#Straight out from my still writing doc

[crystal-snowfall]

Spoiler from Relmouret

[This is totally the whole chapter, you know? Chapter zero from Relmouret? The somewhat Preface or Prologue?]

In truth, Humans should’ve known better than to harm the beloved one, one that was loved by the creators of their own world.

(Especially that they were warned again, and again, and again.)

But then again, it is too late for them to have any regrets. For what is done, cannot come undone.

So why don’t I tell you about what that is, the meaning behind the words I said? You’re interested?

Good.

Now, heed us well as we begin with everything goes like this:

Humans, those that were born with brilliant powers, were able to bear one of the elements of the primal four, which were: Fire, Water, Earth and Wind.

Or in the known language of this world: Lares, Terous, Thios, and Howls.

Proud of what they were, they never once learned the origin of how they even came to possess these miracle powers in the first place.

Before the Humans, came the Gods, a supreme being who oversaw the people below from high above. And among them, there was one who was of the newborn, a young Godling, who was the strongest and also the loneliest of them all.

And that young, lonely Godling one day wandered upon the middle realm, where most Humans and Creatures lived. Upon wandering, that young, lonely Godling met a lost child, who was just as young as he was.

Naive that young and lonely Godling was, he helped the sly and manipulative young Human child, without once did he know of his downfall that the Human child shall soon bring him to.

And when the war came, the Godling perished upon the betrayal of that Human he once helped.

Sure, with the death of that young Godling, it brought the Human race with great rewards, letting them to be able to wield the elements, be that as it may, it also brought them the Gods’ Wrath upon them, their rage arose with the knowing of the death of their fellow kin.

For fifty days and fifty nights the Humans fought with the Gods, and soon the Humans came out as the victorious of the long and gruesome war.

However, their vanquishment of them was only because the Gods had decided to leave the Human realm in the remembrance of that young Godling that they actually came to love without the Godling’s knowing.

Some of the Humans wrote it down in their history that it was the one and only time they were proud of being able to defeat such divine beings that came from above.

And that Human who betrayed the young Godling was crowned as the King – no, as an Emperor of the new empire.

But, that Human was swallowed in his guilt, unable to overcome the betrayal he had brought to his first friend. Thus, in remembrance of that Godling he betrayed, that Human then named the Empire with the name of Kaimaharene, a wish to be forgiven by the deed he had made.

Not only that, that Human renamed him and his future generation as the Xolani, leaving its once prideful name into the Void of the Forsaken One, never to be remembered by any but him.

No other Humans had come to know what it meant and the reason for such action, but they let it be, thinking that their newly crowned Emperor was just seeking forgiveness for the loss of their people in the war with the Gods.

As if this action itself was very obvious to everyone, and to the Emperor himself.

And one day, nearly a year after the war between the two races, one of the Humans found a unique gemstone and presented it to the Emperor of the Kaimaharene Empire.

With one look, the Emperor knew that it was no normal gemstone they had brought to him, it was a gemstone created by someone he was most familiar with, the young Godling who he had wholeheartedly betrayed.

And so, the Emperor kept the given gemstone in the most safekept place, the place that sealed with the key of both him and the deceased Godling had created in the past of the forgotten.

From then on out, the door closed behind him and no other Humans had ever seen their Emperor ever again, and the next Emperor was crowned soon after the disappearance of the first Emperor.

Now, the story ends here. But there is one question that I have in mind, what actually happened in between this very story that caused such an ending? What of the betrayal that the Human has brought the young Godling?

Are there still things that none of us, till this day, has ever known of?

Maybe we can begin with a slumbering child in their sleeping cocoon who sleeps for many, many years to come, in the forest that is protected by one of the Gods above?

We can only sit back and watch, as everything unfolds before us, either in a slow and mysterious way, or in a way where they only bring more questions to us.

And with the quill placed down on the table, a mysterious smile formed on their face as a feminine voice spoke that echoed in the air. “Let the show begin, Child of hers.”

“Will you entertain me or will you disappoint me instead?”

[intromortal]

LIQUID SWEETENER

jake takes care of his sick girlfriend, but with an unexpected twist.

PAIRING jake x f!reader

CONTENT smut. mdni. established relationship, reader has a fever, she's very annoying tbh but it's bc she's ME! it's okay tho bc jake is equally as bad. spitting medicine in someone's mouth... is this sanitary? absolutely not but i also can't bring myself to care

WORD COUNT 3.8k

a.n happiest birthday to my love !!!! nia era where she doesn't let everything she writes rot in her google docs bc she's not happy enough with it??? gasp. maybe. thank you to my lovely @ak4e7a for being so patient with me and reading what i write before anyone else so i don't look stupid i love you mama

WARNINGS fingering, spit, biting, implied oral f!rec, cum eating

Jake’s pout got somehow more pronounced than what it already was when you, once again, refused to just take your medicine. He’d been trying to get you to swallow at least a tiny dose of the sweet fever syrup for the best part of an hour, after every attempt to get you to down any kind of pill resulted in you just hiding them somewhere underneath your cozy pajamas, against your burning skin. He even made sure to pick out a syrup that wouldn’t taste straight up radioactive, knowing you well enough to predict you’d make a big fuss about the nasty taste. Yeah, he could picture it right then in his head, how you’d gag dramatically at the smell and just beg him to go get the tablets again.

For how much you hated being sick, you seemed to dislike the idea of getting better quickly even more.

“You would feel so much better if you just took your medicine,” he sighed, resting the cap filled to the brim with sticky honey flavored syrup on the crowded comforter, careful not to leave it too close to the edge.

“Not even that sick,” you huffed back, trying to wiggle yourself out of the cocoon of blankets Jake wrapped you in as soon as you fell asleep.

“Yeah?” Jake looked at you with an arched brow, before pointing his head to the little mountain of discarded, snot filled tissues overtaking your comforter, the ones he was in the middle of throwing away. “This right here is breeding ground for bioterrorism allegations.”

He stopped you from getting out of bed, securing the warm fuzzy covers around you again. “No need to leave, just tell me what you need and I’ll get it for you,” he whispered against your lashes, placing a soft kiss to your closed eyelid.

“Just wan’ you.”

“But you have me baby, I’m right here, yeah?” he snickered, plump lips thinning into that gorgeous wide smile of his.

He knew damn well what you meant, a frustrated grumble spilling out of you at the thought. Cheeky bastard, of course he wanted you to say it out loud. The quiet part.

“Want…more,” you cranked one of your eyes open, struggling when a droplet from the wet towel on your forehead Jake promptly changed every fifteen minutes slipped in it. You blinked a few times, adjusting to the light in the room before looking over to Jake, his grin still wide and brightening up his whole face, his head turned to the side as he observed you lovingly, a strand of hair longer than the rest tickling the side of his nose.

If Jake had to be completely honest with himself, he wasn’t particularly sad at you being a little sick.

Sure, it sounded mean to say out loud. But you were not doing so badly or in any kind of pain that would worry him, and he enjoyed doting on you like this, with you having no choice but to just take his love. Can’t blame a man for wanting to take care of his girl, especially when said girl had a streak of refusing to just lay back and let him do the work.

You were always hiding your pain and vulnerability from everyone around you, so he enjoyed knowing he was helping make it at least a little better for once.

You—however—wouldn’t exactly agree that he was making you feel better, definitely not by walking around with damp hair from the shower and intoxicating the air around you with the lingering salty marine and musky notes of the cologne he always sprayed on his fresh change of clothes. A smell you usually related to comfort and home, making your head spin in the best way possible, a whirlwind of anything but pure thoughts crowding your mind.

Jake took notice of the subtle shift in the air around you right away. You had been–subtly at first—laying down little hints for him to pick up, you craved him. Had been craving him for what felt like forever, ever since you got sick. A nagging hunger that just grew further with every hour he silently ignored it. Usually you would busy yourself with random tasks, keeping your thoughts clear of images of his hands, or his plush lips and how he always absentmindedly licked away at them or how—you get the idea. But being sick didn’t help, being physically weak and needing rest didn’t stop your mind from running wild. Made it worse, actually, since you had nothing to do but lay in your bed all day. If only he’d slide right next to you under your covers and—

“I know what you’re thinking,” Jake interrupted your thoughts, a hint of amusement shining through his smooth tone. You looked up to him hopefully, breath caught in your chest fearing the next few words he was about to say. “And you’re still too sick.”

Really not being dramatic, but you thought you felt a boulder crush you right on your chest. You groaned, turning to the other side so you could sulk properly without having to look at Jake’s stupidly handsome face. A face you would love to ride as soon as possible.

“No like, you actually hate me,” your voice was muffled by the pillow you were squishing your face against.

“What are you even doing.”

“Trying to suffocate myself since my man hates me,” you explained, grabbing the sides of the pillow and pushing them to cover your ears, making Jake erupt in a fit of boyish giggles.

“No I don’t, just want you to feel better first,” he barely whispered, the loving tone making your body feel light.

You suddenly pushed yourself up with your arms to look at him, nest of hair a mess from the speed of your movement, “I would feel sooo much better with your fingers deep inside me right now.”

He looked at you for a moment, really looked at you, assessing what to do in this situation. He too missed your touch, far more than what he was letting on. Even just sleeping next to you—a pillow fortress separating you two by your request—had turned out to be too much for him on multiple occasions, finding himself silently sneaking out of bed to go and take care of his sudden little problems in the bathroom.

As if sensing his resolve wavering, you added, “don’t I deserve a little reward?”

“A reward… for what?” Jake was thoroughly amused by your desperation. You rarely ever got like this, and he was enjoying every second of it, maybe even pushing it a little farther than what he usually would, ending up punishing himself a little along the way too. But he didn’t care, not when he didn’t know when the next time he’d get to this would be.

“Well of course! For having fought this fever tooth and nail and having come out of it alive.”

“You still have a fever though,” he deadpanned. “Could kick your ass right down at any given moment.”

“That.” you glared at him with all the fake anger you could muster up. “Is such a mean thing to even suggest.”

“Don’t you care about me getting sick? Made a scene all week and now you’re okay with me touching you?”

“First of all—I only made you keep the pillows between us the first two days. And like I told you, I feel better, so if—” the words died in your throat as you felt the bed dip underneath the weight of Jake’s knee. You looked up to him as he slowly got inside the covers, right next to you. His presence felt different, the soft look in his eyes overtaken by something more primal, and you couldn't help but feel like prey under his watchful gaze. It felt intimidating in a way you weren’t used to. It made you squeeze your legs together in search of any friction, your already feverish skin somehow feeling even hotter.

“Maybe you’re right,” Jake whispered against your cheek, his nose rubbing for a moment on your skin as he snuck an arm underneath your body, pulling you flush to his side. Even just that single touch sends an electrifying shiver down your spine. “Since you’re fully capable of talking my ear off…”

You reached for his hand wrapped comfortably around your waist and guided it down to cup your heat through your thin shorts, your own hand resting on top of his as you ground your pussy against it.

You took notice of how his breath hitched in his throat, his carefully crafted mask of calmness slipping as you used his hand, the illusion wearing off even more when he tried to hide it with a gulp, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down. You knew he wanted it just as bad as you did, you were just willing to beg for it as long as it got you what you wanted. “I’ll—” you audibly gasped when he flexed his fingers just that tiny little bit you needed to be able to feel them press against your fluttering hole. “I’ll do anything, just please make me cum.”

“Anything?” he teased you, voice light and airy as he moved the fabric of the shorts out of his way. A deep chuckle tickled your neck, Jake’s mouth having dipped down do leave open mouthed kisses on the sensitive skin.

“Anything, just… please,” you whined, flexing your neck to allow him more space, his tongue dipping to lick a stripe down to the juncture of your neck.

If you hadn't been so deprived of Jake’s touch up until then, you would have found the way you were grinding up against his hand and moaning in his ear almost embarrassing. But you were desperate, so you couldn't bring yourself to care about how pathetic you probably looked.

Jake though, oh he enjoyed it thoroughly. His cock was stiff in his sweats, almost painfully so, from feeling how wet you were through your shorts. Dripping already and he had barely touched you. You were just so fucking hot.

“You’ll take your medicine then?” He moved his hand from your mound to grip your thigh, ignoring your weak one clawing at his arm in an attempt to get the little taste of pleasure he was giving you back. He kissed his teeth, his eyebrows furrowed in faux disapproval. “Use your words. What will you do?”

“Take my medicine,” you whimpered, looking into your boyfriend's eyes despite the tears aligning your waterline, and finding amusement swimming through his gaze. Little cheeky shit. Not that you were about to complain or anything.

“Theeeere we go,” Jake sang in your ear, placing a soft kiss behind it before dipping down once again and resuming his sweet torture. “You can be good once in a while.”

You nodded, lips thinning to keep quiet as if any wrong sound would make him change his mind and leave you hanging. The hand that was drawing circles on your thigh came up to hold your chin, carefully tilting it away from Jake’s mouth as he sucked on a particularly sensitive spot on your skin. He smoothed over your lips with his thumb, coaxing them to part once again.

“Let me hear how good you feel, baby,” he mumbled, mouth still latched on your neck, before taking a strong whiff off your neck. Had you not been so distracted by the wetness seeping out of your clenching hole onto your panties, you would've noticed how his eyes rolled all the way back in his skull at your smell.

His free hand finally slid under your shorts, a gasp leaving you because of how cold he felt. Jake was always warmer than you, but your fever made it so his touch felt icy against your skin. Your back arched slightly when one of his digits parted your sopping folds, your sensitivity heightened by the unusual difference of temperature.

“Poor little thing, she’s got a fever too,” he giggled into your neck, another digit joining in as he slowly dragged them from your clit to your hole to coat them in your juices. “But it’s okay, I’ll help her feel better.”

Usually you would’ve groaned at his stupid little jokes and pushed his face away. But this time, blame his voice being deeper and hoarser than normal or blame your fever, it got you clenching around nothing, cunt feeling emptier than ever while he took his sweet time playing with you.

Your head dug deeper into the pillow, hips lifting from the bed to follow Jake’s torturous movements, desperate to feel something more.

“So needy…” he breathed into your neck, going back to placing sloppy open mouthed kisses wherever he could reach.

A yelp left your mouth, eyes you didn't even notice you had closed shooting open when Jake bit down on the junction of your neck and shoulder, just enough to rip you out of the trance you were quickly falling into. He smoothed over the little bite mark with this tongue, a tingly sensation overtaking the pain in a matter of seconds, pleasure overriding anything else.

Jake finally prodded two of his digits into your hole, testing the waters, still careful not to push you too hard so soon. But your reaction was instantaneous, pussy hole fluttering against his fingertips right away, he just had to bite down on his bottom lip to keep most of his noises in. “God… I fucking love it when you act like a little slut.”

Jake was so fucking turned on, he could barely think about anything but your pussy. The only thought in his mind was get her off, make her feel good, get a taste of her sweet cunt, sweet pretty and oh so delicious cunt… like a broken record. He felt like he was born for this and this only, as if his mission in life was just that of pleasing you. And to think he had deprived himself of such bliss for even a few days… Something in you seemed different to him, almost animalistic, the way you rutted your hips against his hand as soon as he started scissoring his fingers inside you, the way you weren't even trying to hold in your moans like you usually would, mouth hanging open with a string of drool attached to your lips. And this was just from his fingers.

You yourself weren't doing any better, your brain basically turned to mush as you helped Jake get you off by essentially riding his fingers, despite how weak you felt from the fever. His fingers were so long, hitting all the right spots you knew you could never be able to reach by yourself, and his thick knuckles dragged against your walls so deliciously.

“S-so good,” you gasped when he turned his fingers just the right way, hitting the spot he knew had you coming undone in just a few strokes.

The room was filled with the slapping sounds of his palm against your drenched cunt, more and more slick dripping down your thighs and onto the bed with every flick of his wrist, making it all that much more obscene and filthy. You could feel the familiar pressure building up in your tummy, and suddenly the overwhelming need to just grab onto something crashed on you, heavy and almost painful. You clawed at his shirt, eyebrows furrowed in deep pleasure, unaware of the fact that Jake was not facing you anymore.

He looked over his shoulder to the comforter, the cap filled with syrup still there amidst the mess. He twisted his body to grab it, careful not to slow down the relentless pace he was fingerfucking your cunt at. A few drops of the liquid spilled onto his shirt as he took a sip of it, a grimace overtaking his features as he tried his best to hold it in his mouth. You were still a moaning mess by his side, tiny brain turned to putty so much so you didn't even register anything else happening around you, so hyper focused on the pleasure your boyfriend was providing you.

“J-jake, I’m so close.”

Perfect timing.

Jake grabbed your jaw to turn your head towards his, applying the pressure he always did to signal it was time to part your pretty lips and take his spit, like the good well behaved girl he knew you to be. And you did just that; immediately following his movements like he had trained you to, tongue sticking out too for good measure. He bent down slightly to aim better. But this time, instead of the slightly bitter taste of his saliva you expected, he let small amounts of medicine fall on your tongue.

You uselessly tried to back away from him, but he held you in place, fingers still working inside your cunt. Nor did he allow you to close your mouth despite your surprised gasp. His hand held your jaw open, grasp getting firmer everytime you tried to break free of it. After all, you made a promise, and he was going to make sure you fulfilled it.

“You weren't going to take it, huh?” Jake mouthed against your lips once he had made sure you swallowed every last drop of the thick honeyed syrup, holding eye contact with you through it all, fingers never once slowing down their pace. “Little dumb pet thinks she can outsmart me.”

He smashed his mouth on yours, not so much a kiss as a silencing of any complaint you were about to spit it at him. Those turned to even more whines when he finally brought his thumb to your clit, drawing harsh circles on it as he fucked you to your orgasm. It was almost instantaneous, but you just couldn't have helped it even if you tried; you were so close already, his stiff cock rubbing against your thigh and his pants hot in your mouth but his thumb so cold against your neglected clit

“That’s it baby, so good for me yeah.” Jake’s fingers gradually slowed down inside you, making sure you got every last bit of pleasure you could possibly experience from this high. He too was relishing in how your cunt pulsed against his digits, making it harder to move them inside you. Oh he wished it were his cock being constricted like that instead. But that could wait.

You finally felt like you could breathe again, chest heaving to catch in as much air as you could, forehead all sweaty from the exertion.

The sheets were drenched around you, and you couldn't even pinpoint when it had happened, but you could immediately tell you weren't the only one who had made a mess. Your gaze wandered to Jake’s pants, a very evident stain on his crotch catching your attention. And fuck, if you weren't ready to do it all over again.

Jake looked absolutely divine; hair disheveled and soaked from the sweat, boxers and sweatpants full of cum. A waste truly.

You snuck your hand in his pants, ignoring the loud hiss from overstimulation Jake let out when you wrapped your hand around his cock and pumped a few times, your thumb swiping on his exposed head to collect some of the cum covering it.

Jake watched you, mouth ajar and cock stiffening again right away, as you licked your fingers clean. He slid his own fingers out of your cunt, lapping at them like a man starved, hoping to work you up as much as you just did to him. His heart raced in his chest as you kept looking at him, a little smile playing on your lips.

“That was so…” you spoke up, giggling when Jake interrupted you by throwing himself over your figure, capturing your lips in an actual kiss this time. A very messy, very wet kiss. Allowing you to savor your own taste mixed with his and sweetened by the medicine.

“I think the word you’re looking for is hot.”

“Dramatic,” you interjected. “So, so dramatic.”

Jake curled an eyebrow at you. “You were the one acting like it’d kill you to swallow some syrup. And actually, let’s not forget–” He placed a quick kiss on your nose before pushing you against the mattress further, his entire weight on you. “Ohhh no Jake! Please my Jakey! If I don’t get your cock right now I will DIE!”

“Well I still hav–”

“And won’t.” he deadpanned, sensing where you were trying to stir the conversation. “But I’ve got a few ideas.”

You smiled to yourself, feeling featherlight kisses making their way down your body, with his messy hair tickling your skin every so often. He placed a soft kiss on your mound, whining dramatically when you grabbed a few strands of his hair to stop him. He rested his head on your thigh, puppy-like eyes looking up at you, almost pleading for permission to continue what he started.

“I really don’t want you to get sick,” you said, voice coming out in a whisper full of care, your fingertips playing with his hair and enjoying the way he nuzzled his head further against your skin.

“Well if I were to get sick by touching you… I’d say the deal is sealed by now, no?” He placed another kiss on your thigh, teeth slightly grazing the plush skin when you took too long to contemplate whether to give in or not. “Actually, I think some of this syrup would heal me right now.”

“Jake. I’m being serious.”

“What could I possibly even catch from eating you out that I haven't already by exchanging spit with you? Best pussy in the world disease?” He laughed at his own joke, gaining a roll of the eyes from you. “Let me tell you, the chances of that happening are close to zero anyway. I don’t have a pussy but I am the proud owner of a very fat co–”

“You are downright insufferable.”

“Okay so shut me up with a mouthful of this pu–”

The rest of the sentence was muffled against your mound as you pushed his head down, deciding you heard enough for the day. And the week.

“Okay, okay. Go on,” you giggled as you laid back once again, a deep sigh following as soon as his expert tongue made contact with your cunt.

[ellecdc]

He Shoots & He Scores

hockey player!James Potter x team medic!reader who finds a diagnosis for James [1.9k words]

a/n: a little imagining from a while back with the queen of au's @maladaptiveescapism [who's going to be abandoning (kidding/affectionate) me soon to write her own fics 😭😭]

CW: fem!reader, swearing/cursing, James worried about making work weird for everyone, Remus being a little shit

James rapped his knuckles twice against the door to your office before gently pushing the door open, his smile faltering when he spotted Remus leaning his hip against your desk as he looked over a file in one hand as he took a bite from an apple held in his other. 

“This is getting embarrassing, Potts.” Remus offered with a snort as uncrossed his ankles and stood up straight. 

“I have no clue what you’re talking about.” James offered as primly as he could manage as he peered back down the hallway he just entered from in hopes of spotting you. 

“No?” Remus taunted. “Something I can help you with then? Or do you need to see the doctor?”

“Fuck off.” James let out, halfway between a laugh and a moan as he shoved at Remus’ arm playfully. 

“Why don’t you just tell her you have a crush on her and get it over with?” Remus asked as he returned to perch on the desk and mirrored James’ posture as they both waited for you to return - though Remus was gracious enough not to comment (a second time) on the fact that he knew James to be doing just that. 

“Because she’s my doctor.”

“She’s the team’s doctor.” Remus corrected as he took another bite of his apple. “And I believe her proper title is medic if you wanted to get into the nitty gritty.” 

“But isn’t that weird? To be crushing on your team medic?”

“Oh it absolutely is.” Remus agreed readily, causing James to groan miserably. 

“I don’t want to make her uncomfortable.” He muttered. 

“Well all this pining and finding bad excuses to spend time with her is making me uncomfortable. Ever think about that?”

“I swear to fucking god, Lupin, nothing works around here except for us.” They heard you mutter before either of them could continue in their conversation; James standing quickly at attention and Remus snorting at his expense. 

“Oh shit, sorry captain.” You offered James with a smirk that was equal parts teasing and bashful as you looked up at him briefly from the tablet in your hands. “I know you players aren’t used to hearing such profanity.” 

James let out a quick bark of nervous laughter that startled even himself before turning to look at Remus with an expression that he hoped screamed ‘holy fucking shit help me’.

“Please,” Remus cut in, answering James’ prayers, “did you hear that string Black came up with last game?” 

You snorted as you tapped a few more times at the iPad that was apparently causing you issues. “What was it again? Uhm, ‘son of a fucking cocksucking bitch ass hoe bag’?” 

“I want that written on my headstone.” Remus responded solemnly as he binned the core of his apple, earning him a hum of acknowledgement from you. 

“Alright, Potter?” You asked with your face still pointed at the tablet. 

“Hm?” He asked dumbly, gaining your gaze as you looked up at him with an arched eyebrow. 

“Are you alright? Or did you need something?”

“Oh! I- Uhm, actually yeah no I needed to see you about something.” He offered awkwardly, and you finally seemed to lose all interest in the faulty tablet in your hands. 

“Why? What’s wrong? Is everything alright?” You rapid-fired, (beautiful) eyes darting over his form as you scoured his frame for any signs of ailment or injury. 

“Oh, well, no I mean, I mean I’m fine, but-”

“You’re fine?” 

“Not fine, fine, but like, not… bad?” 

Remus actually looked pained on James' behalf - pained and also a little smug, and perhaps there was a side of mischief there in his amber eyes too. “Bad enough to see the doc, though.” He offered with faux sympathy; his lip jutting out in a theatric pout. 

James tried to scowl at him when he felt a gentle, cold finger dig into the flesh beneath his jaw bone. You used your thumb to tilt his face towards you and James felt like the air was being forced from his lungs as he now had you standing so close to him, brows furrowed in concern as you scanned his face. James sort of wanted to smooth out the divot between your brows with the pad of his thumb and kiss the displeased downturn of your lips with his own - but he refrained, because that would be weird. 

“Did you hit your head during practice?” You asked seriously, startling when Remus let out an uncharacteristic bark of laughter from behind you. 

He tried to play off his laugh as a cough when you turned to give him an incredulous look, but he continued staring at James with mirth in his eyes as you turned your attention back to James. 

“I’ll leave him in your very capable hands, doc.” 

“Lupin!” James hissed as Remus backed out of the office. 

“Sorry Potts! I’m just a PT!” He called back from further down the hall, and James hoped to the hockey gods you couldn’t hear his snickering as you held your finger up in front of James. 

“Look here, Potter.” 

James allowed himself the pleasure of staring uninhibitedly into your eyes as he leaned back against your desk so that the two of you were closer in height; your finger still tracking his pulse and his jaw still trapped in your grasp. 

“My finger, Potter.” You corrected with the hint of an upturn in your lips as you wiggled the finger he was supposed to be tracking to prove to you he didn’t have a concussion. 

“Sorry doc,” he started as he followed instructions, feeling emboldened by the humour in your eyes, “the view was just too good, I couldn’t help myself.” 

You bit your bottom lip as you smiled and shook your head at him fondly, though you continued watching his eyes as he watched your finger. “You’re such a flirt. I’m gonna flash a light.” You warned as your finger disappeared along with the rest of your hand into your team scrubs pocket and pulled out a small flashlight before shining it in his eyes. James’ gaze remained steadfast on you.  

“Alright. I didn’t think I saw you hit your head, and you’re showing no physical signs of a concussion, so what the hell are you doing in my office?” You declared with a breath - whether it was a tired sigh or a breath of relief, James didn’t know - as you moved to the other side of your desk and took a seat. 

There were two perfectly fine seats on the other side of your desk, but space wasn’t what James was after when he went in search of you, so he followed you around to your side of the desk and perched himself on the edge so that he was facing you instead. “I’m not allowed to come chat with the team medic?” 

You raised an eyebrow at him but didn’t deign to answer; you had one leg crossed over the other and you used the foot still on the ground to swivel your desk chair back and forth as you continued to stare at him sceptically. 

“Do I look good out there?” James asked quietly then - just for something to say, just to keep the conversation going. Hockey was safe, hockey was familiar; the two of you could talk about hockey, right? 

“Yes…” you started cautiously, still looking at him with one eyebrow raised. “But you know that. And Remus could’ve told you the same.” 

“He could have, but would Remus have told me the same?” James asked sceptically in return, earning him a snort of laughter from you. 

“No, he would have bullied you first. Would you like me to try again?”

“No,” James moaned, “that’s why I came to you.” 

“Why did you come to me?” You asked him again, quietly this time. Something about the way you were looking at him made him feel cut open and raw and vulnerable; you were suspicious, rightfully so, and so very much onto him. 

James shrugged and looked at the wall of books set up behind your desk - anatomy, kinesiology and sports medicine textbooks that you and Remus had collected over your educations and careers sitting on standby as resources should either of you need them. You never did though, James found. The two of you brilliant and confident, knowledgeable and assured enough to ask the other for feedback or input when you second guessed yourselves. You worked well together - you and Remus - James realised then. A team; much in the same way that the Lion’s were. He was lucky to have you on his team; they all were. 

“I like spending time with you.” James admitted then, still not looking over at you, though he couldn’t help but notice when you stopped swivelling back and forth in your chair. 

“So…you feigned a concussion in order to be alone with me?” You nearly whispered then, and all of James’ fears had come true. He’d made you uncomfortable, he’d freaked you out, pushed you away. You’d leave the team, or, or maybe you wouldn’t leave the team, but you’d certainly hand over James’ care to one of the leagues other medics.  

James screwed his eyes shut before turning to face you, ready to apologise and beg and vow to repent for his sins when he saw you with one hand covering your mouth and your eyes full of ill hidden humour. 

You were fucking with him. 

“I did not feign a concussion!” He barked back at you - though his voice was breathy with relief. “You assumed!”

You pulled your hand away from your mouth to display a wide smile as you pointed back at him in an accusatory manner. “You came in here acting like someone with a concussion!”

“I came in here acting like someone with a crush.” James both corrected and admitted; in for a penny, in for a pound and whatnot. 

You hummed in acknowledgement as you brought your hand back to your lips and continued swivelling in your chair. “My medical books never taught me to look for symptoms of a crush.” 

“Those are terrible textbooks then.” James added solemnly. “You should probably get your money back.” 

“Probably.” 

“They should take your licence away too.” He accused as he stood, and your mouth fell open in shock and offence. 

“James!” You chided, and James fought the urge to shiver at the way his given name sounded coming from your lips. 

“What kind of doctor doesn’t know how to diagnose a crush?” He scoffed. 

“Get the fuck out of my office.” You laughed, and James turned to wink at you and offer you a salute. 

“Doctors orders.” He said before slipping out of your office. 

He poked his head back in to see you still smiling towards the door like you’d been looking after him. 

“But... maybe I could message you later? You know…about that diagnosis?” 

You stopped swivelling in your chair as you smiled at him - more softly this time. “Sure, James.” 

James returned the smile and tapped twice on your doorframe. “Goodnight, doc.” 

“Night, cap.” You murmured in return, and James waited until he was outside in the team parking lot before pumping his fist and letting out celebratory holler. 

Unbeknownst to James, Remus started his own car only after James had gotten into his, shaking his head fondly and muttering something that sounded an awful lot like ‘fucking finally’ as he pulled away from the Lion’s arena.

[alyrasturnz]

pls write an angsty fic where matt gets mad at reader for being too clingy but he finds her shivering on the couch and yeah just a happy ending

 ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎TOO CLINGY ?

❐ summary » when matt falters and, in a moment of weakness, channels all his pent-up anger towards you, the weight of his mistake hangs heavy in the air. his frustration, like a storm, lashes out, leaving emotional wreckage in its wake.

❐ pairings » bf!matt x fem!reader

❐ warnings » angst, argument, lowkey toxic!matt

❐ a/n && w/c » this was sloppy af.. my vision is so blurry dude its so late and im so sleepy i cant think straight • 2.80k

the tension had been simmering all day, a cauldron of unspoken words and unacknowledged feelings, teetering on the brink of eruption. you had sought refuge in his presence, your touches and embraces a desperate attempt to bridge the widening chasm between you. yet, he remained indifferent, his demeanor as impenetrable as a storm cloud brooding on the horizon, casting a shadow over every fleeting moment of intimacy.

each time you endeavored to initiate any form of physical connection, he would instinctively recoil, as if your touch carried the weight of an unspoken burden. his reactions were swift and unyielding, a silent rebuke that deepened the chasm between you with every attempt.

»--•--«

9:37 AM, saturday

your eyes fluttered open, the absence of matt's arms around your waist immediately unsettling you. this deviation from the norm sent a ripple of unease through you. as you rolled over, you were met with the sight of his side of the bed, meticulously made and conspicuously empty, a silent testament to his early departure.

you cast your gaze over to his desk, where he was seated with an air of quiet concentration. his hair, still tousled from sleep, framed his face in a disheveled halo. before him, the glow of his open google docs illuminated the scene, a silent witness to his early morning endeavors.

you smile softly, the gentle curve of your lips a fleeting expression of warmth. sitting up, you rise to your feet, the chill of the ground seeping through your soles as you make your way towards him, each step a delicate bridge between the realms of your shared solitude and his focused sanctuary.

you wrap your arms around him from behind, feeling the subtle shift in his posture as he tenses beneath your embrace. the tension radiates through his frame, a silent testament to the unspoken complexities that linger between you, each heartbeat a whisper of the uncharted emotions that bind you together.

you furrowed your eyebrows, a fleeting expression of concern that you quickly brushed aside. leaning down slightly, you planted a soft kiss onto the top of his head, the tender gesture infused with unspoken affection, a delicate attempt to bridge the silent chasm that had momentarily formed.

"hi baby," you muttered into his hair, your voice a gentle murmur that wove through the strands like a whispered secret, carrying with it the weight of unspoken emotions and the subtle promise of comfort and connection.

"hi," he said, his voice cold and distant. you furrowed your eyebrows once more, the chill of his tone reverberating through you as you straightened up, the moment heavy with unspoken questions and a palpable tension that seemed to hang in the air.

"you okay? something bothering you?" you ask, your voice laced with concern. he responds by shrugging your arms off of him, the gesture a silent yet poignant rejection that leaves a lingering ache in the space where your touch had been.

"i'm fine," he muttered, his fingers dancing around his keyboard with a restless, almost mechanical precision, each keystroke a testament to the emotional distance he was trying to maintain.

"okay, i'm gonna go make breakfast," you say, walking around him with a measured grace until you're beside him. you cup his face gently, leaning in for a kiss, but he subtly swerves, the motion a silent yet unmistakable evasion that leaves your gesture hanging in the air.

"mm yeah okay," he mumbles, shrugging you off again, leaving you perplexed. the weight of his dismissal lingers, but you choose not to dwell on it as you walk out of his room, the unanswered questions trailing behind you like shadows.

»--•--«

3:34 PM, saturday

matt was on the couch, his eyes glued to the tv screen. a small smile crept onto your lips as you watched him, the flickering light casting a warm glow over his focused expression, creating a momentary haven of tranquility amidst the chaos.

you saw this as the perfect chance to cuddle with him, the opportunity presenting itself like a rare gem. you moved towards him, the anticipation of his warmth drawing you in like a moth to a flame.

you walked towards him, each step deliberate and measured, before settling down next to him on the couch. he slightly shifts in his seat, his eyes still glued to the screen, the flickering images reflecting in his gaze, creating an almost hypnotic trance.

"what are you watching?" you ask, your voice a soft murmur as you gently rest your head on his shoulder. the question hangs in the air, mingling with the ambient sounds of the television, as you seek to bridge the quiet distance between you.

he gently shrugs you off, his voice still cold as he mumbles, "10 things i hate about you." the words, though simple, carry an undercurrent of detachment, creating a chasm between the two of you that feels both vast and unbridgeable.

"you love that movie, don't you?" you giggle softly, inching closer to him, your attempt to rest your head on his shoulder interrupted as he abruptly gets up. the suddenness of his movement sends a jolt through you, and you watch as he stomps away, the sound of his footsteps echoing the unspoken tension in the room.

you furrow your eyebrows, a deep crease forming as concern washes over you. he's been acting strange and distant, his avoidance like a shadow that has lingered over you both all day.

have you done something to provoke his ire? you wonder, the question gnawing at the edges of your mind, casting a long shadow of doubt over your thoughts.

»--•--«

11:12 PM, saturday

now, you find yourself lying on his bed beside him, his back turned towards you in a gesture that feels like a silent barrier. the room is filled with an unsettling quiet, each second stretching into an eternity.

as you gaze at his turned form, a frown tugs at your lips, the weight of his silent withdrawal pressing heavily on your heart, leaving you to ponder the invisible chasm that has grown between you.

as the night deepened, you made another attempt to bridge the ever-widening gap, slipping your arms around him in a tender embrace, hoping your warmth might melt the icy fortress he had built around himself.

"can you just give me some space?" he snapped, his voice cutting through the quiet room like a whip crack. "i need to breathe without you constantly clinging to me," he continued, each word a sharp, stinging rebuke that left you reeling in the wake of his sudden outburst.

your heart felt as if it had been struck by a hammer, the sting of his words reverberating through every fiber of your being. "i was just trying to be close to you," you said, your voice trembling with the weight of your hurt and confusion.

"why do you have to be so cruel?" you continued, each word laced with the raw pain of his unexpected harshness, leaving you to grapple with the emotional chasm that seemed to yawn wider with every passing moment.

he turned to you, his eyes cold and unyielding, like shards of ice piercing through the dim light. "because i can't stand it anymore," he spat, his words dripping with venom. "you're suffocating me with your neediness. it's pathetic," he continued, each syllable cutting through the air like a blade, leaving you feeling exposed and vulnerable under the weight of his cruel declaration.

the harshness of his words cut deep, leaving you feeling exposed and vulnerable, as if your very soul had been laid bare. "i'm not trying to suffocate you," you whispered, tears streaming down your face like rivers of sorrow.

"i just want to be there for you," you continued, your voice trembling with the weight of your earnest longing and the pain of his rejection, hoping against hope that he might see the sincerity in your eyes.

he scoffed, shaking his head in disbelief, a bitter laugh escaping his lips. "you think you're helping? you're just making everything worse," he said, his voice dripping with disdain. "i can't even think straight with you around, always needing something from me," he continued, each word a dagger aimed at your heart, leaving you to grapple with the crushing weight of his contempt.

you felt a tempest of anger and sorrow welling up inside you, your hands trembling as you struggled to hold back the flood of tears. "i never knew you felt this way," you said, your voice barely audible, a whisper lost in the storm of emotions. "why didn't you tell me sooner?" you continued, the question hanging in the air like a fragile thread, seeking answers amidst the turmoil of your heart.

"because it's pointless," he said, his tone dismissive, like a door slamming shut. "you wouldn't understand. you're too wrapped up in your own world to see how you're dragging me down," he continued, his words like heavy chains, binding you in a prison of misunderstanding and despair.

the weight of his words settled heavily on your shoulders, leaving you feeling small and insignificant, as though the very ground beneath you had shifted. "i'm sorry," you said, your voice breaking like fragile glass. "i didn't mean to hurt you," you continued, each word a plea for understanding, a desperate attempt to bridge the chasm that had opened between you.

he rolled his eyes, his expression one of contempt, a cold mask that concealed any trace of warmth. "save your apologies," he said, his voice like ice. "i don't need them. i need you to back off and give me some space," he continued, each word a barrier, pushing you further away, leaving you to grapple with the chasm that now yawned between you.

with a heavy heart, you nodded, the weight of resignation settling over you like a shroud. "fine," you said, your voice barely above a whisper, a fragile echo of your inner turmoil. "i'll give you the space you want," you continued, each word a reluctant surrender, an acknowledgment of the widening distance that now separated your worlds.

you turned and walked away, each step a painful relinquishment of hope. the sound of the door closing behind you echoed through the room, a final punctuation to the conversation, leaving him alone with his anger and the oppressive silence that followed, a silence that seemed to swallow all the unsaid words and unresolved emotions.

»--•--«

2:45 AM, sunday

matt had been caught in a relentless dance of restlessness, his body twisting and turning in the sheets as the hours dragged on. sleep eluded him, a distant and unattainable dream, for the absence of your presence left a void too vast to ignore.

without the comforting weight of your head resting on his chest or the warmth of your body nestled in his arms, tranquility slipped through his fingers like sand, leaving him adrift in a sea of sleepless longing.

he extended his hand toward the vacant expanse of the bed, the emptiness a stark reminder of his solitude. guilt, like a relentless specter, tugged at the delicate threads of his heart, weaving a tapestry of remorse and sorrow. a frown, unbidden and sorrowful, etched itself onto his lips, a silent testament to the ache of your absence.

he was acutely aware of the distance he had imposed between you both today, a chasm carved by the weight of his own burdens. guilt gnawed at his conscience, a relentless reminder of how he had unfairly unleashed his stress upon you. you, with your unwavering patience and kindness, did not deserve to bear the brunt of his turmoil.

he swallowed his pride, the bitter taste lingering as he rose from his bed. with a heavy heart, he made his way out of his room, each step echoing the weight of his resolve, and ventured into the living room, seeking solace or perhaps redemption.

he discovered you shivering on the couch, your delicate frame curled up in a futile attempt to capture any semblance of warmth. the sight of your vulnerability pierced through him, a silent plea for comfort etched in the contours of your form.

a blanket was draped over you, yet it did little to stave off the shivers that coursed through your body. the sight of you, cold and vulnerable on the couch due to his actions, tugged painfully at his heartstrings as he approached, each step laden with the weight of his remorse.

his heart clenched at the sight, the pang of guilt nearly overwhelming. without uttering a single word, he gently scooped you up, cradling you in his arms as he carried you to the room, each step a silent vow to make amends for the pain he had caused.

you stirred, drowsy and disoriented, your eyes fluttering open in a futile attempt to grasp the reality unfolding around you. "what... what's going on?" you murmured, your voice a fragile whisper, barely audible in the quiet of the room.

"shh, it's okay," he whispered, his voice a soothing balm as he gently laid you down on the bed, tucking the blanket around you with tender care.

his eyes, brimming with remorse, held a depth of sorrow as he sat beside you, delicately brushing a strand of hair from your face. "i'm so sorry," he said, his voice cracking under the weight of his genuine regret. "i never meant to push you away. please, forgive me."

you reached out with trembling fingers, your hand finding his and giving it a reassuring squeeze. "it's okay," you whispered, your voice a soothing melody amidst the tension. your eyes, softening with forgiveness, met his with an understanding that transcended words.

"i understand," you continued, each word a gentle balm to his aching heart, conveying a depth of empathy that only the closest of bonds could foster.

but he couldn't shake the guilt that gnawed at him, a relentless specter haunting his conscience. "no, it's not okay," he insisted, his voice quivering with the weight of his remorse. "i was wrong, utterly wrong. i should have never treated you like that. you deserve so much better, more than i have given."

you shook your head, a small, bittersweet smile playing on your lips. "what matters is that you're here now," you said softly, your voice imbued with a gentle warmth. "and that you're truly sorry. that's enough for me. the past is a shadow, but your presence now is the light that dispels it."

he looked at you, his eyes a tumultuous sea of guilt and gratitude. "i promise i'll make it up to you," he vowed, his voice resolute despite the emotion that threatened to choke him. "i'll never hurt you like that again. i'll spend every moment proving that you're cherished, beyond words and beyond measure."

you nodded, your heart swelling with a profound mixture of love and forgiveness. "i believe you," you whispered, and in that moment, the oppressive silence that had once filled the room began to lift, replaced by a fragile yet hopeful sense of reconciliation, a delicate promise of mending what was once broken.

he sat there for a moment longer, his hand still holding yours, as if afraid that releasing it would shatter the fragile bond you were rebuilding. "i just... i can't forgive myself for making you feel this way," he admitted, his voice barely above a whisper, laden with sorrow. "seeing you like this, it breaks my heart into pieces."

you squeezed his hand tighter, your eyes locking onto his with unwavering resolve. "we all make mistakes," you said gently, your voice a soothing balm. "what matters is that we learn from them and grow, becoming better versions of ourselves. and i believe, with all my heart, that you will."

he nodded, swallowing hard as he fought back the tears threatening to spill. "i will," he promised, his voice trembling with emotion. "i'll do everything within my power to become the person you truly deserve."

you smiled, a serene sense of peace washing over you like a gentle tide. "that's all i ask," you whispered, your voice imbued with a quiet strength. your eyes fluttered closed as the weight of exhaustion began to envelop you. "just be here with me," you murmured, the words hanging in the air like a delicate promise, an unspoken plea for presence and companionship in the face of weariness.

he watched as you drifted off to sleep, his heart a tumultuous blend of guilt and unwavering determination. he understood the arduous journey that lay before him, a path fraught with challenges and the need to earn back your trust.

yet, he was resolute, ready to traverse every step, no matter how treacherous. for you, he would move mountains, conquer any obstacle, and face any hardship.

tags — @imwetforyourmom @meatballzerz69 @pinkishpearls @thedangerousalleyway @muchloveforhacker @stinkytinkywinky @jetameivous @everleiqh @conspiracy-ash @ifwdominicfike

[physalian]

10 More Character Types the World Needs More of

Part 1 was specifically character dynamics, but I’m considering this a sequel anyway.

1. Fiercely independent character’s lesson isn’t to “trust people”

I’m not projecting. You’re projecting. There is a divide wide enough to fit the Grand Canyon between “trusting that someone isn’t lying” and “trusting someone to follow through on a promise”. Most dumpster fire attempts at these characters (almost exclusively women) rely solely on mocking them for the former because “not all men” or something.

Being consistently let down in life makes you hesitant to a) gain friends, b) pursue romantic interests, c) maintain familial relationships, d) get excited about any event that demands participation from someone who isn’t you. None of this is simply a bad attitude—it’s a trauma response. There is no lesson to be learned, and not even exposure therapy can help because it’s a real, legitimate, and common stunt people pull, whether they mean it or not.

So write one of these characters and legitimize their fears, give them someone who proves the exception to the rule, but do not let the lesson be “well they just haven’t found the right person yet”. Even the “right person” can let them down. It's about not becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy by sabotaging a good thing to prove it will inevitably go bad.

2. Conventionally attractive men who aren’t horndogs

I’m going to find every way I can to tell you to write more aces. This is to fight the stigma that attractive people must be attracted to people. Give me gorgeous aces and demi’s, men, women, enbys and everyone in between, who put a crap ton of effort into looking their best, and yet happen to not have a very loud libido. They look good for themselves, and not to impress anyone else.

Give me someone who could have anyone they wanted, gender regardless, and just simply has no interest. Or, they do actually have a significant other, but sex, how hot their partner is, or how horny they are, isn’t their internal monologue. I don’t even care if it’s unrealistic, it’s annoying to read.

And, you know, giving men male characters who aren’t thinking about sex all the time can be good, right? Right?

3. Manly warrior men who also write poetry

A.K.A Aragorn, Son of Arathorn. Just give me more Aragorns, period. This dude is either covered in filth, blood, guts, and the last 30 miles of rugged terrain, or singing in Elvish at his own coronation while pink flower petals fall. A man can be both, and still be straight.

A man can also drink Respect Women juice, you know? He ticks off all the boxes—he’s gentle when he needs to be, not afraid to hide his emotions, kind to those who are vulnerable and afraid and need a strong figure to look up to, resolute in his beliefs, skilled and knowledgeable in his abilities without being arrogant or smug, and the first boots on the battlefield, leading from the front.

4. Characters who are characters when no one is watching

This is less a specific type and more a scene that doesn’t get written enough. This whole point comes from Pixar’s Cars. I. Love. This. Movie. It’s not Pixar’s best, for sure, but this is my comfort movie. The best scene, one that’s so unique, is when Doc (aged living legend) thinks he’s alone when he rolls out onto the dirt race track and comes alive tearing around the oval.

This character’s unbridled, unabashed glee and euphoria at proving to himself that he’s still got it, when he’s completely unaware of his audience, is perfection. Not enough credence is given to characters to just… enjoy being themselves. He’s not doing it to prepare for the climactic race, he’s not doing it for the plot, he’s doing it just to do it, not even to prove Lightning wrong—just for himself.

Give your characters a “Doc Racing” scene. Whatever their skill is. Maybe they’re a dancer, a skater, a swimmer, a painter, sprinter. Just let your character love being alive.

5. Characters whose neurodivergence isn't “cute”

A.K.A. Lilo Pelekai from Lilo and Stitch. Really, her relationship with Nani is peak sibling writing. But Lilo herself is just so realistic with how she interacts with the world, how she interprets her relationships with her so-called friends, how she organizes her thoughts and rationalizes what she can’t quite understand, and how friggen smart she is for an… 11-year-old?

But she’s not “cute”. As in, she wasn’t written by generic Suits who were trying to cash in on the ND crowd by writing what they think will sell, but also making her juuust neurotypical enough to still be palatable by the rest of the audience. Lilo’s earnestness is what endears her to everybody. But also, she doesn’t get a free pass for her behavior, either. Her “friends” aren’t forced to accommodate her and Nani isn’t written as the cold-hearted villain for trying to discipline her.

6. Straight male characters with female friends

Am I double-dipping a bit here? Yes. While I completely understand how tempting it can be, this type of character is in dire need of exposure and representation to prove it’s possible. No weird tense moments, no double-glances when she isn’t looking, no contemplations about cheating on his girlfriend (and no insecure jealous girlfriend either). Just two characters who enjoy each other’s company and are able to coexist in a space and be in each other’s spaces without hormones getting in the way. Peak example? Po and Tigress from Kung Fu Panda.

Let these two rely on each other for emotional strength in times of need, let them share inside jokes, let them have a night alone together at a bar, at home, cooking dinner, getting takeout, talking on the patio in a porch swing… with zero “will they/won’t they.”

7. The likable bigot

I’m actually on the fence with this one but it’s something I also don’t see done often enough and I’m adding it for one reason: Bigots aren’t always obvious mustache-twirling villains and the little things they do might seem inconsequential to them, but are still hurtful. So showing these characters is like plopping a mirror down in front of these people and, I don’t know, maybe something will click. They don’t have to be MAGAs to be dangerous, and only writing the extremes convinces the moderates that they aren’t also the problem.

Example: I have a “friend” who recently said something along the lines of “I have lots of gay friends” followed up shortly by “I don’t think this country should keep gay marriage because it’s a slippery slope to legalizing pedophilia.” You know. The quiet part being that she *actually* thinks being gay is as morally abhorrent as being a pedo. But she totally has lots of gay friends. Including one who was driving her during that conversation. (It’s me. Hi. I’m apparently the problem, it’s me.)

She’s absolutely homophobic, but the second she stops announcing it, she’s a very bubbly person. She’s a ~likable~ bigot and thus thinks she can distance herself from the more violent ones.

8. The motherly single father

I say “motherly” merely as shorthand for the vibe I’m going for here. “Motherly” as in dads who aren’t scandalized by the growing pains of their daughters, and who don’t just parent their sons by saying “man up boys don’t cry”. Dads who play Barbie with their kids of either gender. Dads who go to the PTA meetings with all the other Karens and know as much if not more than they do about the school and their kids’ education.

Dads who comfort their crying kids, especially their sons. Dads that take interest in “feminine” activities like learning how to braid their daughter’s hair, learning different makeup brands, going on nail salon trips together. Dads who do not pull out the rifle on their daughter’s new boyfriend and treat her like property. Dads who have guy friends that don’t mock him and call him gay. Dad who does all this stuff anyway and is *actually* gay, too, but the emphasis is on overly sensitive straight men’s masculinity here.

Wholesome dads: a shocking amount of single-parents to female anime protagonists.

9. The parent isn’t dead, they’re just gone

Treasure Planet is an awesome movie in its own right, but what’s even better? This is a Disney movie where the parent isn’t dead, he’s just a deadbeat who abandoned his son and isn’t at all relevant to the plot beyond the hole he left behind for Jim to fill. The only deadbeat dads Disney allows are villains and those guys are very vigorously chasing an aspiration, that aspiration just doesn’t include quality fatherhood. Or motherhood. Disney has yet to write a deadbeat mom, I’m almost certain.

I just wrote a post about the necessity of the “dead parent” cliche, but what is perhaps more relatable because it’s more common, and what earns even more sympathy and underdog points for the protagonist? The hero with the parent who left. Then there’s a whole extra layer of angst and trauma available when your hero can now plague themselves with the question of if the parent leaving is their fault. Death is usually an accident. Choosing to abandon your kid is on purpose.

10. Victim who isn’t victim-blamed or told by their friends (and the narrative) to forgive their abuser

Izuku Midoriya lost so much support from me the moment he told his friend, bearing the consequences of domestic violence across half his face, that Midoriya thinks he’ll be ready soon to forgive his abomination of a father. I am firmly in the “Endeavor is a despicable human and hero” camp and no I’m not taking criticism. I audibly gasped when I heard this line and realized Deku was serious. Todoroki needs friends like the Gaang to remind him that he's allowed to hate the man who's actions caused the burn scar across his f*cking face.

I understand that the mangaka apparently didn’t anticipate the vitriolic backlash toward Endeavor during his debut and reveal of his parenting tactics but the tone-deafness of telling a fifteen year old with crippling emotional management issues and a horrible home life that his abusive dad in any way deserves and is entitled to forgiveness on the grounds of being related is disgusting.

Take it back further to a more famous Tumblr dad: John Winchester. Another despicable human who got retroactively forgiven by his sons after his death in a “he wasn’t so bad, he really did try” campaign. It’s one thing if the character believes it, it’s a whole different matter if the narrative is also pushing this message.

Katara is a perfect example: She lets go of her grudge for her own peace of mind and stops blaming Zuko for something he had no hand in, stops blaming him simply because he’s a firebender and he’s around to be her punching bag. She doesn’t forgive the man who killed her mother, because that man doesn’t deserve her forgiveness. Katara heals in spite of him, not because of him, and had she let him off the hook, she would have gotten an apology for getting caught, not for what he did (which is exactly what happened).

[sanguineterrain]

Hello madame terrain, I have been thinking about boxer!jason for some time now and I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about him? if not that's totally okay too ☺️ love all your writing!!!

lol hi, madame terrain is adorable 💕 also boxer jason is big brained!!! let's do it ;)

boxer!jason todd x gn!reader. reader is an apprentice to a ringside doctor (leslie thompkins). tw creepy OMC intimidates reader, jason protects/defends r, fluff, my attempt at boxing stuff.

****

Leslie said she'd be back in an hour.

You're currently at the thirty minute mark, hoping for a natural disaster, an angel, anything, because...

"Doc gives me stuff for my pain all the time," Keith says for the third time. "It's real simple."

Keith Dixon is one of the gym's regular fighters. You haven't seen enough matches to judge his fighting, but you can confidently say that his people skills are in the toilet.

He'd barged into the office ten minutes ago and had refused to leave even when you said Leslie was out.

You need to make a break for it.

"You have to wait for Dr. Thompkins," you say, lifting your chin. You won't give in and risk losing this job. No way in hell. "I can't administer medications. I'm not licensed."

Keith rolls his eyes. He's a hothead, new to Gotham. Likes to fight. Likes to fight mean.

"Look, you're new. I'm just giving you a heads-up on how things work around here," he says, backing you up further. You're nearly against the wall.

Where the hell is Leslie?

"I'm sorry, Mr. Dixon, but I can't prescribe painkillers without her supervision."

"Uh-huh. Know what I think? I think you're just not cut out for the ring," Keith says, cornering you against the cabinet. "Cute thing like you shouldn't be hiding in an office. The Doc ought to know better..."

"Is there a problem?"

The new voice makes you flinch, just a little. Keith pulls back, posture easy but guarded. The second guy holds himself similarly. He's also well-built, clad in a gray tee and black sweatpants. His hands are wrapped.

"J-man," Keith says, daggers in his teeth. "Man, I thought you were benched for the week. You meet our new assistant? They're still getting used to how things run around here."

The mystery man looks at you. His eyes are a lovely teal.

"Is he botherin' you?" he asks.

"I—" You swallow. "I was just explaining to Keith that I can't administer medicine without Dr. Thompkins."

Keith huffs. "Jason, tell 'em how this works."

Jason faces Keith. They nearly match each other in height and bulk. You hope to God they don't decide to brawl here and now.

"I think you're the one who needs a reminder, Dixon," Jason says coolly. "Seems pretty straightforward to me. You need to wait for the Doc. So was there something else you needed?"

Keith's mouth presses into a line. You can tell he's got about a hundred ugly thoughts on his tongue right now.

"Nope," he grits out.

"Mm. Then step off."

Keith obeys. You slip out of the corner.

"I'll come back," he says.

"When the Doc's here," Jason adds. It doesn't sound like a suggestion. "If y'need a reminder of her schedule, I don't mind giving you one."

Keith looks at you. You hold his gaze, heart pounding.

"Of course," he says, all false charm, and pushes past Jason. "See ya in the ring, J.T."

You can't relax even after Keith leaves. Jason remains in the doorway. You close your eyes at the thought of dealing with another fighter. It's not bad with Leslie here, but this is your first time alone. It's already a disaster.

Obviously, none of the fighters respect you like they respect Leslie, even after three weeks of you working here. You don't even know all of the fighters.

"Hey." Jason doesn't move from his spot as he asks. "Y'okay?"

"Yes," you say, keeping your back straight. "I'm fine. Do you need medical attention?"

"I just came to get some more wraps. But I can get 'em at home."

His voice is softer now that Keith's gone.

"No need," you say. "That's what I'm here for."

You get a roll of tape from the drawer. It takes you three tries to pull the edge out. You drop it twice.

You feel Jason's eyes on you. You keep pulling the tape, but it won't comply.

"I got it," he says. "I can wrap myself. Toss it here."

You pause, tape half unfurled. "Dr. Thompkins told me to do all wraps myself."

"Leslie's cool. I won't tell her, anyway."

You shake your head. "Why don't you want me to wrap your hands?"

Jason glances to the side. He leans against the doorframe, purposely casual.

"'Cause Keith's a big guy. And I'm a big guy. And your hands are still shaking."

You tighten your grip on the tape.

Jason gestures to the office. "This is your space. I won't come in if you don't want me to. That's not how this works."

"It's... it's the job," you say, startled. "I don't—I've heard that Keith's rough with everybody."

"Yeah, well, he's an asshole. You shouldn't have to be rough back. Good fighters turn it off outside of the ring. I don't want to make you feel small. Alright?"

Tension bleeds out of your spine. You no longer feel like prey.

"It's easier if I wrap them for you," you say, and turn your back on him to fetch the antiseptic.

The tiles behind you creak as Jason hesitates for a moment. Then he walks in and sits in a chair, so you're higher than him.

He looks up at you. He really does have beautiful eyes. His eyelashes are dark and delicate. There's a faded bruise on his cheek.

He's boyishly handsome, with a mouth that looks like it smiles a lot.

"Do you also fight here?"

He nods. "Since I was eighteen. Been here a while."

You take one of his hands in both of yours. Jason's already thrown out the old tape. His knuckles are cut up. They're covered in scars. His fingernails are short and neat.

His hands are big, far bigger than yours. Veins feed into each other from the backs of his hands up his forearms.

You take out the antiseptic spray.

"Might be cold," you warn.

"'S okay."

You spray his skin. Jason doesn't even flinch.

"Your hands are really soft," he says.

"Oh, thank you. I use Isley's Salve. Works great."

Why did you share that?

Jason's mouth quirks. "Yeah? Might have to try that. My hands have seen better days."

"I have some in my bag." You let go of the half-done wrap and dig through your backpack. You pull out the small tube of salve and squeeze some onto his hands.

Jason is quiet and still as you rub in the lotion. He's pliant as you finish the wraps, letting you turn his hands over. You pull the wraps tight.

"All done," you say, face suddenly warm like you've been caught doing something you weren't supposed to.

He flexes his hands a few times. "Thanks. You're good. I can see why Leslie chose you as her apprentice."

You shrug. "Anybody can wrap hands."

"Dunno. I've seen some pretty shit wraps in my time."

"Oh. Well, um, I'm here most of the time, so feel free to come by and get your wraps changed."

He hums. "Sure. Don't worry 'bout Keith. I'll take care of it."

Your eyes widen. "I don't want more trouble..."

"You won't get trouble, I promise. We don't tolerate that here. 'Sides, he's overstayed his welcome."

You nod. "Okay. Thank you, Jason."

"No need for thank you's. Y'alright getting home?"

"Yes, I'm okay. Leslie's dropping me."

Jason nods, then picks himself up. He pauses like he wants to say something else, but he strides out of the room like he's in a rush instead.

"Well, um. G'night," he says over his shoulder. "Take care."

It's about fifteen more minutes until Leslie returns.

"Everything alright?" she asks in a tone that tells you she already knows the answer. "I ran into Jason on my way in. He said Keith Dixon gave you some trouble. I'm sorry I took so long. Are you alright?"

"You ran into—I thought Jason went home for the night."

Leslie looks like you've just told her the sky is red. "He wanted to make sure you were okay. So he waited till I came back. Are you okay? Did Keith hurt you?"

You shake your head. "No, I'm alright. Just shaken up. He's a bully. Wanted painkillers."

Leslie frowns. "He won't bother you again. I'll make sure you're not alone."

"It's okay. I mean, Jason was there."

She nods. "Mm. He's a good boy. I know his father."

"Yeah, he, uh, was nice. I wrapped his hands."

Leslie raises an eyebrow. Your shoulders rise.

"What?" you ask. "You said to practice my wraps."

She shrugs. "Nothing, nothing. I did tell you that. I'm glad you got some practice in."

You follow her to her car. Soon, Leslie pulls out of the lot.

"Leslie, do you mind if we stop at CVS?"

"Sure. What for?"

You feel for the little tube in your pocket.

"Need more Isley's Salve... I'm, uh, running low."

[maximwtf]

“I would endure endless defeats before burdening you.”

Capitano x Reader

Words: 4200

Google Docs Pages: 7ish

Warnings: 5.1 spoilers but just about Capitano, established relationship but everything has to be horrible so it’s not established but kinda is but just when you think it is, it’s not. Angst/ kinda comfort? Idk you try to comfort an immortal man rotting from the inside and see how it goes. I guess like the tiniest amount of fluff but that’s sad too. Bad communication, emotional hurt. I imagine him with more real rot, maybe with some abyssal like Dain? Idk, but this is written based on that :) Rotten man, save us.

Opening: Does he have people to open up to about all the years he’s spent with his condition and the thoughts of regret he’s accumulated? Would he allow himself that comfort even if he did? Because that has been for you to figure out, bit by bit. 

AN// G/N reader. I don’t think yall understand how happy I was to get this lore drop on Capitano. Like wdym they have a suffering old man in the cast, and you kept him from me for this long?! Anyway, I feel like it was my duty to write something for him due to that. Enjoy.

If you have any fic ideas for him, feel free to request :)

“I would endure endless defeats before burdening you.”

The hallway outside was silent, matching the space behind the door at the very end of it. A faint light on a sturdy wooden table, a couple other lights scattered here and there. But no amount of warm candles nor a bigger fire could truly disperse the coldness in the room. The man inhabiting it, so stupefied by it by now that he barely noticed anymore. And the people who had before, dared not mention it anymore either.

The light outside had disappeared some time ago. The sun never truly rose in mid winter, or at the very least it didn’t seem like it did. Especially on the days when the snowfall was so thick it painted the horizon white. Covering the sun along with its soft blanket. And so it had done on this day as well, and by the look of it grown tired by the end. Yielding, and soon the snowflakes turned so small it looked more like powdered sugar from afar. Only a little too late for the sun to make any sort of appearance anymore, the chance for that long gone. 

Did the sun have regrets at the end of days such as this? Had it not tried hard enough to repel the heavy snowfall on this day? And now that it had failed, would the people who’d longed to see it shine once more at the end of the day be disappointed? Would they be blinded enough to not see that it had tried to save the end of the day with a few rays of its light, only to realise it was far too late for that? And that it would try again just as hard if another chance was given. 

Capitano stared outside through the window of his office. These seemingly eternal thoughts running through his mind yet again. At times hoping his mind would rot enough to be able to forget any sort of regret he may have still been holding on to. But a curse seemed to stay as such, unable to forget and let his mind rest. 

Not when small things around could be used to remind him, having to shut his mind from viewing these aspects around him on such a deep level. In truth having nothing to do with the past and the actions taken and left undone. All the more reason to try and forget any regret. 

His eyes gazed outside at the snowfall. It coming down in a straight line, placid as ever as it settled to its rightful place. To perhaps be blown to a new location the next day with a gush of wind. The weather was so calm it almost appeared warmer outside than in the uncomfortably chilly office of his. The cold that would have sent a shiver or two down his spine in the past.

Capitano’s eyes focused on his reflection against the window. A man he’d constructed his outer appearance to be, something to stay unchanging as everything else was torn from him bit by bit. That was a man with no regrets, someone powerful to look up to. Someone he’d once been fortunate enough to truly be and live as.

Not that he wasn’t that now as well. Enjoying the respect of his peers, troops and alliances. But each show of power reminded him of who he wasn’t anymore. The person he could no longer even become. A rare few amongst the people he met even being able to comprehend the status he’d held all those years ago. 

His head lowered, a careful pair of hands taking a hold of the carefully constructed mask. Removing it with a slow, almost dragging motion. Lowering it along with his hands, eyes having returned to peer at his reflection. The space dim enough to not allow his full appearance to truly show off. But he knew exactly what the blurry and darkened out parts looked like. What the mask so diligently hid behind it. 

What the outer man he’d built was concealing underneath. The commander he’d been and the person he’d turned into. Forced into being. Cursed with something others would spend their lives seeking, not understanding the cost of living beyond their years. How the flesh would deteriorate and rot. How even his soldier’s will and self respect wavered under the power this change had. How his mind had to come to terms with what used to be and what was now. Who he had to be and what he could now do in order to use what he’d been given to make a mark. Even if only to himself, he wanted to be able to to make this time count. He’d be a disgrace to his former homeland if he had given up all that time ago and frozen in place. The only option was to move on. Even if this curse was eating him alive. 

A part of him sighed in relief when the silence deep in the hallway was disturbed, releasing his mind of these thoughts. Focusing on figuring out who was nearing his door. There was no knock, steps that were silent as ever and that paused almost right after as the door behind this person closed once more. The silence, almost like a vicious entity, taking over the space like it was guarding it. And just before that Capitano had come to a conclusion, you. 

“Greetings,” he spoke with a surprisingly formal tone. Quick to adapt from his thoughts to the current situation. Not foolish enough to not have a guess as to what you were doing here at this hour, but hopeful enough a conversation might make you change the course. But the sound of your voice as you replied, ‘evening’, suggested there was a little chance you’d yield. 

There was much he could have done to try harder, yet he surrendered so soon. Who was he to resist your sheer will? The same will he’d tried to direct elsewhere in the past multiple times, yet it always returned to him. A seasoned warrior smart enough to recognize a losing battle when stumbling upon one, he would have known. 

Your eyes followed keenly as Capitano placed the mask from his hands onto the table. The man’s eyes looked piercing in the faint light of the room, no doubt even frightening to the less knowing. You couldn’t even see his face, only the broad frame of his back. Only the blue shine from the glistened against the reflection from the window, as if peering back at you. The sight overall something not seen every day, something most never saw.

There was no reason for your eyes to be the ones to be allowed to see, to watch and analyse. Or so you believed, if there was a reason neither of you dared to word it. As if doing so would unleash some sort of a spell neither of you wanted to see the aftermath of. There was only so much change a person could bare to their person, so whatever it was that Capitano refused to word, was good as it was. 

Of course, you hadn’t come here for simply the joy of visiting. That never seemed to have formed into a habit, but instead seeking him out when word of him rose from the troops. Anything alluding to his person, not the more usual reputation talk. If that ever changed was when it felt almost mandatory to see him. A difference in the behaviour of a person such as Capitano was sure to never go unnoticed. 

“How was your day?” You broke the silence, seemingly ignoring the reflection from the window. He wasn’t a man to hide himself from you, yet some part of you liked to imagine that respect made you not bring his condition up. Not so soon. 

Waiting for his response after a deep ‘hmp…’ felt like an eternity. Allowing you a chance to slip closer to his desk, eyes skipping mindlessly on the items he’d left there. His words had a deeper growl in them when he spoke so silently, “nothing out of the ordinary.” Which likely was true. Your eyes had scanned the papers on the table, a very few left there to linger. Nothing important ever left for the prying eyes to catch. Yet it proved his words correct, no straight lies ever told. He had no reason to lie to you, to hide anything. But the both of you knew the question had been intended for a deeper analysis of his day instead of an overall view. He hid things. Not out of malice, you knew better than to think such things. 

“That’s good,” you answered soon after. Straightening out a few of the papers, stacking them so the corners met each other in a straight line. The moment was so heavy and you’d only now started to realise as much. There was never much you could do if the murmurs around the troops turned out to be true. He felt so far away even when he was so close, merely on the other side of the desk.

You knew him, better than most, yet he’d seen more than any mortal could likely wrap their head around. So who were you to tell him that it would simply ‘be okay’ or that you were ‘there for him’ when you started to notice his gaze wander. He was not simply sad, he appeared melancholic. But at times even that seemed to be rooted so deep down within him that you couldn’t find a word to describe the emotion radiating from him. And he was unable to give you a word for it. Leaving the now physical distance between the two of you to form into a deeper pit of confusing aches. 

But there was also the root of the problem. This was by no means the first attempt of coming to him, seeking him out and attempting to figure out why his mind wandered. Where it was trying to get for it to be something he couldn’t word. What was the reason for the superficial answers, as if speaking to any one of his soldiers. Why let someone so close, but keep them at the threshold when they were willing to come in?

Though, thoughts like these felt ironic. Knowing you played along with this act of his, not only to entertain him but because it felt easy. How easy it was to allow him to care and dutifully take care of his tasks as he always had, and when it came time to actually connect with him to just let it slide each time. His actions never held any malice nor betrayal, there was no man more loyal to their own morals and comrades than him. So who were you to simply blame him for not letting you closer, when it was you who indulged in his way of communicating. 

“The men seemed to have lived a different day.” You commented after, hoping Capitano would pick up on what you meant. He was not foolish enough to be fully unaware of what his own men were doing and talking about when his back was turned. 

And you’d been correct, the comment made the man look down at you over his shoulder. The piercing eyes of his holding so much in them, it was hard to put to words, but you could tell he knew what you meant. And so you indulged in this way of communicating once more.

Seeing as he had nothing else to ‘say’, you continued. “Thankfully the snowfall gave in on the way here. It was an honest nuisance today…” Continuing to speak of the things you always did, the things you found slipping from your lips each time instead of the actual questions and words you wanted to say. But what use would that be when it felt as if there was no one who truly received those words. 

“Here’s to hope tomorrow will be better on that front,” you continued on alone but knowing full well he was listening, even if he knew exactly the topics you’d choose. The mantras you repeated. His attention on you while you slowly circled around the desk to his side, hand sliding against the smooth surface of the desk. The act as if a final cry to ask for him to reciprocate. 

The fabric of Capitano’s clothes rustled, the movement appearing heavier than they likely truly were. He gave you space near him, allowing you to join him near the window he’d been so keen on. “Hm, may it be so then.” He replied, leaving the end of his response hanging. As if there was more to be added, but left out due to the everlasting heaviness of the room and the air inside it. But you didn’t need more. Past a certain point the conversations you held as a coverup to attempt to communicate started being more tiring than standing in silence to try and understand him better. 

Your eyes gazed at the window, his reflection. Turning to peer at his face soon after. The rot, having consumed so much of the man he used to be, carved him into someone else. You had not seen how he’d looked all those years ago, but he’d insisted that even his comrades from then wouldn’t have been able to recognize him today. 

So how could you ever understand him truly? You weren’t sure what sort of explanation you were waiting to gain from him to make you understand, when there likely was none. He’d seemingly accepted his fate a long time ago, an eternal life ahead of him each morning he woke. Up until the day his body would falter at last. 

But in your eyes that was not a life worth leading on, not with the regrets you knew he held. How could a man rotting from the inside still yearn to fix something that hadn’t even been within his power to save in the first place?

You’d initially not even realised that was likely what he was thinking when his mind started to wander. Not when you’d first seen his face, seen the state he lived in each day. You’d initially feared he held some form of heaviness within him for the way he looked. For a human, losing everything you had and who you were would have been a fate worse than death. Losing the strength you held and the person you had been. Yet he held himself the same each day, seemingly no shame in his condition, if only a flickering light of anguish against the fate he’d been dealt. 

On top of that, he had seemingly never let himself fall to ruin. The person he’d been might have changed into something unrecognisable that could easily disturb the too comfortable. But this was a man of honour, a dignified soldier. For the sake of others, you’d concluded, he diligently kept himself clean. Kept the rot that bothered him not, from causing disturbances to the rest. 

So it was clear, by no means had he given up. He was in terms with who he was now, yet at times like these it seemed like his mind hadn’t. When you so clearly tried conversing, attempting to get him to speak his mind, he refused. Treating you gently, leading your conversation on for long enough to tire you and finally make you stop worrying for him. 

You gave the mask on the table a look, an attempt to lean back towards the topic. Neither of you had forgotten nor had it gone unnoticed by him either. Not now or earlier. 

Capitano followed your movements, eyes landing on the all too familiar mask. Not having to even gaze upon it to know what was being asked of him. And he wished, internally held up hopes that the rot was messing with his mind, feeding him thoughts that weren’t true. That you hadn’t come back to him out of sheer worry yet again.

He was ready to be moulded by you into any shape, ready to yield in front of you if that’s what you asked of him. He cared about what you thought, but in some sense wanted to keep you from worrying. The burdens he held within were self inflicted, he knew that much. A part of him knew the regrets he had were foolish, he couldn’t have done anything more than he had. So when he wasn’t driven mad by those thoughts, he had time to try and form a bond with you. A bond which he wished to not be based on a worry of him. 

He knew you were curious, that was only natural. That was why he’d been open about who he was now, what he could offer you anymore. But what would have been the point of going further into his thoughts, those were his burdens to bear. A fault in himself which he’d created. 

“Your cheek appears irritated?” You said silently, gazing at his face with keen eyes. Pausing for a moment as he turned to face you. “I’m sorry if that-” Backing away from what you’d said a little, cringing if it had come across mockingly. Capitano raised his hand slightly, pausing your rambling. “I know. No need to apologise, you’re fine,” he said after and watched as your expression softened back to normal. 

But you’d been honest, the irritation was no mere frostbite that’d got him. You’d seen it before when he hadn’t had the time to upkeep the condition. A neglect he didn’t participate willingly, but something his work on some occasions forced him to pick up. And which you’d find he let you take care of on those very certain occasions. The least you could do to ease your own worry and the yearning to communicate with him about himself. 

Your hand moved to brush some of his hair from his shoulder to a better position. Running your fingers through it gently so as to not tug him on accident. And he didn’t move, not even if you had. Watching you with the same fond expression he always seemed to. Following keenly when you turned your back to him, abandoning his hair and the caresses he’d grown fond of by that point. Rummaging through the upper drawer of his desk. 

The light in the room was rather dim, not allowing you to see what you were seeking for at first. But your hand knew the shape of the small jar containing a lotion you were familiar with. It was no match for something as detrimental as his condition, but seemingly if this world carried anything that did anything to combat it, it was worth it. 

You fiddled with the jar for a moment, turning it in your hands before daring to look back up at his towering form. He didn’t move an inch, even without the mask he appeared honourable as ever. To you, maybe even more so now. 

An old ache radiating from unsaid words and praises stung your chest at moments like these. An uncountable amount of exalted thoughts of him that you just couldn’t bring yourself to tell him, to make him understand that you wanted to share his burdens. None of them would make you view him any differently. No matter how many regrets, scars or rotten flesh would face you, he’d still be the same honourable and respected man in your eyes. 

Your eyes gave him an asking look, almost automatic. The request yet again something you couldn’t put into words, and that would leave an awful ache into your chest for not saying. But you adored how he still always understood, hesitated like he’d always done and still ended up accepting. It was you, after all. 

Capitano sat down on the chair behind him. The old wooden thing let out a small noise under the added weight, the room not falling fully silent after. He watched as you undid the lid of the jar, placed it on the table and carefully leaned closer. Taking some of the product onto your finger and with the same tenderness spreading it on the irritated parts. Yet, even from so close up it felt as if some sort of unremovable distance stayed. Always. 

Capitano closed his eyes for a moment, a low breath escaping him as his form allowed his shoulders to ease ever so slightly. Your touch was always gentle and careful, no matter how far he kept you from his burdens and regrets. So who was he to completely refuse your care? He never wished to turn you down or push you away, but he’d also had the time to rot for 500 years. Building something like this was exceptionally hard, and he’d only now come to figure out what that meant truly. 

You made sure the salve was nicely spread before pulling back, watching as his eyes opened after. Feeling how they followed you when returning back to the lid to put it back on. With movements clearly familiar to the situation, you placed the jar back into its rightful place, closing the drawer with a faint thud. 

“Thank you,” his low voice called out with the familiar growl at the end of his words. Capitano leaned onto his knees, pushing himself up from the chair to return back to the window. His silhouette appeared more frail than when he had the thick cloak on, something that somehow still surprised you every now and then. He was by no means a small man to begin with, yet the cloak changed him so much. Making you wonder if that was why he preferred wearing it so. 

You watched him walk up to the window, this time clearly gazing out rather than at his reflection. Following the now faint snowfall outside in silence. Following along from the side, attention moving back to his reflection at what almost felt like force. Mind so occupied by him it felt impossible to focus on the weather outside. 

You felt almost on edge with how much you wanted to tell him, let him know of what you thought about him to get him to tell you more. It felt almost as if something in your chest stung each time a good moment like this was spent in silence. 

Which was why you almost jumped when he began to speak, not turning around to do so, but nevertheless. “I understand you have your fair share of curiosities about this. But allow me to be selfish, and have you without burdens. And if that by itself is a burden too heavy to carry, you’re not obligated to stay. Know, you are respected even then.” Capitano’s familiar voice spoke, this time for longer than you’d heard during this entire time. Leaving you slightly shaken for a moment, though for an odd reason the air didn’t feel heavy. As if air itself had paused to allow you this conversation. 

And it stayed that way as you walked behind him, hesitating for a moment before placing your forehead against his broad back. Arms sneaking gently around his waist, lose in their hold as your eyes closed. You took a deep breath, mind ticking to form a response. Feeling Capitano tense for a mere moment in the hold before his muscles eased once more. 

Normally, no matter how many walls of protection you shattered from around him, he didn’t seem to react to anything. No matter if he was wearing the helmet or not. A part of you wondering if the corrosion was a sort of a mask itself. 

“I’m not going anywhere. But I don’t want the way I see you to be written on your epitaph. Let me in, make this easier.” The words coming out in a whisper loud enough for him to hear, but not disturb the usual silence. 

A low chuckle escaped Capitano, a part of him amused by the plea. But nevertheless taking it seriously, knowing you’d meant it. “You’re more hopeful than I am,” he replied with a hum. Placing his hands over yours, against himself. Pressing them together lightly, as if hoping that was an answer enough. Aware that it wasn’t, but using it as a way to ask for more time. 

He feared he’d overstep a boundary of sorts, if he told you of his thoughts on a deeper level. He didn’t wish to put them on your shoulders, protecting you from himself in a way. If that was one of the only things he could do for you, not expecting anything from you in return, ever. 

The squeeze from his hands made you lean against him more heavily, a gentle sigh escaping. Not bothering to feel frustrated, not at him. The curse wasn’t his fault, what’d happened to him wasn't his fault and he was in no way obligated to ever let someone so close as he’d allowed you. So even the smallest of actions kept you close to being carefree, in the sense that you didn’t fear that there was no way to help him. There was, and you’d allow him to show that path to you on his own terms. 

[misaerabl]

Feeding The Fire

Academic Rival Abby X F!Reader

MINORS AND MEN DNI / word count : 8k

SUMMARY: In the elite world of Ravenswood Preparatory Academy, your rivalry with Abby Anderson has always been a blaze of ambition and sharp words. Forced to work together on a high-stakes project, the fire between you begins to shift as late-night study sessions and unguarded moments reveal the vulnerabilities behind Abby’s perfectionism. When an argument at her house exposes the weight of her relentless drive, sparks ignite into something far more intimate. What starts as a battle for dominance becomes a journey of understanding—and something else as fiery as your rivalry.

WARNINGS: Plot with smut, eating out (r & a receiving), a riding on r's face, swallowing come, fingering (r receiving)

A/N: Since you guys were looking for something like Off The Ice... found this on my google docs, I decided to finish it and post it now. This is kind of in a different format than how i usually write but here it is cuz I think its good! (this was actually written the same time as Off The Ice)

⋆.˚🦋༘⋆ 

Ravenswood Preparatory Academy wasn’t just a school—it was a battlefield. Not in the way of physical fights or dramatic standoffs in the cafeteria, but in the quiet, cutthroat war of academics. The halls buzzed with the chatter of straight-A students, all vying for valedictorian, internships, or that one golden-lettered acceptance from the Ivy League. You were no stranger to the competition. In fact, you thrived on it.

But then, there was Abby Anderson.

Where you clawed your way to the top with late-night study sessions and sheer determination, Abby seemed to coast through effortlessly. She was the Abby Anderson—student council president, captain of the debate team, and the top of every leaderboard. She didn’t just ace her exams; she annihilated the curve, leaving you—and everyone else—in her wake.

Your rivalry wasn’t personal, at least not at first. It was just a fact of life, like the sun rising in the east or Ms. Callahan assigning an absurd amount of reading. But over time, it evolved into something more. A sideways glance during test results. A clipped comment in class discussions. A subtle smirk when one of you outdid the other.

By senior year, the rivalry had become the stuff of legend. Teachers tried to keep their distance, afraid to spark a wildfire between you. The rest of the school watched with bated breath, waiting to see who would claim the top spot once and for all.

And then, Ms. Callahan dropped the bomb.

“Your final project will be done in pairs.” Her voice carried across the room, calm and steady, as if she didn’t just upend the lives of her most competitive students.

You barely had time to react before she added the kicker: “And the partners… have been assigned.”

The tension in the room was palpable. A few students groaned, others exchanged wary glances. You sat frozen, gripping your pen as Ms. Callahan began listing names.

When she got to yours, you heard it before you saw it: the sharp intake of breath, the audible pause.

“...Anderson.”

Your head whipped around, locking eyes with Abby, whose expression mirrored your own disbelief. It wasn’t anger or annoyance—not yet, anyway. Just pure, unfiltered dread.

Ms. Callahan’s voice pulled you back to reality. “I expect great things from the two of you.”

Of course, she did. Of course, she thought pairing the two fiercest rivals in the school was a brilliant idea.

You didn’t even hear the rest of the assignments. All you could think was: This is going to be a disaster.

The Aftermath

The bell’s shrill ring echoed through the room, but you remained seated, the words “Anderson” still ringing in your ears. Your classmates filed out, some throwing you sympathetic glances, others shooting amused smirks.

“Guess it’s just you and me now,” Abby said, stopping at your desk. Her tone was light, but there was an unmistakable edge to her smirk—one that ignited the familiar spark of irritation deep in your chest.

You forced yourself to look up, meeting her gaze. “Don’t think for a second that I’m going to let you take over this project.”

Her smirk widened, like you’d just issued a challenge. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Besides, I’m sure I’ll need someone to double-check your work.”

Her words hit like a match to kindling, and you felt the fire flare. You opened your mouth to respond, but she was already walking away, her ponytail swaying with each step.

This wasn’t just a project. It was war—or so you thought.

The First Meeting

Monday after school, you found yourself heading to the library with a mix of dread and determination. Abby was already there, seated at a table with her laptop open and a cup of coffee by her side.

“Right on time,” she said, not looking up.

“Let’s skip the small talk,” you said as you sat across from her. “What’s your grand plan for making this work?”

She leaned back in her chair, her arms crossing in a way that seemed both casual and calculated. “I’ve already outlined a few ideas. You can handle the visuals—I’ll take care of the research.”

You snorted. “Of course, you think you get to decide everything.”

Abby tilted her head, her smirk softening into something almost playful. “Do you ever stop arguing?”

“Do you ever stop being insufferable?” you shot back, but there was no real venom in your voice.

For a moment, the fire between you burned differently—still hot, but less about competition and more about the way her eyes lit up when she laughed softly under her breath.

Sparks Beneath the Flames

The first week of working together was a rollercoaster. Arguments about the direction of the project turned into hours-long brainstorming sessions, punctuated by Abby’s dry humor and your exasperated comebacks.

“You’re not bad at this,” she admitted one day, her tone grudging but honest.

“Wow, Abby Anderson complimented me,” you said, feigning shock. “Someone mark the date.”

She rolled her eyes but didn’t hide her smile. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

As the days passed, the rivalry that had defined your relationship began to shift. It wasn’t just about outdoing each other anymore. Somewhere in the late nights at the library and the shared coffee runs, you started noticing things—like how she always brought an extra pen because you’d forgotten yours, or how her confident exterior cracked when she doubted an idea.

And then there was the way her hand brushed yours as you both reached for the same book. It was fleeting, but it sent a jolt through you—like a spark catching on dry wood.

Feeding the Fire

By the second week, the lines between rivalry and something more had blurred. Your arguments had turned into playful banter, and your stolen glances lasted just a little too long.

One evening, as you sat across from Abby in the dimly lit library, you found yourself staring at her—not in frustration, but in curiosity. The way her brow furrowed when she was deep in thought, the way her lips pressed together as she scribbled notes... it was mesmerizing in a way you didn’t want to admit.

She looked up suddenly, catching your gaze. For a moment, neither of you spoke. The air between you felt heavy, charged with something new.

“What?” she asked, her voice softer than usual.

“Nothing,” you said quickly, looking away, but your cheeks burned like an open flame.

And that was the moment you realized the fire between you wasn’t just about rivalry anymore. It was something deeper—something you weren’t sure you were ready for but couldn’t stop feeding.

The Vulnerable Truth

You didn’t know what to expect when Abby invited you over to her house. The idea of crossing into her personal territory felt... strange, like stepping into the heart of the storm. Her place was just as polished as you’d imagined—pristine furniture, meticulously arranged decor, and an eerie quietness that seemed at odds with Abby's fiery energy.

“I’ll grab us something to drink,” she said, disappearing into the kitchen.

Left alone, you wandered around the living room, your eyes scanning the shelves and walls. Tucked among pristine family portraits and school trophies was a photo of Abby as a little girl. She was holding a medal, grinning wide, her eyes sparkling with pride. Beside her stood a man—her father, judging by the striking resemblance. His hand rested stiffly on her shoulder, his expression as cold and composed as the room itself.

It all clicked.

“Find something interesting?” Abby’s voice broke the silence, sharp and cutting.

You turned to see her standing in the doorway, her arms crossed and a guarded look on her face.

“I wasn’t snooping,” you said quickly, though you couldn’t shake the weight of what you’d just realized. “I just… saw the photo.”

Her jaw tightened. “Congratulations. You’ve cracked the case.”

“Abby, I didn’t mean—”

“Didn’t mean what?” she snapped, stepping closer. “Didn’t mean to dig into things that aren’t your business? To play armchair psychologist?”

You hesitated, then spoke softly. “I just wondered if that’s why you push yourself so hard. Why you have to be the best.”

Her eyes flared, the fire in them unmistakable. “You don’t know anything about me.”

She turned on her heel and stormed down the hall, disappearing into what you assumed was her room.

For a moment, you stood frozen, unsure whether to follow. But then you heard the muffled thud of something hitting a wall, and your feet moved before your brain could catch up.

The Confrontation

You knocked once on her door, but when there was no response, you pushed it open. Abby was standing by her bed, her back to you, her fists clenched at her sides.

“Abby, I—”

“Why are you here?” she interrupted, her voice trembling—not with anger this time, but something far more vulnerable.

“I just wanted to help,” you said, stepping closer.

She spun around, her eyes blazing. “Help? You think you can help me? You don’t know what it’s like to have someone expect perfection from you every single second of every day.”

Her words hit like a punch, raw and unfiltered. You’d seen Abby angry before, but this was different. This was Abby exposed, stripped of the armor she always wore so effortlessly.

“You think I like this? Being the one everyone’s watching, waiting for me to slip up?” She laughed bitterly. “Well, guess what—it’s not about being the best. It’s about not being a disappointment.”

“Abby…”

Your voice was soft, almost pleading, but she was already pacing, her energy frantic. “Do you know what it’s like to see it in their eyes? The second you’re not good enough? I can’t—” Her voice cracked, and she stopped, her back to you again.

You didn’t think. You just moved, closing the space between you. “Abby, look at me.”

She turned slowly, her walls cracking further, and for the first time, you saw the weight she carried. Without thinking, you reached out, your hand brushing hers.

“I don’t care if you’re perfect,” you said, your voice steady. “I just care that you’re... you.”

Her breath hitched, and for a moment, the air between you felt electric. She looked at you, her guarded expression softening into something you couldn’t quite name.

And then she closed the distance, her lips crashing into yours.

A New Kind of Fire

The kiss was urgent, fueled by all the tension that had built between you—weeks, months, maybe even years of unspoken words and unresolved feelings. Her hands gripped your shirt, pulling you closer, as if afraid to let go.

When you finally pulled back, both of you were breathing hard. Abby’s forehead rested against yours, her eyes searching yours for something—reassurance, understanding, maybe both.

“I hate you,” she whispered, but there was no venom in her voice, only a shaky vulnerability that made your heart ache.

You smiled softly, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “No, you don’t.”

She huffed a laugh, the tension between you easing slightly. “You’re insufferable.”

“And yet, here we are,” you murmured, your thumb grazing her cheek.

For the first time, the fire between you didn’t burn—it warmed.

The Fire Between You

The air in Abby's room felt heavier, charged with something that neither of you could deny anymore. The soft hum of the outside world seemed miles away, and all that mattered was the space between you and Abby, the heat that radiated from her touch as she pulled you back in.

Her hands gripped your waist with a desperation that matched the fierce hunger in her kiss, her lips pressing against yours with a sense of urgency, as though she was trying to make up for lost time. The tension from earlier—the unspoken words, the anger, the vulnerability—had all bled away, replaced by something far more consuming.

You melted into her, your hands finding their way to her shoulders, to her hair, tugging her closer. There was nothing delicate about this kiss. It was messy, raw, a clash of need and emotion. Abby’s body was warm against yours, her breath shallow as she deepened the kiss, pulling you closer, never letting go.

Her arms wrapped tighter around your waist, her fingers digging into the fabric of your shirt as if she was afraid to lose you in this moment. You could feel her heartbeat, fast and erratic, mirroring your own, and for the first time, it didn’t feel like a battle. The competition, the rivalry—it all faded, and what was left was just the two of you, tangled up in each other.

When she finally broke away, both of you were gasping for air, your lips swollen from the intensity of it. Abby's eyes were wild, her pupils blown wide, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she tried to catch her breath.

"God," she whispered, her voice trembling. "I didn’t think… I didn’t think it would be like this."

You could barely form words, your mind racing from everything that just happened. "Neither did I."

But there was no going back now. Not when the fire between you had been lit, not when everything that had once seemed like a fight now felt like something else entirely.

Abby ran her fingers through her hair, her breath shaky. "I—I don’t know how to do this," she admitted, her voice laced with hesitation. "I’ve never... with anyone... not like this."

You reached for her hand, squeezing it gently. "You don’t have to have all the answers, Abby. I don’t either."

She met your gaze, the uncertainty still flickering in her eyes, but something else too. "Are we... are we really doing this?" she asked, her voice quieter now, more vulnerable.

You leaned in, brushing a gentle kiss across her forehead, a silent answer to her question. "Yeah. I think we are."

And as you held her, her body pressed against yours, you both realized that maybe the fire that had always burned between you wasn't meant to destroy—it was meant to light something new. Something neither of you had expected but both of you desperately needed.

The Fire Ignites 

Abby’s hands slipped underneath your shirt, her touch warm against your skin. A mischievous glint flashed in Abby's eye as her hand slid under your shirt, savoring the feel of your heated skin. She traced her fingertips teasingly along your stomach, feeling them tense under her touch.

Her hands reached around your back, finding the hook of your bra with expert ease. She unhooked it slowly, her eyes locked onto yours, daring you to pull away. As the bra fell open, she slid her hands around to your front, gently pushing the fabric aside to feel your bare skin.

As the bra slipped away, Abby's hands cupped your breasts, her thumbs lightly brushing over your nipples. A soft gasp escaped her lips, feeling them harden beneath her touch. Your body arched instinctively into her hands, craving more contact.

A few moments ago, you had uncovered a vulnerable side of Abby, the reason behind her fierce drive. Now, everything had shifted—she was kissing you with a desperate intensity, her hands pulling you closer, touching you in ways you would've never thought would happen between you two, as if she couldn’t get enough. The heat between you escalated, your bodies pressed together, skin meeting skin, the air thick with desire.

With deft fingers, Abby started unbuttoning your uniform blouse, her knuckles lightly grazing your skin with each button she undid. Your breath caught in your throat as she pushed the blouse off your shoulders, letting it fall to the floor.

You stood before her in just your skirt and underwear, feeling incredibly exposed and vulnerable. "You look so pretty in your uniform,”

You blushed deeply at the compliment, your heart racing in your chest. Abby reached out and gently traced a finger along the waistband of your skirt, her touch sending shivers down your spine. "I've always loved this uniform on you," she murmured, her voice low and husky. 

"You do?" Normally, you prided yourself on keeping your cool, always ready with a witty comeback—especially when it came to Abby. But right now, in this heated moment, your usual confidence slipped away. Your mind felt scrambled, and all you could focus on was the sensation of her close to you, leaving you dizzy and lost in the moment.

“You're so beautiful," she whispered, her words. Her voice was a breathy whisper, full of longing. She reached out and gently pulled the skirt aside, revealing your matching panties. Abby's eyes lingered on the delicate fabric before looking back up at your face. "So beautiful” 

Your cheeks flushed a deeper shade of red, your eyes darting between Abby's face and her hands. You bit your lower lip, your breathing growing faster as she slowly began to trace patterns on your thighs, her touch light and teasing. You squirmed slightly, the anticipation almost too much to bear.

Abby's touch ventured higher, her fingertips brushing against the edge of your underwear. She looked up at you, her blue eyes filled with a fiery intensity. "Can I?" she asked, her voice barely audible. Her fingers hooked into the elastic band of your underwear, waiting for your response.

You nodded almost imperceptibly, your heart pounding in your chest. Abby slowly pulled your underwear down, letting them pool around your ankles. You stepped out of them, feeling completely bare before her. She stood up and gently pushed you onto her bed, kneeling between your legs. "You're so perfect,”

Abby slowly leaned in, pressing her lips to your inner thigh. She kissed and nibbled her way up, her touch gentle yet firm. Your breath hitched, your fingers gripping the bed tightly as anticipation built up inside you. When she finally reached your center, she paused and looked up at you.

With a smoldering gaze fixed upon you, Abby leaned in slowly, her warm breath tickling your most sensitive spot before she finally made contact. A surge of electricity coursed through your body as her tongue found its mark, your hips instinctively lifting off the bed sheets.

Abby wrapped her arms around your thighs to keep you in place, her pace slow and deliberate. She looked up at you again, her eyes filled with desire as she continued to lavish attention on you. Your hands flew to her hair, fingers tangling in the silky strands as your breathing grew heavier.

You couldn't hold back a moan as Abby's tongue danced around your sensitive flesh, sending waves of pleasure through you. Your body shook, your legs trembling as she worked her magic. "Abby, oh god, Abby," you whimpered, your voice strained with pleasure. "I'm…”

Her arms tightened around your thighs as she felt you nearing the edge. She quickened her pace, her touch becoming more insistent. Your back arched off the couch, your fingers gripping her hair tightly as you shattered, your voice echoing through the room as you cried out her name. "Abby!”

Abby continued her attentions as you rode out your high, prolonging your pleasure until you collapsed back onto the bed, your chest heaving. She placed a final kiss on your sensitive flesh before crawling up your body, a satisfied smirk on her face. 

Still caught in the throes of ecstasy, you could only manage a breathless giggle, your body tingling all over. You reached up, cupping Abby's face in your hands and pulling her into a deep, passionate kiss.

As you kissed her, you gently pushed her back, breaking the kiss. You looked up at her, your eyes shining with desire. "Now it's my turn," you said softly, reaching out to grasp the hem of her shirt. "I want you to strip for me, Abby. Slowly.”

As you broke the kiss, you looked up at Abby and whispered, "Strip for me." Your voice was husky from pleasure, your eyes dark with desire. Abby's smirk grew wider as she stood up, slowly reaching for the hem of her shirt. "With pleasure,”

Abby pulled her shirt up and over her head, revealing her toned midsection and the  bra barely containing her beautiful breasts. She tossed the shirt aside, her eyes never leaving yours. Her hands moved to her pants, unbuttoning them teasingly slow.

Abby shimmied out of her jeans, kicking them away as they pooled around her ankles. She stood before you in just her bra and panties, a sultry smile playing on her lips. Reaching behind her back, she unhooked her bra, letting it fall away to reveal her breasts.

“You look so good Abby…” 

Abby's smile grew wider as she heard your praise, her chest rising and falling with each breath. She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her panties, slowly sliding them down her legs. As she stepped out of them, she kicked them aside, standing before you completely naked.

With a mischievous grin, you patted your chest and said, "Come here, I want a taste." Abby's eyes glinted with amusement as she climbed back onto the couch, straddling your chest.

Abby slowly positioned herself over your face, her thighs on either side of your head. She lowered herself until her most intimate area was hovering just above your mouth. Your hands instinctively went to her hips as she gazed down at you with a look of pure lust. "Go ahead”

You eagerly buried your face between her thighs, your arms wrapping around her thighs to pull her closer. Your tongue explored her soft, wet folds, tasting her sweet nectar. Abby let out a low moan, her head falling back as she grinded against your face. "That's it…” 

In that moment, all you wanted was to make her feel good—wanted to be the one to lift her up, even if only for a while. As Abby was on top of you, every thought, every worry, faded away. You weren’t thinking about rivalry or perfection anymore. It was just about her—about giving her something real, something she might not have allowed herself to feel in a long time.

Abby's hands gripped the sheets as you worked your magic with your tongue. Her hips undulated in a sensual rhythm, riding your face with increasing urgency. Soft gasps and moans spilled from her lips, her eyes fluttering closed in bliss. "Don't stop…” 

Your dedication to pleasing her was unwavering, and it showed in the way you devoured her pussy. You sucked and licked with reckless abandon, your fingers digging into her thighs as you held her in place. Abby's legs began to shake, her body tensing as she approached her climax.

With a loud cry, Abby's orgasm hit her like a tidal wave. Her back arched, and she ground her pussy against your face, fucking your mouth with wild abandon. Her juices poured into your mouth, and you drank it all in, not stopping until she collapsed forward, her chest heaving.

Abby turned around and reversed her position on you, She shifted, moving to kneel between your spread legs. Her fingers trailed teasingly up your inner thigh before she suddenly plunged two digits deep into your aching core without warning. "You want this?"

You gasped, your hips bucking forward as Abby's fingers filled you. The sudden, intense sensation was both welcome and overwhelming. Your hands gripped the couch cushions, knuckles turning white as you braced yourself. "Yes... please, Abby," you panted, your voice barely a whisper.

Abby grinned mischievously, her eyes locked onto yours as she slowly began to move her hand. Her fingers curved upward, expertly finding that spot inside you that made your vision blur. Your breathing quickened, becoming shallow pants as she steadily increased the pace. "Abby... it's…”

Your words were cut off by a sharp cry as Abby added a third finger, stretching you deliciously. She could feel your walls fluttering around her digits, knowing you were close. "That's it, baby," she cooed, her thumb finding your clit and rubbing firm circles.

You thrashed your head back and forth, your mouth open in a silent 'O' as Abby's fingers worked you into a fever pitch. Your fingers tangled in her hair, pulling hard as your hips lifted off the couch, meeting her thrusts. "Abby... I'm... I'm…”

Abby's eyes darkened with triumph as she felt your body tense, your orgasm imminent. She leaned in close, her breath hot against your ear. "Let go. Come for me," she commanded, her fingers plundering your soaked depths with increased fervor.

Your back arched sharply as your climax hit you like a tidal wave. You cried out Abby's name, your voice echoing through the room as your inner muscles clenched rhythmically around her fingers. Abby held you through it, prolonging your pleasure until you collapsed back against the cushions, spent and trembling.

Abby's expression softened as she looked down at you, cuddled against her chest. She stroked your hair gently, her voice tender. "That was… You were-" she murmured.

Abby chuckled softly, her fingers trailing down your back. “Incredible. You're incredible.” She pressed a kiss to your forehead. 

Then, the air shifted—suddenly, she grew quiet, her expression turning serious. She held you close, but there was a tension in her grip now, as if she was reminding herself of everything she had tried to guard against. She remembered what had brought you both to this moment, and it hit her all over again—this couldn’t be a sign of weakness, of letting her walls down completely. She didn’t want you to see the side of her that she had fought so hard to keep hidden, especially now that you knew why her drive for perfection had always been so intense.

Her fingers tightened around you, but the tension in her grip was clear—she was holding on, but not entirely letting go. Abby’s gaze flickered to yours, then quickly darted away, like she was trying to avoid something she wasn’t ready to face.

“I don’t... do this,” she murmured, her voice unsteady, the words almost lost in the quiet. “I don’t let people in.”

There was a sharpness in her tone, something defensive, reminding you that this wasn’t the Abby you’d come to know—the confident, determined girl who had always kept a distance. This was someone else, someone raw, someone afraid of being vulnerable.

“I’m not asking you to change,” you said softly, your hand brushing her arm. “I’m not asking you to let your guard down completely.”

Abby looked away again, her breath catching slightly as she shifted, pulling back just enough to create space between you. "You should go," she said, her voice suddenly more distant, the walls rising again. "This... doesn't change anything. You were right about me—about everything. It doesn’t just vanish."

You could feel the shift, the sudden return to the distance she’d always kept. Her walls were back up, thick and impenetrable.

"You don’t have to keep pretending with me," you said, your words barely more than a whisper, but they seemed to hit her harder than you intended.

She stiffened, her jaw tightening. "I’m not pretending," she snapped, her voice sharp. "This is just... it’s not normal for me. I’m not... like you. I can’t just... I can’t just let go. There’s always something to prove. To everyone."

Her words cut deeper than you expected. You knew she was driven, had always been, but hearing her admit it so plainly—how much she’d built her life around that need for control—made you realize how much harder it was for her to let someone in.

"I’m not asking you to," you said quietly, your voice steady. "I’m just here. I’m not going anywhere."

She met your gaze again, but this time there was something different in her eyes—hesitation, doubt, maybe even a little fear. But it was gone as quickly as it had come, replaced by the same guarded expression she always wore.

"Don’t say that," she said, almost pleading. "Don’t act like I’m some... I don’t need someone waiting around for me. I don’t need anyone thinking they can fix me."

The words stung, but you knew they weren’t meant to hurt. She was trying to push you away, but this time, it felt different. Her voice, though sharp, wasn’t as certain as it usually was. You could see the cracks, but she wasn’t ready to let them show yet.

"I’m not here to fix you," you said, your voice quiet but firm. "I’m just here. And if you want me to go, I’ll go. But I’m not going to pretend like this didn’t happen."

Her eyes softened for just a moment, but before you could say anything else, she turned away, pulling the blanket around her tightly. "Please. Just go."

You hesitated, but nodded, the weight of the unspoken things between you heavier than the room around you. Without another word, you left, knowing that whatever had happened wasn’t over—not yet. And whether she would admit it or not, neither of you were the same as you were before.

Quiet Before the Storm

The next day, the library felt heavier than usual. There was a thickness in the air that you couldn’t quite shake, as if everything from the night before had followed you here. You'd barely seen Abby throughout the day. When you did, she seemed like she was in a different world, not meeting your gaze, not acknowledging you like she usually did.

You both had agreed to meet in the library to finish up the project, which was nearly done, but somehow it felt impossible to focus now. You were both supposed to be competitive, to push each other to be the best, to always come out on top. That was the deal. But now, after everything that had happened, things were different—this wasn’t just about grades or outshining each other anymore. It was something deeper, something much worse. There were feelings tangled up in it now, things that neither of you knew how to navigate.

You arrived early, trying to settle your nerves as you stared at the empty table. The clock on the wall ticked in time with the erratic beat of your heart. When Abby finally entered, you felt her presence before you saw her. She was just as you remembered—indifferent, guarded—but this time, there was something else in her eyes. A flicker of something unspoken, something that made you pause.

She didn’t acknowledge you, not in the way she usually did. Instead, she just walked past, set her things on the table, and sat down, almost mechanically. The usual fire in her eyes was gone, replaced by a quiet, almost unsettling calm.

"Let’s just finish this," she said, her voice devoid of the usual sharpness, flat and cold.

You nodded, but as the minutes passed, you realized this wasn’t the same. You weren’t just competing to finish a project anymore. This felt like a competition of something deeper, darker—something that neither of you had signed up for. The connection, the tension, everything that had happened between you both, was still hanging there in the space between you. It was worse than before, because now it wasn’t just academic pride or the need to be the best at school. This was about something more fragile, more vulnerable.

The silence between you both grew, and with it, the understanding that something had irrevocably changed. You both could feel it, but neither of you dared to address it. Instead, you kept working, but every movement felt heavier, as if the weight of your own thoughts and the lingering tension between you was suffocating you both.

It wasn’t just about competing for grades anymore. It wasn’t about who could be the smartest, the most driven, or the best in class. This—this was something worse. It was about what happened when all those walls you built around your pride and your achievements crumbled, and what you were left with was something real, something raw, something neither of you were prepared for.

You didn’t know if this was the end or the beginning of something far more complicated. But you did know one thing: it wasn’t going to be easy.

Something Beneath The Surface

The day of the presentation arrived, and despite the lingering tension between you and Abby, you both found yourselves sitting next to each other in class, preparing for what was supposed to be the grand finale of weeks of hard work. The project that had brought you together was almost complete. Almost. The day felt like it was going to be just another day—until it wasn’t.

Before the bell rang, there had been a quiet unease between you two. Abby had barely looked at you since you both walked in, her eyes focused on the project folder in front of her as she nervously fidgeted with a pen. The usual competitive spark in her eyes had dimmed, and she seemed distant—like she was holding herself back. You couldn’t help but notice the way her fingers tightened around the edges of the paper as if trying to keep herself from unraveling.

You sat quietly, your mind running through the final details of the presentation, but no amount of preparation could silence the knot in your stomach. You knew you couldn’t hide what had happened between you both, but now, in front of the entire class, everything was different. You weren’t just presenting to finish a project anymore. You were presenting as something else—something uncertain, tangled between unspoken feelings and unfinished business.

When the class started, you were called to go up first, and the usual nervousness was replaced by a tension that had nothing to do with the project. Abby stood beside you, her expression unreadable. You started presenting your section, your voice steady, but each word felt like it carried more weight than it should have. The class was watching, but it wasn’t the eyes of your classmates that made you feel exposed—it was Abby’s. She stood there next to you, speaking in her usual calm, collected tone, but her gaze never once met yours. She was speaking as if she were still trying to maintain control, as if this whole thing was just another task to cross off her list.

When it was over, the class clapped politely, but you barely heard them. All you could focus on was the space between you and Abby, the silence that lingered like an elephant in the room. You turned to her, hoping for something—some acknowledgment that you hadn’t just been two strangers presenting a project, but two people who had shared something much deeper.

She nodded stiffly, her eyes still avoiding yours. “Good job,” she muttered, but the words felt distant, like they weren’t meant for you at all.'

The bell rang, signaling the end of the class, and Abby didn’t wait a second longer. She gathered her things quickly, her movements sharp, like she was trying to escape something. Before you could say anything, she was out the door, leaving you standing there, unsure of what had just happened.

The rest of the class seemed to blur as you walked out, your thoughts racing, not about the project or the presentation, but about Abby. It wasn’t just the project that mattered anymore—it was the looming presence of Ivy Week, just around the corner. Everyone was preparing, everyone was talking about it. It was more than just a week—it was the culmination of years of hard work, of everything that mattered to Abby. And you? You were caught between that and everything that had happened between you two.

You stood there, thinking of what to do next. Should you follow her? Talk to her? Or should you focus on Ivy Week like everyone else and just let everything go?

But even as the question lingered, the anticipation of Ivy Week hung heavy. You could almost hear the voices of your classmates, already strategizing, preparing for what would come—the pressure, the competition, the stakes. Abby, as driven as she was, wouldn’t let this chance slip away, and neither would you. But with everything that had happened between you two, it felt like the real challenge wasn’t the Ivy Week itself—it was figuring out how to move forward when you both seemed to be walking on different paths, yet so undeniably intertwined.

Tipping Point

Ivy Week had arrived in full force, and with it came the heavy anticipation that hung over every conversation, every glance. You could feel it in the air—the competition, the tension, the pressure that had been building for months. It was everything everyone had been working for, and now, it was all coming to a head.

You barely had a chance to catch your breath before the news broke. Abby was in the hallway, talking to a group of friends when you overheard her name—your stomach dropped as you realized what they were saying. Abby had been accepted into Harvard. Of course, she had. She had everything it took—the perfect grades, the relentless drive, the ambition. It was all there, like a sign that her efforts had paid off. You felt a small sense of relief; you'd heard about your own acceptance into the Ivy League, and even though you had been so focused on the future, part of you had been dreading what it would mean for your relationship with Abby. You knew it had to come sooner or later—the fact that you were both destined for the same future.

As the day dragged on, it was clear that the excitement surrounding Abby’s acceptance was only making everything more complicated. The halls buzzed with congratulations, but to you, it felt almost suffocating. You’d worked just as hard—maybe even harder—to get to this point. But something about Abby's success, the way she held herself with that quiet, smug pride, made you feel like there was more to it than just academic rivalry.

The day ended, but the weight of the news was still hanging between you two, pulling at your every interaction. You couldn’t avoid Abby for long, and as the evening wore on, she showed up at your dorm room, her face unreadable.

“Congratulations,” she said quietly, her voice softer than usual. She hadn’t come to celebrate, not like you’d expected. Instead, there was an emptiness in her words.

“Thanks. Same to you,” you said, trying to keep your voice steady. You didn’t know what to say. There was so much tension between you two that you couldn’t even look at her without feeling like you were both trying to hold onto something that was slipping through your fingers.

“I wasn’t expecting it,” she said, a small, almost sad smile flickering on her lips. “But I guess... I guess it was inevitable, huh?”

You could tell she was trying to joke, but the bitterness in her voice was hard to ignore. You stood up, not sure if you wanted to get closer or push her away. "It doesn't feel like a win. Not yet," you said, your voice quiet, unsure if you were talking about Harvard, or about everything between you and her. "You were always going to get in. You always do."

Abby tilted her head, studying you carefully. “And you?” she asked, her tone suddenly more serious. “You think I’ve got it all figured out, don’t you? That this is the end of it for me? Getting into Harvard? It’s all just part of the plan, right?”

You were taken aback by the question. You didn’t know what to say. “It’s not just about that, Abby. We’ve been… we’ve been competing for so long, it feels like this whole thing was a game.”

She laughed, a small, dry sound that didn’t reach her eyes. “Maybe it was. But I don’t know if I know how to stop. Even now, even after everything that’s happened between us.”

The words hung in the air between you, thick with meaning. You could feel the tension crackling. “You don’t have to keep proving anything to me, Abby,” you said, voice wavering slightly. “You’ve already done more than enough.”

Her expression softened, but only for a second, before she seemed to close off again. "I don't know how to not keep proving it," she said quietly. "I’ve spent my entire life doing this—focusing on my goals, on everything being perfect. It’s who I am. And maybe, in some twisted way, I wanted you to be a part of that too. But I’m afraid, if I stop now, I might lose everything."

You stepped closer, your heart pounding in your chest. “You won’t lose anything,” you whispered, reaching out to touch her arm. "Not if you let yourself live a little. Let yourself have something outside of all this. Something that isn’t about competing. Something real."

Abby met your gaze, her eyes flickering with a mixture of confusion and fear, but also something else—something deeper, something raw. She stepped back, shaking her head. "I don't know if I can," she murmured, voice shaky. "Not after all this time. Not after everything I’ve sacrificed.”

The words stung, but you knew she was still in the process of understanding everything that had happened between you two.

"I get it," you said softly, trying to mask the hurt. "But maybe it’s time to stop pretending everything’s about winning. Or maybe you just don’t want to let go of the fight we’ve been having. Either way, we’ve been running from this for too long."

Abby didn’t answer right away, but the way she avoided looking you in the eyes told you everything you needed to know.

And as the night fell silent, the weight of Ivy Week, the pressure of the competition, and the uncertainty of your future together loomed over both of you. The storm wasn’t over, but it felt like you were both too exhausted to fight it anymore.

In the silence, all you could hear was your own heart beating, wondering what would come next.

After the Storm

It had been a few days since the tension had shifted between you and Abby, and though things had slowly started to feel lighter between you both, there was still a quiet sort of distance. You hadn't heard from her much after your last conversation, and while you didn’t mind the space, a part of you couldn’t help but wonder what was going on inside her head.

That’s when the knock on your door came.

You weren’t expecting anyone, especially not Abby, so when you opened the door to find her standing there, looking slightly apprehensive, you blinked in surprise. She was dressed in her usual cool, effortless way—jeans, a hoodie, and her sneakers, her hair pulled back into a messy ponytail. But her eyes, the ones you had come to know so well, were different this time. Soft. Vulnerable, even.

"Hey," Abby said, her voice a little rough. "Can I come in?"

You stepped aside, heart pounding for reasons you couldn't quite explain. "Of course."

She hesitated for a moment before walking in, her steps slow as she looked around your living room like she was unsure of how to act. The quietness between you two was palpable, but there was something in her expression that told you she was here to say something important.

You offered her a seat on the couch, and she took it without a word. You sat down across from her, crossing your legs, unsure of how to begin.

"So," you said, trying to keep your voice casual. "What’s up? What brings you here?"

Abby ran a hand through her hair, a nervous habit you had come to recognize. She seemed almost distant for a second, like she was debating whether or not she should say what was on her mind. Finally, she sighed.

"I’ve been thinking a lot lately… about everything," she started, her eyes meeting yours with an intensity that caught you off guard. "About the competition, about how everything was always about being the best. About how much I pushed everyone away, including you."

You blinked, taken aback by her honesty. Abby had never been the type to open up about her feelings so easily, especially not with someone she had been so competitive with.

"I get it," you said softly. "You were just doing what you thought you had to do. It wasn’t about me or anyone else, it was about you trying to be perfect in your own way."

Her eyes softened at your words, and for a moment, you both just sat in silence. The weight of everything that had happened—the arguments, the distance, the unspoken feelings—seemed to hang in the air between you, but there was something different now. Something that felt like the storm had passed, even if the aftermath was still lingering.

"I don’t want to keep pretending like I have everything figured out," Abby admitted, her voice trembling slightly. "I don’t want to keep pushing you away. You… you mean more to me than I’ve let myself admit. I’m just scared. I don’t want to mess this up."

You could feel your heart flutter in your chest. She wasn’t the same Abby who had always been so focused on her grades, her goals, her need to win. This was a new Abby—a more open, vulnerable version of herself that she’d kept hidden for so long.

But then, there was the hesitation, the quiet fear that lingered behind her words. "And my parents..." she trailed off, looking away. "They’ve always had these expectations for me—about what I should do, who I should be. They push me so hard, and I always felt like I had to be perfect for them. I didn’t want them to see you as… a distraction. I didn’t want them to think you were just some mistake. I didn’t want to disappoint them."

You listened, your heart sinking as you understood what had been holding her back. The weight of her parents’ expectations had been another chain keeping her from fully embracing what she wanted—what she needed.

You gently reached out, placing a hand on hers, feeling the coolness of her skin as she glanced back at you. "Abby, you don’t have to be perfect for them. You’re allowed to make your own choices. You deserve to be happy, and you deserve to have someone who sees you, not just the version they want you to be."

Abby met your gaze, and you saw something shift in her eyes—something lighter, like a part of her was letting go of the weight she’d carried for so long. "I know," she whispered, her voice quiet but firm. "And for the first time, I don’t care anymore. I don’t care if they disapprove of me being with you. I’m tired of living my life for them. I want to live for me."

The relief in her voice was palpable, and you couldn’t help but smile, your chest swelling with affection for her. You had always seen Abby as someone strong, driven by the need to be the best, but now you saw her in a different light—vulnerable, human, real.

She leaned in then, her hands cupping your face as she kissed you softly, her lips warm and tender against yours. It wasn’t just a kiss—it was a promise, an unspoken vow between the two of you that no matter what happened, you were both going to be okay.

When she pulled away, her forehead rested against yours, and you could feel her breathing even out, the tension from before finally dissolving.

"I don’t want to be scared anymore," she said quietly, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "I want to see where this goes. I want us to figure it out together, no more fear, no more pressure."

You nodded, your heart full of hope. "We will," you said, voice soft and sure. "Together."

And in that moment, everything felt right. The storm had passed, and what was left in its wake was a new beginning—a chance for both of you to be yourselves, without the weight of the past, without the fear of judgment. You didn’t need to be perfect. You just needed each other.

Together.

[gadriezmannsgirl]

Ok in honor of the new boyfriend selfie ruben posted, can u pls write something about him as a boyfriend. Like him being really needy to his gf, sending her silly pics like that when they’re away, and being very clingy and constantly needing affection from the gf when they are finally at home together

Here it is! Hope you like it, please let me know!😌

Needy, Cute and Manly Boyfriend -R.D3

Summary: He loves having your attention

You couldn't help but smile at your phone. Your 3 years boyfriend, Rúben sent you a pic of himself and your dog, Simba. You instantly replied with a quick "my baby's😍❤️. Love you both so much"

Soon Rúben sent another selfie, this one only of himself, at the bottom there was a text "What time you'll be home? I miss you"

You were going to reply but were interrupted by a call from you boyfriend, you quickly answered it.

"Meu amor" He said "I miss you"

"I miss you too, babe; but I still have another class to go, I'll be out in about an hour and a half, after that I'm all yours"

"You already are mine"

"Well yes but you know what I mean" Rúben chuckles

"Let me know, I'll pick go and pick you up"

"Thanks, Rú. But there's no need, Lisa can give me a ride home, you're pretty tired baby, have some rest"

"None of that. You said an hour and a half, right? I'll be there"

"You're so stubborn"

"Teimoso e tudo mas é assim que me amas" (Stubborn and everything but that's how you love me)

You smile nodding "That I do" You blow him a kiss "I need to go to class right now but I'll text you as soon as I'm done, handsome"

"You do that, bonita" (beautiful) He blows a kiss into the phone "Eu amo-te, amor"

"Love you too, baby. See ya later" and with that you hung up the call and entered your class.

After what felt like an eternity you went out discussing some points with your best friend.

"But it doesn't matter if we are different mentions?"

"I don't think so to be honest"

"And what about that neurology oratory? You're planning on going?" You nod

"Dr. Jones will do it and I think it will be good, you know? He's one of the best out here and it'll fantastic if I can do my internships in his hospital"

"You're good, you will do!" She nudges your shoulder

"We don't know about that, I need to be the first one in class"

"As if you aren't?" You gave her a look before she smirked "Prince charming's here for you" You turned around to see a very well known Ferrari and your boyfriend leaning up against the car with a cap on his head. "See ya, girl!" Lisa hugged you over your shoulders, kissed you cheek and let you go

"See ya, Li" You smiled at her before walking up to your boyfriend. "Hello"

"Hello, meu Amor" You quickly gave him a kiss on his lips, his hands went over to your waist pulling you closer "Let's go home?" You nod with a smile on.

He kisses your cheek before opening the door for you and helping you get in.

You push your backpack to the backseat and wait for Rúben to start the car.

"How was your day, querida?" (Darling) He asks, his hand going straight to your thigh

"It was good! We did a pop quiz, teacher told us to go out whenever we finished and at the end he gave us the results right there and then"

"How did it go?"

"Amazing!" You smile widely "I absolutely rubbed my full grade into his face"

"Is that professor the one you told me about?" You hum "What was his nickname? Doc. Mean?" You hum

"He's just awful" He laughs "And he looks exactly like Emmet Brown"

"The doc from Back to the Future?" You nod and Rúben squeezes your thigh laughing "He does look like him"

"Awful" You laugh with him as you watch how he changes the route to your house "You need to go somewhere?"

"We are going somewhere" He put emphasis to the we

"Where are we going then?"

"To get some burgers"

"You don't eat them"

"But you do" He shrugs "I can have a little cheat day"

"You having a cheat day?" Rúben looks at you during a red light "What did you do to my boyfriend?"

"No. What did you do to me? I never break a diet until you came around"

"So I'm at fault?"

"More or less, you love burgers and I love you. Having a burger once in a while won't kill me"

"It better not. I'll be a widow even before getting married"

"That's definitely something we don't want"

"Definitely not" You grip his hand with one of yours and hug his arm with the other "Can you also get me a?" -

"Double meat, double cheese burger with extra fries and a chocolate chip cookie? I know"

"I know you know... But I wanted-"

"An iced caramel mocha?" You look at him narrowing your eyes

"You know me"

"I have to, tu és a minha menina" (you're my girl) you smiled feeling him leaning over the console to kiss you quickly. He rolled down the window and greeted the worker before ordering.

A few minutes later, both of you were on your way back to your house, singing and humming along the songs on your shared playlist.

"Gonna take a quick shower, I'll be back in ten" You said as soon as you got inside, however Simba made it difficult for you, he wanted his attention. "You're my babyboy but you gotta let me go and take a shower, baby"

"Simba, I'm the only one who can jump on her!" You heard Rúben's voice inside the kitchen and then you heard the blender go on

"Dad's jealous. You're my baby" You kissed his fourry face.

"Weren't you going to shower?"

"I'm giving my baby love"

"You don't need to give Simba that much of love, you can give it to me"

"Are you jealous of a dog?"

"Pufff!" He gave you a look "Obviously yes. I'm supposed to be the only one you give your love and attention to"

"You are. But also is Simba" You kissed the dog's head once again

"Nonono!" His cries made you laugh "Simba, get off!"

"He likes the attention way too much"

"Even I do if it's yours!" You break in laughter

"You know I'll give you all my attention after I shower and eat?"

"What are you waiting for to do that?" He asks making you laugh more

"You are so jealous of your dog"

"I am!"

"Please don't take it in the wrong way but you're so needy, I love it"

"I'm not needy"

"És tão giro" (You're so cute) You said in between giggles

"Sou um homem viril, não sou giro" (I'm a manly man, I'm not cute)

"You are both, actually"

"Go take a shower, I'll set something up so we can watch while we eat and you love on me"

"Sounds like a deal" Rúben smiled before turning around to the kitchen "Hey" You call him as he turns

"What?"

You grab his hand and pull him down so you could kiss his lips softly "My needy, cute and manly boyfriend"

°°° °°° °°° °°°

taglist: @gaviymarcsbride @stuckinaf4nfiction @elijahslover @azzpenswrld @http-isabela

[heartfeltcherie]

❝come and get it now❞

notes; birthday present for myself! this is also my first time writing something not rated pg-13 so my apologies if it’s not the greatest.

wc; i was too lazy to paste everything to google docs to figure out how many words were written lolz

warnings: mentions of smoking weed, making out, suggestive at the end. minors please don’t interact lol

you emerge into the lounge area, looking for something— anything —to do, pure boredom clogging up your mind. you see alastor and your dead heart skips a beat.

only he’s capable of doing that.

shades of red cast in through the open door of the hotel. alastor leans against the doorway casually, smoke dancing from his lips so gracefully you’d swear he was doing it on purpose to put you in a trance.

“penny for your thoughts?” you didn’t realize you were staring. “are you smoking weed?” a dumb question. you know a blunt when you see one. “indeed it is, my dear” he answers back so smoothly and casually, like seeing him doing such a thing is completely normal.

you take a few tentative steps closer to him. he’s got his eyes trained on the outside of the pride ring. his side profile looks so beautiful. and the way he holds that blunt between his fingers with such elegance and… care? god, you wish it was your hand he was holding instead.

“didn’t take you to be a smoker” you joke playfully, leaning against the opposite side of the doorway, one leg crossed in front of the other. alastor chuckles at you. “there’s a lot of things you don’t know about me, belle” he takes another drag and blows out the smoke… your gaze goes to his lips. “my eyes are up here, darling” your eyes widen and your face feels hot as he curves his finger under your chin to tilt your head up. his eyes are so beautiful under hell’s red glow.

you both stay like that for what seems like forever, time ticking by slowly as you put a tentative hand around his wrist, carefully testing the waters. and it surprises you when he doesn’t pull away or make the distance between you two less…

he stays. and instead he uses his thumb to gently pull your bottom lip down, moving his thumb across it so teasingly and tauntingly — but what else did you expect? it’s alastor for hell’s sake. but it doesn’t stop the sudden urge you feel to open your mouth fully for his thumb to enter your mouth.

fuck…

“something on your mind, cher?” alastor’s voice breaks through the silence with a smirk on his face; yeah, a certain radio demon and how badly i wanna kiss him. “may i try it?” alastor tilts his head at you, his radio coming through with muffles. “the weed”

alastor stands up straight again, taking his hand away from you (it feels cold there now). he lets out a hum, taking another puff. “oh, if you so must” he passes it to you and it gives you butterflies that your lips will be where his were in just a matter of seconds.

he watches as you put the rolled joint between your lips and he swears to himself that he’s never seen you look more angelic — which is the funniest thing, he thinks, utmost hilarious, considering you’re in the depths of hell. you breathe in the intoxicating air but your lungs decide it would be fun to betray you, making you begin coughing an ungodly amount. alastor laughs at you.

what an ass.

“al, you’re mean! i could’ve died!” you put a hand over your chest, catching your breath. “oh the dramatics, my dear. it was simply just smoke! you wouldn’t have died”

“i deserve a redo”

“a redo you say? hmm…” alastor makes a thinking face for a moment before a smirk graces his face again. he gently takes the joint out of your hand. “my dear, i’m gonna need you to stay completely still for this” you nod and watch as he takes the joint between his lips again, breathing in with ease. he leans down again, cupping your chin with his other hand as the joint rests to the side of him. he uses his thumb, again, to gently pull your bottom lip down as he so-gracefully blows the smoke into your parted lips.

you feel so giddy having an intimate moment like this with hell’s most feared overlord. it makes you wonder why people think he’s so scary when he’s always the utmost gentleman… with you.

your eyes are closed as you feel his hand go from your chin to your hip, clutching onto the material of your clothing like a vice as you put your hands over top his chest and you swear you can feel his heart beating. it’s intoxicating and dizzying and it puts you in a daze when everything’s finished. you open your half lidded eyes and he’s still nose-to-nose with you.

“was that better?” alastor looks at you with hooded eyes and all you can do is nod, feeling like you’re not even on the ground anymore. he chuckles. “oh darling, you’re too adorable…” he brings his hand back up to your cheek, stroking your skin gently with his thumb. “especially in this state”

then do something about it, you wanna say.

“al?”

you swear you see him looking at your lips the same way you’re looking at his; with hunger, want, need, desire, like you’ll die if you don’t get to know the feeling of each other’s lips.

fuck it.

“what will it take for you to kiss me already”

and that sentence is all it takes for alastor to break the distance between you both, crashing his lips onto yours in a fervent motion. you sigh against his lips, your hands clutching onto the lapels of his coat because if you don’t, he might disappear. he tosses the forgotten joint somewhere outside, not caring where it lands as his only focus is hitching your leg against his hip and holding it there as he keeps kissing you with so much passion and hunger that it takes your breath away every time you hear your lips smacking together. you’re feeling so turned on and the high gives you this cloud nine feel and—

oh my fucking god, i’m high and making out with the radio demon.

alastor puts both hands on your hips as he mutters a small “jump”, refusing to bring this make out session to a halt for even a couple seconds. you happily comply as you jump into alastor’s arms, wrapping your legs around his waist as his hands cup your butt, giving a gentle squeeze and he can’t help but chuckle lowly as you gasp into his mouth. he walks you both over to the couch, stopping at the side of the arm rest before he gently lays you down on the couch. the kissing stops for just a second (much to both of your dismays) so you can watch as he crawls over top of you like a predator about to pounce on his prey.

you part your legs so he has space to slot between and oh boy do the butterflies tickle your tummy with their wings seeing him on top of you like this. your face feels like lava.

“you know, my dear, i was planning on properly courting you before doing such explicit things,” he moves some hair out of your face, looking at you with hooded eyes. “but my mind is filled with thoughts that make me less of a gentleman” you bring your fingers to card through his hair.

“i don’t want you to be a gentleman with me, al. not right now”

alastor smirks and you swear you see his pupils turn to radio dials as he leans into your neck and says lowly in your ear,

“good girl”

tags; @alastorthirsty

comments/reblogs are appreciated ♡ also! if you liked what you read, consider asking to be on my taglist :)

[starlit-typewriter]

Genshin SAGAU, Creator of Teyvat, but not Humanity Part 9

Here it is part 9!

Takes a peek at my writing doc. Yep uh, plot is beginning.

Also I've done the most recent Archon quest and uh, Wow.

I uh, didn't expect to cry that hard.

But very glad that my fic is still technically canon compliant. Literally counting down the versions till a lore drop breaks what I have built.

Warning for Spoilers up to Genshin Impact 4.6

Masterlist | Prev Part | Next Part

~~~

Silver clouds float around lazily on a beautiful sparkling blue sky. 

From beyond the billow of misted water, a spark shines.

It glows brighter.

And faster.

It shoots down towards the sky, breaking the sea of clouds, leaving a gaping hole from where it burst through.

The spark becomes a star, flickering from blue to a brilliant gold, leaving trails of light as it descends towards Teyvat.

As it approaches, it shrinks, becoming smaller, but no less powerful.

A targeted stream of light, of energy.

It approaches a city, a harbor. 

You can feel the energy in the air, the hustle and bustle as humans galavant and frolic.

The sounds and smell of a festival, filled with raucous cheers and lively conversation.

The light ignores it all, heading straight towards a solitary figure.

A figure cloaked in brown and gold, strolling along the roads of this place.

A non human hiding in their midst.

They’re concealing their presence, but the light knows better. 

It can feel their raw power and strength.

This is the one they were looking for. 

It heads straight towards it, hitting their body with force, causing them to stumble in their tracks.

The light, no. The blessing burrows it’s way into this figure.

Mine

It purrs, settling inside their body, warming him from the inside, filling their body with power and energy. 

All Mine

~~~

Your eyes snap open as you jerk out of your trance.

Morax was still sitting there, quietly.

Observing you with those eyes.

Those calm arrogant eyes.

You hate them, you hate them so much.

“Do you remember now,” he asks.

You clench your fist, fingernails digging into your skin. 

You don’t want to believe him. On some level you still don’t.

However, you can’t deny that he has your power. 

That he was gifted with your power.

Blessed

But you don’t know why.

The unfortunate truth, something that Morax no doubt knows, is that you don’t have all your memories.

Azhdaha’s sacrifice gave you some of your powers back, but it’s far from what you used to have.

You remember a time when you were powerful.

When you created mountains and oceans.

When you could create living beings with a single touch.

Well, not a single touch, but you could still do it.

You remember an era of peace, of dragons.

But it’s all gone.

Destroyed.

All because of them.

But you don’t know how.

You don’t know why.

The anger and grief wells up in your chest. 

Your power responds accordingly, strumming under your skin, begging to be set free.

No,

You can’t.

Not now,

Not yet.

Later, you promise yourself.

Later, you will find out the truth and get your revenge.

~~~

“To the tales of the lyre, to the sweet dream of tonight!” A sweet melodious voice sang to the cheerful applause of the Angel’s Share patrons.

The teal figure bowed jauntily, waving his hat with a flourish.

Another successful night completed! 

The bard in question skipped over to the bar, offering its red headed owner his most charming smile. 

Alas his efforts were in vain as the Pyro wielder barely offered him a glance before going back to polishing glasses.

“Oh come on Master Diluc,” he weedled, offering his best puppy eyes. “Did my music not please your patrons ears, surely that deserves some complimentary beers”

“That’s exactly why I’m deducting some drinks from your tab,” He grumbled, “your unpaid tab, might I add.”

“In Angel’s Share I spend my time, in hopes of getting some dandelion wine,” he strummed, “Of varied notes, I sing so high, yet my sweet drink you so deny.”

“Let the bard drink,” Quinn cheered drunkenly, as did the rest of the tavern to Diluc’s chagrin.

The man tried to explain, only for the cheers and chants of the tavern to rise in volume, drowning his voice out. 

Mondstatians and their alcohol.

The tavern owner turned around with the most unimpressed face known to mankind.

Venit would be intimidated, but unfortunately for Diluc, he is not a man and has seen much much more unimpressed faces over the years.

The two stared each other down, one smug and the other exasperated, all the while the tavern’s chanting rose.

With a defeated sigh, the uncrowned king of Mondstadt pours the bard a glass of dandelion wine. 

The bard in question whoops in triumph. As does the rest of Angel’s Share as they celebrate his “Victory” with more drunken cheers and songs.

He knew the tavern owner wasn’t truly angry, exasperated and annoyed perhaps, but the man could never muster any real anger towards Venti.

A small bonus from him revealing his true identity of the Anemo Archon to him. 

For all his tough words against the Knights of Favonious, he was still a Mondstatder through and through. 

Whilst he did not have nearly as much presence in Mondstadt as the other nations did, and was proudly the weakest of them. The people of Mondstadt did not forget what he’s done for them and still recognize and worship him accordingly.

The wind spirit kicked his legs back and forth and he watched the redhead over the lip of his glass.

In terms of personality he really is nothing like his ancestor. Which makes sense of course, it’d be foolish to expect them to end up the same even though they have the same bloodline.

If anyone in Mondstadt were to have that title it would be the Acting Grandmaster.

Guiltily, he is glad that they differ.

To humans, gaining a vision is a great honor. Proof that their worth has been acknowledged by the gods.

He’s happy for them as well, whenever a Mondstater gains a vision.

But he won’t deny the seed of anxiety that sprouts in his heart as well.

Visions can make humans, gods among men.

But the world is made of more than just men. 

Humans may be many but are comparatively weak in the grand scheme of things.

Although, having numbers is its own form of strength.

Perhaps he isn’t giving humans enough credit. 

A lone human is weak, but a group of humans have a level of strength and fortitude that amazes even the gods.

He supposes that must be why the heavens protect them so.

Well, protect is a strong word.

They will do whatever it takes to ensure the continuation of humanity.

But they really won’t waste their time on individual humans.

Unless,

Well,

Visions are gifts for a reason.

Allogenes are rare, and are appropriately rewarded.

Not that visions are not a great boon.

He’s single handedly watched how visions save and change the lives of their wielders.

It’s simply what can come after.

It is extremely rare for an allogene to ascend to Celestia. That position is only reserved for the strongest of wills in all the lands.

Vanessa was one such will.

He knew it the moment he laid eyes on her. 

Her burning passion and desire to protect her people.

How could she not gain a vision, how could she not ascend.

It was why he stuck around, stayed by her side. 

Partially to ensure the safety of Mondstadt. 

Partially to see if there’s anything he could do to save her.

Not that there’s anything he could do, or dare do.

Her will was extraordinary during her life.

It's just beyonf that, that is the issue.

The gaze of Celestia is particularly strict when it comes to cases such as these. Any attempts to defy destiny will be met with swift retribution.

Celestia does love its retribution.

Any hint of disloyalty, or protest will be swiftly squashed.

There was always a bitter irony in his position as Archon.

He was strong enough to protect his people from gods and monsters and other humans.

But not Celestia.

Not one was strong enough to fight against Celestia, even the creator of this land fell to their lies and trickery.

He has no idea what the Tsaritsa could possibly be planning to think they stand a chance.

Perhaps that’s why she’s moving so quickly.

In hopes of finishing her plans before the Heavenly Principles awaken.

He wished her luck on that front.

Even though he may not have the courage to do the same.

He just wished she was less aggressive about it.

Honestly, she didn’t even bother asking him before sending Rosalyn to attack him.

In front of his own church no less.

Honestly the audacity

Although, to be fair, without that audacity she probably wouldn’t have dared to try going against Celesta. 

Her lack of contact with Celestia may have also played a role.

She is not a part of the original Seven after all.

Both he and Morax had visited Celestia firsthand upon their ascension to Archonhood.

It’s where they received their gnosis, their Archon robes and well.  

Where they’ve seen the true capabilities of Celestia.

Witnessed the lengths they’re willing to go to to squash any resistance.

On that front he understood Baal’s reasoning behind the Vision Hunt Decree.

While she may not have gone to Celestia herself and witnessed what the original seven did. He had no doubt that her sister passed on some warning to her before her death. 

It was smart.

If not ultimately misguided.

Sacrificing the few for the sake of the many.

Stifling a couple vision holders in exchange for the safety of her nation.

He understood the urge.

Disagreed with it, but understood it all the same.

The role of allogenes is essential to the survival of Teyvat.

Like it or not.

Without them, Teyvat would collapse.

Sacrificing the few for the many.

He despises it.

What Teyvat is built upon.

What it requires to function as it does now.

But he’s not strong enough to change any of it.

All he can do is wallow in the knowledge that Teyvat is-

The bard shakes his head vigorously to get rid of the path his thoughts are heading towards.

No,

Bad thoughts,

Not tonight,

Tonight is for fun.

Not, 

Well.

Anyways, he’s getting maudlin, that’s no good for such a festive night. 

He tips his glass back, emptying it of its contents.

The Dawn’s Winery quality is unparalleled.

As usual of course.

One of his pettier achievements to say the least.

When Morax announced his desire for Liyue to become the trading hub of Teyvat, and one of the most prosperous nations. Going on to monologue about how he will pave the way for business and prosperity using his contracts and all that blah blah blah.

Well, he couldn’t help but make fun of him about that, now could he.

Leading to Rex Lapis snapping back about how he can’t contribute anything to his nation beyond drunken songs.

Well jokes on him.

Mondstadt is now the nation of drunken songs. 

The best in fact.

Sure it could be considered a waste of time to change the water in Mondstadt specifically so that it would be the best for wine brewing.

But the wine industry is now one of Mondstadt's main sources of revenue.

It was a calculated business decision and completely not related to the grumbling of some winemakers about having to purify the water multiple times to get a good yield.

A familiar presence approaches, the wind whispers.

Venti perks up as he hears a familiar set of footsteps approach.

“Tone deaf Bard,” an excitable voice exclaimed. “I knew he’d be here.”

The bard in question swiveled around in his seat to face the Traveler and Paimon, pasting a cheerful smile on his face.

“Traveler, we meet again, why don’t you sit down, we can share a drink or ten.”

The golden haired teen rolled their eyes at his, admittedly cheesy rhyme.

“I need your help with something,”

Their voice is serious.

In all honesty he hasn’t seen them this serious since what happened with Dvalin.

Venti took a quick peek over at Master Diluc, still serving other customers, great!.

He quickly slipped out of his seat and followed the Traveler out of the Angel’s Share.

Once they’ve reached an appropriately secluded spot, they turned to him.

Paimon and the Traveler exchange glances.

This must be pretty serious for even Paimon to sober up like that.

“Venti,” they ask, “We need to ask you and Dvalin a favor.”

Me, and Dvalin?

What could-

“The creator of Teyvat is back.”

~~~

Masterlist | Prev Part | Next Part

I was thinking of doing something special for part 10, haven't really decided but I'll keep you guys posted.

Thanks so much for your kind words of encouragement.

You guys are the only reason I've gotten this far in the story so far.

As always my askbox is open, for any questions, theories, etc etc

Taglist:@bunniotomia,@lucid-stories, @ymechi, @chocogi,  @ra404, @ash1, @esthelily, @tottybear, @mmeatt, @quacking-simp, @reemthetheme, @universallyenthusiastsage, @resident-cryptid, @fantasyhopperhea, @thedevioussmirk, @etherisy, @naynayaa ,@mel-star636, @chericia, @aithane, @mmeatt, @xrosegorex, @amidst-the-tempest, @8-sinner-8, @reapersan, @elementalia ,@strangeygirl, @chaoticfivesworld, @scalyalpaca, @avalordream,@ranshin03, @vvyeislazzy, @wishicouldart, @raykayrei

[the-oblivious-writer]

After the Storm |2|

Tara Carpenter x Spider-Woman!Reader

Chapter two: Repeated Mistakes

Summary: Another time's a charm, right?

Warning(s): Swearing, Police!Sam, & spidey level violence

Notes: Not my gif! Writing for spider!reader is literally so fun

Masterlist|Previous Part|Next Part

“So if you need a hero, just look in the mirror...” You quietly sang between bites of the sandwich Tara packed for you. You were currently on a rooftop with your feet swinging off the edge and mask half up as you ate. 

You continued to hum along to the song that was playing in your head when you heard your phone ring. You turned it over to see Tara calling you.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“You need to come right now,” a loud crash could be heard in the background, “It’s Dr. Connors—shit!”

“Tara? Tara!” The phone cut out and before you knew what you were doing, you dropped everything and started swinging to Blackmore.

When you got there you could see The Lizard through one of the windows as he shredded the place to pieces. He was in the middle of clawing up the wall when you snuck up on him.

“Ugh, we have to stop meeting like this,” you leaned up against the wall on the opposite side, arms crossed.

“Spider-Woman…” The reptile snarled. 

“Dr. Connors! How've you been buddy? You know…since we squared up in the sewers?”

He didn’t respond verbally; he swung his large tail at you and you jumped up to the ceiling, dodging it. He didn’t relent, continuously attempting to grab and claw at you. You were able to land a few punches to his face but not before he lunged at you, landing the both of you in the college’s lab.

He now laid on top of you with one arm raised, ready to claw out your eyes. “Your breath is horrible by the way,” you remark before webbing his eyes, using that distraction to slip free.

You both wrestled with each other, causing an even greater mess. You were on his back, holding onto him by your webs as he tried to get you off. Suddenly, he rams his backside—you—into the wall and it feels like the wind just got knocked out of you.

He looks over to the filled beakers and combines its contents, throwing them at you as it explodes. It looks like it took you out but suddenly you emerge from behind him, putting him in a headlock.

“Why can’t you be a normal lizard,” you grunt as you do this.

He throws you to the ground, slamming his fist down with a great force. You quickly move your head before it could get squashed from the giant lizard's hand. You leap up, quickly dusting yourself off and your fight with The Lizard continues.

You’re able to get him out in the halls, trying to control his movement with your webbing. “Can’t we just talk this out? You’re not thinkin’ straight doc!” You shout as he tries to rip off your webbing. He takes another swing at you, and you leap up to the ceiling. 

You swung and crawled around the ceiling as he tried to forcefully tear you down. You grab a light but it falls, causing you to drop to the ground and Connors leaps at you but the light from before falls on his head.

By the time he’s up, you’re ahead of him, webbing his hand to the locker but unfortunately giving him a weapon as you see him ripping off the locker door you webbed him to, raising it in the air and ready to swing.

“Oh boy.”

You leap backwards with each swing he took then slid between his legs using a web. He turns around to see you squatting. 

“Alright so you don’t wanna talk?” As the reptile responded with a growl you cut him off by webbing his mouth. “There you go!”

 He ripped off the webbing and swung around his tail. You held onto it… What a mistake.

“Don’t–uff–make me–uff–have to–” you said as he swung the tail you clung on back and forth against the walls, “hurt you!” Suddenly you fly further down the halls, still holding onto the tail that has now separated from the reptile’s body.

“Ahh!” You screamed before harshly hitting the ground. “Ugh, disgusting,” you threw the tail off of you before leaping back up. The Lizard, who already had a freshly grown tail, was walking towards you with loud stomps. 

You webbed both sides of his shoulder, lunging forward at him but he quickly reacted by grabbing your head and slamming it into the window beside him. You were practically suffocating under his giant hand as you struggled to tear away from his grip.

You grunted when he suddenly dropped you and turned to face his left. You looked over to see Tara, raising a trophy that you assumed she hit Connors with.

“Tara,” he growled, stomping towards her as she backed away with each step he took.

The Lizard was about to attack Tara but you pulled his raised arm back with a web. You continued to web him up as you crawled around him, trapping him as a spider does with its prey. 

He struggled to break free from your web jail as you immediately went to Tara, taking the trophy from her hands and throwing it out the window, causing the glass to break. You pulled Tara close to you, hands on her hips as her hands held onto your shoulders.

Tara’s eyes shifted up and down your mask face before you finally spoke. “I’m gonna throw you out the window now.”

“What?!”

Before Tara could process what she just heard, you did as you said and threw her out the window. She shrieked and you shot out your web for Tara to hang by. Tara was still gasping in shock as she felt around the web that was now sticking to her waist. She swung back and forth as she was finally able to process being thrown out a window.

By the time The Lizard was finally able to break free, police sirens could be heard. You smirked behind your mask as you heard them, moving into your notorious Spider-Woman squat.  

“Uh oh…someone’s been a bad lizard,” you quipped in a teasing tone. 

Your fight quickly travels to the library but by the time you lift yourself up from the last blow, Connors is nowhere to be seen. You let out a sound of frustration as you looked around the destroyed room, no sign of where he could have gone.

—

“No,” Sam said with firmness in her voice as she and Tara washed and dried the dishes.

“Pleaseee?” Tara begged her sister. She was trying to convince Sam to let you come over for dinner but it was no use; Sam was never your biggest fan. The fact that you were a genuine kid with a high IQ didn’t matter at all to her. Tara knew Sam was being biased because of how you defended a certain masked vigilante. She’d be grounded for life if Sam ever found out Tara’s relationship to said vigilante. 

“No is my final answer.” Sam turned off the water, walking over to sit on the couch. Tara put down the rag and followed her sister.

“You just need to get to know her.”

“I know plenty.”

“It’s not fair Sam; you haven’t even given her a chance,” Tara’s voice ran hot with frustration. She let out an aggravated groan, stomping off to her room and slamming the door shut before Sam could stop her.

Sam sighed, rubbing her temples as Tara took out her phone and sent you a text.

wife to be (8:43 pm) you doing anything rn?

bug girl (8:43 pm) possibly getting ready to see you if I get a yes

wife to be (8:44 pm) See you in 10?

bug girl (8:44 pm) ofc<3

wife to be loved ‘ofc<3'

Just like you said, you were there in ten minutes. Tara heard a light knock on her bedroom window and turned over to see you giving her a dopey smile. She giggled before walking over to lift up the window. 

“Hey, bug girl,” she greeted before leaning in and giving you a kiss. You melt into the kiss as you both wrap your arms around each other. 

When you break apart, you look into her eyes with that same dopey smile. “Hey, gorgeous,” you replied before giving her another kiss. 

“Come on, it’s cold out. Let’s get you inside,” Tara said after the kiss, not waiting for a response as she pulled you inside by your sleeve. 

“You okay?” 

“Hm? Yeah—yeah of course. Why?”

“You just seem…off,” you answered, giving her your full attention.

“Just another fight with Sam,” Tara responded, waving you off as she sat down on her bed. Her head followed your movement as you walked over to sit beside her, gently placing a hand on hers.

“You wanna talk about it?”

“Not really,” she answered honestly.

“Okay, we don’t have to,” you turn over and reach into your bag, grabbing something, “Guess what I got…”

Tara grinned as she saw you had something behind your back, “Is that what I think it is?”

“Depends,” you reveal what’s behind you, putting it to your chest for Tara to see, “how passionate are you about sour gushers?”

“Did I ever tell you how amazing you are?” 

“Are you talking to me or the gushers?”

Tara pretended not to hear you as she grabbed her laptop from the nightstand and opened it. “I’m in the mood for some horror,” she said as she took your arm and wrapped it around her. "Wow, guess I know my worth when gushers are involved."

A couple hours go by and you’ve fallen asleep on her shoulder. Tara looks at your resting face and smiles to herself, but her admiring is quickly interrupted by police sirens coming from outside. The sounds quickly wake you up. You look around as you become self aware of your surroundings.

You look out the window from where you sat, seeing the flickering lights as the police cars raced through the city’s streets. You give Tara a look that she has gotten enough times to know the meaning behind. 

She lightly nods at you, giving you a quick kiss on the cheek before saying, “Go get 'em, spidey.”

You grab your bag before jumping out the window, luckily wearing your suit under your clothes.

Tara sighed to herself as she stared out the window you just leaped out of. 

“What am I gonna do with you?”

—

A few hours later, you decided to revisit the sewers. You were determined to have your traps work this time. After some tweaking and adjusting, they were all set for a re-do. You refused to just sit back while The Lizard crawled the city’s sewers, endangering the city.

As you set up the last trigger, you heard a noise. It sounded like a low growl that only grew and grew with time. You hurriedly shot a web, now hanging from above.  You carefully, and quietly, watched as Dr. Connors rummaged through his belongings; it looked like he was looking for something.

You hung for a few more seconds until suddenly your spidey senses went off; you immediately swung down, dodging The Lizard’s mean claws when they swiped at you.

“Filthy pest,” the mutant growled with venom laced in his tone. When you finally got a good look at him, you could tell he was more far gone than the last you saw him.

“Damn, doc. You look like shit,” you said before he whipped his tail at you. You jumped up, quickly webbing his eyes and feet. While he was distracted by the webbing, you took that as an opportunity to lure him closer to your traps.

You thought back to your crawler trap you performed at the school, thinking it could work again. You crawled around the lizard, webbing him up as she struggled and swung his claws and arms. You could see it. He was about to take one more step and your plan would have worked.

Suddenly, your spidey senses went off. You looked to your right to see him crashing into a pipe. You were able to move before it fell onto you but when you looked back to The Lizard, he had broken free.

The reptile growled before running at you with full force. Instead of moving, you stayed there until you jumped at the last minute; he crashed into the wall, letting out a loud and frustrated growl.

He quickly picked himself up, ripping a pipe off of the wall. That’s when you realized. He had cornered you. This whole time you thought you were setting a trap for him, but alas he’s done it for you. 

Your senses were going off but you had nowhere to go. There wasn’t even enough room to crawl upward. Before you could even think of where to escape, you felt the metal pipe The Lizard harshly swung at you. It made contact with your ribcage, causing your breathing to grow slightly heavy. 

Surely The Lizard knew a metal pipe wasn’t enough to keep Spider-Woman down?

Suddenly, he threw it to the ground. He picked you up then harshly threw you back down, and you were now doubled over with your backside showcased to him. He balled up his fisted then slammed them down on your back, causing you to let out a loud gasp as you felt the air being sucked out of you.

It all made sense; he was just warming you up with the pipe.

He turned you over and slowly dragged his claws across his chest as they grew in size. You groaned in pain as you tried to push his big hands away but he only pushed his claws in deeper. “There is no stopping me. I’m getting stronger everyday!”

He tightly gripped your throat as he raised you up, slamming your head harshly against the wall. You gasped for air as you felt tight pressure surrounding your throat. “There’s no stopping…what you too will soon become,” The Lizard snarled before throwing you to the ground.

You weakly lift yourself up by your arms, now on your knees and coughing. You were hardly catching your breath when your senses went off again. 

You were too weak to react when it happened. When his large hands slammed on both sides of your head. The ringing in your ears being so loud you couldn’t hear your own screams. You couldn’t hear…anything. 

You were helplessly laying in pain when The Lizard made his escape. When you couldn't hear his loud stomps, or even the dripping water; you knew you were screwed.

You were scared and alone.

-----------

A/N: I swear I'm gonna make up for the lack of Tara and R scenes in this chapter with a one-shot/drabble for this story

[essentiallyleaf]

day 01. titfucking. with. yel.

1709 words.

tags.

kinktober ‘23, idol x male reader, college classmates, subby(?) reader, cutie not-really-dom-but-not-really-sub-either yel, i know that doesn’t mean anything but that’s kinda how it is, public, handjob, blowjob, some spit, fondling, self-fondling i guess, masturbation, titjob, titfucking (are they the same thing?), actually it’s probably just softie dom yel, idk how to do this, barely edited, it wasn’t supposed to be this long.

notes.

i accidentally opened a google doc and this is what happened. if you read this, i love you and i’m sorry, and if you don’t, i also love you and you might be dodging a bad-writing bullet, so congrats, reader. or, non-reader, i guess. lovingly, leaf.

You need to get your shit together. The first day of college was always going to be hard, but the combination of you waking up half an hour late, of your ancient, rectangular-spectacled professor blabbering for an hour, no, an hour and sixteen minutes, about derivatives and limits, and your ponytailed deskmate’s disproportionate tits almost popping out of her tight white t-shirt, begging for your attention, well, that made it incredibly harder.

So as soon as the lecture ends, you take your tired, bored and horny ass off the chair and go to the restroom to try to freshen up.

“Do you like them?” A voice pops out of one of the stalls behind you, making you jump on the spot. You see her face in the mirror, it’s the pair- or, the girl who was sitting next to you in class.

“Sorry?” You turn around, startled and confused.

“Do you like my boobs? You've been looking at them for the whole class, do you like them that much?” She asks again calmly, on her face the same bright smile she had when she entered the classroom. Guess her rack wasn’t the first thing you noticed about her. Probably the second though.

“I’m so- I wasn’t look- I’m sorry.” You can’t hold eye contact for more than like, a second and a half straight.

“You didn’t answer” She tilts her head to the side and crosses her arms, pushing her breasts together even more.

“I- Did the professor ask me anything? Sorry, I’m still half asleep from-”

“My question. Do you like my tits, pretty boy~?”

Wasn’t that a rhetorical question? Besides, how did she get in the men’s room? Before you, nonetheless. She even hid in a stall, like a ninja, hiding in the trees before jumping on her prey. Is this part of a conspiracy, an ambush orchestrated towards you? And why is your dick getting hard at her calling you pretty?

“Answer honestly. I won’t get mad” She really looks like she won’t. She has the smile of a person who’d never hurt a fly. Her head swings lightly from left to right and back, making her ponytail dangle with it.

“I- Yes” You look away awkwardly and try to fix your pants so your hard-on doesn’t show.

Then, like she’s not in the middle of a public bathroom of a public university, or maybe like she knows that she is, and finds the whole thing that much more intriguing, she goes:

“Hehe~ Wanna see them?” What the fuck?

“Yes.” You don’t even say that. The word just leaves your mouth of its own accord. And while you’re wondering how it did, she’s already taking her t-shirt off and reaching behind her back for the clasp of her bra.

Click.

She takes two steps towards you while removing the straps from her shoulders, now only holding her cups with her palms, still smiling like this is a game, and she’s winning by a landslide, playing with you at this point. And now you can’t look away.

She slowly lowers her hands and lets her bra fall to the floor, revealing a pair of magnificent, big, round breasts. You’re now fully erect and don’t give a shit about hiding it.

She lets you stare for a couple seconds, then attacks your lips while holding your head. Your tongues meet and wrestle for a while, your hands still awkwardly holding the sink behind you.

“You can touch, you know~” Your hands grip her wide hips tight, then move up her back while you’re still kissing her and reach to the front, finding her soft boobs. You fondle them with both hands, your thumbs playing with her nipples. She moans softly.

One of her hands leaves your cheek and darts down towards your shaft, stroking up and down through your pants and making you growl in her mouth.

Then she detaches from your body in a flash, like she just had an epiphany, and heads towards the stall she came from.

“Come here, I think you’ll like this” She’s not asking this time, so you don’t answer. You simply smile back, follow her in and let her take the lead.

The girl gets on her knees and starts unbuckling your pants, her stare not leaving your eyes. She pulls your pants and boxers together down to your ankles, your cock plopping down right in front of her face. She looks at it with hunger, licking her lips, while she starts stroking it. She knows you don’t need her to, you’re already fully erect, she’s just playing with it for her own pleasure, and you’re ok with that.

“You’ll need some of this, hehe~” she says as she spits on your dick, spreading her saliva around with both hands now. She then does the same on your balls, and just to keep you busy in the meantime, she wraps her lips around your rod, slowly inserting more and more of it into her mouth.

“Fuck!” You know you’re still in a public bathroom, but her mouth is too good to care about that.

She takes more than two thirds of your cock, you almost touch the back of her throat before she retreats, drooling a little.

“Hehe~ You having fun, pretty boy?” You shudder slightly at the pet name. “Don’t cum so soon though, this is not even the best part~”

She spits again, this time on both of her hands, then begins fondling and massaging her own boobs. She’s staring at you when she starts, but she slowly gets more and more immersed into her own massage and closes her eyes halfway through, high-pitched whimpers occasionally leaving her mouth as she flicks her nipples. She licks her lips, like she’s longing, waiting for something, so you instinctively reach towards them with your finger, which she accepts into her mouth. She coats it with saliva and licks all around it, even bobbing her head on it a little, still smearing saliva onto her breasts. Your dick is hanging there untouched and you just stare at her pleasured state in awe. After what felt like almost a minute she breaks out of her trance.

“Oops! Sorry, I got a little too into it, I do that sometimes” she shyly remarks. You give a doting smile.

Then she immediately wraps her tits around your shaft and starts bobbing them up and down in a frantic rhythm, causing you to seek support on the wall behind you from the sudden pleasure.

“Hehe~ I knew you’d like this, you’re so cute”

This girl will be the death of you. You know that when she casually throws compliments at you, you know that when she puts that giddy smile on, but more importantly you know that when she does all of that while squeezing your dick between her boobs and bouncing on it.

As your hand reaches for her now slightly messier ponytail, she lowers and opens her mouth, letting her tongue out. With each thrust your tip now meets her soft, wet tongue, adding more stimulation to your shaft. She even gives it a little lick once in a while, and now you’re silencing your moans. You feel your orgasm building, so you take things into your own hands.

“Fuck, wait a second”

The girl only mouths a cute “Okay~”, simultaneously taken aback and amused at how you take the lead. You grab and place her back against the wall, then reach for her tits. She’s still on her knees, but she’s quite tall, so you only need to bend your knees slightly for your dick to be right in front of her breasts. You then place your shaft between her mounds and press them together before you start thrusting up slowly.

She can now keep her eyes on yours as you gradually pick up the pace. Both of her hands are free, but you only feel one wrap around the back of your thigh, both slowly stroking it and slightly supporting you. She reaches up towards your butt, helping your hips’ motion and now almost guiding your rhythm as you speed up and feel yourself getting closer. As you thrust between her breasts, you start squeezing them like stress balls, and at this point there’s nothing other than you, her boobs, and your impending orgasm. So when she starts fondling your balls from behind, the moment the pace of your thrusts reaches its peak, you know that’s the last bit of stimulation you needed.

“I’m about to cum. Where do you want it?”

She doesn’t even speak, just takes your dick and wraps her lips around it, licking all around it while spurts of white hit the back of her throat again, again and again, as you feel her mouth vibrate on you like she’s moaning on your girth. She keeps up the tongue work while bobbing her head up and down slightly, and as you release the last few drops, you’re just spent.

It takes a minute with your back against the wall for you to even be able to say anything.

“Are you okay?” She nods cutely and you notice she seems to be storing something in her cheeks. She opens wide and shows you the pool of your cum still in her mouth, not a drop wasted, then swallows it in one go. You stare at her mouth agape, she just chuckles.

Then you realize. “Shit, you didn’t- Do I need to-”

“Don’t worry, I got my share” she says while taking her still wet and sticky right hand out of her panties, then licks her fingers clean. “Yummy~” You bet. You’d love to have a taste, next time. “Thanks for offering though, you’re so cute~”

This girl will be the death of you.

The two of you put your clothes back on and wash up, trying to look as presentable as possible. When she’s ready, she turns towards you.

“My name is Yel, by the way, nice to meet you!” She extends her arm for a handshake like it’s the most normal thing to do after giving a titjob in a public bathroom. And in the awkwardness of the situation, you find that endearing.

“See you at class tomorrow?”

-

footnotes.

so, i'm trying this kinktober thing. i don’t know how many days i will write, maybe 31, maybe 10 , maybe even just this one, but i’ll try. some of them will be shorter, some longer, some softer, some kinkier, most of them probably very sucky. for now, just thank you for reading. have a kith and a good day <3. hopefully, leaf.

[toriisasimp]

Sleepy Scientific Method

Egon Spengler x Reader

Prompt: During a rough night of attempted rest, you are the only one awake in the firehouse, getting a midnight snack. But, when Egon realizes you're awake and more tired than you think, he offers some help to try and soothe you back to sleep.

Warnings: None! Just an INSANE amount of fluff, and unspoken feelings!! We love to see it!

A/N: My first published Egon one shot. I have so many sitting in google docs and thought I might as well start putting them out! Egon Spengler is the loml and I love writing fluff with him. ENJOY >:)

-

It was nearing the ungodly hours of the morning, and you had been lying awake on your bunk for at least two hours now. You crane your neck to get a glimpse of the alarm clock next to your bed, and it reads 4:07 AM. Christ, you think- running a hand over your face. You sit up slowly, eyes adjusting to the darkness and seeing four lumps right where you left them, along with the sound of a distant ticking clock, the AC pumping, and Venkman’s snoring. You’d adjusted to it and naturally gained the ability to tune it out when you sleep, so you knew it wasn’t that keeping you up. 

Perhaps it was the four cups of coffee and 53 page research paper you typed up for Egon to read over on the cardiovascular effects of paranormal experiences on humans. 

Snapping out of your train of thought, you finally give up and toss the covers aside, snatching your robe and tossing it over your shoulders before trudging out of the bedroom and into the large lounge area, most of the lights shut off. You flick one on, a small kitchen light sitting above the dining table in the middle of the right corner. 

Squinting and yawning, you stand still for a moment and let your eyes adjust to the sudden change of light before shuffling over to the fridge, opening it up and peeking inside. An aching appetite, perhaps that was it. You grabbed the gallon of milk that you prayed wasn’t expired, checked it by taking a whiff and making the assumption that it was fine. 

You then opened the top cabinet, reaching up and just barely grazing the cereal boxes on the top, before knocking one over and catching it right on time. Cinnamon Toast Crunch, your favorite. You and Egon shared a love for it, while Venkman liked Fruit Loops, Ray liked Lucky Charms and Winston was a Cheerios kind of guy. 

You kept stock of all of them.

You then grabbed a bowl and spoon, and opened the box as quietly as possible and tried to inconspicuously pour it into the bowl, only making a slight clinking sound as the cereal hit the inside of the bowl. You put it back, and poured some milk, just as you heard your name being softly called from the bedroom.

Egon stood in the doorway, holding his robe around his waist with one hand as the other slid on his glasses. 

Your eyebrows raised, immediately feeling guilty for waking one of your buddies up with your midnight cravings. 

“Sorry, I’ll uh- I’ll be done in a second.”

“That’s alright.” He successfully gets his glasses on and finishes tying his robe, as he approaches you at the counter. “An early breakfast?”

“Can’t sleep.” You say while pouring some milk into the bowl.

“Have you considered melatonin?” He inquired, tilting his head.

“Doesn’t work on me.” 

“Hmph.” He hums, turning to lean his back against the counter and fold his arms, eyes scanning over the dark horizon of the rest of the floor of the fire house.

You then stir the cereal a bit, then take a bite and chew as you pick up the bowl and resume the same position as him.

“Sorry if I woke you up.”

“You didn’t.” He shook his head slightly. “I already had something on my mind and was basically awake.”

You tilt your head, take another bite of the cereal and chew while you speak. “What’s on your mind?”

He shakes his head and looks down at the floor.

“Alright.. I won’t pry. For now.”

He smirks and looks back up straight for a moment, before his eyes move over to your tired figure.

“You look tired.” He notes the prominent bags under your eyes, the lack of color in your skin tone, and the downturned position your face automatically takes, rather than the more alert, expressive one it usually does. 

You shrug and nod. “I am. But I have nothing on you- didn’t you say once, gosh, that you slept for like-“

“Fourteen minutes a day? Yeah, I quit that a couple months back. Ray said it was making me a bit hay-wire.”

“Egon Spengler? Hay-wire? Pshhhhh.” You shake your head and giggle softly, and you look down and see the empty bowl of cereal. You must’ve finished it during the conversation. 

“Very funny.” He says plainly, and you can’t quite tell with the sleep in his voice if it’s genuine or sarcasm.

You snort at his response, turning and rinsing the bowl out in the sink before setting it down into it, and sighing softly as you run your hands over your face.

Egon internally goes over the list of strategies to create sleepiness.

“My Mother always used to tell me when I couldn’t sleep to just lay there with my eyes closed. Turns out she raised an insomniac, because it never worked. I always ended up sleeping throughout the day.”

“Have you considered physical touch?” He asks out of the blue. 

You turn, the next words you were going to say getting caught in your throat. You perk a brow.

“What?” You ask, genuinely confused.

“Physical touch. I’ve looked into it myself, and some sources say receiving physical touch can lead the mind into a relaxed state, and could also lead to sleepiness.” 

You let out a puff of air, wondering where he’s going with this.

“Ray says I give good hugs.” He states, almost like a question- trying to prove himself. 

With that, you look over at him, giving a small wiggle of your eyebrow as a silent ask of approval, and he gives a subtle nod, opening his arms just enough for you to step in front of him and up to him so you’re pressed against him, your head resting perfectly against his chest. Your arms naturally fold against his chest as well, not exactly certain on putting them anywhere else.

There’s a moment where he’s not touching you anywhere else, other than where you are touching him- until you feel his arms gently wrap around your waist, his hands folding at the base of your spine. He lets out an audible breath.

You already feel your eyes start to flutter.

“Do I have to-“

“We can just stand here, if that works for you. I don’t mind silence.” He speaks softer this time, more tender- and it makes your shoulders relax.. you didn’t even notice how tense they were.

“Focus on your breathing,” He begins to quietly guide you. “Lower the tongue from the roof of your mouth. Let your eyes shut and your body relax, I’ve got you.”

I’ve got you.

Your face turns slightly further into his chest, and you inhale, taking in his scent.. it’s hard to place, but it makes you smile.

“This is quite the scientific solution, Doctor Spengler.” You say softly with a giggle, and you can feel his chest rumble beneath you as he laughs as well. 

Without another word spoken, he brings his hand up to the back of your head, resting over the bun your hair was tied up in.

“May I?”

You nod, and he gently tugs on the scrunchie, your hair falling out and resting naturally now. 

The scrunchie disappears out of his grip, and it’s replaced with the alluring sensation of his fingers running through your hair, over your scalp.. making you shiver. Your eyes are completely shut, your breaths slowing.

You’re not sure how long he’s been playing with your hair and holding you upright, but you eventually mumble.

“Egon, I might fall asleep standing up..”

And you hear his gentle response,

“I won’t let that happen.”

Sleep tugs at your eyes, your mind, and your entire body begins to give up it’s weight.

As you brink at fully being unconscious, you feel something else peck at the top of your head for a brief moment, before it slumps to the side, and you lose contact. 

But not soon before you feel your heavy legs get whisked up from under you, making you feel completely weightless. 

There’s some soft footsteps, the pause and reach as it suddenly gets more dark, and then more footsteps before you feel yourself getting eased back into your cozy bed. There’s another pause before your blankets are pulled up to rest under your chin, and another one before you feel the same rough, but gentle fingertips brush some of your hair back, and another peck at the skin of your forehead.

Some unintelligible words mumbled, or maybe they’re just sounds.. 

Before sleep finally pulls you under.

And all you dream about is the undeniable comfort and peace Egon Spengler brings you. 

-

<3

[calware]

dear calware, I'm not sure how much you know on the topic of Doc Scratch, but I was wondering, why is the common consensus around him that he's like a creepy pedophile? after rereading his messages with Rose, he seems more tone deaf and weird than a fully on creep. is there something I'm missing?

scratch isn't "literally" a pedophile (or a hebephile, which is the accurate term for this situation) which we know because of this

but at the same time, that is still the Way he's written

(i'm sorry if this following explanation is confusing.... i really do not have the right wording to describe it) it's almost like a metaphorical representation. he's a child predator in every way but the actual sexual attraction. the way he's written references the behavior of actual child predators and is meant to signal to the audience that this is the Kind Of Character he is. it's a literary tool(?)to tell the audience that he is literally taking advantage of characters in various ways (as well as straight up abusing damara) while at the time comparing it to child sexual abuse

but if you do want literal actions on his part, he does Literally groom young girls and they are his targets for manipulation

also, directly from the author commentary (which. is not 100% serious at times. but i do think it sometimes offers some actual insight):

I know I just said a bunch of stuff about [DD] maybe being a creep. But look, this is just my OPINION here. I don't think he's actually being creepy about this. I think he has a genuinely parental attitude toward Aradia and wants to see her succeed in her violent and underhanded schemes. See how he wants them to conduct their business with efficiency? He's way too professional to go Full Doc on these girls.

Another peek at Rose suggests she's still at it with her creepy uncle, Doc Scratch.

Then you have a few beats of conversation which bring Equius to mind, such as the creep-factor

[Dirk and Equius] have this creepy-guy streak running through them, with strange or offputting interests, and seem to get a quiet kick out of making others uncomfortable through demonstrations of these fascinations. [...] I'd say these self-examined qualities are just drawn out, isolated, and inflated both for dramatic effect, and also as critical write-up of those qualities existing within many human beings in general, which I would like to think is grounded in a creative process involving a certain degree of humility about some of this bullshit. I like all these characters here, but that doesn't mean I think their unpleasant qualities are good. It just means I am harnessing and heightening those qualities for creating strong villainous portraits.

We start getting the sense that the entire purpose of this conversation, from Doc's vantage point, is just to passive-aggressively manipulate Rose into peering directly into one of his cursed testicles. Wait, my youth pastor is literally barking like a dog right now for some reason. Probably because I put him on a leash and tied him to a post in the backyard. I guess I fucked up again? I mean one of Doc's seeds.

Maybe it's fair to say I have a higher than average tolerance troubling content. But even I have to admit to shuddering a little when I read Doc's creepy lines toward Rose. I think Doc's creep factor toward girls is most likely channeling part of Caliborn's personality, which almost seems to revolve around his horrid attitude toward women. For Caliborn, this weird combination of wrathful misogyny, yet fixation and obsession with certain girls, is obviously central to the type of real-world profile he's meant to portray. But when his personality is more muted among the collective in Doc's head, those qualities come across as more "restrained," "polite," and "flattering," which arguably just makes it all creepier. The result is a creepy dude profile that also exists in the real world, sort of adjacent to the Full Caliborns out there. There seem to be many stripes of this kind of unfortunate male behavior, which all exists in a broader family of sub-Caliborns. The Docs, the Eridans, the Cronuses… They're all sketchy in different ways.

Doc sitting back just to "watch" is another creepy Equiusism. Remember that was a thing with him.

I wonder what Jade would think if she knew she had in her possession since childhood one of Doc's testicORACLES!!! Oracles. The word I meant to say was oracles, not anything else. Anyway, like I was saying, how would Jade react if she realized every time she played with one of her beloved toys, she was actually fondling this weirdo's plump, juicy oracle. I know you think my youth pastor may have something to do with this peculiar outburst, but you're wrong. I "dismissed" him recently, because he told me with great pride that I learned everything he had to teach me. I don't need anyone to keep me from shoving my foot in my mouth anymore, I'm sure you'll be pleased to know. Now let's watch this grieving teen receive a demonic message from an evil puppet's big fat nut.

bonus commentary from book 6 that has nothing to do with the post:

We're reaching a specific kind of story partition. Not the end of an act, but the end of a year. Also an end of "disc," which is a kind of meta-partitioning I just made up for the purpose of closing the book on two years of content, as well as being a good meta-device for introducing the Doc sequence we're about to get into in the next book.

"next book"...... sad

[therealslimshakespeare]

Friends in the Crucible

MOTA PACIFIC THEATRE || FLIGHT SURGERY AU

1: Welcome to Hell Island

Requested by the sweet @forsythiagalt

AU NOTE: due to a long-standing crush on real life heroine Ensign Jane Kendeigh and her work on Iwo Jima, the current ongoing anniversary of the battle and a hope to not step on the toes of any existing Nurse!xBuck pairings -I’ve gone with what excited my imagination the most and created an entire Pacific AU with our MOTA boys. If this AU ends up being as interesting and stimulating to y’all as it was for me in writing it, I’d be terribly down for exploring more scenarios with everyone in their new and varied roles.

Main paring: Gale Cleven and OC Flight Nurse Ensign Maureen Kendeigh…cameos by “Doc” Egan, John Brady, Ken Lemmons, Harry Crosby and Benny Demarco…and maybe a nod to a certain Marine Captain named “Andy” who I refused to let die, even though he was never on this island. You neither need to have seen HBO’s Pacific or know about the history for this to make sense, in fact it might help my ignorant writing go down better without it 😏

Warnings: WAR?! Graphic descriptions of wounds, battlefields, gore, foul language, period typical language: use of the word “Jap” and a joking insult of “fish eater” for a Catholic. Hints that John Egan is a terror to his nurses, Cleven having to take his pants off for a wound to be examined, brief mentions and emphasis on his never having been touched by a woman intimately, a nurse positioning a man’s member out of the way to his surprise, strictly professional tho. No joke, really. But they’re having a bit of a moment.

Only proof read once. So many thanks to Bee, Christi and Ashley who all enabled me into going this rogue with a simple request and for giving edits and assurances. Hope y’all enjoy!

There were a whole lotta jolts in the descent. Of course there were. Why, there were jolts and bumps even coming down to the runway at Pearl or San Diego, and there had been far more than jolts on the training tarmacs in Kentucky. She had been in enough planes, experienced enough banging about, and had enough wheels up landings that Maureen felt somewhat entitled to her opinion on the necessity of jolts or none.

So far, Major Gale Cleven had piloted this monstrous tin can like a limo, smooth, steady and with full warning for each bank and turn. Maureen had not even had to catch a single falling bottle so far and the rows of empty bunks lining each side of the plane had hardly rattled except in the same low humming frequency of the ever thrumming engine.

But now there were jolts. And of course there were, they were flying straight into a warzone. Cleven had gotten them to Iwo Jima two hours ago, and since that time he’d been circling the island in a wide arc, casually waiting for a pesky air battle between fighters to calm down enough for him to land. Sure, the beaches had been wiped clean and a landing strip had been carved out of volcanic ash and marine corps blood -cleared for their use. But still, there were Jap bunkers, Jap planes, Japs themselves and Jap equipment in that smoldering mountain and so far, no word had come down definitely as to when the island might be considered secure.

It was all very historic, Maureen has been assured -allowing a woman into a combat zone. First time ever, so they kept erroneously insisting. That’s why there was a man armed with a camera and not plasma sitting a few lines down from her on the cold metal bench. Maureen had once had plenty of time to ponder the historicity of her mission and that of her fellow nurses back in Guam, right now she wished she could focus solely on her training and ignore the ominous crack-pop of something hazardous in the air and the resulting wobble of Major Cleven’s steering.

Stupidly she wished the Major’s low voice would come back on through the near radio system and soothe them all back down like frightened livestock. Gale Cleven had a way of managing that even with his face obscured, and while it made Maureen blush to admit she needed any calming, the facts were she was 24 years old, practically untried and desperate to be brave enough to be of use. Rattling on the bench seat between equally nervous girls and a hawk-eyed journalist was no match for the cuticle picking anxiety.

Maureen chose to forcefully look up from said bloody cuticles and was met by Major Egan’s gum smacking grin across from her. How many carriers had he been on when they went down? Kamikaze planes jutting out the side of them, ocean water pouring in, sharks abounding and hundreds of patients under his care, in his charge to tow to shore?

Mild, scattered, poor-man’s flack wasn’t remotely disturbing to their flight surgeon. “He’s great, isn’t he?” Egan yelled to her cheerfully, the jerk of his head suggested his praise was directed towards someone in the cockpit.

Maureen knew well enough that much as Egan respected the co-pilot Demarco, it was no match for the love affair between him and Cleven, an appreciation that had Egan’s special request yanking his friend from Air Force to Navy to Transit. Such a series of bounces in a man’s otherwise distinguished career, all to chauffeur one charmingly entitled flight surgeon, was enough to put anyone into a bad mood -it would explain Major Cleven’s initial coolness on meeting them all at the departure tarmac.

Or maybe he was just businesslike. Maureen couldn’t fault anyone for that. He had been prepped, perhaps not as much as she had, but he didn’t act entitled in any way, and he kept the plane steady. Except for this mounting series of jolts.

“Yes,” she had chosen to holler back to Doctor -Lieutenant Commander? Bucky No Shits? Johnny? Doc “Smirky”?- Egan, knowing he’d want a favorable report on his friend, “it’s been remarkably smooth.”

Maureen was glad truth aligned with diplomacy in this instant. Although if any man could handle the outright truth it was John Egan, no matter what they all said. And “they” said a lot, he had once had two marine squadrons under his care and to them he was a Marine, simultaneously he’d had three navy squadrons to take care of and to them he was a Navy man. He’d even switched uniforms thrice in a day before. And now he was being flown about by his best friend to tend carcasses on a foreign strand, oddly suited to terrible conditions and bad scenarios, offering medical aviation expertise and poorly timed jokes wherever he went.

He’d trained her group of specialized Evacuation Flight Nurses the last three weeks of aquatic conditioning in the states, and he’d culled eighteen out of the group for getting winded after towing full grown men seven laps in the San Diego surf -all while puffing on a cigarette himself, seated with sunglasses on in an motorized dinghy. Maureen had come to hate him that day, and every day after she’d come to want to be like him. Kathleen Martin got her wings pinned first and Maureen right after, “well done, Candy!” Egan had praised while his fist drove in the tack.

“It’s Kendeigh, sir.” Maureen had dared correct for the hundredth time that training week, “Pronounced like: Ken-Day.”

“Cand-ay. Got it!” he repeated with jovial affirmation and that was that.

Major Cleven had given her the respect of calling her ‘Ensign’ as he shook her hand, a quick and firm squeeze and on to her next companion, she’d have judged him as too pristine in everything from mannerisms to features were his war record not ample justification for his bearing. The low cadence of his voice over the coms came in as a slight pitch to the plane and a swoop of decline in altitude became apparent under her—

“All personnel prepare for landing.”

Cleven was nothing like those pilots during training, barking orders laced with frantic warning in their voices. It was a cow pasture back in Kentucky and there they’d had no good reason for alarm. Here where there was real reason, Gale Cleven crooned to them and John Egan smiled opposite her as he took in the effect his chosen pilot had on his nurses.

“Like soothin’ a baby,” Egan sighed as he lounged a little deeper on his bench, long legs deceptively braced for impact, Maureen had long ago learned the man was nothing but smoke and mirrors of his actual intentions, “isn’t he great? In danger of fallin’ asleep with that guy at the wheel.”

To emphasize his point -or more likely to distract “his girls” from the imminent prospect of landing on a battleground, Egan leaned back all the way and tipped his cover over his eyes, pretending to fall asleep. Maureen caught him as he cocked one sharp eye open to see if she was still watching. She gave him a hopeless smile of recognition of his disguised kindness before forcefully suppressing a gasp of shock as the plane hit Amtrak smoothed gravel and ground its way down the beach. Egan hadn't budged by the time the momentum ceased and the plane became bizarrely still after hours of vibrating travel.

“Right. That’s us.” He straightened up, his cover and his posture, rising up in his seat and slapping at the metal ceiling of the plane, “Good job Buck.” he hollered and got no reply. “He’s still crabby about flying a C-47.” he divulged to no one in particular as they all rose and prepared to disembark, drilled for ages in this routine and finally let loose to practice it. Egan’s nonchalance was almost disorienting for such a momentous occasion.

The large cargo door was opened and a irreverently pleasant tropical breeze funneled through the plane, bearing with it the sounds of crashing waves and popping, far off gunnery. There was also a smell that came with it, sulfur and sweet. It was sickening from the first, and Maureen dreadedly wondered if it was from volcanic fumes and rotting vegetation or something more heartbreaking. With her kit on her back she followed her companions out the cargo door, finding Major Cleven blank faced and unphased on the tarmac beside it. Nothing but a smidge of sweat around his hairline to suggest the hours of flight he’d just clocked and the wacky landing he’d managed so well.

“Welcome to hell island, ladies.” he greeted in a droll monotone and Maureen’s gait stiffened without her permission.

There was no true tarmac, as they had been warned, just a strip of cleared back sand churned up by Cleven’s wheels. Lapping waves were on the left side and then a field of sheets to the right. It was the oddest sight. Rows and rows of camo tarp and white sheets blotted pink, hardly a spot of sand to be seen between. They’d been warned it was havoc here, the situation so bad that they’d finally allowed for this exception, allowed the sending in of specialized units to evacuate by air as the boats could hardly ferry enough of the wounded out in time to save them. But this -this beach of corpses was so daunting a task it seemed impossible to choose where to start.

“John,” she heard Major Cleven address Lieutenant Commander Egan as he dropped down beside her, “you’ve only got so many births, do what ya need to do to fill them, but I’ve got my orders. You’re not settin’ up a hospital. When we get the supplies off, get this plane full -we’re takin’ off. Full stop. I’m not gonna have us here like sittin’ ducks for the mortars while you fuss.”

“I hear ya.” Egan assured him in that remarkably unassuring way of his and lit a cigarette. “Alright nurses, gather round.”

Triage was crucial for such a mission, the prioritizing of wounds and necessary services essential for prolonging the lives of those in imminent peril, versus those with the likelihood of surviving on only the essentials found in a corpsman or medic’s arsenal. They’d be back tomorrow with another flight, and the day after that. Cleven was right that they weren’t here to establish a hospital, yet still the idea of how many would perish from being left behind, even by this first flight, was a sickening probability Maureen has been trained to ignore.

“Where are all the corpsmen?” Egan asked one pharmacist's mate who came to greet them, picking his way through the rows of groaning men. The boy couldn’t have been a day over seventeen.

“Up there,” the kid had nodded up to Mount Suribachi and its ominous veil of smoke, “or dead. Lost so many in the first week they started sending us in to substitute. We’ve done what we can. Sure glad to see you guys.”

“What’s your name, boy?”

“Lemons, sir.”

“Hell I can’t call someone a lemon, now can I?” Egan’s grin was infectious and the boy grinned back like he was seeing his first friend in ages.

“Then it’s Kenny. Sir.”

“Yeah alright Kenny, let’s get to it.” Egan had drilled you all so thoroughly you could have performed even without the aid of the grounded pharmacists and their mates, yet still it was odd to see such a mass of wounded and so few to tend them. The desperation and chaos was tangible.

Maureen had barely set off out from under the plane wing when Gale Cleven’s brusque reprimand arrested her steps as forcefully as a tug to her flight suit would have, “That bunch don’t need your help.”

The terse judgment in his tone gave her sharper eyes to notice that the particular section she was headed towards all had sheets pulled over their faces. Her own face blanched at both the misstep and the sensory overload of so much sorting to do. She wasn’t going to feel sorry for herself, not here, not when faced with the easy part of all this, and she wasn’t going to be crippled by criticism while enduring her first trial by fire. “Right, thank you, Major.” she agreed with him as stoically as possible and ground her heel back around on the sand and tromped off towards the direction of sheets that were visibly alive and writhing in misery.

That changed as soon as they saw her girlish form walking amongst them. Sounds of dying anguish changed to cheerful wolf whistles and happy greetings. It made Maureen’s heart swell with pride at the unbreakable spirit in each of them.

She spent the next hour and a half amongst those men.

Gruesome was a word that Maureen swore to herself that she would never use lightly again. She wasn’t one given to hyperbole anyway, and her years apprenticing in the hospital in Manilla and her most recent training for exactly such wounds as these, understandably led her to believe she knew the mettle of such a word.

But no.

Gruesome, she decided as she began her task again and again, applied only to this: the way the tiniest slip of her hand on any part of this poor boy took skin with it, charred and soupy flesh squishing off meat and sinew like the flaky crust on a prime bit of brisket. It was the only comparison fitting. His own flamethrower had bitten him as he tried to take a countless next pillbox. He’d said it like a joke even as his teeth chattered too hard from pain to deliver the punchline.

Maureen wasn’t here to contemplate ironies, or the unfairness of war, she was here to find some intact vein through which to stab her needle and begin giving him back the blood that was slowly leaching into the black sand beneath him. Ensign Smith was holding up the bottle, throwing a shadow over his charred form that helped Maureen discern a bit better, giving the boy a kind word or ten of reassurance about home and pain relief. Maureen bit through her own tongue when she finally slid the needle home, deep and pulpy, she could only pray it would hold the blood they gave back.

“Alright, bandages, Smith.” Maureen decided and did her best not to jump as a mortar thumped on the sand, hundreds of yards away, but still, they were getting ever closer, proving Major Cleven’s grim prognostication to not be unfounded. He was confirmed that the Japanese didn’t give two shits about red crosses, much less cargo planes carrying in supplies and taking away wounded. Maureen tried not to dwell on it as she and Smith began cutting away filthy uniforms and wrapping their patients' flesh in the Vaseline soaked bandages. It was a terrible business for the first few minutes before the interlaced numbing agents in the gauze took affect and made their care something less like torture for the poor men.

Some of them could walk, a missing leg being a mild injury comparatively, they just needed the helpful shoulder of a technician and off they went to amble into Cleven’s plane. There the Major met them despite it being beyond his purview, handing out cigarettes even though he himself abstained and kept an eye on the Navy mechanic refueling his plane from a bullet riddled jeep. When he wasn’t doing that he was scanning the sky, aviators turned up and reflecting a cloudless sky. Maureen’s mouth grew chalky at the thought of what he was looking out for.

Once wrapped and tended, the men were ready to be hoisted on stretchers and taken to the plane. But those men were select ones, ones that Egan had decided upon. He had a particularly odd way of triaging, one that upon initial observation appeared rather callous and aloof to his nurses who had been trained as much in medical practice as in solicitous decorum.

Doc Egan moseyed through the ranks of wounded, keenly aware he was not as popular as his pretty faced nurses, but making up for it with such easy-going banter that chuckles followed him wherever he went, making the men forget that he was deciding who got relief and who did not. Who were to be permitted the cooling sheets of Elysium by nightfall and who were to be left burning on the sand. Puffing a cigarette and making small talk, he clocked each injury and each likelihood of recovery without giving a bit of it away.

Nearing Maureen’s own patient of the moment, she felt him crouch down beside her and take in the hopeless gut wound she was ineffectually trying to stuff with bandages. A sturner superior would tell her not to bother, to move on, save such determination for someone with a longer life expectancy than five minutes. Maureen found it hard to make that call herself when met with the pleading eyes of someone’s dying son.

“C’mon Candy, move over, lemme try.” Egan murmured and his hip knocked hers gently as he crouched over the boy, perfectly aware of the futility. “Hey bud, breathe for me, breathe. You wanna smoke?”

Egan’s now bloody fingers reached up to his own lips and plucked his fresh and third cigarette of the hour and brought it down to the boy’s chapped mouth, shifting until he was fully seated on the sand, arms around the kid’s shoulders, gently taking the refreshment away when he puffed out, then replacing it for another inhale.

Maureen knew better than to linger. Beside this scene of brotherly last rites was another dying man and a hundred more beside him, so she moved on, seeing only vaguely the way the kid coughed blood as he laughed at Egan’s conversation. The topic seemed to be on the boy’s dog back home. The Sergeant she was tending added in a bit of teasing over the name -who names their dog “puppy”?!

Maureen had barely managed a tourniquet on the sergeant's arm before she could suddenly hear Egan’s gentle chatter turn to low shushing.

The sergeant looked away to the other side.

Maureen noticed the discarded cigarette laying on the sand, it had been smoked to a stub.

The heaving rattle of panicked breath beside them stopped.

Egan shifted onto his knees again and his long, bloody fingers dragged those sightless eyes closed. There was the brittle clink of dog tags being checked.

The sheet was tugged up all the way.

That triage was over.

Maureen politely ignored Doc Egan’s harsh sniff beside her -it was dusty here- but clocked the way he rose to his feet, a rough brushing off of his flight suit and his brusque inquiry regarding her morphine distribution in sector 2.

“All tended-“ she had begun when a shout from the far off plane rang out-

“-JOHN!” That was Cleven’s unmistakable bellow and Egan, despite being in a human sea of potential Johns- responded like he’d been made to hear that one voice alone. “Incoming, west!”

“Shit.” Egan spun westward and sure enough there were fighters with a blazing red sun, rushing straight down at them.

They were such a distance away still, Maureen doubted Cleven’s sight for all of fifteen seconds before horror set in. “They wouldn’t-?” she looked up at Egan whose bitten lip suggested that they would indeed strafe these poor men given the chance.

“Stretchers!” Cleven yelled again, “Get ‘em under the wings!”

There was a callous logic to it. Those men already prepped to be saved might as well be prioritized this much more. Fairness wasn’t something promised in war and Maureen chose to hate Gale Cleven instead of some ephemeral “war” for verbalizing the awfulness of that necessary.

“Do it.” came Egan’s agreeing order and Maureen and Smith took their respective sergeant down near the waterline at a run, fifteen other nurses and the various techs mimicking them. They deposited their men under the relative safety of the flimsy wings and dashed back out for more, leaving two techs behind to hoist the poor fellas into the cargo hold and deposit them in their respective bunks.

“Come onnnnn.” Cleven’s warning yell was drowned by the commencement of allied anti aircraft higher up the beach, trying to pick off the fighters before they reached the landing strip.

Maureen hardly noticed the closing drone of the fighter’s approach, nothing but her heart beat and memorized lines of her training on repeat in her ears. She’d been trained to fight hand to hand if necessary, her folks knew the risks of their daughter volunteering for such service but there was a sour dampening of resolve at the idea of being picked off from the air, not even allowed a bit of struggle to go out with.

All she could do was lift, hoist, run, deposit, do it all again.

They were getting near to full. On one pass through she saw Cleven counting berths and scolding poor Ensign Courter for her rushed method of securing her charge- “five feet drop to the floor on my first bank, oughta be just what that chest wound needs. For God’s sake, I’ll do it!”

He had a cold sort of fury to him Maureen found obnoxiously potent, and she felt a judgment rise in her for his obvious haste in wanting to get out of there. To his credit, when the planes did go by and everyone hit the ground, he was still standing yanking on the straps to secure the top bunk. Bullets punctured the side of the plane and riddled it, tiny specks of light flooding into the dark hold. One man was grazed as he lay in there.

“John!” Cleven warned again after they’d gone by.

“I know, I know damnit.” Egan snapped back from yards away, “There’s just not enough corpsmen -let me finish my damn job.”

“By the time you finish yours I won’t be able to finish mine.” Cleven retorted and the obvious finally occurred to Maureen -perhaps it was not his own safety that preoccupied him but the fragile capability of his riddled plane being able to evacuate once full. That, was indeed, his job. Still, such sentiments expressed as they were from the shelter of the cockpit and from a man who favored a silk blue neck scarf identical to the shade of his eyes, rankled Maureen.

The returning buzz of the Japanese fighters coming back around only cemented her futile rage. Her arms were aching and the sand caught at her boots and her mouth was dry with dust and there were so many, so, so many more left to help. Ensign Smith had been called away to assist with lifting another, and Maureen was knelt beside the man they’d managed onto a stretcher, doing her damndest to find how many bullets were embedded in his left leg and how deep the shrapnel was on his right. There was so much blood and filth it was impossible to tell and Andy, as his name was, couldn’t give her much help besides informing her it hurt like hell and she sure was a sight for sore eyes.

“Egan! At your three o’clock!” There was Cleven again.

Maureen grinned back at Andy and forced it to stay on her face as the buzz of the approaching fighters grew imminent and the dreadful thwump of machine gun fire thudded into the earth yards up the beach. It hit the section of the dead first, a further injury and dishonor. Maureen felt a lump in her throat at the realization she had no one near to help her lift this stretcher and that Andy himself hadn’t a usable leg to spare.

“Go.” her patient told her with a clear look of realization on his face as the leaden spatter of strafing began to elicit responses from those wounded men still alive enough to react.

“No.” The refusal came out of her mouth about as naturally as taking the next breath.

A shadow threw over them for a second and Andy’s facial expression grew surprised, but, stubbornly focused on her patient’s face, Maureen assumed it was the plane passing by at last and chose not to spend her last seconds watching what was going to kill her. “Ensign Kendeigh, lift.” Major Cleven’s voice was so close so suddenly it spooked her flat on her backside until she saw him, squatting down and casting a shadow at the head of the stretcher, poles gripped in both hands, ready to hoist. She scrambled to the foot and took the wood in hand, lifting for the twentieth time that day and running towards the plane.

Time was slow and fast all at once. Cleven’s shadow had come before even the first fighter. But as they ran it zipped by, bullets flinging up sand into their eyes, a near miss. The second one was close behind and as they ran near to the wings, they saw no room was left under them, as crowded as an awning at Coney Island during the height of summer.

Maureen squatted fast and lowered the foot of the stretcher, feeling Cleven mimick her movements behind her. Before she could turn ‘round and enact her training, there their pilot was, body draped over the battered Marine captain, his back as stalwart and protective as the wings of his plane. Maureen threw herself to the ground as well, propping herself over Andy’s battered legs. Together they made a turtle shell of sorts and, damned to be caught cringing when death took her, Maureen kept her eyes open and stared back at Gale Cleven’s gentle face as the -thud-thud-thud- passed them, a micro expression of assurance twitching his mouth and eyes as death passed over.

Who needed to look at the sky when you could find God in those eyes his mother gave him?

For as long as she lived, Maureen would never forget the gust of his spearmint scented breath on her face, the first sensation she registered as soon as the planes were past and they yet remained, alive, locked together above a man they’d both risked dying for.

“Major, you shouldn’t’ve.” Andy’s rough voice spoke Maureen’s own dazed sentiments as they straightened up, Cleven picking up his fallen aviators from the sand, “You gotta fly us outta here, you die an’we’re all sitting ducks.”

“Eh, that’s why we have co-pilots, Skipper.” Cleven grinned before glancing back at the sky, his face morphing into anything but carefree.

“Is that how Lt. DeMarco feels?” Maureen teased wearily.

“I’d never presume to know how Benny Demarco feels.” Cleven replied levelly but the corner of his mouth quirked up in amusement, “Ensign Kendeigh, give me a task.” he demanded.

“Sir-“

“I want us outta here in ten.” His tone held no room for argument, “What’s somethin’ even a dumb pilot can manage? Egan!” He yelled as the Lieutenant Commander approached them at a jog, his dark face the picture of rage for the men in his care being further hurt. “Out in ten.”

“Not gonna happen, still got supplies to distribute-“ Egan was visibly inscenced.

“-one more pass on my plane and we’re not gettin’ up. Look at that back wheel” Cleven replied, nodding at the deflating tire. “Hand me your shit, what’re we supplyin?”

“Aren’t you queasy for needles?” Egan balked, finding time for teasing despite himself.

“Hand me the damn syrettes.” Cleven stuck his hand out.

“You're under Candy’s orders.” Egan stipulated, pointing to Maureen and Cleven nodded.

“Yup, and we leave in ten.”

“Okey Buck, go, go, go.”

The nurses that had gone before them had tagged and labeled each, making it easy for Maureen and Major Cleven to squat along the rows and complete what help could be given. Her other companions were doing the same, each staggered at a few yards and assisted by Corpsmen and pharmacists. And despite the tension from the strafing and the dismal prospect of having to leave so many behind, the hum of chatter soon picked up again on the beach.

“Shit, shit, shit, no-I hate needles!” Marty, eighteen years old but with eyes that had seen a little too much, bore his dressing with tired stoicism until Cleven pulled out the morphine syrette.

“Son,” Gale murmured with barely concealed amusement, “your side looks like a bear cub teethed on it, you’ll be fine. And this’ll help.”

“Don’t ‘son me’ you baby faced glamor boy.” Marty spat back, marine corps superiority coursing through his admittedly impressive veins.

Gale was midway through a good natured snicker at Marty’s venom when the heavy shock of lobbed mortars began to thud the beach again. “Jesus.” the Major sounded more annoyed than surprised and had the wherewithal to place a restraining hand on Marty’s chest as the kid began to scramble up in panic, displacing Maureen’s dressing on his ribs.

“Cleven, they’re chewin’ up our strip!” Demarco yelled to them from the cockpit and sure enough, craters were beginning to form at the end of their taxi-able stretch of beach.

“Don’t leave me! Don’t leave Major!” Marty suddenly clutched at Cleven and the Major had to wrench his arm free. “Calm down, private, you’re on a stretcher.” he then ducked his head as he moved round to seize the poles, “And if there’s one thing you should know,” he went on in a low murmur just for Marty’s benefit, “it’s that Doc Egan doesn’t waste his stretchers on dead men.”

Carrying Marty’s stretcher to the plane was Maureen’s last jog down the beach. She ran up the cargo ramp and Cleven was after her, handing over the task of racking the private into a bunk to one of the nurses before sternly ordering a path for himself through the crowded belly up to his cockpit. Demarco had the full radio system on, the better to communicate with the nursing personnel as they prepared for take off, and everyone aboard could hear his exasperated greeting as his reckless officer took his seat.

“You really game enough to try to get this Goony off the ground with less than a thousand feet of strip?” Benny’s broadcasted doubt made most nurses pause in their work and Maureen met Andy’s eye from the third bunk halfway along the plane wall.

“I thought he said that’s why they have co-pilots.” Andy joked to her quietly.

“Mm,” she agreed mischievously, “I guess co-pilots are one thing, co-Clevens are another.”

“Should find a way to mass produce.” Andy sighed, “War would be over in five seconds.”

Gale Cleven hadn’t even refuted Demarco’s concern verbally and already the crew shrugged it off, if Major Cleven couldn’t get them off Hell Island then no one could, and that was that.

“John Egan, get your ass onboard, it’s wheels up.” Cleven’s yell out the window blasted through the radio, too, and the girls grinned at each other -Major Egan wasn’t one to get bossed about. But, as if to challenge everything they knew about life and their own superior, mere seconds later, John Egan was hopping up into the belly of Cleven’s plane with his empty sack dangling and sweaty hair in disarray. “We’ll be back Kenny!” he yelled to the young pharmacist’s mate left on the sand as the cargo door was hastily wrenched shut by Brady.

“Honey I’m home.” Egan yelled up to the front and Demarco’s snicker echoed along the walls of the tin belly.

“Everybody stow your gear,” Cleven’s order came through, the pounding vibration of nearby mortars shuddering the plane even more than the engine’s revving, “we’re gettin’ outta here now. S’gonna be bumpy.”

“That’ll be one word for it.” Demarco snarked, “Death by bumps.”

The human cargo in the plane, those not groaning or insensible, let up a unanimous chuckle. It helped to have been to hell and back, a quick death as a plane failed to get air and plowed instead into a sand bank was hardly the worst prospect these men had faced.

“Believe, Benny, believe.” Maureen could hear Cleven’s soft smile in his voice as the wheels began to roll.

Brady, their engineer, navigator and the lone crewman besides the pilots aboard this transport, kindly manhandled Maureen to a seat between his legs on the rattling floor beside Egan’s built-in desk, his hand fisted in the back of her jumpsuit collar like she was a kitten. They kicked their legs out together and braced as they gained speed and the plane began to jostle into the milder craters at an ever more intense pace.

Shell fragments made a series of charming bangs off the side of the wing nearest her and Maureen could hear Brady whispering behind her in repetition “God spare the oxygen, God spare the oxygen, God spare-“

“50-“ Demarco’s countdown was unfortunately broadcasting like some morbid game announcer and Maureen could see Egan’s jaw ticking in stress under the harsh overhead lights.

There was a terrible blast in front, the sound of shattering glass or metal and a jarring shudder went through the plane, “Damnnit.” Cleven hissed but the acceleration remained.

“You hit?”

“No. Read me, Benny-“

“80-“ Demarco obligingly resumed counting.

“C’mon Buck.” breath gusting on Maureen’s neck behind her, as Brady had begun to direct his prayers to the Major now and as if in answer, the stomach swooping feeling of flight took over them seconds later as the cargo plane let out a mighty roar of strained endurance and lifted with a wobble that had more than a few bunks puking their guts out. There’d be over five hours to clean the plane floor and attend to housekeeping if they could just level out and stay up long enough to get out of range.

Down the way from them Egan was still seated, one hand holding aloft a not yet hung plasma bottle and the other gripping a support bar. But his head was starting to nod like a dancer keeping pace with the band’s ever growing tempo. The engines had a beat, if you’d been personal with a plane long enough to pick it up, and Maureen paid attention to Egan’s stippling fingers on the cross bar as they mounted and mounted, little bursts of enemy gunnery causing a comparatively mild wobble to the plane body every few seconds. She figured a veteran like Brady would know when it was safe to let her go; judging by the grip on her collar he was still highly dubious of their lasting success.

“Fighters, -everyone brace.” Cleven’s voice warned about as cooly as if he was pointing out the drip of ice cream slipping down a cone.

“Ice man.” Andy praised from his bunk to the agreement of his companions as the fighter zipped by without so much as a shudder from Cleven’s steering.

Plenty of the passing bullets had punctured the belly and one man got a direct hit. “Candy!” Egan commanded from his place checking the unfortunate man’s pulse, “Go remind Buck that we haven’t got the oxygen to go full bomber, he’s gotta keep low and -Candy! When ya come back, time to start throwin’ on blankets. Brady, get our pumps going. This is as steady as it’ll get.”

“You got it, commander.”

More than a little sure her mission was more provoking than necessary, Maureen still obeyed and followed Brady up the length of the plane and towards his electrical station, then past it to poke her head between the pilot’s seats.

“Well, well, this is a pleasant surprise, getting car sick, kiddo?” Demarco joked, “Hey, I get it, I’d find it hell back there with no windows to look out.”

Their front window was partially shattered and the metal on Cleven’s side was gnarled.

“Those mortars obligingly made a few.” Maureen joked back.

“Anybody hurt?” Cleven asked, and to her surprise, he turned from his panel to look at her with unmasked concern.

A joke was ready made there about everyone quite literally being shot to hell but she sensed he’d not appreciate it and following some uninterpreted impulse of desiring his good opinion, she hardly wished to repay his earnestness with flippancy. “Only one.”

“How bad?”

“He looked -dead.” Maureen admitted. She hadn’t gotten a good look at the man moving past him but she’d seen Egan’s treatment of the body and it wasn’t promising.

Cleven’s jaw worked overtime at the news and something snapped in his mouth, followed by a soft curse from lips too full and soft to always be so stern. Maureen thought he may have broken a tooth with all that tension but he spit out two halves of a blooded toothpick instead. It fell to his pant leg.

“Major Cleven, sir, you’re bleeding.” It had drawn Maureen’s attention to his wet lap.

“That’s what I said.” Demarco agreed.

“It’s somebody else’s.” Cleven shook his head.

“You know if you pass out on me-“ Demarco warned, completely ignoring Cleven’s denial.

“-that’s why we’ve got co-pilots.” Cleven finished for him with a maddening smirk that made Benny Demarco throw his hands up.

“Can you check him?” he asked, “I mean -you are a nurse!”

“What? Hell no!” Major Cleven spooked for the first time all day at the suggestion, glancing quickly from his reddened trousers, behind him to Maureen Kendeigh, and back again. “I’m fine.” he declared in a firm tone that dettered her almost as much as the challenge of getting over the instruments and a steering column to pull down his pants and look. “Ensign Kendeigh, was there a purpose to your visit?” He redirected, resolutely ignoring Demarco’s unabated concerns.

“Yes sir,” she replied, meekly as she could, “Doc Egan asked me to remind you that you’re not flying a bomber. To mind the oxygen, sir. And that it’s cold.”

Cleven let out a mirthless little laugh. “We’re full of holes Ensign, of course it’s cold.”

“I know sir.”

“Yeah, ‘course you know,” his eyes lightened for a moment and Maureen almost deluded herself he was being chummy when he murmured next, “you’re smart like that. Tell the Lieutenant Commander I’ll keep her nice and low, so low the Jap navy gunners can blow the floor out without a sweat.”

“Much obliged, Major.” Maureen chirped, pleased to have been trusted with a bit of morbid humor -it was the truest test of being taken seriously a woman could hope for in the service.

“Thank you, Ensign.” And with that she was dismissed.

By the time she got to the belly again her assigned job of doling out blankets had long been accomplished by her fellows. Brady had the place lit up like an operating theater and there was the added drone of medical equipment added to Cleven’s engines. She liked to think of them as his now, Maureen realized, a tiredness seeping in now that the rush was over, now there was just six hours of the same until they touched down again in safety. His engines stayed with them, consistent, steady, dependable yet a little absent, just like the man himself.

“Major Cleven said he’ll keep her low, Doc.” Maureen reported dutifully but whatever humor Egan once held when sending her to the cockpit was now gone, a bloody mess on his hands as he and Ensign Dormer worked over a head wound.

“Good.” Egan gritted out, “I need a monitor on vitals and I need new gloves, c’mon Candy, c’mon!”

The hours passed like this, no way of telling time in the artificially lit tube of metal. Some men needed a cup of water and a kind smile, others required every bit of grit and intelligence to keep even the faintest pulse discernible above the hum. When one of them passed away in the anonymity of the top bunk, Egan didn’t bother to cover his face, the man looked to be sleeping and it suited the morale better if his fellows were not disillusioned on that score.

It was impossible not to think for a split second on the unfairness of it all -live to be finally evacuated and only die before getting safe. To think how someone else less tore up might’ve been given that bunk and survived the trip.

“Can’t dwell on it.” Ida Brady, their headmistress back in Manila, had said -and she had been right. But seeing her brother Lt. Brady cross himself now in recognition of a soul passed did something to Maureen’s own spirit, a grieving sort of fury possessed her which matched Egan’s own as they worked on the next unsalvageable man until he became a likely contender for seeing his wife and kids again.

She had been up for nineteen hours, flying for ten of those, nursing for four. She was bone tired and yet there was always someone to be tended and the thought of leaving one of these poor men without even the slightest of their needs met felt impossible. Maureen didn’t even think to pause or lag in her expertise, neither did the nurses around her and up there at the front somewhere, Cleven’s eyes were sharp and focused as ever, she knew it, and knowing it brought a calm over her that made her sympathize with Egan’s own superstitious preference for the man.

Brady came through with coffee, an abnormal duty he picked up as a result of trusting no one else with the process or the electrical requirements to make it. “Figured our pilots could use it.” he explained before passing out a passel of paper cups to the girls filled with the peppy stuff, belying his practical excuse, before taking two to the cockpit.

He came back out with a funny look on his face- “Benny says he needs a pan.”

“What the hell for?” Egan balked.

“Or a condom.” Brady dutifully amended the petition.

“I repeat -what the hell for?”

“They’ve drank a lotta coffee sir.”

“Any of you fellas got condoms?” Egan asked his patients with a laugh and got a series of predictable replies. “Gale Cleven sure as hell don’t.”

There were light hearted moments like that, many of them in fact, but six hours of flying with wounds as bad as the ones they were tending was no joke, there were bits of laughter and there were times of quiet and there were restless sleepers whose terrors not even morphine could dim.

“Forty minutes out.” Major Cleven had gone quiet over the coms for so long it was like hearing from God again when he came on, gentle and steady.

Those they couldn’t get comfortable were at the height of their groaning as the cold and the endless buzz got to them. Helplessly the nurses offered pillows and water and irrigated the burns with saline and checked needle positioning. Maureen had taken to charting, something too often neglected in high stress environments but something that proved terribly crucial as soon as they landed and handed over their charges to a new set of professionals. On the left side of the plane she held one man’s wrist after another and noted their pulse. On the right side she did the same, one man’s left hand after another, wedding band or sans wedding band, in her notes it was only ever:

“94, 57, 88, 91, 63, 82”

The lights had been dimmed, hopes were some rest could be gotten by those in any shape to manage sleep. It made for a drowsy atmosphere, only the flashlight in her teeth illuminating the veins under her fingers and her co-workers faces, Egan’s face was a shiny mess of freckles in the torch light despite the chill, exhaustion seeping out of him but not a hint shown in his workmanship. It made the dull chorus of groans in the dark all the more ominous and Brady remarked to Smith on one pass that maybe they should have brought a record player.

“Twenty minutes out.” Maureen and every other soul on board was living for those little updates from Cleven.

Men told to hang in there and not die before they could be gotten to surgery suddenly had a goal in mind and the suspense was growing brutal. Stashed and stowed, secured and checked, landing preparations were already done and it was last minute tending before taking seats. Maureen found herself nearly piddling by one young private, trying to soothe him with a washcloth as sepsis fever wracked him when over the intercom came the oddest lulling hum, like a far off jazz intro.

It was too soft initially to be recognized but the surety picked up, something about the tone unmistakably belonging to their pilot, his hums about as characteristic of him as his laconic speech.

“Is that whadda friend we have in Jesus?” Demarco’s voice overtopped the gentle melody.

John Egan was wheezing in a chuckle beside her as Maureen shook her own head in disbelief.

“No,” Gale murmured, humming paused only briefly, “it’s ‘Leaning on the everlasting arms’ -you fish eater.”

“You gotta be jokin’.” Benny was wheezing too but Cleven was back to his gentle humming, words actually forming this time and filling the tired plane with a timbre that could put Bing Crosby out of a job.

“What have I to dread, what have I to fear

Leaning on the everlasting arms?

I have blessed peace with my Lord so near

Leaning on the everlasting arms”

It worked, the sickening drop in elevation was -if not noticed- bravely pushed aside for a hymn sing, Brady leading from the back and Cleven from the front. And for a brief moment, men from Kansas to Florida, Oregan to Rhode Island, strapped in a flying coffin of flickering souls, were seated back in the pews of their childhood, trusting something larger than themselves. Even if that something was Gale Cleven’s steady hands or the justness of a cause worth dying for or God Almighty, it was something big and above the pain of right now.

“Leaning, leaning

Safe and secure from all alarms

Leaning, leaning

Leaning on the everlasting arms”

The Navy station at Gaum had a runway, in fact there were five Cleven could have picked at whim, and there was no feeling so beautifully civilized and sure as the smooth roll of plane tires on asphalt after what they’d just left. “Flaps at quarter!” and they were slowing, the deflated back wheel only causing some slight disturbance, and then they were stopped.

That bizarre stillness settled again as the engines were cut. Egan gave Maureen a smile so soft and telling that her heart about seized in realization -they’d managed it. “Well that’s us.” he repeated for the second time that day, voice gone raspy with cigarettes and fatigue. “Welcome to American soil, boys.”

There were so many lights outside the cargo door, searing white flashes in the nighttime, jeeps and ambulances and all manner of medical personnel at the ready, it was overwhelming in the exact opposite way the beach at Iwo had been. Maureen hopped down onto the tarmac with Ensign Mann, ready and prepared to stay with her charges until the transition could be made. Clipboard in hand and kit on her back, she’d go in with her select five until they’d been admitted and charted meticulously in the various wards.

“How’s it feel to make history, Miss?!” -some of those lights, Maureen realized with a dull throb behind her eyes, were flashbulbs. Journalists were thick as thieves, snapping and hollering, others respectfully keeping a distance, “You're the first woman to step foot in a combat zone-“ Maureen kept her hand on her stretcher even as she watched Cleven limping over to a jeep and piling in after Demarco. Her mouth set in a sour line of suspicion regarding his claims of being unscathed. He’d be in interrogation and she in the wards for the next hour, she’d have to find out later.

A couple of hours later John Egan was sat with Captain Crosby in the administration office, nothing but a small alcove at the front of the ward, his legs spread wide in his chair and good scotch whisky being slurped from a cleverly injected orange while reviewing the charts. Croz was a whizz at this, meticulous and careful to a fault and John adored him for it because men who gave a damn were scarce after this many years of grueling loss and, also, because it allowed himself to wind down sooner than he was technically free to do so.

“Two men lost, that’s -that’s still good odds.” Crosby couldn’t manage an upbeat tone, he felt those two lives as deeply as Egan did, but facts were facts and over all, this experimental mission had proven beyond successful. Now to tell that to the families of the two men now being carted to the morgue instead of surgery and salt baths.

“Yeah, my girls were Trojans out there.” Bucky sucked his teeth, the squint in his eyes beginning to relax with a boozy sort of calmness. “Speakin’ of Trojans! —Candy!”

Maureen approached the little alcove at a tired gait, not above reprimanding Egan for his loud voice with all those occupied beds just feet away. “It’s late, Commander.” she reminded with hinting softness that only made him crane his head back and grin sloppily at her.

“It is, it is.” he agreed, reaching up to pat her arm and she squinted at the smell of whiskey, Crosby’s sudden and transparent busyness with the charts confirmed her suspicions. “You should get some shut eye, Candy! Back at it tomorrow.”

“So should you.” she hinted kindly.

“Mm,” he hummed in negative, “apparently my ‘specialty’ is needed elsewhere before then.”

“And so the booze?” she struck back and Crosby’s pen briefly dragged along his tidy line in shock at her daring.

“Steady hands, Candy darlin.” Egan responded, lifting two sticky palms up and showing, indeed, not a tremor. “I’ve got a surgery in less than an hour -working with Brady’s old sister, of all people, the one who snuck out of Manila after?- anyways, she’s 90 pounds of spit and vinegar. Starved for two years, but she takes three weeks off and a round of anti-parasitics and she’s all ‘let me back at ‘em.’ Hell of a dame. Anyway, surgery with her. I need this.”

“Well,” Maureen Kendeigh knew when to let go of a fight with a man who’d as yet never failed her or anyone else, despite his habits, “I can confirm it does nothing for your eyes bags.”

“Kiss ‘em better?”

“Not in my purview, sir.” she couldn’t help but smile, “Perhaps lieutenant Brady will be obliging?”

“She scares me.” he objected.

“And I don’t?”

“Only in the ways I like, Candy Darlin’.” he insited.

“Ah Major!” Crosby’s strained greeting drew their attention away from this over rehearsed banter and Egan straightened up fast upon sight of his friend.

“Buck!”

“John.” Gale Cleven was in the same uniform he’d been in for hours, flight jacket undone and scarf hanging loose. He must have come straight from interrogation and standing in front of the administrator's desk he was turning his cover over and over in his hands. Maureen was certain that were she to devote two hours a day to brushing her hair she could never bernish it to the golden brilliance that twelve hours of flight-sweat gave his. On a more concerning note, his was pale as death except for those lips. “I came to check in on everybody. Load of journalists out there.” He thumbed back behind him at the public area, “Mostly curious about you, Ensign.”

“Historical.” Egan affirmed and sent Maureen a sly look as she sighed over the fuss being made of her mission.

“I’m one of twenty.” she reminded.

“I hope you were nice about her.” Egan goaded his buddy and to her confusion, Gale flinched as if that were a remarkably successful mode of attack.

“O-of course.” he frowned severely and Maureen had a desperate urge to thumb those lines away. “I told them the truth.” he defended, mildly heated.

“Which is?” Egan was enjoying this and neither Maureen nor Harry Crosby could seem to puzzle out why.

“They did remarkably.” Cleven didn’t budge.

“Better than you thought.” Egan prodded.

“Yeah. Admittedly, far better than I thought. Jeeze, John.”

“But were you nice about her?” Egan insisted.

“What?”

“You said they were particular about Candy.” Egan said, “So what did you say?”

Maureen grew concerned that with such a level of fluster in the Major’s face not a stitch of blood seemed able to raise a blush.

“How ‘bout you read it in the paper.” Gale replied, coolly mean before clearing his throat and straightening up, back in possession of himself. “I came to see how many -how’d we do?”

“Twenty eight.” Egan confirmed.

“Outta thirty?” Cleven asked for confirmation.

“Yes sir.” Crosby answered him.

“Alright.” The Major accepted that, hat still whirling in his hands, a strange contrast to his perfectly contained posture. It drew Maureen’s eye to his hips and that deep red stain running down his pant leg.

“How’s your hip Major?” she asked, seeking to break the silence before Egan did so with some new and regrettable subject.

That did bring a flush and a sheen of sweat broke out on a face Maureen knew would be feverishly hot were she to touch it. He looked peeky, truth be told. “It’s fine, ma’am.”

“Hold up,” Egan stood from his chair and leaned over the desk to glare blearily at Gale’s trousers. “You're hit.”

“It’s a scratch.”

“Scratches don’t keep bleedin’ like that.“

“Well, mine do.”

“Hey, I don’t go tellin’ you how to fly your planes-“

“-you do though.”

“-so you don’t go tellin’ me what’s a scratch and what’s a wound. It’s still drippin’, that makes it a wound.”

Cleven moved his boot to the side impatiently and only succeeded in proving his friend’s point as a line of fresh blood smeared the white tile. “I was gonna just -“

“-What?”

“-Clean it in the shower.” Cleven sighed, defeated but with an edge that suggested he might yet do it .

“Oh, just gonna rinse mortar fragments outta of your thigh, yeah?”

“It’s not that bad. Dunno if it really got hit.” He protested, “Might be scratched.”

“Or you might have a piece of your instrument panel snuggled up to an artery.” John affirmed sarcastically. “We’re goin’ up again tomorrow. I need you fit, I need you good.”

“I am.”

“You’re gonna get checked.” Egan commanded and Gale looked back at the double doors leading to freedom and a pack of journalists and sighed. “You’re on the ground now, flyboy, I call the shots.”

“Ok.” Cleven mumbled, “If you’re so goddamn eager to pants me, do it.”

“I am, I am but I’ve got even better things to do.” Egan rounded the desk and flung an arm around Gale in parting, bringing him in close despite Cleven’s stiff necked antipathy that hid only the deepest seated endearment, “Like putting a left lung back where it should be and trying to get Lt. Brady to smile at me.” Egan expounded, letting go and beginning to actually leave, much to Cleven's sudden concern, “Which is, naturally, on the left -the left lung, that’s where it goes.” Egan went on.

“Wait, aren’t you gonna-?” Cleven called after him.

“Pantsing is more of Ensign Kendeigh’s purview.” John replied cheerfully. “Don’t look so appalled, I'm sure she’s seen smaller.”

“John!” Major Cleven and Maureen both inflected his name like twin, scandalized parrots.

“You deserve each other.” John laughed, “Ensign, do your duty.”

“This is the kinda behavior that has you gettin’ write ups for bein’ a terror to your nurses!” Gale growled after him in remonstrance but it did nothing to slow Egan’s tactical withdrawal.

“Bulshit, everybody on this ward loves me!” John dared to claim even as he was berated on his way out by more than a few wounded marines for being a little too jovial at two in the morning.

Cleven didn’t wait for the doors to fully close on Egan or for Maureen to collect her professional demeanor and clipboard before he was leaning over Captain Crosby at his desk, large hands splayed on the fresh paperwork, assuming the pose of a supplicant before a lawyer. “Harry, Captain, do me a favor this once and take a look fo-“

“-Major Cleven sir,” Harry Crosby interjected levelly and with the utmost respect, “I’m an administrator.”

Maureen composed herself, the sight of this stoic man losing a grip on himself due to the prospect of lost modesty was surprising, it was also motivating to find her own professionalism and put him at ease. “Major, if you’d follow me?” she nodded her head towards the ward and started clopping down the dim aisle toward one of the last empty beds. He didn’t need to lay down for it but she needed her instrument tray, an isolated light and, if his shyness was so severe, drawing the sectioned curtains would hardly be amiss.

When she arrived and turned round to instruct him, he was obediently there to obey. Something about that dogged respect for authority he possessed and his compliance with her own profession filled her with an odd protectiveness and she motioned him into the space gently, tugging the curtain closed behind him. He was taller than she realized, made more apparent as he took the initiative and tugged off the bulky weight of his flight jacket, methodically laying it out in a half fold on the bed, nothing but a lean line of him left in olive green.

Lanky, her mother would call him, a long drink of water. He looked all of twenty four, suddenly, soft and in need of a meal. “Your leg, yes?” she reaffirmed, jotting it down in the chart. She had found that men found it easier to talk of injuries when she wasn’t making eye contact.

“Yes.” His voice was low as the grave and hushed too, “And -I think maybe my hip.”

Maureen’s eyes flicked to the place in question, recalling how she had suspected his lap in general on the plane. “Right.” she made the customary jot down of the detail and then an arguably unnecessary note beside it, the longer to give him a chance to cool himself. “Your pants Major, if you would.” she filled in the date and the time, cursory information so as not to be idle while he undid his belt, the clank of the flat uniform clasp deafening in the space where he seemed to hold his breath.

She was used to discerning the moment when it was safe to look up. Often there was a brief period after the sound of pants hitting the floor where one might have the misfortune of catching a man adjusting himself to a preferred side. She was prepared to give him that moment in peace but his voice called her to attention.

“Is this?-“ he didn’t finish his sentence and she looked up to see his vague gesture as he stood in briefs and boots, jacket hung open, too.

“Yes I think we can manage with those on.” she smiled reassuringly, discerning his query. His skivvies were blood stained on the right and clinging to him but the wounds appeared to be above and below their coverage, “I’ve always got scissors if need be.”

“Scissors.” He repeated with a nod, teeth savagely dug into his lip.

“Jacket off, this could get messy.” She ordered and something about her decisiveness seemed to soothe him like she knew it would, he shrugged it off gracefully and laid it beside the sheepskin, and yanked at his tie to relive his bobbing throat. “Please, sit Major.”

He sat down on the bed, a little stiffly, and she reached above her to turn on the large overhead lamp, shining it down on them both and in the harsh glow of it she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen something so beautiful as Gale Cleven’s blushing face fixed upturned towards her own.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood, looks like.” she attempted to make conversation and got a mere nod instead, once she stepped nearer, his eyes devoutly focused themselves somewhere to the right of them, on the floor.

She rinsed the area first, wiping away the crusted blood until his smooth, lightly haired skin came into view, little jagged tears visible in it with small fragments embedded. It wasn’t bad at all, but deep enough to keep it bleeding.

The touch of cool water made him jolt in surprise. What it didn’t do was make him shrink. She saw his hands curl, white knuckled around the mattress pad beside him as she gently dug out the metal, and she had a suspicion it wasn’t from the pain.

As unabashedly as her profession had taught her, Maureen tugged up his boxer leg until she was satisfied she’d uncovered the last little shard and did what was necessary, reaching atop the wet fabric and moving his heavy member up and away. He about bucked off the table at that mere touch of positioning and Maureen backed away out of pure animal instinct to avoid getting reflexively kneed.

“I'm sorry!“ he rushed out, his chest suddenly tight like an elephant were sat on it and his blood thudded in his ears, “Ensign, I apologize, I don’t know why-“

“It’s fine.” she insisted, stunned and pitying at the realization she probably was the first woman to touch him this way. To touch him at all. “I’m sorry this requires it.” she admitted.

“Please don’t -“ he took a large breath and began again, actually managing to meet her eyes out of sheer willpower, “-I’m the one who’s sorry. You’re doing your job, i don’t know why I get- it’s unprofessional of me, I'm sorry.” he repeated firmly and straightened his spine as if he could discipline a most human reaction away.

“It’s not at all uncommon.” She whispered, feeling compelled to be unprofessional herself if only to make him stop berating himself, “We nurses deal with this all the time, quite normal after combat, particularly.” Maureen paused for a moment and weighed the joke on the tip of her tongue as she dabbed iodine on a cotton ball and prepared to go back into the dreaded zone of his thigh crease, “It’s to be expected, the manual says; your blood is quite literally UP.”

Stood there in suspense between his legs with the iodine swab waiting mid air, Maureen waited until she saw a flicker of amusement twinkle his sad expression and a snicker escape that sober mouth. “Tell me about it.” he rasped, exasperated at his own body. “Every damn time.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” she teased, bringing the swab down and ignoring the sizable jolt his whole body and appendage gave at this dab to his thigh or the way his belly caved in with his deep intake of breath, “I’m telling you it’s normal.”

“Damn, you are sweet.” He declared suddenly with gut wrenching emphaticism that finally broke Mauren’s own precarious composure. “Not just to me,” he hastened to add in response to her melting expression so close to him, “to everybody out there. You were incredible today.” He paused and Maureen swallowed hard and tried with great difficulty to find the capability to thank him for the compliment. Before she could, he added with youthful honesty, “But you are -sweet to me.”

“Right back at you. Major.” she insisted, daring to stay that close and look back into those eyes she thought would be her last sight on earth for a second there on the beach earlier. His shuddering breath suggested he was recalling it, too.

“It’s nice to have friends in the crucible with ya.” he explained and Maureen felt her heart glow.

“Your poor hands.” she whispered, dropping her swab to gather his shaky hands in hers, the large palms engulfed her own even as she tried to cradle them. Never a hint of this anxiety while flying them, yet here he was shivering with it afterwards. “Probably blood loss.” she gave him an out, some men weren’t ready for talk of flight exhaustion or strained nerves.

“Then why’s it wasting all I’ve got to spare on…that?” He actually managed to joke back and Maureen actually allowed herself to laugh -god help her, she laughed at a man’s joke about an ill timed erection.

“John would say something about hope springing eternal, right about now.” she wheezed even as he groaned, his hands still placidly jittering in her grip, “I enjoyed your singing, by the way.”

“Mm, yeah, well,” he cleared his throat, “you didn’t see the hole in the wing or the busted flaps all the way home. That landing didn’t promise to be as pretty as it was.”

“But it was pretty.”

“Yeah. Not too bad.”

“A gorgeous landing.” she insisted and his eyes started to water under the harsh light. Impulsively, and in an act of unprofessionalism she would have never recognized before today, Maureen Kendeigh drew his hands close to her chest and pressed a kiss to his lined forehead. The way he sagged against her in a shuddering lunge suggested her impulse was a good one. “Doc Egan insists whiskey is good for this.” she whispered into hair that smelled so strongly of his musk and the wool of his cap she about buckled from it.

“Mm, but is it g—good for him?” he responded rhetorically, a gust of moist breath against the open throat of her flight jacket, his usual irony still remained with only a hiccup of nerves interrupting his speech. Maureen wasn’t sure anymore, what saved a life, well, it had saved a life, so why demonize it? She was here to force things to keep living in environments so hostile wildflowers gave up. Some men needed their booze and some men needed to be held in the hospital ward at two in the morning until their shakes calmed. As if he could read her mind, she felt Gale turn his head to the side a little for breath, face still pressed to her chest as he uttered quietly, “This is working. For me.”

“Good.” Nose buried in his hair she took a few measured breaths herself, feeling that odd calm still radiating off him, even as his body was shot to hell and giving off the overtaxed jitters. “You bring people calm, you know that, Major? It’s why Egan picked you for this, deep down, you make a plane load of dying men hang in there. That’s a gift. But when you’ve got a cup you keep pouring out of, it’s bound to go empty. Gotta refill yourself, sometimes, yes?”

“I thought this was blood loss.” Gale replied softly and it took Maureen a beat to recognize the sad mischief in his blue eyes.

“Alright. I’ll speak for myself.”She conceded with a huff.

“You must be exhausted.” he noted, suddenly as sober as they come.

“A little tired.” she admitted, questioning the way she instinctively tightened her hold on the back of his neck as he stiffened to pull away. Entirely unprofessional, she wasn’t a medicine spoon or a needle, he had every right to pull away.

“So what would fill your cup back up?” he asked in that low voice that sent a million varied undertones crashing through her, whether he intended it or not.

Too tired to be much more than plainly honest, or as honest as a woman should be with a half undressed patient cradled to her chest, Maureen admitted the half of it, which in many ways was the whole, “This is working for me.”she repeated his own words to him and watched them take effect.

Like a sudden reanimation had occurred, Gale Cleven untangled their hands with emphatic surety and then, in an act of kindness Maureen never expected, brought them to her shoulders and tugged her down for a solid embrace. “A hug and a nap then.” He prescribed, his solid shoulder beneath her cheek and his legs parted for her to step between. Only the bandages kept him from bleeding further on her.

“Not a nap,” she smiled, an inexplicable warmth and calmness flooding through her in his hold, his back was broad and lean under her hands, “we should go to sleep.”

“No such thing as going to sleep in the military, Ensign.” Gale murmured, “Sleep -that’s what happens when your mama tucks you in and you’ve got a whole night to waste. Naps. That’s what we take.”

“Alright, a nap, and a hug.”

“Alright.”

“You know,” Maureen dared with a little smile as some part of her slotted back in place and gave her the boldness to be a little too much, “there’s this thing people came up with ages ago where you hug and take naps at the same time.”

Pink cheeked but with a jaw clench that had defeated warzones, Gale Cleven pulled his head away and gave her a heavy look of admonishment, “Marriage.” he stated unamused.

Well, she had meant sex, and she wanted it, always had after danger -but Cleven had a point too.

“Uh, yes, that’s the most common-“

“-If I were to marry you, Maureen Kendeigh,” his voice took on a teasing lilt that was somehow more devastating than all his commanding earnestness, “there’d be no nap taking.”

“Oh.” A single utterance was about all she could articulate in the face of that smirk and gentle refusal. Both flattering and painful all at once. “Well, that’s not for us then.”

“No.” he pondered, full lips twitching downwards in disappointment, “At least, sounds like a decidedly post-war endeavor. No naps.” he clarified.

“Oh -yes.” she caught on, well used to the code of superstition all around her that didn’t allow men to spell out any sort of lasting, long term hope. “A postwar endeavor.” she agreed, never having heard marriage so smartly categorized.

“Uhuh,” his hands trailed up from her ribs to squeeze the sore muscles of her deltoid, “for now -naps. Back up tomorrow.”

“Alright.” she agreed, stepping a small distance back and looking him over, this time his presence didn’t shrink, in fact if anything he expended in the small room and it made her chest ache, “You're alright?” she made sure one last time.

He held his palms flat up and Maureen could attest they were indeed steady, terribly large, too, and his watch on his wrist was careening towards three o’clock. “Looks like it.” he rasped. “But you’re in charge here. Can I go, Ensign?”

Regretfully Maureen nodded, “You’re dismissed, Major.”

When he stood up from the bed he was by necessity in her space, looking down at her rather fearlessly as he yanked up the waist of his trousers and gathered the belt closed around his lean waist. Maureen felt her cheeks burn but couldn’t look away, if she were to glance away from those eyes she might see something even more tempting before he’d secured the fabric.

“Got any more duties after this?” he asked, breaking the moment as he bent to arrange his trouser hems over his boots.

“No.”

“Then I’ll walk you to your billet.”

“For naps.” she clarified cheekily.

“For naps.” he agreed with mirthful vehemence, finger pointed at her with almost paternal caution to not push his patience.

“Do you want your shell fragments?” she rattled them in their dish, the pieces she'd pried from the shallow muscle of his hip.

Cleven paused with his hand on the dividing curtain, shaking his head in amusement, “Give ‘em to Egan,” he suggested with a wicked little smirk, “knowing him he’ll make a talisman out of them or something equally useful.”

Hope y’all enjoyed! Feedback is a writer’s life blood, lemme head your thots or screams! Xoxo

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