiss there before continuing.

“This is not even in the same ballpark of the kind of daunting meet-the-parents plus the whole family thing that you did to me.”

“Fuck me,” I said, thunking my head against the wall.

“Alright,” Elliot said with a mischievous light in his eyes.

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Not funny.”

“I seem to recall a girl who said something wildly inappropriate to me just as we pulled into her parents’ driveway.”

“That was funny.”

“No.”

You harrumphed and Elliot chuckled before pulling you close.

“I can’t keep you a secret forever. Don’t want to.”

“Adopting my lifestyle now? Elliot Alderson is climbing out of the shadows?”

“Fuck no—I still like my…mysterious persona. Keeps people at a safe distance.”

“Didn’t work on me.”

“No, you little weirdo. You were like a moth to a black flame.”

“I really was,” I said through a soft laugh. “I think I was half in love with you after the night I helped you prep for idiot Colin’s presentation.”

“And now you’re all the way in love with me?”

“For the thousandth, unrequited time, yes,” I said turning my head to smile at him.

“It’s not,” Elliot said, his face growing serious, my own smile faltering as I looked at him in the dim lighting of his apartment.

“What?” I whispered, my voice sounding like it was a million miles away.

“It’s not…unrequited. I—I love you,” Elliot said, his eyes suddenly finding a spot to look at on the bookshelf next to me.

“I love you, too,” I said, my face stretching into the biggest smile it had ever achieved.

Elliot took a deep breath and his eyes flicked to me now that the danger had passed, relief settling over not just his face, but his entire body.

“Check something for me?”

I furrowed my brow and slowly said, “Okay. . .”

“Check outside and see if hell’s frozen over.”

I laughed and launched myself into his arms, half sitting on his lap.

I pulled back from my hug to search his face, my thumb resting on his cheek as I cupped his jaw.

“Hell doesn’t freeze over when you tell someone you love them.”

“I feel a little sick,” he said, smiling shyly up at me.

“That feeling in the pit of your stomach,” I began as I touched him there, “like everything is just too much, like you’ve just gotten out of a bathtub after having your skin scrubbed raw, that vulnerability. That’s love.”

“I’m not sure if that’s poetic or if that’s even supposed to make me feel better, but it’s pretty fucking accurate.”

“I’ve been feeling it longer, so I’m the expert.”

“You haven’t—I just haven’t been able to tell you until now.”

We looked at each other for a long, long moment and I knew he meant it. Elliot loved me. I moved all the way into his lap and straddled him.

“I want you so much, El,” I breathed. “All of you. All the time.”

“I’ll always give you as much of myself as I can—promise,” Elliot said as he closed his eyes and let me kiss him.

The kiss was as slow and as sensual as our sex; we undressed each other, took turns kissing one another from head to toe. By the time Elliot slid into my aching, wet heat, I was near tears, overwhelmed by the intensity of our now shared, raw emotion.

We came, successively breathing one another’s names over and over, and I was sure that life couldn’t get any better than this.

* * * * *

Darlene Alderson may have physically resembled her brother, beautiful face with big eyes that made me feel exposed as they traveled over my face, but that’s where their similarities ended. She was outspoken, crass, and owned any room she was in. She projected a confidence I only rarely saw in Elliot, and she also seemed to speak each thought as it popped into her mind, very unlike her brother’s labored communications.

The plan was to meet at Elliot’s apartment to watch movies and order a pizza; I asked if we should go out somewhere nice and he outright laughed.

“Darlene doesn’t really do . . . nice.”

“Everyone likes a little nice.”

“Not my sister,” he said with a hint of annoyance.

I thought he was wrong, but then again, Elliot had been right about a whole lot of things lately.

Despite asking Elliot to look into the people who hacked Colin, he hadn’t been able to find anything. I was surprised, but I knew if anyone could find something, it was him. Since he hadn’t, it made me more nervous because so far, we were the vigilante’s only target. Insider trading wasn’t something rare—if the hacker’s goal wasn’t exposure, what exactly was it?

My anxiety had been worsening since Colin’s arrest and resulted in my first full-blown panic attack in months. I woke up, sweating, certain death was imminent as my heart hammered so hard I could feel it pounding when I held a hand to my chest. I was relieved Elliot hadn’t spent the night. I didn’t want him to see how much all of this stress was affecting me.

But thankfully, Elliot continued to provide ample distraction and waiting to meet his sister made me a different kind of nervous, one that forced me to put Colin out of my mind, again.

I roamed around Elliot’s apartment, straightening things that didn’t need straightened. I had made the bed twice and was now giving it another weary eye.

“Please let me buy you a bed.”

“I can buy a bed if I want to.”

I growled and left Elliot to fuck around on his computer, not really looking at what he was doing. He usually wasn’t on it when we were together, but he said he had something to finish before Darlene got there.

“Stop . . . fusspotting,” he mumbled without turning around and without missing a keystroke.

I stopped in my tracks and marched to stand behind Elliot’s computer chair.

“That’s what my nanny always said! She called me her little fusspot.”

“I know,” Elliot chuckled as he swiveled his chair around. “Your mom told me that. She said you’ve always been a nervous person, even as a child. And, it’s selfish, but I like it when you’re outwardly nervous—makes me feel more normal.”

Elliot scooted forward and ran his hands up my thighs, pulling me close to hug me, his head resting on my stomach as his hands cupped my ass.

I narrowed my eyes as I looked at what he was doing on the computer. It looked like he was creating a virus—

Elliot pulled open the button of my jeans with his teeth and successfully diverted my attention.

“Elliot! Your sister will be here any minute.”

“I’ll lock the door,” he said in a muffle as he started licking at the skin he had just exposed.

But it was too late for that.

The door to Elliot’s apartment flung open and Darlene came in, causing me to jump back from him so quickly I tripped and fell onto the mattress, causing Elliot to then tumble out of his computer chair.

I quickly rebuttoned my jeans and prayed to god for the mattress to open up and swallow me.

“Ew,” Darlene said, staring at the two of us.

Elliot rolled over onto his back, his sides shaking with a silent laugh until I kicked his shoulder and rolled off the bed.

I knew my cheeks were red, so I took a deep breath and gathered what respect I had left for myself and walked over to Darlene.

“Hi—sorry about that. Your brother’s a complete dick.”

Darlene grinned, and I was struck by how much she looked like Elliot when she smiled.

“Finally! Someone else gets it. I’m Darlene,” she said with a wave as she dumped her bag on Elliot’s table.

“Y/N,” you said with your own wave and embarrassed smile.

“I think you dislocated my shoulder,” Elliot said from his spot on the floor as he watched us both turn to look at him.

“Good,” Darlene and I said at the same time before looking at each other and laughing.

“Fuck. I’ve made a terrible mistake,” Elliot mumbled as he pulled himself up and back into his chair.

“Did you fix my virus?” Darlene asked as she moved past me to stand beside Elliot’s chair.

Elliot turned to look at her, clearly telling her to shut the fuck up with his eyes, but I spoke up.

“I can see it’s a virus. And you only popped the button of my jeans to distract me from looking at it.”

They both turned to look at me, twin expressions of incredulity, waiting to see what I would say next.

I crossed my arms and waited—I knew how to wait Elliot out.

“Darlene writes viruses and sells them to companies that make antivirus software.”

I raised my eyebrow, “Interesting niche.”

Darlene grinned, “We can’t all be corporate sellouts like you two.”

“Darlene,” Elliot warned.

“It’s a joke, douche,” Darlene huffed as she plopped on the bed.

“I knew this job would make you uptight—no offense, Y/N. I mean, someone’s gotta do it. Just never thought it would be my brother.”

“Do you . . . want a job? We could always use another tech.”

“No,” Elliot said, a look of horror washing over his face.

Darlene laughed and lifted her head to turn her eyes to me.

“So, you could just do that? Snap your fingers and get me a j-o-b?”

“You’re Elliot’s sister, his family. I’d do anything to help you—if you wanted it,” I added hastily.

Elliot and Darlene looked at each other, and Darlene laughed, laughed so hard a tear squeezed out from the corner of her eye.

“Elliot told me you were, like a good person or whatever, but shit. I don’t think anyone who hasn’t wanted to fuck me has ever offered to do anything that nice for me. Wait--you’re not into freaky siblin--”

“Darlene!” Elliot yelled, the vein in his neck popping.

Darlene raised her arms in a gesture of surrender and said, “Excuuuse me.”

I watched their exchange with a smirk of understanding. I did have three siblings of my own.

“Jobs aren’t exactly a scarce commodity for techs on Wall Street,” I said, crossing my arms and drawing their attention back to me.

“Just something to think about if you ever want some stability,” I added as Darlene continued to look at me like I was an alien.

“Elliot says you’re rich—”

“Fucking shut up, Darlene!” Elliot groaned, twisting his hands in his hair and standing.

“My father is rich, so yeah. I’ve never gone without,” I said with a slight head shake at Elliot’s distress.

“I’m so sorry about her,” Elliot said taking a step toward me while still glaring at Darlene who only rolled her eyes.

I chuckled, “It’s fine, El. She’s curious and clearly doesn’t beat around the bush—unlike you.”

“Ha!” Darlene said, raising her middle finger at her brother’s back.

This was . . . interesting, I thought. Not at all how I thought it was going to go, but there was something refreshing about Darlene, something childish in the same way there was something childish about Elliot—only on opposite ends of the spectrum. She had a child’s impetuousness, while Elliot had a child’s reservation. I wondered for the millionth time just what it was like growing up for the two of them because I had a feeling it was, at best, difficult. Most people shed those traits with maturity, and it was odd neither Elliot nor Darlene ever did.

I did enjoy Darlene’s assertiveness, even though I was certain it had gotten her in trouble over the years, but that’s what big brothers were for, right?

“Anything else you wanna know?” I asked as I sat on the edge of Elliot’s mattress.

“Since you both have fancy ass jobs for a fancy ass corporation, why the hell are we eating pizza in Elliot’s shithole apartment?”

“I told you,” I said looking at Elliot with a smirk.

Elliot sunk into his chair, sighing heavily before he popped the CD from his computer and tossed it to Darlene.

“Let’s go out,” I suggested. “Elliot and I had this debate before you got here, and I’m happy to say that he just lost because I was right.”

“Elliot needs a good check. He’s not always right,” Darlene said, glancing at him and giving him a smirk.

Elliot just looked at Darlene and shook his head.

“So, dinner in Midtown? Do you like seafood?”

“Fuck yeah.”

“I’ll make a phone call,” I said smiling, enjoying using my privilege to impress Darlene.

I wanted her to like me; she was the only family Elliot really had, and she could be a good ally if he ever needed more than just I could give him.

“El? Do you feel like going out?”

“Does it matter?”

I looked at him and wondered if our teasing really had bothered him.

“Of course it does,” I said with a soft tone as Darlene looked between us, watching our exchange with interest.

Elliot’s eyes ran over my face, and his lips gave me a ghost of a smile.

“I guess even Darlene likes a little nice.”

“Told you,” I said before I went to retrieve my cellphone.

As I made reservations, I could hear the quiet mumble of Elliot’s voice in the background and Darlene’s much less quiet answers. When I hung up with the restaurant, I ordered an Uber.

“Uber will be here in 15 minutes. Should give us plenty of time to make our reservation.”

Both Elliot and Darlene looked up at me, that twin expression again which was starting to unnerve me a bit. Getting up from the bed, Darlene took the CD Elliot gave her and shoved it in her bag. She pulled out her phone and checked it, her thumbs moving quickly as she answered a text or an email.

Elliot turned off his computer before turning his attention to me.

“Thanks for doing this,” he said quietly as he put his hands on my waist.

“I want her to like me,” I said into his ear as I hugged him quickly.

“She does,” he whispered back, pressing a barely-there kiss to my temple.

* * * * *

Dinner was fun and easier than when it was just Elliot and I sometimes. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy quiet nights with Elliot; it was that, given what happened with Colin this week, I greatly appreciated the distraction. It was nice to get lost in Darlene’s stories, and as it turned out, there wasn’t much she wasn’t willing to share, talking almost nonstop about everything from her love life to her and Elliot’s childhood.

Elliot listened, but I could tell he wasn’t truly present. There was something about his sister that seemed to make him retreat further into himself. I wasn’t sure if it had something to do with me or if it was something to do with their childhood. After the Fourth of July, I hadn’t pressed Elliot. He seemed to be in such a good place that I didn’t want to open up a door he clearly needed to keep closed.

“Do you remember that, El?” Darlene asked.

“Hmm?” Elliot questioned, clearly not listening.

“That first time we went to the museum in Queens with Angela? The place you always ran away to?”

Elliot gave a half-convincing nod.

“Anyway, it has this really cool model of the entire city. You should check it out.”

“I’ve lived here forever and never knew it was there. I love finding spots in the city I’ve never visited.”

“We should go—all of us,” Darlene suggested, looking at her brother.

Elliot didn’t answer, which seemed to be something Darlene was used to. She gave him time, but when it became clear that was as far as she was getting, I spoke up.

“Are you busy Saturday morning-ish?”

“I keep my life pretty open to my whims,” Darlene said as she chewed her roll.

“I need to find a dress for this dinner thing next week. Do you want to come shopping with me? I could use a second opinion—and lunch would be my treat for putting up with my indecisiveness.”

“Sure,” Darlene said with a grin. “Let me get your number.”

She opened her phone and quickly created a new contact for me to enter my number. Elliot watched us with a little more interest now that Darlene wasn’t talking about their childhood.

By the end of the night, I felt like Darlene and I were on our way to becoming friends. When the Uber took us back to Elliot’s, I let them go back to his place alone to have some time, probably to talk about me.

Elliot gave me a look and a wave as he shut the door, and I could hear Darlene chastising him for not kissing me goodnight. I waved and shook my head, giving the driver my apartment’s address.

* * * * *

As it turned out, shopping with Darlene was fun. While I tended to err on the side of being reserved and polite, she was to the point, and I ended up finding a dress more quickly than usual thanks to her frank opinion.

We had lots of time before lunch to wonder through a few more boutiques and Darlene stopped to try on some sunglasses. She looked particularly cute in a pair of heart-shaped ones, and I offered to buy them for her as a thank you.

She accepted with a shrug of her shoulders and a grin, once again the complete opposite of her brother, which I told her.

“I know, right? Elliot said I get it from dad. He was never afraid to say what was on his mind.”

“Does he talk about your dad to you? Or your mom?”

“Not if he can help it. We had a pretty shit childhood. Dad died when I was 5, so I have trouble remembering him. It hurt Elliot—they were best friends. I think my mom was always kinda jealous of that and really took it out on him. Which is really funny because it only made us hate her more.”

“Is she still living?”

“Yup. But she’s in assisted living. Fuck if either one of us was going to take care of her when she started getting sick. When Elliot left for college, I counted down the days until I could get the fuck out of that house. Without him, it was depressing as shit.”

“So you two are really close?”

Darlene gave me a measured look before replying, “How long have you known Elliot?”

“Mmm, almost a year.”

“But, like, you haven’t been close until, what, like a few months ago?”

“We were pretty close at work from the start. I was one of the only people he talked to.”

“But you didn’t really hang out a lot?”

“No.”

“And, since you got close, nothing strange has happened?”

I stopped walking and turned to face Darlene.

“Strange as in . . . occasional memory loss?”

“Yes!” Darlene said, her face filling with relief. “I was fishing because I didn’t want to—you know, Elliot is the best person I know. I would do anything for him, anything to protect him the same way he’s always protected me.”

“I understand. There’s something about him that makes you want to give him a really big hug and tell him the world isn’t as shitty as he thinks it is.

“But fuck if he’ll let anyone. I mean, you’re the only real girlfriend besides Angela he’s ever had. And they had some sort of friends with benefits thing going on—she’s her own basket of freshly baked fucked up.”

I laughed, “What the hell did they put in the water where you’re from?”

Darlene chuckled and shrugged her shoulders.

“Anyway. Elliot’s had those weird blackouts since we were kids. I’m convinced it has something to do with keeping people at a distance, at least that was what it always seemed to be with us. But that shit works on your nerves and for a while Elliot and I just didn’t talk. I mean, we kept tabs on each other, but we didn’t see each other.”

“Well, I think you’re good for him. He needs people who care about him actively in his life. Being alone like he was—that’s not good for anyone.”

Darlene smiled.

“I’m glad he has you—not just because you’re rich, but you seem cool.”

“Thanks, but no worries. I come with my own, how did you put it? Basket of fresh-baked fucked up?” I asked through a laugh.

“That was a good description, huh?”

“It was. So, maybe you can help me figure out how I’m going to tell Elliot I’ve rented him a tux and he has to attend this event with me?”

Darlene threw her head back and laughed, clearly loving that her brother had just been sentenced to a night of boring horror, and we linked arms as we walked to a café around the corner for lunch, grinning as we guessed at his response.

* * * * *

I hung my new dress on the back of my closet door, making a mental note to go through my shoes to see what matched and to remember to tell Elliot he had plans on Wednesday night.

Spending the day with Darlene had been fun, but exhausting. Getting to know people was hard work, especially people as complex as the Aldersons.

Elliot had said he wanted to come over, so I left my door unlocked while I ran a bath, loading up on the bubbles.

As I watched the tub fill up, I thought that maybe I should give Elliot a key to my place. Elliot Alderson most likely wasn’t about to break up with the person he finally got the courage to tell he loved, so the gesture might be another nice piece of consistency for him (and for me).

I stepped out of my underwear and slid into the tub, luxuriating in the warmth and the sweet scent of coconuts. I had almost fallen asleep when there was a soft knock on my door before Elliot pushed his way into the bathroom.

He gave me a soft smile and took a seat on the edge of the tub.

“So you do use this thing?”

“Everyone loves a good soak in the tub.”

I paused, then seductively asked, “Want to join me?”

“No,” Elliot said flatly, making me laugh. He was such an atypical man that it was refreshing at times.

“That’s okay—I’m wiped. Your sister is exhausting. She has more energy than a child.”

Elliot nodded, his eyes incredibly focused on my face.

“I like her, though. I want to spend more time with her.”

“I’m glad,” Elliot said with relief. “I wasn’t sure if she’d be too much for you. She’s too much for me sometimes.”

“She loves you, El. So much. It’s sweet.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, a) she’s your sister,” I said, sitting up a bit and shaking off my sleep. “And b) she said you were the best person she’s ever known. I’d say that means she loves you.”

“I really don’t deserve that. I’ve done some shitty things to her.”

“Haven’t we all? I mean, to our siblings. Erin told you all about the epic chip battle of 1996.”

Elliot snorted, “I hardly think that counts.”

“I was being funny. We weren’t about to rehash the time she fucked my prom date in our limo the first time you met the family.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Erin was evil to me throughout high school. Granted, she was addicted to pills and to boys—she was six shades of fucked up.”

“What—why?”

“Two excellent questions, both with pretty blasé explanations. She got in with the wrong crowd, loved the attention, and just got sucked into that shitty world. It took years of therapy, and she was in and out of rehab until she finally found a purpose. She’s one of the lucky ones—so many addicts can’t find their way back once they take their first hit.”

“Wow. Never would’ve guess that.”

“You didn’t hack them, did you?”

“What?”

“Don’t sound so surprised—I trust you, El, however, I didn’t define all the grey areas, did I?”

“Not really—but I just assumed the whole ask, don’t hack applied to everyone in your life.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmm.”

“Is there something you want to ask me?”

“No,” I said a little confused. “Should there be something I should be asking you?”

“No.”

“Okay then.”

“Do me a favor?”

“Sure.”

“Beside the front door, there’s a ring of keys on the very last hook closest to the wall. Bring them to me?”

Elliot got up without saying a word and returned a minute later, the keys jangling as he walked. He handed them to me, and I shook the bubbles off my hand before I searched for my apartment key and wriggled it off the keyring.

“Here you go,” I said, holding the little silver key out to Elliot who now looked like he had a mouth full of peanut butter.

“Huh?” he asked, his mouth barely parting.

“I want you to be able to come and go as you please—and it also means I don’t have to get up to answer the door anymore, or leave it unlocked if I know you’re coming over at some point in the evening. It’s a gift of convenience.”

“Are you . . . sure?”

“It’s just a key to my apartment, El. Not an invitation to our wedding,” I finished as I closed my eyes and didn’t bother to hide the smirk on my face. I could practically hear the pistons misfiring in his brain at the mention of a wedding.

“Thanks,” came his cautious, quiet reply.

I nodded my head, not bothering to open my eyes as I let the warmth of the water envelop me again.

#Elliot Alderson #elliot alderson x reader #female reader #elliot x reader #elliot alderson fanfic #mr robot fanfiction #rami malek #rami malek character

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libermachinae · 5 years ago

Text

Schematics [Or, Another Chance] – Ch. 5, Command

Also available on AO3! Notes: @prowlweek In which the title of my tumblr becomes relevant.

⏳ 🚧 🚓 ⌛ 🏗 🚧 ⏳

There was a tension in the group. Hook didn’t want to make much of it, but it was present in the way Prowl entered the timestream without a world to the rest of them, and how Long Haul inserted himself into the lineup without being told to. Hook almost stayed behind, since Prowl hadn’t specified an anchor, but Mixmaster was already making himself comfortable against the back wall. They shared a glance, and then Hook followed the others into the past.

Now, they were on Cybertron again, an explosion had just gone off in the distance, and Prowl was speeding down the road after it. Hook watched, dismayed, as the little Earth cop car disappeared around a corner, but turning to the others gained nothing but confused shrugs and a nervous peep from Scavenger.

“We’re going after him,” Hook decided, because following Prowl’s lead was his default. “Hook and Scavenger, you’re coming with me. Bonecrusher, you stay here.”

“But—”

“I’m sorry, we don’t have time to discuss this.” He did feel bad about leading Bonecrusher behind again, but that seemed to have been Prowl’s preference so far. “Come on, guys.”

The trio transformed in unison and took off down the road, Hook in front with Long Haul and Scavenger flanking him. Even the time it had taken them to get this far put them at a disadvantage, and they were forced to go more by hope and instinct than anything else.

“Either of you see anything?” Hook asked anyway.

“No, fragger’s fast,” Long Haul said. His voice came out in a huff and his engine was belching exhaust, not designed for a high-speed chase. Scavenger, too, was struggling, but Long Haul’s annoyance came through more obviously. Hook hoped he would be able to bear it the way he had throughout their time in the Decepticons, accepting whatever miserable jobs Megatron assigned to them. Demeaning occasionally, and below what their skills were capable of, but worth it to know they would be fueled in the end.

Everyone had their limits, though.

“Oh, frag this.” Long Haul slammed on his breaks and flipped up into root mode. Hook swerved to the side to slow himself down while Scavenger skidded forward, his treads not designed for sharp maneuvers.

“C’mon, Haul, we don’t have time for this,” Hook said. “We’ve got to catch up to Prowl.”

“Why?” Long Haul demanded, standing in the middle of the street and crossing his arms.

“Uh, because he’s the boss?” Scavenger said as he and Hook also transformed. He said it like a suggestion for the others to verify and shrunk back from Long Haul’s glare.

“Why? Why do we keep him?”

“He’s part of the team,” Hook said, advancing on Long Haul. They really didn’t have time for one of his episodes right now, and sometimes stupid aggression was enough to get him to back down. “He’s our head and he knows what he’s doing, so he’s the boss.”

“That’s slag and you know it!” Long Haul shouted, reciprocating with a ringer that jabbed at Hook’s chestplate. “You used to be the head, Hook! That was your job, you were proud of it, and that made the whole thing stick together. When did you become such a softspark?”

“Stop talking slag, Long Haul.” Hook shoved him, just enough to dislodge the angry jabs.

“Stop looking at him like you’re a pathetic little turbopuppy! Both of you.” He looked between Scavenger and Hook as though both disgusted him and he couldn’t decide which was less painful to look at. “When are you going to finally realize that that’s not the same Prowl anymore?”

“Watch it,” Hook warned.

“We’re going after some no-name punk with nothing to go on but a list he left for us to find!” Long Haul gestured around them, as though the buildings were to blame for their predicament. “Prowl abandoned us, got scrapped, and completely lost his edge. I don’t know why he dragged us along on this stupid chase, and I don’t care anymore.”

“You were the one ready to fight him just to come with this time!” Hook pointed out.

“So I could work with the team,” Long Haul corrected. “That’s how we do things, Hook, how it’s always been. This, though, spread out on either side of the war, not even able to comm each other? That’s not worth my time. You two better keep yourselves safe and not get yourselves slagged on Prowl’s behalf, but I’m done.”

“You can’t be done,” Hook said, grabbing Long Haul by the arm.

Before the upgrades, that might have done something. Now, Hook had just a moment to process his mistake before he felt himself being lifted into the air and slammed down onto the metal ground. Air rushed from his vents, a wince escaping his vocoder as he felt something snap.

“Want to tell me what I can’t do?” Long Haul said, staring down at him.

Hook started to push himself up, though his rattled gyros made figuring out the precise direction a challenge.

“Prowl’s part of our team. If you have a problem with that, you bring it up with him. You don’t walk away from a job.”

“Maybe you should bother telling him that some time,” Long Haul said. “I’m going back. I won’t leave without you, because you’re team and that’s how we work. But Prowl can rot another four million years. I’m done.”

He stalked off, heavy footsteps sending echoes through the narrow, empty alleyways. Hook tried to watch him go, but his attention drawn aside by a faint whimper.

Scavenger had cowered by the wall, shivering, optics turned up bright.

“Hey, Scav, it’s okay,” Hook said, finally finding the bearings to sit up and offer a hand to his teammate. “C’mere, it’s okay.”

Scavenger hesitated, then crossed the space, kneeling beside Hook so they could entwine their fingers. They sat together, silent among the distant sounds of city life, while Hook waited for Scavenger to say whatever he needed. He wished Prowl were here. Whenever the Constructicon leaders had disappeared, it had fallen on Hook to make decisions and get them through, and he always hated it. He could never make the right choices, say the right things. Even at his best, there was always something off in the end, a problem left over that Scrapper or Prowl had to solve.

“I don’t know if I agree with Long Haul,” Scrapper said, “but I don’t think he’s wrong. Prowl doesn’t care about us.”

As soon as the team got their slag sorted, Hook was going to kill Long Haul and Prowl.

“I don’t know about that,” he tried, but that just caused Scavenger’s plating to shiver as his optic band flickered.

“I mean, he just left,” he pointed out. “Most of the time he treats us more like a nuisance than an asset, and he said himself, he only picked us for the gestalt bond. Not even for combining, just the bond itself.”

“Well, yeah,” Hook said. “But I think the important thing is, and what Long Haul’s having trouble remembering right now, is that we have combined with him. Prowl’s part of the team, and whether we’re helpful for him, whether he appreciates having us, we’re together. We’re going to be there for each other, even at our worst, our most unhelpful. That’s what it means.”

“Shouldn’t we be trying to do better?” Scavenger asked.

Hook shrugged. He would say they had been, but at this point he wasn’t so sure that was true.

“If you want, I guess,” he said. It was an Autobotish idea, the kind only Scavenger could come up with. None of the others knew where he got thoughts like that, and multiple investigations had revealed little more than the presence of a permanently gentler spark among their ranks.

“But that kind of thing takes time, and effort,” he went on. “And in the meantime, we’re still team. So, even at our most nasty, most unappreciative, worst tempered selves, we stick together.”

“Yeah, and Prowl left—”

“I know.” Hook really was going to kill Prowl later. “He doesn’t get it. We’ll figure it out, though, because that’s the real reason we stick together through the worst of each other: when we inevitably screw up, we’re there to help each other fix our mistakes.” He patted Scavenger’s shoulder. “Listen: go back with Long Haul and make sure no one does anything really stupid that gets us stuck here for four million years. I’ll catch up with Prowl and we’ll regroup.”

“But, Prowl said to—”

“From what I recall, Prowl didn’t say anything, so as second in command it falls to me to make the orders. Got it, Scavenger?”

Dropping the nickname seemed to do the trick. Scavenger sat up straighter, nodding his assent. Though Hook doubted he was really convinced, all of them functioned better when they had specific orders to follow. Improvisers, the team were not.

“Okay,” Scavenger said, “but how are you going to find him?”

Hook just managed to keep his plating from shifting uncomfortably.

“I’ll figure it out,” he said. “Bond will help.” The gestalt bond really wasn’t designed for sonar work like this, but it could work. If he kept following the direction of the explosion they heard earlier, the combination might be enough. Besides, Prowl would be on the lookout to make sure none of them did anything too stupid, right?

Scavenger transformed and took off the way Long Haul had gone, while Hook did the same in the opposite direction. In an a distantly familiar city with only a vague sense of direction, the possibility of getting lost was very real, but he didn’t see any other choice than to keep going. Tires, never updated from their Earth form, skidded painfully against the smooth metal roads, and more than once his rush almost had him crashing into walls.

He needed to get to Prowl. The team needed a leader, and he wasn’t—

“Hook!”

He tried to slam on his breaks, and this time really did careen into a wall.

“Prowl!?”

“This way!”

He backed away from the wall, bumper smarting, and tried to look around, but the most he caught was a glimpse before his teammate was hurrying on.

He back away from the wall, bumper smarting, and looked over just in time to catch a glint of plating disappear around a corner. Surprised that Prowl had come back for him, Hook couldn’t be too resentful over being left behind again.

“Yes, sir,” he shouted as he righted himself and gave chase.

Even in the tight turns of Cybertronian alleyways, trying to be a leader, Prowl’s alt-mode was still naturally faster than Hook’s and it was all the crane could do to keep up with the darting shadow. He stayed in view, but just barely, and at each turn Hook worried that he would come around and see no more of Prowl. It did happen a couple times, but Prowl’s voice always came back and got him again.

“Come on!”

“Hurry up!”

“Hook!”

He liked it when Prowl said his name. Stupid thing to be thinking about in the middle of a chase, but that’s where his processor went. He only snapped back to reality when he turned a corner, didn’t see Prowl, and heard no call guiding him on which way to go next.

“Prowl?” he called. “Prowl, where’d you—”

“Hook, quiet.”

The angry command came from above. Hook transformed to root mode and looked up, just able to catch the glare of a single optic from up on the roof.

“How’d you get up there?” he asked.

Prowl put a finger to his lips and pointed further down the building, to a fire escape.

“Right, gotcha,” Hook said. He thought he heard a hushed grumble but was too busy making his way up the ladder to worry about it.

It was a squat building by Cybertronian standards, probably a warehouse of one single, high-ceilinged story, and it only took Hook a few moments to scramble to the top. Once he was there, he could see they were on the outskirts of a distant city, somewhere deep in a manufacturing district. Further out, twinkles of life flickered and danced. The area around them had the same aesthetic as the last place they’d been to, but here was dead and still, not even a whisper on the breeze to suggest life nearby. Pockmarks of war dotted the landscape, and when he peered closer at those distant lights, he realized that some were undoubtedly fires.

Prowl stood on the edge of the roof, and though his doorwings twitched as Hook approached, he did not turn to his teammate.

“What’s going down?” Hook asked, trying to keep his voice hushed. From the glare he got, he hadn’t been successful.

“Megatron just killed Orion Pax,” Prowl said, pointing out, toward the lights. It was impossible to tell what he was indicating, though Hook thought he saw a smudge that might have been a crater. “At this moment, I suspect Orion is within several meters of the Matrix.”

“He’s gonna become Prime?” Hook’s voice hushed further still.

“Yes.” There was a creak of strained metal. At his side, Prow’s fist had tightened. “Our war is about to begin.”

Hook looked at the clenched hand in dismay. It sounded painful, but he didn’t have anything to offer to alleviate it besides his own frame.

“Didn’t Megatron and Sentinel already get it going, though?” he tried, as though that might be enough to distract Prowl.

“The conflict between the Autobots and Decepticons was a long time coming, yes, but the real war? The pointless grandstanding of ideals between Optimus and Megatron that they dragged an entire galaxy into? We’re witnessing its birth right now.”

It was a quiet, desolate birth. Its attendees, sparse though they were, looked on. Prowl’s hands had relaxed at his sides, but the rest of his frame was rigid with tension, like a soldier waiting for inspection. Discipline was measured differently between the Autobots and Decepticons: Megatron hadn’t cared so much if you could stand up straight, so long as you were able to hold you own and maintain Decepticon victory. Hook still recognized, though the posture of a mech who could no longer conceive of rest.

He thought about the rest of the team, about how just a day ago they’d been lying in hospital beds, their bodies just recently stitched back together and brought online. Maybe all they needed was a break.

“I’ve made myself sick wondering what would have happened if it had been me,” Prowl said, breaking the weight of the silence. It still took Hook a moment to understand.

“Prime?”

No response, which said enough. Hook didn’t know what to say either. He couldn’t imagine it: Prowl, a Prime? Yes, he was an ideal leader, adept at developing strategies and making necessary decisions, but Primacy was more than the wartime role Optimus had shaped it into. Primes were ruthless in all things. Prowl had a bit of that going for him, more than most Autobots, but he had an unfortunate caring streak that made him unfit.

The way Scrapper had described it, Primehood came with some vague set of ideals, freedom and mercy and whatever else the Matrix had written on its handlebars or whatever. It was the role of the Prime to maintain those ideals in himself and his followers, no matter the material cost, and often enough to his own detriment. A Prime was expected to allow a deadly enemy to live, because to kill him would infringe on everything that made him a Prime. Prowl wasn’t capable of that. Primes never thought about the ends, about what their actions were intended to produce, instead focused on production itself.

Primes asked why instead of how. They weren’t the type to do the things that needed to be done; Prowl was. Mechs like Prowl, who could draft a plan and see it through to completion without squeamishness, were essential, even though few mechs understood that. They weren’t meant to understand, that wasn’t the point, and it was that distinction which set Prowl apart from every lousy Prime their planet had ever spat out.

Hook didn’t think to say any of that. Instead, what came out was, “Would’ve been lousy.”

Prowl laughed, a single, sharp sound that seemed to shrink the space around them.

“Yes, I think the Autobots would agree with you,” he said.

“Don’t really care what Autobots think,” Hook grumbled.

Prowl’s hand moved, fluttering up to the center of his chest piece. He opened his mouth, but seemed to teeter over the words, closing it again without a sound. His hand dropped. Hook watched the whole movement, knowing that he had missed something essential.

“Do you want it?” he asked.

That snapped a change in Prowl, reset him as though their brief foray into something approaching intimacy hadn’t taken place. His doorwings were up, and when his optic met Hook’s, it was like being faced with a one-way mirror.

“What I want is of no concern,” Prowl said. “I need to stop time from collapsing in on itself. I need to protect every life in the universe from a sudden, agonizing death.”

He didn’t want to talk about it, which told Hook it was important, but not how to get through. Again, he wished they could still combine. Inability to understand Prowl hadn’t been a problem their first time together, because inevitably they would link up and everything Hook wanted to know would be made available. The longer they spent together without accessing each other’s minds, though, the more lost Hook felt around his teammate.

“I want to know what’s going on,” he tried, even though he hadn’t been asked. “I want to know who we’re chasing, what they did, why it even matters to you.”

“I’ve told you everything you need to know, Hook,” Prowl said, leaning close, the way he did when he was trying to intimidate him. Hook wasn’t sure why it wasn’t working this time, but his lack of reaction, caused Prowl’s lips to pull back in a snarl. “Are you questioning my authority?”

“No,” he said, “but I guess you should know the others are asking questions. Long Haul’s getting tired of all this.”

“Long Haul’s tired?” Prowl repeated.

Hook did wince then. Wrong time to ask for a break, definitely, but he was too deep in the scrapheap now.

“He says he’s done,” Hook said. “And even though he’s the most dramatic slagger I’ve ever met, it’s still gonna mean something if he walks out. Last time it happened, Scrapper quit the job to get him back. The others are gonna be paying attention.”

“What would they have me do?” Prowl demanded. “Abandon the mission? You did hear me when I said every life in the universe, didn’t you? That’s past and future, Hook, that’s the scale we’re facing right now.”

“Yeah, I know,” Hook said, “and to be honest, I don’t think they’d care.”

Prowl stepped back so quickly it was like he’d just noticed the big, ugly Decepticon in front of him. The facial expression was still imparseable, and his doorwings were fluttering in a pattern Hook had never seen before.

“You don’t. Care.”

“No?” Hook looked around, at ruins that would soon become ashes of the world they’d called home. “Prowl, think about it. Pretty much every other species would be happy to see Cybertronians dead and destroyed. If Unicron hadn’t gotten to it first, they would have melted Cybertron for scrap the first chance they got. What do I care whether a bunch of slaggers like that live?”

“—rthlings are giving up their home for you! The Galactic Council is finally giving us a chance to do good in the universe, after we spent four million years blowing it up! And even if you can’t find it in your sick, undersized spark to care about that, are you really too stupid to remember that you’re one of those slaggers?”

Hook stared down at Prowl, his doorwings trembling with anxiety, optic so bright it was nearly white, fans turned up high as his little body radiated heat. He hadn’t seen this Prowl in a long, long time. And oh, how he’d missed it.

So, Hook shrugged.

“The Autobots’ll clean it up, then.”

Prowl’s finger stabbed at the middle of his chest, where, even after all that had happened, there was still his Autobrand, red against the inky black.

“I. Am. An Autobot!”

Both mechs were too engrossed in each other to notice the faint light blossoming in the distance.

“C’mon, Prowl, under all that paint we all know you’re still—”

“Don’t say it!”

The spot grew brighter, a bubble of blue energy that sucked in on itself while still it grew.

“—Constructicon green.”

The bubble burst. Both mechs swung around as a pillar of blue light erupted into the sky, announcing the arrival of the new Prime. Hook felt bleached by the light, color ripped from the furrows of his plating, and when he tried to look to the mech beside him, all he saw was white, contour sucked from the world.

Even when the light dissipated and their colors returned, Prowl’s doorwings remained shocked to stillness. For reasons he couldn’t articulate, that was the detail that made Hook question himself.

“Prowl—”

“We’re leaving,” Prowl said, ducking his helm so Hook couldn’t see his optic. “The target isn’t here.”

Hook’s teammate, their leader, turned and walked back to the ladder that had taken him up here. He hurried to follow, hopping off at the bottom so he had time to transform and keep up with Prowl, who was blowing ahead without waiting.

The drive was much faster the second time and Hook didn’t recognize the route, but he wasn’t thinking about it. He was mostly concerned about Prowl, in a vague way he didn’t know exactly how to communicate. Everything he’d said was true. This was more Scavenger’s thing, though, emotions and slag. Hook wouldn’t ask him about it, but maybe he would shove Scavenger to Prowl at some point and see if he had better luck working out what had gone wrong.

Bonecrusher was alone when they pulled up. Prowl didn’t acknowledge him as he transformed and marched through, and all Hook had to offer was a hopeless shrug as they followed.

The timestream felt heavier as they trudged through. Hook’s vents were acting up, or maybe it was the air itself, but he felt like his internal were overheating while his prating grew frigid and brittle. Stepping out the other side was even more of a relief than normal, but the feeling was replaced by dread when he saw his teammates cowered to one side, Prowl punching the keys of the terminal as images flashed across its screens.

“Where to next, boss?” he asked, approaching Prowl from behind and angling to try to see what was going on in front of him.

“You’re fired.”

Hook froze.

There was a whimper somewhere behind him.

“Boss, what…”

“I am now an independent agent,” Prowl said. “If you continue stalking me during my mission, I will take lethal action. I am no longer obligated to ensure your safe return to the present: if you follow me, you will be stranded.”

“Wait, but—Prowl.”

The gate was open again and Prowl had shoved past Hook to approach it. The others were frozen, staring.

“Useless slags, stop him,” Hook ordered. They needed to do something, fix this. They were builders, engineers: whatever had gone wrong, they could mend, but they couldn’t do it if Prowl was on the other end of time.

Bonecrusher, still at the arch, took one step to intercept Prowl’s advance. Hook didn’t see the look Prowl shifted to him, but he saw the berserker freeze, then cower, ducking out of the way and giving Prowl unimpeded access to the timestream.

“Prowl, stop!” Hook finally remembered how his motor functions worked and chased after him, too late. He was still several meters away, echoes of his footsteps rattling the cave walls, when Prowl’s doorwings melted into the light and he was gone.

“How in the pits do you plan to get back?” he demanded of the freezing light. What the frag had happened? This wasn’t logical, this wasn’t a plan. This was an act of emotion that Hook didn’t know how to categorize. This wasn’t how Prowl worked.

Now that Prowl was gone, the team stepped closer, crowding around the archway as they stared into the swirling timestream.

“Are we gonna leave?” Scavenger asked.

“We can’t,” Mixmaster said.

“Yeah,” Bonecrusher said.

Long Haul didn’t add anything. He was looking at Hook, and when they caught each other’s gaze, Hook understood enough.

“Of course not,” Hook said, turning back to the timestream. “I’m going to get him.”

“We all should,” Long Haul said, but Hook shook his helm.

“No, I fragged up,” he said. “I’ll risk my plating to get him back, and then after that, we’ll fix it. But I’ve gotta do this first.”

“He said he’d kill you,” Bonecrusher said.

Hook shrugged.

“Have heard that a lot,” he pointed out.

There was no response. They were a team and it was their nature to solve problems together, but they also had a chain of command. Prowl had removed himself from it, which meant Hook was at the top, and they would follow his orders for as long as it was productive. They would not stop him as he stepped forward, though Scavenger’s expression seemed just shy of begging him to let them come.

“Back in a klik,” he said, and stepped through.

#maccadam #prowl week #prowlastator #prowl #constructicons #transformers #my writing #longfic #schematics #command

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artificiary-fr · 5 years ago

Text

ok so arti’s unnecessary opinion time

Just wanna give a disclaimer that these are just my sort of thoughts in general, and are in no way an attempt to demean, attack, or cause drama about any artist or staff member, or community member. Just kind of what I’ve observed and come to the questions/conclusions of. I got a little opinionated at the end but I tried not to single anyone out save for I think, one unnamed example?

I’ll put everything under the cut here, because I know I have a tendency to get wordy (and spoiler: It did. This is a super long post, I’m sorry). So, here we go...

TL;DR: I like the gene, I’ll wait for the revamp before giving a concrete opinion, there were definitely some issues, I appreciate that staff took note/action, more communication like this or the dev streams is good (though communication between staff/community is a Thing unto itself of which I probably have a Disliked Take on and that was the really long part that isn’t necessary to read)

Okay before anything: the familiars. They’re super pretty! I like the recolors, and now I’m gonna have to grind the Kelp Beds for those boss fams. Dang. I love the kitty golem recolor.

With that out of the way, here we are - the subject of today’s discussions... Glowtail.

So, my first opinion: It’s not a bad gene! I can see some curious use for it, certainly. But there are some problems with it (and yes; I am aware staff has addressed this and pulled it to fix those problems! That’ll be more relevant later on here c: )

Note One: I think I do understand why it is a gem gene. Yes, design/thematically it does appear to fit the bill of a Baldwin Gene more. But I’d like to posit it’s the completion of a gem-gene set - Wasp/Bee/Glowtail. So in that regard, it makes sense!

Note Two: My personal opinion with the gene is that I like it, but it feels... hm. Plain isn’t correct. Like it’s missing something, I guess? I wish the segmenting was a little more prominent, and that the glow or gradient had a little more glitz/glamor, maybe some glitteries around the hips, to really sell it as a gem gene. I do like the glow we have on the other bits of dragon like light reflection, though, because it adds a little bit of dimension! All in all however even so, I do like it, and I won’t cement my opinion until we see what their updated version looks like in the future.

Note Three (The Problems): The art errors. What... what happened here?

As we’ve noticed, male snappers and male tundras are the two big offenders, with large chunks of color erroneously sitting outside the lineart quite noticeably. There is also part of the ‘glow’ (the aforementioned light reflection) that doesn’t make sense - being on parts of the dragon where it shouldn’t be, like on the front of wings where the tail is not in front of said limb, but behind.

But like... how did this not get caught before it got posted? Was it a time crunch, or it just... didn’t get quality checked before this happened? It’s really unfortunate. :c

Something I do with my art - and this is just my own process/thoughts - is when I’ve put down the base color, before I do any shading/highlights/big details, I pop a layer underneath the entire drawing and fill it with a high contrast color to the palette. That way any bits where I missed coloring in - or didn’t clean up outside the lines - becomes super noticeable, and I can fix it then instead of being a problem later. Maybe doing something like this before throwing the gene through the color automation process would’ve helped?

Last Note:

I feel like part of why these errors went unnoticed is because of how often, and sometimes how rushed, some of these updates have been - and this has been more noticeable in this year than otherwise. Is it because of community dissent with wanting more updates creating more crunch? Due to low-attention reticence creating a need for pushing more ad revenue / more “come to the site there’s new”?

I’m unsure, but it’s unfortunate nonetheless. I think staff, and FR as a whole, would benefit from like... hm. How to word this...

Maybe taking more time on updates / a more extended schedule so things aren’t as crunch (of course this being said, I don’t know what the workload is like so I can’t even say if crunch is applicable), and more open communication? Like how the dev streams were going - that was pretty well liked and everyone I know got pretty excited to see em and how the art was doing. It also opened up the avenue for more open communication / more nuanced opinions or thoughts.

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But herein lies the huge issue, I think, with communication. This is the part where I’d like to reiterate, this is just my observations, and is not intended as an attack, a vaguepost, or deliberate callout at anybody. There’s no malicious intent here. This bit could also be construed as drama I suppose, and I apologize for that because again - not the intent. Just my take.

I’ve noticed posts going ‘no drama please’ or being tired when new updates come out of like, ‘oh boy here comes the negativity’ so I don’t think it’s just me who’s seen it, but have you guys noticed when anything new comes out, there’s an immediate rush of extreme salt and negativity?

And I don’t mean posts where its like “it’s not for me” or “I don’t like it but here’s [detailed/explained reason why]” - those are the nuanced opinions I mean. Those are fine. I mean the ones where people in forums, or on the more prolific drama blogs, are just.... mean/empty? Like “FUCK staff I hate how lazy they are with this it’s shitty looking” - that really vocal generally super salty in general minority of the community. Just hate without explanation, or just kind of aimless generalized attack/complaint.

I think that’s where communication with Staff fell off the bandwagon. The really loud, really vocal minority of folks who throw super salt or yell “This Sucks You Suck” completely overshadow the people who are well intentioned with sharing their opinions or problems/criticisms. The toxic bits and really vitriolic words are what gets seen and noticed. I think this is the majority of what gets heard, which is why communication got so closed off / shut down unless positive, in recent times. Do I agree with that? No, I don’t either - but I’m just looking at this from the outside. Idk how staff feels or thinks.

And this goes for both people who don’t like the content, and people that do.

Remember that the Keel thread got locked because someone who was white-knighting started getting real nasty with people in the thread, and going to extremes insulting artists who did mock-ups to help visualize their thoughts/opinions and was just being a real douche?

What I really wish was that we could have more open communication. Some of the things I really liked to see were like: Dev Streams, Community Updates/Q&A, Opinion Polls, That Update Progress on Breed/Gene Progress from a while back. All of that was excellent. And I like to see the community responding in well thought out ways! I like to see staff more hands on too! We’re only human and love this site and our dragons and want to see it at it’s best - but they’re also only human, and make mistakes, and we don’t know what’s goin on in there, just out here.

Trello is a really good way to kind of show that communication, and is transparent, but isn’t free-to-use for businesses, so... of course I also don’t know how Stormlight Workshop runs their business/hours so I’m just blowing hot smoke. But anyway, I think everyone would benefit from slowing down and opening up. If things are going slow, that’s okay - if Staff opens up to the community and says “This is taking longer than expected, but here’s upcoming releases / current in-progresses” I think we’d be like oh okay things are happening and it’ll be nice! As compared to everyone gets super antsy, nothing’s happening, no-one is talking... and then we get hit with a bunch of updates, some of which, like today’s, have... issues.

Of course then I worry that with more open talking or “we’re experiencing delays” the more vitriolic will get even angrier/saltier which doesn’t... help... but I mean... yeah.

ANYWAY so I’ve written a full dissertation essay here without really intending to (see? I warned y’all! I ramble/don’t shut up ahahaha) so I’m gonna just stop myself here before I start going in circles. This last chunk I don’t really know what the meat of what I was trying to say was, now, I think. Sorry about that. It was just “here’s my stream of consciousness” apparently ^^;;;;

Have a good evening y’all! Thanks for listenin’ to my (rant?) if y’all made it this far. You’re appreciated and thank you for letting me bend your ears! Stay safe in this crazy world, hang in there, and have a good one!

#so i wrote a literal novel under the cut most of which can probably be ignored #but i do wanna say im not attacking the community in defense of staff #staff has made missteps and mistakes and doesn't handle some things the way they should #im just noting some things ive noticed that i feel like correlate #am i gonna make people really mad at me? oh probably #i hope not but idk #arti parties #update opinion #long post

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