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vivwritesfics · 17 days ago

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The Devil Dances With A Smile

Chapter One

He can't kill you. He can't bring himself to lay a hand on you. So, he falls for you instead (its a shame his employer really wants you dead)

Hitman!Max x reader

Chapter Two

His class wasn't listening, he could tell that much as he drew things onto the whiteboard. He ignored it, kept writing. But then the giggles started up.

It was a new class, a bunch of eleven year old experiencing their first year of high school. For the first week, they had been quiet. But now they were a month in. The trouble makers had learnt how to make their peers laugh and it was normally at his expense.

They hadn't yet seen their teacher, a professor, at that, angry. He'd gotten annoyed, had snapped a pen under his desk to help keep his cool, but had never gotten angry with his year sevens.

"Eliza, James!" He snapped, and the two fell quiet. He wasn't angry, he just needed the two of them to know better than to test him. Not today. Not after how rough his other job had been.

"Sorry Professor Verstappen," the two of them said in unison. The entire class fell silent when the two of them did, and Max got on with his lesson.

Max rubbed his eyes as his lesson came to an end and his class handed in their workbooks. He shouted a reminder about homework, but their chatter was too loud to hear it.

When the door fell shut and Max put his head in his hands. Just a few minutes of rest, that was all he needed. He let his eyes fall shut.

Even in rests that only lasted a minute, Max dreamt the same thing. The young man with the lion tattoo on his hand, begging for his life at the end of his gun. It didn't matter what he said, Max always pulled the trigger.

A knock at his door pulled him out of his dream, pulled him back into his day job. He pushed his hair out of his face and looked towards his classroom door.

The history teacher stared at Max for a minute. No, not stared. He'd asked him a question and Max had just ignored it. "Huh?" He asked, a yawn leaving a lips.

"I asked if you were okay," Charles said, his worried expression softening.

Max gave a nod. He had always liked Charles, even when they were academic rivals through secondary school. But then university came and they went their separate ways. Max went off to study geography and Charles went to off to do history. They never thought they'd be reunited as colleagues. "Just tired, that's all," he admitted.

Now, don't get it wrong, Max loved teaching. Sculpting young minds, helping them pave their way forward in life. But teaching was only part of what he did.

Most teachers went home and marked homework. Max did that too, for maybe an hour. And then it was dinner while the cats ate. Tonight he had some shitty, healthy pizza and the cats had their gourmet food.

But then his night shift began.

He didn't look like a contract killer. He didn't wear all black, didn't have a long coat with weapons beneath. No, he looked like a normal guy. He wore skinny jeans and a black leather jacket.

But their was a reason people called on The Lion. He didn't exactly need a weapon to kill anyone. He was quick, clean, and didn't ask any questions.

Christian met him in the same place each time. Max entered the office in the warehouse full of old cars, and Christian slipped the manila folder across the desk.

There was a usual routine to this. Normally Max pulled out the paper in the folder, read the information on his target. He learnt all he needed to know about his target, grabbed the weapon he thought would be best, and he set off.

But not this time.

Pulling the information from the folder, he turned the paper towards Christian. "What the fuck is this?" He asked.

On the folder was a girl in a cafe. She had an apron around her waist and a tray of empty glasses in her hands. No criminal convictions listed, no possible crimes.

No reason for Max to take her out.

"Something about inheritance," said Christian, his voice nonchalant. He didn't care what happened to the target, as long as they ended up dead by the end of it. Christian was just there to fill his coffers.

Max looked at the picture again. She was pretty, he couldn't deny that. She was smiling in the picture, seemingly making jokes with somebody the picture hadn't captured. His usual targets were criminals that had made threats against people. Those people wanted the criminal taken out before they made good on those threats. That was where Max came in. He was the one that took them out.

His other type of target was rich assholes. The kind that exploited people for money, the kind who's wealth would be better distributed to the very people they were exploiting. They weren't easy jobs, killing someone and changing their will, and they didn't get them often, but they were Max's favourite. The tougher the better.

"Christian."

Christian groaned as he rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "Do you want to stand around and argue, or do you want to get paid?"

The Lion was on the prowl. No weapons, Max wouldn't need them for her. He climbed into his car and looked at the address of the café. A café by the train station, open for twenty-four hours out of the day. Two and a half star rating, the only good thing about the café being the 'pretty, kind waitress'.

Once the night was up, the reviews would plummet.

Max drove. A waitress at a shitty, twenty-four hour café. She couldn't be worth as much as Christian was saying she was. And, if she was worth that much, she couldn't have known.

Parking outside of the train station, Max looked over at the café. It was the same angle the picture was taken from, he recognised as he looked down at her picture in his folder. She was grinning in that picture and she was grinning now as she cleared away somebody's plates.

He couldn't do this.

***

You didn't love your job. How could you when this was your job? But you still completed it with a smile. Making coffees and running food out to people. Clearing plates and glasses, and wiping over their tables.

It wasn't forever, you told yourself as you took the plates back into the kitchen. "Desserts for table sixteen," You called to the boys in the kitchen. Jimmy saluted you as you scraped the plates into the food waste bin. It was just you, Jimmy and Frank this late at night. Jimmy and Frank were in the kitchen, while you worked the floor.

While Jimmy made the desserts, you backed out of the kitchen and surveyed the few tables you had in. Somebody was at the counter. "Sorry," you said as you rushed past him. You logged into your till and looked at him. The handsome man with the freckle on his lip. "What can I get for you?" You asked, finger poised over the buttons.

For a moment, he said nothing. It was nearly one in the morning, and he wasn't being an easy customer. He looked behind you, at the drinks you had on offer. He looked at the small version of the menu on the board behind your head.

"How about some coffee?" You tried, holding up a mug.

He gave a nod. "A coffee, please," he said and you got to work. Making coffee's was the easiest part of your day. Steaming the milk and pouring it in with the shot of coffee, creating a leaf in latte art at the end. You passed over the coffee and put it through the till.

The bell rang, signalling the desserts were ready, but you didn't run to it. Not while the handsome man in the skinny jeans and leather jacket was still paying. His phone chimed as the payment went through and he grabbed his coffee, taking a seat on one of the round tables by the counter.

You ran to answer the bell, to run the apple pies over to table sixteen, and returned to the counter, cleaning the coffee machine and the jug you used to clean your milk.

Eyes were on you as you worked. You didn't mind it too much, it happened more than you cared to admit. Teenagers that should have been in bed, coming into the café to stare at you as you served them black coffee. You let them sit in the café, since it was better than them roaming the streets.

As you cleaned the counter, you looked at the little round table opposite. Looked at the man with the freckle on his lip. He was pretty, pretty blue eyes, pretty full lips. He was well put together, better than most of the people you saw something through your door at this time in the morning. "What brings you here at this time in the morning?" You asked as you sprayed sanitiser on the counter.

The handsome man with the freckle on his lip looked around. "I'm probably here for the same reason anybody else is," he said and sipped his coffee.

You couldn't help but look around at everybody else in the café. Those getting home late from work, waking themselves up before they headed home to their families. People on break from working in the middle of the night, coming in for a coffee to wake themselves up. People that just wanted shelter, that you had undercharged for a coffee.

The man in front of you didn't seem like that.

Your eyes returned to him. You stared at him, stared at what he was wearing, at the way he was holding his cup. He didn't look on break from work, desperate for a fix of caffeine. He didn't look ready to go home, waking himself up to go and deal with the kids.

You hummed and grabbed a pastry from the counter. "Here," you said and placed it in front of him.

He looked up, brows furrowed as he continued to smile at you. "What's this for?" He asked and pulled the little, white plate towards himself.

You shrugged your shoulders. You couldn't very well tell him that you wanted to figure him out, that you gave him the pastry to keep him around.

Going back to work, you could feel his eyes on you as you cleared away plates and glasses and cleaned tables. You caught his eye several times as you ran plates back into the kitchen.

When you got him his second cup of coffee, he finally introduced himself. "I'm Max," he said and pushed his empty cup towards you.

"It's lovely to meet you, Max," you said, keeping your tone polite. You introduced yourself, gave him the name that he could have read from your name tag.

At the end of your shift, Max was still sitting there. Your conversation had been light through the evening, neither of you learning very much about each other. Just enough to keep you thinking about him as you got changed.

The morning crowd were walking in as you walked out. Max was still at your table. Part of you wanted to stop, wanted to tell him how you hoped to see him again another time.

But Max stood. He put his empty mug at the end of his table. "Can I walk you to your car?" He offered, taking long strides to catch up with you.

You gave him a smile. "You can walk me to the bus stop, if you'd like," you said and he answered you with a nod.

The two of you kept talking, the topics light as he walked you to the bus stop just a little way down the street. Even at the bus stop, Max stayed talking to you until your bus pulled up.

"I'll see you around," Max said as you stepped onto the bus.

Waving, you paid for your ticket and found yourself a seat.

You should be dead, he couldn't help but think as he walked away. Max ignored his buzzing phone as he walked back to his car.

Christian was going to have his head, he knew as he started heading back to his apartment.

He couldn't kill you, he was sure of that now.

a/n we're starting over with taglists. no permanent one. comment if you wanna be added for the series

taglist: @nurse-floyd @biancathecool

#max verstappen #max verstappen x reader #max verstappen fluff #max verstappen x you #mv1 #mv1 imagine #mv1 x reader #f1 #formula one #formula 1 #f1 imagine #f1 x reader #formula one imagine #formula one x reader #formula 1 x reader #formula 1 imagine

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azulhood · 1 year ago

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Danny and Jazz were almost at the end of their rope.

They've checked almost everyone they knew who would take them in.

Sam's family? Didn't want them living under the same roof as their daughter.

Mr Lancer? He did actually want to take them in but his one bedroom apartment was not a suitable place for kids to live and his teachers salary couldn't afford to support three people.

Tucker's family? Got shut down by Vlad.

Which was the end of the list of who could get custody, well living at least.

There was no way either of them were living with Vlad, and with that in mind, they decided to get creative.

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

When Edward woke up, sitting at an old interrogation table in what seemed to be an abandoned warehouse (don't ask him which one, gothem had too many) and splitting pain in his head from most likely getting knocked out, his first thought was I knew it.

Gotham rogues had been disappearing only to reappear the next day with no memory and often in bad shape, like black mask and Bane.

Some of the rogues, such as penguin and Ivy, believed that they would be safe from the next attack.

Edward was slightly more pessimistic.

And it turned out he was right.

"ahem." Noise brought his attention to the warehouses other occupants.

Two teenagers.

It was strange to think that these two put Bane into a coma, but Edward had spent most of his nights getting the stuffing beaten out of him by a child wearing the colours of a traffic light so he was suitably wary.

"How can I help you?" Being polite was always a good idea when kidnapped by possible meta children (because no normal person could walk away from a fight with Bane, the bats don't qualify as normal.)

"Hi, I'm Jazz and this is Danny." The red head introduced herself and the blue eyed boy next to her. "Nice to meet you Mr Nygma."

"Nice to meet you as well." His mouth responded on autopilot as he panicked over being addressed by name, no one who kidnapped him did that ( which was mostly the bats taking him back to Arkham after another foiled plan) unless they were Amanda Waller.

"Right, now that we all know each other, let's get started." Danny said pulling out a sheet of paper and star themed pen from somewhere.

"Get started on what?" Torture? Edward would really like to know if that was the case.

"The interview." Jazz explained " You just have to answer a few questions then you get to go, after we wipe your memory of course, we have someone who we don't want knowing we're in Gotham."

"Oh, of course." Edward replied faintly as he processed the information given to him.

"And if you get job we'll contact you in a week." Danny added as he twirled his pen. "Got it?"

"Yes." Edward had never been more confused in his life.

#dpxdc #dcxdp #dp x dc #dc x dp #if you can't get your own responsible adult then store bought is fine #everyone in Gotham is confused #the bats have no idea whose kidnapping villains and why #Jazz and Danny just want someone they can trust as their guardian #do they care if that someone is a villain? no #anyone is better then Vlad #does Red Hood count as a rougue?#if so he gets an interview too

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ajortga · 2 months ago

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love at first glance

pairing: tara carpenter x bass guitarist!fem reader

word count: 5.5k+

summary: in which tara admires your bass skills, then admires you even more.

author's note: please bear with me, i don't know what i'm doing but i'm just hoping these scrambled words just go well. tv girl mentioned!

based off request!

tara carpenter x masc! fem reader and reader is in a band, maybe like lead guitarist or bass? but like tara goes to a concert with all of the core 4 (+anika cuz i miss her) and like is mesmerized by reader. maybe they make eye contact during a song or sum? they leave the concert and tara is still thinking about reader and reader is still thinking about tara. cut to like later maybe at a party or a bar and they bump into each other and chop it up, but reader is like awkward-ish?

You’ve always had a love for anything that was related to music. Your parents made you take singing lessons ever since you were little.

At first, you hated it. Singing Mary Had a Little Lamb in different keys was not entertaining. But as you grew older and probably didn’t need to sing that song every practice, you began to use your house’s grand piano that was left untouched for years. And then, being able to sing and knowing your keys inside and out wasn’t so bad after all.

You spent countless times in the living room, the echo of your voice lingering against your house as you learned your favorite songs.

You wrote songs and composed as you experimented with your voice and the keys. It was almost never surprising when your parents caught you up late at night under your pillow, pencil scratching notes across lined pieces of paper. In every single talent show, audition, or musical, your name would be signed. Everyone in your family knew that one day, you’d grow to be a musician.

People would even begin to see you whenever they were at warehouses and you’d be playing a piano. At every gathering, your relatives would ask, “Where is that little Y/N?” And your parents would look at each other with a knowing glance, both saying confidently, “Probably in the living room with that damn piano.”

You loved listening to music, making music, playing music, feeling your emotions in music, god, every time you’d go out, your earphones would be in your pockets.

So when you were gifted an acoustic guitar for your 12th birthday, to say the least, you were fucking thrilled. Instead of playing the piano 7 days a week, you’d play guitar for half those days. Gosh, was it hard learning a string instrument after playing piano for half your life? Maybe. But you loved it.

You’d practice and practice, gradually getting better, then you’d play the electric and bass. And was the bass guitar a hell of a sound, you loved it.

Then, the best thing ever happened to you. You had grouped up with your friends and quickly became a band with all your talents combined. Slowly but surely, did you begin to realize how far you had gone. Because in a blink of an eye, you were at concerts, fingers pressing down on your strings as it electrified through stadiums and arenas while people cheered.

Cheered for you. That’s something you’ll never regret in your entire life.

You turn your bass’s machine head, plucking each string as you tune them before your concert. Nights like this never get old, you’d always be left with the adrenaline from every concert, like your body was refreshed when you slept under your hotel room’s covers.

As your hair and makeup stylist’s makeup brush dabs across your cheeks, you trace the outline of your bass guitar and look at yourself in the mirror. Layered hair, a black tank top over your toned arms, hidden beneath a red leather jacket. Your favorite part would probably be your nails painted red to compliment your hands. You had to keep them short though.

What would this night bring you? Everytime you close your eyes and listen, you can hear the faint echo of your bass vibrating through, lights swaying into the crowd, a smile forming on your face.

Every night had something different, there were different people, a different crowd, it makes you feel different every time. Yet you still feel the thrill and pride swell against your chest.

Junia, one of your closest friends that plays the drums, pops her head in. “You look hot,” she grins, “Jess said she’d come to pick us up at 40. You’re going to kill it, Bass.”

Bass. What an original nickname, you lean your chin into your palm as you raise your eyebrows, “You know it, June.”

7:45.

Tara looks at herself in the mirror, Mindy and Chad screaming at each other while playing Jenga in the background. She pushes a stubborn strand of hair away from her eyelashes while she curls them.

“CHEATER!-” Mindy yells, making the brunette flinch and breathe in frustration. She was not going to get her eyelashes pulled out.

After Tara was done with a cropped graphic tee, a jean skirt, and a cute little white bow in her hair, she walked through the hallway and into the living room, still adjusting her gold hoops.

There, Anika and her sister seemed the sanest out of them all. On the other hand, the twins were fighting over the remote.

“Babies,” Sam mutters, pushing her dark brown hair back.

Anika pulls the remote out of both of their hands easily while Chad mutters ‘what the fuck’ under his breath.

It was like being in a daycare. Tara ate a cookie while watching Anika throw the remote onto the sofa, wearing a lace tank top with jeans, “Mindss, why don’t we just leave the remote and find something else. Your hair is getting all poofy.”

“And a little dingussy,” Chad adds.

Mindy smacks him, “Don’t ever use ‘dingussy’ to describe something. It sounds sexual.”

Before they could say furthermore, Tara jumps in, mentally begging them to shut up for a moment, “You have the keys, Sam?”

Sam pulls them out of the pocket in her jeans.

Tara gives a small nod, looking a little over Sam, “Anika, tickets?”

“Yep, 5 of them,” she says, pulling out each ticket one by one with one hand and smoothing out Mindy’s hair with the other. When it was 5:30PM, they were all off, crawling into Sam’s car. Tara immediately sat in the passenger seat.

I’m not sacrificing my hair by sitting in the middle seat, she thinks as she looks back at Anika, who was basically separating the two twins that were probably yelling in her ear at this point.

“You guys will love them. Jess has always been one of the most talented people I know in music. I have no doubt her band will be the best on stage.”

When Anika had first mentioned when she won a giveaway for a concert. It was for a barricade, but it was stated that they were allowed to be in the front row, the tickets she won had granted her that. Tara wasn’t very interested. Music just wasn’t something she always listened to on a daily basis. But there were 5, and no way would she miss out.

So she listened to a song, played it on Spotify while walking to class.

The scene shifts to a local coffee shop in Woodsboro.

“Let me tell you, the bass was fucking amazing! Brilliant!” Tara yaps excitedly to the four people in front of her. She loved how well the drums, electric, lyrics, and bass sounded. The bass blessed her ears. She had immediately added it to her favorites.

“Bass, huh?” Anika smiles while drinking her coffee. “I think that’s one of the leads, Y/N. Jess always talks about how good she sounds, she usually comes up with all the riffs and lines.”

Y/N. It was unique, Tara made a note to remember it. Yet, she forgot about that conversation no less than 2 days after.

They all stepped out once they could see people lining up and buying the light up sticks that were controlled throughout the concert. Tara found it cool that the sticks had stars on them, in fact, the lights were one of the parts that made a concert a concert.

Mindy was yelling happily and doing a little dance once their tickets got scanned and they all ran to the front row.

Anika gave a cocky grin, “Maybe they’ll notice us because we’re in the front!”

It was thirty minutes until the background music came to a stop and the lights slowly started to dim. People were screaming, Tara’s heart was pounding against her chest. It was dead silent, whispers and occasional excited screams echoed.

“Oh my god, it’s happening,” Mindy whispers loudly, holding onto Anika as they look at the curtains.

They wait a moment, then two, and by the third one, drums begin to echo. ‘Tsst’ being echoed, before it follows with a loud 16th beat of drums. Then, the curtains open as Tara’s eyes widen.

Are you sick of me?

Would you like to be?

I'm trying to tell you something,

Something that I already said

The drums softly fill Tara’s ears, as she watches them play, she finally notices you. Perfect layered hair, messy in all the right ways. The bass girl. Something about the way the warmth of the light danced across your face in all the right ways captivated her. The way your deep red leather jacket hung over your shoulder, exposing your defined collar bones and toned arms while you pressed on strings.

Oh god, it felt as if a new story line with different love interests began to change for Tara. She could see the veins against your slim hands as they traveled across your guitar with ease. You mouthed the lyrics, enjoying yourself as you close your eyes and sway softly to the beat.

You like a pretty boy,

With a pretty voice

Who is trying to sell you something,

Something that you already have

The drums left Tara’s thoughts, now hearing you and the way that your bass adds on to the magic of it all. You’re just standing there, your bangs swiping across your features as you tuck it to your sides, smiling to yourself as you scan the crowd for a moment then look back down to your strings.

Maybe it was the way you looked like you were the right person for this part–to be on stage like you were meant for it. Or maybe it was the way your gaze flickered to the front row and landed on Tara’s wide ones. She could see the way you tilted your head and gave her a curious, wondering look, before giving her a small smile.

Oh my god, your smile was so cute. If she could describe it, it’s like the kind of smile that made her all giggly and was so contagious that she felt herself slowly smile.

The lights shine over your face, making everything about you glow. You pluck at the strings as you mouth the chorus to Tara. Her eyes searched all over your face. You don’t break eye contact with her.

But if you're too drunk to drive,

And the music is right

She might let you stay,

But just for the night

“And if she grabs for your hand, and drags you along,” Tara mouths back in time with the song.

One of your eyebrows raise as the light shines onto you once again, god, she can almost hear your soft, breathy voice teasingly singing, “She might want a kiss before the end of this song..”

Anika screams, jumping up and down and hyping everyone up, waving her heart stick in beat with the song.

Because love can burn like a cigarette…

By the end of the concert, Tara was love struck. Very very love struck. It was late when her and the four of her friends walked out, the stars shining just a little brighter. She couldn’t get you out of her head. She might have grown gray hairs. How could you be more than any other celebrity crush?

She prayed to the universe that it would align you both together. Just like each star was in the night sky.

It’s bad, Loving Machine is playing and she can only think about you strumming your guitar.

Here she comes walking down the street,

Maddie Klein and her fabulous loving machine-

“Earth to Tara, hello?” Anika pauses the music, waving her hand into the girl’s face. It was almost like a record scratch moment as Tara blinked and looked around. “Oh, sorry, what?”

“Did you like the concert?” She asks, holding onto her star light up as the red light makes the glitter under her eyes sparkle. Anika was now in the middle, the car a little quieter since Chad was now in the passenger seat.

“Oh yeah, I loved it.” Tara answers, half of her attention slipping away. She starts to see you from a camera, lighting cast against your tan skin, a TV effect on you, making your movements jerky.

The rest of the people are fading away, their voices, so loud and eager. Blah blah blah blah… Y/N.. Bassist. Love of her life.

Dreamy sigh.

Blah.. Blah.. “Yeah the bassist was hot.” Mindy’s voice suddenly being processed.

“What?” Tara immediately turns away from the window and looks at Mindy on the opposite side. Oh god, now she was going to have to fight for you? "No! Go find someone else to admire!” She grumbles, before immediately looking away.

The whole car shakes as they all laugh, playfully hitting Tara. “See? She was literally summoned, baby!” Anika giggles, talking to Mindy. “She wasn’t giving any shits when we were talking, and as soon as we talked about Senorita Y/N, she was like poof!”

Sam looks from the rearview mirror, an eyebrow raised, “Already? One concert that lasted two hours and she’s already wrapped you around her little finger?”

Little fingers, those veiny hands that played so smoothly across the-

Chad turns around excitedly, like a child peeking at surprise presents, “She was literally captivated the whole damn concert! You should’ve seen her, a love sick puppy!”

Her sister cackles, the car moving as she keeps snorting, “Gotta admit though, she’s fine wine.”

“Sam!” Tara rubs her cheeks, she seriously hoped she wasn’t going to have to battle till death for you.

“Chill!” Sam coaxes, putting one hand up in the air, “I would totally go for her if you weren’t interested. Didn’t think you had a thing for ‘Sam accepted’ girls.”

The freckled cheek girl couldn’t help but sigh, the thought of you still lingering in her mind. Like a twinkling little Melody who’s lyrics couldn’t get out of her mind, even when she slept.

It had been a week. Tara says that she doesn’t think of you too often, but every single time she hears your band’s song, you end up in her mind for the whole day. Every time she steps into a coffee shop, she wonders if you’d be the person to give a free concert.

She wonders if you’re as sweet as your name sounds. She wonders if you’d hold doors for others or walk old ladies down the street. She wonders if your hand would fit hers. She wonders if you had even thought of her after the curtains closed.

She wonders if you smell good, if you’d smell like a musky, sweet, fruity vanilla-y scent with leather undertones. She sure hoped so.

To say the least, you’ve thought about the brunette just as much. You were having fun, strumming your guitar and feeling the beat radiate off your skin. Until you lay eyes on her. She had wide, brown doe eyes that made your knees buckle.

She was heaven-sent. You could even make out her tan freckled cheeks. And you were almost in denial when she was looking at you. It was always who was singing that people looked at, heck, you did too. But you were looking at her. And she was looking at you.

Plenty of people might have looked at you, but she was different. Like she was mesmerized by how you played. Like she was a moth to your flame.

In fact, you don’t know if anyone has ever looked at you with that much admiration.

The girl was so beautifully written, you wished you knew who she was. Instead, she was one out of 8 billion people out there, in a blink of an eye, a close of a curtain, she was off.

Tara looked at herself in the mirror, standing there like.. She didn’t even know, her serious eyes trailing down to what she was wearing, before turning to Anika slowly.

“Anika, I look like a hot dog.” She cries, looking at the way the costume swallowed her whole in the fitting room.

“That’s because you’re wearing a hot dog costume, Tar. But you look like a steaming hot hot dog!” Anika shakes her head, her head only visible since she was basically a whole mustard bottle.

Mindy waddles through the living room, a red ketchup bottle, a red dangling earring complimenting her poofy hair. “Has anyone seen my earring? I can’t find it! It was in my purse and I thought if it looked good, I’d totally buy this.”

Chad walks in the girl’s fitting room, slightly peeking as Sam walks out of her dressing room, a serious expression on their face, a cookie and milk costume.

Tara wants to laugh, but no way in hell was she going to wear this at a costume party, at least not at a serious one.

After actually taking it seriously, Tara decides on a pirate outfit, tying up her bandana.

She can almost hear the music blasting from her apartment, which is filled with laughter and chatting from her ‘family.’

Her eyes skim over her board, looking for her calendar that was usually meant for school, roaming around the small photos of you and a heart drawn over your face. She traces over it, before getting ready to leave, not even looking at the calendar.

Maybe the calendar was just an excuse.

After 5 songs and a half of your band’s music, the core five, including sweet Anika, open the door. A heavy scent of booze fills their senses, sweat, and a mix of perfumes all lingered. Not to mention, it was stuffy.

“Ugh, do they ever think about AC?” Sam grumbles, clearly not a party person as she gets whacked across the face from a toilet plumber that belonged to a person who was wearing a damn toilet costume. Mindy cackled, before tripping and almost crashing into them, luckily her girlfriend tugged her back.

They pushed against cowboy hats and random inflatable dinosaurs, across the dance floor, and to the drinks station.

Tara did not leave empty handed, her mouth gulping down the bubbly bitterness of alcohol.

She was buzzed, a few drinks here and she was flushed and giggling, so she made sure to think about her intake. As she parted from the other four to find a trash can, scanning the groups of people. Sometimes she found people she knew at school, cute boys, just people she’s seen.

Tara took a different route back to her friends, the music growing louder in her ears when she got near the dance floor, slivering through bodies. It was almost inevitable that her nose would scrunch, too strong of a perfume, or just sweat.. It made her nauseous.

Where was she going? She didn’t know, she stood on her tippy toes, her ruffled blouse crinkling as she searched for her friends.

Her face smacked right into someone, her hand automatically being placed on their chest. She opened her mouth, about to apologize and prepare for a scolding until her nose twitched. A fruity and sweet vanilla-y smell, and a light leathery contrast.. No?..

“Shoot,” you look down, your drink almost spilling on yourself as you look at the shorter person as you smooth out their hair. Did you ruin it? “I’m sorry, are you okay?”

Tara looks at her outfit, perfectly fine, no stains. Hearing your soft, breathy voice, it was unrecognizable to her at first.

“No, it’s totally fine, I wasn’t looking where I was going.” Tara says, immediately looking up and seeing your big curious eyes.

Oh my god.

Your eyes search hers, like you’re scanning her. Like you feel you’ve seen her before. No, you know you have. But where? The trace of her nose, doe eyes, oh! Tara almost puts a hand over her mouth because she can almost see the swirling sense of recognition in your eyes.

You opened your mouth to say something, maybe to ask about the concert, but you closed it. You don’t even know if she noticed you, maybe she was spacing out and was not acknowledging you during your concert a few weeks ago.

When it came to people, especially ones you crushed on, you were all stuttering words and pink cheeks.

The shorter girl sees the way you tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, and she registers what you’re wearing as her eyes trail down. And fuck, you looked angellic. Seriously.

A halo over your head and wings enveloping your sides. A black corset and ruffled skirt that showed a little of your legs, which were covered with tights. God, she thinks she can see the muscles as you cross one leg over the other.

It immediately makes you think she’s judging you. This costume was not your cup of tea, but your friends invited you to match with them, all angels in different colors.

The little pirate instead gives you a genuine look, “I like your costume,” she says, focusing a little too much on your toned arms and slightly flushed cheeks.

“I um.. Thank you..?” You bite your tongue, not knowing her name. In what chance do you get to meet the girl that made you think soulmates were real once again? At least a 1 in 300 chance.

“Tara,” she answers for you, pretending she didn’t already have your name embedded in the back of her head.

“I’m Y/N,” you bite a smile, she probably didn’t recognize you. You take a small sip from your drink, nose scrunching at the taste.

“You’re good at the bass,” she says nonchalantly, and you almost choke on your drink.

You didn’t think she’d recognize you, but now knowing that, you tilt your head. “Thank you. It comes from years of practice. What did you think?” You were genuinely curious.

“I think you’re just so good at the bass..” She mumbles, again, trailing off, before clearing her throat. “I mean, the bass always makes the songs so much better! You know? It’s like realizing how amazing something really is when you notice it-”

“I appreciate it,” you say, now aware of your surroundings because instead of where you two just bumped into each other, you were sitting at a table. You turn your head, looking at where you were, probably near the back.

Tara took the opportunity to notice your damn jawline, so perfect and sleek and defined-

“I like your freckles,�� you admit, voice breathy. You turn back to look at her while batting your eyelashes, Tara’s eyes trained on how your hands.. Veiny hands lifted the cup to your lips.

The compliment almost catches her off guard, because with all the compliments she might get, freckles were usually not on the list. It used to make her insecure, but the way you said it and looked said otherwise. The alcohol was definitely taking a toll on you, because you were staring at her with no shame whatsoever.

Wide, searching eyes, it looked as if you were trying to memorize every detail.

The flutters in Tara’s stomach would’ve lasted longer. Except her eyes teared away from yours as she could see a very familiar ketchup and mustard costume and two other people behind them.

“Oh my god!” She groans quietly, covering her face as she scoots deeper into the booth.

She completely forgot that she slithered away from them, getting side tracked.

The brunette could die from embarrassment. You on the other hand.. Just prettily sitting there with a curious look on your face, the small warmth of the lamp casting a glow onto your face.

You bite your lip, trying to fight back a small giggle as you peek at the costumes that you can almost kind of guess who they are to Tara.

“SHE’S LOOKING THIS WAY!” Mindy hollers, tugging the mustard bottle next to her as Chad scribbles something on a piece of paper.

“Tara’s literally hiding from us.”

“Hold it up!”

They’re screaming at each other. You can’t hear it from all the music and party chatter, but you can definitely figure it out from their expressions. For a moment, they turn away from you, so you can’t see them.

You slip on a leather jacket that was in your bag.

A hiding Tara is in the corner of the booth, you raise your eyebrows at her.

It doesn’t take long before the four people across the room slowly turn to you in synchronization.

“Um, I don’t-” You start, feeling a little awkward.

They hold up a paper, and you can’t even see what the words are saying. It’s at least the size of a penny. And from here, you can’t even make out the words.

“Dingus,” Mindy shouts to her twin, noticing the confused expression on your face as you try to understand what the paper is saying. She finally turns the paper around after holding it up. “It’s too small, that’s why!”

One of the four holds up a finger, signaling you to give them a moment as they adjust, before turning around.

‘Give her your numbar’ The sign says, you still don’t get it. Oh, number. You grab a tissue from the booth, and take out a sharpie from your pocket. Sharpies were always needed whenever you went out. To write down something on your hand, to sign autographs..

You slip the paper to Tara, giving her a small smile. She was definitely embarrassed. She didn’t even notice you slipping it to her, because after 5 seconds of you sliding it to her again, she still was clueless! The girl, instead, turned around to look out, immediately still seeing her stupid friends.

You sigh, putting the paper into your pocket. You feel a little bad for her.

Party lights fill the empty crevices of the room while you scoot out of the booth and stand up, pretending you didn’t notice the four people who were staring into the back of your skull.

“I think my friends are playing some Uno, you wanna come?” You offer, guiding her out of the booth as you look down at her.

“Sure.”

As the game went on, the last two players in the center still battling it out, Tara could see you were all fuzzy and flushed.

You were definitely drunk. Too drunk to drive.

Your knees were nudged against hers, a little closer than expected, cuddled into her, but she didn’t mind. God no she definitely didn’t.

She was talking a lot, and you were always open ears and one of the best listeners. And then you would ramble and Tara would listen. It made you both feel heard and understood.

After a moment, you remember something.

“Can I borrow your phone real quick? Uh, my phone is dead right now and I have to text a friend where I’m at.” You lie, your words slightly mushed together.

“Sure,” Tara says, unlocking her phone and handing it to you, a little drunk. You try to ignore the fact that the wallpaper is you from the concert she attended weeks ago.

You slip into the contacts, adding your contact and changing the name to; y/n, the bass guitarist ♡.

She didn’t even notice for the rest of the night.

As the sun slept at night, Tara stared at the ceiling, her vinyl spinning while a crackled “Say Yes to Heaven” reverberated around her bedroom.

She wished she could’ve stayed so much longer, but her friends had to leave, and there was no way she was taking an Uber or driving when tipsy.

Tara wanted to ask for your number, but because you never asked, maybe you didn’t because this didn’t mean as much as it did to her.

Curiosity was getting the best of her as she checked the messages on her phone, wondering how you typed like to your friends. But to her surprise, there were no messages to a number she didn’t recognize. The last number was just to Sam.

Her nose wrinkled, swiping to check the apps recently opened as she clicked the recent one.

Dimples creased against her cheeks as she saw your name with a little heart. She immediately clicked to message you. But to her surprise, you had already done so.

y/n, the bass guitarist ♡: whatcha doing? i hope ur not asleep yet>:(

tara ☆🧭: thankfully not yet, i’m in bed. u know, i was going to be a little sad than i’d like to admit if i didn’t get your number.

y/n, the bass guitarist ♡: i did hand you a paper, but you were hiding in the corner of the booth and i thought it would be easier this way

It took her a moment to think of what to say, before she thought of something she never thought she’d do late at night.

tara ☆🧭: do u wanna call? maybe just talk to each other till one of us falls asleep.

You usually weren't the person to connect over facetimes and calls, sometimes you didn't know what to say in the moment. You don't know..

She doesn’t get a response for a minute, before her phone vibrates in her hand and she swipes to answer.

Your hair was let down loose, in an oversized tee that even then she could still see your collarbones. You give a sleepy smile.

“Tara,” you say softly, and something in Tara thumps because you look so happy to see her. She grins back, shifting so she could see you better.

“I’ve never really done one of these,” your quiet voice says, a warmer tone casting over your face. “Do you want to say hi to Cinnamon? He’s my puppy.” You say, pushing your hair back.

The brunette nods, “Puppies are so cute, my sister isn’t very fond though. They sometimes make her sneeze.”

“Oh, allergies you could get a poodle breed or something, Cinnamon doesn’t shed much,” you agree, your camera slightly shaking as she can slightly hear you call your dog's name in a cute voice. “Come here, boy!”

Seconds later, you bring out your puppy, which lolls outs his tongue as you press a kiss to his head. Tara can see your red nails as you mess up his hair.

“Tell me about yourself,” Tara says, looking at you through the screen with pure curiosity.

“I-” You pause, thinking for a moment before shaking your head. “I think you should tell me about yourself first. It’s late and I want to listen to you. As much as I’d try to stay up, I’d fall asleep if you went second.” You murmur, cuddling with Cinnamon.

What you said made Tara feel something she doesn’t feel often. Appreciated? Well, she always wants to listen to others when calling, then she might go second, but when you brought up her going first? That made her feel fireworks.

“Okay, what do you want to know first?”

“What’s your favorite memory and why?”

As an hour, then two passes, you begin to tell Tara about yourself. She’s never felt so heard before. Both your lamps are off, now the only light from each others screens.

She can tell you’re beginning to doze off. The way you’re pausing and blinking sleepily before murmuring a little too softly.

“What is something that you hate?”

You don’t say anything for a moment, your light breaths heard on the other end as you shift slightly and prop up your phone.

“Peppercorns..” You yawn, keeping your eyes half open. “They’re fine for seasoning, but when I bite into them, god.. It tastes so bad..”

You pause again, eyes heavy as you blink. “When you feel like you have to change for other people to like you. When you have to be someone you’re not because of people that don’t make you feel like you can be yourself.”

Tara nods, rubbing her eyes as she admires your defined features, even from the darkness. She could see the softness too. If she looked enough.

“I think those people make me feel the worst. Not wanting to be the one laughed at so you change to the one that’s laughing. Or when people talk down on the things you love. It hurts. And that’s something that I hope no one goes through.”

Wow, something about that makes her get to know the kind of person you are by a landslide.

“That’s a good response. What about your favorite fruit?”

“Mmm.. Watermelon. The sweet ones.. It’s so refreshing and…” You trail off, your eyes closing as your breathing evens out. Your lips were slightly parted, your puppy making a small whimper as he snuggles into you.

It’s silent, except for the faint white noise from Tara’s ceiling fan. You looked like a dream. Everything you talked about made Tara see nothing but good. And knowing that makes her feel like she should start seeing things the way you do.

A car passes by, the softest lyrics playing, it lulls Tara to bed.

We were listening to lovers rock

In her bedroom

You both fall asleep on call, maybe people were meant for each other.

#jenna ortega x you #jenna ortega x reader #jenna ortega x fem!reader #tara carpenter x reader #jenna ortega imagine #tara carpenter x you #vada cavell x reader #jenna marie ortega #jenna ortega x y/n #vada cavell x y/n #wednesday addams x female reader #wednesday addams x you #wednesday addams x reader #jenna ortega imagines #jenna ortega #tara carpenter x y/n #tara carpenter x female reader #cairo sweet x y/n

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redflagshipwriter · 10 months ago

Text

Hot Ghouls in Your Area

Chapter 1

“A cult?” Jason blew out a bubble and enjoyed the disgusted face that Bruce made.

“Yes.” His voice was tight. Jason could tell that he wanted to turn back to the Batcomputer. “They’re operating in Park Row-”

“Crime Alley.”

Batman sighed and accepted the correction. “I would like to propose a joint operation.” He sounded so tired and not very optimistic.

Jason eyed up his on-again-off-again Father figure and popped his gum, thinking it over. Bruce clearly expected him to say no, fuck off, and take the information himself.

He could. There was nothing wrong with that.

“Sure, old man.” He clapped Bruce on the shoulder and finished screwing together the tool he’d brought in for maintenance. He’d had to fabricate a new part and the Red Hood didn’t exactly have the equipment for that in his two room apartment. “Thursday night alright?”

“They’ve a planned meeting on Wednesday, actually,” Bruce said, frowning slightly at him but looking soft around the eyes with confused hope. “Would that be possible? They seem to gather mid-week.”

Jason let out a sigh. “I can make it work. Ta, old man.” He made sure to toss off an especially insouciant salute as he sauntered away. Sure, he was willing to put a little effort into maintaining their relationship, but he couldn’t be too compliant. If you gave Bruce an hour of your time, he wrote you down on the schedule for an hour every day until one of you fuckin’ died in a warehouse explosion. Something like that.

He wasn’t that trusting, though. Jason took the information that Bruce emailed him and did his own legwork. He wasn’t stubborn enough to bother redoing digital work that Bruce had done or gotten from Babs. That would be a waste of his time, and he valued his time. But he scoped out the cult’s meeting place.

Of all the undignified things, it was a rented room in the community center. Jason found himself sheepishly breaking into the office to check on the reservation and poking around the room itself.

There was nothing special about it. It was a shitty room with shitty paneled walls and cheap, well-trodden grey carpet. It boasted a few too many tables, arranged in a U shape, and a whiteboard pushed up against the wall that hadn’t been cleaned off well enough to erase what he was pretty sure was a reference to their lord and savior, destroyed of worlds.

So. That was a point for Bruce’s cult thing.

He hadn’t really doubted it, if he was honest, given that this had originated in a tip from Zatanna. She had told him as a courtesy that some creep had moved their base of recruiting and operations into Gotham.

Apparently, recruitment was going pretty well. The room could seat like, twenty? Jason counted chairs and left.

He came back on Wednesday at 8pm with the Batman and an attempt at a good attitude. He probably wasn’t going to need any of the weapons on his person. They were going to check in so that this guy knew they had an eye on him and that he would be suspect number one if there was any hint of people or cats being sacrificed.

Bruce fucked off to peer in the windows, like the giant caped creep he was. Jason took the front door, nodded congenially at the old man in the office, and knocked at the room the cultists had reserved.

He could hear Bruce internally curse through the comm. It was silent, of course, but the quality of the silence changed. “Knock knock,” he called, since a literal knock hadn’t done it. He opened the door without waiting. “Just checking in, heard you’re new to town and that you tried to feed Zatanna’s shitty little cousin to the god of Death?”

The room stared at him. A whiteboard marker squeaked to a stop. He idly followed the sound to the board. A …. Huh. that looked like some kind of mystical bullshit.

“You’ve been touched by death,” said the fraud himself, a man in his fifties with a wildly pretentious robe that was wrinkled from the paper bag he’d clearly used to carry it in. He outstretched the hand that didn’t have a blue whiteboard marker in it. “You would be a perfect sacrifice to our Lord.”

“So will it be,” said about half the people there, at the same time a young woman said, “No shit?” in an impressed tone.

Jason rolled his eyes through the helmet, unintimidated by the room of weirdos standing up. The kind of people who gathered at a community center on a Wednesday night were not going to summon the God of Death. Light glinted off the window where Batman was clearly weighing the possibility of breaking glass and swinging in. Jason silently waved him off with a headshake. They weren’t to the point of property damage yet. He took a couple of steps into the room with deliberate swagger. “What a lucky guess,” he drawled. “The Red Hood has had brushes with death? No one but a legitimate prophet could possibly make such a statement.”

“I’m not a prophet,” said the man, and turned back to his white board. “I’m a devote.” He rubbed out a line with the meat of his hand and then hurriedly wrote in ‘The Red Hood’ in a tilted cursive. “The sacrifice!” he shouted, throwing his arms wide and accidentally making a big blue line through his evil little sigil or whatever it was. The elderly lady to Jason’s right opened up her bag, thrust her hand in, and came up with a fistful of -

“Salt?” Jason asked, confused and unimpressed as the silly twit threw her handful of salt at him. “Thanks, I’m better seasoned now,” he snarked. He pulled out a gun easily. “Alright, let’s get serious. I-”

The whiteboard was glowing. The blue letters were glowing green.

“What the fuck?” Jason said. The windows exploded with broken glass as Batman decided now was the time to make his entrance. He barely got to see it before something hooked unpleasantly on his body and soul and twisted it sideways.

The world was green now. Holy shit. Jason spun a circle on uneven ground and gaped. “...Egg on my face,” he said. “I’ve been sacrificed. Consider me embarrassed.” A quick check showed that his comm was useless. It was giving off a steady little eeee of static that kinda sounded like screams. Whimsical. Jason turned it off.

He wasn’t panicking yet. The void wasn’t that freaky. It was weird, sure, but there weren’t any demons or enemies. He flicked the safety off his favorite gun just in case and frowned into the darkness.

It was like he was standing under a spotlight with no light source. There was ambient lighting in all directions, but the world faded into darkness only a few dozen feet away. He took some experimental steps to determine that, yeah, the field of visibility traveled with him.

Well. Time to get moving. Jason walked. There was nothing for the first - hour, he was gonna call it an hour. He got antsy and started jogging. The green stretched on, placid and infinite in a way that was really starting to piss him off. “Hey!” Jason barked into the void. “Anyone there?”

There was an answering electronic whirr. He stopped in his tracks. Jason looked in every direction, including up, and only saw the fucking thing when it was basically on top of him.

The vehicle was probably most equivalent to a spaceship, he decided, as what was probably a 3-man craft at most parked. The top clicked. It opened from the top and someone bounded out. “Hey!” came an annoyed male voice. “What’s the deal, bud?” The stranger landed in front of Jason with crossed arms and a pissy expression. His white hair floated above his head as if he was the little fucking mermaid in the ocean.

Jason scowled, the back of his mind cataloging the other guy’s outfit as pristine and undamaged and his musculature as athletic. “What’s it to you?” he asked, defensive. He didn’t know if it was safe to give information to this guy. “I might be a little lost,” Jason conceded.

“A little lost,” the guy repeated, and then- okay, he flew in a weird little flippy circle, scowling all the while as Jason gaped. “A little lost.” He scoffed. Then he let out a sigh that made his whole body look smaller. He uncrossed his arms and ran a hand through his hair. “This is a weird question,” he said, making it sound more defensive than apologetic. “Did you uh.” He scowled, like the words were distasteful. “Look,” he tried again. “Are you delulu, or did you get caught up as the sacrificial bride? I told Frank to knock that shit off.”

Sacrificial bride. Jason felt his brain go offline for a moment. Say what now.

“Helloooo,” the… was this rando a god of death? He was impatient. He flew way up into Jason’s personal space and snapped his fingers. “Someone just smashed metal trash bins together at my grave to get my attention, basically. No, it’s more like one of those spam pop ups that says there’s hot girls in your area?” He made a gesture at Jason. “Only it’s loud. It’s ringing in my ears, and I had to come track you down. Do you think this is funny?”

“...Sacrificial bride?” Jason finally managed to croak out.

Weirdly, this made the other guy relax immediately. “Just found out, huh,” he said, sounding much more sympathetic. “Yeah, okay, we need to sort out a spiritual divorce immediately. And then you can go home and there will be no more hot girls in my area and I can get back to my ess- my work.”

Jason took a few moments of grief and confusion to accept his apparent status. “We’re married?” he said weakly.

The white haired man looked a little sheepish. “Marriage is probably not quite accurate,” he said, and Jason felt a little bit of relief before the guy continued, “It’s more like you’re my concubine?” He sounded mortified by this. “I didn’t want this!”

“No, no,” Jason said, meaning both that he believed it and that he needed this conversation to change directions immediately. “I- who are you?” He gestured at his– what the fuck was the other side of a concubine relationship? King was the associated word that came up, but that…

“I’m nobody, really,” said the white haired man weakly. “But I may technically be King of ghosts or whatever. The Infinite Realms.” He scratched at his face. “So… yeah.”

They stood in utterly mortified silence for a long moment before he seemed to remember something. “You can call me Danny,” he offered.

“...Call me Jason,” he said.

“Thanks, Jason,” Danny said genially. “So, uh, this is a mess, right?” He started floating away backwards. “I’m going to hunt down my mentor and advisor and get some uh- advice, I guess. Do you wanna come with? Or should I come back and check in once I’ve heard from him?”

Jason weighed up his situation, the conventional wisdom about getting in vehicles with strange men, and wondered how useless his gun was going to be in this situation. Danny had never reacted to it being pointed at him, so his guess was ‘utterly unhelpful’. He put it away. “I’d like a ride, thanks,” he said dryly.

They made some stilted conversation on the ride. Danny was clearly trying to hold back and give him no identifying information. That was fascinating, because it implied that there was something Jason could do from the human world to track Danny down. It was also reassuring because there was no reason to withhold information if he’d planned to keep Jason prisoner, so, ya know, that was a good sign.

Anyway, Jason got a lot of information from Danny.

Danny was a terrible liar and he misspoke like, all the time. Jason was pretty sure he was in the ghost equivalent of school, like college or something. He talked like someone in Jason’s age group would, so he’d probably died very recently. Maybe he had been a college student when he’d died and he just hadn’t given up on that degree yet, honestly. Jason managed to drag the conversation around to education. He got nowhere with asking about literature but he hit the jackpot with science. Danny was still babbling about a telescope when he landed the …ship outside of a wonky clocktower.

Jason took off his safety belt and froze in his tracks when Danny absently stopped him with a cool hand. Jason looked down at that hand.

“You had better stay here,” Danny said. He shook his head slightly. “Clocky doesn’t like everyone.”

He melted into the chair as if he had never wanted to get up. “Alright,” Jason said.

Danny was out of the spaceship by the time that Jason realized something was very wrong with that interaction.

He hadn’t decided to sit down. He hadn’t wanted to sit back down. Did- did he actually think it was reasonable to stay behind, or would he have argued and gone in normally?

‘...I think Danny did something.’ Suspicion swirled in his gut. Jason tried to take the safety belt off and stand up. He couldn’t. It was like his muscles wouldn’t respond to it.

Well, that was pretty fuckin’ evil. His pulse picked up in his throat. It… It was some kind of compulsion? He had to do what Danny told him to do? That was really fucked up. He was starting to feel really unsafe now. He wished he’d hung back with Bruce. He wanted someone to bring him home. And weirdly, he felt betrayed. He hardly trusted Danny, didn’t know the fucker well enough to, but he hadn’t gotten that impression off the guy–

‘It wasn’t him,’ Jason realized. ‘It was the binding ritual. Danny said it wasn’t like a marriage, it’s not equal. That’s why I did what Danny wanted me to do.’

Well. Well then. If Danny didn’t know that Jason had to follow his orders, Jason was most fucking certainly not going to spell it out for him. It was a grim calculation to make, but it seemed the safest. As it was, Danny seemed to want to get rid of him as fast as possible.

So that was it. He’d play along and get Danny to spit him back out into Gotham, a young hot divorcé free on the streets.

#red hot ghouls #jason todd #dcdp #deadonmain #dp x dc

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eupheme · 6 months ago

Text

— hit the road [into the fire, part vi] [finale]

cooper howard / the ghoul x f!reader

rated e - 3k

tags: dubcon, power dynamics, vault dweller!reader, bounty hunting, sex for favors, sub/dom elements, hurt/comfort, kissing, fingering, light dacryphilia, rough PiV, creampie, multiple orgasms

a/n: the final part! thank you so much for checking out this series! 💖

“You still mad?” He husks, pulling back to let his lips brush yours. His thumb swirls against your clit. Tempering the pitch of your groan, as you buck into his touch.

It makes you remember just how angry you had been with him, the day before. His harsh words already easing with the way he slaughtered all those men for you.

“Yes.” Your teeth nip at him, a whine as his fingers slip from you, to tap harshly against your center.

“Good.” He growls, “Don’t hold back on me, now. Want you to ride these fingers, sweetheart.”

(or - the Ghoul does a thorough job of making sure you’re alright.)

You only make it as far as the third room.

The warehouse is empty, the only sound in your quiet footsteps. The hitch of your breath, as you try to catch it. A familiar warmth that you’ve come to associate with him, as he checks for anyone lingering.

An old office door knocked open with the barrel of his shotgun. A bathroom next, the stall doors hanging off their hinges.

An old bunk room, at the end of the hall. A narrow military cot tucked against the wall, next to an overturned desk, age-old papers spilling out against the floor.

His head turns, catching the way you automatically look to him. The way you follow at his heels, his own little shadow.

A ground-out sound slips from his teeth - a decision, as he hauls you in behind him. Your back pressed up against the door as it closes, his swift fingers latching the lock in place.

His look hungry, as your eyes meet him. Caging you in, hands grasping at your waist - a thigh fitting between yours, pressing to your core.

Your hips rock on their own, a shared breath as your nose brushes his cheek. He’s hard against you - since your mouth had first met his. Maybe even before. Meeting the roll of your hips, as your hand reaches down to cover him.

Feeling bold, as he fills your palm. Your fingers curling as he hisses, just before his lips press to yours again.

You can feel him throb against you. As you cup and squeeze - his own fingers flicking at the button of your pants. Going further - his hand twisting until he can fit it down, and tuck it against your cunt.

Rough fingers parting you. Slipping over slick skin, as you tug at his belt.

“Always so fuckin’ wet for me,” He husks, a low hum at your expression. The half-lidded eyes as he pets at your clit - your own hand going still, distracted.

“Ain’t that right, sweetheart?”

Pinching your clit, sending a pulse of pleasure-pain down your spine.

“Only for you.” You breathe.

A rough growl, as his other hand reaches, to finish your job for you. Wrenching open the zipper, letting your hand slip beneath.

“I know. Only for me.”

It’s a sigh, as your skin meets his, squeezing.

You think he’d take you right here. Spin you around and fuck you against the door, and you’d let him. His fingers already nudging at your hole, teasing the tip into where you need him.

You whine in surprise, when his hand slips free. A rough hum around his fingers, licking them clean, when he sees your expression - as he herds you back towards the cot.

Shoulders rolling, his bandolier and his bag dropped on the table. That dark coat slipping from his arms. Flung across the cot, so you’re not wrapped up in the filth that splatters the outside when he fucks you.

Stalking toward you until the backs of your knees hit the mattress, sending you down. That thrill shoots through you, at how easy it is for his fingers to catch around the waistband of your pants, to tug them down.

You lean forward enough to work the laces free on your boots, kicking the layers off until you’re bare.

Watching as he regards you, in faded shades of blue and worn leather. Broad-shouldered with a trim waist, all hidden by the bulk of his tattered coat. Fingers at his throat - loosening the snaps, before he’s straddling the end of the cot.

His eyes doing a slow sweep, a pinch to his brow - almost as if confirming that there weren’t any other marks on you that weren’t left by his own hand, or mouth.

Bending low when he is content - hands catching your thighs, pushing, to keep them apart. A slow drag of his tongue against your pussy, before his fingers follow to fit inside you.

Arcing over you, swallowing your cry - licking into your mouth so you can taste how you meld together.

Losing just a bit of the messy, hungry edge from earlier. His free hand slipping up - palm curled around your neck. Almost as if remembering how to do so, as he lazily deepens the kiss.

The plunge of his fingers is loud. Two notched deep, stretching you out. This he has not forgotten - how to press and curl his fingers until you are keening.

“You still mad?” He husks, pulling back to let his lips brush yours.

His thumb swirls against your clit. Tempering the pitch of your groan, as you buck into his touch.

It makes you remember just how angry you had been with him, the day before. His harsh words already easing with the way he slaughtered all those men for you.

“Yes.” Your teeth nip at him, a whine as his fingers slip from you, to tap harshly against your center.

“Good.” He growls, “Don’t hold back on me, now. Want you to ride these fingers, sweetheart.”

Encouraging your hips to roll, to buck into his touch. Chasing the high that shoots through you, with each pound of his fingers.

A rough sound of approval when your hand slips beneath your shirt. His own leaving your throat to tug at the hem. A bitten out “off ” that has you tugging it over your head, the faded bra following.

Nipples tight when his teeth pinch against them. A ragged groan as you reach down - your fingers joining his, his thumb tucked in between them.

He lets you touch yourself for a moment, the needy circle of your fingertips, before he’s batting your hand away.

“Only way you’re gonna come is by me,” The Ghoul rasps, “You need to keep your hands busy, then you keep ‘em right here.”

Guiding your hand down to his cock, letting your fingers wrap around. Your thumb slick when it brushes the head, his grunt low as you try to stroke him.

Desire warm in your belly and thrumming in your veins with how hard he is. At the feral sound he makes when your fingers flex, dipping down to stroke against the tight seam of his sack.

It sends you higher, each flick of his thumb and crook of his fingers bringing you closer and closer, until you’re there.

“Oh.” It’s ragged, as you chase the building pressure. His hand at your hip, biting into your skin, “Fuck, I’m gonna come -”

Your moan breaks, as the pleasure rushes over you. Pooling low in your cunt as you clench around his fingers, then rippling outwards.

“There you fuckin’ go,” He hums, watching your eyes flutter shut. The pinch of your brow, the small of your back arching off the table as you cry out.

Drawing out your orgasm, as his fingers stroke. One of your hands pinching at your tits, the other forgotten as it curls around his cock. Almost missing the way his hips cant into your touch, matching the thrust of his fingers.

Teers prick at your eyes. A whine as his fingers slip free, only to press against your mouth. Dipping past your lips as they part - your gaze heavy-lidded as your teeth pinch down, tongue licking across his knuckles. Sucking the taste of you off them, with his eyes greedily fixed on you.

“Fuck.” It’s caught in his throat.

Man-handling you as he shifts forward. Tugging your thighs over his, thumbs pressing into the joints of your knees as he pushes them up towards your chest. Spreading you wide - opened beneath him.

His spit-slicked fingers drifting to wrap around his cock. The flushed head ghosting across your cunt as his hips shift. Leaving a sticky spot against your belly, as he imagines how deeply you’ll take him.

“Fuck me.” You beg, hips hitching.

He growls in response. The fat tip slipping across your clit, notching at your entrance. Your muscles tense in anticipation, still unable to help the ragged gasp as he fills you with a swift thrust.

Even with the way he made you come, there’s still that ache. The heavy weight of him fitting inside you, his teeth clenched as he feels the way you wrap so tightly around him.

“Were made to take me,” His voice ragged, as his hips move, “Weren’t you?”

Rough skin dragging against your walls, as he watches how you squirm beneath him. All you can do is nod, the words caught in your throat.

It knocks something loose inside you. How big he feels, the stretch of him. The ache in your limbs, the drain of adrenaline and the sweet embrace of relief.

Your moan hitches. The tears spill over. Cutting through the dust on your cheeks, glinting in the light.

He throbs inside you at the sight. A heave of his chest, a stuttered slowing of his hips at the choked noise you make.

But you need this. Need him - need to forget everything else.

“Don’t you fucking stop.” Your teeth are bared, and something flickers in his expression. The smallest dip of his head, before his grip is tightening around your thighs.

“I’ve got you.” He husks, as he pulls you to meet him.

Driving harder into you. Leaving you breathless, panting. Until you’re thoroughly distracted, too full to feel anything other than him.

Mindless, just how he likes you when he’s buried inside your cunt. The tip of his tongue drags against your cheek - catching a glimmering tear, before his lips are pressing to yours.

You want his mouth everywhere. Between your thighs again. You wonder if this is why he held back - that spark that ignites when you slot your mouth with his, the shiver when his tongue brushes yours.

You don’t want him to ever stop.

“You're gonna give me another.” It’s a command. Short and rough - breathed out against your lips when he pulls back.

He clicks his tongue, with the shake of your head. That heated look dragging down you again, fixing where he spears into you.

“I can’t-” You gasp, but you can feel it.

How his cock strokes against that spot deep inside you. Each breath short as you reach - nails biting into his wrist, where he keeps your thighs spread wide.

“You will.” He vows, through gritted teeth.

Filling you, only to ease himself out - drive himself again to the hilt. Your gasps loud and unfiltered as he brings you higher, words tumbling from your mouth.

You think he can make you - with the tight clench in your belly, the desperation that tinges the sounds pulled from you.

He’s done it before, after all.

“Oh, god,” It’s a needy sob, as you watch the way his fingers tighten their grip. Head lifting to watch the glossy shine of his cock, as it pounds into you.

He grunts, loosening his grip - fingers slipping against where you’re stretched wide around him. Slick when they circle your clit again, that spark inside you roaring.

Another panting breath, another plea,“Oh my god-”

“Cooper, darlin’.” He rasps, “Call me-”

"Cooper.” You echo - his name drawing out long and low between your lips.

Feeling right, something missing clicking into place.

His hips grind harshly against yours, a broken sound caught in his throat when he hears you say it.

Such a small thing to have such a weight. But it does - you know what it means, for him to gift you this.

You try it again, his eyes fixed on the way your lips round with his name, how you clench around him with the tight swirl of his fingers.

"That’s right.” Cooper growls, “You gonna be cryin’ out a name, it fuckin’ better be mine.”

Again, and then again. Until is long, drawn out.

A plea that breaks, as you cry out - when he makes you come hard around him. Your nerves are a live wire - the ceiling above swirling into a haze as everything fades to white noise. All you can feel is him.

He fucks you through it - hands easing down to grasp at your hips, keeping your hips meeting his as you pulse around his cock.

Fingers lazy as they swirl against your clit, until you’re bucking with overstimulation. Trying to push his hand away - but he flattens it, possessive with the way he keeps it tucked against soaked skin.

This time when you come down, he lets you breathe. His cock still notched deep, feeling the fluttering aftershocks of your orgasm as he arcs over you.��

Your eyes dazed, a cock-drunk smile as they drag across his face. Sharp cheekbones and rough edges. Pretty, you think - and not for the first time.

Greedy as they dip lower, to his throat - all that open skin, new to your eyes. He catches you looking at him - his own eyes narrowing. The flick of his tongue against his teeth.

“Go on, now.” He husks.

Waiting for you to ask. Giving in, when you do.

It’s slow, how you reach. The tips of your fingers mapping his scarred skin. Thumb pressing into the hollow of his throat - drifting down to the hard muscle of his chest, where his faded shirt parts.

Tugging at the fabric - head tipping up so you can press your lips against the healed gnarl of skin, where he had taken a bullet from you.

Close enough that you can hear how his breath comes out ragged. A low groan against your teeth when they scrape his neck - your hand pressed too close to the gallop of the heart.

It has him leaning away from you. Catching your wrists, the brush of his lips against the bruised skin, before he’s dragging them down and pinning them against your belly.

A flicker of pain as you gasp, punctuated by a harsh thrust of his hips. Your tits bouncing where they’re framed by your arms, his fingers pinching against your skin as he does it again.

You’re slick around him. Can hear each plunge of his cock - his eyes dropping to see how you smear across the base. Sticky against his sack when he grinds deep, from when you gushed as he fucked your release from you.

It’s not an act, the way you sigh his name. The way you clench, as if to keep him inside.

“Too fuckin’ good,” Cooper growls, feeling your spiked pulse beneath his fingertips. How you squirm, brow pinched as he arcs over you.

As he takes. As if he thought he wouldn’t get this chance, again.

As if you're his, and you just might be.

It shoots straight to his cock, the tightening in his belly. Driving him near feral, with the way you watch, the hot shimmer of desire.

“Gonna come in your tight, sweet cunt. Fill her up right.” It comes out low, almost desperate - if he could be. Those sharp thrusts turning shallow as your hips move, chasing after him.

Your eyes fix on his, teeth sinking into your lip as you grin. Knees closing around lithe hips, your ankle hooking around his to keep him close.

“Please.” You beg, “Cooper, please -”

The sound of his name has his teeth clicking together. A ragged groan, pressure against your wrists as he leans into you.

Fitting his hips flush with yours, as he comes. Cock heavy and twitching as his hips rut - fucking his come deeper inside you with each pulse as he empties himself.

Panting as he drifts down, but there’s no menace in the sharp edge of his words.

“You’re gonna be the fuckin’ death of me, sweetheart.”

It feels different this time.

The weight of him as he stays seated in you. His fingers are still tight around your wrists, keeping you close on his terms. A hand planted near your shoulder, as the heave of breath slows.

Something from before, slipping in.

He didn’t have to find you. You don’t even know how he did.

Didn’t have to kill those men. Lay you down on his coat, fuck you until you couldn’t even think -

It has to mean something.

And with the way his eyes trace over your face…

You know that Cooper feels it, too.

When you jolt awake, you’re alone.

You’re not sure when you drifted off, a wince when your hand scrubs over your face. An ache in your cheek, a much duller one settling between your thighs.

The spot next to you is cool, the coat gone. Your stomach flips, uneasy. Fingers fumbling as you redress - already stumbling for the door as you tug on your boots.

A knot winding tight in your chest as you slip through the door. A ragged sigh of relief when you see him, your back sagging against the wall.

Not used to being idle. Finishing up his business, snapping the metal lid shut on a small crate.

“Cooper.”

His name rings out - those dark eyes finding you instantly.

Crossing the room slowly, with the jangle of his spurs. Knuckles tipping up your chin, frowning at your expression.

"Thought you were gone," You huff, embarrassed, “Thought it was all a dream.”

There’s the lightest twitch of his lips.

“If that was your dreams,” He husks, “I’d hate to see your nightmares, sweetheart.”

It’s the first time that the field has been leveled, between you. Something charged sparking, in the slow sweep of his eyes.

“What next?” Your question is quiet - rough hum, as his eyes narrow.

“Mean to find a courier.” His head tilts towards the crate behind him, “Send a lil’ somethin’ back to your Vault. Gotta see a man ‘bout his brother, too.”

The implications of both makes your stomach churn - another reminder of just how dangerous he is.

You blink, with a small nod, “And… and after?”

“And after,” He drawls - with the sweep of his thumb against your chin, “I suppose we’ll have to see where the road takes us.”

Cooper’s hand drops. Palm upright, as it extends between you - an offer.

Giving you a chance to run, now that your life is your own.

“You in, sweetheart?”

It’s easy to answer.

With a smile -

You take it.

the end! ✨

honestly, thank you so much for reading this. I was feral over the idea of a one-shot, and there was so many kind comments that it blossomed into a longer story for them 💖 every comment has meant so much, and I have loved every second of writing this! thank you for the encouragement, and giving me an excuse to write more, because ahh I was (and am!!) so hooked! you all are the best. would love to know what you thought!

#cooper howard x reader #cooper howard x you #the ghoul x reader #the ghoul x you #fallout smut #fallout tv series #fallout #cooper howard

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roguelov · 1 year ago

Text

Let Me Help

Summary: On a mission with Miguel to stop a variant of Doc Ock, you accidentally inhale something you shouldn’t have. You actively try to ignore these burning desires raging through you. However when Miguel notices your odd behavior, he finally confronts you. A confrontation that leads to this thing you need most: him.

Word Count: ~6.6k

Reader: Afab (no fem pronouns used)

Warnings: SMUT (sex pollen, fem!masturbation, fingering, unprotected sex, riding, oral (fem!receiving), doggy style, multiple orgasms, slight praise kink, voyeurism, cockwarming, switch!reader, switch!Miguel), smut with some feelings, unestablished relationship, mutual pining

MINORS DNI/ 18+ ONLY

The salty harbor water splashed against the algae covered docks of the warehouse district. Smog of the city filtered into the already cloudy night sky. The sea and city - cars and boat horns - clashed together in an odd cacophony. Your nose wrinkled as the sting of salt mixed with newly poured asphalt.

On top of a warehouse, you and Miguel stood side by side overlooking the massive, old and rundown, area. Another anomaly was plucked and dropped off in a universe where they shouldn’t be. The Spider-Man, Peter W. Parker, of this world was unfortunately and temporarily subdued by the anomaly, a variant of Doc Ock. Peter was completely paralyzed from his encounter and was resting back at HQ as a team tirelessly tried to work on an antidote for him.

“Be careful,” Miguel warned.

“Always am,” you smirked under your mask, before leaping off the building to search the west end of the docks.

Miguel scoffed. Yet, his eyes watched you intently as you landed on another building. You slipped inside one of the broken windows and disappeared from view.

He paused, hesitating for a second, then turned away.

Searching through your area, the anomaly wasn’t in the first building. Or the second. You hoped, sending out a small prayer to the universe he was in the last building. If not, maybe Miguel had more luck than you.

The last warehouse was filled with wrecked boats strewn up on lifts, scattered repair parts, and half broken shipping crates. Moving around, your footsteps were light, and unheard. Nothing creaked, and dust barely moved. You tried a few office doors only to find them locked, or rusted shut. Sighing, you knew of another way to enter and luckily they all lined the edge of the warehouse.

Outside once again, you carefully scaled the building approaching the first set of windows. Brown paper covered most of the dirty glass, yet one window had no covers. The paper was luckily torn back. Peering inside, it was a packed room.

A manager's office was reinvented. The desk was pushed to the far wall. Crates piled into the room, acting as other workstations. Old and battered scientific equipment, some even haphazardly thrown together, filled the desk and crates. Cracked glass - cups, beakers, and vials - were scattered about. Scraps of tarp were laid across the floor and hung from the walls as if for protection. A harsh pungent smell soon assaulted your nose. Your face scrunched up in disgust. Chemicals, any and all so it seemed, were carefully placed into rows on the floor and on top of crates. While vials lined a chipped wooden shelf, poorly screwed into the wall. Each one a different color, and labeled with a system you didn’t comprehend or care to understand.

It was crowded, an office turned into a makeshift lab.

Yet, your eyes fell back to the obvious man taking up the cramped space.

If you could call him that.

He was an experiment, a genetic splicing, gone wrong. He was a human on top while stormy blue grey tentacles were his legs. Strangely, he moved so easily. The appendages carried him with perfect posture, and also effortlessly reached for material around the homemade lab. As a tentacle slithered past your view, you quickly noted the tips had black barbs.

You carefully pushed on the window to thankfully find it unlocked. You crawled through and softly dropped in. But, he was somehow alerted to you.

He whipped around, beakers and vials with unknown liquid swayed in his hands. Massive goggles were strapped around his bulging inky black eyes. Tubes of water wrapped around the side of his neck over gills. A torn, stained lab coat hung off his bare torso. Yet, despite his somewhat menacing appearance, he cowarded at your presence. A whine, a bubbling of water, erupted from him.

You raised your hands, hoping to calm him, “Hey, hey, there’s no need to be scared. We’re just going to get you back home, okay?”

As if proving your point, he glitched. He groaned, leaning into a wooden crate. His massive eyes locked with yours. He violently shook his head. “No, I’m not going back.”

“I’m sorry, but you have to. If you don’t you’ll destroy yourself and possibly this universe.”

“No!” He immediately threw whatever vial he had in his hand.

You easily dodged it, but it splattered into the wall behind your head. A sickly sweet aroma filled your nose. You coughed, waving it away. While you were distracted, he fled. He moved with surprising agility, and squeezed through a small air vent.

“Shit.” You coughed one last time. You pressed your watch, calling Miguel. Clearing your throat, you said, “Miguel, I found him. Far west end of the docks, and he’s on the move.”

“Understood.”

You stepped forward and the world tilted. You quickly stumbled into the crates. You grunted as a dull ache rolled through you. Clenching your jaw, you shoved down the pain.

Not now. We will deal with this later.

You dove through the window to catch Doc Ock who was scrambling down an alleyway. His tentacles made a distinct ‘thwap’ as he ran away. For a moment, your vision blurred. Your grip loosened as you slid down a few inches down the brick wall. Gritting your teeth, you shook your head. Everything cleared again. Ignoring the obvious signs, you fired a web and swung down into the alley.

Miguel, however, beat you to it.

Landing in the alleyway, Miguel stood over the now unconscious Doc Ock. The red glowing webs secured around his torso and tentacles. You let out a silent thanks.

Miguel turned around, and approached you. “Are you okay?”

His voice reverberated throughout your body. Your heart leapt into your throat. You let out a shaky breath, trying to calm yourself. “Yeah, I’m good.”

His eyes trailed over you. You were breathing heavily, why? Did the two of you fight? How did this anomaly slip past you?

“Ready?” You asked, already opening up a portal.

“Yeah,” he muttered, grabbing the anomaly.

After dropping off the anomaly at HQ, you said your quickest farewells and practically ran back home to your universe, to your apartment. Your chest started to constrict horribly when Miguel was nearby. It wasn’t the giddy childhood crush you were already accustomed too, but this deep heart wrenching ache of desire.

It frightened you.

You had to get away from him.

Returning home, you found your city basking in the moonlight. Neon signs and billboards flickered in the distance. And the usual rush of cars quieted down just enough for most of the city to fall asleep. However, sleep would not come tonight for you.

You tossed and turned endlessly. Your heart raced, like a hummingbird in flight trapped in a cage. Sweat beaded over your forehead. The dull ache from before started to move farther south of your body. You groaned and arched your back.

What … what the hell is this?

You rolled over, burying your face into the pillow.

We’re fine. It’s fine. It’ll pass.

It didn’t.

The moon, with its siblings of stars, fell and the soon burning and bright sun rose over the horizon. Yet, these sensations never wavered. Dare you say, they intensified. Your sheets were kicked off the bed, pillows tossed across the floor in fits of rage, and your clothes skewed and damped with sweat.

Fuck.

Your body ached horribly.

Hot flashes surged through you in intense waves. You groaned, curling into a tight ball. However, it was the growing heat between your legs that was becoming unbearable. You unconsciously rubbed your thighs together. The minimal friction, basically nothing, caused you to moan.

“Fuck,” you whimpered.

Shower. A cold shower might help.

Dragging yourself out of bed, you shuffled into the bathroom and slammed the door behind you. You turned on the show to the coolest, and still comfortable, temperature. This should help, hopefully. Stripping out of your sweaty clothes, you hopped in. You hissed slightly. The water was a shock to your overheated, clammy skin. Pressing your palms into the shower wall, you dunked your head under the water like a poorly done baptism. You needed to cleanse yourself and your unholy thoughts.

You forced yourself to stay there. You gritted your teeth, and squeezed your eyes shut. The water pounded over you. Each drop were needles: sharp, quick, and irksome. But, standing under the water, you were still unbelievably hot, still painfully aroused.

Screw it.

One hand skimmed down your body between your legs. One swipe over your soaking folds and your knees nearly buckled. Still holding yourself up with one hand, and hunched under the running water, you slowly dipped your fingers inside yourself.

And immediately, his face appeared behind your closed eyes.

You could easily conjure up a scenario, and you happily indulged in your fantasy.

He was in the shower with you. Still bent over, his arm wrapped around your waist, holding you up. His chest pressed firmly into your back. His skin was so warm compared to the cool water. His lips brushed over the shell of your ear. His thick fingers were inside you, it was his fingers bringing you to your release.

You moaned, pumping yourself faster.

“That’s it,” his voice whispered in your ear. “Just like that.”

“Shit,” you hissed.

“Come on,” he encouraged with a light chuckle. His hand brushed up your sides to your breasts. He gently pinched and played with your nipples. “Come on, cum around my fingers.”

You curled your fingers, making your walls flatter. You whimpered. The sinfully wet sounds mixed with the water rushing over you. You were close, far closer than you expected.

His lips skimmed down your neck. “That’s it, almost there.”

You bit your lip. You quickly flipped yourself around, supporting yourself with your back to the shower wall. Your other hand played with your clit, swirling around, as your fingers worked faster. It was messy, it was desperate. A whine rumbled in the back of your throat.

“Oh, please, cum for me. You’re so close, I can feel it.” His fingers curled, beckoning you towards your end.

It built and built, then it all snapped so suddenly and forcibly. You came hard around your fingers. “Fuck,” you hissed out.

He hummed, working you through your orgasm. “There it is.”

You leaned heavily into the wall, panting and dizzy from your rapid orgasm. You closed your eyes for a second, and let the water wash everything away.

Meanwhile, a familiar looking portal opened up in your bedroom. Miguel stepped out with a tension wrought into his shoulders. His mask retracted and his crimson eyes slid over your room, your messy room. He raised an eyebrow, surveying your room. The one thing that concerned him the most was you weren’t here.

Where were you?

“Fuck.”

Miguel’s head whipped over to the closed bathroom door. He heard you so clearly. He almost moved, almost burst through the door, but he stayed rooted in place.

Why couldn’t he move? What if you were in trouble, what if -

The shower turned off. He heard you move around, and he saw your shadow flash under the door. If you were moving, then maybe nothing was wrong. Then without warning, the bathroom door swung open with a resounding bang.

Miguel flinched, startled by the sudden noise.

Water still dripped down from your hair and down your face. Hunched forward, you propped yourself up with one hand on the doorframe. Your chest heaved. You gulped down air as if you ran a marathon. You wore only a baggy shirt which clung to your still wet skin. Your eyes swiveled over, instantly clocking Miguel’s unexpected presence.

Miguel’s eyebrows furrowed. “Are you okay?”

“What are you doing here?” You asked, ignoring his initial question.

“You haven’t responded to my calls.”

You glanced over to your watch, blinking on your nightstand. “Sorry, I was busy.”

His eyes trailed over your body. Concern filled him. He repeated, “Are you okay?”

“Just dandy.”

His lips thinned. Why were you like this? So goddamn stubborn sometimes. “You don’t seem fine, especially since our mission last night.”

“I’m just tired,” you huffed. “And a little sore.”

God, even now your body was still aroused. And with Miguel being here, it was making everything so much worse. Your fantasy from only moments ago was seared heavily into your mind.

He needed to leave before you did something you regretted.

Miguel sighed, crossing his arms. “Are you sure? Did -“

“I said I’m fine.”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine, whatever.” So be it. He pressed a button on his watch, opening up a portal back to HQ. He paused. He clearly wanted to say something, but didn’t. He stepped through without uttering another word.

You wanted to call him back, you wanted to shove him onto the bed, you wanted to him and happily bounce on his -

You groaned loudly, rubbing your hands over your face.

Dear god - universe, whatever - just someone save me from myself.

You reluctantly crawled back into bed. Maybe, the shower helped. Maybe, with Miguel gone you could rest. Maybe, this was all over.

Maybe, you were just delusional.

Tonight was no better than last night. In fact, it was probably worse. Fantasies of Miguel flooded your mind, and you couldn’t satisfy yourself no matter what you did.

You will find a solution tomorrow.

There had to be one.

The next morning, before the sun properly greeted the world, you pushed yourself up and out of bed. You had an idea on where to start. Not bothering with your suit, you kept your baggy shirt and pulled on an old pair of sweatpants. You slipped on your watch and opened up a portal to HQ. You marched directly towards the area where all the anomalies were being contained. Containers lined the area as their chorus of voices begged to be released. Your eyes swiveled around, trying to locate the one anomaly who had any possible explanation to your current endeavor. But, you couldn’t find him in the sea of people. Getting frustrated, you turned your attention towards the person operating the ‘Go Home’ machine.

“Spider-Byte.”

Margo, the purple holographic girl, whirled around. She smiled only for it to falter given your appearance. You were obviously and very plainly pissed. You glared icily, unable to calm yourself. Worst of all, every time you moved, pain and pleasure rolled through you.

“Whoa, are you -“

You cut her off, “The Doc Ock, the one Miguel and I brought in yesterday, is he still here?”

“Uh.” She brought up a screen and tapped on it. “Yeah, he’s still here but not for long. I’ll have him back home in a few hours.”

“I only need a few minutes. Just point me in the direction where he is.”

Margo did so without question, she gestured down a row of anomalies. Mumbling your thanks, you spun around weaving down the aisle until you finally saw him. You stomped over and pounded on the container.

“What the hell did you do to me,” you gritted your teeth.

The man blinked owlishly. “I’m sorry - oh, oh! You! Oh, this is fantastic! I’ve been hoping to see -“

You slammed your fist again. “Answer me! What the hell did I inhale!”

He shrank, and squeaked. “Oh, uh, that’s … that’s complicated.”

“How so?” You sneered.

“Well,” he fidgeted, his tentacles squirming around. “I don’t know exactly what I gave you.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I … I was experimenting with my toxin and - and I was constantly adding new compounds to it or trying to rewrite it.”

You clicked your tongue, and raised an eyebrow.

“And well, I was trying to make it stronger, more of a deadly venom than a paralyzing agent.”

“And so you don’t know what you gave me or what was in it?”

“… no … I needed more time to study it.”

“Fantastic.”

“Well, what are your symptoms? Tell me, what are you feeling? Any discomfort? Any pain? What about hallucinations?”

He was like a giddy child.

“Oh, yeah definitely some discomforts,” you sarcastically replied. You shook your head and turned away. He shouted after you, but you simply ignored him. It took all of your strength and willpower to not break through the containment and pummel him.

Taking calming breaths, you swiftly left the area. Passing by all the anomalies, each of them shouted at you as you tried to think of a way to make this suffering end. Peter W. Parker apparently was still in the medical wing dealing with his paralysis. So, time seemed to be the only reasonable solution you could think of. And it had been a day, surely it would wear off by now.

Even if you felt worse every hour.

“(Y/N).”

A hand curled around your wrist.

A fire unfurled in the pit of your stomach by such a delicate touch. You shuddered. You kept your head trained forward, and your back to the last person you wanted to see. He couldn’t see you like this.

Not now, not after yesterday.

“What’s wrong?” Miguel asked, then took in your disgruntled appearance. “You look like …”

Horrible? Like shit?

��It’s nothing, I’m fine,” you quickly answered, tugging your wrist out of his grasp.

“Clearly,” he sarcastically replied.

You bit your tongue. Dear god, his voice. So smooth, so rich. “I’m tired, okay? So, I’m just going home.”

“Wait -“

“Good day, Miguel.” You pressed a button and stepped through the portal.

Miguel clenched his fists. He was about to chase after you when Lyla appeared saying others needed him. Begrudgingly, he left. But, this wasn’t the end for him. He will get a proper answer from you.

You sighed deeply, standing back in your room alone. You collapsed forward onto the bed. A muffled groan erupted from you.

I can get through this, I’ll be fine.

An hour passed.

An ice pack, barely cold anymore, laid across your forehead. Your pants and underwear were discarded. You constantly tugged on the collar of your shirt and fanned yourself. Your body ached. You wanted to claw at your skin, you wanted to rip your hair out, you wanted -

You wanted Miguel. God, you wanted him terribly. You wanted him to bend you over.

“Just like that,” you imagined he would coo as he slipped his cock inside of you.

You tried pleasuring yourself, but nothing helped. Nothing satiated you. This swelling sensation only became more and more intense.

You hissed and curled up onto your side. The ice pack slid off your forehead. You lazily picked it up, tossing it onto your nightstand. Your eyes blinked slowly. You stared blankly at the wall, trying to focus on something - anything. Anything but the dampness between your legs, anything but your spiraling perverted thoughts.

Move.

Do something.

Call for help.

You languidly pushed yourself up, and hunched forward. Your head fell into your hands. Your chest continued to heave and tighten. Your heart pounded and rang in your ears. “Fuck me,” you muttered under your breath.

“Only if you ask nicely,” Miguel chuckled.

You shivered.

Almost summoned by your thoughts, yellow and orange lights burst to life behind you. You twisted around. A portal opened up, and a familiar hulking figure walked through: Miguel. Seeing his face, your heart sank. You whipped back around, unable and unwilling to face him.

Why? Why the hell was he here?

He squinted, seeing your decrepit posture on the edge of your bed. “Still fine I see.”

You rolled your eyes. “What do you want? I’m trying to rest.”

Miguel shuffled over. “I came here to see why you’ve been acting weird.”

“It’s nothing.”

He sighed, a short disappointed sigh. He lowered himself onto your bed. A notable gap was between the two of you. Yet, you could feel the heat roll off of him. You unconsciously leaned slightly towards him, desperately seeking him out.

“Talk to me.”

I’m worried about you, he thought.

He hadn’t stopped worrying. You were constantly on the forefront of his mind. Most of all, he wondered why you were avoiding him. Why were you locking yourself away in your room? What happened?

You stayed silent.

Miguel gently rested his hand on your shoulder. “Look -“

You flinched. You leapt away and hastily took a few steps away from him. “Don’t touch me.”

One touch and your body nearly crumbled.

His hand fell. Shock evident on his typically stoic face. His fist clenched. Anger was now getting the better part of him. “I’m trying to help you.”

You hugged yourself, keeping your back to him. “I’m - I'm fine.”

“No, you’re not.” He stood up. “Tell me what’s wrong?”

“I’m fine,” you repeated harshly.

Miguel clicked his tongue. He had enough of your constant dismissal. He grabbed your shoulders and whirled you around to finally face him. You gasped. He stared intently down at you, dissecting and analyzing you. You were panting, your skin glistened with sweat, and notably your pupils were completely dilated.

“What -“

You jerked away from him. And you unconsciously rubbed your thighs together.

Oh. Oh.

Miguel’s cheeks darkened faintly. He placed his hands on his hips, and glanced away. He cleared his throat, “How … how long have you been like … like that?”

You crossed your arms, and sighed. There was no use hiding it anymore. “Since our encounter with Doc Ock.”

His eyes flickered up. “So, he did do something to you.”

“… yes.”

“Which was?”

“He … he threw some substance at me and I accidentally inhaled it.”

He rubbed the spot between his brows, a common place for his headaches to start. “And why did you tell me?”

You tsked and sneered, “Oh sorry, boss, I can’t come in today. I can’t focus or do anything because I am unbelievably and painfully horny.”

God, this is humiliating.

Miguel sighed deeply, dropped his shoulders. “Well, maybe Doc Ock can -“

“He can’t help. I already confronted him, he was just a mad scientist who didn’t know what he created.”

He shifted his weight side to side. “Well, have you … you know …”

You groaned, covering your face with your hands. “Miguel, we are not having this conversation.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. His eyes scanned over you again. God, he couldn’t deny that you were absolutely delectable right now. His mind ran rampant with impure thoughts. It was the way your lips parted as you breathed heavily, it was the way your body squirmed, it was the way you desperately tried to bury the noises ready to jump out, it was the way you adamantly avoided his gaze, it was the way your hardened nipples poke through your shirt, it was the way how he could smell you and your arousal.

He wasn’t blind to your beauty. He was simply ignorant to his feelings and attraction. He buried it deep within him, unwilling to acknowledge any of it. But, seeing you now, seeing the discomfort you were in, seeing you in such a needy state, he wanted to help. He took a cautious step forward, “Maybe I can help.”

You snapped your head up, staring wide eyed at him. “What?”

“I said maybe I can -“

You shook your head and backed yourself away from him until your back bumped into the wall. “No, no, what needs to happen is that you need to leave.” Swallowing down such desire, you closed your eyes and muttered, “Just go.”

“I’m not leaving.”

Fucking hell.

You shouted, “Just get the hell out of here!”

Miguel didn’t respond. Cracking open your eyes, his gaze bore directly into you. It was a searing gaze. Your knees nearly buckled under the intensity. He stepped closer.

“Please,” you whispered, practically begging. “I - I … just … just not like this, not because of my dumb mistake.”

He froze, and his eyebrows knitted together.

Your gaze dropped to the ground. You couldn’t - and wouldn’t - look at him.

He slowly continued to walk towards you. You forced down a whimper. Sandwiched between the wall and him, he gently grabbed your chin. You flinched and squeezed your eyes shut. It pained you immensely to fight so fiercely against your desires and needs. He tipped your chin up. “Look at me.”

You kept your eyes closed, and your face scrunched up.

“Por favor, cariño. Please, look at me.”

Your heart flipped at his unusually sweet tone. You opened up your eyes, and was immediately greeted by his strangely, endearing, rosy crimson eyes.

“Good,” he murmured.

Oh, fuck.

Biting down on your tongue, you forced down any noises that almost dared to crawl out. You dug your nails into your palms. You wouldn’t dare touch him because if you did you wouldn’t let go.

“If I didn’t care for you in this way, I wouldn’t be here. I would be back at HQ working on a cure, on some antidote.” His other hand reached out and rested on your hip. He drew you close, flushing you to his chest. “But, am I at HQ right now?”

You didn’t trust your voice. You simply shook your head, a small twitch.

“You’re right, I’m not. I’m right here asking - begging - to let me help you.” He bent his head down, brushing his lips over yours. “Please, I want to help … I’ve … I’ve wanted this for so long.”

“Miguel.”

“Please.”

You let out a shaky breath. “I don’t … I don’t know what’ll do. I don’t know if I can control myself.”

He slowly pulled up the hem of your shirt. His hand skimmed across your lower back. He laughed once, “I can handle it. Please, let me help.”

His fingers lightly touched your skin. A groan rumbled in the back of your throat. “I don’t want you to think differently of me,” you whispered as your eyes dropped to his lips.

Your excuses were hollow now.

He moved his head, letting his lips brush over your neck. His hands snaked further up your back, and his talons gently scraped down. You moaned, arching your back into his touch. Your hands latched onto his biceps, squeezing them.

“My opinion of you won’t change,” he muttered into your neck. His leg slid between yours. Your swollen clit rubbed against his massive thigh.

“Fuck,” you hissed, clinging onto him.

“Just say yes, cariño.” He nuzzled his face into your neck. “I want to help.”

You cupped his face, looking directly into his eyes. His eyes were begging, pleading, for you. You brought him down, giving him a sweet, loving kiss. He hummed, wrapping his arms around you. However, you quickly broke the kiss before he could truly enjoy it.

Miguel didn’t understand. How would he know? He inadvertently poured gasoline over the already raging fire inside of you. Your eyes darkened. You pushed Miguel backwards until his knees hit the edge of the bed and he flopped backward. He held himself up on his forearms, stunned by your sudden change.

A smirk curled over your lips. A beast, one you had been holding back for more than a day, was finally unleashed. Locking eyes with him, you slowly stripped out of your shirt - your only article of clothing - letting it dramatically drop to the floor.

Miguel’s eyes greedily drank in your naked figure.

You crawled onto his lap, straddling him. You pushed him down so he laid flat against the bed. His hands instantly rested on your waist. You hovered over him, planting your hands on either side of his head.

He looked up at you with absolute adoration. He could not describe how thrilled he was right now.

You bent down, kissing him passionately. As you took the lead, you opened your mouth, deepening the kiss. Miguel hummed. He brought your hips down, making you grind down on him. You moaned into the kiss. Breaking apart, you muttered, “Fuck.”

You peppered kisses all over his face, and across his jaw. You desperately wanted to trail your lips all over him. It was such a ravenous feeling. You needed to mark him, to bite him, to taste him.

“Take the suit off,” you murmured, kissing the corner of his jaw.

He let out a pleased sigh. The digital suit retracted with a whirl of colors, revealing himself to you. You bit the inside of your cheek as you felt the tip of his cock brush against your inner thigh. Your lips brushed down his neck. He tilted his head, allowing you better access to do whatever you wished. Your heart soared. You slowly - teasingly so - kissed the crook of his neck. His grip on your hips tightened. Like a switch, you attacked his neck. Your teeth scraped across his sensitive skin. You nipped all along his neck needing to mark his skin. Oh, it excited you to know that these bruises would be under his suit tomorrow. Your tongue swirled over soothing any pains.

Miguel moaned.

What a beautiful sound.

Stopping your attack on his now blemished neck, your lips trailed further down his body. You kissed over his chest, occasionally biting his skin. Your eyes flickered up, seeing his head tilt back. You ran your teeth over his nipples. He groaned. You licked up his chest, tasting the saltiness of his sweat. You kissed up his jaw to his ear, and gently nibbled on his lope.

Miguel clenched his jaw. His heart flipped in his chest. He didn’t expect this, he didn’t expect to ever be here like this with you. He surely didn’t expect the control you quickly had over him.

And oh, he loved it.

Lifting yourself up, you teasingly rubbed his tip across your dripping folds. He groaned, almost whimpering.

“Fuck, Miguel,” you moaned.

At such a simple movement, you were seeing stars. You weren’t sure how long you would last. You wanted to draw this out longer, you wanted to have more fun with him, but you couldn’t.

You needed him. And you were nearly insatiable.

You slowly sank down on his cock. Miguel hissed. You placed your hands on his chest, panting. Miguel soothingly rubbed his thumbs over your hips. You moaned, feeling how he stretched and filled you. No one made you feel this full or good. As you bottomed out, you swore under your breath.

Miguel chuckled to himself.

But, his amusement was cut short when you started to move. Lust flooded back into his veins. He moaned out your name. His talons popped out and dug into your hips.

You set the pace, a nearly brutal but wondrous pace.

And Miguel thought you looked divine.

Your head tilted back to the heavens. Your lips parted as you whispered his name like a prayer. Your body arched like an angel soaring up, like a renaissance painting. Your hands traced up your hypnotic body, playing with your breasts. He wanted to draw you back down, he wanted to shower you in kisses, he wanted to flip you over and pound into you. But, this was all for you. You were the one who was affected by something strange, you were the one to take the lead. You rolled your head, glancing down at him. A soft smile tugged on your lips.

Oh, the way you looked at him, the way you bounced on his cock, the way your eyes softened with affection, he felt his heart was going to explode.

His cock twitched inside of you.

You hummed.

You rolled your hips, and he swore in Spanish. Smirking, you changed the pace. It was slow and easy - just to have your fun, no matter how short lived it might be - then flipped to hard and fast - desperate to reach your end. And your end was coming quickly.

You happily split yourself and continuously moaned out his name. “Miguel,” you moaned, dropping your hands back on his chest. “I - I won’t last much longer.”

Miguel felt your walls clench around you. He gritted his teeth, and moaned. “That’s okay, that’s okay,” he whispered.

He helped you, lifting your hips along with your movements. He slammed you back down right as he bucked his hips up, grinding you further onto him. You gasped and swore.

“Fuck, Miguel, keep doing that,” you whimpered.

He smirked, enjoying your sounds. Moving you faster, you pounded on his cock. Your nails scratched across his chest in red ribbons. The coil tightened and tightened in the pit of your stomach.

You whined.

Miguel wanted to squeeze his eyes shut and lose himself in the feeling of you. But, he also wanted to watch you come undone. So, he watched hungrily.

It was getting sloppy and erratic.

You closed your eyes. You dropped your head, tucking your chin to your chest. But, fingers gently guided your chin back up. “Eyes on me,” Miguel murmured. “Please, I want to see it.”

You melted into his touch, then he bucked his hips right as you went down. The coil snapped. Your walls clamped down around him as your orgasm crashed through you. You moaned out his name as you stared down at him with hooded eyes.

Miguel clenched his jaw. Oh, what a sight. His cock jumped.

Your movements, however, didn’t slow down. You wanted Miguel to cum, you wanted to feel it. You grabbed Miguel’s face and forced him to sit up. You kissed him heatedly as you still rode him. Miguel hummed. Your fingers threaded into his dark curls, and yanked on them.

He whined.

Your eyes sparkled. “Come on, Miguel. Cum for me.”

Miguel shivered. Your words, your body, it was so wondrous. He bucked his hips up, cumming inside of you.

Finally stopping your relentless movement, you dropped your head onto his shoulder. Both of you were gasping for air. Your eyes flickered down, seeing the mess you both created.

You shivered.

Miguel, however, surprised you. He flipped you over, landing you on your back. You gasped. Before you could do or say anything, Miguel dropped to his knees onto the floor, yanked your body down the bed, then nestled his face between your legs.

He devoured you like a starved man.

Your lips parted in a silent moan as your eyes rolled back. You arched your back, and tangled your fingers into his hair.

He wanted to taste you. God, he dreamt of this so many times. Although, he didn’t dare admit it out loud. He groaned. He lifted one of your legs, tossing it over his shoulder. His hands fiercely grabbed your thighs. His talons scraped along your inner thigh. He buried his face deeper. His nose brushed over your already sensitive clit and you cried out. He growled, the taste of you and him on his tongue was divine.

“Miguel,” you gasped.

He forcibly pulled himself away, panting. His chin and lips were covered in mixed juices. His eyes were lit with primal desires. He smirked, flashing his fangs. You scrambled up. You grabbed the back of his neck, smashing your lips to his. You easily slipped your tongue inside his mouth, swirling it around. You hummed in delight, tasting him and yourself.

You still wanted more.

Needed more.

The residual of whatever affected you still lingered.

You pulled away from him. Your combined hot breaths filled the minimal space between the two of you. With you still on the bed on your knees, you finally had some height over Miguel. You cupped his face, and tilted his chin up. His arms wrapped around your waist, pressing you into him. You smiled then brushed your thumb over his lip. Without hesitation, he parted his lips and you slipped your thumb into his mouth. His tongue ran over the pad of your thumb, and the tip of his fang grazed over it.

You shivered, causing him to smirk.

You removed your thumb. You couldn’t help yourself. You leaned down, kissing him sweetly again. It was a confession, and a thank you. He sighed into the kiss. You slowly parted, lingering for a second. It was so tender, despite the cum and saliva coating his chin and your lips. And your following words reminded Miguel how and why he got into this bizarre, surreal situation.

“I want you to fuck me from behind,” you whispered.

Miguel’s eyebrows shot up for a moment, then he chuckled. “Of course,” he purred. Whatever you wanted, he was happy to do. “Can you get on your hands and knees for me?”

You bit back a smile. Your fingers skimmed along his jaw as you backed away and got into position. Miguel watched, transfixed. His eyes trailed down. Seeing your soaking folds, he moaned softly. He can still taste you on his tongue. He licked his lips. Crawling onto the bed, he carefully grabbed your hips.

“You’re too good for me,” he confessed quietly.

You sighed under the simple praise.

He lined himself up, just teasing your entrance. You began to fist the sheets in anticipation. He leaned down. His broad chest pressed firmly into your back, and he whispered in your ear, “But now, let me be good for you.”

He easily pushed himself in.

You moaned unabashedly.

“That’s it, let me hear you,” he grunted.

This round was hot and fast. There wasn’t adoration or love this time, this was solely desires and sins. This was using each other’s bodies.

And Miguel was animalistic. God, it was utter bliss.

You grinded back, meeting his thrusts. You dropped down onto your forearms unable to support yourself fully. Your face buried into the sheets as you cried out. His cock was kissing spots you didn’t think was possible.

Miguel smiled, enjoying your muffled sounds and how you squirmed. His fingers reached around and began to play with your clit. You swore as your body shuddered. Your walls fluttered around him.

He rolled his head back at the sensation. It was as if you were made perfectly for him.

“Miguel,” you whined.

You wanted this so badly. You moved your hips feverishly in tune with his. Skin slapped together, wet noises echoed, and voices cried out. Miguel gasped. His talons buried into your hips, drawing out small specs of blood. He gritted his teeth, almost baring his fangs.

“Ay dios mío,” he grumbled.

Neither of you would last long.

You were begging under your breath. You needed it, you needed him. “Fuck, Miguel, please.”

“I know, I got you,” he groaned, pounding into you. “Let go, cum for me.”

You moaned.

With his fingers, his pace, and your already stimulated body, you came. You gushed around his cock, and slumped heavily into the bed. As your walls clamped down again, Miguel hissed as he spilled himself inside of you. He continued to gently rocked his hips as you both came back down to reality.

The air buzzed with the aftermath.

Your grip on the sheets loosened. You turned your head, glancing back at him: his chest covered in new bruises, his sweat covered forehead, and his fangs and talons were still out. You shivered at the sight. His eyes flickered over, connecting with yours. He gave you a tired smile. He bent down and kissed the spot between your shoulder blades.

You hummed softly.

Miguel rolled onto the bed. His arms wrapped around your waist as flushed your back to his chest. His now softened cock still buried inside.

“Better?” He murmured into your ear.

You nodded.

“Good,” he sighed. “Just … just stay like this with me, please.”

To be fair, you had no energy to argue or care. A day of exhaustion finally caught up to you. You relaxed into his embrace, enjoying the comfort as well as the fullness of him still inside of you. You placed a hand over top of his and intertwined your fingers with his. You squeezed his hand.

“Thank you,” you muttered.

He kissed your shoulder. “You’re welcome. Now rest, cariño, I got you.”

I always will, he thought as you drifted off in his arms completely satisfied.

#across the spiderverse #spiderverse #atsv #miguel spiderverse #miguel o'hara #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o’hara smut #miguel o’hara x afab!reader #miguel x reader #miguel x afab!reader #afab!reader #smut

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reidsworld · 3 months ago

Text

Scars of Time Chapter One: Gimme Shelter

Summary: Tension grows as Logan's failing healing abilities take a toll on your relationship yet simultaneously bringing you closer together as you begin to navigate the situation with Laura.

Pairing: Logan Howlett x Fem!Mutant!Reader

Category: Fluff, Angst

Content Warnings: Canon-typical violence, alcohol use, use of Y/N, pet names (darlin’, my love)

Word Count: 4.9k

Song... Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones

Mars speaks… Wow, this is a long one. I’m honestly so excited to write the next chapter, I had a lot of fun writing this one and did my best to stick close to the plot of the movie.

Masterlist | Series Masterlist | Next Part >

2029

The dark sky hung heavy over the barren landscape as Logan pulled the battered limousine into the driveway. It had been a long day and an even longer night, the hours blurring together in a haze of exhaustion and frustration. His hands tightened on the steering wheel, the knuckles white and bruised, and he exhaled a deep sigh. His bones ached in a way that wasn’t just physical; it was a bone-deep weariness that had been building for years, a heaviness that never seemed to lift.

He cut the engine and sat in the silence for a moment, gathering the strength to move. The old warehouse loomed in the distance, a relic of better days, now more prison than home. He pushed open the car door with a grunt, his joints protesting, and made his way inside. Caliban was waiting, his pale face stark against the dim light.

"Where is she?" Logan asked, his voice rough from disuse.

"With Charles," Caliban replied, his tone clipped. "She’s been with him most of the night."

Logan nodded, a flicker of something softening the harsh lines of his face. "Thanks."

The metal door to Charles’ tank creaked as Logan pushed it open, the familiar scent of antiseptic and old paper filling his nose. The dim glow of the sun peaking through the holes in the tank bathed the room in an eerie light, casting long shadows on the walls. Charles was seated in his wheelchair, his frail form barely more than a shadow, with you beside him, holding one of his hands between yours. You glanced up as Logan entered, offering him a small, tired smile.

"Hey," you greeted softly, rising to your feet as he approached.

Logan leaned in, pressing a kiss to your forehead, the gesture filled with a tenderness that was rare for him. He brushed a strand of hair from your face, his touch lingering.

"What's he on about this time?" Logan asked, nodding towards Charles, who was muttering under his breath, his eyes unfocused.

"I'm not even sure," you replied, glancing back at the professor with a sad smile. "Just wanted to keep him company. I feel bad that he's locked up in this tank all the time."

Logan grunted in agreement, his jaw tightening as he looked at the man who had once been the most powerful mind in the world, now reduced to this. "He deserves better than this."

"We all do," you murmured, your gaze meeting his. The unspoken weight of those words hung between you, a reminder of the life you both once had, now lost to the passage of time.

Charles began to wheel in a circle, muttering incoherently about Taco Bell before Logan stepped in front of him, blocking his path. Charles’ confusion was palpable, his eyes darting around with a mixture of bewilderment and irritation.

“Who are you?” Charles asked abruptly, his tone sharp and accusatory.

“You know who I am,” Logan replied as he leaned down, rolling up Charles’s sleeve with practised ease. His expression was a blend of weariness and concern, a familiar routine etched into his features.

“You’re the man who puts me to sleep,” Charles said, his voice tinged with a mix of resignation and bitterness.

“We all could use some sleep,” Logan murmured as he flicked the syringe. His fingers moved with a certain roughness, betraying his frustration with the situation.

“No, no, no!” Charles protested vehemently, his body tensing and fighting against Logan’s hold. The commotion escalated quickly; Charles fell backwards in his wheelchair, hitting his head on the floor. His voice was filled with fear and confusion as he cried out, “What are you doing to me?”

You called out his name, desperation lacing your tone as you tried to calm him down. Before you could say more, Charles suddenly stiffened, his eyes wide with panic. The seizure hit with a sudden, violent force. The room seemed to tilt and sway as if caught in the grip of an invisible storm. You barely had time to react before the psychic shockwave rippled outward, its impact hitting you like a physical blow.

Instinctively, you reached out to steady Logan, who staggered, clutching his head in visible pain. His face was etched with strain, his usual rugged composure cracking under the weight of the psychic assault.

"Charles!" you shouted, your voice barely piercing through the chaos in your mind. You rushed to his side, trying to provide comfort, but it felt like trying to halt a tidal wave with your bare hands. The intensity of the seizure was overwhelming, and your efforts seemed futile against its ferocity.

Logan gritted his teeth, his hands gripping the edges of the tank as he fought to remain upright. The pressure in his skull felt as though it was building to a breaking point, but he pushed through the agony, his determination to protect both you and Charles evident in his strained movements. With a guttural roar of exertion, he forced his way towards Charles and jammed the syringe into his chest, injecting the medication that would hopefully calm the storm within his mind.

Gradually, the room stopped shaking, and the pressure in your head began to ease. You took a shuddering breath, your body trembling from the strain of maintaining your composure. Logan turned to you, his eyes filled with concern as he reached out to steady you.

"You okay?" he asked, his voice rough but soft as he moved to pick up Charles, carefully placing him back onto his bed.

"Yeah," you whispered, though the uncertainty in your voice betrayed your own shaken state. "I’m fine."

Logan gave Charles’s his pills as you moved to clean up the mess on the floor and gather his scattered wheelchair. Your movements were mechanical, driven by the need to restore some semblance of order amidst the chaos.

You positioned yourself near the door, waiting for Logan to finish tucking Charles in. As you watched, Charles suddenly grabbed Logan’s face, forcing him to meet his gaze.

“What a disappointment you are,” Charles said in a low, accusing tone. The words landed with a visceral impact, visible in the way Logan’s body stiffened. The flicker of pain in Logan’s eyes was unmistakable, and you felt a surge of empathy, wanting to offer him comfort.

He turned to look at you before turning his full attention back to Logan, his voice heavy with unresolved issues. “When I found the two of you, you were pursuing a career as a cage fighter. A warm capper to a life as an assassin. Hooked on barbiturates. You were an animal and she was a singer, a match made in heaven.”

Logan got up, having heard enough.

“We should have taken her and left you,” Charles continued, his voice sharp with regret. “But we took you in. I gave you both a family.”

“They’re gone now,” Logan grunted out as he turned away, his voice trailing off into a mixture of anger and regret. His accusations continued to pierce the air, his voice a harsh reminder of past decisions and their consequences.

Logan’s face was a mask of anguish as he opened the door to leave. Before Logan shut the door, Charles shouted, “No one should live like this, drugged in a fucking tank.”

“It’s for your own good,” Logan replied, his tone firm but laced with a sense of hopelessness. Before leaving, you reached out, grabbing his arm and pulling him gently toward you.

"Don’t listen to him, Logan," you murmured, your voice soft yet resolute. "He doesn’t mean it."

Logan’s expression remained grim, his jaw clenched tightly as he gently pulled away from your embrace. "He’s right," he muttered under his breath, his eyes dark with self-loathing. “Things would’ve been better off if they had only taken you.”

You offered him a sad smile, shaking your head. "No, they wouldn’t have, Logan," you said gently. "I don’t know how I would have lived without you."

Logan’s gaze softened slightly as he looked at you, but the tension in his body didn’t ease. Frustration was evident in his every movement as he ran a hand through his hair. "I need a drink," he muttered, turning on his heel and leaving the room before you could say anything more.

You watched him go, your heart heavy with worry. You knew him well enough to understand that he wasn’t just going for a drink—he was trying to escape the guilt and pain that had been gnawing at him for years. With a sigh, you moved to sit beside Charles’s bed, taking his hand in yours and offering a reassuring smile.

“You’re waiting for me to die, aren’t you?” Charles asked solemnly, his voice tinged with resignation.

“No. We’re going to get out of here one day, and you’re coming with us,” you promised, your voice steady despite the heaviness of the situation.

Charles sighed, his gaze drifting. “Sing me a song. Please, it’s the least you could do for me, keeping me locked up here in this fucking tank.”

You smiled softly, beginning to sing a soothing melody. The song flowed gently, a comforting presence amidst the chaos and pain. By the time you finished, Charles was sound asleep. You pressed a tender kiss to his forehead, whispering a soft goodnight before leaving to find Logan.

You found Logan in the small, dimly lit bedroom, slumped on the edge of the bed. The room was gloomy and cold in addition to the lingering smell of whiskey. Logan was hunched over, his face set in a grimace as he struggled to extend his claws. Two of his adamantium claws were extended, the metal glinting ominously in the low light. The struggle to fully extend the third claw was etched in the lines of pain on his face, and the frustration simmering just beneath the surface made your heart ache.

"Logan, stop that, you’re hurting yourself" you called softly, stepping into the room and closing the door quietly behind you.

He didn’t look up, his attention fixated on his hands as he fought against the stubborn adamantium. "I’ll heal," he grumbled, his voice thick with irritation and exhaustion.

“You and I both know that’s not true,” you crossed the room with determined steps and gently moved his hand away from the claw. "Let me help you."

"No," he snapped, his hand jerking away from you. "You don’t need to waste your energy on me."

"Logan," you said firmly, your voice unwavering as you cupped his face in your hands, guiding him to meet your gaze. "I’m not wasting anything. Let me help."

He looked into your eyes, and the raw pain and anger reflected there made your breath catch. For a moment, you feared he might refuse, but then he sighed deeply, the tension in his posture slowly easing as he leaned into your touch.

You guided his hands to rest in yours, your healing energy flowing from you to him. The familiar warmth of your power radiated through your fingertips, and you could feel the strain it put on your own body. Despite the effort it took, you focused on the relief that gradually appeared on his face as the pain subsided.

"Stop pushing yourself so hard," Logan murmured, his voice soft but edged with concern.

"I can handle it," you replied, though fatigue was beginning to seep into your bones.

Logan’s expression hardened, and he pulled his hands away. "I don’t want you hurting yourself because of me."

His frustration was palpable, and it ignited a fire in you. "And I don’t want you suffering because you’re too stubborn to accept help!" you retorted, your voice sharper than you intended.

Logan flinched, his eyes narrowing in reaction. "I’m not some helpless—"

"No, you’re not," you interrupted, your voice trembling with emotion. "But you don’t have to do this alone, Logan. You’ve never had to."

The silence that followed was thick with the weight of unspoken feelings. Logan’s shoulders relaxed slightly as he sighed, his voice softer. "I’m sorry," he said, his tone laden with vulnerability. "I just… I don’t want to lose you, too."

Your heart clenched at the rawness in his voice. You moved closer, wrapping your arms around him in a comforting embrace. "You’re not going to lose me," you whispered, your voice steady with quiet resolve. "We’re in this together."

He didn’t respond with words, but the way he held you close, his grip almost desperate, conveyed more than any words could.

You shifted to lie down next to Logan as he sat solemnly on the bed, holding his dog tags in his hand while simultaneously holding back tears. You rubbed his back in an attempt to comfort him.

You eventually managed to convince Logan to lie down beside you, though sleep remained elusive for both of you. The weight of the day’s events hung heavily over you, casting a long shadow of uncertainty and danger that neither of you could fully escape.

Later that evening, Logan stirred beside you, his movements deliberately gentle as he tried not to disturb your sleep. But the shift in the bed's weight was enough to rouse you slightly, and you blinked in the darkness, catching a glimpse of him as he quietly grabbed his blazer from the chair. The dim light from the hallway illuminated his figure, casting long shadows across the room. He looked back at you once, his expression unreadable, before slipping out the door.

As you lay there in the stillness, the muffled sounds of Logan and Caliban’s argument seeped through the thin walls. The tension in their voices was palpable, each word carrying a weight that pressed down on your chest. You heard the sharp crack of a mug shattering, followed by the heavy thud of Logan’s boots against the floor as he stormed closer to the bedroom. The door creaked open, and in the faint light, you saw his silhouette move towards you. He leaned down, his breath warm against your skin as he pressed a tender kiss to your temple.

"Where are you going?" you mumbled, your voice thick with sleep and worry, your hand instinctively reaching out to find his.

"Out," he replied, his tone clipped and distant, a stark contrast to the softness of his touch.

"Be safe," you whispered, your eyes already growing heavy with the pull of sleep again.

He didn’t reply with words, but the lingering kiss he placed on your lips was full of unspoken promises and the familiar comfort of his presence. It was a silent vow that he would return, no matter what.

As the night slowly gave way to the first light of morning, you stirred awake to find Logan lying beside you, his eyes already on you. The way he looked at you, a mix of relief and something deeper, made your heart ache.

“You know it’s creepy to stare, right?” you muttered with a sleepy smile, trying to lighten the heavy atmosphere that had settled over you both.

“M’sorry, just couldn’t help myself, darlin’,” he replied, his voice low and filled with warmth as he leaned in to press a soft, lingering kiss to your lips.

“When did you get back?” you asked, concern lacing your words as you reached out to trace the lines of his face.

“Don’t know. Late, the sun was almost up,” he admitted, his tone carrying a weariness that went beyond just physical exhaustion.

“Logan…” you began, your heart clenching at the sight of him. The shadows under his eyes, the tightness in his jaw—it all spoke of battles fought both inside and out.

“I know,” he cut you off gently, his hand finding yours and squeezing it reassuringly. “Soon we won’t have to deal with this shit hole.”

But his words didn’t bring the comfort they were meant to. There was something else behind his eyes, something he was holding back. "I need to talk to you about something," he said, his voice rough with hesitation.

“Anything,” you whispered, giving his hand a reassuring squeeze.

“I got offered a lot of money,” he started, his gaze dropping to the bed as if the words were too heavy to meet your eyes. “Have to drive this girl and her daughter to North Dakota. They’re being chased by some bad people, people I don’t wanna get involved with. I don’t wanna do this, don’t want you to get hurt. But she’s offering me $50,000 ‘nd I can’t just let this little girl and her mom get killed.”

The room was silent as you processed his words. The weight of what he was saying settled heavily on your shoulders, but you knew there was no other option in his mind. "I’m coming with you," you said firmly, your voice leaving no room for argument.

“Like hell you are,” Logan shot back, his protective instincts flaring up.

You sat up, your eyes locking onto his with a determination that matched his own. “Logan, I’m not letting you go alone.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but the look in your eyes told him it was a battle he wouldn’t win. He sighed, the fight draining out of him as he leaned in to kiss you again, this time with a desperation that spoke of all the fears he couldn’t voice.

"Fine," he muttered against your lips, his breath warm and familiar, his hands pulling you closer as if he could shield you from the dangers ahead.

You and Logan sat across from Charles as he meticulously tended to his plants, his frail hands gently brushing the leaves. The quiet hum of the room was broken by Charles' soft voice.

“I like those,” Charles remarked, nodding toward Logan as he adjusted his glasses and pulled out his phone.

“Huh?” Logan looked up, slightly distracted.

“The glasses,” Charles clarified, a small smile playing on his lips. “They make you look younger.”

You couldn't help but smile, glancing at Logan through the lens of affection. The glasses did something to him—softened his edges just a bit.

“I like ‘em too,” you added, leaning over to plant a kiss on his cheek. Lowering your voice to a whisper, you teased, “make you look hot.”

Logan paused for a moment, his hand freezing mid-motion as he slid his phone back into his suit pocket. The smirk that tugged at your lips didn’t go unnoticed by him, and you saw the faintest hint of color rise to his cheeks.

Clearing his throat, Logan shifted in his seat. “I gotta go… uh, I gotta go away for a few days,” he began, his tone suddenly more serious. “I got a long ride for some good money, and Y/N’s coming with me. But when we get back, we’re gonna get outta here.”

You nodded, your hand finding Logan's for a reassuring squeeze. “We’re gonna drive down to Yelapa, get ourselves a boat, and live on the ocean,” you added, painting the picture of the future you both longed for.

Charles' eyes met yours, a flicker of concern in them. “Will you be safe there?”

Logan hesitated for a split second before nodding, his voice steady. “Yeah… yeah, we’ll be safe.”

Just then, Caliban entered the room, holding Charles’ meds. The moment felt like a brief interlude between the past and the uncertain future. Logan stood, his hand still in yours as he pulled you gently to your feet.

As you both made your way to the car, Logan exchanged a few words with Caliban, promising to be back in a few days. The weight of what lay ahead was heavy in the air, but there was also a quiet determination in Logan’s stride, a sense of purpose that you couldn’t help but admire.

On the drive, the heat of the desert sun beat down relentlessly, the landscape stretching out endlessly before you. Logan was silent behind the wheel, his focus on the road, while you sat beside him, your thoughts swirling.

You reached the outskirts of the city, and Logan’s brow furrowed in concern. Something felt off. As you drove closer to the motel, Logan tensed, and you followed his gaze, noticing the abandoned car parked haphazardly in front of one of the rooms.

Logan killed the engine, and the two of you stepped out cautiously. The air was thick with tension, a silent warning that something was wrong. You followed Logan to the motel room, your heart pounding in your chest as you noticed the broken door.

Logan cautiously pushed it open, and the sight that greeted you made your stomach drop. The woman, who had come to Logan for help, was dead, her body slumped in a pool of blood on the floor. Logan cursed under his breath, his eyes scanning the room for any sign of the girl, Laura.

"She’s gone," you whispered, your voice filled with dread.

You both quickly searched the room, finding her phone with an unsent text to Logan that read, They here, Pleas

"Let’s go,” he grunted out, reaching for your hand and walking back to the car.

The drive back was suffocating, the air thick with unspoken fears and regrets. Logan gripped the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned bone white, his jaw clenched in a silent battle against the thoughts swirling in his mind. The engine's roar was the only sound, filling the void left by words neither of you could bring yourselves to say.

You stole glances at him, your heart breaking at the sight of his hardened expression. His eyes were locked on the road, but you knew his mind was miles away, lost in the chaos of what had just unfolded.

"Logan…" you began softly, unsure how to bridge the widening chasm between you.

"Don’t," he cut you off, his voice rough and strained, barely masking the turmoil beneath. "Should’ve never gotten involved in this shit."

His words stung, but you understood the weight he carried. You both knew this wasn’t just another job gone wrong—this was something darker, something that reached into the parts of Logan’s past he tried so hard to bury.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, the warehouse came into view, its shadow stretching long and ominous across the dusty ground. Logan parked the car, his eyes darting around, scanning for threats even as he tried to suppress the gnawing fear that had taken root in his gut.

When you stepped out of the car, Caliban was already approaching, his expression wary. “What happened? Something go wrong?”

“The job was wrong to begin with,” Logan muttered, his voice barely more than a growl as the two of you made your way inside.

Before you could fully step into the safety of the warehouse, Caliban’s voice called out behind you. “Who does this belong to?” He held up a small bag and a ball, turning just in time to hear the distant rumble of an approaching vehicle.

“Who’s that?” Caliban asked, his tone edged with concern.

Logan shot him a look, frustration lacing his words. “Thought you were supposed to see shit coming.”

Caliban bristled, a rare flash of anger crossing his usually placid features. “I’m a glorified truffle pig, not a goddamn clairvoyant.”

Logan’s eyes narrowed, but before he could retort, his focus shifted back to you. “Go inside, keep Charles quiet,” he ordered Caliban, his voice brooking no argument.

Then, turning to you, his gaze softened, though his tone remained firm. “You too.”

You hesitated, your instincts screaming to stay by his side, but the look in his eyes told you there was no room for debate. With a sigh, you reluctantly turned and headed inside, the weight of leaving him alone gnawing at your resolve.

The moment you were inside, a loud crash echoed from outside, followed by the unmistakable sound of a struggle. You rushed back out just in time to see Logan narrowly dodge a metal bar thrown with surprising force.

“Logan!” you shouted, panic lacing your voice as he caught the bar mid-air, his muscles coiled, ready to retaliate. But as you stepped closer, you saw who had thrown it—a young girl, her eyes wild with fear and defiance.

“She’s just a kid,” you urged, your voice softer now, pleading with him to stand down.

Logan’s jaw tightened, his grip on the bar unwavering for a moment before he finally relented, lowering his arm with a frustrated sigh. The tension in his body was palpable, but the anger faded as Charles appeared, stepping into the scene with a calm that belied the chaos.

“This is Laura,” Charles said, his voice carrying a gentle authority as he called out for Caliban. “This is who I’ve been telling you about,” he continued, switching to Spanish as he spoke to the girl.

You watched, your heart pounding in your chest as Laura’s gaze flicked between you and Logan, wary and untrusting. But there was something else in her eyes too—a glimmer of hope, perhaps, or recognition.

As they made their way inside, a laugh escaped your lips, the tension breaking for just a moment. "She’s got some fight in her," you remarked, your voice a mix of admiration and relief.

“Yeah,” Logan muttered, the smallest of smiles tugging at the corner of his mouth at the sound of your laugh. He nodded toward the door, signaling for you to follow Charles and Laura inside. You gave him a reassuring look before slipping inside after them.

Inside, the atmosphere was tense but calmer. You found Laura sitting at the table, her expression guarded, still wary of her surroundings. Charles sat nearby, watching her with a mixture of sadness and understanding, the sight pulling at your heartstrings.

You knelt beside her, your voice gentle as you spoke. “You did good, kid,” you said, offering her a small, encouraging smile. “But we need to stay inside now, okay? It’s not safe out there.”

Laura nodded, her eyes wide and trusting as she tentatively took your hand. The simple gesture made your heart swell, and you squeezed her hand gently before leading her and Charles further into the building, away from the danger that still lingered outside.

When Logan finally joined you inside, the sight that greeted him was almost surreal—Laura eating quietly at the table, you beside her, coaxing her to eat a bit more. The scene was a stark contrast to the violence and fear that had dominated the day, a brief respite in an otherwise tumultuous world.

Charles watched you all with a sad smile, a bittersweet look in his eyes as he observed the scene. For a moment, it was easy to imagine a different life—one where the three of you, maybe even four, could have been a family. But the harsh reality was never far behind.

Logan’s eyes softened as he took in the sight, but the moment was fleeting. The weight of everything that had happened pressed down on him, pulling him back to the harshness of the present.

“Where’s Caliban?” you asked, noticing his absence.

“Outside,” Logan replied, his voice clipped, the tension in his body telling you that whatever had transpired, it wasn’t something he wanted to discuss.

You didn’t press him, but when he moved to grab the bag from the table, his actions were frantic, almost desperate. Laura’s hand shot out, grabbing the bag, her expression fierce.

“You can get it back after I figure out what you and your mother have got us into,” Logan ground out, his frustration boiling over.

“Logan, calm down,” you said softly, reaching out to place a hand on his arm. The touch was meant to ground him, to remind him that he wasn’t alone in this. “We’ll figure this out.”

But Logan was teetering on the edge, his hands shaking as he dropped the bag, overwhelmed by the sheer weight of it all. “We don’t have time for this,” he muttered, the words barely making it past his lips, more a desperate mantra than anything else.

“Logan,” you repeated, your voice firmer this time as you stepped closer, forcing him to meet your gaze. “Look at me.”

His eyes finally lifted to yours, and what you saw there broke your heart. The storm of emotions swirling behind those familiar hazel eyes was a torrent of fear, anger, and exhaustion. But underneath it all, there was something else—something that mirrored the unspoken fears you carried too.

You didn’t say anything, just held his gaze, your eyes conveying the reassurance words couldn’t. Slowly, you watched as the tension in his body eased, his breathing evening out as he let the connection between you anchor him.

“Okay,” he finally muttered, his voice barely above a whisper, a single word carrying the weight of his surrender.

He was watching you with an unreadable expression, his eyes portraying a swirl of emotions. You gave him a small nod, a silent understanding passing between you. There was so much more to your story, a past filled with moments that had shaped who you both were. As you watched Laura quietly eating, you remembered how it all began, how you and Logan found each other in a world that seemed determined to tear you apart.

Mars speaks... (again) Thank you for reading, if you wish to be added to removed from the taglist, let me know. Any and all feedback is always appreciated🫶

Tags... @annagraceevanss @jane-the-virgin0 @h0n3y-l3m0n05 @paintlavillered @morganas-pendragons @lanabobana @inthetub @kellyxo1 @lillycore @twinky-wink @politicstanner @emiemiemiii @savy-luvs-dilfs @charlyrmv @rockerchick05 @londonbeachgirl @lefroggie

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halfmoth-halfman · 2 years ago

Text

life's little comforts

Pairing: Simon “Ghost” Riley x Medic!Reader Synopsis: Soap finally gets a better glimpse into your relationship with the Lieutenant- even if it's not the way he wants. Word Count: 3.9k Warnings: alcohol, smoking/cigarettes, torture, gore, blood, canon typical violence Disclaimer: I do not own modern warfare or any of the modern warfare characters. part one. part two. part four.

It’s late in the day when Soap walks into your office.

He hadn’t planned on being here, but after literally running into you- he wasn’t paying attention, and you took a corner too quickly- you’d asked him to grab a file from your office and bring it to you in Price’s office. You didn’t give him the chance to decline- not that he would’ve- continuing down the hall with a quick thanks.

It feels a bit like breaking and entering, like sneaking into his parents’ room as a child when they weren’t home. It’s too quiet, the sound of boots against the vinyl plank echoing in his eardrums as he heads to your desk. It’s a stack of papers in a bright blue file; you can’t miss it, you’d told him.

He can miss it, apparently, since the file seems to be absent from your desk. Your plethora of colorful office supplies sits neatly organized atop your desk alongside your phone, computer, and printer, but there’s not a single file in sight. There are stacks of papers on the filing cabinets- the doors of which, he discovers, are locked with no key in sight- behind your desk and an absurd amount of sticky notes covering the locked glass planes of the pill cabinets. His only other option is-

He doesn’t want to go through your desk. It feels silly but somehow he imagines the desk sitting in front of him to be an extension of you. If he peeks inside the drawers, will he find clues about what makes you, you? He can’t imagine you’ll be angrier about him going through your desk than not bringing you the file but still, he hesitates.

It takes him two minutes to talk himself into it, telling himself not to look at anything that doesn’t look work-related.

It takes one minute for him to completely disregard that as he pulls open the bottom drawer and sees the thick black edges of a picture frame beneath the file he was sent to find. He pulls the file and the frame from the drawer, setting the file on your desk with no consideration as he examines the photo. Saying the picture is old is an understatement. Deep creases run down the center and across it- someone’s folded and unfolded it several times- with the edges frayed away to almost nothing. The image is faded to all hell, but Soap recognizes the two figures in it with ease.

You’re in a warehouse perched atop a stack of black military crates, putting you at eye level with Ghost, who stands leaning against the crates in the space next to you. Your hair is longer, left down and pushed back by a pair of sunglasses and you’re dressed in all black with a matching tac vest. Ghost is dressed similarly, all black and all tactical, but the familiar skull plate is replaced by a pair of black sunglasses resting over his painted balaclava. The two of you are facing each other, covered in dirt and grime and what is most likely blood, but you’re beaming up at Ghost like you’ve won the lottery, as he cradles your left hand in his gloveless hands, caught in the process of sliding a solid black ring onto your finger.

The words Ghost & Hornet are scrawled across the bottom in someone’s chicken scratch above a date that's been worn away.

How long ago was this taken? Why is your callsign Hornet? What did you do before you became the 141 doctor? Who took this picture? If it wasn’t one of you who took it, then who gave it to you? Questions swirl around Soap’s head as he stares down at the picture in his hands.

“Did you grab that folder?”

Soap drops the frame back into the drawer, kicking it shut with lightning speed as the door swings open and you peek your head inside.

“Got it right here!” You barely take a step inside your office before he’s meeting you at the door, shoving the file into your hands. “Need anything else?”

“No, that was it,” you smile up at him- a small imitation of that same beaming smile in the picture- taking the file. “Thanks for grabbing it for me.”

“Of course, Doc.” Soap follows you out of your office and the infirmary, watching you continue down the hall before he splits off toward the barracks.

He respects you and Ghost, respects your privacy, but all the clues and all the hints have piled up into a perfect little mystery waiting to be solved.

What’s the saying: curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.

Three weeks turns to six weeks turns to nine weeks turns to twelve.

If Soap never has to see the glittering crystal white of snowfall again, he’ll be glad for it. The mission wasn’t supposed to take this long but, as all missions that take place in the ass end of nowhere seem to do, something went wrong and the team is stuck in the Narsaq mountains.

Everything was fine after the first delay; the team was frustrated but optimistic for the most part. After the second delay, there were small cases of worry and bickering but everyone was able to stay on track. Things go downhill at the start of month three and by the end of the fourth month, it’s a miracle that any of them are speaking to each other.

Soap drags his feet up the stairs to the base rooftop where Ghost is on watch. He assumes you’re there too; Price had sent you to relieve the Lieutenant not ten minutes ago before deciding two pairs of eyes were better than one and sending Soap up after you. You weren’t happy about it- your hatred of the cold stronger than anyone else’s- and you’d frowned at Price’s orders, stomping your feet the entire way out of the room. Soap could see the irritation rolling off of Price in waves before the Captain uncharacteristically snaps at him to follow you and send Ghost back down.

The rooftop door is held open by a rock, letting the soft flurries of snow drift inside and coat the top four steps. Soap takes those steps carefully, not trusting the rusted railing and the way it grates and shrieks whenever someone leans on it. Bracing himself for the cold, he tucks himself further into his heavy jacket, stepping onto the rooftop and into the ankle-deep snow. He turns to the right and comes to an immediate standstill when he spots you and Ghost.

You’re both leaning against the broken a/c unit, staring out into the endless white of the mountain range. Ghost’s mask is pushed up to his nose as the two of you pass a cigarette back and forth but he’s shed his jacket, leaving him in a thermal long-sleeved shirt. There’s no mystery as to where the jacket went; you’re happily drowning in the oversized garment, snuggling into the fabric every time you pass the cigarette back to Ghost.

Soap creeps back to the staircase, stepping softly to avoid the crunch of the snow. He peeks outside again, catching you as you watch Ghost take a long drag from the cigarette. He holds the cigarette out to you, keeping his eyes forward; a perfect distraction as you lean forward and press a kiss to the sliver of skin on his wrist peeking out between his glove and shirt sleeve. You pluck the cigarette from his hand, looking back out over the snowcaps with a playful smile- the first smile Soap’s seen on your face in weeks. Ghost shakes his head, pinching your ear when you turn away from him but it’s obvious the way the tension eases from his shoulders.

Soap chuckles to himself, moving back down the staircase to take a seat at the bottom of the steps as he decides Price can wait a few more minutes.

Rough missions are par for the course for the 141, everyone knows it.

Everyone has their own way of coping, their own personal rituals for decompressing. Before you had joined, Soap had no idea what Ghost did after a particularly hard mission. Staying true to his namesake, the man would simply vanish, appearing hours, sometimes days, later without a word.

He never explained, and no one ever asked.

It’s still true now, though everyone knows if they really need his whereabouts they can ask you; whether or not you’ll tell them is a different story.

But then there are the missions that stick- the missions where the blood sinks into the skin and stains the bones red. Where dying faces are burned into the backs of their eyelids and imprinted in the parts of the brain that will last long after everything else has faded. Where the chorus of bullets and death rattles drown out all other sounds long after the fight has ended.

Ghost doesn’t bother with pretense after those missions. Instead, he beelines to the infirmary, disappearing into your office where you allow him to stay, keeping the door locked unless you- and only you- need to get something.

Soap gets it- he’s probably one of the few who do- which is why he does his best to keep his distance from you and your office unless it’s an emergency.

It’s late when he passes by the infirmary. Exhausted and sore, he shuffles towards his room on his way back from the fitness center- his own way of coping- passing by the infirmary doors. It looks mostly empty, the only light coming through the glass on your office door, and he thinks for a brief moment that he should check on you and ask after Ghost.

He makes it to your door, taking note of the shade that’s drawn halfway up. He bends slightly to get a clearer view inside, the lamp on your desk the only dim source of light in the room. Ghost sits in one of the chairs in front of your desk with the entirety of his body weight leaning forward against you as you stand between his legs. His head is down, pressed against your stomach and his hands grip tightly onto your hips.

Soap doesn’t need more light to see the tension wound up in Ghost, the weight of the mission bearing down on his bowed back.

You, on the other hand, are the embodiment of peace, supporting the weight pressed against you, hands running over Ghost’s shoulders and kneading into the tight muscle. Your fingers dip just under the collar of his shirt, skirting across the edges of his mask and you bend your head slightly. Soap can see your mouth moving and Ghost nods to whatever you ask him.

You gather the bottom of the balaclava in your hands, pushing it up just enough to get your hands underneath and around the base of his skull where you continue kneading into his skin. Ghost melts into you, pressing himself as far into you as he physically can.

You say something else and Ghost leans his head up to look at you just as you lean down and-

Soap steps back from the window, turning in his heel to head straight out of the infirmary with the affirming knowledge that you’ll both be okay.

There was a healthy mix of excitement and apprehension when Price told them they were teaming up with another task force. Guesses were thrown out over who this new team would be, what they’d be like, who’d be the better shot-

(“There’s no way they’ll be a better shot than me!”

“Everyone’s a better shot than you, Johnny.”

“…that hurts, Lt.”)

You don’t take part, letting the team speculate without adding anything yourself. Soap and Gaz try to get your input, teasing you until they think you’ll relent but they get nothing out of you.

Two weeks later, they’re gathered in the briefing room when the doors burst open, followed by the thundering of boots as three strangers in solid black tactical gear swarm you. Soap is on his feet in seconds as the largest one grabs you by the waist to swing you around and you…laugh?

You’re laughing. Why are you laughing? What’s going-

“At ease, Sergeant,” Price laughs, entering behind the boisterous group alongside an unfamiliar woman. The three strangers set you down, the smallest one looping an arm around your shoulders while the man who had picked you up claps Ghost on the shoulder with a wide smile.

“Missed us, Casper?”

“Like a knife in the gut,” Ghost deadpans.

It takes a minute for things to settle before Price makes introductions: Sergeant Theodore “Grizzly” Lin, Sergeant Charlotte “Firefly” Bishop, Sergeant Kenneth “Trip” Hale and Captain Juliana Owens.

Your former team.

Soap has so many questions, so many things he needs to know, but he doesn’t get the chance after introductions are made as Price and Captain Owens call the room to attention.

The mission sounds simple: your team has the locations of several hidden terrorist cells and will infiltrate and wipe them out with the 141’s help. It’s nothing either team hasn’t done before, but the additional manpower will help to get this done before the enemy decides to move house.

They mesh well with the 141, blending in almost seamlessly on base.

On the field is an entirely different story.

The 141 works well together, Soap knows that, but your team is on an entirely different level. They operate like a single person, moving with and covering each other without a word- like they were trained to protect each other from birth. Soap isn’t sure what’s more unsettling: the ease with which they hunt down their enemies or how effortlessly you slip into your role alongside them. He knew you could handle yourself, but after watching expertly slice through the jugular of a close-range enemy before twisting your hands around their neck to force the blood from their artery out through your fingers, he realizes how deeply the team has underestimated you.

And if he’s a little scared of you after that mission, he’ll never tell.

For the three months that your former team occupies the 141 base, Soap takes every opportunity to speak with your old teammates. He gets the most information out of Grizzly; the man is more than eager to brag about your abilities. Trip and Firefly offer occasional information if he asks, but it’s usually too vague for Soap to understand- like some kind of inside joke he’s only partially in on.

He gets a few tidbits from you: Theodore is as cuddly as a teddy but fights like he’s trying to maul his enemies, Charlotte- Charlie, she prefers- is a former fighter pilot with an allegedly long history with arson, and Kent is a mastermind when it comes to trip mines despite being clumsier than a newborn deer. He gets a couple of old mission stories from you too, nothing too detailed, some including Ghost, and all suspiciously absent of your involvement.

He asks Grizzly one day during a rare moment of downtime when you’re too occupied in your office to stop him-

(“What’s the story with the Doc?”

“Who? Hornet?”

“Why Hornet?”

“You ever seen a hornet in a beehive?”

Soap hasn’t. And judging by the feral smile that splits Grizzly’s face in two, he doesn’t want to.)

The teams go out to celebrate once the mission wraps up. It’s a long night filled with too much alcohol and too little supervision that ends at a run-down bar occupied only by both teams and the bartender. Soap taps out after losing the third round of billiards- even with Grizzly and Trip on his team, Gaz and Firefly still manage to wipe the floor with them every time- heading to the bar to get another beer.

“Cleaning crew cleared out the apartment. Said it looked like a random break-in, but we’re assigning you a new safehouse just to be sure.” Soap’s ears twitch as he hears Captain Owens speak. He glances to his right where you and Ghost sit at a table across from Price and Owens looking too serious for the occasion.

“What about the house?” you ask, folding your arms over your chest.

“No activity, but I’ve got eyes on it,” Owens sighs.

“You can take some time if you wanna check it out for yourselves,” Price suggests. You and Ghost share a brief look, an entire conversation passed between glances.

“Maybe another time,” you answer with a casual shrug.

“I swear, I’ve never met a couple more averse to spending time together at home than the two of you-” Owens shakes her head, turning to Price with a teasing grin. “You lettin’ my kids have too much fun on your base, John?”

Soap nearly chokes on his beer as you groan, scraping your hands down your face, and Ghost rolls his eyes so hard it’s a miracle they don’t roll back into his head.

Your former Captain knows- that makes sense if he thinks about it- but Price… Soap clearly remembers Price denying any knowledge of your and Ghost’s relationship. If he knew, if it was meant to be a secret, then why give him hints?

Soap is desperate to know more, the alcohol spurring him on as he gathers the questions in his head sorting them by level of importance so he’ll know which to ask first come tomorrow.

He doesn’t get the chance, as the team departs first thing without a word of goodbye and Price calls everyone in for a new mission.

Soap has seen his share of gruesome things, but this is-

They’re gathered around the small monitor, unable to tear their eyes from the screen. The video had been sent to Price with no name attached to it. It’s grainy, most likely recorded on an older camera but the audio…the audio is crystal clear.

And the way your screams echo through the room will haunt them for the rest of their days.

It was an accident. Through pure shitty luck, the team had been separated, then separated again, and once more until everyone was on their own trying to retrieve intel from an empty base that turned out to not be so empty. The intel was retrieved and their opponents made an uncharacteristically hasty exit. It isn’t until exfil arrives and you don’t that they realize what’s happened.

Now, after two months of agonizing silence, they get this.

You’re strapped to a metal chair, beaten and bloody, when one of your captors yanks your head up by your hair. He growls something at you in muffled Russian and when you answer him with silence, he spits in your face. You meet his taunting gaze with a severe glare and the man laughs, letting go of you to call someone else over.

He steps in front of the camera, blocking any view of you, but there’s still a clear view of one of his men approaching you with a cattle prod. The man speaks directly to the camera- directly to the 141- his voice almost drowned out by the buzz of the prod and the scream you let out.

The video ends there, fading into jumbled static before starting over again.

“It’s proof of life,” Price sighs, shutting the monitor off. “They’re offering a trade. Intel for the doctor.”

“Can we trace it?” Gaz asks.

“Laswell’s working on it.”

The room falls into silence and Soap can’t help but look at Ghost. He appears calm, standing still with his gaze focused on the monitor, but Soap knows better. There’s nothing in those eyes, Ghost’s mind completely vacant, an empty shell of a man stuck standing before them. With nothing more to add, Ghost turns, walking out of the room without a word- a true statement to his name.

He’s been like this since you disappeared- disassociating so hard he might as well have been taken with you. He broke out of it once, when Gaz suggested changing your status from MIA to KIA.

Gaz’s black eye took almost three weeks to heal and Ghost vanished from the base until it did, returning without an apology and a tension that followed him into every room.

It takes another agonizing week before Laswell comes back with anything, but she delivers more than enough information. Price is barely off the phone with her when the team is gearing up to go and find you.

And, oh, when they find you-

Soap isn’t sure there’s a need for the entire team as Ghost tears a warpath through their enemies. There’s no words, no mercy, no stopping as he cuts down person after person after person. He’s coated in gore and viscera, thick crimson a stark contrast to the bone white of his mask, hands dripping with enemy blood- an angel of death coming to collect.

Soap finds you first while clearing a room as Ghost bludgeons one of the guards to death in the hallway.

You’re huddled in a corner of the cell, leaning against the grimy wall curled in on yourself. Soap lowers his gun, approaching cautiously as though you’re a wild animal, speaking softly, “Doc?”

Soap jumps back as you lunge for him, swinging what looks to be a piece of broken glass. He can feel the sharp sting as you catch his arm, taking several steps back until he’s almost out the door. You move back, pressing yourself against the wall with your hands up; your fingers so tightly squeezed around the shard in your hand, Soap can see the fresh blood sliding down your palm.

“Easy, easy,” he coaxes, hands up, palms facing out as he calls back over his shoulder. “Ghost!”

The man materializes out of thin air, nudging Soap out of the way as he takes in the scene before him. You look like hell, dressed down in a torn shirt and pants with one eye swollen shut and covered in so much dried blood that they can’t tell where your injuries are.

Slowly, Ghost takes a step into the cell.

“Don’t!” you yell, voice hoarse. “Nor- Norilsk, six years ago. We were…we were on a mission and one of our team was KIA. What was the last thing he said to us?” Ghost takes a careful step forward, bloody hands raised.

“Should’ve had that last drink,” Ghost speaks lowly, inching towards you. “Barely got it out through the blood but he never stopped smiling.”

He gets close enough to reach out to you, hands gently wrapping around yours as he eases you into letting go of the glass. It clatters to the floor, snapping in half against the moldy concrete.

“I-I didn’t tell them anything.”

“I know.”

“They tried to get me to, but- but I didn’t-”

“I know.”

“I fought back.”

“I know, love.”

Ghost maneuvers you forward until you’re pressed against his chest, forehead digging into the hard pockets of his tac vest. Soap turns his back, giving the two of you a moment and keeping watch. He can hear Ghost’s low murmurs and the rattling of your voice.

You meet up with Gaz and Price ten minutes later, when you’ve collected yourself enough to separate yourself from Ghost. You roll your shoulders back, biting back the pain to stand as tall as you can. Price sets a hand on your shoulder, giving it a soft, comforting squeeze.

Are you okay?

You reach back where Ghost stands directly behind you. His hand finds yours, squeezing three times. You squeeze back once, then twice, then three times before letting go. You give your best smile, feeling the comforting weight of Ghost behind you as you nod at Price.

I will be.

#simon riley x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #ghost x reader #simon riley #simon ghost riley #modern warfare #modern warfare 2 #mw fics #moth writes #private

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guilty-ff · 3 months ago

Text

𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐁𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐏𝐭.4

ᡕᠵ᠊ᡃ່࡚ࠢ࠘ ⸝່ࠡࠣ᠊߯᠆ࠣ࠘ᡁࠣ࠘᠊᠊ࠢ࠘𐡏 ˚⁎⁺˳ .

Previously: Y/N, restrained and tortured, learns from Francis that her regeneration causes others to suffer in her place. As the pain intensifies, she weakly mutters his name before passing out.

This story takes place between the second and third movies (warning: not 100% movie/comic accurate)

Pairing: Wade Wilson/Deadpool x Reader

Genre: Angst, revenge, Fanfiction, Marvel

Warnings: Movie Spoilers! Explicit content, swearing, torture, mental health, weapons

Word count: 3927

Wade was a broken man, trapped in a relentless cycle of despair and obsession. His life, once marked by chaos and humor, had become an endless string of sleepless nights and futile searches.

The warehouse, which had once been a safe place of his independence and creativity, was now a pitiful reflection of his deteriorating mental state. It was cluttered with stacks of documents, photographs pinned disorganised on the walls, and maps dotted with red circles and frantic scribbles. Every inch of the space was covered in evidence of his failed search for Y/n, and the air was stuffy with the odor of stale coffee and unwashed clothes.

Wade's physical appearance mirrored his mental decline. He had lost weight, his once muscular frame now gaunt and sickly. His suit, once his pride, was now old and stained. The red and black fabric was faded, a wretched testament to his endless struggles.

His face, usually masked by his signature humor, was now painted with deep lines of exhaustion and despair. His eyes, once sharp and full of mischief, were now hollow and bloodshot, reflecting the sleepless nights and relentless guilt that hunted him.

The daily routine was monotonous and the same.

Wade would spend hours looking over the maps and documents, his fingers stained with ink and coffee. He would pace the warehouse, muttering to himself as he memorised every detail of his search. The endless cycle of hope and disappointment had messed up his sanity. Every time a lead turned out to be a dead end, it felt like another nail in his coffin.

Weasel had tried everything to break through to him. He had been by Wade's side through every failed attempt, every new lead that went nowhere. But as the years wore on, his patience began to wear thin.

Dopinder, too, had grown weary. He had watched Wade's descent into obsession with a heavy heart, and the silence in Altheas apartment was often emphasised by the sound of Weasel's frustrated sighs.

One evening, after yet another dead-end search, Weasel finally exploded. His face was flushed with anger and exhaustion as he stormed into the room. The narrow space, filled with the waste of Wade's obsessive quest, seemed to close in around him.

He slammed a stack of papers onto the table, the documents scattering and fluttering across the floor. "Wade, this is fucking insane!" he yelled, his voice cutting through the oppressive silence. "We've been at this for years! We've gone through every fucking corner of this city and beyond, and there's nothing. She's gone. You need to accept that!"

Wade, hunched over the table, looked up with hollow eyes. His face was pale, his expression a mix of desperation and confrontation. "Don't you fucking tell me that! She's out there. I know it. I can feel it. I promised I'd protect her. I can't just fucking let go."

Dopinder, who had been standing quietly, finally spoke. His voice was steady but laced with frustration. "Sir, he's right. This obsession is making you lose your mind. As you know, I once felt similar to Gita because of my cousin. It's time to face reality. Kidnapping Bandhu and going after her as you told me was not the move. She's not coming back."

Wade's face twisted in torment. "I can't stop. I made a promise to her. I have to keep looking. If I stop, it means I failed her."

Weasel's anger softened into a weary sadness.

"Wade, look at yourself. You're barely holding it together. This obsession is destroying you. It's okay to accept that she's gone. You can't keep going like this."

The argument had reached a fever pitch when Althea, arrived unannounced. She entered the room with a smirk sensing a suffocating atmosphere.

"Well, well, well," Althea drawled, her tone dripping with sarcasm. "Look at you, Wade. You're like a fucking stray dog, clawing at every lead and getting nowhere. Pathetic, really. You've been digging through garbage for years, and what do you have to show for it? Nothing but a dirty room and a broken spirit."

Wade's eyes flared with anger and pain. "Shut up, Althea. You have no idea what this is like."

"Oh, I have an idea. You're just like a cockroach, scuttling around in the dark, hoping for a crumb. And look at you now- your obsession has turned you into a fucking joke. A pitiful, little joke."

The cruel words cut deep. Wade's resolve finally began to crumble under the weight of his guilt and the relentless pressure from his friends. He slumped into a chair, his body shaking with the intensity of his emotions. Tears streamed down his face as he realized the immensity of his failure.

Weasel placed a hand on Wade's shoulder, his voice soft but firm. "You did everything you could. It's time to take care of yourself. You've been searching for years. It's okay to let go."

Wade's voice was a broken whisper. "Fine. Fine. She's dead. I get it. She's gone." The admission felt like a knife twisting in his gut. "I'm so sorry. I'm so fucking sorry."

The room fell into a heavy silence. He sat alone in the dim light of the warehouse, feeling a hollow emptiness that no amount of searching could fill. The dream of finding Y/n and making things right had ended in crushing defeat.

Guilt catching up on him, eating away at whatever was left of his sanity. He should have been there for her, should have protected her. He would failed her, just like he had failed Vanessa.

•┈┈┈•┈┈┈•┈┈┈•┈┈┈•┈┈┈•┈┈┈•

As Wade's search faded into a resigned acceptance of her death, Y/N's reality became one of unending horror.

Francis, the man responsible for her capture, took pleasure in her suffering, using her as a pawn in his twisted game of revenge against Wade.

The sterile, metallic walls of her prison reflected her pain back at her, a constant reminder of the nightmare she could not escape. And as the torture escalated, so too did her resolve- she would survive this, if only to make sure Francis paid for what he had done.

Each day, Francis would enter, his footsteps echoing down the corridor before the door creaked open. He was always methodical, almost clinical in his approach, but his eyes betrayed a sadistic pleasure in what he was about to do.

He would start with the physical pain.

The tools varied- sometimes it was the sharp blade of a scalpel, cutting into her flesh; other times, it was the searing burn of heated metal pressed against her skin, leaving behind the burned smell of charred flesh.

But no matter how much she bled or how deeply the burns seared, Francis always had more in store for her, never satisfied with just one form of torture.

As Francis stood over her, his expression cold and unfeeling, a stark contrast to the cruel image that flickered in his eyes. His hands moved quickly as he secured the straps around her wrists and ankles, ensuring she could not move even an inch. Y/n's breaths were shallow and weak, each one a reminder of the agony her body had endured.

"Comfortable?" Francis asked, his voice dripping with mockery. He leaned over her, his face close enough that she could see the sick pleasure in his eyes.

Y/n managed to muster a weak glare, her voice a raspy whisper, "Go to hell."

He smiled, a cold, predatory grin that made her stomach turn. "Oh, we're already there, sweetheart." He nodded to one of his servants, who stepped forward with a large, filthy rag and a bucket of water. The sight of the bucket made Y/n's heart race, a surge of primal fear washing over her.

"Let's see how long you can hold your breath," Francis said, his tone almost casual, like they were discussing the weather.

The servant threw the rag over Y/n's face, the old fabric scraping against her raw skin. Her world became dark, the air around her thick and suffocating. Panic set in immediately, her body instinctively struggling against the restraints, but it was useless. She was trapped, helpless beneath the weight of the rag and the knowledge of what was coming next.

Francis stepped back, savoring the moment before giving a slight nod. The servant tilted the bucket, and the water poured out in a steady stream, soaking the rag and filling her mouth and nose. It was cold, a shock to her already trembling body, but that was quickly replaced by a more immediate terror.

Y/n exhausted, her body screaming for air, but all she could do was choke on the water. It felt like she was drowning, like her lungs were filling with liquid fire. Her mind screamed at her to breathe, to cough, to do anything to expel the water, but it was impossible. The rag was an unforgiving barrier, the water relentless as it flooded her senses.

"Do you know what the worst part is, Y/n?" Francis's voice cut through the roaring in her ears, his tone conversational as if they were chatting over tea.

"Wade's not coming for you. He's probably already forgotten you, moved on to the next whore who'll get caught up in his mess. You're nothing to him now. Just another casualty of his fucked-up life."

His words were a blade, slicing through the last threads of her resolve. Y/n wanted to scream, to tell him he was wrong, but all she could do was gag on the water that filled her throat, her body arching off the table in a desperate attempt to escape the suffocating torture.

Francis watched her struggle with cold detachment, his hands clasped behind his back. "He's not worth this, you know," he continued, his voice low and insidious. "You're suffering for nothing. For a man who doesn't even have the decency to keep searching for you. How long do you think you've been here, Y/n? Days? Months? Years?"

Her mind spun, disoriented by the lack of oxygen and the overwhelming need to breathe. Time had lost all meaning in this place, each moment stretching into an eternity of pain and fear. She did not know how long she had been here, but it felt like forever. And the thought that Wade had given up on her, that he had moved on... it was a torture all its own.

Francis nodded again, and the water stopped. The rag was ripped away, and Y/n gasped, coughing violently as her lungs finally found air. Her body shaken violently, trying to dodge the water that had nearly drowned her, each breath a ragged, painful gasp.

But Francis was not done. He leaned down, his face close to hers, his voice a poisonous whisper. "He's not coming for you. No one is. You're all alone, Y/n. And this... this is your life now."

Her chest heaved as she struggled to breathe, her body trembling with exhaustion and fear. But somewhere deep inside, buried beneath the pain and terror, a spark of defiance still flickered. She would not let him break her. Not like this.

Y/n turned her head, her eyes meeting his with a fierce determination. "Fuck... you," she spat, her voice hoarse but filled with venom.

Francis straightened, a cold smile tugging at his lips. "We'll see how long that fire lasts," he said, stepping back as the servant prepared for the next round of water.

And as the rag was placed over her face once more, Y/n braced herself for the flood, for the darkness that threatened to consume her. But she would hold on to that little hope, no matter how small it was. Because it was all she had left.

Days turned into a blur of pain and despair. The cycle of waterboarding became just one of many methods Francis employed to break her spirit. The physical torment was relentless, but it was the psychological warfare that truly triggered her. He seemed to take a perverse pleasure in ensuring that she remained as mentally shattered as she was physically.

Francis knew how to break a person from the inside out. He was a master of manipulation, weaving a web of lies and half truths designed to trigger her spirit.

He would lean in close, his breath hot against her ear as he whispered cruel taunts. "You really thought Wade would come for you?". He would say, his voice dripping with malice.

His words were like poison, getting into her mind, making her question everything she had believed. She tried to resist, to cling to the hope that Wade was still out there, searching for her, but with each passing day, that hope vanished.

The isolation, the constant pain, and the relentless psychological assault began to wear her down. Francis took every opportunity to remind her of how alone she was, how forgotten she had become.

He had a way of getting inside her head, twisting her thoughts until she did not know what was real anymore. He played mind games with her, altering the timing of her torture sessions so she could never expect when the next wave of pain would come. Sometimes he would leave her in darkness for days, the silence broken only by the distant echoes of other prisoners' screams, a constant reminder of her own doom.

As the years dragged on, Y/n changed. She had lost track of how long she had been trapped in that hellhole. The days had bled together in a blur of agony and despair. The torture had done more than scar her body- it had twisted her mind, turning her into something she barely recognized.

The physical pain was constant, but it was the psychological torment that truly broke her. The things Francis had done to her, the things he had made her believe about Wade, had planted a seed of hatred in her heart, one that grew with every day of her captivity.

The isolation was suffocating. Y/n found herself questioning her own memories, her own worth. The lines between reality and the lies Francis fed her began to blur. She started to believe that Wade had forgotten her, that she was not worth saving. The thought of him moving on, living a life without her, filled her with a rage she had never known before- a rage that Francis eagerly thrilled.

Six years had passed in a relentless blur of pain and suffering since the accident, leaving Y/n in the dark, cramped cell. Her bruised body and broken spirit showed the unending cruelty she had endured.

The cell was a dark, oppressive space, highlighted only by a sliver of moonlight that struggled through a foggy window. Y/n laid crumpled on the cold concrete floor, her body twisted in exhaustion.

The air was heavy, the stench of old blood and sweat mingling with the scent of despair. Her clothes, once white, were now an old and torn mess, barely clinging to her damaged frame. Her skin was marked with bruises and burns, each one a testament to the relentless cruelty she had faced.

Breathing was a struggle, each inhale short and shallow, as if her lungs were weighed down by the enormity of her torture. Her eyes, hollow and unfocused, drifted across the cracked walls. She mumbled to herself, her voice barely more than a whisper, choked by the weight of her guilt and despair.

"They're... they're suffering because of me," she murmured, her voice breaking with the weight of her own realization. "They're dying... and I'm... I'm still here..."

Her thoughts were a mess, separated by the horror she had endured and witnessed. The echoes of distant screams and cries seemed to mess with her mind, though she knew they were not her own. Each cry, each plea for help, was a stark reminder of the suffering she had become intertwined in.

She tried to push away the images and sounds of others' suffering, but they seemed to get into her consciousness, an unending reminder of the pain she had without intention caused.

"Why... why can't I stop this?" she mumbled, her voice stammering. "Why am I the one who's still alive, when they... they're not?"

She felt a intense sense of disconnection from reality, as if the walls of her cell were closing in on her, pressing her down with the weight of her guilt. The thought that her continued survival meant the maintenance of others' suffering was unbearable. She was a vessel of pain, a curse that dragged others into hell with her.

In the silence of her cell, the only sound was her quiet mumbling and the occasional shudder of her body. Her thoughts swirled in a chaotic blur, a never- ending loop of self-blame and guilt. Despite the crushing weight of her situation, a small, flickering hope remained. It was this tiny spark, barely noticeable that drove her to plan her escape.

The day of Y/n's escape had finally arrived, though its outcome remained uncertain. Her heart pounded in her chest as the guards dragged her into a dark metal room, the weight of her chains clinking with every step.

As she was forced to lay on the cold metal table, her body trembling from the effects of the latest torture, a spark of resistance still burned within her.

They had locked her in a small, dark box this time, the temperature slowly dropping until she could see her breath in the air, until her fingers went numb and her teeth chattered uncontrollably.

The cold seeped into her bones, turning her blood to ice. She could feel the frost forming on her skin, tiny crystals of ice biting into her flesh. It hurt- God, it hurt- but she refused to scream. Screaming would only give them the satisfaction of knowing they had won.

The box was so small that she could not move, could not even shift her position to relieve the pressure on her aching joints. The darkness was suffocating, pressing in on her from all sides. She could not see anything, could not hear anything but the faint sound of her own breathing, growing shallower as the cold tightened its grip on her lungs. She focused on that sound, using it to ground herself, to keep from slipping into the abyss of madness that threatened to consume her.

When they finally pulled her out, her body was shaking so badly that she could barely stand. They threw her back onto the table, chaining her wrists and ankles so tightly that the metal bit into her skin. She could feel the blood trickling down her arms, warm against the chill that still clung to her. Francis stood over her, a smug smile on his face as he looked down at her shivering form.

"You're stronger than I expected," he said, his voice cold and clinical. "But everyone breaks eventually. It's just a matter of time."

Y/n did not respond. She did not have the strength to. She lay there, her chest rising and falling in shallow, rapid breaths, her eyes half-closed. To Francis, she looked like she was on the brink of passing out, just another victim of his sadistic games. But Y/n was far from unconscious. She was waiting.

Francis turned away, motioning for the guards to prepare her for the next round of torture. They moved around her, their footsteps heavy on the concrete floor. Y/n waited until one of them leaned in close, unlocking the chain around her wrist. In that split second, she struck.

With a surge of adrenaline-fueled strength, she grabbed the guard's arm and yanked it toward her, using his own momentum to pull him off balance. Her hand found the sharp shard of ice she had hidden, formed from the frost that had coated her body during the freezing torture.

She drove it into his throat with all the force she could muster. The man gurgled, blood spurting from the wound as he collapsed to the ground, the life draining from his eyes.

"Fuck, she broke ou-"

The second guard barely had time to react before she was on him, the makeshift weapon flashing in the dim light as she drove it into his chest. He staggered back, clutching at the wound as blood poured from between his fingers. Y/n did not stop to watch him fall. She was already moving, her body fueled by a desperate, animalistic need to survive.

Francis turned, his eyes widening in shock as he saw her standing over the bodies of his guards, her breath coming in ragged gasps. "You-" he started, but she did not give him a chance to finish. She lunged at him, the ice shard slicing through the air, aiming for his throat. But Francis was quicker than she had anticipated. He dodged to the side, catching her wrist in a vice-like grip.

She struggled, but he was stronger, his hand tightening around her wrist until she could feel the bones grinding together. Pain shot up her arm, but she refused to let go of the shard. She twisted, bringing her knee up into his gut. He grunted, loosening his grip just enough for her to pull free.

Y/n did not waste any time. She turned and ran, her bare feet slapping against the cold floor as she sprinted down the hallway. She could hear Francis shouting behind her, calling for more guards, but she did not stop. She did not look back. All she could think about was getting out, getting away from this place and the horrors it held.

The facility was a labyrinth of sterile hallways and locked doors, but she knew it well. She had been dragged through these corridors enough times to memorize every turn, every exit. Her breath was coming in ragged gasps, her lungs burning with the effort, but she pushed herself harder, refusing to let the exhaustion slow her down.

Finally, she burst through a door and into the open air. The night was cold, the sky a dark, starless void above her. But the chill was a welcome relief after the suffocating confines of the facility. She did not stop running, her feet pounding against the ground as she made her way toward the fence that surrounded the compound.

She could hear the guards behind her, their shouts growing louder as they closed in. But she did not care. She was almost there, almost free. With a final burst of strength, she launched herself at the fence, scrambling up the chain-link like a wild animal. Her hands were slick with blood and sweat, making it hard to keep her grip, but she refused to let go. She hauled herself over the top, her body crashing to the ground on the other side with a painful thud.

She did not stop. She could not. Ignoring the pain that shot through her limbs, she pushed herself to her feet and started running again, disappearing into the night, leaving the facility and Francis behind.

But the damage had been done.

As she ran through the darkened forest, the memories of the past years haunted her, flashing before her eyes like a twisted film reel. The torture, the pain, the manipulation- they had all left their mark on her. She was no longer the woman she had been when she first entered that facility. That woman was dead, buried beneath the layers of trauma and hatred that now consumed her.

And as she ran, one thought burned brighter than all the others: Wade Wilson had abandoned her. He had left her to suffer, to be broken by Francis and him.

#fanfic #deadpool #deadpool 2 #deadpool 3 #deadpool x reader #fiction #marvel fanfiction #wade wilson #wade wilson x reader #marvel angst #marvel #marvel fic #deadpool x you #deadpool x y/n #deadpool 1 #angst #x men

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sweet-as-an-angel · 2 years ago

Text

Yandere Simon "Ghost" Riley Headcanons

Summary: You were just a civilian caught in the crossfire, kidnapped by a cartel and held prisoner. And now, after being rescued by Ghost, you may wonder if you are any safer with him than you were out there.

Warnings: Kidnapping, mentions of physical abuse, memory loss/amnesia, loss of ability to walk (temporary), yandere behaviour, toxic behaviour, possessive behaviour, kind of slow burn, romantic tension, Ghost gets jealous, somewhat angsty in some parts, very fluffy in others (a good balance), mentions of interrogation, Reader showcases anxiety, no use of pronouns for Reader except ‘you’, mentions of games,

Wordcount: 7,581 words

You were a tourist who was in the wrong place at the wrong time - seen things you weren’t meant to see.

And that’s how you ended up here, chained up in a warehouse for what you could only have guessed to have been a couple of months.

You were barely kept alive by restricted rations of food and water the cartel members gave you, needing you alive but just weak enough to not be able to fight back.

They kept you around for their own amusement, hitting you, beating you, humiliating you.

You missed your family, your friends, your old life. You truly believed, with a heavy heart, that you’d die here without ever getting the chance to see them again.

Until…

It had all happened so fast that you couldn’t keep up with it all.

One minute there was a group of men playing poker at a table nearby, the next they’d all been blown away by some nigh-silent, unseen force.

As soon as it had began, it was all over, though gunfire resonated from deeper within the warehouse.

Your heart thudded, your mind hazy and heavy yet just about conscious enough to acknowledge a set of heavy, booted footsteps nearing you.

A walkie-talkie crackled, followed by a deep, gravelly voice.

“One potential hostage found. Commencing collection now.”

The chains keeping you tethered to the metal post were cut and your hands fell.

You barely had the strength to lift them, nevermind your head, which lolled forward, gaze fixed in your lap.

The person who you presumed to have released you knelt down before you. A gloved hand pushed against your forehead, forcing you to look at them.

He was ghastly.

His flesh face was covered by a second, the insignia of his endoskeleton splayed across a dark mask. His eyes were dark and seemed to swallow all light that tried to glimmer within them.

“Can you talk?” he said. His voice was calm yet lacked patience, as if he knew time was short.

You could barely move, barely think.

You said nothing.

The man took your non-answer and moved to lift you, keeping an arm under yours and the other firmly holding his gun.

Now, stood at full height, walking on legs you hadn’t used in months, your body couldn’t handle it.

Your blood pressure dropped and so did you.

The man grunted as your weight collapsed into him, almost taking him with you.

You fell unconscious, and the man rearranged you, slinging his gun over his shoulder and carrying you in his arms.

The next time you awoke, the setting was drastically different.

The dust-filled, sweltering warehouse you had grown accustomed to had given was to a blindingly white facility, the scent of streilisers and medicine filling your nostrils.

You couldn’t move much, body heavy yet soul willing, and your eyes shifted beneath hooded lids.

A machine beeped closeby, one you recognised to be mimicking your heartbeat. The rest of the room was quiet, save for the turning of paper somewhere.

The surface beneath you was plush, encompassing you, unlike the warehouse floor.

Putting the pieces together, your heart began to pound. The heart monitor copied.

A nearby nurse rushed to your side, turning your head this way and that and shining a light in your eyes, talking at you rather than to you.

The rest became a blur.

Doctors visited, recorded your condition. You didn’t know where you were but you knew you were safe. For now, at least.

Some officers came and tried speaking to you, only to find you unable (or unwilling) to talk.

This came as a discovery to you, too.

Soon after waking up, you found that your mind, your memories, were blank. Nothing of your prior self remained save for an overview of your torturous time in captivity, and…

That mask.

The man who’d saved you.

You found it hard to speak, not having done so properly in months save for begging for your life and crying whenever you were alone.

When one of the officers asked you if there was anything you needed, your body acted on instinct, by reflex, and came out with only one word.

“Skull.”

Ghost was stationed by you shortly after that, having been known to be the one who brought you back to Base and the only one to resemble the ‘skull’ you’d spoken of.

The task was…mind numbing, to say the least.

After your singular request for the man who saved you, you went silent again.

No words, no noises, just you sat in the hospital bed, dead to the world.

Nobody could coax a word from you, not even Ghost, as you heard him introduce himself.

The events of the last couple months had forced you into a state of “Dissociative amnesia,” as the doctor had put it. “Rare, but real.”

The doctor said it could take a while for you to regain your memories, and until then, you would have to be kept under supervision.

No permanent thoughts crossed your mind during your period of blankness. They flitted in and out of your consciousness as a phantom would.

Ghost had only tried interacting with you two or three times, the first being his introduction, the others being an attempt at getting any sort of response from you.

Nothing worked, and you were both resigned to sitting in silence with one another.

Days passed, you weren’t sure how many.

Ghost was getting impatient.

He knew you could be a key witness to the cartel’s deeper activities, but he knew he couldn’t force your cooperation. Not while you were practically vegetative, at least.

Ghost sat on a chair by your bedside, all but resembling a mannequin.

He stared into the distance.

“Oh,” came your small, croaking voice. “It’s you.”

Ghost almost didn’t turn to look at you, believing the voice to be a hallucination.

He hazarded a glance and almost considered jumping.

You looked at him, dead into his eyes, conscious, talking.

Another blur of activity surrounded you immediately after, Ghost alerting the doctors to you becoming vocal again and leaving them to do their job not long after.

Tests were run, your memory was tested (of which there was still little), and the better part of a day was spent observing you, trying to determine whether you were ready for interrogation or not.

Luckily, the higher-ups seemed to feel lenient, giving you longer to recover until you were expected to produce answers to their copious questions.

In the meantime, Ghost was assigned to you day and night, both as your protector and observer.

He was…quiet, to say the least.

Rarely spoke unless spoken to, meaning he was of little entertainment to you in your bed-bound state.

This led to you trying to make small talk, regardless of whether Ghost would respond or not.

Little did you know that, despite his lack of participation, Ghost was listening to every single word you said.

During a one-sided conversation, you mentioned colouring, an activity you liked when you were younger.

“Yeah!” you said, face lighting up as you slowly recalled a memory of your younger self, colouring book in tow. “I remember that my grandma had this old, really old colouring book that she gave me. It was vintage, smelled like antique book pages, sweet,”

Ghost watched you, listened. He saw your face light up. You looked at him, eyes smiling.

“It was nearly as old as her when she gave it to me; I was terrified of ruining it so I never coloured in it. Just kept it safely on my bookshelf, looked at the pictures before bed…”

The day after, Ghost came to you with a colouring book and a box of pencils.

“Not exactly vintage, but it’ll do,” he said, laying the book and the utensils on your bedside.

You smiled up at him as he settled into his seat.

“Thank you, Ghost,” you said, smiling. “I mean it.”

Ghost offered minimal input whenever you spoke to him, which you still did while you coloured the pictures.

It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

After that, over the course of a week, more memories came back to you.

They were small, inconsequential at best, but they were evidence that you were making a fast recovery.

And Ghost was there to hear every single one of them.

Whenever you came out with something new, he’d write it down in a Base-issued notebook, telling you to slow down whenever words failed you, your mind wrapped up in splinters of who you were - who you are.

And you would glance at his notes every now and then.

“Wow,” you said, suppressing a smile. “Your handwriting’s worse than mine.”

“I’d like to see you do better,” Ghost replied, barely casting you a glance.

You reached for the pen, which Ghost withheld from you until he realised what you were trying to do.

Now, equipped, you turned to a new page in the notebook and tried writing something.

It came out like a doctor’s signature, merely cursive scribbles that meant nothing to the untrained eye.

Ghost eyed your work.

“What you tryna write?” he said, accent rough.

You bit your lip, trying to focus all your efforts on making what was in your head come out onto the paper.

“My name,” you said.

Ghost seemed to straighten up at that.

The memory was weak, a fawn stumbling on its wiry legs, trying to find purchase.

But it was there, behind frosted glass. You could vaguely make out the letters which would be the key to your existence.

You kept scrawling, muscle memory having weakened significantly, until you hit upon a familiar pattern.

The ‘letters’ were indecipherable, even to yourself. The memory of your name began to fade, and, though you grasped at it, you were left with nothing as it was consumed by darkness.

You stopped writing, defeat overtaking you.

“Why’d you stop?” Ghost asked, looking up from the notebook to you.

You felt tears fill your eyes, tried to keep them in.

“I forgot again,” you said, voice cracking.

The pen lay limp in your hand, and Ghost removed it, putting it down.

The fabric of his glove against your skin sent a jolt through you, unexpected but strangely comforting.

“Well,” Ghost said, a temporary solution coming to him. “How ‘bout we give you a new name, just ‘til you find your real one.”

You sniffed, tried smiling at the gesture, and nodded.

You went back and forth for a while, trying to think of a name that would suit you based on the limited information you had about yourself so far.

“It needs to be nice,” you said. Ghost gave a slight inclination of a nod. You kept thinking.

“Fawn,” Ghost said.

His eyes bore into you, though you suspected that was just his disposition rather than him intentionally trying to spook you.

“How’s that sound?”

You tried the name on your tongue, then, you beamed.

“I like it,” you said, giving Ghost a grateful smile.

From that day on, Ghost referred to you as Fawn, a name that the rest of the Base staff called you, too, having nothing else to call you.

Ghost never told you why he picked that name. Perhaps he saw something in you that resembled your namesake. Your newborn optimism, perhaps.

At your bedside night and day, Ghost became the first and only witness of your memories as they slowly revealed themselves to you.

Some were light-hearted, some were filled with the natural sorrow found in human life, and some were downright embarrassing; all of which gave Ghost gradual insights into who you are.

He eventually seemed comfortable enough to make fun of your more embarrassing ones, such as the time you went to a store your crush worked at, only to find that you had toilet paper stuck to the heel of your shoe the entire time.

This became somewhat of a joke between you and Ghost. One that the staff seemed to find confusing.

Whenever staff escorted you to and from the bathroom, Ghost would look down at your feet.

“No toilet paper to worry about this time,” he’d say.

Your face would burn at the memory, but you’d laugh regardless.

You also forced him to listen to music that came to you as visions from another time, tunes which you’d hum to Ghost, who recorded them, took them to whoever, and would come back with the song it originated from.

Soon, you had three or four CDs which contained music you’d enjoyed before your amnesia.

They all felt and sounded familiar. Comforting.

You’d implore (guilt trip) Ghost to listen to them, too.

His face - his eyes, really, the rest of it was covered - were blank as you passed him the headphones, preparing himself to listen to whatever you’d found that day.

He gave no indication of whether he enjoyed it or not.

“I can see why you like it,” is all he would say, passing the headphones back to you.

“Oh?” you said once, laying the headphones on the bed. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Ghost leaned forward onto his knees, elbows propped upon them.

“It means,” he began, “that I’m not surprised this is the type of music you listen to.”

You feigned hurt, having slowly regained your ability to utilise humour after your diagnosis, the days getting easier.

“Well, I bet I can guess what type of music you like to listen to.” You held a smile on your face, just bordering on smug.

Ghost gave you a look. “Oh yeah?” he said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. “Go on, then.”

You pretended to think for a moment, already having thought this question through many times before. Ghost was elusive, that much was plain to see, yet you imagined him in ways that made him familiar - human - to you.

“I bet you like metal,” you said. “Heavy.”

Ghost gave a sound that may have been a laugh.

“Am I that easy to read?” he said, a smirk vague in his tone.

“No,” you replied, innocently. “I’m just not surprised that’s the type of music you listen to.”

Ghost gave a slow, sarcastic, demeaning clap, muffled by his gloves.

“All right, well done,” he said, the smirk in his voice growing.

The two of you played board games together, too.

Initially, he let you win, claiming that life in the military had left him “No time for leisure.”

Translation: “I haven’t played board games in an age.”

You picked up early on he was letting you win and insisted on having him play fairly.

There was something deeply enigmatic about watching a trained soldier try and mask his frustration when he lands on Mayfair for the third time in Monopoly.

Whenever you’d lose you’d challenge him to another game, thus continuing the cycle of celebration and condemnation, with you claiming he was “cheating” when he won.

“You told me to play fair,” Ghost would say, a smugness in his voice.

Not all times with Ghost were light-hearted, however.

Even if his presence reassured you, there was the overwhelming feeling that you were missing out on something.

You knew you had family, if they were still alive, but you didn’t know them.

Friends, too. You wondered how many you had.

If you had a crush, that meant you interacted with people on some scale, right?

And it was in times like these, times when you just wanted to go home, wherever that was, that Ghost was there for you.

More often than not you’d end up in tears, trying to stifle them.

Ghost said nothing as you wept, chiming in only when he deemed the onslaught over.

“Why don’t blind guys skydive?” he said once.

You sniffed, wiping your nose, and looked at him.

“What?” you said.

“I said, why don’t blind guys skydive?”

You looked down, as if the answer lay in your hands. You shrugged.

“Scares the shit outta their dogs.”

Silence for a second. And then, a laugh.

You gave a laugh, airy at first but firmer the longer it went on.

You put a hand over your mouth, as if to hide your growing smile from Ghost.

Wiping the streaks of tears from your cheeks, you looked at him.

“Thank you,” you said. “I feel a little better.”

“S’what I’m here for.”

About two weeks into your rescue, your physical training began.

Having fully recovered from malnutrition, Base wanted you to start learning how to walk again, both for your convenience and theirs.

Ghost attended each meeting you had to go to, watching from the sidelines as a nurse guided you between two wooden poles.

The sessions were tough. Very tough.

You felt useless, responsible for your own suffering.

“If I’d done more, if I’d fought harder-”

“Then you’d be dead,” Ghost would insist whenever you questioned your choices.

“Types like the ones who kidnapped you don’t enjoy people who can easily fight them off. Trust me, you did the right thing.”

After sessions, you were usually tired, opting to try and push for an extra hour or so to get back your ability to walk quicker.

The nurse would insist you rest immediately afterwards.

One evening, you wanted to push yourself.

“I need to do this,” you told Ghost, pulling your legs over the side of the bed. He stood by your bedside, waiting to catch you if you fell.

“I need to-” you slid off the bed, lost your balance, and fell into Ghost’s arms.

His chest was rock solid, and he held you by your arms, close to him, helping you back up.

“You need to rest,” he said, trying to guide you back to bed.

“No!” You yelled, immediately regretting it.

Still in Ghost’s arms, you looked away, shame overtaking you.

“I’m sorry, Ghost, but I- I really, really need to…”

You didn’t finish your sentence. Ghost remained silent for a minute, then nodded.

“Alright,” he said, pulling you away from the bed.

“I’ll help you.”

In your room, Ghost walked a few laps with you, his hold emigrating from your underarms to your elbows, and then to your hands.

You took uneven, shaking steps, but they were steps in the right direction.

You smiled back at Ghost as he stood behind you, helping you.

Another couple of weeks passed. Ghost would give you secret after-session sessions, helping you walk wherever you pleased (within the confines of the room).

You were still shaky, very weak in certain areas, but you were getting stronger, more reliable.

You got to know Ghost more whenever you were resting in your room.

“My favourite colour,” you began one day, “is…[f/c].”

Ghost gave a brief noise of acknowledgement.

“What’s yours?” you asked, continuing to colour.

Ghost spoke plainly. “A secret,” he said.

You blinked, wondering if you’d misheard him.

“Huh?” you said, looking up at him.

There was no humour in his eyes. He was dead serious.

“Aww, come on!” you said, oddly hurt by his lack of willing. “You don’t trust me?”

Ghost’s eyes said everything and nothing at the same time.

“Depends,” he said, diplomatically. “D’you trust me?”

“Yes,” you said, without hesitation and with all the certainty of someone who felt nothing but trust and blind faith.

Ghost’s eyes widened for a second, as if he wasn’t expecting your answer, or maybe the light was playing tricks with your eyes.

Sensing he wasn’t going to say anything, you tried to cover for his absence.

“I mean, it’d be hard not to.” You looked down at your colouring book. You became warm, as if confessing something personal.

“You saved my life, you protect me, you’re always there when I need you,”

“Because it’s my job.” Ghost’s declaration came out as if it were an attack, a deterrent for you to not pursue this line of thinking any further.

You swallowed and continued on.

“Yeah, you could say that,” you said. “But you took this job.”

“I was assigned-”

“No, no, not this one,” you said gesturing to the room, looking squarely at him. “I mean as a soldier.”

Ghost said nothing, only watching you.

“Why would you take a job protecting people if you didn’t see yourself as trustworthy enough for them to rely on you?”

Your question was simple yet revealed a lot. Too much for Ghost’s liking.

Ghost gave no response, his gaze travelling elsewhere.

You dropped the conversation.

The room returned to silence.

“Green.” Ghost’s voice came out of nowhere, low, making you jump.

You looked at him. He said nothing else.

You swallowed, looked down at your box of pencils, and withdrew a green pencil. You passed it to Ghost, who took it reluctantly, and turned the colouring book so he could reach it.

You coloured the rest of the page together.

Then, the interrogations began.

What memories and names Base didn’t gather from your notes, they tried extracting from you in ‘interviews’.

They were simple enough at first: what did you see during your time with the cartel; what were the names of the people you encountered (ones which you hadn’t already alerted them to); how long were you in the cartel’s captivity, etc.

The interviewers were firm yet didn’t push too hard in areas which were still hazy to you.

You gave every detail you could remember and passed on every memory, no matter how small, about your time in captivity.

It brought back unwelcome feelings, the fear, the hunger, the shame…

You were offered psychological aid, which you found to be of some help, though there was an itch the psychiatrist couldn’t quite scratch.

One that you spoke to Ghost about.

“It’s like…it’s like they’re going by a script,” you said, walking with Ghost around your room, leaning against him as you navigated the circuit.

“Like they’re trying to help, they want to help, but…”

“But?” Ghost’s voice was heavy behind you, like a wall. You stopped shambling and Ghost came to a stand-still behind you.

“But…they don’t know how. They don’t know how to help me because they’ve never-”

“Been in your situation.” Ghost finished your sentence.

You turned to look at him, mouth agape as you heaved laboured breaths, your exercise having taken it out of you.

You felt a shiver crawl up your spine. Recognition.

“Yeah,” you said, exasperated. Finally, someone understood!

Ghost nodded. “I know how it feels.”

You both sat down, you on the bed and Ghost in his seat. You shifted, watching him. He searched for something to say.

“I know how your situation’s affected you,” he said. His gaze flitted from your eyes to anywhere else. “And I wish I could say it gets better. But…”

His eyes looked hard, dark. His gaze finally settled on you, penetrating your soul.

“Look, the only way you can start to rebuild your life is to talk to someone.”

“You mean…” You dared not let your gaze slip.

Ghost gave a fractional nod.

“I know these shrinks ain’t much good when it comes to our kind of trauma, but talkin’ to someone who’s been through what you have might make you feel like you’ve not lost the plot.”

You felt like a breakthrough had been made. Something, maybe excitement, crawled up your throat.

“Our?” you said, quiet, as if sharing a secret. A small smile tweaked at the corners of your lips.

Ghost gave no confirmation. But the silence was enough.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, alongside recovering more menial memories of your past, the interrogations became harsher.

You told and retold the interrogators everything you knew, any new developments which had occurred to you, forced to relive everything which had reduced you to your current condition.

But they weren’t satisfied.

They thought you had something to hide. That you were covering for the cartel by withholding names and knowledge.

The second you were back in your room, you broke down.

You ranted and raved to Ghost, who listened intently, his attention solely on you.

In one hand you squeezed your fist, looking for your stress ball; the one that, ironically, was given to you by the same people who had caused you to need it now.

You couldn’t find it. You turned to Ghost.

Hyperventilating, in your panicked, angered state, you reached out to him.

“Can I squeeze your hand?” you said, words spewing out faster than you could think about them.

Ghost seemed rigid.

You swallowed thickly.

“Please.”

Ghost took a step towards you and, slowly, he raised his hand to you.

You took it, squeezing it, trying to stamp out the anxiety pulsing through you.

With your eyes closed and breathing evening out, you held Ghost’s hand close to you, your grip lessening with every minute that passed.

After your attack, as you got ready for bed, outside of your field of vision, standing just outside your room, you didn’t see Ghost.

Didn’t see him look down at the hand you’d so intimately held, squeezed, close to your chest.

He could feel your remnant, phantom warmth encompassing it.

He clenched his fist, as if trying to hold your hand, the memory of it which swam around his like fish in a pond.

A couple days later, you were set for another interrogation.

While you were holed up in that room, Ghost remained in yours.

He searched for your stress ball, the image of your tear-stained face in the forefront of his mind.

Somewhere within his psyche, as he scoured the space for that little yellow sphere of temporary distraction, your voice echoed.

It thanked him for finding it, held him in its grip, drove him.

The warm gratitude you’d express plagued him, encompassing him in a similar, diluted warmth he’d felt when you held his hand.

He glanced under your bed. And there it was.

He plucked it and turned it over in his hand.

The gratification of seeing your face light up when he presented it to you fizzed in his mind.

And then another, heavier thought crossed his mind.

The feeling of you close to him, holding, gripping him in your time of need…did something to him.

He’d be the last to admit that he hadn’t felt warmth like that in a long time. And to forfeit it just for a moment’s gratification seemed a waste.

Ghost glanced at the ball. He deposited it deep into his pocket.

He told himself he’d return it to you later.

Later. Later.

Later came as you hobbled down the corridor with the help of a frame.

You seemed stressed. In need of release.

Ghost slid his hand into his pocket. Squeezed the ball.

“Did you find it?” you asked, hopeful. Your optimism was difficult to ignore.

Ghost shook his head. “Negative,” he said, a habit he’d picked up. Slow and intentional. He knew what he was doing. “But I’m here if you need me.”

And need him, you did.

You ended up confiding in him how the interrogation went, how the interviewers had made you feel like you had something to hide.

All the while, you clutched Ghost’s hand.

No amount of pressure you could muster could possibly hurt him, yet Ghost could tell you were holding back what little strength you had - both physical and mental.

“Don’t be shy,” Ghost said, voice cutting through your anxious ramblings. He looked down at your conjoined hands. “Squeeze harder.”

Something in the way you looked at him, with a look that said ‘I don’t want to hurt you’, crossed your eyes.

A look Ghost had nearly forgotten in his line of work.

You eventually fell into a comfortable rhythm wherein you would squeeze Ghost as hard as you could, leading to him faking injury at one point.

You chided him, you both laughed (or, Ghost nearly laughed), and you rested against your pillow.

“You know,” you said, turning to Ghost, “one day, I hope we won’t need a military.”

You were exhausted. Ghost could tell. He humoured your sleep-deprived ramblings regardless.

“So that people like you don’t have to fight for us.”

“Oh?” Ghost said. He’d be lying if he said his curiosity wasn’t piqued.

You nodded, movements growing sluggish, lethargic.

Your hand still held Ghost’s, resting it upon your stomach.

“You’re people, just like us.” You said, yawning. “I don’t want you getting hurt.”

Ghost felt an unfamiliar warmth spark in his chest. He ignored it.

“Not gonna happen, I can assure you that.”

“Which part?” you asked, eyes shutting.

Ghost leaned to mutter in your ear: “I’ll always be here to protect you.”

He didn’t know if you’d heard him.

When he withdrew, you were asleep. Still holding him.

He pulled his seat closer to your bedside, unable to bring himself to dislodge his hand from yours.

And that’s how he found you the morning after, awaking from his rigid sleep, still conjoined.

And thus, a habit was born.

After each interrogation, or psychiatrist visit or physical rehabilitation session, you would return to your room with Ghost and squeeze his hand until your anxiety dissipated.

All the while, your memories had begun returning at a quickened pace.

Ghost was learning more about you day by day.

Your favourite food, your home country, the names of your family members.

Your real name.

When he’d heard you say it for the first time, he swore the room got brighter.

It was beautiful and personal in ways that ‘Fawn’ could not compare.

It gave him a place to start searching for traces of you elsewhere.

Social media accounts, certificates, places of work and education - he knew he could find it all.

To make sure you were better off at home than you were at the Base is how he’d justified this interest to himself.

He still called you Fawn when you were alone, the name an inside joke between the two of you.

Speaking of, Ghost exchanged many jokes with you.

Regardless of how illogical or downright plain they were, you laughed each time.

Genuinely laughed.

Ghost wondered if you’d have reacted the same had you not been in the situation you were in right now; practically tethered to him and needing him for everything.

Well, almost everything.

After a few months of physical rehabilitation, you could just about walk again.

Your balance was a little off and you still needed the frame, but it was a start!

Ghost was there with you to celebrate, which, despite their best efforts to make you feel like a caged bird, the Base celebrated, too.

You’d been incredibly useful to them, having turned up many new leads for them to investigate.

As a reward, Base let you do something which caused Ghost to wonder if this was really the best decision.

They let you go to a bar with the boys.

To clarify, they said you could leave your room, the news of which travelled around the Base until it reached the ears of Ghost’s team.

“When were you gonna tell us?” Soap said, Alejandro nearby.

Ghost’s face was blank.

“Didn’t deem it necessary,” he said. And left it at that.

Naturally, Ghost’s team came to visit you and asked if you wanted to go to a bar with them.

“All that alcohol might help you remember something,” said Gaz, looking between you and Ghost.

You looked to Ghost, who, under the silent scrutiny of the other Force members, knew he couldn’t deny you of this freedom.

“Sure,” he said on your behalf. His eyes found yours and, while yours were filled with hope, Ghost’s seemed to exhibit a darkness never before seen by you.

You squeezed his hand that night you were set to leave.

“What if they don’t like me?” you said. “What if I was a terrible person and I remember all the bad things I’ve don-”

“Doesn’t matter.” Ghost’s voice came as a welcome distraction. You looked at him, swallowing your nerves.

“So what if they don’t like you? S’not like you’ll ever see them again.”

Ghost realised what he’d said wasn’t what you wanted to hear when your eyes widened, at which point he cleared his throat and tried again.

“What I mean is that they’ll like you regardless. Hell, they’re excited to just meet you after you’ve been holed up in confinement for the last few months.”

“You think so?” you said. Ghost nodded. And squeezed your hand back.

“I promise.”

The bar was nothing spectacular, being dimly lit and made solely out of wood, it seemed. But it was a change.

Creaking into the room, Alejandro spotted you first, throwing a cheer your way, followed by the rest of the Task Force, turning to face you.

Ghost was your shadow, large and wall-like behind you.

You held onto his wrist, daring not to let go, your other hand on the frame.

“Welcome, (Y/N),” said Gaz, lifting his drink in your general direction before taking a swig.

You gave him a slight wave, a shy smile crossing your features.

“Come, take a seat with us!” Alejandro hollered, waving you over.

You cast Ghost a glance over your shoulder. He nodded stiffly and you made your way to the group.

Ghost came to your side, with you gripping onto his arm.

His hulking mass beside you relieved you somewhat.

And, though he wouldn’t admit it, having you cling to him brought back the same feeling he experienced whenever you squeezed his hand.

Was this perhaps…liking?

The cheers of the team cut his thoughts short.

He knew you’d be safe with his team if he just left. And, with your warmth radiating through him, he felt that he needed to take a step outside to rid himself of this growing affliction.

He made a move to detach himself from you, and, quick as lightning, your hand was atop his.

“Don’t leave,” you whispered to him, eyes pleading as you snapped to look at him.

His heart jumped. Something in him stirred.

“Alright,” he said. “I won’t.”

“Hey,” came Alejandro’s jovial tone. “I can see why Ghost’s been hiding you away and keeping you to himself all this time.”

You felt your face heat up at the implication, then feigned oblivion. Just in case you were misreading the situation.

“Oh?” you said, tone inquisitive.

Alejandro nodded. “You’re very attractive.” He gave you an eye smile.

Your face felt as if it were on fire.

“Ah, look what you’ve done,” came Soap, emerging from the group. “You’ve gone and embarrassed (Y/N)!”

All the while, Ghost was beside you.

He seemed…rigid.

“That’ll do.” Ghost’s stern voice came, cutting through the chatter of the bar.

You nuzzled further into his side, as if trying to cover yourself.

You and Ghost settled into a quiet section of the bar after that, Soap, Alejandro and Gaz coming to pay you a visit whenever they brought you a drink, chatting for a minute or two before feeling ghost’s icy stare on their backs.

That night, laying in bed, you cast Ghost a tired smile.

“M’sorry I’ve been so clingy recently,” you said, Ghost tucking you in beneath the covers.

“Don’t be stupid,” he said, trying not to make eye contact with you.

Leaning back into your pillows, you reached for Ghost.

“Nervous?” he said, placing his gloved hand in yours.

“No,” you said. “Just want you nearby.”

Ghost’s heart spiked. He ignored it.

You fell asleep with his hand on your chest, hands holding his.

Ghost couldn’t bring himself to fall asleep without taking you in.

Even in the darkness, your features struck him as ethereal, your temperament and trust enrapturing him in ways he’d never been before.

He sat beside you, your loyal guard, watching over you through the night.

At some point, perhaps lulled to sleep by your rhythmic breathing, he joined you in a world far from this one, in a house you’d never seen before yet had lived in for years. You were happy, with Ghost behind you, unmasked, holding you.

Whether you shared this dream or not was irrelevant to Ghost. The only thing that mattered was that this, for now, felt real.

And yet, dreams can only satisfy the human lust for that which they do not have for so long.

The next day, more confident in your physical ability, you asked Ghost something which held an implication you weren’t yet aware of.

“Play Twister with me,” you said. You had a small smile on your face, one which Ghost was finding more and more difficult to deny.

After much pleading and begging, he eventually relented, more fond of the idea than he’d let on.

However, there was a stoic hesitance about him.

“I might hurt you.” His voice was sincere, yet his tone felt blank, as if he were protecting himself from the thought of injuring you.

You just smiled. “Never,” you said. “I trust you.”

Ghost scarcely contained the warmth seeping through his chest, threatening to make him smile.

He suppressed it.

“Fine,” he said.

Half an hour later, you were tangled together, neither relenting as your competitive nature got the better of you.

You span the dial, then called to Ghost: “Right foot, yellow!”

You tried. You really, really tried. But being pinned under the weight of a 6’2 ½ man and only just getting your strength back didn’t exactly give you an advantage. And stretching yourself too far, spreading your strength too thin, caused you to crumble.

You yelped, falling onto your front, winding yourself.

Ghost remained stationery on top of you.

You turned over onto your back and looked up at him, laughing.

“You can let go now,” you said. “You’ve won.”

“I know,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure you knew that.”

You gave a breathless laugh, hands either side of your head.

Ghost lowered himself onto his knees, your legs caged between them.

He didn’t notice until he felt your thighs touch the inside of his legs, at which point he became aware of the position you were in.

His hands were on either side of your shoulders, trapping you beneath him.

You went quiet, the only noise being your laboured breathing as you regained your breath.

You were so close, you noticed, able to see Ghost’s dark eyes searching yours.

Neither of you spoke.

Slowly, cautiously, Ghost leaned down, drawing closer to your face.

You watched, frozen by your own indecision.

Sure, you liked Ghost, but did you like like him?

Your body decided the latter as you tried to meet him in the middle. Instinctual.

The material of his mask just grazed the tip of your nose when a hurried knock came at your door.

Your heart jumped and you gasped, both you and Ghost turning to look at the door.

You regained your breath, chest heaving. “We should…um…” you struggled to find the words to say, sliding out from beneath Ghost.

“Yeah,” he said, getting up. He offered a hand to you, which you took, and hoisted you up.

You landed on his chest, his hand still gripping yours.

You couldn’t bring yourself to let go, and neither could Ghost, by the looks of things.

But alas, the doctor was persistent, calling your name through the door.

You parted without another word, leaning onto your nearby frame. Ghost assumed his usual tall posture, shaking the situation off his shoulders as if it were snow.

A couple weeks later, the foundations upon which you and Ghost had built your friendship came tumbling down.

Base had announced that they were sending you home, having gotten in contact with your family.

More of your memory had resurfaced, as had your strength; enough to reduce the risk of you getting injured somehow during transit.

Upon hearing this, you and Ghost had very different reactions.

Your heart swelled and you cheered, the thought of reuniting with your family again making your body light up.

Ghost remained quiet, no different from usual. But something about his quietude felt…off.

Cold.

Base would discharge you within the next day or so.

You related your plans of what you would do when you returned home.

“I’m going to go to the beach, I’m gonna read more, I-”

Ghost tuned you out, watching you with a vacant stare.

He knew he should have respected that you were bound to leave eventually, as all good things do. But…something about you made this separation more difficult than it needed to be.

Perhaps it was his ego, so inflated with your reliance on him that he could scarcely see himself having any value outside of it.

That was his first and final line of defence against what the real issue was.

As he watched you get excitable to get away from here, from him (he told himself), his resolve began to crack.

It had been chipped and scathed by other occurrences, sure. But this pressure, this final obstacle, threatened to destroy it entirely.

“What do you think, Ghost?” your voice tuned in as if it were re-emerging from water.

“About what?” he said. He saw little purpose in feigning interest now.

“About me being able to go home.” You wore a smile, a genuine smile. Ghost had seen enough to be able to identify it.

“Good,” he said. “Finally be out of my hair.” There was a venom in his tone that made you double-take.

You tried to ignore it, tried to focus on what the future held for you, but something in Ghost’s demeanour had changed. You sighed, dropped your previous train of thought.

“Ghost…” you said as you slid off the edge of your bed. Your balance had improved, making the trip to Ghost easier than it used to be. He reached out to grab you on instinct.

Standing before him now, you gazed into his eyes, trying to find the root of the issue.

“I wish we got more time together. Under different circumstances, of course.”

Of course, Ghost wanted to say, but he remained mute.

You placed gentle, cautious hands upon his chest, smoothing them over the fabric.

“You’ve been so good to me, and I’ll never be able to thank you enough for that.”

Your hands inched their way up to hold the sides of his mask. He made no move to remove you. His eyes bore into yours, soft in a way you’d never seen them before.

He placed his hands upon your waist, pulling you closer to him, slowly, methodically.

Your mind flashed back to your game of Twister. How close you’d been then and how close you were now.

Without thinking, urged by some sorrowful desire, you pulled Ghost into a tight hug, burying your face into his shoulder.

You sniffed, feeling tears sting your eyes and throat.

Ghost’s arms gingerly encompassed your frame, sliding around your waist, securing you.

The aversion he had to physical touch seemed to dissipate from him as you felt his weight pile on top of you, no longer holding back.

Neither of you spoke.

In your mind flashed a future without Ghost, a very real possibility. In Ghost’s, a future of only you and him. A silent promise he made to the both of you.

It took some time but the two of you eventually separated, with you wiping your nose on your sleeve.

Ghost watched you, hesitant to leave. Hesitant for you to leave.

You went to sleep that night as you never had before; Ghost laying in bed beneath you as you rested on his chest.

In his pocket, Ghost squeezed the stress ball, having found more use for it than you had.

In his haze, overwhelmed by the scent and presence of you, came an idea.

Later that morning, as you prepared to leave the Base, Ghost returned your stress ball to you.

“You found it!” you exclaimed, taking the ball and holding it close to your chest. You beamed up at Ghost, though there was an evident sorrow within you. “Thank you.”

Ghost offered his hand to you as he had many times before. And, for what you believed to be the final time, you took it, squeezing it.

You didn’t want to let go.

And neither did Ghost.

You were escorted onto the aircraft, Base fearing that you may be a target for any remaining cartel members while in the country, thus issuing you with a more discreet method of air travel home; a small helicopter.

You watched as Ghost grew further and further away, waving to you as you did to him, until he was gone.

In your hand you clutched your stress ball. Looking down at it, you turned it over in your hand.

There was something on it.

Looking closely, you saw the unmistakable outline of a phone number written in black ink, along with the word ‘Ghost’ below it.

You smiled, the crushing dejection you’d experienced for many hours before evaporating, replaced with a feeling you had grown all too familiar with.

Hope.

Meanwhile, Ghost got straight to work on tracking your location.

He wanted to know where that aircraft was going, when it would land, and approximately how long it would take for you to get home (and call him).

You may not have been able to see him anymore, but Ghost was watching over you.

This would be far from the last time you’d see him, he’d make absolutely sure of that.

Reblog for more content like this! It helps creators like myself tremendously and it is greatly appreciated :-)

Masterlist Masterlist [Continued] Masterpost Modern Warfare AI Masterlist

AO3 Wattpad

A/N: Due to tumblr's 4,096 character limit per text box (paragraph), I've had to separate the whole post out like this to be able topost it. I've tried putting the breaks where there would be a time skip so that reader immersion doesn't suffer too much.

Thank you for your patience :-)

Taglist: @yagipeach @deddoea @ghostsbrooklnbabe

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holylulusworld · 10 days ago

Text

Sewer Rat (3)

Summary: He broke your heart. Now he must pay for it.

Pairing: Mobster!Bucky Barnes x fem!Reader, former Mobster!Tony Stark x fem!Reader

Warnings: angst, scared reader, Bucky is scary as shit, mentions of a breakup, Tony being an asshole, Rumlow is no better, hatred on men

Sewer rat (2)

Sewer rat masterlist

“Pier 3,“ you recite the information you memorized if Tony ever turned his back on you. “He likes to use the warehouse there for interrogations. He pays the guards, and the cops look the other way.”

“Good,” Steve nods while taking notes. “We will check on the warehouse and see if he’s hiding our informant there.”

“I’m not sure, okay,” you hastily add. “It’s simply an assumption. I heard him talk about the warehouse and Pier 3 more than once. Not while I was around, of course. Only in a hushed tone in private.”

“Steve, be careful. It could be a trap,” Bucky warns. “No hasty decisions. Maybe Stark tries to fuck us over by feeding his bed bunny the wrong information.”

You flinch at his crudeness. Bed bunny, that’s what women are to these men. Nothing else. A toy to use until they get bored or find a better toy.

“If the information was right too, can I go then?” You hope Bucky will keep his word and help you start a new life. A few bucks and new papers will be enough. You’re not picky like Tony’s ex.”

“Boss did ya hear? Stark already replaced her." Rumlow snorts in your direction. He’s not the nicest guy, but you didn’t expect him to be friendly.

Bucky quirks a brow. “Oh, whom is he fucking now?”

Rumlow makes a face. “Potts, his ex.” He snorts. “If I exchange a pussy for another one, I’d choose a new one. Not an old hole I already fucked.”

That’s enough. They don’t know anything about love. You don’t need a guy like Rumlow to make fun of your predicament and broken heart.

“He can fuck any hole he wants to fuck. I don’t care. Your input is useless to me,” Bucky mutters as he watches you close the door behind you. “Next time, don’t mention it in front of our new informant. She’s a little sensitive when it comes to her ex.”

Brock rolls his eyes. “Did ya get weak for some pussy, boss? She’s only a random informant.”

“I gave you an order,” Bucky snarls at Rumlow. “I expect you to follow my orders without asking questions. If she’s crying her eyes out, she’s not useful to me.”

You angrily wipe your already swollen eyes. His ex. Out of all the women he could replace you with, it’s his ex. Pepper Potts. The shadow you were living in for the longest time. It was only a matter of time for her to reclaim her throne.

“Spilled milk,” Bucky waltzes into the guestroom. Well, you cannot expect privacy in his house. You’re nothing but an unwanted guest, an intruder even. “You shouldn’t cry over him.”

“What do you know about feelings and love?” You snap at Bucky. “Not days ago, I believed Tony would propose, and now he’s banging his ex. The red-haired devil.”

“As I said—” He stops right in front of you to grab your hand and keep you from wiping off my tears.“ If you want me to help you, these will be the last tears you waste on him. I need your sharp mind to bring Stark down. What I don’t need is a crybaby.”

“You’re such an insensitive asshole, Barnes. You all are. Men are all the same,” you snap at him and wiggle your wrist free. “Why do women still waste their time on you? You don’t deserve love and devotion. None of you. We should let you go extinct.”

Bucky snores at your outburst. “You can be funny too. No wonder Tony kept you around for longer than his usual flings.”

Getting reduced to a fling stings. You know by now that Tony never loved you; otherwise, he would’ve listened when you tried to tell him that you’d never cheat on him.

“I cannot understand how women and men can be so different,” you say, and look around the room. “We don’t belong together. You only want sex—a warm body to lean on once in a while. We look for a connection and a deeper meaning beyond psychical touch.”

Shaking your head, you look at your hands. They’re trembling. “It’s not worth the pain and disappointment. If men like us commit to a woman, it’s more than marriage or a relationship, Y/N. Till death do us part means something different in our world. You should know that. If you are mine, you’ll be in danger all the time.”

“Tony never warned me,” you murmur. “He came into my life and..." You shake your head, chuckling humorlessly. “He simply demanded that I change my life to commit to our relationship. I gave up my job, my home, and my friends. I built my fucking life around his needs, only for him to throw me out like trash.”

“I told you, no more tears.” He roughly cups your face and growls your name, “It’s not worth it. Love is an illusion. Nothing else.”

“What a sad world we’re living in,” you conclude. “In the end, you are all great pretenders, aren’t you?” Lifting your chin defiantly, you look Bucky straight in the eyes. “Tony pretended to love me. My friend pretended to be my friend. And you pretended to be on my side. All of you used me differently.”

“May I remind you that you came to me?” Bucky angrily replies. “I didn’t use you. It was a business transaction. You deliver information; I protect you.”

“Sure, you do,” you reply without missing a beat. “For as long as I’m useful. After that—” You shrug and keep the ending open. Just like Bucky does.

Jake worriedly looks your way. “Boss, I don’t think she should see this.” He says and pleadingly looks at Bucky.

“Play the footage, Jensen,” Bucky grunts. He’s not in the mood to waste more time finding the people behind your downfall. “Now. I don’t have all day.”

While you nervously wring your hands, Jake starts the video. It’s your friend and certain redhead talking. The timestamp tells you the meeting took place one week before he called you.

You can hear Pepper tell your friend to call you and pretend he wants to marry. That he must hug you and kiss your cheek. She wanted him to spend time with you and that she'd take care of the rest.

“Pepper Potts, what a devious snake you are,” Bucky muses. “Who would’ve thought she would go so far only to get that old man’s dick again?”

“Me,” you reply. “She threatened me whenever she got the chance. Pepper believed I was the reason for their breakup. In reality, I met Tony half a year after their breakup.”

“You mean he told you so, sweet cheeks,” Rumlow snickers. “I hate to break it for you, but Stark wanted to get into your pants. He’d told you about the sun and the moon to get between your legs.”

“As amusing as my heartbreaks must be to you, this won’t help me start a new life.” You shrug when the men stare at you. “She got away with it, okay. Tony is banging his ex, and all my shit belongs to her now. All I want is to get out of this town without getting shot.”

Bucky grabs you by your arm to guide you out of the room. “It took us days and lots of resources to find out the truth. You could show a little more gratitude.”

“I gave you everything to destroy Tony and take over his empire. That should be enough, don’t you think?” You try to put a brave face on and not show weakness. Bucky owes you, and he knows it. “When will you get me out of town?”

“You’re mine for as long as I tell you.” He cups your face with his gloved hand. “Don’t you dare believe for one second I’ll shelter your life if you keep on talking like that to me.”

“Breaking promises already?” You challenge. “I believe you’re known for being a man of your word.”

“I am a man of my word.” He kisses you hard, taking you by surprise. You gasp when he steps away seconds later. “When I said you’re mine, I meant it.”

Tags in reblog.

#bucky barnes #mafia au #mobster!bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #former tony stark x reader #x reader #Sewer Rat (3)

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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months ago

Text

How a billionaire’s mediocre pump-and-dump “book” became a “bestseller”

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/15/your-new-first-name/#that-dagger-tho

I was on a book tour the day my editor called me and told me, "From now on, your middle name is 'Cory.'"

"That's weird. Why?"

"Because from now on, your first name is 'New York Times Bestselling Author.'"

That was how I found out I'd hit the NYT list for the first time. It was a huge moment – just as it has been each subsequent time it's happened. First, because of how it warmed my little ego, but second, and more importantly, because of how it affected my book and all the books afterwards.

Once your book is a Times bestseller, every bookseller in America orders enough copies to fill a front-facing display on a new release shelf or a stack on a bestseller table. They order more copies of your backlist. Foreign rights buyers at Frankfurt crowd around your international agents to bid on your book. Movie studios come calling. It's a huge deal.

My books became Times bestsellers the old-fashioned way: people bought and read them and told their friends, who bought and read them. Booksellers who enjoyed them wrote "shelf-talkers" – short reviews – and displayed them alongside the book.

That "From now on your first name is 'New York Times Bestselling Author' gag is a tradition. When @wilwheaton's memoir Still Just A Geek hit the Times list, I texted the joke to him and he texted back to say @jscalzi had already sent him the same joke (and of course, Scalzi and I have the same editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden):

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/still-just-a-geek-wil-wheaton

But not everyone earns that first name the same way. Some people cheat.

Famously, the Church of Scientology was caught buying truckloads of L Ron Hubbard books (published by Scientology's own publishing arm) from booksellers, returning them to their warehouse, then shipping them back to the booksellers when they re-ordered the sold out titles. The tip-off came when booksellers opened cases of books and found that they already bore the store's own price-stickers:

https://www.latimes.com/local/la-scientology062890-story.html

The reason Scientology was willing to go to such great lengths wasn't merely that readers used "NYT Bestseller* to choose which books to buy. Far more important was the signal that this sent to the entire book trade, from reviewers to librarians to booksellers, who made important decisions about how many copies of the books to stock, whether to display them spine- or face out, and whether to return unsold stock or leave it on the shelf.

Publishers go to great lengths to send these messages to the trade: sending out fancy advance review copies in elaborate packaging, taking out ads in the trade magazines, featuring titles in their catalogs and sending their sales-force out to impress the publisher's enthusiasm on their accounts.

Even the advance can be a way to signal the trade: when a publisher announces that it just acquired a book for an eyebrow-raising sum, it's not trumpeting the size of its capital reserves – it's telling the trade that this book is a Big Deal that they should pay attention to.

(Of all the signals, this one may be the weakest, even if it's the most expensive for publishers to send. Take the $1.25m advance that Rupert Murdoch's Harpercollins paid to Sarah Palin for her unreadable memoir, Going Rogue. As with so many of the outsized sums Murdoch's press and papers pay to right wing politicians, the figure didn't represent a bet on the commercial prospects of the book – which tanked – but rather, a legal way to launder massive cash transfers from the far-right billionaire to a generation of politicians who now owe him some rather expensive favors.)

All of which brings me to the New York Times bestselling book Read Write Own by the billionaire VC New York Times Bestselling Author Chris Dixon. Dixon is a partner at A16Z, the venture capitalists who pumped billions into failed, scammy, cryptocurrency companies that tricked normies into converting their perfectly cromulent "fiat" money into shitcoins, allowing the investors to turn a massive profit and exit before the companies collapsed or imploded.

Read Write Own (subtitle: "Building the Next Era of the Internet") is a monumentally unconvincing hymn to the blockchain. As Molly White writes in her scathing review, the book is full of undisclosed conflicts of interest, with Dixon touting companies he has a direct personal stake in:

https://www.citationneeded.news/review-read-write-own-by-chris-dixon/

But this book's defects go beyond this kind of sleazy pump-and-dump behavior. It's also just bad. The arguments it makes for the blockchain as a way of escaping the problems of an enshittified, monopolized internet are bad arguments. White dissects each of these arguments very skillfully, and I urge you to read her review for a full list, but I'll reproduce one here to give you a taste:

After three chapters in which Dixon provides a (rather revisionistd) history of the web to date, explains the mechanics of blockchains, and goes over the types of things one might theoretically be able to do with a blockchain, we are left with "Part Four: Here and Now", then the final "Part Five: What's Next". The name of Part Four suggests that he will perhaps lay out a list of blockchain projects that are currently successfully solving real problems.

This may be why Part Four is precisely four and a half pages long. And rather than name any successful projects, Dixon instead spends his few pages excoriating the "casino" projects that he says have given crypto a bad rap,e prompting regulatory scrutiny that is making "ethical entrepreneurs … afraid to build products" in the United States.f

As White says, this is just not a good book. It doesn't contain anything to excite people who are already blockchain-poisoned crypto cultists – and it also lacks anything that will convince normies who never let Matt Damon or Spike Lee convince them to trade dollars for magic beans. It's one of those books that manages to be both paper and a paperweight.

And yet…it's a New York Times Bestseller. How did this come to pass? Here's a hint: remember how the Scientologists got L Ron Hubbard 20 consecutive #1 Bestsellers?

As Jordan Pearson writes for Motherboard, Read Write Own earned its place on the Times list because of a series of massive bulk orders from firms linked to A16Z and Dixon, which ordered between dozens and thousands of copies and gave them away to employees or just randos on Twitter:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7emkx/chris-dixon-a16z-read-write-own-nyt-bestseller

The Times recognizes this in a backhanded way, by marking Read Write Own on the list with a "dagger" (†) that indicates the shenanigans (the same dagger appeared alongside the listing for Donald Trump Jr's Triggered after the RNC spent a metric scientologyload of money – $100k – buying up cases of it):

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/21/books/donald-trump-jr-triggered-sales.html

There's a case for the Times not automatically ignoring bulk orders. Since 2020, I've run Kickstarters where I've pre-sold my books on behalf of my publisher, working with bookstores like Book Soup and wholesalers like Porchlight Books to backers when they go on sale. I signed and personalized 500+ books at Vroman's yesterday for backers who pre-ordered my next novel, The Bezzle:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53531243480/

But there's a world of difference between pre-orders that hundreds or thousands of readers place that are aggregated into a single bulk order, and books that are bought by CEOs to give away to people who may not have any interest in them. For the book trade – librarians, reviewers, booksellers – the former indicates broad interest that justifies their attention. The latter just tells you that a handful of deep-pocketed manipulators want you to think there's broad interest.

I'm certain that Dixon – like me – feels a bit of pride at having "earned" a new first name. But Dixon – like me – gets something far more tangible than a bit of egoboo out of making the Times list. For me, a place on the Times list is a way to get booksellers and librarians excited about sharing my book with readers.

For Dixon, the stakes are much higher. Remember that cryptocurrency is a faith-based initiative whose mechanism is: "convince normies that shitcoins will be worth more tomorrow than they are today, and then trade them the shitcoins that cost you nothing to create for dollars that they worked hard to earn."

In other words, crypto is a bezzle, defined by John Kenneth Galbraith as "The magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it."

So long as shitcoins haven't fallen to zero, the bag-holders who've traded their "fiat" for funny money can live in the bezzle, convinced that their "investments" will recover and turn a profit. More importantly, keeping the bezzle alive preserves the possibility of luring in more normies who can infuse the system with fresh dollars to use as convincers that keep the bag-holders to keep holding that bag, rather than bailing and precipitating the zeroing out of the whole scam.

The relatively small sums that Dixon and his affiliated plutocrats spent to flood your podcasts with ads for this pointless 300-page Ponzi ad are a bargain, as are the sums they spent buying up cases of the book to give away or just stash in a storeroom. If only a few hundred retirees are convinced to convert their savings to crypto, the resulting flush of cash will make the line go up, allowing whales like Dixon and A16Z to cash out, or make more leveraged bets, or both. Crypto is a system with very few good trades, but spending chump change to earn a spot on the Times list (dagger or no) is a no-brainer.

After all, the kinds of people who buy crypto are, famously, the kinds of people who think books are stupid ("I would never read a book" -S Bankman-Fried):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/29/sam-bankman-fried-reading-effective-altruism/

There's precious little likelihood that anyone will be convinced to go long on crypto thanks to the words in this book. But the Times list has enough prestige to lure more suckers into the casino: "I'm not going to read this thing, but if it's on the list, that means other people must have read it and think it's convincing."

We are living through a golden age of scams, and crypto, which has elevated caveat emptor to a moral virtue ("not your wallet, not your coins"), is a scammer's paradise. Stein's Law tells us that "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop," but the purpose of a bezzle isn't to keep the scam going forever – just until the scammer can cash out and blow town. The longer the bezzle goes on for, the richer the scammer gets.

Not for nothing, my next novel – which comes out on Feb 20 – is called The Bezzle. It stars Marty Hench, my hard-driving, two-fisted, high-tech forensic accountant, who finds himself unwinding a whole menagerie of scams, from a hamburger-based Ponzi scheme to rampant music royalty theft to a vast prison-tech scam that uses prisoners as the ultimate captive audience:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Patrick Nielsen Hayden – the same editor who gave me my new first name – once told me that "publishing is the act of connecting a text with an audience." Everything a publisher does – editing, printing, warehousing, distributing – can be separated from publishing. The thing a publisher does that makes them a publisher – not a printer or a warehouser or an editing shop – is connecting books and audiences.

Seen in this light, publishing is a subset of the hard problem of advertising, religion, politics and every other endeavor that consists in part of convincing people to try out a new idea:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/04/self-publishing/

This may be the golden age of scams, but it's the dark age of publishing. Consolidation in distribution has gutted the power of the sales force to convince booksellers to stock books that the publisher believes in. Consolidation in publishing – especially Amazon, which is both a publisher and the largest retailer in the country – has stacked the deck against books looking for readers and vice-versa (Goodreads, a service founded for that purpose, is now just another tentacle on the Amazon shoggoth). The rapid enshittification of social media has clobbered the one semi-reliable channel publicists and authors had to reach readers directly.

I wrote nine books during lockdown (I write as displacement activity for anxiety) which has given me a chance to see publishing in the way that few authors can: through a sequence of rapid engagements with the system as a whole, as I publish between one and three books per year for multiple, consecutive years. From that vantagepoint, I can tell you that it's grim and getting grimmer. The slots that books that connected with readers once occupied are now increasingly occupied by the equivalent of the botshit that fills the first eight screens of your Google search results: book-shaped objects that have gamed their way to the top of the list.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/03/botshit-generative-ai-imminent-threat-democracy

I don't know what to do about this, but I have one piece of advice: if you read a book you love, tell other people about it. Tell them face-to-face. In your groupchat. On social media. Even on Goodreads. Every book is a lottery ticket, but the bezzlers are buying their tickets by the case: every time you tell someone about a book you loved (and even better, why you loved it), you buy a writer another ticket.

Meanwhile, I've got to go get ready for my book tour. I'm coming to LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, Calgary, Phoenix, Portland, Providence, Boston, New York City, Toronto, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Tucson, Chicago, Buffalo, as well as Torino and Tartu (details soon!).

If you want to get a taste of The Bezzle, here's an excerpt:

https://www.torforgeblog.com/2023/11/20/excerpt-reveal-the-bezzle-by-cory-doctorow/

And here's the audiobook, read by New York Times Bestselling Author Wil Wheaton:

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_459/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_459_-_The_Bezzle_Read_By_Wil_Wheaton.mp3

#pluralistic #molly white #books #publishing #dunning kruggerands #crypto #cryptocurrency #a16z #venture capitalism #guillotine watch #this is why we can't have nice things #bookselling #the bezzle #bezzles #web3 #blockchain

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