#all I really have to actually do is clean it up

[greenplumbboblover]

[WIP] TS3 UI "Krystal"

I figured it would be cool to finally publicly share what I've been working on behind the scenes, as well as some mockups!

A few of you on Patreon or Discord may have already seen sneak peeks/given feedback. I kept things quiet because I wasn’t sure I’d even do it in the first place as a next modding project, and I didn’t want to let anyone down.

Luckily, @lazyduchess’s Monopatcher made the job ten times easier. The biggest hurdle was that I would've had to make a core mod to override UI code (I’m normally anti–core mod), but the patcher solved that and let me push ahead.

(Psst, if you're looking at seeing the mockups bigger, I also posted this post on my site: Simblr.cc 😉)

Creating the Mockups

Fun fact: I actually have a degree in UI/UX design! (for websites) While principles like “How wide should this padding be?” or “Which colors send the right signal to the user?”—game UI is a whole different beast.😬

Main Menu

I started with the main menu:

Cut the SimPoints clutter and the “Buy TS4!” banner—after a decade, we get it exists 😉.

Grouped items into clean blocks

Added a text-free “Create New Family” icon

Swapped lot thumbnails for family shots (still baffled by EA’s original choice).

Dropped an options gear in the bottom-left; might label it if it’s too subtle.

Different backgrounds: one solid blue, one closer to the classic gradient.

A lil' sneek peek of where I'm at:

She's not finished, but it's definitely getting there! 😉

Load Screen

Not much has changed here! It's just less... busy I suppose, lol!

2 Different backgrounds to choose from

Moved the Game Tips to the bottom, so the main focus stays on that loading bar 😉

I also have a third option but I'm strongly leaning towards just having the loading bar as it's the most clear!

Live Mode

The hardest of them all lol. Kudos to EA for figuring that one all out! I really struggled with this one in regards to shape and what to even move around/remove!

I figured, it should be nice to pull really into that glassmorphism I've been using over the Mockups! Now I do realise that it can hamper user experience in the sense of not being able to read anything. But these are pictures! So that should be all fine and dandy.

The active item in the queue will now be more "visible". The queued item however, you'll see look a bit more "unactive" compared to what the current version has.

I also completely overhauled the thumbnails for your sims, showing their moods a bit better, and giving the active sim a tiny plumbob! :D

And now the real deal: The control panel! You might notice it's not the whole thing, but I'm still working on that part.

I removed the camera controls from the panel. However, upon feedback, I did hear that it's better to have them as some people are limited in their hand movements on their keyboard and that those controls are really useful. So I will make sure to share 2 versions :)

I also realised I completely forgot the Build/buy mode buttons 😬 So, err, stay tuned for that? lol.

Notifications I really just tidied up :p

I am aware that the space where the text is and the thumbnail is huge, and normally I'd wrap the surrounding text, but apparently in TS3's UI stuff that's practically impossible. Hence that they got this "2 column" effect to them 😉

About releasing the UI:

I'm hoping to release them all in bits and pieces! So first up is the Main Menu (and possibly the Loading screen given it's simplicity).

After that, I hope in my second "update" to release a big portion of Live mode, but that's a bigger task on it's own of course 😉

Any feedback at this point is also completely welcome by the way!

[yeagersss]

Sukuna x Blind!Reader (Part 2)

<- Previous

For some reason he found himself going back to you.

As hard as it was for him to admit it but you—a fragile, blind woman had managed to pique his interest.

So every once in a week, he left his temple and found himself wandering to your house in a state of boredom. Sometimes he encountered someone—a human, a curse or a wild animal. He slaughtered them without a second thought.

You managed to tell it's him just by the sound of his heavy footsteps and according to you, his scent.

"Copper, ash and sandalwood. That's how I can tell it's you." You told him enthusiastically.

Sukuna doesn't do much when he's at your place. He sits on the tatami mat and observes you as you move around, rambling about whatever you did that day.

And it turns out. You weren't lying when you said you have a system.

You knew every nook and cranny of your little house. You knew where everything was. What to do and how to do it. Your blindness did not stop you from living your simple yet fulfilling life.

It was interesting to see you navigating around. It was either with your walking stick or by touching the walls. You explained it to him with a soft smile on your face.

"I can tell I'm in the kitchen because there's a scratch on the wall near the shelves." You explained, feeling around for it and when you did, you beamed and went inside to prepare something for Sukuna.

Your dishes were simple. Miso soup, fish, rice and sometimes chopped fruits or vegetables on the side. Nothing rich and grand like Uraume prepares for him.

But the fact that you actually manage to prepare it properly and not screw it up was— sort of—impressive.

"Do you like it, my lord?" You asked while nibbling on your grilled fish.

"Passable." Was all Sukuna grunted. You pouted at that.

His lower left eye was fixed on you. "You should eat more meat. Don't you get tired of eating fish all day?"

You hummed, chewing your meal slowly in thought. "Mm... I have eaten rabbit meat before... But meat is really expensive and it's not like I can hunt for it." You said with a soft giggle.

And then during his next visit, he brought something for you.

You greeted him with your usual smile. "Good morning, my lor—eep!" You exclaimed, startled when something was tossed on the wooden floor with a loud thud.

"W-What was that?!"

"A boar."

"A boar?!"

"It's dead. Stop worrying." Sukuna said, running a hand across the dead animal's fur. "This is what we're eating tonight."

You relaxed and perked up at his words in interest but then the stench of blood hits your nose and you gasped.

"My lord, I just finished cleaning the floor!" You whined.

"So?"

"So—" You frowned and marched right up to him, your eyes unintentionally fixed on his chest with a glare. "At least warn me next time you decide to bring a dead animal inside the house!"

Sukuna stared down at you. His lips quirking up in amusement that you—a tiny, little blind woman who barely reached his chest was scolding him of all people.

... It was... adorable. So to speak.

He smirked. "And what if I don't?" He asked, enjoying the fact that he was riling you up.

Your lip jutted out in an angry pout. "Then... Then I will not speak to you the next time you visit." You huffed, crossing your arms.

"Hah! Impossible. I will make sure you can't ignore me."

"I won't cook anything for you."

"Go ahead. I shall simply raid your pantry and eat everything that is there."

You turned back to him and glared at his chest again. "You're insufferable!"

He grinned, enjoying this senseless, little argument he was having with you. For some reason, it got his heart acting up.

"At least look me in the eyes when you argue with me, woman."

You frowned at that and tilted your head a bit up. Your clouded eyes where fixed on his collarbone now. He snorts. "Not even close."

Your breath hitched when you felt his finger curl beneath your chin and he tilted your head up and up and up...

"There we go." He hummed in delight as he gazed at your face with a certain intensity. His eyes drinking in each and every one of your features. He watched the way your cheeks tainted pink and your lips curled into a silent oh as you noted this detail about him. That he is far taller than any man you have ever met.

He lets go of you and steps back, a frown on his face as he changes the topic. "Are you simply going to stand there gawking at me, woman? It's time to prepare the meat."

You opened your mouth to protest that you were incapable of gawking at anyone but were cut off when your stomach grumbled.

You flushed in embarrassment while his lips perked up slightly.

It was strange having him in the kitchen helping you.

Well, besides cutting up the boar meat, his help consisted of standing in the corner telling you what to do. With some trial and error, you managed to prepare a dish with some herbs and rice.

"This is so good!" You exclaimed happily.

"Hmph. Not bad."

You beamed at that. Despite his words, you could tell by the tone of his voice that he liked it.

--

"Do you love poetry, my lord?"

Both of you were sitting by the river one day. The question stirring up after a minute of silence.

Instinctively, Sukuna opened his mouth to say no. But he stopped. At this point, is it really necessary to hide his guilty pleasure for the arts from you?

"Yes."

You smiled. "Oh! That's nice! Yesterday I was in the village and a poet was reading his works in the main market." You hummed, tapping your chin in thought. "It was about the tragedies of love but... It didn't particularly move me and his voice was too shrilly."

Sukuna couldn't help but snort at that. "That was no poet. It was a con man simply tricking gullible humans into tossing coins to him."

You smiled at that. "Ah... It's no wonder I was getting such bad vibes from him."

Sukuna frowned. "And you don't get these so-called "bad vibes" from me?"

You laughed softly. "No at all! Oh! Wait here! I want to show you something." You said, eagerly grabbing your walking stick and standing up to go into your house.

You came back a few minutes later. A scroll in hand and you sat back down next to him.

He noted you were closer than earlier. Your knee gently brushing against his.

You sat there in silence for a moment, your fingertips gently brushing against the scroll in your hand as if it was your most delicate possession. Then you untied and slowly opened it.

"This is my mother's collection." You mumbled softly. "She was an... avid reader and writer. She loved writing about nature. The beauty and life in it."

You were looking straight ahead with your clouded eyes in a solemn gaze. "It's also why I live here. It's easy to get inspiration when you live in a place like this." You giggled humorlessly.

Sukuna stared at you with narrowed eyes. "Why are you telling me this?"

You quickly wiped your unshed tears away. "No reason! I simply got sentimental." You sniffled.

You hold out the scroll to him. "Would you like to read it, my lord?"

He found himself unable to refuse. In a way, he was curious to see your mother's works. He took the scroll from your hand, noting just how dusty it was. The pages were turning yellow from the corner. It seems that it had been stored away for years, completely untouched and this was the first time it was taken out since then.

His eyes scanned across each syllable. He had to admit, he was quite impressed. Not only was the calligraphy quite elegant but the meaning behind the poems were thought provoking too.

Next to him, you shifted softly. His lower set of eyes went to you, taking in your slumped posture. Your eyes were downcasted while you nervously wringed your hands.

When he finished reading the first poem, he read the second one out loud.

He watched the way you perked up. Your breath hitched in a soft gasp. A delicate smile graced your lips and your cheeks flushed a soft shade of red.

You intently listened to your mother's poems as the King of Curses narrated them in his deep, baritone voice.

And somewhere along the way, you found yourself leaning against him in utter content. "You have a very beautiful voice, my lord." You whispered shyly.

Sukuna, on the other hand, stiffened at your soft gesture and comment. He had paused his reading to stare at you. You— the blind woman who was somehow so brave enough to lean against him like he made you feel safe and happy. Like you were utterly grateful to him.

He went back to reading out loud again, wondering deeply why his heart felt so light and warm.

[geeky-politics-46]

John Walker Headcanons

Random thoughts I have about John Walker. I separated them into SFW and NSFW. These may be elaborated on and expanded on later. If there is a specific headcanon you really want a story about, let me know in the comments or an ask. This may also become an entire NSFW Alphabet as I love writing those.

SFW:

Definitely a control freak. Don't touch or move his stuff without asking first unless you want either a lecture or a very pouty annoyed super soldier. Part of this is due to military training. Part of this is just him desperately needing to be in charge. His room is by far the cleanest, and he will randomly start cleaning if he's anxious.

Rigid in his routines almost to a fault. If he's not following a routine, he doesn't know what to do with himself. His entire life has been about military structure. Now, even if he's not a military officer anymore, he still can't bring himself to move out of his established routines.

Very awkward when you first start dating. The last time he successfully wooed anyone was high school. To say he's a little rusty is an understatement. Expect lots of dorky flirting and bad innuendo. May even some frat boy-esque come ons that almost make your skin crawl.

He tries to show off extra in front of you. You can't reach something? All you have to do is ask. Can't open a jar? He's right there with his hand held out. Need help carrying in groceries? He can take them all in one trip. If you come into the gym while he's in there, he will stop what he's doing to pick up even heavier weights in hopes that you notice.

Has a bit of a dumb blonde streak to him. May actually be really intelligent but will say the absolute dumbest things sometimes. Things that leave the rest of the team staring and speechless. Prime example being his “we're running out of space?” comment at the end of Thunderbolts.

100% gets jealous of your celebrity crushes. He knows it's stupid and that you having crushes is completely normal, but he can't help it. He wants to be your number 1 all the time. He needs to be your number 1, your first choice. Even if it's some married A lister you would never meet in a thousand years. He can't stand the thought of you being with someone else. Of you picking someone over him just like so many others in his life have.

The Georgja boy southern drawl comes out when he's turned on or feeling frisky. The whole team has learned this against their will, and all it takes is an “ain't” or a “darlin'” and they are shooing you behind closed doors before things progress. It's created a bit of a Pavlovian response in you whenever you hear it.

At first, he doesn't want to be left alone with his son when he gets visitation. Somehow, the team is surprisingly good with kids and helps get him comfortable. Bob watches SpongeBob or other cartoons with his son. Yelena brings out the guinea pigs to play with. Alexei is the king of storytime and also trying to help make up for some of his own fatherly shortcomings. Ava gravitates towards the arts and crafts, especially crayons and watercolor. Bucky teaches him games he used to play as a kid. He may also start reading the kid on The Hobbit. After a while, John can do it by himself and feels more confident as a dad, but by that point, everyone is a part of the family.

He really wants more kids once he's learned he's not totally shit at being a dad. He grew up with the idea of the white picket fence and 2.5 kids in the suburbs or even a farm in the country somewhere. That's still what he wants, even if it didn't come as easily as he was promised. He desperately wants a happy family. You renewed his hope that maybe someday he could have it. This correlates directly into NSFW headcanon #9 - breeding kink.

Even though he received a dishonorable discharge and was stripped of his rank and benefits, he still has his Army dress uniform hanging in his closet and his fatigues along with his tags, medals, and other mementos in a box under his bed. Even his West Point diploma is in there. They were a part of who he was, and he still isn't quite sure of who he is if he isn't a soldier. He looks through the box a lot, especially when he's feeling down.

The only thing he leaves out in the open all the time as a reminder of that life is the photo of him and Lemar that Mrs. Hoskins gave him. He also still talks to Lemar when he's feeling depressed or just wishes he was there. He doesn't know if Lemar can hear him, but he hopes he can. He was raised in the church, and even if he's not sure he believes it anymore, he likes to think Lemar is watching over him. Still by his side even from heaven.

He hates it when he cries. It makes him feel weak. He tries to stuff down all his feelings, and this has manifested in the man we see in Thunderbolts. He tends to stew in his own emotions, and you have to call him out and confront him on it. Otherwise, he will not address it. It helps to remind him that that behavior is what got him there in the first place and that if he wants to grow as a person, he has to change. You will constantly be reminding him that failing at something isn't necessarily the end of the world and that crying or admitting his feelings is not failing.

NSFW:

His body count is low. I'm talking low end of single digits. Yes, he was married and has a kid, but he also married his high school sweetheart. If they both weren't virgins when they got together, he had probably only been with one or two other women. If he's been with anyone since, and I firmly believe that's a very strong if, it was a one night stand or two.

I firmly believe he probably hasn't had sex with anyone since the divorce. He probably avoided it for a while in hopes that he could win Olivia back, and he really only wanted her. After he realized it was really over, the depression took most of the desire he had left for sex. People also tended to avoid him like the plague after the flag smashers thing. So it's not like he had women lining up for the newly single dime store Captain America.

Because of his relative inexperience, you may end up having to teach him stuff in the bedroom. Especially if you are into anything kinky. I feel like him and Olivia were probably pretty vanilla when it came to sex. He will also get really flustered when you try to talk about sex with him. He's pretty game to try whatever you want. Just don't make him talk about it.

We've all collectively decided that he has a massive praise kink. Not just in the bedroom but in all areas of his life. This is not a new thing by any means, but he never really thought of it as a kink until you called it that. Tell him how good he fucks you and he'll start purring. Tell him he's such a good boy and worthy of it and his brain will completely melt.

Once you uncork the bottle, he will be pretty insatiable. He's been backed up for a while and has a lot of energy to expend on amorous activities. Thanks to the super soldier serum, he's also going multiple rounds every time. You will be sore after sex the first handful of times simply because he's so energetic.

I think there is a distinct possibility he's accidentally bruised your cervix when he forgot about his enhanced strength and speed in the heat of the moment. He didn't exactly have a ton of sexual experience after the serum. Especially not with someone new. He was horrified and a little proud of himself all the same time.

He loves you talking dirty to him and will encourage you to keep talking. Talking about sex can get him a little flustered in normal circumstances, but if you start talking dirty, he's immediately ready to blow. He still can't really believe all the filthy things that come out of your mouth, but he hangs on every fucking word. After a while he'll even start talking dirty in return.

Sucker for fancy lingerie, but he prefers you in just one of his shirts. He loves seeing you all wrapped up like a present in satin and lace, anything sheer he has a particular soft spot for, but seeing you fresh out of the shower bare legs in one of his old t-shirts makes him practically feral. He discovered this even before you got together when your mission bag went AWOL and you had to borrow his shirt. He swore he was so hard he nearly passed out from lack of blood to his brain that whole mission.

Once the thought is in his head, his breeding kink will go from 0-100 at light speed. Olivia was pregnant while he was in the midst of a depression, so he kicks himself for not letting himself enjoy it. Especially once you start showing his hand is constantly on your belly. Talking to you the entire time you're in bed about how sexy you are all swollen with him and how he's gonna be such a good daddy for you. Before you have the baby he's already talking about looking forward to knocking you up again. Although he may worry too much about hurting you during penetrative sex in your last trimester, he's happy to help satiate you with his fingers or tongue.

He is a bit of a pillow princess when he's feeling depressed. Normally, he likes being the one in charge and doesn't mind doing most of the work. When he's down, he just wants you to ride him and talk sweet filthy nothings to him. His praise kink is turned up a notch even higher than normal, too. Tell him how good he feels. Tell him how big his cock is. Tell him that you couldn't want anyone else the way you want him. Just let him lie there and enjoy it.

He's not a big fan of PDAs, but practically suction cups himself to you behind closed doors or no one else is around. When he discovers cockwarming, he wants it every time you are alone. Practically begging you to just let him put in. Promising he'll behave and let you finish your book when you know in reality he'll start humping you after maybe 5 minutes.

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

You caught him watching porn and jerking off once, and he found it incredibly hot. He was a little humiliated but loved the way you teased him about how desperate he was and that he was a naughty boy for not asking first. How you would have helped him and maybe you should touch yourself too. He came in less than 2 minutes after you started teasing. He wants it to happen again but isn't sure how to bring it up. He is genuinely unsure if it was the humiliation or the thought of mutual masturbation that got him off so quickly.

There will probably be a part 2 to this once I think about it more.

John Walker taglist: @sareim123122

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[elysiasasuya]

Honesty in sickness

Characters : Megumi Fushiguro, father figure! Gojo Satoru and mother figure! Reader.

Summary : When Megumi was young, he met an obnoxiously loud man who approached him with an undeniable reassuring presence. At his apperance, his world stretched wider, no longer stuck at the world he was once in. Gojo Satoru. That's the one who stepped up when he was quietly in need of support. Not just his mentor, more of a father. Alongside him, was you, not just Satoru's wife, more of his mother. The young couple who stood with him.

Genre : ADORABLE FLUFF.

Content tags : Parental figure Gojo Satoru and reader, Familial affection between Megumi and you, romantic moments with Gojo Satoru, use of teasing words to Megumi (gumi, little gumi), Megumi is actually a teenager here, use of familial terms (dad, mom, papa, mama). Adorable fluff.

Word count : 1515

Author's note : this is a oneshot idea coming from anon! Make sure that you read the names and pronouns to know which one is speaking. I hope it is clear and not confusing however. Enjoy!

Megumi feels both hot and cold. Cold because of the shivers that ran down his whole body, his hair standing up at the uncontrollable temperature of his surroundings. That's why he's curled up in bed, seeking to be away from the cold. Hot because of the heat his body is emitting, due to the fact that his temperature struck up to 38C°. One touch is enough to burn you like a lava just touched you. That meant nothing to you though, you were nursing him– touching his skin so carelessly that he has to remind you the same reminder: “ Don't get too close, I'm sick. You might catch it. ”

Stubborn as you are, you smiled at him, wiping his sweat through the use of a clean damp towel. “ I've been nursing you since yesterday, I won't get sick. ” it was true. You haven't left at all, you stayed by his side, ready to assist him in any way you can. He says you didn't need to. He says he can do it himself and yet he remains rotten in bed, unmoving. Damn this sickness– is all he could think of. He is being a burden. He just hopes it will pass soon so you don't strain yourself too hard. “ I hope you recover, Gumi. ” amidst his thoughts, her hand finds his, squeezing it lightly. Oh, he prays for that. Right away even. So just he wouldn't be a burden.

Or maybe so he wouldn't have to endure the unbearable beam of energy Gojo Satoru carries. Here he comes. “ Yo, Gumi Gumi! Guess what your dad bought? ” and here is the exact person he dreaded to deal with. The same grin since yesterday is plastered on his lips as he approaches the bed, plopping right beside him, near you. “ Aww, the baby Gumi is sweaty and needs a shower. Good thing his mama is here. ” absolutely horrendous. Now this time it isn't because of the sickness, perhaps it is, of him that is. He might even consider getting sick just because of his constant teasing. His stress levels must be up there.

“ Satoru, really? You know Gumi doesn't like your teasing antics, playing house and all. ” you chuckled. Deep inside however, he knew that a feeling of happiness and warmth is already blooming in you. So for the sake of it, he tolerates Gojo Satoru. He lets him trespass and poke his tired and heavy body. He groans at him though when he literally just pushes him up, earning a smack from you. “ Be careful, can you? Oh gosh, sorry Gumi. ” again, the irritation leaves and he just nods at her. “ Damn, what favoritism. Here I am getting you the food you wanted and that's what I get? ” Satoru huffs.

“ That's enough for you two, Gumi has to eat now. I'll- ” hope swells up in his chest when he waits for what he most wanted to hear, you to feed him. Definitely not because he enjoys it, he does. but because that means Gojo wouldn't have to play airplanes in feeding him but oh well, poor luck. “ You can rest, wifey. I'll feed our Gumi Gumi. Poor baby needs to eat. ” this elicited a glare from him, about to finally send out a protest– once again cut off. “I know you stayed up late at night for Gumi, go on and rest. ” Satoru knew what he was doing when he used the final blow of reasoning, winking at Gumi knowingly. He cannot refuse now for you.

So here he is, sitting against the headboard, body still a little bit paralyzed. If it weren't for that poisonous curse, he wouldn't be here, getting fed by no other than his mentor. Truly, damn. “ Stop cursing me in your head will you? Get this airplane in your mouth, woosh here it comes! ” Satoru mimicked a plane landing towards the lane or not because he dodged, he cannot bear this. “ Oh no! The plane crashed now. ” Satoru laughs, almost letting out a huge snort when he ends up complying because the food actually did fall down. Just a few bits went onto the sheets though. “ Clean it up, I don't want her to clean this mess. ”

“ Go eat then. ” Satoru knew he would and he did. Minutes passed and Megumi was finally done. Finally, finally, no more Gojo Satoru. Just you who has come back from a nap it seems. You stretched out your arms there, sauntering to Satoru's side who gave you a forehead kiss. “ Successful landing, pilot? ” you teased and he let you. “ Very much, just for my pretty darling. ” Satoru mused, drowning in your scent as he pressed his lips on your neck. Great, now he has to see this unfold. Cough. Cough. Cough. “ Alright, I'll accompany Gumi now, get your ass going 'toru. ” you shake your head, keeping your laughter hidden because of the face of disgust Megumi was showing.

Now, the " finally " actually happened. It's just a comfortable silence. Softer. Better. Because you're here. “ I'm sorry about Satoru. He may be overbearing to you but let me tell you how he insists on visiting you daily despite busy missions. ” he feels himself go steady, voluntarily this time. His eyes focus better on your face, the light beside the bed illuminating the gentle expression it has. He knows that look. The look of love towards Satoru and him. He feels this warm feeling creeping up to his chest again. “ He actually rushes to finish curses just to buy you what you ate earlier. ” you shook your head, smiling even wider. The warmth he felt suffused even more.

“ Yeah. He's like that. I'm sorry if I'm irritable during moments like this. ” He acknowledged it, bowing his head low as a sign of reverence. He looks just like a dog filled with guilt. He knew that their energy levels don't match up, technically like what extroverts and introverts are like. But once again, he knew that his teasing was more than just for the sake of pissing him off, it was his care for him. “ Please don't tell him but as much as I am irritated with the teasing and noises, I am grateful for him. ” you, who was sitting on the seat stood up to lay down beside him. This act is for more intimacy and secrecy. A display of her trustworthiness. “ I won't tell him. So, you actually think that? ”

“ I would be ungrateful and spoiled if I didn't. He did take me in when me and Tsumiki were barely living with the lack of needs. ” his eyes cast themselves low, nostalgia and something tender swirling in his irises. “ I remember, it was also our first meeting. Kinda like we were having our first kids. ” you bit your lower lip, a cheeky smile of pride and joy hidden as to not cause him discomfort. “ It was, thank you.. ” a pause, silence. This time you felt the bed grow heavier and warmer so your eyes drift to check up on him. You were right, he's sleeping– “ Dad is a stubborn and joyous man. It's bad if I don't accept him and the contagious joy. ” your breath hitches.

“ Mom, thank you. You two. ” now silence again. The vastness of the room is nothing in comparison to the small space the two of you are in so you can confirm his asleep state. “ So shocked? He can be straightforward when he's sick and sleepy. ” Satoru emerges from the shadow of the door left ajar earlier. He dips beside you, admiring the huge smile on your lips. “ I didn't know he actually thought of us like that. ” you whispered, reaching out to hug him. It felt so domestic, so loving. “ It feels like a family huh? I know that's what you're thinking. ” he laughs softly and quietly.

“ I know, I know, we are, honey. You did well with Gumi's growth. Well done mama. ” you raised your head from his embrace immediately though and smirked. “ Why are you acting like he didn't acknowledge you first hm? You shy then, papa? ” now's your turn, a revenge for your little Gumi. Satoru froze then, his face flushed with a hint of smile forming on his mouth. “ He did. ” this time, it's not hot and cold for Megumi now. It's warm and nice. He fell asleep right after hearing it.

© @elysiasasuya 2025. © Ri (edits) © kodasworld (dividers) . Hearts, reblogs and shares are appreciated!

[demie90s]

Can you write a imagine where the reader is dating two UConn players (your choice), and the rest of the team slowly realizes it through subtle hints — matching hoodies, inside jokes, post-game kisses. Eventually, the team confronts them, and the reader just says, “What? I’ve got good taste.”

Triple Threat

Nika Mühl x Azzi Fudd x fem!reader

MASTERLIST | MORE

Summary: It started with matching hoodies. Then inside jokes. Then a not-so-subtle post-game kiss. The team put the pieces together one by one.

Warnings: Poly relationship, team reactions, slow reveal, casual confidence, light fluff

Word count: ~ 0.4k

I thought we were being discreet. For real.

A hoodie here, a soft laugh there. A kiss that maybe landed a little too close to the mouth post-game. Nothing crazy.

But apparently, when you’re dating both Nika and Azzi—two of the baddest players on the court—it doesn’t take long for people to catch on.

It started with the hoodies. We all have team gear, but somehow I always showed up in Nika’s gray one with the faded logo and Azzi’s oversized black one with the faint hot cocoa stain on the sleeve. KK clocked it first.

“You don’t own clothes of your own?” she asked, brow raised, smirking.

I blinked. “I like to rotate. Let me live.”

Then there were the inside jokes. Little stuff like me saying “Croatian curse words hit different,” and Azzi giggling before Nika could even translate. Or Azzi mumbling “You always steal my lip balm” in front of the locker room mirror while I grinned and pocketed it anyway. Aubrey just stood behind us one day whispering, “Something in the water ain’t clean.”

And then came the post-game moment that really set it off.

Big win. Cameras flashing. Team celebrating. I ran up to Azzi first, gave her a quick, low hug—nothing wild—but her hands stayed on my waist just a bit too long. Then I turned to Nika, and she pulled me in with one arm and kissed the corner of my mouth in front of the whole damn bench like it was Tuesday.

Dead silence. Ines dropped her water bottle. Paige straight up choked on her gum. Caroline just stared like a sitcom mom watching her kid do something unholy.

“Okay, what the hell was that?” Paige finally said, pointing between all three of us like she was solving a crime.

Nika didn’t flinch. Azzi just smiled like she’d been waiting for the team to catch up.

KK’s eyes went wide. “HOLD ON—both of them?! YOU GOT BOTH—YOU DATING THE WHOLE BACKCOURT?!”

I shrugged. Wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Looked around like I was confused why anyone was shocked.

Then I said it. Real calm. Real casual. “What? I’ve got good taste.”

The room lost it. Paige screamed. Like actually screamed. Kk threw a towel in the air. Jana muttered, “I knew it. I knew it.”

Meanwhile, Azzi kissed my temple. Nika smirked like she was daring anyone to say something outta pocket.

I sat down, stretched my legs, and said, “Now run me my snacks. I got a full-time relationship to maintain.”

@xxsnowxx213 @draculara-vonvamp @kcannon-1436-blog @zizi-bee-yapping @kaliblazin @perksofbeingatrex @soapyonaropey

[telamonisms]

Oughh I love the way you write chance, can I request a fluff oneshot of reader accidentally falling asleep ontop of chance and he just quietly panic (still trying to get used to the touch) but also not wanting to wake them up.. I hope it's not too much to ask for 🥲

✦My first request of this batch and it's a Chance one, I had to ask Telamon to momentarily gift me with a tail just so I could wag it upon reading this.

✦BABY STEPS✦

You and Chance had been dating for around four months now and things were moving at a snail's pace between you both. You weren't bothered by it however, more than happy to allow Chance to mark the pace and take all the time they needed.

The rounds for the day had already ended, dinner had already been prepared and eaten, there had been a coulple of rounds of board games in which everyone participated before people started retiring to their rooms or leaving to do something else.

Between thouse people, you and Chance.

It had only been very recently, a coulple of weeks ago, that Chance finally allowed you to spend time with him in his room and so, tonight after quickly fetching a book to read from your own room, you followed Chance as he allowed you into his room.

Finding a comfy spot on his bed you sat down, the atmosphere calm on your part. On his, you knew that he was monitoring your every move even with his signature shades fully hiding his eyes.

You don't blame him. You don't quite have all the details, he won't tell you just yet, at most you can assume from what little he's told you that he suffered a grave betrayal that left him with such huge trust issues.

Chance attempts to hide his nerves by making small talk with you as he too sits down on the bed and begins to clean and care for his flintlock.

They talk about the rounds of that day, bragging about how they hit all their shots and how Lady Luck had been on their side that day. You know itXs not their typical, honest bragging, but the one they use to cover up the shakiness on their voice. You don't mention it and instead shower them in praise.

Eventually they finish their routine clean and care of their flintlock, loading it before tucking it safely somewhere within their person, ready for use should it be needed. Once more, you don't fault them. They finally ask about your book, flipping their coin, not to gamble but to soothe their own nerves. You tell them it's a slice of life, you'd never had too big of an interest for them but after finding yourself in this realm, you used them as a means of coping somewhat.

He gives it a light skim with his eyes, deciding to instead keep flipping his coin. You yawn and get yourself into a comfier position in bed, he hides his flinch, but his coin flips slow down for a bit until after you settle down again.

You weren't yet allowed to cuddle him, you'd only just moved on from locking pinkies to actually holding hands. Still you wouldn't fault him.

The time passes in silence as you enjoy your book and he flips his coin, just a bit less vigilant. At some point he'd moved posotions, sitting under the covers, letting you know you could do so too after he saw you slightly shivering but still not joining him in the warmth. Another yawn, your eyes felt heavy and you were having trouble reading, needing to go over the same sentence multiple times to fully process it.

Flip, flip, flip, yawn, flip, flip, flip, yawn flip, flip- Chance's coin fell off his grasp as he suddently felt a weight over his side, hand immediatly reaching for his flintlock, only pausing as he saw your book slip from your grasp and looked at your sleeping face.

His shoulders were tense, he stared you down with deer in the headlights eyes, only after your slow breathing confirmed to him that you were in fact asleep and not faking did he let go of his flintlock.

He was panicking really, his breathing shaky and quickened and his heart threatening to beat right out of his chest, the only reason he wasn't shaking was because of how tense they were.

Weighting down their options, they knew they could wake you up and you wouldn't be mad at them, they knew the only thing that'd come out of your mouth would be rapid fire apologies.

Yet they also didn't want to wake you up, today had been exausting for you with the rounds, all the luck he had, was flipped as bad luck for you, getting constantly targeted by the killers, being kept on far too many chases.

Eventually they ever so gently pulled you to his chest, fully laying down with you on top of him, he was sure that his hammering heartbeat would make it into your dreams. He could only hope it wouldn't turn them unpleasant.

After taking the book, placing a bookmark on it and letting it rest on his nightstand, he turned off the lights, wishing you a good night and some sweet dreams.

Chance did not sleep that night but he thinks he might at least allow you to lean on him next time.

✦First request of the day finished, thank you for sending this lovely prompt anon. I deeply enjoyed working on it and I hope it is to your liking.

[alarajrogers]

What can we do? I reblog pretty much every "stop being antisemitic, shitheads" post across my dash and I have frequently said that "anti-Zionists" are the worst possible hypocrites because almost all of them either come from colonial empires, or live on colonized land that doesn't historically belong to them, or both, and here they are calling Jews colonizers for taking back their homeland. Israel's behavior is horrifying, but so is America's behavior in Iraq and no one gave us the kind of shit for it that Jews who aren't even Israeli are getting today. And Iraq had literally nothing to do with 9/11, whereas Israel's current behavior was absolutely triggered by Hamas' violent attack on civilians.

Like, when it's not Jews, we can somehow comprehend that people from a country don't necessarily co-sign what their government is up to, that people of descent from a country doing terrible things who aren't themselves citizens should be left the fuck out of the discourse, and that a country that has been provoked by a violent attack on civilians is in fact likely to do some horrifying shit, and you don't have to forgive them for it, but you do kinda need to keep in mind that they were in fact provoked and you should not be stanning the terrorists, who have probably just made life much worse for everyone they were supposedly fighting for. This kind of attitude, while hardly universal, seems to be a lot more commonly believed in leftists circles when Jews are not involved in the equation.

But somehow, when Jews take their land back it's colonization, and when terrorists murder and rape and take civilian hostages, we... support the terrorists?

People who genuinely support Palestine do not stan Hamas, who deliberately provoked Israel knowing what Israel would do in retaliation because they get more converts to their cause if Israel carpet bombs civilians. (The fact that Israel fell for this trap is terrible, but absolutely predictable given Benjamin Netanyahu. We've known what he was like for a long ass time.) Hamas uses civilian locations such as schools and hospitals as bases so that if Israel blows them up, they get to say "Israel attacks our schools and hospitals". These are not the acts of people who actually want to protect Palestinians and support them. They would happily see all of Gaza murdered if it meant Israel could be wiped off the map. And, apparently, they stay in control by lying to Palestinians and killing Palestinians who try to speak the truth.

People who feel like maybe Hamas has a point, who feel like American Jews (or in fact Jews anywhere but Israel) are somehow complicit in what Israel's done, or who believe that Israeli citizens deserved to be assaulted, murdered, raped, and taken hostage, really need to take a good look at themselves. Do you believe that about America? Do you believe that about your own country? Would you be okay with it if you were murdered by "freedom fighters" because of the bad shit your country is doing? (And they are. No country on this planet has clean hands.)

You don't have to support Israel. But you need to take a good hard look at your own biases before you say things like "Israel has no right to exist" (do you support landback? Do you really? Do you think there's a time limit on when people are allowed to take their land back, and if the USA holds onto Indigenous lands for 2000 years they won't deserve their land back anymore either? Or do you hold this opinion because Jews are involved?) And if you support terrorists who murder and rape civilians... where the fuck is your humanity, people?

I’ve talked about how, as a goy, speaking up against the appalling onslaught of antisemitism that permeates every facet of society now often feels like yelling into an abyss, because most people either just don’t care or are actively participating in it.

And then it hit me like a brick to the face. People who speak up in support of Jews, Israelis, or for the wellbeing of the hostages often get accused by the extremist “antizionists” as “manufacturing consent for genocide.”

And that is EXACTLY what they are doing. The sheer level of dehumanisation and demonisation of Jewish communities, of Israelis, has reached a point where if a large scale horror like the Holocaust were to happen again, a terrifying amount of people would shrug their shoulders, turn away, and say “it’s just Zionists, they deserve it anyway.”

[tortillamastersblog]

Where Light Bends Wrong - Part 13 | Wednesday Addams

Pairing: Wednesday Addams x reader

Warnings: mentions of injury

Summary: You’ve kept your secret buried and your power quiet, until Wednesday Addams came to Nevermore and turned your whole world upside down.

Previous Part | Next Part | Masterlist

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I wake with a start, the sound of the monster’s roar and Eugene’s cry of pain echoing in my mind. I sit up groggily, and drag my hands down my face. 

It’s been two days since Eugene was attacked. Two days since the Rave’N and Wednesday’s betrayal.

I’m not even sure I can call it that because I should have seen it coming, but I don’t know what else to call it.

I’m still burning with embarrassment and frustration for ever trusting her in the first place. It’s like I said before, she does what she wants and she doesn’t care who she hurts in the process.

I’m not even sure she knows what going to the dance with Tyler did to me…

I get out of bed and pad into my en suite, stripping out of my sweat soaked pajamas and stepping into the shower.

It’s almost seven, and the sun is just starting to peek over the horizon. Despite what happened, today is a normal school day and I’m planning on going to classes like normal because on top of everything else, I can’t afford to fall behind on my school work too.

After talking to Weems and Sheriff Galpin in Weems’ office on Friday night, right after Eugene was taken to the hospital, she said I could take as much time off as I’d like, but I’m not taking any time off. 

I can’t. I’m exhausted and drained to my core, but I can’t take time off because if I do, I’ll overthink everything that happened. 

A rational part of me knows what happened to Eugene isn’t my fault, but I can’t help but still feel guilty that I didn’t get to him quicker.

I should have known he wouldn’t listen. I should have known he’d go out alone…

Weems and Thornhill came to check on me over the last two days, and reassured me Eugene was stable, but their reassurances did nothing to get me to leave my room.

I shut off the water after scrubbing myself clean. It feels like  Eugene’s sticky blood is still all over my body but there’s nothing else I can do about it, so I get dressed back in my room after toweling off.

It feels wrong, putting on my school uniform and going to class as if nothing happened, but I have no other choice.

I finish getting dressed and make my bed before grabbing my bag and heading to breakfast.

If I wasn’t as hungry as I am, I’d skip it, but ever since Friday night I’m hungrier than ever. 

“Y/N!” Enid waves me over to her table as soon as I make it to the Quad. I hesitate for a moment before joining her alongside Yoko and, to my surprise, Ajax.

“Hi guys,” I mumble, sliding my tablet onto the table and taking a seat. I feel all their worried eyes on me but ignore them in favor of shoveling cereal into my mouth. 

“How are you?” Enid is the first one to break the silence, and I barely glance up to answer.

“Fine.”

I catch her sharing a concerned look with Yoko and Ajax before turning back to me. “You know what happened is not your fault, right?”

I pause with my spoon halfway up to my mouth and look at her. She’s chewing on her lower lip, anxious for my reaction.

I sigh and drop my eyes back down to my cereal. “I know. But I should have been there earlier. If I’d just–” “You couldn’t have known,” Ajax cuts me off softly. He shifts in his seat which is when I see that he’s actually holding Enid’s hand under the table.

Huh. 

That’s new.

I don’t know how or when that happened, but a small part of me is glad that they finally figured out their feelings.

I shake my head, not wanting to talk about this anymore. Luckily, they get it and after a moment of silence, Yoko adjusts her sunglasses and leans forward on the table, saying, “So, have you heard what happened at the dance?”

I eat another spoonful of cereal and shake my head no even though I don’t really care.

“Lucas Walker and his friends hooked up a water tank filled with red paint to the sprinkler system and set it off,” she says with a cringe.

So that was what Wednesday and Thornhill were covered in… It doesn’t surprise me that it happened because Lucas and his friends have always had a certain disdain for us outcasts, but I didn’t think after destroying Xavier’s mural last year they’d do something like that again. But then again, Wednesday did beat them up at the Weathervane, so I guess that stirred up their hatred once more.

I get the revulsing suspicion that Tyler had something to do with it because he used to be friends with Lucas and he was at the dance, but then Yoko’s eyes flicker to Enid who shrinks in her seat.

I raise an eyebrow and look at her, waiting for some kind of explanation.

“Lucas asked me to the ball,” she says quietly, “And I went with him…”

“Which gave him the chance to let his friends onto the premises,” I conclude, making her nod. 

I sigh and offer her a sympathetic yet tight-lipped smile. “It wasn’t your fault. He’s an asshole. They all are.”

The irony of my words is not lost on me because as much as the paint disaster wasn’t Enid’s fault, Eugene getting hurt wasn’t mine, but I can’t bring myself to believe it.

Ajax and Yoko nod, and Ajax even kisses Enid’s cheek in consolation which makes the blonde’s cheeks turn a faint shade of pink.

“Thanks, Y/N.”

I squeeze her forearm and go back to eating, letting the ensuing conversation about the upcoming parents’ weekend wash over me until a familiar heartbeat across the Quad makes me look up.

Wednesday is standing right there in her black school uniform and signature braids. She’s holding a tray and looking right at me with an unprecedented look of uncertainty on her face. 

The sight of her makes my heart flutter involuntarily, but when she takes a step forward, seemingly heading in our direction, I clench my jaw and get to my feet.

“Y/N–?” Ajax raises an eyebrow.

I grab my tray, my fingers curling tight around it, and avert my eyes from Wednesday. “Sorry guys,” I say, “I forgot something in my room. I gotta go before class starts.”

Enid and Yoko look like they’re about to protest, but I slip away before they get the chance. Of course I didn’t forget anything. I just don’t want to see Wednesday right now, much less talk to her. 

She knocked on my door once yesterday afternoon, but I didn’t answer her. Whatever she has to say, she can save it. I don’t want to hear it. Thing even came tapping on my window, but I didn’t let him in, choosing to ignore him even though he’s technically done nothing wrong. 

At the end of the day he’s still Wednesday’s family, and I know he’d try to get us to make up, which is something I’m just not willing to do right now. 

She asked me for help and then bailed on me. 

I also realized I keep giving, whether it’s helping her or saving her, while she just keeps on taking. She hasn’t even thanked me once for all I’ve done for her, much less apologized for what happened yesterday, so I’d rather stay away from her for the time being.

Weems has instated very strict curfews after what happened with Eugene, and she’s told me Wednesday is already on thin ice for blowing up Crackstone’s statue, so I know that, for time being, she won’t do anything reckless that will require any saving.

I pause for a moment before pushing open the door to Eugene’s hospital room. It’s Friday, exactly one week since he’s been attacked, and he’s still in a coma. 

The sight of him on his bed, pale, intubated and covered in cuts and bruises makes my heart sink, and it takes another moment for me to get my feet moving again. 

I enter the room and close the door behind me before grabbing a chair and pulling it next to his bed. The overwhelming smell of antiseptic makes my eyes sting, but I take a seat nonetheless and take his hand in mine, being mindful of the IV on the back of his hand.

He looks so small like this, even younger than he actually is, and I feel tears sting my eyes.

“You didn’t deserve this,” I whisper, squeezing his hand softly. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to you sooner…” He doesn’t move– of course he doesn’t– and I exhale shakily, listening to the steady beeping of the heart rate monitor next to his bed.

It’s weird being this close to him and not feeling any emotions radiating off him. Normally, he’s filled with this buzz of excitement, but now there’s just nothing…

I perk up when the image of my hands glowing on his stomach pops into my mind, and I try to channel my powers to heal him again, but nothing happens. 

Frustration bubbles up inside me because I don’t know how I did it in the forest, I just did, and now it’s not working anymore.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper again, giving up and closing my eyes. 

I sit with him for what feels like ages before a nurse comes in and tells me visiting hours are over.

I look out of the window and see that the sun is about to set, so I get up again, feeling a crick in my neck. 

“I’ll be back,” I promise Eugene, squeezing his hand one last time before leaving and taking a cab back to school.

As soon as I walk through the gates, I get a text from Enid, asking me to come to her room. I pause for a second because I don't want to see Wednesday, but her heartbeat is off in the grounds of Nevermore, probably tending to Eugene's bees, so I text Enid back that I'll be right there.

I cut through the courtyard, the sun now gone, leaving behind a faint pink glow as the night settles in, and head into the school.

I make my way to Ophelia Hall, getting wary and curious glances from a couple students I pass on the way, before knocking on Enid’s and Wednesday’s door.

Ever since what happened in the forest, there has been a lot of talk about what really happened and how I somehow managed to get away unscathed while Eugene is now clinging to life in a hospital bed. I try to ignore them most of the time, but it’s difficult sometimes because people have started questioning my powers again. Before they just let me be, wondering what I am and what I can do, but never really questioning it. Now that has changed and under the premise of the book also being gone, I feel more exposed than ever.

Enid opens the door and I enter, my eyes immediately darting to Wednesday’s side of the room since I’ve not been in here since she moved in.  

It’s exactly as Enid described it. While her side is all rainbows and butterflies with a bunch of stuffed animals, Wednesday’s side is dark, monochrome and kind of gothic. Her sheets are black and gray and her desk is empty except for her vintage typewriter. Her cello is perched on a stand in the corner next to her bed, right next to an old record player.

Enid snorts when she sees me taking it all in and jumps onto her bed. “Tasteful, isn’t it?”

I just shrug, knowing she’s being sarcastic and cross the room to take a seat. I swivel around to face her and raise an eyebrow, waiting for her to explain why she asked me to come up here, but she doesn’t say anything.

She just wrings her hands together, looking all guilty and when I hear the soft pitter-patter of Thing scuttling across the floor, I know why. 

I sigh and get back to my feet. “Enid–”

She scrambles off the bed and steps in my way with her hands up and a pleading look. “No, wait. Thing just wants to talk to you.”

I cross my arms and watch the hand climb onto Enid's bed, approaching me tentatively. 

“Well, I don’t want to talk to him,” I say, going to brush past her, but she grabs my upper arm and stops me. I raise an eyebrow at her, which makes her let go immediately again, but she still doesn’t step out of my way.

“Please, just hear him out. I can’t take it anymore. The whole school can tell you’re avoiding Wednesday like the plague and it’s getting out of hand.”

I scoff and tighten the grip I have on my upper arms, not so sure what she means by getting out of hand. I’m simply avoiding her. I do go out of my way to avoid her in the hallways sometimes, but I can’t imagine anyone actually caring. “I’m sorry, Enid, but this is none of your business, what happened between Wednesday and me–”

“Was a series of unfortunate events,” she cuts me off. I tilt my head and narrow my eyes. I wasn’t aware she knew what went down between us, but Thing or even Wednesday herself must have told her. The former seems the more plausible of the two options, but at this point, I’m not sure what to believe anymore.

Wednesday is a mystery I’ve grown tired of understanding, despite my ears still heating up every time I catch a glimpse of her around school. 

“Please, just sit,” Enid asks quietly, and despite myself, I do, sinking back down in her desk chair. 

Thing scuttles over the bed and onto the table while Enid takes a seat on the edge of the bed with her hands clasped in her lap.

I keep my arms crossed and turn the chair so I can see both of them. Then… “Well?”

Thing takes a moment before getting right into it, signing, Wednesday went to the dance with Tyler because of me.

I frown. “Excuse me?” 

He moves closer to the edge of the table and I dare a glance at Enid before focusing on him again. 

I invited him on her behalf, he signs which makes me clench my jaw. I go to ask why he’d do that, but he goes on. He likes her and even though she doesn’t like him back, he’s the Sheriff’s son. 

He likes her… 

Of course he does. That’s why he’s been acting so weird recently. I’m surprised and bitter at the same time that I didn’t realize it until now.

They fought the morning of the Rave’N because Tyler got jealous of Wednesday going with Xavier.

“So?” I snap. “Why would I care if Tyler is jealous of Xavier? Also what does his being the Sheriff’s son have to do with anything?"

Thing turns to Enid for a split second, almost as if they’re sharing a look before he turns back to me, tapping, If Wednesday is in Tyler’s good graces, there’s a chance she’ll be in the Sheriff’s, too.

I scoff. “You really think that? Sheriff Galpin doesn’t like Wednesday, no matter whether or not she's on good terms with Tyler.”

He made that abundantly clear when Wednesday beat up Lucas Walker and his cronies. 

Thing goes to tap something else, but I’ve had enough. I can’t believe he did that. Yes, I know now that Wednesday going to the dance with Tyler wasn’t exactly of her own volition, but she could have said no after all. She didn’t have to go with him. She could have blown him off, but she didn’t.

“You know what, this is stupid.” I get to my feet, making Enid panic and get up as well again.

“No, please, Y/N. You have to understand where Thing was coming from. He was trying to protect Wednesday and–”

The door opens, cutting her off and making me freeze at the sight of Wednesday. She’s still in her school uniform, but she doesn’t have her bag with her. She’s also holding a glass of honey, which confirms my earlier conclusion that she was at the bee shed.

“What’s going on?” she asks, her voice tight with hesitation. Her eyes flicker to me and I ball my hands into fists before looking away.

“Nothing,” I say, brushing past Enid.

Thing jumps off the desk behind me, probably to stop me, but I don’t slow down. I cross the room, feeling Wednesday’s eyes on me all the way until I’m in front of her.

I go to side-step her, but she actually shifts, blocking my way, her hand twitching as though she wants to reach for me. “Wait.”

She’s so close I get a whiff of the cold evening air still clinging to her and mingling with the smell of cedar wood and fresh linen. It makes  my heart skip a beat, but I ignore it and look up to glare at her. 

“What?”

She swallows thickly and her dark eyes dart between mine, but in the end she doesn’t say anything, so I push past her, hating how my fingers burn where they brush against her hand.

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Little bit of a filler chapter but oh well...

Tag list: @sunshinez4 @protozoario @automaticpatroltragedy @mamas-evil-hag @theallseer97 @hellenheaven @iwshemj2 @jizzuo308 @trashcannotbealive @gloriousvariant @brocoliisscared @1863rdorv-reader

[moesthoughts]

thinking about bottom nat

blurb about bottom nat because i’m starting to really like the idea, (lit after my dom nat propaganda post i got so many sub nat on my time line) So here are some thoughts

pairing ➥ natalie scatorccio x fem reader

warnings ➥ sub nat, fingering r! giving, head r! giving, strap, mostly just sesbian lex, pure smut

𑄽𑄺 Thinking about how Nat is all bark no bite, sure she can get you weak in the knees with some whispered words, but once you have her alone and under you she’s suddenly the shyest person on earth.

𑄽𑄺 One knee parting her legs during makeout sessions and she’s completely yours, already rocking her hips on your thigh, whimpering into your mouth.

𑄽𑄺 Sex while you’re both high, and she’s feeling the most vulnerable and sensitive. You’re eating her out like she’s your last meal and she’s on cloud nine in two different ways.

𑄽𑄺 Nat just loves the attention, she’s been deprived of it her whole life and now that she has you making her feel so good when she needs it, she feels so safe in your grasp.

𑄽𑄺 Please praise her, don’t be mean. Any bit of degradation makes her sad, not turned on. But if you praise her she melts under your touch, begging you for more.

𑄽𑄺 Fucking her with your strap, drinking in her moans as she grinds on your fake dick. Riding her strap or sucking on it, she’s groaning like she can feel what you’re doing to her.

𑄽𑄺 She falls apart around your fingers, be rough, be gentle, she doesn’t care. She loves how you know where to curl your fingers to make her pleasure levels skyrocket.

𑄽𑄺 I feel like she’d be quiet, but if you want to hear her she will be loud. Mostly, you’ll get soft moans, quiet whimpers and groans on occasion.

𑄽𑄺 Drunk sex too, in a semi public space at a party. You both pressed against each other, and your hand traveling down her pants that has her heavily breathing into your mouth. The thought of being caught excites her.

𑄽𑄺 Rub your thumb around her clit and she melts against you, losing all strength in her knees. She can’t resist your touch.

𑄽𑄺 I feel like her relationship with Travis made her feel like she had to be dominant, so if you guys got together after they broke up she’d be so relieved to finally be receiving again.

𑄽𑄺 Leave hickeys on her, kiss marks from lipstick, anything. She loves having something from you on her. She also loves seeing her marks on you.

𑄽𑄺 DIRTY TALK. Nat cannot keep her mouth shut during sex, she’ll praise you, tell you how good you’re making her feel.. she just loves affirming what you do.

𑄽𑄺 Sex in her hut when you’re in the wilderness, it’s perfect because you both are quiet enough that nobody will notice. Even then she’s arching into your tongue, you tasting every bit of her.

𑄽𑄺 Aftercare, clean her up, light her a cigarette, or get her water. She’ll help you clean up as well, try to get anything you need.

𑄽𑄺 if she can’t touch you she will actually whine, small protests, tie her up and she can’t stand it. Her hands need to be somewhere on your body, ESPECIALLY if you’re riding her strap.

𑄽𑄺 Pull her hair and she’s all yours, groaning into your pussy while she eats you out.

𑄽𑄺 Nat just loves receiving from you and enjoys the break she has from being the dominant one all the time.

since i’ve been hypnotized here u go… i might be even more in love with her idk.. FALLIMG FOR SUB NAT PROPAGANDA

req me!

masterlist

[kenziiie]

Porn plot for GoJo to Sabrina Carpenter bed chem song please

you’re not supposed to be here.

he’s definitely not supposed to be here.

but it’s 2:34 a.m. and satoru gojo is standing at your door like he owns the damn building, soaked from rain, shirt wrinkled, lip busted open.

you fold your arms under your tits. “bad mission or bad decisions?”

his mouth quirks. “what’s the difference?”

you roll your eyes. he steps inside anyway.

you want to hate the way your skin still reacts to him — tall, too-pretty, all swagger, that thick-ass accent curling under every syllable like he knows what it does to you.

“i was in a sheer dress the day that we met

we were both in a rush, we talked for a sec

who’s the cute boy with the white jacket and the thick accent?”

that was two years ago.

now he’s the man who fucks you raw, leaves hickeys behind your ear, and doesn’t sleep over unless he’s bleeding.

you should send him home.

but you just grab the first aid kit and nod toward the bathroom.

⸻

“you don’t gotta take care of me,” he says when you wipe his lip clean.

“then stop showing up like this.”

he watches you from under messy lashes. “couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

you pause. heart skips. “must’ve hit your head.”

“nah,” he murmurs. “just wanted to feel good again.”

and somehow, that pisses you off.

“gojo—”

he cuts you off. “satoru.”

your jaw tenses. “don’t do that.”

“do what?”

“make this more than what it is.”

he leans in close, breath warm. “and what is it?”

you freeze.

he doesn’t wait for an answer. just slides his mouth over yours like it’s always been his to take.

and you let him.

⸻

he fucks you in the hallway.

clothes half-off, tongue deep in your mouth, hands gripping your thighs like he’ll break if he lets go.

your back hits the wall. his lips hit your neck.

“but i bet we’d have really good bed chem…”

he growls when your nails rake down his abs, breath hot against your cheek as he pulls your panties aside and sinks two fingers inside you.

“how you pick me up, pull ‘em down, turn me ‘round…”

you moan his name, high and wrecked.

“oh, it just makes sense.”

he doesn’t make you wait. never does.

he lines himself up and fucks into you slow, then hard, burying his face in your shoulder as you both curse at the feeling.

“always so tight,” he groans. “so fuckin’ good for me.”

your eyes roll back. your legs shake.

you both come, mouths open, chests heaving — like your bodies knew the choreography by heart.

and you hate how right it feels.

⸻

you’re lying in bed after, covers kicked down, legs tangled.

he doesn’t get up. doesn’t say goodbye.

you glance over. “why are you still here?”

he props his head up. “you mad?”

“confused.”

“i missed you.”

your throat closes up.

he shifts closer. “you ever think about what it’d be like if we actually tried?”

you blink. “you mean, like… date?”

he nods, slow. “i bet we’d be good.”

you try to laugh it off. “we don’t even talk.”

“yeah,” he smirks. “but in bed?”

you roll your eyes, but your smile cracks through.

and he leans down, kisses your shoulder.

“and i bet we’d both arrive at the same time

and i bet the thermostat’s set at six-nine

and i bet it’s even better than in my head…”

your heart skips again.

and this time, you let it.

⸻

the next morning, he’s still in your bed.

shirtless. smug. feeding you a strawberry with a grin.

“so,” he says, mouth full. “do i get to take you on a real date now?”

you arch a brow. “you mean like, outside?”

he grins. “with real food. and maybe i hold your hand. maybe i don’t fuck you against the sink after dinner.”

you lick juice off your thumb. “only maybe?”

“depends how much you beg.”

you chuckle. “you’re so full of yourself.”

he leans in. “and full of you, if last night was any indication.”

you throw a pillow at him.

he catches it and pulls you into his lap.

“no more hiding,” he whispers.

you look down at your hands. “i’m scared.”

he tilts your chin. “me too. but you’re still it for me.”

your heart slams in your chest.

and for once, you let yourself believe him.

⸻

because maybe good bed chemistry…

was never just about the bed.

maybe it was the start of everything.

[cheshireliam]

"Surprise Bag 2025" Story Sale: The Villain Became A Plushie!?

Nica Schwartz

This is a fan-made translation solely for entertainment purposes with no guaranteed perfection; expect mistakes, grammatical errors, and some creative liberties. All original content and media used belongs to Cybird. Please support the game by buying their stories and playing their games. Reblogs appreciated.

Read this before interacting

Nica: This is the worst. Seriously the worst thing to ever happen, I really can’t deal with this. 

His once pure white clothes were dirty, even his cheeks and hair were stained. 

Now in the form of a plushie, Nica was cursing up a storm. 

Nica: I HATE being dirty. Specifically this grimy, dingy, type of dirty. It’s the ONE thing I hate the most. 

(He’s very upset…) 

I could understand why he would feel irritated, but none of it really sank in because of how ridiculously adorable he looked. 

Nica: Spatzi, are you listening? 

Kate: I’m listening. You're so cute. 

Nica: Then repeat everything I just said.

Kate: You’re upset, and yet the way you said all that while looking this cute just softens everything up… like, your words didn’t sound harsh at all. 

Kate: You’re soooooo cute, Nica. 

Nica: This is hopeless. You're not listening at all. 

Even the way he held his head in his hands was unbearably adorable. I watched him while smiling fondly, but—

(I can’t leave him in this state, though.)

Nica was undeniably uncomfortable, but it could harm his body if he remained dirty when he turned back into a human. 

(Alright then!)

Kate: Nica, we’re getting you washed up.

Nica: You’re going to wash me?

Kate: Yes, leave it to me. 

I rolled up my sleeves, turned on the shower, and started filling up the bathtub with a little bit of warm water 

Kate: I’m putting you in now.

I picked him up and gently lowered him into the bathtub while holding the shower in my other hand. 

And then, water splashed right onto his face—

Nica: Ptff! H-hey! Be gentle, will you!? 

Kate: I-I’m sorry!

I hurriedly turned the shower off and scooped up some warm water from the bathtub with my hands.

(Let’s start with his hair and cheeks.) 

Doing my best to be gentle and careful, I began scrubbing the dirt off, working it out like a massage. 

Nica: … 

Being unusually quiet for a talkative guy like him, Nica simply sat there and let me do my thing. 

Feeling a little awkward with the silence, I decided to pretend to be a beautician for fun. 

Kate: Do you have any itchy spots, Sir? 

Nica let out a small chuckle and leaned back against the bathtub.

Nica: I’m a little itchy behind my ears.

Kate: Over here, Sir? 

Nica: Mm, right there. How long have you been in this line of work, Miss? 

Kate: Actually, I just started today. You’re my very first customer. 

Nica: You’re not bad for a first-timer.

Kate: Fufu, thank you very much. 

Our giggling echoed in the enclosed bathroom.

The time meant for cleaning him up turned out to be surprisingly enjoyable.

Nica: You’re being a little rough again. Be more gentle with your customer. 

Kate: Like this, Sir?

Nica: Mm-hmm, just like that. 

Even while I was scrubbing the dirt from his cheeks, Nica obediently remained seated in the bathtub. 

(His hair and cheeks should be clean now. Next…)

I looked at his dingy white clothes, thinking.

(I should probably take those off before washing them separately.)

Just as I reached for his clothes, a soft little plush hand stopped me.

Kate: Nica?

Nica: … Are you about to undress me?

Kate: Yes, I thought it'd be easier to properly wash everything if I remove all your clothes first. 

Nica: You're actually being serious? 

Kate: I can’t get the grime off otherwise.

Kate: Didn't you say you hate being dirty? 

Nica: I mean, yeah, but…

He seemed unconvinced, and I tilted my head at his reaction.

He let out a deep sigh. 

Nica: Look, I’m a man. 

Nica: You might've forgotten that fact because I’m a plushie right now, but undressing me is one very bold move. 

Kate: Oh… 

Nica was so cute in his plushie form, I’d honestly forgotten about that.

Now that he’s mentioned it, thinking it through, he was indeed a grown man. 

Nica: I mean, if you want to see me naked, be my guest. 

Kate: Uhh… s-sorry. 

I pulled my hands away from the buttons of his shirt, and at that moment—

Nica: Whoa

Kate: Wha— 

There was a puff of smoke, and the next thing I knew, Nica appeared right before my eyes in his original human form. 

But the problem was with that exact situation we were in.

(This looks like I’m assaulting Nica…!) 

There he was, sitting in the bathtub, soaking wet and his shirt clinging to his skin… and there was me, leaning in with my hands on his chest.

If anyone were to walk into the bathroom at that point, there’d be absolutely no explaining my way out of this. 

Panicking, I tried to quickly take my hands off his shirt. 

However, he grabbed my hand and wouldn't let go—

Kate: Hey, Nica—

Nica: You’re chickening out now, the instant I turn back? 

Kate: But— 

Nica: Come on. If you want to see, I’ll let you strip me, you know? 

As Nica closed the distance between us with a mischievous grin, I instinctively snatched my hand back to escape.

Kate: Ah! 

My hand slipped and smacked onto the tap, and water burst from the shower, pouring straight down onto me. 

Nica: Aaand now you’re soaked too, Spatzi. 

Kate: Eek! 

Nica grabbed my hand and tugged me forward again, causing me to lean into him with my chest pressed up against his torso. 

Our bodies stuck together, soaked clothes clinging to our skin. 

We were even closer than before, and my heart was practically exploding in my chest— 

Nica: I was thinking of how I should thank you while you were washing me… and now I’ve decided. 

With his wet hair sticking to his skin, and drops of water sliding down his neck, his eyes locked onto mine. 

Nica: I’m going to wash you in return, Kate. 

I froze, my breath caught in my throat, as his hand reached for the ribbons of my blouse. 

He whispered into my ear in a sultry voice,

Nica: Shall we wash each other? … Kate? 

The ribbons of my blouse came undone. 

While I was mentally screaming for someone or something to give me back the adorable plushie version of Nica, he only laughed. 

He was clearly thoroughly enjoying himself. 

[mashtatosworld]

the end of the beginning

summary: it's Diva's first day of school. and this time, it's not Jiyong being the problem - but the menace herself.

The house had never felt so full and so quiet at the same time.

You were sitting on the floor of Diva’s room, her tiny legs swung over your lap as you sectioned off her hair with practiced hands. She handed you clips one by one, carefully choosing them from the pink box in front of her.

A perfectionist in the making.

“Rainbow,” she said solemnly, passing it over.

“Of course, rainbow,” you said, smiling as you clipped it in place.

Behind you, Jiyong was methodically packing her bag - checking the list for the third time, making sure her snack box was in the cooler pouch, her change of clothes were neatly folded in the side pocket, and the little stitched label with her name - Kwon Jia - was facing out.

His fingers hovered over the letters, tracing them almost absentmindedly.

She was really going. He sucked in his lips.

No. No more crying. He thought he had got it all out last night, lying in your arms as he came to terms with the fact that his baby was now four and would be starting big girl school.

Jiyong sighed. He just had to keep reminding himself that she'd have fun there. She'd play all day and come back with drawings for him.

Breathe. Breathe. Oh god, his eyes were watering again.

Angel stirring from sleep cracked through the baby monitor.

You looked up, already rising. “I’ll get her. Can you do socks and shoes?”

Jiyong nodded, dropping the sparkly pencil case back into the bag with a soft sigh. “Come on, princess,” he said, scooping up a pair of pink socks and her tiny white sneakers. “Let’s get your feet dressed.”

She sat, obliging at first, one sock nearly on before she asked sweetly, “Appa, what are you and Eomma gone do today?”

“Well,” he said, grinning as he adjusted the sock, “we’ll be home with Jemi. Maybe go for a walk. Clean up a bit.”

Diva froze.

Her face twisted into instant, fiery betrayal. “Without me?!”

Jiyong blinked. “Well... yes. Because you’ll be at school.”

“No,” she said flatly.

And then - with the speed of someone scorned - her foot yanked out of his hands and the sock was peeled off. Before he could even react, she whipped it across the room.

It hit the laundry basket with a dramatic thwap.

Jiyong stared. “W-what-”

“No go,” Diva declared, standing and stomping over to the bed. She climbed on top, grabbed her pink iPad, and flopped down like this was a perfectly normal Monday routine.

Jiyong scrambled to collect the socks. “Jia-yah, come on. Don’t you want to learn about shapes? You love shapes!”

“NO SHAPES,” came the sharp reply, muffled by the blanket she'd now thrown over her head.

He crept toward her, holding the shoes like offerings. “Jia, please, before Eomma tells me off.”

She started kicking when he got too close.

You walked in, Angel on your hip, blinking at the scene.

“What is happening in here? We're going to be late.”

“She’s can't go to school,” Jiyong said immediately, holding up the abandoned sock like it was evidence in a crime. “She’s not ready.”

Diva threw the blanket off, staring at you with big eyes. "I not ready."

You raised a brow. “You were so excited about using your Hello Kitty lunchbox fifteen minutes ago.”

Then Diva started crying - big, dramatic wails that were louder than necessary and accompanied by precisely zero actual tears.

You narrowed your eyes. She rarely cried. Not like this.

You crouched beside the bed, bouncing Angel gently. “Jia. Tell Eomma what’s wrong.”

She huffed, looked right at Angel, then did a full-body roll away from you, turning her back.

That’s when you knew.

This wasn’t sadness.

This was a tantrum.

You shot Jiyong a look.

He whispered, “I think she’s jealous. About Jemi. About us staying home.”

You turned back to Diva, stroking her hair gently. “Sweetheart, going to school doesn’t mean we won’t miss you. And you know Jemi can barely even talk yet, right? She just drools and kicks and looks surprised at ceiling fans.”

From behind, you heard Jiyong quietly agree, “We'll think of you the whole time."

Diva peeked over her shoulder, just a little. Still grumpy. But listening.

“And we’ll be waiting right here for you when you’re done,” you added softly. “We can get ice cream after.”

She was silent for a moment, staring, before her eyes narrowed at the three of you. "No. Go."

𓆩♡𓆪 𓆩♡𓆪 𓆩♡𓆪

Diva had not forgiven anyone.

She was in the backseat in full protest mode - sandals strapped on only after Jiyong gave up on the socks entirely. The silver buckles were slightly too fiddly for her to take off on her own, which you suspected was the only reason she hadn’t chucked them out the window yet.

“She’s not ready,” Jiyong muttered under his breath as he pulled out of the driveway.

You side-eyed him. “We’re five minutes in.”

“Exactly, we can still turn back.”

“Appa,” came the syrupy voice from the backseat, her earlier wails now miraculously softened. “I love you so much.”

You turned your head. “That's very sweet, but that trick only works once.”

She'd done it before when you had taken her to the doctors office: butter up the weakest link, Appa.

“I do,” she added, voice climbing in sweetness. “I’m your baby. Don’t send me away. I be so sad.”

Jiyong bit his lip.

“Eyes on the road,” you said sharply. “Don’t fall for it.”

“I don’t fall for things.”

You sighed, choosing peace over war, turning back toward the window as Diva softly began humming - a made-up tune that sounded suspiciously like the words nooo schooolll over and over.

By the time you pulled into the school’s car park, Jiyong was pale.

“Let’s just take her on tour again,” he tried. “We can release a shared album.”

“She’s been on tour three times. Get out of the car."

You turned in your seat and gave Diva your firmest Eomma look. “Let’s go. Now.”

But she was suddenly limp.

“Jia - ”

“No. I not going.”

“Princess,” Jiyong said, opening the back door. "This is just as hard for me, as it is for you."

She screamed like she was being handed over to a villain.

“HELP ME!” she bellowed as Jiyong pulled her out, arms windmilling, sandals kicking wildly.

A concerned woman at the front gate turned, startled. Jiyong winced and smiled.

“It's fine, she’s mine,” he said quickly. “We have the same nose." He held her up next to his face.

You walked a few steps ahead, biting the inside of your cheek to keep from laughing.

Diva’s arms were now locked around Jiyong’s neck like a boa constrictor. Her face was buried into his shoulder, wailing faintly, muffled by his jacket.

As the building got closer, her grip tightened. When he went to gently lower her to the ground, her legs stayed clamped around his waist.

“Princess,” he whispered, “you have to let go.”

“No!”

You tried to help, gripping her back, tugging gently. “Come on, baby. You’re going to have so much fun - ”

She immediately switched targets, flinging herself into your arms mid-transfer. You stumbled back, Angel still strapped in the carrier against your chest.

She let out an excited 'ah' at being so close to her sister.

“Okay,” you grunted. “Now I’ve got two clingy babies.”

“She’s really not ready,” Jiyong said again, adjusting the little back pack on his shoulder. “Maybe next term. Maybe uni.”

You glared at him. “You’re not helping.”

You looked down at the little tangle of arms and hair and pouty faces clinging to your torso like koalas.

“I not want you to have fun without me,” she sniffed.

You softened just a little. “We don’t have fun without you. It’s boring. And we’ll miss you so, so much.”

She looked up at you, big eyes shimmering.

You felt yourself wavering. Then -

“Don't let Jemi play with my toys."

You blinked. “What?”

“No toys Jemi!” she turned to her sister with stern eyes.

And just like that, you were back in tantrum territory.

You sighed and looked at Jiyong helplessly.

He looked at you, equally defeated.

Then you both looked down at Diva, still firmly attached.

It was going to be a long first day.

𓆩♡𓆪 𓆩♡𓆪 𓆩♡𓆪

When it came to school pick up, you both decided it was best Jiyong go alone.

Diva was already upset Angel was getting to spend the day with her parents, without her, and had blown a loud raspberry at her sister over Jiyong's shoulder as he carried her in.

You started pacing a little by the front door when they were almost an hour late.

Angel was in her bouncer, cooing happily to herself, entirely unaware that her older sister had apparently dropped off the face of the Earth along with your husband.

Maybe he took her for ice cream, you’d told yourself.

Maybe the park. Or the bookstore. Or that overpriced toy shop she loves that smells like plastic and sugar.

Still - you checked your phone again.

And that’s when the front door slammed.

You flinched.

In stomped Jiyong, his jaw tight and stormy as he threw his keys into the dish and his jacket somewhere near the coat rack.

Following close behind him was Diva - thunderous, stompy, backpack crashing to the floor in one dramatic hurl before she stormed down the hallway.

She didn’t even look at you.

You blinked.

“…Hi?” you called weakly after them.

Jiyong made a beeline for the kitchen. You watched as he grabbed a wine glass and filled it to the brim.

He took a long gulp, leaned on the counter, and let out a sharp sigh.

“She told her teacher I wasn’t her Appa.”

Your eyes widened. “What?”

“At pickup,” he bit, eyes narrowed. “I went to get her - just me - and she stood there and said, ‘He’s not my Appa.’ Just like that. And I didn't have my ID on me! Thank god we look alike.”

You stared at him. “You’re kidding.”

“Jagi, I wish I was. She’s lucky she’s cute.”

You tried to hide your smile, though it was difficult.

“She’s hurt, Ji,” you said gently, shifting closer and wrapping an arm around his waist. “Jealous. And probably hangry.”

“She got McDonald’s on the way back. I didn’t get McDonald’s. I couldn't even eat, I have emotional trauma.”

You kissed his cheek. “I’ll talk to her.”

He just nodded, taking his wine like it was medicine.

You made your way down the hall, stopping in front of her door, which was open just enough for you to peek in.

Diva was curled on her bed, her uniform torn off - vest still on, but no cardigan or shirt, and her little bowtie discarded somewhere on the floor. Her pink iPad was propped on her lap, playing some overly enthusiastic toy unboxing. She side-eyed you when she heard your steps but said nothing.

You smiled softly. “Hey, baby.”

No answer.

You crossed the room, crouched down beside her little bed, and gently swept her hair back from her face. She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t lean in either.

“How was school?” you tried.

“Fine.”

“Make any friends?”

“Don’t ‘member.”

You nodded, used to toddler stonewalling. “Appa said you told your teacher he wasn’t your Appa.”

She blinked, still watching her screen. You waited.

Then her head dipped, lips forming into a sad, shameful pout.

You were about to ask again - gently - when Angel’s cry suddenly rang out from the front room. You instinctively turned your head, just for a second, even though you knew Jiyong would get her.

But Diva noticed.

And she huffed, loud and deliberate, rolling over and pulling her iPad closer.

“Go back to your new baby.”

Oof.

You stilled. The ache in her voice was unmistakable, even if her words were sassy. The truth was written all over her little furrowed brows and pursed lips.

You eased onto the bed beside her, nudging her gently with your hip. “No way,” you said. “I’m staying right here.”

Your legs curled around her, fitting yourself into the tiny space like you used to when she was a baby. You peeked at her screen. “So… are they going to open that sparkly egg or what?”

She looked at you from over her shoulder.

Then, silently, she moved the iPad so you could see better.

You smiled.

You rubbed her back slowly as the video played. Her breathing started to even out. Her little body softened, the tension draining away with each swipe of your hand.

Eventually, she turned over, rested her head on your chest, and within ten minutes she was snoring softly - just like Jiyong always did after a sulk.

You laughed under your breath.

“He's definitely your Appa,” you whispered, even though only the walls could hear it.

You pulled the blanket up and wrapped it around her, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

Your first baby. Still your baby.

Always.

𓆩♡𓆪 𓆩♡𓆪 𓆩♡𓆪

That evening you and Jiyong quietly padded into the living room.

He settled next to you on the couch, one leg bouncing slightly as he scrolled through photos of her from earlier that afternoon, pausing on a blurry one where she was wearing her backpack sideways and scowling at a pigeon. You leaned into him, watching the screen.

“She told me earlier... when Jemi cried… she said to go back to my new baby.”

Jiyong winced, his thumb pausing on the screen. “She's a tad dramatic."

“Hmm, I wonder where she gets that..." You then sighed loudly, resting your forehead on his shoulder. "Ji, she’s not mad at just one of us. She’s mad at both of us. We keep taking turns with her, like she’s a task.”

Ever since Angel was born, of course you and Jiyong had spent time with Diva one-on-one, whether that was shopping trips or pamper days - but never the both of you, together.

“We were just trying to make sure she got time with each of us…”

“Yeah, but not us. Like it used to be.”

He nodded slowly, then turned to you, determined. “Okay. So… tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.”

He reached over and tapped your cheek. “Jia Day.”

𓆩♡𓆪 𓆩♡𓆪 𓆩♡𓆪

The next morning’s school drop-off was as dramatic as ever.

It was already twenty minutes past the time you’d hoped to be in the car.

“Jiaaaa,” Jiyong called, walking down the hall with her shoes in hand, patience worn thin. “You said you were just grabbing your bag!”

No answer.

He pushed open the door to her room cautiously. Her curtains were drawn again, casting the space in sleepy shadow. And there she was - tucked neatly in bed, covers pulled up to her chin, staring at him from the pillow small and silent.

He squinted, flicking on the lights. “Why are you back in bed?”

She sniffled dramatically and he immediately hurried closer, kneeling beside her bed, smoothing a concerned hand over her hair.

"What's wrong my Princess?"

“I sick,” she said gravely, then without warning, leaned forward and with a loud, exaggerated, "ah-choo", fake-sneezed directly into his face.

He blinked. Slowly. Very slowly.

“…Okay,” he said flatly, wiping his nose with this sleeve. “Now Appa is sick too."

You appeared behind him with a suspicious look. “What now?”

“She’s suddenly got a mystery illness,” he replied with a helpless shrug.

"Oh really."

This was also another regularly used ploy from the Diva playbook.

Just a few weeks ago she hadn't wanted to go to Uncle Dae's birthday party after he accidentally broke Tabi - the latest of her electric toy cars. She had claimed she was 'sick', coughing all over the two of you until the word 'cake' was mentioned. And suddenly she'd been healed.

You glanced at Jiyong. He exhaled, rolling up his sleeves. “Okay. Time for plan B.”

“Wrestling her into her uniform again?” you asked with a wince.

“Unfortunately.”

Ten minutes later, and little progress had been made.

Jiyong was on his knees in her room, hair messed up, hoodie now discarded, gripping one of her sleeves while Diva shrieked dramatically and attempted to escape out the other side of her bed.

“I don’t like it!” she wailed, yanking her hair in frustration, catching him in the eye with a flailing elbow.

You hid in the hallway as Angel sucked her thumb on your hip, eyes wide.

“I don't like it either!” he huffed, struggling to get her into her cardigan as she flopped in protest.

Finally, somehow, she was in the uniform - her tiny bowtie was crooked, and her expression was a mix between deep betrayal and anguish - but she was dressed.

Then came the car seat.

You stayed inside for that part. You had limits.

But it hadn't been as disastrous as dressing her.

Only because Jiyong, wide-eyed and flushed with battle, had caved and handed her a grape lollipop just to get her into the car.

Now she sat in the back, legs swinging, sticky mouth, quiet only because her entire soul was consumed by that one sugar orb.

You gave him a look as he leaned out the window to kiss you goodbye. "She's going to have a sugar rush,"

“That’s gonna be the teacher’s problem,” he mumbled, drawing you in again for another kiss as if he was leaving for war.

You leaned in for a final embrace, and gently peeled off the glitter sticker that was still stuck to his temple. “You did good, Gdaddy.”

𓆩♡𓆪 𓆩♡𓆪 𓆩♡𓆪

Then, later that day, you returned to her school gates - together. No Angel in tow. Just the two of you.

Diva spotted you immediately, approaching with a cautious shuffle. Her brows furrowed.

“Where Jemi?” she demanded immediately, still not quite trusting the situation.

“With Halmeoni,” you told her.

She looked between the two of you, analysing. Deciding. Then, without another word, she slipped one of her hands into yours, and the other into Jiyong’s.

You felt her tiny fingers squeeze yours tighter when you said, “We’re having a special day today. Just the three of us.”

She gasped. “Like… like a no Jemi day?”

“Well, we'll see her later, but right now...” Jiyong grinned, lifting her into his arms. “Is Jia Day.”

You’d packed a change of clothes so she wouldn’t be photographed in her uniform, and soon enough you were all seated at McDonald’s, watching her attempt to drink a milkshake with a straw she kept accidentally snorting.

She was delighted.

Then came the toy store.

Diva marched in like she owned the place, you and Jiyong trailing behind her.

“Oh no,” you said quietly, as she beelined toward a shelf of neon goo.

“She’s seen the slime,” Jiyong whispered back, hands resting on your shoulders.

She picked out a pot the size of her head and turned to you with a hopeful smile. “Eomma. Can I?”

You stared at it. “That… will end up in someone’s hair.”

“Jagiya,” Jiyong said softly, squeezing you with a grin. “We said whatever she wanted.”

Diva saw her opening and immediately launched a full-body hug attack on your leg. “Pweeease Eomma?”

You sighed. “Fine. But it stays in the kitchen. And nowhere near Jemi’s hair. Or my shoes.”

She did a little jump of victory. Diva continued round the store, sweeping the shelves of any toys.

And then, to your surprise, she picked out a weird, lopsided goblin doll and added it to the basket. “For Jemi.”

You blinked. “Really?”

“It look like her.”

"Oh," Jiyong nodded slowly, eyeing the creepy thing. "Well, that's very thoughtful to think of your sister."

"She need a toy too." Diva explained, tossing another bouncy ball in the basket for herself.

You and Jiyong locked eyes over her head and exchanged a silent, stunned high five.

Success.

Parenting success.

𓆩♡𓆪 𓆩♡𓆪 𓆩♡𓆪

When you and Jiyong arrived home, the house was quiet in that suspicious way that meant something was either deeply wrong or peaceful.

You rounded the corner into the living room and found Angel cradled in his mother’s arms, dressed in what could only be described as a... costume.

She was wearing a ruffled onesie with a tutu attached and at least four bows pinned into her hair, one on top of the other like decorative cherries. She blinked up at you both.

“She didn’t cry once,” his mother said proudly, bouncing her a little.

Jiyong sighed in relief. Although Angel rarely cried, she was very clingy. But it seemed that Halmeoni was enough to keep the chubby baby happy.

You grinned, kissing Angel’s plump cheek as you thanked Jiyong's mother and walked her out, promising next time you'd leave both grandkids with her.

Once she left, Diva settled herself in the living room, surrounded by her new toys. Angel was in her playpen, blissfully chewing on the horrifying goblin plush.

You stood in the kitchen with Jiyong, finally catching your breath, sipping tea and leaning against the counter.

"They're playing with their new toys..."

"Yep." You nodded, taking a slow sip as you stared at him with curious eyes. Your husband continued to slink closer, a mischievous grin on his face.

"So, do you think we have enough time to slip away?" He ran a hand from the nape of your neck all the way to your backside, lingering there with a firm grip. "It will only take us five minutes."

"For me, or for you?" You laughed with a scoff.

"Both," He shrugged, confident in his bedroom skills.

Then Zoa padded by, tail high.

With slime stuck in her fur.

Bright green, glittery slime.

You and Jiyong froze, slowly turning to look at each other.

“Oh no.”

You both broke into a sprint.

The living room looked like it had lost a fight with an alien lifeform.

Diva stood beside the sofa, expression unreadable, her entire front glistening with slime. Her bangs were matted straight to her forehead like a greasy helmet. The armrest of the couch had a neon glow.

Angel was now somehow out of her playpen, gurgling and chewing on Goblin Baby. Both green and gooey.

Your eldest stared back at you both. Not guilty. Not smug. Just accepting her fate.

You let out a long, soul-worn sigh. “I’ll start running the bath.”

Jiyong nodded, deadpan. “I’ll try to save the sofa.”

You pointed at him. “And that is the last time slime enters this house.”

𓆩♡𓆪 𓆩♡𓆪 𓆩♡𓆪

Bath time was a mission.

Diva went in first, leaving a greasy ring of green goo in the water. Then Angel, who actually enjoyed it, with her hair spiked into a soapy spike. Zoa was wiped down with a damp cloth - she was not pleased.

And now it was Iye’s turn - the cat, standing ankle-deep in the sink, yowling like she was being sacrificed.

Jiyong stood over her, scratched and soaked, attempting to hold her in place with a kitchen towel. “I am going to bleed out here!"

“We have band-aids,” you muttered from your position beside him at the counter, where Diva sat on it, wrapped in a towel.

You were trying - desperately - to comb through her bangs. The slime had set like cement.

“Ow,” Diva whined, squirming.

"Stop moving or you'll really look like Appa." You said as her hair seemed to be getting shorter and shorter with each cut.

You gently snipped at the clumps of matted hair, trying to salvage something vaguely respectable. It was not going well.

Angel was on the floor on a towel, watching the chaos unfold with wide, amused eyes, kicking her little legs like she was at a front-row show.

“We shouldn't have bought that slime,” Jiyong muttered, struggling with the soaked, hissing cat. “How are you always right?”

You shrugged. "I'm raising three Jiyong's. I've learnt a lot."

You then paused in your trimming and looked at your daughter’s very, very uneven fringe.

“...Maybe hats. You'll need hats for a few weeks.”

Diva looked at herself in the mirror and shrugged. “I like it.”

You caught your husband's eyes in the reflection - wet, scratched, exhausted - and just started laughing. Because somehow, despite the mess and madness, this was still the sweetest kind of chaos.

Your chaos.

And slime or not - you wouldn’t change a thing.

Well. Maybe the sofa.

And Iye was never forgiving any of you.

𓆩♡𓆪 𓆩♡𓆪 𓆩♡𓆪

You gently pull the blanket up over Diva’s chest, tucking it beneath her arms as she blinks sleepily at you both. Her bangs - uneven, but absolutely charming - stick slightly to her forehead as she gives you a slow, satisfied smile.

“Did you have a good day, sweetheart?” you ask softly.

She nods, already half in dreamland. “Mmhmm… I wanna show my school friends my new hair.”

Before either of you can say anything else, she’s fully out - mouth slightly open, eyelashes long and damp from the bath, fingers still curled around the edge of her blanket.

You switch on her night light and tiptoe out together, quietly pulling the door closed behind you.

In the hallway, Jiyong exhales.

“You hear that?” you grin, bumping your shoulder against his. “She’s made friends already. Our little socialite.”

He nods, but when you glance up at him, his hand is moving discreetly across his face.

“…Are you crying?”

“No,” he says, immediately defensive, voice thick.

You raise an eyebrow.

He wipes at his eyes again and shrugs helplessly. “It's just all hitting me now - school... Our baby goes to school. And I was her first friend,” he mumbles. “Now she has others.”

You stare at him for a second before wrapping both arms around his waist, pulling him in. His forehead drops against your shoulder as he sniffles dramatically.

“Oh my big baby,” you coo, rubbing his back, “do you need some attention too?”

“…Maybe.”

You laugh softly and kiss the top of his head. “Alright, come on then. Let’s get you to bed before you start asking for slime too.”

𓆩♡𓆪 𓆩♡𓆪 𓆩♡𓆪

happy Diva Day!! our baby is growing up fast - im not crying, you are 😭

the next diva series will hopefully include angel more <3 bless her

thank you for reading! slime was highly requested for this series - and it's not the last we'll see of it...

love always,

mash

xxx

taglist: @petersasteria, @mirahyun , @allthoughtsmindfull , @gdinthehouseee , @infinetlyforgotten , @redhoodedtoad , @kathaelipwse , @lxvemaze , @loveesiren , @sherrayyyyy , @getyoassoutthetrunk , @shieraseastarrs , @ctrldivinev , @xxxicddbr88 , @onyxmango , @tryingtolivelifeblog , @tulentiy , @bettelaboure , @breakmeoff , @emmiesoverthemoon , @rafesbunniebby , @ricecake9999 , @fleabagspurplewife , @sylviavf , @ldydeath , @wonyluvi , @deliciousmagazinequeen , @heartubeatusalon , @imminsugasgf , @steponupbabe, @moontabi , @1950schick , @wcnderlnds

[echo-exco]

❝DOCTOR, I'M CHASIN' A GHOST, DO I LOOK LIKE HIM?❞

୨⎯ ┊BATFAM X NEGLECTED!HEALER!READER ꒱

✰ ৎ──────SYPNOPSIS: all you ever wanted was a purpose. something that would give meaning to your existence, your power. healing others was the only thing that ever made you feel alive, needed… until you ended up in that awful place.

✰ ৎ────── masterlist. | prev. | next.

You were in the same corner as always, sitting by the desk, your feet dangling slightly from the seat, elbows resting on the wooden surface, an open notebook in front of you and a pencil between your fingers. You weren’t writing at that moment. Just reading. One of the many pages you seemed to have copied and rewritten over and over again.

Medical records. Detailed, meticulous, with personal notes and small fragments of thoughts the patients themselves had said out loud without realizing it. Those were your favorites. You liked jotting down those details, even when they were repetitive or confusing. Masashi always said that was a good thing, that using boredom for something “productive” was a valuable habit for someone like you.

Back then, you almost laughed in his face. Not out of any personal contempt, really, it just struck you as funny, ironic, that Masashi, of all people, would talk about productivity like he actually knew what it meant.

Sometimes you wondered if he even understood what work really was. You loved him, of course you did. After all, he had saved you, given you a purpose, a name, a pretty room, white coats with sleeves that were just a little too long. But you also knew that, no matter how fond you were of him, he was downright hopeless at certain things.

If anyone was shouldering the responsibility in that clinic, it was you. Always you. The one who organized the files, the one who remembered to clean the instruments, the one who had to go fetch him because he forgot he had surgery scheduled with a new patient. The worst part wasn’t his messiness—it was the way he reacted when you tried to point out the problem. He laughed. Apologized. Sometimes he picked you up and spun you around like an angry little pet. “Oh, my grumpy little doctor, you scold me more than my supervisor in med school,” he’d say, as if that were somehow endearing.

You were grateful to be here, away from him. At least for now. Sometimes it was just too exhausting to deal with his pleas. You supposed it was because Masashi had a very peculiar way of asking you for things. They weren’t orders. He never phrased them that way. It was more like… “Wouldn’t you like to wear this for me?” or “Wouldn’t it be nice if you sat on my lap while I read your reports?” And since it wasn’t an order, it wasn’t that easy to say no. He asked with that gentle voice, like it was for your own good.

You, of course, wanted to do things right. You wanted him to be happy.

Even with Charlotte around, a girl who was brilliant, efficient, and didn’t have the annoying habit of talking in her sleep, Masashi still kept chasing after you to accompany him in things that had absolutely no clinical purpose. As if only you could meet his ridiculously specific standards for companionship. He said Charlotte was “too artificial.” That he could actually talk with you. That your complaints were endearing.

Charlotte was useful, sure, but she didn’t have a “soul,” he sometimes said. She lacked your charisma and sweetness. Masashi said it while laughing, but also a little too seriously. You, on the other hand, had a soul. And expression. And soft hands, he’d say.

You theorized that maybe that’s why Masashi preferred asking you to try on a new dress in front of the mirror, or to sit with him while he fed you like an ill infant. Sometimes he even held the spoon for you. You always said you could do it yourself, but he insisted you’d get tired.

It was obvious he cared about you deeply. You knew it because he said things like, “Can you smile a little more? My head hurts when you look sad.” And you didn’t want him to hurt. So you smiled, even if it didn’t always come out naturally. He noticed, of course. But he’d say you’d look beautiful when you smiled for real.

Still, you thought it would be wonderful if he put that same level of care and enthusiasm into his work as a doctor. He had so much talent. You’d seen him operate. When he focused, he was brilliant. But it was rare. Lately, he seemed far more preoccupied with you than with his patients. Sometimes you worried he wasn’t sleeping well because of you.

Once again, all you truly wished for was that he’d put that same effort into his medical duties. How many times had you had to remind him that scalpels don’t belong in drawers with pencils? Or that lab reports do not make good bookmarks? It frustrated you sometimes, how he didn’t seem to realize just how important he could be if he simply did what he was supposed to do.

But instead, he came looking for you to ask how you’d slept. Or to fix your hair with those combs he collected like they were family heirlooms. “You look so serious when you frown. It’s adorable,” he’d say. Adorable? What part of asking him for the fifth time to prep the operating room was supposed to be adorable?

But he said it with such affection that it felt rude to say no. Besides, who else would go through so much trouble just for you?

Still, there you were. Sitting with your feet dangling, going over a page full of names and symptoms, trying not to think about the fact that you kind of missed having to scold him.

Just a little. A very, very little.

You quickly straightened up in your seat when you saw Alfred entering your room silently, carrying a box of tissues and a set of fresh bedsheets. Not because anything was dirty, you hadn’t stained anything, or made a mess, or moved a single thing in all those days, months, but because he found it unbearable that your room felt so... inert.

Almost as if you were purposefully avoiding leaving any trace behind.

“Good afternoon, master Y/N.” He greeted in a soft voice.

You didn’t answer. You only lifted your head a few centimeters and gave the faintest nod, as if speaking would have been asking too much of you.

Alfred walked over to your desk. He began wiping the edges with a dry cloth, even though there wasn’t a speck of dust. He adjusted the pencils that were already perfectly aligned. He picked up a folded sheet of paper with a tiny butterfly drawn in the corner.

“You don’t have to do that.” You murmured suddenly, without looking at him.

Alfred gave a faint smile. “I assure you, this is part of my job, master Y/N.”

“There’s nothing to clean. I don’t make a mess. I don’t even use the desk. You can skip this room.”

“Impossible.” He replied with a slight bow of his head. “It would be a grave discourtesy to a resident of this house. Everyone has their space. And their space must be properly cared for.”

You shrank in on yourself a little more. Your shoulders dropped slightly, as if the mere presence of another person in your room made you uncomfortable. As if someone choosing to spend time with you was some sort of overdue obligation.

Alfred didn’t say it out loud, but he’d thought it before: she’s just like Master Bruce.

The way you withdrew. The silence that clung to you. The expression of someone who had accepted that they shouldn’t ask for anything, or need anything. Who believed that simply existing was already a burden to others.

It was the same look he’d seen on a little boy standing in front of two coffins, with an empty face and trembling hands doing their best not to reach out for comfort.

Only now, it was on the face of his daughter.

It was like watching time in reverse. As if the past had returned with a new face—but the same eyes.

And it hurt. He didn’t say it. He never would. But it hurt.

“Can I ask you something, Mr. Alfred?” you said suddenly, your voice soft, seeking permission.

“Always. And there’s no need to be so formal with me, Master Y/N.”

“Why… do you help me?” You asked out of nowhere. It wasn’t a question laced with bitterness or sadness, and certainly not with scorn or hatred toward the butler.

It was a genuine question. You were simply curious about the strange and direct care Alfred always showed you. It wasn’t the first time he’d done something like this, you’d long since lost count of how many times you’d tried to make him stop, tried to let him know you didn’t need to be treated like someone who belonged to this family.

You can’t understand it. You thought you’d made it perfectly clear that your relationship with this person was strictly formal. You didn’t need him to clean anything in your room or help you with anything, no matter how small or insignificant. You had no power over the city, and you didn’t do anything like your other siblings.

You’re not useful in this house.

And you’re definitely not anyone in this family.

Alfred paused for a second, without lifting his head. He pretended to adjust the corner of a notebook.

“I do it because you live here.” He said with all the solemnity of a butler. But his voice was lower than usual—gentle, as if he were speaking to a small, frightened animal. “And because you deserve to be comfortable. It doesn’t matter if you don’t think you need help. Sometimes, it’s simply okay to receive it. After all, you’re family.”

You lowered your gaze. You didn’t argue. You just sighed, with a kind of childish resignation.

It wasn’t that you didn’t believe him.

It was that you didn’t even know how to believe it in the first place.

Because the moment you show your true self… will Alfred really be able to look you in the eyes and say those same words? Gotham is no place for beings like you. This city, your own family, they would all deny your power, your purpose, your very existence and reason for being alive.

It’s painful, suffocating even, to think about what will happen if Bruce or anyone else in this house ever finds out about your powers. You don’t think they’d be capable of understanding. You had to find Masashi just to give meaning to everything you were, something to keep you sane and delay your inevitable collapse.

But was that enough? Was it really worth having that purpose at the cost of your innocence?

You can’t save yourself, so how do you still expect to save anyone else?

Alfred finished straightening the desk, crossed the room, cracked the window open to let in a bit of breeze, and then moved to check the wardrobe to make sure everything was in order. There was no need, of course. Every garment was folded as if no one had ever touched them.

“Would you like me to prepare something for tea?” He asked softly, pausing near the door. “Perhaps some vanilla cookies. Or a bit of fresh fruit.”

“I’m fine.” You murmured. “Thank you.”

You always said that. Always with that same awkward tone. As if being around him, or anyone else in this family, was somehow improper.

Alfred nodded. He didn’t press.

As he closed the door, he stopped in the hallway, hand still on the doorknob. He allowed himself a sigh.

Have I failed her too?

I failed Bruce… and now I’m failing his daughter?

Or is this family simply doomed to grow up believing they’re not allowed to ask for anything?

He knew Bruce was doing everything he could. That he was obsessed with that figure in the shadows, the nameless man who might still be out there, posing a threat to your safety while he remained free.

From the moment you arrived, you kept to the sidelines. Not out of rebellion, or visible pain, or even shyness. You simply acted like someone who was… passing through. As if it didn’t matter whether you got used to this place or not, because you weren’t planning to stay.

According to the files, you’d been through several families. None of them were especially terrible. No marks, no signs of neglect—just returns. The kind that never get recorded as damage, but leave scars on the soul. Families that “didn’t connect,” or “weren’t ready.” Families that got tired.

Alfred had read those reports on a night when Bruce couldn’t sleep. Because he couldn’t sleep either.

And yet… something didn’t sit right. Something felt artificial about the entire sequence of events. Alfred was far too old not to suspect when a story seemed too carefully designed to be harmless.

You… you knew it wasn’t true.

You had seen those documents by accident, stumbled across them by mistake. You flipped through those reports like they were silly stories someone else had written about your life.

You’d never been in any family at all. You don’t even think you’re capable of remembering your own mother.

Masashi had mentioned that he knew your mother. Apparently, they were close friends. Unfortunately, the woman died during childbirth, and poor Masashi took a couple of years to learn of your existence so he could help you.

Of course, there’s no reason for your newly discovered family to ever know about that.

Alfred knew Bruce felt guilty, for whatever you had been through and whatever uncertain future might still await you—even without knowing the details.

He understood.

Because he felt it too.

Maybe you would never see him as more than an old butler. Maybe you’d never understand why he changed your sheets every week or left a glass of warm water by your bed. But he would do it anyway.

Because you are part of this house.

Even if you didn’t believe it.

Master Bruce, he thought as he finally stepped out of the room, this time you won’t be able to postpone the conversation. She looks too much like her for you not to see it.

He closed the door carefully.

The tray remained on the table.

The cookies, untouched.

The tea, lukewarm.

You looked at the butler for a brief moment, then at the snack, a quiet gesture of goodwill. You lowered your gaze. You didn’t nod, didn’t refuse. You just went back to writing a note in your notebook, as if the conversation had never happened.

Eventually, Alfred would forget this conversation.

At least, that’s what you hoped.

Damian knew before the others. Not because Bruce told him first, but because he noticed.

The hushed voices between Alfred and his father. The long phone calls. The sealed file on the Batcomputer with restricted access. The closed-door meetings that not even Nightwing knew about. It wasn’t hard to put the pieces together—not when you’d been trained by the League of Assassins.

A daughter.

A biological daughter.

Another one.

He said nothing for an entire day. He just thought about it.

He remembered his mother’s voice, sharp as a blade over tempered steel, repeating for years what he already knew: “You are the only son of Bruce Wayne. The rightful one. The heir.”

But it wasn’t true.

Now there was another.

A blood daughter.

A sister.

Damian felt a strange stab in his chest. It wasn’t jealousy exactly. It was… disorder. Something was wrong with the world, and it needed to be corrected.

He met you three days later.

He expected something. A threat. A fraud. Someone who walked with the arrogance of someone claiming what wasn’t theirs.

But no.

He saw you sitting in the corner, feet dangling from the couch, a cup far too big between your hands. Your gaze still, almost vacant.

You didn’t try to speak to the others. You didn’t approach when he walked in. You didn’t even look at him properly.

Damian felt irritated by that. By your calm. By your weakness. By your silence.

You were… soft. Fragile. Kind, even. When you spoke, your voice was patient. Nothing like what he expected.

You didn’t challenge him.

You didn’t confront him.

You didn’t look at him like an equal.

She knows her place, Damian thought with satisfaction.

That was good. That was right. The world needed order.

And you weren’t part of his world. Not really.

He watched you for days. Always on the sidelines. Never interrupting. You didn’t train. You didn’t ask for missions. You didn’t even complain when the others ignored or interrupted you. Not a grimace. Not a single unnecessary word.

You weren’t useful, but at least you knew you weren’t.

Damian clung to that idea tightly. He needed to believe it.

Not necessarily because he hated you. Not yet.

If you weren’t a threat to his family, then there was no need to eliminate you.

Only to keep an eye on you.

Sometimes he found you alone, reading medical reports or staring out the window. You always pulled away when someone entered. Including him.

That bothered him, too.

Not because he wanted to talk to you. Not because you wanted to talk to him. But because you were supposed to be his sister. Blood. And yet you slipped away like you weren’t.

He convinced himself that it was fine. That it was for the best. That you knew your place. That he, as the true son, the one meant to protect the legacy, would protect you, too.

Even if you were weak. Even if you didn’t deserve it.

Because now, you were part of this, too. And he wasn’t going to let anyone else touch what was already his— his family.

Not even you.

Damian couldn’t fully explain it. It was irritating. Exasperating.

The way you were always there, so quiet, so… out of place.

He had expected anger. Competition. A challenge. Something to prove you had the right to be under the same roof as him. But all he got was that damn look.

That look that held no fear, no defiance, not even a hint of submission.

Just… pity.

The same look he sometimes saw in civilians’ eyes when he returned from a mission covered in blood, before they recognized him as Robin. A blend of judgment and unwanted sympathy.

But from you, it was worse. Because you kept it to yourself. Barely looked at him, and still, you knew. As if you understood before he even spoke.

“Why didn’t you fight back?” He asked once. His voice low, barely a whisper.

It wasn’t a real question. It was meant to provoke.

You only looked at him from the floor, rubbing the arm he had twisted. “…Because you didn’t want to kill me.”

The answer froze him. Froze his chest and burned his ribs all at once.

What the hell did you mean by that?

You had said it in the same voice one would use to list a dosage, to recommend rest, professional. That’s what sickened him the most. That it sounded like you’d lived through it before. Someone yelling at you. Someone hitting you. Someone hurting you.

You just... accepted it.

"...It’s like you’ve dealt with tantrums before." He muttered later, alone in the training room, throwing his katana with such force that one ended up embedded in the steel wall.

Tantrums, he thought bitterly. You made him feel like a spoiled child, not the blood heir to the Assassin League’s throne he once was, not the son worthy of his father.

Still, no one said anything. No one took your side at that moment.

Not even Alfred.

As if everyone agreed. As if you had done something to deserve it.

And that sealed his idea.

You weren’t worthy. You weren’t strong. You weren’t useful. You had no training.

You had no instinct. You had no history. You were just... Bruce’s biological daughter.

That was enough.

Enough to be in his house. Enough for everyone to pretend they cared about you. Enough to take a seat at the table you hadn’t earned.

Damian didn’t want you in his house. He didn’t want you near, but he wasn’t going to let you go either.

It wasn’t because he didn’t want you. It wasn’t because you were his sister. Damian had already seen what the world does to the weak. If you were going to be so stupidly fragile, so pathetically useless, then he would handle it. He would watch you. He would decide what to do with you.

You were his responsibility. His burden.

His sister.

Later, when he recalls that first time he threw you to the ground, he realizes that what made him angriest was your emotional distance. You weren’t a victim. You didn’t cry. You didn’t run away. You didn’t even shake.

You just... waited for it to pass.

As if you already knew him. As if you knew that this too, over time, would heal.

The worst part was that, deep down, he was right.

Cassandra was never good with words.

Nor did she care to be.

She never considered them reliable. She saw them as disguises: fragile tools people used to hide, not to reveal themselves. She had learned from a very young age that lips could lie with elegance, but the body rarely knew how to do the same.

That’s why she didn’t need them.

That’s why she never relied on them to understand someone.

She preferred silence. The stillness between one breath and the next. The tremor in the fingers, the tension in the shoulders, the stiffness of a back, or the way someone avoided a glance. All of that spoke louder, with more sincerity, than any carefully crafted conversation.

With you, from the very first moment, everything was painfully clear.

No greetings or long introductions were necessary. Just a few seconds. Barely ten. That was all she needed to understand you.

You didn’t want to be there.

You didn’t want to talk.

You didn’t want company.

And the most obvious thing: you didn’t want her.

But she didn’t take it personally. It didn’t feel like a direct rejection. It was more like an old barrier, a resistance built with years of experience. A discomfort without a clear name, but dense, thick… as if you had been carrying a weariness for so long that you no longer knew how to let it go.

You were no stranger to the feeling of not fitting in.

She, who also understood that weight, decided not to push you. She didn’t force closeness. She didn’t try to sit next to you at the table, nor did she offer you forced conversations while you flipped through a book or ate in silence. She kept close, yes, but always on the periphery. She measured her steps. She guarded her presence like someone trying not to scare a wounded animal.

Because every time her footsteps got too close, you would tense up.

And that, though she tried not to admit it, hurt.

Not out of ego. Not because she felt rejected by you. What truly hurt her was seeing how that discomfort seemed more directed at yourself. As if being there, surrounded by people who wanted to accept you, was some kind of punishment you had to endure in silence.

Cassandra understood that. And decided she wouldn’t add her shadow to the pile. She wouldn’t be another burden, nor a presence that forced itself.

As the days passed, something started to change. Very little. Almost imperceptible, like the first hints of dawn after a long night.

Your eyes would follow her briefly. You lingered in the common spaces for a few seconds longer. Sometimes, you stayed in the living room, behind the couch, saying nothing, as if simply being near her was already an effort. A silent way of saying you wanted to belong, even if you didn’t know how.

As if you were trying to fit into a home you still found too painful to face directly.

Cassandra didn’t reproach you for it. But she noticed.

She observed how each of your attempts seemed to be born out of exhaustion. How your smiles seemed borrowed. How every word you spoke seemed to come from a corner of obligation, never from a genuine desire to be part of things.

You were forcing yourself to fit in.

That... that was what frustrated her. Not the fact that you kept your distance. Not your silence. Not your emotional awkwardness.

What infuriated her was the falseness of your effort. That lukewarm performance that tried to show affection, but only revealed your guilt. Or your fear.

Cassandra, who had spent her life deciphering these masks, couldn’t ignore it.

One night, she just couldn’t take it anymore.

She found you in the kitchen. You were holding your notebook tightly, pressed against your chest like it was an invisible armor. She had only gone to get a glass of water. She wasn’t expecting anything. She wasn’t looking for a conversation.

But you spoke.

"Do you like jasmine tea?"

It was a light phrase. Empty. Like a rope thrown into the abyss, with no intention of anyone grabbing it.

Cassandra, who had been watching you pretend a closeness you didn’t feel for weeks, responded without embellishment. Without softness.

"Why are you pretending you want to be here?"

The question wasn’t aggressive. It wasn’t sharp. But it cut deeper than any scream.

And she knew it.

You didn’t answer. You just lowered your gaze, as if you’d been caught hurting someone, when in reality, you were just lost. Confused. Unable to fully understand why you were pretending something you didn’t even get yourself.

The silence that followed was thick, unbearable.

"You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to." She added. Her voice was still firm, but it no longer sounded like an accusation. "Just… stop pretending you’re trying. It’s fake. And you know it."

That’s what hurt the most.

Not your distance. Not your walls. What really stung was your insistence on faking an affection you didn’t feel. That small lie, repeated in every gesture, every look, every awkward effort.

For Cassandra, who could recognize good intentions disguised as lies, it was the breaking point.

She didn’t speak to you again. For days, not a word, not a glance, not a greeting. Nothing.

If she’s honest with herself, she doesn’t remember looking at you the same way after that.

Cassandra didn’t hate you.

It wasn’t hatred.

It was incomprehension.

It was helplessness in the face of your silent pain and your determination to keep pretending you wanted to be a part of it, even though every action screamed the opposite.

What bothered her the most… was that she still wished you would try for real.

But she did the right thing. She repeated that to herself many times.

You, on your part, never sought her again. There were no more words directed at her. Not even a glance, not even one of those tense sighs you used to let out when her presence overwhelmed you. You became a shadow that avoided hers. You slipped through the house as if she were a presence that hurt you.

In a cruel irony, that hurt even more.

Cassandra clung to the idea that she had done the right thing. That telling the truth, even if it was brutal, was better than continuing to feed a comfortable lie. That at least now you were honest. That you no longer pretended you wanted to be close.

Clearly, you didn’t want her company. Clearly, you couldn’t stand her. Clearly, you had stopped pretending.

So… why didn’t it feel better?

Why did she wake up in a foul mood? Why, when she saw you walking down the halls with your head down and your steps measured like you were an intruder in your own home, did she feel a twinge of frustration she couldn’t shake off?

Why did she keep watching you in the room, alone, hugging that notebook like it was an excuse to exist, her eyes lost in a dead point... and filled with rage?

It wasn’t at you.

She had already resigned herself to your presence. To the way you didn’t truly be there. To your absences even when you were right in front of her.

The rage was with herself.

With that part of her that kept waiting. That wished, at least once, you would turn around. That you would look at her. That you would say something real. That you would make that rejection, at least, feel personal. That it would hurt for the right reasons.

Because before, you used to pretend you wanted to stay.

That hurt.

But now, she couldn’t even have that.

Now, you were a wall.

Cassandra knew she should feel at peace with it.

She should.

Because she hadn’t pressured you. She hadn’t insisted. She hadn’t become a burden. She had done what was supposed to be right: leaving you in peace.

But every time she saw you interact with others in the same distant way, every time you disappeared for hours, every time you avoided any emotional connection as if breathing out loud hurt, she felt something inside her grow heavier.

Sharper.

It wasn’t guilt. Not like what others felt.

It was something else. A dull premonition. Like her intuition, the one that always guided her with such precision, was telling her that the wall was no longer just yours.

That now she was on the other side, too. That she had helped build it. That she, too, hid behind it.

Because it hurt.

Because she didn’t know how to face the pain with words.

So, she did the only thing she knew how to do: she ignored it.

Or at least pretended she could.

She told herself that it was just a matter of time. That you would eventually open up. That you couldn’t stay alone forever. That one day you would sit with them, without fear. That maybe, just maybe, you’d look at her again without that shadow in your eyes.

That one day, you would speak… with truth.

She would be there, waiting.

Because she did the right thing.

Right?

Right?

Even if now, for the first time, she no longer knew how to read you.

taglist. @prettiest-thing-in-the-morgue @victoria1676 @ithoughtthinks @maybeethan69 @moonsunlights @ghostxmio @niamcarlin @mys0cksrwet @joseylouge @kore-of-the-underworld @lithiumval @ryuushou @jellystar-star @bbsaeko @sadeem575 @buckturd @justonerandomreader @amaryilia @shycreatorreview @galaxypurplerose @hearts4mica @lonely-entity @bronermalls @justafank @theholyharp @jjoppees @raiyuxa @bbmgirll @hattersrabbit @1abi @a-lurking-fae @cristy-101 @eli-chris @kenman00001 @aaaaailo @c4xcocoa @funtimekoda14 @shrimp38 @ghostgirl-207 @yarn-mony @expressodepressogetoffmyproperty @java-lava @on-a-sugar-rush @hwaissooo @endaculi @shadowsofapastera @deaddino3 @lalana1703

[satrs]

A/N; working on alll of ur requests rn sweeties!!! It's gonna take me a good while tho, so here is a lil sum sum I wrote abt the guys sum time ago ^^ Hope u enjoy my late night yapping and plzzzz be patient with meeee, I didn't forget ur requests my lovelys!!!

Random/unpopular headcanons of Weird stuff they do! (MDNI! SFW ans NSFW)

ZAYNE

SFW

Drink his coffee HORENDOUSLY. It looks like a brew straight out of hell. Honestly, it’s closer to motor oil than anything drinkable.

Eats like a pregnant woman with the wildest cravings. I’m convinced he mixes sweets with damn near everything, pickles with ice cream, shit like that.

Uhhh, I also think he’s messy??? Like, his house looks tidy at first glance— floors clean, dishes done, nothing crazy. But if you actually live with him, you realize he doesn’t have time to handle allat!!! There’s always clothes flying around, jackets tossed over chairs, hoodies crumpled on the couch, random socks disappearing into the void. Not necessarily dirty clothes, just... clothes littered across the house. It's like he tries to stay organized, but life moves too fast and the laundry pile moves faster.

NSFW

Tries to optimize things. It's kinda weird but also hot??? "What if we adjust the angle by 12 degrees—oh. Oh, that's better."

One time, he came with one hand on the wall like a man in mourning and didn't say a word, just stood there. (Post-nut trauma pose lmaooo)

Looses track of time when he's with u. You've been at it for 3 hours with barely any break before he realized that he has 2 hours of sleep left before he has to get up for work. But he'll worry about that in the morning.

He's giving you a clinical review when you ride him. "Your pelvic tilt just now was exceptional. Ten out of ten."

SYLUS

Bro im ngl… i feel like he's a hoarder. Antique stuff probs like old pennies from 1500s or sum shi.

Props a history nerd on the low. Knows every event ever happening around the word from the stone age to modern times. (Rants to you about them sometimes)

Caffeine Dependency, But in odddd forms.He refuses to drink normal coffee so, instead, he's obsessed with fancy stuff like matcha lattes, cold brew espresso, or even herbal teas that are supposed to enhance mental focus. If you catch him on a "bad caffeine day," you'll see him get irritated if he had to settle for a drink that doesn't meet his exacting standards (He's gonna pull out the glock ain't he).

NSFW

Discovered his wax kink one time when candle wax happend to drip on him turing sexy time, and he moaned so loud it scared you. That's when you both began to involve wax as a main actor during the act more often.

Oh he's soooo horny when you patch him up after a deal gone wrong. Grows soooo hard when you're shocked self runs up to his all bloodied form:(( Just such big baby and a suckerrr for your nursing skills!!!

Guns are everywhere. Like, casually. Sometimes there's one just sitting on the nightstand, loaded, of course— the barrel practically staring at you while he's fucking you. It's kinda terrifying if you think about it too hard.

Okay, hear me out!!!! When he's really exhausted, like dead-on-his-feet exhausted, he comes home, takes a quick, half-awake shower, then just slumps onto the bed, still wet, still half-dressed, a lit cigar hanging from his lips as you ride him. He's barely doing anything, just lying there with this lazy, heavy-lidded look, letting you use him however you want. Smoke curling up toward the ceiling, his body all warm and loose under your hands. It’s messy, raw, and honestly addicting if you admit.

CALEB

SFW

Constantly challenges himself to do backflips in inappropriate places. "Bet I can flip off this railing" No, Caleb. You can't. But he does it anyway(urghhh). It's even grown to a point that he makes a quick backflip when you two meet up as agreeting mane. It's sooo embarrassing when the bystanders eye him but he thinks it's soooo cold LMAOOO

Caleb still doesn't know how to use a lot of things properly. He'll try to fix things around the house and end up breaking them worse than they were. You'll catch him watching YouTube tutorials, struggling with the basics of cooking, or just trying to figure out how something works.

NSFW

Tries to make you laugh mid-stroke. Literally says stuff like "What would you do if I'd start moonwalking right now?" You're crying laughing while he's still inside you.

He high fives you after sex. Every damn time. Yep. Its canon bc i said so!

Treats you on top as if he's ur personal trainer. "Yeahhh, get those megan-kness working. One, two, three— heyheyhey you gotta put your legs into it!“

XAVIER

SFW

Despite him sleeping so damn much, I feel like hes a light sleeper. If you move away slightly his eyes shoot open bruh. (They also glow in the dark and scare the shit out of you when ypu come back to the room after taking a piss)

Incredible memory for faces, but not names. He can remember every single detail about a person's face—the way they looked when they smiled, the exact way they tilted their head during conversation—but when it comes to their names? Not a clue. He js couldn't give less of a fuck.

Always late for your dates. At least half an hour. Not bc he's been sleeping but because he's so slowww man! You're so mad bc you can't teleport like a certain someone cough cough, but still manage to show up on time!!! And when he shows up he acts so innocent and clueless as if you didn't wait for him for half an hour.

NSFW

Thinks it's soooo sexy when you scold him. Say his full name with force and he's rock solidddd 'm tellin youuuu!!!

Always insists on so much foreplay it's frustrating. Don't get me wrong it's sexy! ....until it's been 45 minutes and you’re still begging for him to finally put it in.

Has a thing for u playing with his hair, especially if you pull it when he's eatin you out. But even if you just genuinely move it out of his face after a heated make-out shesh, he whines as if you got his dick in a headlock (you do).

RAFAYEL

Props has a journal and draws little doodles of you next to his entry of the day!! When he's feeling espacially romantic, he'll begin with a small doodle but get lost in it end end up drawing the most breathtaking portrait of you. He hides the journal too, a bit too embarrassed to show you his rambles of how much in love he is with you. Yeahhh for his eyes only!

Rafayel is full of bizarre superstitions. He's the type to refuse to walk under a ladder, always carries a lucky charm, and insists that everything happens for a reason. If you spill salt, you're definitely going to have to throw it over your left shoulder. Was a literal sea god but bad luck are the most of his worries ig...

His desk is a mess, but somehow everything is in its right place. Papers are scattered everywhere, but you can not touch them. He has his own chaotic filing system, and God help you if you try to reorganize anything.

NSFW

Sucker for you when ur in heels. I dare you to step on his foot by accident in heels!!(he almost came in his pants). Loves to fuck you in heels from that point onwards.

Ok so this is ridiculous but I have this headcanon that you both made out in the ocean once and got so into it that you didn't notice rafayel turned into a merman until his fishtail grazed your legs and you fucking screamed for your life. He had to make it up with some sloppy toppy head underwater ofc!!!

Will literally stop mid stroke to get his sketchbook and sketch you when he has the urge to capture your beautiful form splawed out for him. Like, this is for him, like.... oh my godddd yu're so perfect???

[nightmarenyxx]

𝓗𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓽 𝓒𝓱𝓮𝓬𝓴 1, 2, 3...

->.. Where Y/N lands a job at JYP Ent. and gets assigned to work with Stray Kids, a popular K-pop Boy Band and accidentally starts off on the wrong foot with Felix..

Warnings: cursing, angst, fluff, (idrk what more rn but I'll update it as I go)

Trope: Enemies to Lovers

Italics are thoughts (tho I don't know how much ill actually use these)

A/n: I KNOW it's hella short this time BUT I promise that the next chapter will be much much longer than this, I just don't know how much more I can extend this chapter..

You were nervous and excited as you stand at the big building in Seoul, also known as JYP Entertainment. You miraculously landed a job with the company and had just come in for your first day to be assigned to a group as a staff member.

Entering the building, you immediately go to the reception giving the lady at the desk a wide smile and giving her your details so she could inform you about the group that you'll officially be working with and the directions towards where they currently might be.

Following the directions to what seemed like the dance practice room you spotted a vending machine with drinks, rushing over, you get a coke and spot the dance room right across.

Taking a slight peek inside before going inside you spot the staff members, but none of the idols.

It's alright y/n, you can do it. Just don't bump into anyone and you'll be perfectly fine..

You turn the doorknob and..

*THUD*

You fell on the floor.

Great job y/n, did JUST the thing I told you not to do.

You open your eyes and see Felix. fallen. right in front of you. And his boba all over the floor. Your eyes widen as--

"Oh my gosh, I'm really sorry let me help you---"

"Leave it. I just wanted one damned thing to happen properly and not have it be messed up and some fucking lady decides to mess it all up. God why can I just have one normal day!? "

He gets up and leaves to what you assume is the washroom to clean up.

Kinda rude.

You proceed to get up and compose yourself enough to introduce yourself to the rest of the members, even though you already know them. Who wouldn't in this day and age?

Right as you go up to the others, felix comes from behind and joins them in the line and they start introducing themselves.

"Hana, dul, Step out annyeonghaseyo Stray Kids Imnida! "

You smile at them and introduce yourself too

"Hello! I'm y/n and I'm joining as one of your staff members as one of them have been fired for doing some things which they shouldn't have done, but dont worry because I'll make sure to have you guys be comfortable! "

The guys then disperse to eat their food and you visibly deflate and look around the entire room when you notice the person you know as Han Jisung coming towards you with a buldak Tteobokki and chopsticks.

"Y/n right? I'm Han Jisung, member of 3racha which is the producing unit of Stray Kids. I hope you have a great time with us and dont mind Felix, he's usually a sunshine but his day has not been going good today so he's just really cranky"

He says all this while looking like an actual quokka with food stuffed in his cheeks. He actually does look like a quokka.

"Ah, that's why he's so different.. It's understandable, even I would be hella grumpy if my day wasn't going well.. "

Just as he finishes his Tteobokki, the kids have to go elsewhere for a meeting with the other producers.

"You guys have meeting with producers as well? " You ask Jisung confused

"Well yeah, since we have concerts coming up, the producers need our opinions on the tracks and beats in them. "

They have a concert coming up? How did I not know that? The hell?

You follow them to the producing room, trying not to piss Felix off and communicating with the other members while he just keeps staring at you.

Weirdo.

Taglist: @jisunggy @skyracha @staytinyarmy @niki788 @ilovetocas1 @d3kstar @velvetmoonlght @hash2013 @hwangjoanna @st4rv3lly @angel-writes-skz-here (open)

[thunderboltssasterisk]

Thermodynamic Equilibrium - I

Title: Thermodynamic Equilibrium

Pairing: U.S. Agent! John Walker x Extremis! Reader

Rating: Explicit - 18+

Word Count: 15.3k+

Warnings: smut, talks of medical abuse and human experimentation, discussion of ethical concerns regarding working for government agencies no matter how legit they seem, violence, violence against animals, animal death/murder (it’s a snake), suicidal ideation, survivor's guilt, discussion of child abuse, insecurities, and addiction, not-quite infidelity but John hasn’t signed the papers yet (out of pride) so it would be legally complicated for sure

Dead Dove: Do Not Eat

Smut Prep: (not a hugely obvious dynamic in this part but overall) sub! John Walker/domme! Reader, AFAB reader (no Y/N), first time/getting together, praise kink, handjob, fingering, p-in-v penetration, mention/discussion of pegging

Important Note: this fic will NOT contain any Olivia bashing. That woman made the best, most logical choice for the wellbeing of her home and her son. I’ve seen a lotta John fics demonize her and that’s actually crazy to me fr like they’re divorcing anyway???? I like her idk sue me 

Ao3 Link: here

Summary: set between TFATWS and Thunderbolts* this will be part 1 of a John Walker/Reader series where you are a survivor of the Extremis Project (from IM3) who worked for Tony and now, post-blip, for Val. The next few parts will be set during Thunderbolts* and then continue into the 14 months between Thunderbolts* and the Fantastic 4 arrival.

The tunnels were poorly ventilated. You had, for the most part, stopped being surprised by things like that, but occasionally the poor conditions of the places you raided on Valentina’s behalf left even you appalled. It was a classified underground facility in Nevada this time - though not Area 51, much to your chagrin - located several hundred miles West into the Mojave desert. It was a facility that OXE had taken a special interest in, after a particularly nasty spat between Val and her recently-unskrulled ex-husband, and it was your job to infiltrate the vault-like fortress in the pursuit of information it may have housed on “any potential future-threats.” 

Basically, you were there to spite the CIA. 

The thought made you itchy, irritation prickling your forever-feverish skin as you pondered just how little your actual life meant to Valentina. This whole mission was pointless, anyway, in your not-so-humble opinion. Valentina was already director of the CIA, the problem was that her ex-husband wouldn’t allow her access to any of the medical trial results without proper logging. Valentina couldn’t stand it. If you were being honest, you didn’t blame Agent Ross for being such a stickler - last time the government had been allowed to run around unchecked, they had been infiltrated by Nazis. But Valentina needed to prove a point, so she was sending you off to die. So long as you died in a way that left the older woman able to collect your body, you doubted she would even notice you were gone. You tried - and failed - not to let that bother you. Tony Stark hadn’t been the most openly-jovial employer the world had ever known, sure, but the missions you had been tasked with running for Iron Man had, at least, made sense. They had been helpful. Good. You had been doing good under Iron Man, but you doubted more and more every mission whether or not you were doing good under the Contessa de Fontaine. 

You missed Tony. 

Well, maybe you didn’t miss Tony, nor even really the Iron Man, but you missed the freedom you’d had working for him. The remorse he felt every time he’d seen you had driven his generosity, you knew, but you hadn’t been about to protest a competitive salary and fully-funded living accommodations. All you’d had to do was work for him. Keep the Extremis serum active inside of you for a few more years to help Tony clean up the last of his loose ends, and he would keep you well-compensated and, when the time came, he would help reverse the effects of AIM’s experiments on you, like he’d done for Pepper Potts. At the time, it had seemed like an exceptional deal. You should have realized it was too good to be true. 

Tony Stark, as it turned out, had had a lifetime’s worth of loose ends for you to tie up. Enemies with enemies with enemies, all of them somehow smarter and more harrowing than the last, and all of them with some sort of vendetta against Tony and fetish for human experimentation. You’d freed so many lab rats. People like you, who had gone, struggling, around the world looking for cures to their ailments, or for something to ease their pain. So many labs, so many warehouses. So many bodies. You had done a great deal of particularly heinous things in your pursuit to destroy the people like AIM and Aldrich Killian. Things you regretted, at times, when thoughts of your past plagued you unrelentingly. But they had been for a greater good, done in an attempt to earn back your own freedom. 

Then Tony had gone and died. 

Surely there had been more to it than that, but it’s not like anybody had bothered to sit you down and tell you anything about your employer’s demise. He’d died a hero, everyone knew, saving half the universe from the tyrant of tyrants. Nobody save for the former Avengers actually knew what the fuck that meant, though. It infuriated you, at times, the secrecy that now seemed into every crevice of your life. 

You had no time to dwell on that in Nevada. 

The facility, though poorly ventilated, was well-lit despite being so many miles underground, and you found yourself struggling more than usual to stay hidden in the too-wide halls. You had never been outstanding at stealth missions, you could admit. You were too anxious for them, far preferring a traditional smash-and-grab to the asinine recon plan Valentina had armed you with. But, Valentina now paid your bills, and if she was paying, she was saying. 

The plan, though terrible, was simple enough. You had already completed the first phase of it, making your way down into the facility alongside supply crates in the back of an armoured truck. You’d managed to hide amongst the crates until someone had come in to unload, where you’d knocked them unconscious and taken their uniform and ID badge. Sneaking around the place had gone smoothly thus far, but the constant nerves were beginning to get to you as you crept around looking for the R&D level, your internal temperature beginning to rise even further at the stress. That had always been a problem. Well, not always, but since being subjected to the Extremis Project, your internal temperature had run rampant, a spectrum running from ‘a touch too hot’ to ‘too hot to touch’, depending on what was going on. You were lucky, though. Tony had managed to stabilize the Extremis formula - eradicated it entirely in Pepper, even - so there was very little risk of you turning into an accidental I.E.D. anymore.  

You tried taking comfort in this as you finally managed to locate level 7, the basement of the underground building and the research-and-development floor for the base. This had been your target. Valentina had assured you that the floor was cleared out for the next two hours - something about a maintenance issue taking out the cameras on the floor and the higher-ups not wanting to risk giving opportunity to any whistle-blowers - so it caught you entirely off guard when you slipped into the room to find someone waiting there for you. 

John Walker. 

Irritation spiked your temperature again, an orange haze certainly visible glowing beneath your cheekbones as you stared on in annoyance. Typical. It was so fucking typical of Valentina to double up her odds without informing her gambling tokens, sending them out blindly and damn-near directionless in order to see who came back successful every time. So far, it had always been you, but, it seemed, it had also been Walker. 

“What are you doing here?” the former Captain America sneered when he saw you, annoyance plain on his face. You scoffed. 

“I’m at work, dumbass,” you spat back at him. You had been paired up blindly a time or two before, and worked in a group of three with him exactly once in the past. You hadn’t particularly enjoyed any of those ops. You doubted John had either. 

John rolled his eyes at your petty response, filling in the gaps for himself when you didn’t bother to elaborate further. He wasn’t a dumbass. Despite what you had called him, you knew he wasn’t actually a dumbass. He was actually quite smart, or, at the very least, insanely strategically-minded. An exceptional soldier. A piss-poor spy. 

“How the hell did you even get in here?” you demanded, and it was John’s turn to scoff and withhold a proper answer. Instead, he just turned his back back to you, attention returning to the stainless steel tables covered in equipment. 

It was a large room the two of you occupied, with rows of experimental setups lining the place and a great deal of troubling-looking beakers and vials filling the shelves. It made you uneasy. This room reminded you too much of the labs AIM had housed you in, once upon a time. An impending sense of doom began to creep up on you, your anxiety spiking as the room began to feel smaller, as though it were shrinking around you. You knew it wasn’t. It was all in your head, but it was distracting you nonetheless. Making you sloppy. 

“Why are you just standing there?” John’s annoyed voice cut through your panic, though you rolled your eyes at him rather than acknowledge the unintended aid. 

“I’m locking in,” you mumbled the lie as you shook your head. Focusing back on the task at hand, you started scanning the room for a computer set up. You located one at the back of the room and b-lined for it as Walker started pulling out physical files from the cabinets and drawers. 

Walker, at least, had the courtesy to ignore you. He looked exhausted. He had bags under his eyes, deep and purple like a bruise, and his posture, while technically perfect, held less tension than the last time you’d seen him. Like he was deflating. Too tired for your nonsense. There was less fire behind his eyes now. It worried you, in that vague sort of way it would worry you to see anybody falling apart at half speed. You went back to ignoring him in order to focus on the computer. 

Before AIM and Extremis, you’d been a hacker. Not a label you loved, granted, but certainly one that applied. You’d always been skilled with systems and code, always had a knack for finding back doors and shortcuts where you weren’t supposed to. Your mission training - your combat training - had come later, after the serum took. After your spine healed. Valentina had made a point of using you for both skillsets, much to your chagrin, but you supposed you couldn’t blame her. 

Stupid to only use half an asset. 

The CIA’s systems were almost concerningly easy to get into, but you weren’t about to complain. You made swift progress, downloading files onto a usb drive within minutes as Walker continued to root around the room for manila file folders and loose paperwork, both of you determined to collect more information than the other in a silent standoff. 

God you wanted to win. 

Despite your dislike of the woman, you wanted to be the one to return to Valentina with the better haul. Be the better agent. Walker was undeniably the perfect soldier, but you were by far the better spy. You wanted to prove it. Your hatred of stealth missions aside, you, at least, hadn’t worn literal Stars and Stripes to invade an American base, and you were certain you could download more than he could carry. 

You’re not sure what triggered the alarm. 

It could have been you. Certainly, it could have been you, though you found it unlikely. A loud, piercing siren had started blaring over unseen speakers, the lights in the room flashing a deep red in warning. You didn’t know why. You were a lot of things, but sloppy in a system wasn’t one of them. John hadn’t been doing much that could have alerted anybody to your presence, though, or so you’d thought. Turning around to face the former Captain America, your blood ran cold when you saw him holding the door of a now-open safe. It could have been either of you, in the end, but you didn’t have time to analyze. 

Realistically, if you were captured, you probably wouldn’t be killed on sight. No - if the CIA got you alive, they would keep you alive as a bargaining chip against Val. While it was unlikely that she would negotiate for either you or Walker alone, the pair of you together would undoubtedly increase your odds of being rescued. Your odds of getting out unscathed, however, were exceptionally grim. 

“Walker,” you called out worriedly, “Walker, man, we gotta go!” 

John was two steps ahead of you, halfway marched across the room by the time you’d finished speaking. He dragged one of the lab tables over in front of the door, barricading it temporarily as you scanned for another way out. You had to think fast. You knew that you’d only have minutes, if that, before the CIA managed to break through that door and take you both hostage. The walls were solid stone, same with the floor, but there was a huge ventilation shaft coming down from the ceiling. You bolted towards it. 

“What are you doing?!” John demanded frantically, voice full of an uncharacteristic panic.

“I’m getting us out of here! Come here and give me a boost,” you explained over the noise, and John, reluctantly, rushed to join you. “I’ll pull you up after.” 

“Will you actually?” John asked incredulously. “Or are you gonna bail on me like a coward? You don’t even have anything to open it with!” 

“Oh my god, dude, I don’t have time to explain it! You’re just gonna have to trust me, holy fuck,” you spat, “now give me a boost so we don’t fucking die, Walker!” 

John hesitated for half a second before complying, kneeling down and presenting his shield for you to step on. He lunged upwards when you did, sending you careening towards the vent. You dug your fingers into the steel, heat like molten fire pouring out in concentrated waves. In seconds, your fingers had sunk through the metal, allowing you to grip and pull and send the offending vent flying. The alarm was still screaming at you and Walker, footsteps audible as they approached from the left hallway. Moving quickly, you willed the heat in your hands to dissipate as you hoisted yourself up into the vent, grateful that they were big enough to hide a person. 

“That bitch!” you heard John yell as you disappeared into the metal hideaway, and your stomach churned at the way he sounded. Scared. Angry, too, for sure, but mostly John Walker sounded scared as he raged a floor below you. 

It only took you half a second longer to turn around and lower the upper half of your body back out the opening, but that was long enough for John to have backed up to take a running start at it. Without thinking, you held your arms out wide, catching the super soldier with a yelp, your feet digging desperately into metal to keep you from falling back out onto the floor below. Your feet began to heat, the bottoms of your shoes melting slightly to help stick to the steel, but you had him. 

You had him. 

He seemed just as shocked to be caught as you had been to catch him, if the look on John’s face was anything to go by. You didn’t have time to explain yourself, instead grunting with exertion as you hoisted yourself and Walker back up into the vents. You had to get moving. 

“Come on,” you urged and started forward without a backwards glance. The alarms sounded louder in there, somehow, and the sound was getting to you more and more each passing second. It was jarring. You’d always hated loud noises. 

The vents were only wide enough for one, forcing you and John to move single-file down the metal shafts. You had a vague idea where you were going, but something told you that phrasing it like that to John may actually make the man’s head explode. You could have laughed at the irony. The two of you moved silently for several minutes, both of you doing your best to ignore the blaring alarm and claustrophobic tightness of your current setting. 

You both froze when you heard footsteps beneath you. At least a dozen men passed below, judging by the sound, moving quickly and only slightly out of sync with one another in their urgency to find their target. To find you. Terror gripped your heart, panic seizing your bones as you did your best to will the heat away. You were failing. A faint glow began to emit not from the grid places in the vent below, but from you. Orange in colour instead of the harsh red, the Extremis serum was betraying your anxiety as openly as a tattoo on your forehead reading COWARD. 

John’s fingers curled around your ankle. 

A harsh gasp ripped its way out of your throat at your surprise, the instinct to kick John in the face a hard one to overcome. The glow grew then, heat radiating off of you as you did your best to prepare for whatever it is the super soldier was about to do to you. Something to increase his own odds of survival, you were sure. 

“Relax,” John’s voice was as quiet as it could be, but firm. An order. “Come on, Lava Lamp, you gotta take a breath.” 

You tried not to feel annoyed at the nickname or the commands as surprise added to the suspense rattling around inside your bones. Instead, you focused on John’s words themselves. Relax. Take a breath. You could do that. You could do both of those things. Squeezing your eyes shut, you did your best to ignore the chaos around you, focusing instead on the feeling of John’s hand against your skin. 

You were surprised it had remained there. You weren’t stupid, nor were you in any way blissfully unaware of how unpleasant you were to touch, even through John’s gloves. Your skin burned more often than not, uncomfortable at least and lethal at worst for those around you. It had been so, so long since you’d felt anybody’s hand but your own. 

When you opened your eyes, the glow had faded, your natural skin colour returning in the low visibility. You still felt warm - burning where John touched you - but John didn’t flinch. You glanced back at him, croaking out a weak; “don’t call me Lava Lamp.” 

You knew immediately that the nickname would stick. John’s face had split into a Cheshire Cat-like grin at your words, causing you to roll your eyes. You wanted to keep moving but selfishly - humiliatingly - you didn’t want to move away from the hand on your ankle just yet. It was nice. Nicer than most things you’d endured since Killian found you. There was still a mission, though, so you shook yourself of the foolishness and kept moving. 

Eventually, you and John came to a point in the ductwork that veered upwards as it connected to the floor above. Level 6. Turning your head to face John, you relayed your plan as effectively as you could with the sirens blaring still. 

“This vent has to lead outside,” you explained, “eventually, at least, but I have to go first. I’ll melt hand and foot holes as I go. Wait a few minutes, then follow me up. It’ll be like the world’s worst rock climbing.” 

If John was amused by your attempt to lighten the mood, he didn’t show it. Instead, the blond man nodded once sharply and watched, silent, as you began your ascent. It hurt. Using the Extremis serum always hurt, and the overstimulation was making everything worse. But, you, slowly but surely, managed to drag yourself up the vent shaft, leaving behind adequate hand-holds for John to use after. It took you several minutes to climb all the way to the next horizontal section of ducts, but you were grateful for the reprieve. You only had to wait another 5 minutes or so for your unwilling companion to join you. 

“You didn’t leave?” 

You tried not to feel offended at the accusation behind his words, but it was likely written on your face, with the way John shot you an unimpressed look. Of course he would have expected you to bail. People didn’t work for Valentina if they had a reliable team to work with instead. 

“Come on, Walker.” you replied instead, and you and John continued silently through the vents for the next hour. You repeated your solo ascents up the vents when needed, five more times before coming to the final vertical shaft. 

There was sand everywhere. It was seeping into places you hadn’t imagined possible, pervading so many feet down the metal hall that it seemed to be a fantasy at the end of the tunnel rather than your final escape to freedom. The sand had piled in an incline, making it an awkward crouch as you attempted to get into position. 

“Can you give me a boost again?” you asked, and John huffed. The alarm was still going, the screaming of the sirens fainter now but still suffocating in their relentless shrieks. You were getting tired of practically having to shout above them. 

“Can’t you just do your little trick again?” he shot back. Irritation was plain on his face, but nevertheless, John was maneuvering the shield back off his back and shimmying it forward as he spoke. Taking his advice, though, you hoisted yourself up a foot, arms shaking with exertion until John slipped the shield under you. 

John launched you upwards again like he had in the lab, on his knees in the loose sand this time as he did. You were more stable, this time, able to lean against the vent walls as you gripped your escape hatch, where you again pushed your hyper-heated hands through the metal until the grid face gave way and fell to the ground. There was a three foot drop to the ground below, and it was one you happily did in exchange for finally being free of the blaring of the alarms. 

Relief coursed through you as you pulled yourself up out of the sand. You were free. You were quick to stick half your body back inside after scanning the area, and you saw John looking up at you with an unreadable expression when you did. It was somewhere between awestruck and full of loathing, and it made your heart drop into your stomach at the sight. “Come on!” you called down instead of acknowledging the look. 

The man below you struggled momentarily to strap his shield back onto himself before stretching up to reach your outstretched hand. You struggled a tad to hoist the super soldier out of the vent, but you managed it with a grunt. You backed up as you pulled, leaving room for John to fall into the sand the same way you had. He did. It wasn’t until he refused to stand back up that you realized something truly was wrong. John was curled up on the ground, head between his knees as his hands pressed against his ears. 

His ears. 

Understanding slammed into you, guilt and pity swelling in your chest as you remembered reading about the enhancements Walker’d gotten from his bootleg serum, enhanced senses being among them. Enhanced hearing. However bad the alarms and lights had been for you, they’d undeniably been worse for John. 

“Come on, Walker,” you urged gently, empathy bleeding into your voice in spite of yourself. “I know it sucks but we gotta go.” 

For half a second, John looked like he wanted to protest, but instead he picked himself up from the sand and nodded towards what, to you, seemed to be a random direction. “That way,” he muttered, and you followed easily enough. Now was hardly the time to argue. 

You found yourself quietly grateful for John’s presence as you wandered the desert together, the sun setting rapidly and falling behind the mountainous skyline in the hours you’d spent walking. You were good, sure, and hard to kill, but you weren’t a survivalist. You weren’t prepared for anything other than an immediate extraction, but that wasn’t something you could risk with the base on such high alert. Instead, you and Walker were forced to keep moving, to put as much distance between you and the facility as you possibly could before radioing Val for pickup. You didn’t know how long that would take. 

You two had stopped only once since escaping the base. John had crouched down unexpectedly to cut some sort of overly-textured fruit off of a pretty desert plant. More than you would have known to do. Next to you, John seemed even less thrilled about your circumstances than you were, if the look on his face was anything to go by. His eyebrows were knit together in an aggravated sort of concentration, nose red and lips pursed into a tight line. With his arms wrapped around himself the way they were, John Walker looked thoroughly discontent. 

He looked cold. 

That was something you didn’t really get to feel anymore. Cold. It was a foreign concept by that point, the Extremis Project having eradicated your ability to fall below a certain internal body temperature, even if you’d tried. But the serum John had gotten clearly hadn’t done the same to him, and while in any other circumstances you’d’ve been likely to call him a lucky bastard for it, you couldn’t help but feel bad then. 

He looked cold.

You had only worked with John properly a handful of times, but you already knew that if you brought it up to him without a solution, he would get snippy and close off. John Walker was a planner, one that was easily frustrated by a statement of the obvious when it wasn’t immediately followed by a pitch on how to correct it. It made sense, you supposed, given his extensive military training, but it didn’t make him easy to talk to. 

In the end, it wasn’t you that broached the subject. It was John, his teeth gritted in an attempt not to chatter as he spoke; “we have to find somewhere to hunker down.” 

You knew he was right. The desert during the day was scorching, the kind of heat that even you noticed when exposed to it for too long. The light and warmth both faded fast here, though, the quickly-cooling sand doing nothing to hold its heat as the sun fell below the mountains. Dry and unyielding, the sun had been blistering; the moon, however, seemed to radiate nothing but cold as it rose to take its place. 

You scanned the world around you, eyes peeled for any sort of opening in the rocks you two were now surrounded by. It was dark but you were able to make out the opening soon enough, your eyes drawn to a particularly dark shadow along the stone. A cave. The Mojave desert was full of cave systems and you were beyond grateful for the sight of one then. 

“Come on, Walker,” you said, grabbing a hold of his elbow. It was unnecessary, you knew, but Walker didn’t comment on it as you tugged him towards the cave you found. The wind in the Mojave was biting and you needed desperately to get the super soldier out of it. 

Walker followed you wordlessly, feet damn near silent as you moved together in the sand. You two had worked together well thus far, something that surprised you greatly. You weren’t exactly the team-up-type and you figured Walker wasn’t either, after Germany. Maybe he had been at one point - surely he had been, as a captain for the United States - but not anymore. It hadn’t been the worst mission in history, though, so you had to count the wins where you could get them. 

The entrance to the cave was slightly smaller than you had anticipated at first glance, but you were hardly complaining. The cavern in the rock was spacious, as far as wounds in rock face could be concerned. It was big enough to cocoon you and Walker semi-comfortably, about 9 feet tall and 12 feet deep into the stone, but the problem became evident at the width. It was tight, barely wide enough for you and Walker to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, but the relief from the wind was instantaneous for him. 

“Brace yourself,” John muttered shakily, “close your eyes.” 

Your eyes slammed shut instantly, but the sudden light that flooded the dark space you shared burned despite your lowered lids. You shaded your eyes with your hand as you opened them, squinting against the harsh white that illuminated the small space. 

That’s when you heard it. 

The rattle of a rattlesnake was a nigh unmistakable sound, one you hadn’t heard in years - one that filled the cave you and Walker were hiding in. Your eyes shot down immediately where, coiled angrily around the tactical light Walker had thrown on the ground, you saw a Mojave Rattler. It was a beautiful snake, in any other circumstance, but its tail rattled violently, a clear warning of its intent. 

“Don’t move,” you hissed at Walker and the man beside you froze. 

You braced yourself for the snake to lunge, and you met it when it did. Your hand burned where you grabbed the creature, its scales scalding beneath your skin immediately, but you didn’t dwell on the feeling as you hurled it out of the cave. You felt terrible as you watched the snake fly for as far as you could in the darkness, but you knew it didn’t really matter where it landed, anyway. It was dead either way. 

Guilt churned in your stomach painfully, nausea overwhelming you once the adrenaline had passed. You almost didn’t notice Walker reach out for you, but you’d clocked it in time to not be visibly startled when his hand landed on your arm. 

“You good?” John asked, his voice taking on an uncharacteristically soft edge as his thumb began to rub your upper arm. You doubted he’d even realized he was doing it. 

“Yeah,” you lied, “I’m fine. Good call with the light.” 

You glanced around the small cave in the light provided, scanning for any more creatures or critters you may have to handle before you settled in for the night. There wasn’t any. Relief coursed through you properly for the first time all day, the cave acting as a temporary sanctuary for the pair of you in the aftermath of a - frankly - terrible mission. 

With nothing left to do, you slowly sank to the floor of the cave, your body sinking slightly into the sand covering the stone beneath you. You were so fucking tired. Using your abilities was something you’d gotten better at over the years, sure, but that didn’t exactly make them easy for you to use. They were exhausting. Draining. Energy siphoning in a way that made you feel hollow in the aftermath, no matter how many years it’d been. 

John hesitated only a moment before joining you on the ground as best he could. He reached between you to turn the light off then, flooding the crevice with shadows and darkness as he adjusted his limbs so they could slot between yours in the sand. Arguably, you didn’t have to sit so close together, but with your legs touching his the way they suddenly were, you could feel that he’d started shaking. He was so fucking cold. You sighed heavily, chest tightening when John flinched at the sound. 

“We’ll radio out to Valentina tomorrow,” John said before you had a chance to comment, “put a couple hundred clicks between us and the base before we do.” 

You nodded, though you doubted John could see you anymore. Although maybe he could, with his freaky enhanced super senses. You weren’t sure. Regardless, you didn’t much feel like talking anymore, instead dwelling on the mess of a mission you’d just survived, no small amount of guilt weighing down your heart over the fate of the cave snake. You weren’t even really sure why it was bothering you so much, but it was. 

“It was a Mojave Rattlesnake,” John said suddenly, his voice quiet but still startling in the too-small space. “Venomous as hell. I don’t really know why they’re called that, though. They’re found all over southwestern America, and even down into Mexico. They’re, like, barely Mojave. This part of the desert only makes up, like, 12 or 20 perc-”

John had cut himself off. You did your best to ignore the tremor running through his body as confusion overcame you. Why had he shut up? You glanced around again for a threat, your eyes darting to the mouth of your little hideaway, but there was nothing there. Nobody. You debated asking John what was wrong before deciding against it, instead closing your eyes as you attempted to will yourself into some form of sleep. Then, another rattle-like sound filled the cave. 

John’s teeth were chattering. 

The revelation sent an unpleasant feeling dripping down your spine, like molten pity or white-hot shame. You knew John wouldn’t want to talk about it - wouldn’t want you to actually acknowledge what was going on - so you didn’t. Instead, you closed your eyes and began to focus, all of your remaining energy put into your efforts to raise your own temperature on purpose. You didn’t have to open your eyes to know you had begun to glow faintly again, an orange hue filling the space in the rock between you and Walker. You heard him gasp. 

“You’ll warm up soon,” you assured him. You were grateful when he didn’t comment on the strain in your voice. 

You stayed like that for several silent minutes, sweat dripping down your temples at your effort to project heat without malice. Heat with the intent to kill had always been simpler. There was less precision required when it didn’t matter the collateral - less consequences to live with after you were dead. This, though? This was to help. To keep someone else alive. Heat with the purpose to sustain was almost foreign to you, and you were clearly out of practice. 

“How do you do that?”

The question caught you off guard, the faint light and excess heat receding back into you at John’s inquisitive tone. With a bitter laugh, you choked out the explanation of; “barely.” 

It was grim, but it was true. Judging by his silence, John knew it too. He was still cold. Your heat trick had helped, had stopped the chattering of the super soldier’s jaw, but it wasn’t enough to ward off the late Nevada night. While you remained relatively unaffected by the cold, John hadn’t prepared for it. Not enough. Not the way the Extremis Project had forced you to, years prior. He was still in his typical U.S. Agent get-up - a black-and-red inversion of the red-white-and-blue thing Captain America had going on - which you now knew to be uninsulated. You doubted his helmet provided any sort of warmth either, save for possibly around his eyebrows and cheekbones. His gloves and boots were tactile, not cold guards, and his shield was a concave sheet of freezing metal, 

God, you hoped he didn’t freeze to death. 

The thought, while morbid, was entirely possible if the temperature kept dropping. The elements could kill just as harshly as any man-made weapon ever could, and in some cases, it was worse. You didn’t want that for John - nor for yourself, as unlikely as that scenario may have been - so you sat quietly while you wracked your brain for a solution. Only one seemed obvious. 

“Come on,” you said. You were getting sick of saying it. “I know it’s fucking weird, but we gotta get you warm, so-”

“Why?”

The question caught you off guard. The word - a single syllable - felt like a gunshot in the way it ricocheted around your head, its path of carnage immeasurable in the half seconds it took you to react. His voice had been so… resigned. Tired. He’d been asking simply to hear your answer. 

“What the hell do you mean ‘why?’” you spat harshly, and in the darkness you could faintly make out the way John flinched at your tone. “I’m not gonna let you fucking freeze to death, Walker. You’re my teammate for tonight.” 

You debated saying more - debated telling him that you wanted to keep him alive because, despite your discontent at your situation, you didn’t think he was the worst man alive. You didn’t think he was the monster of monsters that a lot of news outlets had painted him out to be, nor did you think you could find it in you to blame him for the way he’d snapped that day overseas. You thought about telling him about how kindly he had treated you in comparison to so many others, even in spite of his harsh tones and coarse exterior. But you didn’t. Shame and unwanted memories bubbled to the surface as you wracked your brain for more to say that, somehow, wouldn’t betray how rapidly you’d grown attached to the broken man before you. 

“I didn’t even get the files.” 

The admission was soft. Quiet. Almost inaudible with the wind rushing past the cave entrance, but you’d heard it nonetheless. Your eyes finally seemed to be adjusting to the overwhelming darkness surrounding you both, leaving some of John’s features visible despite the lack of light. There was a frown on his face, his eyebrows furrowed, and you could see his arms wrapped around himself in an attempt to ward off the cold. 

“I got the usb,” you assured quickly, but John’s loud scoff was followed quickly by him slamming his helmeted-head back against the stone wall of the cave he leaned against. 

“But I didn't get the files!” his voice was strained and angry. Fear had begun to creep back up on you; a more immediate kind of terror compared to the bone-deep existential dread you had been navigating since the mission’d started. You didn’t like it when Walker got angry. “I didn’t get the files, I didn’t complete my mission. I let Valentina down and I’m the one that’s going to have to pay for it! Me! So I don’t really give a fuck if you got your part of the job, okay? I still fucking failed at mine.” 

You weren’t entirely sure where the emotional outburst was coming from. Or, you were, he had just explained it - profanity laced as the explanation may have been - but you weren’t sure why this had been the breaking point. Surely the military legend was trained to hold on just a little while longer, no? AIM had trained you to withstand genuine torture tactics their enemies may have thrown at you, surely America had done the same for him. 

“I wasn’t bragging,” you said quietly, “I wouldn't have made it out of the room without you, you wouldn’t have made it out of the vents without me. We’re even, here, Walker. We got whatever they had.” 

The words tasted bitter in your mouth, even as you spoke them freely. Sharing credit had never been your strong suit, much preferring to shoulder your breaks and burdens solo, or choke down any unforeseen consequences the same way. Leaving John alone in this didn’t seem to be an option, then. You could tell that whatever part of this had broken something in John that night, it had shattered it in a way that wasn’t fixable by awkwardly-offered compromise alone. 

Then his teeth started chattering again. 

You couldn’t keep the annoyance out of your heavy sigh if you had tried, prompting an equally-irritated sound from John in response. This was ridiculous. You hadn’t been about to extend an olive branch to an icicle, no matter how agitated you felt in the cramped cave. Moving suddenly, you pulled your base uniform overcoat off to expose the standard issue white tank top underneath, the black sports bra you wore under that standing out as a shadow beneath the top. You pulled yourself away from John then and shifted yourself around until your back was against the sloping back of the cave, head pillowed only by your pulled-back hair. 

“Come here,” you said to him, “you’re gonna freeze to death if you don’t.” 

Still, John hesitated. In the faint light provided by the mood and your body’s natural acclimatization to the dark, you could see a look of deep concern on his face as he stared at your outstretched arms. You couldn’t say you blamed him for his reluctance, but you couldn’t help the repeated heavy sigh nonetheless. 

“John,” you said softly, ignoring the way the blond man’s breathing hitched at the sound of his first name, “I don’t want you to die. I can control it better when I don’t have to project it. Come here.” 

The last part was said less like an offer and more like a demand, but it seemed to be what the super soldier needed. John moved stiffly in the cramped space, sliding his helmet off his head and setting it to the side before turning back to face you. Your nerves, begrudgingly, had started to get the better of you again, and a faint orange glow had begun to light up your skin. This, at least, would begin a more natural temperature spike for you. 

“Are you sure…?” 

John’s hesitation was, in a way, sweet. Boyish. The man before you was radiating nerves in a way he never had around you before, not even the times the two of you had come under fire. He was skittish in the faint light of you, his eyes darting across the nebulaic patterns that swirled beneath your skin instead of meeting your gaze. You adjusted your legs and beckoned him forward. 

“I’m sure, John. Come lay with me.” 

That, at last, seemed to finally shatter his resolve. John crawled to you slowly, as if approaching a caged animal, and he was practically a statue as he laid against you. His head came to rest against your shoulder, his cheek pressed to your collar bone and the rest of him pressed against the rest of you wherever it could. You ignored the way this made the glow brighter. Once he’d settled, you threw your base coat over top of the both of you like a makeshift blanket. It was far too small for John, but it was more than he’d had before. 

John seemed to sag against you after a few minutes. He felt deflated. As if any warmth or will to live had long-since seeped out of him. Idly, you brought your arms down to circle his waist, began to rub what you’d hoped were soothing circles across his back at the same time. John’s nose was cold where it pressed against your skin, but that wasn’t what caught your attention. 

He was crying. 

It took you a few more minutes of stillness to be sure, but the feeling of tears sliding against your neck was undeniable. They were hot, and wet, and beginning to roll down your chest as they kept up their unrelenting flow from John’s eyes. You didn’t dare comment. What would you even say? 

The last time you had tried to comfort someone, you’d been a labrat for AIM. You had been one of the phase two testers - the stage after the death-bed dealers and before the retired combat veterans - and you’d been laying in a cot across from a woman whose name you never got to learn. You were both being housed in a medical warehouse outside of Boston at the time, both semi-recovering addicts looking for something to distract yourself from the withdrawal symptoms. While you would later learn that your testing group had been the one used to engineer the addictive properties of the serum’s next phase, all those years ago you had simply been concerned with staying alive and helping your friend. 

“Do you think it’s gonna hurt?” she had asked, red hair fanning out behind her on the uncomfortable bed. She had looked so young. She had barely been 21, a pretty ginger girl with bright blue eyes and hyper-pigmented freckles smattered across her face. You’d smiled at her before you lied. 

“No,” you’d told her happily, “but I’m going first. I’ll warn you if it does.”

You never did get the chance to tell her. Not about the unbearable heat, or the agony of listening to your own spine fuse itself back together. The cause of all those pain pills and drug runs, knitted back together in an instant, and all it’d cost you was your soul. The other girl had burned the same as you, and all it’d cost her was her life. 

Shoving the horrible memories of your friend out of your head, you did your best to focus back in on the task at hand. Walker was crying. He hadn’t said anything yet, and the tension slowly returning to his body let you know that he had no intentions of letting you hear him sob, either. You could feel it, though. You wonder how long it’d been since Walker’d been held, for him to forget that. 

You willed your body warmer, the glow in the cave brightening and your grip on the man in your arms tightening. His shaking hard returned, though you doubted it was from the cold anymore. This was sadness. This was grief. This was the trembling form of a man on the very brink of implosion, self-collapse imminent in spite of his attempts to hold himself together. 

Your heart broke for him. 

A foolish reaction, you figured, but one you couldn’t help. John Walker, for all his flaws, had been one of the highlights in your field ops, especially since Tony passed. You didn’t like the knowledge that he was miserable. You didn’t like it at all. 

“I’m sorry!” John suddenly gasped, practically choking himself on the words in his effort to get them out. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m-”

“Shhhhh,” you soothed awkwardly, doing your best not to come across as angry or upset. “I’ve got you, John. It’s okay. Don’t apologize.” 

You didn’t know what else to say. Was there anything else to say? You didn’t even know why he was crying, just that the sight and sound of it was chipping away at something inside you steadily. The feel of it. Cradling a collapsing star in your hands, you felt like Atlas, doing his best to hold up the sky without letting out a scream. 

John had started sobbing in earnest then, forcing his face deeper into your neck in an attempt to muffle the sounds. It didn’t matter. You felt the way he shook against you, like a war-torn frame heaving against the weight of his own sadness. There was a storm inside of John Walker, and it seemed like tonight was the night it would finally spill out of him. You kept rubbing his back and shoulders, moving one of your hands up to run your fingers through his hair. 

The sound he made, you knew, was practically a wail, but you also knew that John would rather die than admit it. 

“I’ve got you,” you murmured again, “I’ve got you, it’s okay. You’re okay. You’re not a failure, Walker; you saved my ass a few times tonight. It’s okay.” 

You didn’t know if it was actually helping, or if the excitement of the day was finally catching up to John, but you knew that his sobs had started to quiet at your words. They weren’t gone, granted, but they were subsiding. Waning. The sound still tugged at something inside of you, but the relief you were beginning to feel was palpable. You stayed like that with him for awhile, pity and exhaustion at war in your bones about it, but you were hardly about to tell him to ‘suck it up.’

John Walker needed you. 

It was a foreign feeling by then, being needed. Unusual. You couldn’t remember the last time someone needed you. Her, you thought, she needed you. You’d failed her, but maybe you didn’t have to fail him. Maybe you could actually help John. 

“You’re safe,” you whispered, “we’re safe, because of you. You got us through the desert, man. You’re good.” 

“But I’m not!” John’s outburst startled you. He pushed himself up, wet eyes boring into yours with a ferocity you hadn’t been prepared for. “I’m not good. I wreck everything I touch!” 

Your breathing hitched. His face was barely inches from yours, his chest heaving with the force of his sobs. Tears were still streaming down his cheeks, but you didn’t dare comment on that. 

“You didn’t wreck me.” 

Everything froze. Blood rushed to your ears, your heart pounding out of your chest as you stared up at the former Captain America. John didn’t react to your words at first, just watched the way your skin lit up with your nerves. Frustrated and feeling bold, you repeated yourself. 

“You didn’t wreck me,” your voice was firmer this time, “you didn’t wreck me, John. You’re touching me right now, and I’m okay. I’ve been not okay on a lot of missions, I’m okay on this one now. I’m okay here with you.”  

You were rambling. John hadn’t blinked the whole time you were speaking, leaving you unnerved and glowing brighter. It made you talk more than you normally would, made you anxious in a way you’d hadn’t been in years. You felt yourself heat up at the thought. At least John’s warm, you mused, and your lips quirked up into a small smile. 

John’s mouth was on you in an instant. 

You didn’t even have time to gasp when the kiss landed, John had closed the gap so fast that you almost hadn’t realized it was coming. You kissed back, though. The moment you got your bearings about you, you kissed John back fiercely, bringing your hand up to cup his face. 

He tore away from you with a gasp. 

“I’m sorry!” he choked out, “I’m sorry fucking sorry, holy shit, I-”

“Okay-” you cut him off, “well, that’s, like, discouraging as fuck to hear, but. Okay. It’s okay. I’m okay.” 

John rolled his eyes. “You keep saying that!” 

“I keep meaning it, too!” you snapped back. John was back to staring down at you then, and you found yourself quickly getting tired of the feeling of looking up. “It’s fine, Walker. I’m not mad. I, uh… I’m not mad.” 

You’d lost your bravado half way through speaking, your voice trailing off awkwardly. John’s eyebrows knit together in confusion, frustration twisting the rest of his features unpleasantly. 

“What were you gonna say?” John demanded and you would have screamed a thousand screams if it hadn’t been such a risk. You swore your face was going to explode - and that was only half a joke. 

“Oh my god!” you got out, voice clipped and eyes finally moving away from John’s to the cave ceiling. “I kissed you back! Okay? It’s fine! You surprised me, sure, but I wasn’t, like, fighting you off by any means. I kissed you back.” 

You wished closing your eyes would be enough to drown out the light you were throwing as you sat in your own anxiety. This was stupid. You were both being so fucking stupid, really, acting like a kiss in a cave was the end of the world. Like it was something worth discussing. It was the action of lips on lips, a mouth moving against another mouth. There was nothing special, or world-changing, or life-altering, or-

John kissed you again. 

You kissed back instantly this time. You were out of practice but you tried not to let that get to you, instead focusing on the way John’s lips moved against your own. He was a good kisser. As far as you could tell, at least, John was a good kisser; he was steady, the pressure perfect without being forceful, and he hadn’t rushed in with tongue the way your last boyfriend did. Granted, that had been in university, but that was your only point of reference anymore. 

This time when you broke apart, it was for air, and John didn’t seem ready to back out as he panted above you. Without thinking, you pressed a kiss to John’s cheek, an impulsive move that had the super soldier’s face heating up beneath your lips. Pulling away gently, John buried his face in your neck, and you smiled. Content with what you’d already gotten, you’d been unprepared for the way John’s mouth had found your throat. 

“Oh!” you’d gasped, face and chest heating up in shock. You felt John tense, but he relaxed once your hand shot up to his hair, your grip on his hip tightening with the other. You liked that. You liked this. All of it. John kept up his path across your throat, dipping down slightly to press a row of kisses across your collarbone. Without overthinking it, you raised the leg of yours that was between John’s, your thigh pressing into the core of him firmly. 

He was hard. 

A sick, addicting kind of heat swelled inside you at the revelation and you both froze. You tried to focus on your erratic heartbeat, but molten want kept you pressed where you were despite the danger. You knew this was a fool’s risk - that your heart rate spiking too radically could result in you going off like a bomb. Tony had assured you, years ago, that that wasn’t likely to happen anymore, but the fear had been plaguing you for almost a decade. 

Then John whimpered. 

It was a small sound. High pitched and needy, he did it again when he shifted against you, his hips grinding down minutely into the cushion of your thigh. You inhaled sharply through your nose and inched your leg up more, tensing to give him something firmer to grind down against. You wanted to hear it again. You wanted to hear him again. 

John didn’t give you the satisfaction right away. Instead, the blond busied his mouth on the other side of your neck, exploring the next expanse of skin like the trained tracker he was. It felt good, laying under the former captain, letting him kiss you however he wanted. You assumed he was enjoying it, too, based on the way he kept trying to get closer to you still. His tears hadn’t stopped entirely, but they were slower now. Calmer. They wet your neck more than anything else John was doing. 

You shifted the hand that was on his hip, running it up his side to cup his ribs. John shivered. You’d never really considered what John would be like in bed - in cave - but if you had, you still wouldn’t have anticipated how reactive he was. It was adorable. It was addicting. You liked how well he responded to you, pushing into your hands wherever they laid across his body, his hips grinding down against you in a steady rhythm. It made you feel powerful. You were drawing these sorts of sounds and shivers out of a super soldier - he was becoming putty in your hands. 

“This still okay?” John’s voice broke the monologue in your head, his words quick but clear. They made you smile. Briefly, you debated teasing him about the question, but you knew that you were dancing across thin ice. One wrong move, and Walker would send you plunging into the cold. 

“Still okay,” you confirmed, “now come kiss me again.”

John complied easily. That's another thing you would have never thought to anticipate; how non-domineering John seemed to be when he felt good. It was cute. Sweet. It made your heart beat almost dangerously fast, the light in the cave growing brighter as you continued to make out. The hand on your hip shifted then, John shifted his weight to rest mostly on his other arm, his left hand moving to slip under your shirt. 

Your stomach clenched at the feel of his bare hand on your bare skin. Feeling bold, you swiped your tongue against John’s bottom lip and had to bite back a smile at how easily he opened up for you. At your enthusiasm, John grew bolder too, his thigh pressing against your core firmly, the hand on your stomach sliding up to your chest. You couldn’t help the small noise that left you, a content little hum at the feeling of the super soldier cupping you through your bra. John inhaled sharply at it, and he nipped at your bottom lip before pulling away. 

“I wanna touch you,” you said before he had a chance to talk, and John’s pupils blew wide at your words as he stared down at you. He nodded silently, pink tongue dragging across his bottom lip as he gave you his consent. 

You slid the hand on his ribs down to the front of his suit, and you hoped he was also ignoring the way your hands shook and skin lit up. You were so nervous, even as you felt the evidence of how much John liked this pressing against you. You kissed him again to distract yourself from it and worked your hand between you, finally wrapping your too-warm fingers around the bulge in John’s uniform, 

“Fuck,” he groaned out, mouth hanging open for a second at the relief of finally getting proper pressure where he needed it most. “Fuck, pretty girl, keep going.” 

The words sparked something inside of you, sent a wave of desire crashing through your body like a tsunami of want. John’s voice was even deeper than it had been all day, something thick and primal working its way into his tone as he pushed himself against your hand. Idly, you wondered what he was thinking about, but the feeling of John’s hand sliding down to the waistband of your pants distracted you. You didn’t bother waiting for him to ask, you just nodded enthusiastically, pressing your lips against John’s yet again. 

You really liked kissing John. 

You liked even more the way his hand felt as it slipped into your pants, warm and calloused and strong. Your skin was glowing fiercely, your body running hot as you struggled to contain just how excited you were. You were wet, you could feel how slick you had gotten just from making out and you hoped Walker wouldn’t comment on it. You felt him smirk against your neck and, before he could shatter that hope, you squeezed gently around the bulge in your hand again. John moaned. You began to rub him in earnest then, thrilled when he started to grind against your hand while making quiet, content sounds in your ear. 

“Fuck you sound good,” you mumbled mindlessly. John whimpered. The words had slipped out entirely without your permission as you’d gotten lost in the feeling of John surrounding you, something you’d expected him to hate. Clearly, he didn’t. You kept talking. 

“You look good too, you know?” you’d been asking rhetorically, but John nodded like he was afraid to disagree. “You’re so hot. So pretty.” 

John whimpered again. You thought your heart was going to explode in your chest as you fumbled with John’s belt, doing your best to yank it open blind. “I wanna get my hands on you for real.” 

You said it half to turn him on more and half as a warning, giving him ample opportunity to stop you, if he’d wanted to. He didn’t, if the way he bucked his hips into yours was anything to go by. It was awkward in the cramped space, and your back hurt from the rock. You were glowing, and sweating, and shimmieing around in a sandy cave to give a handjob to a super soldier, but you were excited. You wanted this. You were having more fun on the floor of that cave with John than you’d had in years by yourself in a soft bed. 

You didn’t get a good look at John’s cock despite the light you were emitting, the angle of it all making it damn near impossible to see anything other than blue eyes and soft hair. But you could feel it. Hot and heavy in your hands, John was big. Long, and thick, and you could feel the hair at the base of it when you slid your hand down. John’s breathing hitched. 

“Come on,” he urged softly, hips jutting up into your hand. “Come on, Lava Lamp, I need this.” 

You finally did laugh then, a silly, obnoxious giggle pouring out of you as you wrapped your fingers around John properly, stroking as best you could despite your giggling frame. “Don’t fucking call me that,” you said without any fire, “or I’ll rip your dick off.” 

It was John’s turn to laugh then, an easy sound that made you instantly want to hear more. Between your bodies, your forearms were pressed together awkwardly as you rubbed at each other at, possibly, the world’s worst angle. You couldn’t bring yourself to be bothered by it. “I don’t think you mean that,” John teased back. “I think you like it.” 

He emphasized his point by slipping his finger between your folds, the slow drag of it up your center pulling a ragged gasp out of you. He wasn’t wrong. That was kind of the worst part of all of this, in a way. John really was making you feel good, and you had a sinking feeling in your gut like you may never live it down. You clenched around nothing at the thought. 

“I think,” you flicked your thumb across the tip of John’s cock as you spoke, “that you should be a good boy and fuck me.” 

You wondered for half a second if you’d gone too far, or if you’d jumped the shark in regards to being sexy, but the way John shuddered assuaged any worry you felt in an instant. He moaned as he buried his face back in your neck and nodded, his middle finger working its way back between your folds. You held your breath. It had been so long since you’d done anything with anybody, you found yourself craving something more. 

“Come on,” you choked out, “open me up.” 

John obeyed at once, his finger sliding inside you fully now, right up to the third knuckle. It was just one, but the sudden pressure made you hiss between your teeth. “Sorry,” John mumbled softly, and his thumb came up to press circles against your clit. You couldn’t help the moan you let out, loud and obnoxious. It fueled John on, urging him to continue toying with you in the hopes of hearing more. You kissed him again instead. 

Kissing John with his fingers in you was a different kind of intensity, something far more intimate than just lips-on-lips had been. It had been so fucking long since the last time you’d had this. Since you’d had someone. You knew that whatever was happening between you and John was an impulsive, spontaneous thing. It wouldn’t matter when the sun rose, but it mattered to you tonight.

That was the thought that urged you forward, bringing one of your legs up to hook around his hip as you did your best to relax. After another minute or two, you nodded at John to add another finger, which he did easily. You were so wet. You couldn’t really remember the last time you had been this turned on, the last time you were so desperate to have something fill you. It was a fun, albeit vulnerable, feeling, one you’d hoped John was drowning in himself. 

“Another,” you said breathlessly, hand sliding against John’s cock in an easy glide. You had meant to be nicer about it, but John’s cock twitched in your hand at the command still audible in your voice despite the pleasure. 

John obeyed. 

You loved the feeling of him listening to you. It was an easy sort of control, one that felt earned instead of fought for, and it wrapped around you like a cloud of smoke. Permeating, something that hung heavy in the air and clung to your lungs as you gasped in mouthfuls of John. 

It was obvious before too long that you were both ready. Your pussy was dripping, an audible squelching sound making your face burn as John continued to finger fuck you on the floor of a cave. It was so vulgar. So dirty. But it felt good, and weirdly intimate, less like a hookup and more like a beginning. 

You shook yourself. 

That was dangerous thinking, the kind of sap that got you stuck on the tree of life, forever unable to keep climbing towards the top. You had no place for it in your life. It was a waste. A hindrance. A burden you were simply unwilling to bear. 

“Please let me fuck you,” John’s voice was getting higher in pitch. “Please, fuck, gotta feel you.” 

And, really, hadn’t you always been built a bit different? Hadn’t you been designed to bear more than most? The thoughts felt dangerously close to self harm as you allowed them to dance behind your eyes. 

“Fuck me, John. Come on.”

Walker was quick to lift himself off of you then, something that had almost startled a protest out of you before his hands flew to the button on your pants. He fumbled momentarily before he got himself together, lowering your pants until you could get one leg out entirely, allowing for easy maneuvering. Anticipation swirled in your gut. 

John looked at you for assurance one last time. You nodded your head, bringing your hands up to cup his face. “Come on, John.” 

The tip of John’s cock was red and leaking, his cock throbbing visibly where it bobbed between his legs. He lined himself up, giving you one last peck on the mouth before he pushed in slowly. You held your breath, the glow in the cave almost blinding for a moment as John’s pelvis hit yours. 

You needed this. 

You needed this so bad that you didn’t even care about the stream of content sounds pouring out of your mouth, nor the mindless babbling that followed. “So good,” you panted, “oh my god, John, you’re so good. Feels so good. Fuck!” 

Above you, John did his best to suppress a whine. His whole body shuddered at your words, his hips starting their slow grind against yours. His head pressed against your forehead as his eyes closed and you clenched around him, walls squeezing around his cock as his hips began to drive into yours in earnest. Still, he tried not to let you hear the sound trapped in his chest. 

“Say it again,” John begged, “please, Lava Lamp, I gotta hear it.” 

You couldn’t have helped the smile that spread across your face if you’d tried. “Such a good boy,” you said as you grabbed a handful of his hair. “Making me feel so fucking good.” 

And there it was, that pretty little whine he had tried so hard to hide before. John leaned his head back into your hand, letting you pull the fistful of blond hair with just enough force to drag a moan out of the man. John’s own hands found your hips, gripping them with an almost-bruising force to maintain leverage in the cramped space. You didn’t mind. John shifted slightly then, the angle only minutely changed but groundbreaking nonetheless. 

“Oh!” you gasped, “Oh! There! Fuck!” 

You began to press your hips back as best you could, meeting John thrust-for-thrust as need carried you through on instinct. “There?” John asked, and you nodded dumbly. 

“There, John, fuck. Such a good boy. You feel so good inside me.” you knew you were rambling, but you couldn’t stop running your mouth at the feeling, and you wanted to soak up each and every one of John’s reactions to your words. 

He was so responsive. You hadn’t expected it, had instead been expecting some grand display of stoicism from your temporary teammate, even as the heavy petting had started. The tears from earlier seemed to be pooling at the corners of his eyes again, but you didn’t call it out. You just stared into the deep blue of John’s gaze for as long as you could hold it before the pleasure became too much, the inferno inside of you raging against your need from within. 

“This good?” John panted, and your heart clenched at the desperate way he needed validation, even as you soaked his cock with how badly you wanted him. 

“So fucking good,” you panted, “you’re so fucking good, pretty boy. Such a good boy for me.” 

John’s hips stuttered at the petname, losing their rhythm as the words washed over him. Good. He was being good. John preened under your praise, his heartbeat erratic beneath your lips as you mouthed as his pulse point. He was so cute. You kept up with the praise, dropping a gentle “good boy” or “keep going, baby” whenever it felt right, and John kept fucking you like it’d been his mission from the start. 

“Come on, baby,” you guided gently as his hips began to pause too long at your words, “fuck me like a good boy.”

The words activated him like a sleeper agent. 

Walker fucked into you obediently, hips keeping a consistent, addicting pace with an almost militant efficiency. He was good at following orders. You really should have known that - should have realized that the man trained to take lead hadn’t simply gotten there by never being able to follow - but it was still a surprise each time he listened so easily. He was so compliant, allowing you to lead despite his place above you. Not for the first time that night, you wished fiercely that you were anywhere other than a desert cave. 

The stone beneath your back made your whole body ache. Your spine felt warped under the weight of you both, the heat you were throwing was making everything feel sharper than it actually was. Harsher. The heat inside of you felt so good, though. It felt like the Extremis serum, but kinder. It felt like being wanted. It felt like a need so intense you could barely keep yourself from gasping with it as you rocked your body against John’s as best you could. 

John couldn’t keep his hands still anymore. They explored you in earnest, callused fingertips dragging against your sensitive, glowing skin. He slid his hands up your sides, his palms flat and wide as they covered places on you leading up to your ribs. His hands on your tits made you moan despite yourself, pushing your chest up further into grip. Your nipples here hard against his palms, pebbled as if you were trapped in the cold, and practically begging John to do something with them. 

You hadn’t expected his mouth. 

Walker dipped down to get his mouth on your left nipple faster than you could react, an embarrassing whimper tearing its way out of your throat at the sensation. Wet heat encircled the sensitive bud, John’s lips capturing you with a gentle suck. His tongue flicked against the tip of it after a second, making you clench around him tighter. 

“Oh my god,” you gasped out happily, “John, baby, fuck. Making me feel so fucking good.” 

Your head was practically spinning with want as you tugged at John’s hair, your fingers curled into a loose fist that was tightening by the second. Walker took that as his cue to switch sides, but not before blowing cool air against the spit-slick skin of your left nipple, the feeling making you writhe against him. He sucked on your right tit with just as much enthusiasm, his hips fucking into you with enough force to shift your body against the stone beneath you. 

God you hated the stone. 

Idly, in the back of your mind, you wondered what it would be like to do this properly. Maybe in a motel somewhere while you laid low, isolated enough and with a big enough bed for you to spread the super soldier out and toy with him for real. You wanted to hear him whine some more, wanted to see just how far he was willing to go for praise. You wondered if he was into being made to wait, kept on the edge of orgasm for hours while being forced to beg, or maybe the opposite. Maybe the serum in his veins meant he didn’t have a refractory period anymore, and he would lay back all pretty while you spent a night making him cum until he cried - or ran out. Maybe there was nothing more to your encounter in the cave than a moment of weakness and some desperately needed comfort, but maybe there was also just more to John Walker than met the eye. 

You were desperately hoping for the latter.

You were approaching your high far faster than you wanted to. You wanted to savour this, to hold onto the feeling of John Walker compliant in your arms, but you knew it was a losing battle. You felt too good. Your skin was hot, your insides like fire, and you were glowing like nightlight. You were so bright. You didn’t feel like you were going to explode, though; the heat was a pleasant burn, not a charring scorch. Nothing hurt like this, nothing ached or strained or melted away inside of you. Nothing was wrong. For the first time in years, you could almost pretend that nothing was wrong. 

“John,” you tried to warn him, your voice and cunt both tightening. You didn’t need to continue. John’s hips kept their pace, his hand returning to its place between your thighs without your direction. The feeling of his trembling fingers circling your clit made you gasp. Once. 

Twice.

Three times and you were cumming around John’s cock. Hard. you were sure you would have shouted some sort of obscenity if not for John’s mouth on yours, kissing you like his life depended on it as you clenched around him tight. You felt incredible. Waves of liquid fire lapped at your spine, molten desire drowning you where you laid in the sand. Your limbs tensed, your arms crushing John against you as tight as you could without hurting him and your legs wrapped around his hips as they plowed into you in a way that left your body trembling in the aftershocks. 

“I’m close,” John choked out, going to pull himself out of you. You didn’t want that. You wanted to feel John let go inside you, feel the way his body relaxed when he finally let go. Without thinking, you locked your ankles behind his back. 

“Cum for me, pretty boy.” 

John bit into your shoulder as he came, hard enough to break skin and draw blood. It made you whine in overstimulation, but it didn’t make you pull away. It was hot. Being marked. You knew it would heal as soon as John removed his teeth, the Extremis serum doing its best to repair you completely the moment you began to decline in any way. It almost drove you crazy, your inability to see any lasting effects of the battles you’d been through, but you were certainly grateful that you wouldn’t have any marks to hide from Valentina in the morning. 

The feeling of John’s cum painting your walls was almost enough to send you over the edge again, the aftershocks of your last orgasm squeezing everything out of John as you clenched as tight as you could. You felt amazing. John shook against you, his body rigid before relaxing into a pile of flesh and nerves under your careful hands. You were rubbing his back and playing with his hair as you slid your legs down from his hips, your own stretched pelvis screaming at you for the shift. Your back thanked you, though, profusely as you finally eased the tension in the lower half of your body. 

“You were so-”

“That was rea-”

You cut each other off in your attempts to provide awkward reassurance. With the desire cooling in your bodies alongside your blood, you couldn’t help the swell of nerves you felt in the aftermath. This had been such an insanely stupid idea. What were you thinking? You weren’t, clearly, and-

“You were perfect,” you said instead of voicing a single one of the concerns in your head. “That was really fun, Walker.”

You were sure you sounded weird. Like a failed telephone salesman or a nervous third grade teacher, but you couldn’t help it. You had successfully stolen from the CIA hours prior, and somehow this felt like the most dangerous thing you’d done all day. 

“Yeah?” He asked rhetorically, not shifting his head from your shoulder as he maneuvered himself back into his uniform, “I, uh, I think next time, I should eat you out.”

A sudden wave of hunger threatened to overtake you, your pussy screaming at you to take him up on that right then, but the exhaustion radiating from your bones forced you to ignore it. You barely had it in you to pull your pants back on, and you spent that half minute worried that John wouldn’t return to you when you’d laid back down. He did. You pressed your grinning lips against his forehead. 

“Bet,” you replied sleepily, “but only if I get to fuck you, next.”

The last of the water was gone by the time you’d reached a quarter-mile out from the pick-up spot John had set up with Valentina. You had shared it between you wordlessly, tiny sips passed back-and-forth in utter silence. Visibility, and heat, were both an elevating risk in the daytime. 

You pretended that was the reason for the quiet. 

John had been unable to meet your eyes since you’d woken up that morning. He’d moved away from you some time  during your shift asleep, your body so exhausted that you hadn’t even stirred in the process. That wasn’t like you. Usually, you slept lightly, barely allowing your body to ever fall fully into REM sleep, lest something happen while you were unaware. There was also the nightmares. Those were undeniably a factor in your beyond-fucked sleep schedule, and you wondered if it had anything to do with you waking up alone that morning. 

She had visited you, as she often did in your sleep. All fiery red hair and fierce eyes, flames licking across her skin as she screamed about it hurting. About you lying. About death. You hadn’t thought about her this much in years, the topic something you typically couldn’t bear to dwell on much, but she’d been inescapable since your moment of weakness with Walker. You wondered if you had spoken in your sleep. You debated asking John, but you doubted he would answer honestly. You tried not to let that bother you. You also tried not to let the short, clipped way John now spoke to you bother you. 

You were failing at both. 

“We don’t have to talk about it,” you threw out there at last. John froze momentarily in his spot beside you. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m sticky and there’s sand everywhere and it’s just, like, not the fucking vibe, okay? But Jesus, dude, say something.” 

You felt like a fucking high schooler again. Like two 14 year olds refusing to act normal after their first ever game of ‘seven minutes in heaven.’ It was beneath you. Both of you. Ninth grade behaviour, right down to the way you still avoided his eyes while awaiting a response. 

“Crotalus scutulatus,” he finally responded. You did turn to look at him fully, then, your own wide-eyes meeting his panicked blue ones. “It’s the name. Of the snake. From last night. It, uh, it shouldn’t even really be called the Mojave Rattlesnake? This part of the desert makes up, like, less than one-fifth of their habitable area, maybe even less than an eighth.” 

It was the fact he’d tried telling you last night. You almost laughed. This was a field operative? You weren’t stupid, though, and you knew that laughing at John right then would have shattered the surprisingly blissful moment the two of you were sharing in the blistering hot sun. 

“What would you call it, then?” you asked, and John launched into a 10 minute long rant about the classification of desert fauna in the southwestern United States. Again, you almost had to laugh. 

John Walker was such a dork. 

You hadn’t expected him to be such a dork, rambling on about species identification and the differences between a clade and a class. You pretended to be unfamiliar, mostly just enjoying that you had something to focus on that wasn’t the ever-present threat of being shot from afar. John wasn’t even a terrible teacher, really, though he was undoubtedly condescending at times. You were almost enjoying yourself, in spite of it all. 

Almost. 

The whir of Valentina’s jet engines were hardly the loudest in the world, but they were by no means the quietest, either. You just hoped you could get out of the Mojave before the CIA caught up to you, even as you boarded the grey metal flight trap. You’d never been overly fond of flying, but your anxiety on the matter had only skyrocketed in recent years. You were dreading this plane trip. 

If John noticed your hesitation as you loaded in, he didn’t say anything about it. Then again, in all likelihood, he was too busy dealing with his own. Of the two of you, only one of you was returning to Valentina empty-handed, and you were grateful it wasn’t you. You had meant what you’d said the night before in the cave - about sharing credit - but even you knew it would be a flimsy excuse. 

The Contessa de Fontaine was kind of a bitch. 

The plane didn’t hesitate before taking off and your stomach dropped. You hated this. Even with Walker sitting next to you on the plane, you hated it. It reminded you too much of the mission you’d been on when the Blip happened. You hadn’t found out for some time that that’s what it was called, but that’s exactly what had happened to you almost 30 000 feet in the air. 

You had been tasked with keeping tabs on an Italian Contessa, one Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, one of the founders of OXE group and, if the whispers were to be believed, the most recent name on a long list of mad men trying to recreate the super soldier serum responsible for Captain America. You had been getting really fucking tired of people trying to recreate that serum. But, Mr. Stark had promised that this would be your last job, if it could be. Take out OXE at the root, and you would get to live under the shade of a different tree at last. Then you had turned to ash in the second seat of a two-person plane, and had reformed 5 years later, free-falling from the sky. 

It had all felt like an instant. 

To you, it was sudden. It was jarring. It was worse than being lit on fire and more of a shock than being put out. Every sensation you had ever felt had coursed through you all at once as - to you - your plane and co-pilot vanished in a grey haze, leaving you plummeting to your death over top some fuck ass spot of nothing in the Utah desert. 

To you, it was how you’d realized you could fly. 

The panic had overcome you in an instant, a scream unable to even rip its way out of your throat as you fell from the sky. You had been so sure it was the end, your life one huge, meaningless joke, meant only to crumple lifeless in the sand at the end of your days. But heat had overcome you then, a fire unlike anything you’d ever felt before charring you down to your bones before it collapsed, the inferno rushing downwards, the momentum forcing you up. Up, up, up. Until you had far surpassed your original 30 000 feet, the air around you gone frigid despite the waves of fire lapping at your soles. You’d finally managed a scream then. 

From so high above the ground, everything looked soft. Forgiving. If you squeezed your eyes shut, you could have almost convinced yourself that everything would end okay. The fire at your feet cooled, your descent began again, and you felt the air rush around you like an atmospheric tomb. The pressure was immense, the ground growing ever-closer, and you swore your heart was going to explode before either problem became an actual threat. Then your feet caught fire again, and up again you rose. 

It was a cycle from hell, the worst 15 minutes of your entire life as you launched yourself across the elevation points, your body little more than a ragdoll being shaken by a dog-like wind. Each time you would rise a little lower, fall a little farther, and the ground would come a little closer into view. It felt like being choked, like being edged, like being toyed with. It was a hell unlike anything AIM could have put you through when they’d tried. 

But you were flying. 

Around the sixth or seventh time you caught fire, you could recognize your torment for the primitive form of flight it seemed to be. A culmination of heat and momentum, thermodynamics manifest as you hurled towards both sand and stars. It would have been the most exciting, most elating feeling in the entire world if not for the death you were so certain would follow. You were flying, sure, and it was a damn shame that that didn’t mean you’d realized how to land. 

You’d crashed through the roof of a base you were certain hadn’t been there when you started the flight, thick concrete cushioning your fall as best it could as your flames failed you at last. There was too much pain for screaming then, the air forced out of your lungs as heat overcame you from within. Extremis. The serum was repairing your broken body as fast as it had fallen apart, the very fibre of your being stitching itself back together against the molten heat of rebirth. It was agony. It was bliss. 

It was waking up some hours later, strapped to a hospital bed while your blood was being stolen by one Contessa de Fontaine. 

You had been incensed. You had screamed yourself hoarse and raged for hours after that, body thrashing almost as violently as it had in the air. Valentina had had to sedate you, in the end, and twice more after that each time you’d woken up. Eventually, you had been tired enough to listen, and in the end it sealed your fate. Valentina couldn’t let you leave, not with the potential literally burning beneath your skin, so you had a choice; guinea pig or guard dog? 

You’d chosen the leash over a cage. 

You were so lost in your own thoughts that you barely noticed Walker shifting next to you in his seat. You didn’t care to turn and face him, not then at least. Not with thoughts of ash and arial maladies plaguing you. You didn’t want to have this discussion with him, didn’t want to talk about falling into Hell the way you had or your slow attempt to crawl your way out ever since. John didn’t seem at all deterred by your decision to ignore him, however, as the blond began to speak. 

“It’s a Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey,” he said, informative and confusing at the same time, “I’ve ridden in a few before. Good craft. Some of Boeing’s better work, really.” 

So he had clocked it, then. 

A bitter sigh ripped its way out of you. “I don’t want to hear about the plane, Walker.” 

You had tried to keep your voice even. Calm and collected as you addressed the Captain. You knew it hadn’t come out like that. It had come out strained and weak, breaking twice without your permission. You sounded like a little kid, but you had another 3 hours left by plane before you hit Langley and, worse, Valentina. You just didn’t feel like spending them learning about plane facts. 

“What’s your problem with it, anyway?” the question was asked sincerely, but in a tone that made you want to punch Walker right in the head for asking. “It’s a solid plane.”

You laughed bitterly. “All planes are solid until they’re not,” you shot back haughtily, “all planes are solid until they fucking turn to ash.” 

You didn’t elaborate, and John didn’t ask you to. Briefly, you wondered if he thought you were threatening him, implying you would take down the plane if he didn’t shut up. You couldn’t find it in you ro correct him. Not when it got him to move on from the topic of air travel, instead spending the rest of the flight leaned back and sleeping while you were still awake to watch. 

You landed right at the OXE base about 3 hours later, legs stiff and aching as you were led inside by armed guards. The halls of Valentina’s floor of the building were wide like the Nevada-base’s had been. Hers were stark white linoleum where the base had been concrete, but that imposing effect remained the same. You felt unable to hide. You were overexposed walking into that office, even with Walker at your side. 

“Sit.”

She hadn’t even bothered pretending with the pleasantries. Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine had never been a particularly kind or nurturing woman, but the way she’d been radiating cold and malice then had been unnerving. Suffocating. Valentina had the eyes of a brazen bull; hollow inside save for the screams of the dying working their way out of her mouth in the form of commands. 

You and John both sat without question. 

“Which one of you wants to tell me what the fuck happened out there?” Valentina demanded, and you swore your blood ran cold. Did she know? Did she mean the… whatever it had been last night? Or had she meant the base? The alarms and the escape through the vents? You didn’t know. 

“I failed to get the files,” John said instantly, and your head whipped around to look at him, eyes wide. “I prioritized ensuring the safety of myself and my fellow field operative over retrieving them. No casualties in the base, though. No blood spilled.” 

“N-No blood spilled?” Valentina asked rhetorically, a bitter laugh working its way out of her chest. “‘No blood spilled,’ he says, like that’s some sort of goddamn reassurance. You idiots!” 

You and John both flinched at the outburst. 

“Those alarms weren’t for you, stupid! I told you both the cameras and sensors were out on that floor, what the hell is the matter with you? The alarm was triggered by one of the squints on the human trials floor, not by whatever you two losers were doing in the basement.” Valentina was fuming. Steam practically poured out of the woman’s ears as she ranted for another 27 minutes, raving about following orders and not deviating from plans. 

Several times, you’d been tempted to interrupt, but John’s hand on your knee the first time you went to kept you in your place. There was no point. Valentina had decided that you’d both failed, and arguing with her on the semantics of sending out multiple agents at once without informing each other was pointless. She wouldn’t listen anyway. 

When she finally stopped, her chest heaving and her eyes ablaze, you stood up. Wordlessly, you fished the usb out of your pocket and dropped it on her desk. “What’s that?” she demanded. 

“A usb stick full of files from the CIA,” you explained bluntly, your voice a deadpan mockery of itself as you spoke. “It’s here because of me, and I’m here because of him. As far as I’m concerned, that’s all you need to know. Are we dismissed now, Miss Contessa?” 

You refused to flinch or even blink at the intense look Val leveled you with. Her eyes burned. All of you did as well. You knew it was stupid to bite at the hand that fed you, but God, what an exceptional final meal her fingers could make. 

You wondered how this would be taken out on you next. 

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