#also clap for me because I finally took time to clean stuff correctly

[noahl-art]

I've been rotating @sentientgolfball 's Rain from Devotion in my brain for the past few days, so here have two sketches and a bit of a color test loosely based on the bath scene🫶

[pinkbalrog]

Of Gods and Tombs

A Noragami Lost Tomb AU I decided to actually write up. Apologies for cultural errors. I probably could have researched more. No offense was meant. :) Feel free to comment. I consciously tried not to sink too much focus into this because I am a perfectionist and would have brooded over this for weeks, and I do have other projects! All supernatural elements are improvised, perhaps badly. I also wasn’t sure of Xiao Er Ye? Thoughts? I don’t know Chinese : (. 

Mentioning @jockvillagersonly because they have been ridiculously nice. :)

Here we go!

Pangzi stared. The man stared back, holding Pangzi’s wilting incense in one hand. He’d been, savoring it? Maybe? Wide eyes stared back over a thin trail of smoke and, was he blushing?

“Who the FUC-”

“Shhhh!” the man lunged forward. He dropped the incense, wincing and grabbed Pangzi’s arm. “You’ll wake something up!”

“You’re something!”

“We can talk but—yes, I am?”

Pangzi got a handful of silk. Where did he get the hanfu? He jerked him close, eyes narrowed, grinning so hard his cheeks ached. “You,” he grated, “are not part of the expedition”.

Wide eyes blinked at him. “What expedition?” Pangzi cuffed him.

“You think I came in here alone? You did not come in with us.” The guy wasn’t frail, was pretty solid actually, but he had the look of a bird plucked out of a net.  

“No. Obviously?” Thoughts moved rapidly behind his eyes, and he scanned Pangzi, taking in his sweat stained shirt, abraded hands, and his unshaven face. “You came with a group then, and you came up.” He pried off Pangzi’s grip and took a step towards the dark where Pangzi had dragged the heavy door mostly into place. “At least that’s the only way you’d be in this corridor, it’s inaccessible on this level.”

Pangzi gaped. He exclaimed, “Then how the hell did you get here?” The man ignored him, squatting down to look at Pangzi’s sleeping bag. Pangzi stepped in front of it defensively.

The man continued, “They must be dead, otherwise you wouldn’t be alone, and you need help”. He nodded at Pangzi, as if they were having a discussion. They were not.

Pangzi loomed over him. “Again, how are you here?”

The man rolled back on his heels, straightened, and damn well held his hands in front of him like he was lecturing. Long sleeves slid back from thin wrists. His hair was short, and not neat at all. “I’ve been here for a long time, and I need help too.”

“You,” Pangzi sputtered, “you need help. You look, look you’re not a ghost right? You would have already tried to kill me. Right. I’m sitting down for this.” And he threw himself down on the platform of the pitiful, wedged open coffin, nearly squashing his back pack. He crossed his arms. “Well, what’s your name?”

The guy, whoever he was, smiled hopefully. “You can call me Xiao Er Ye.”

Pangzi grunted. “Wang Pangzi”.

Xiao Er Ye bowed, weirdly formal.

Stretching out his legs, which ached from walking uneven corridors for literal days, Pangzi idly rifled through his bag until he had a good grip on his gun, then he pulled out a water bottle and let it hang from his hand. “And what are you anyway?”

“I’m a god.”

The bottle thunked on the floor. “What?”

Xiao Er Ye smiled wider.

Pangzi sneered. He waved his arms. “A god. Bullshit.” Whoever lost their lunatic in that pathetic village was probably wondering what hole they fell into. Pangzi’s hole apparently.

Xiao Er Ye regarded him steadily. “It’s true. Did you wonder why I had your incense?” Pangzi scoffed,

“Becasue you’re a weirdo?”

“Because your offering allowed me to appear to you.”

“Right. And that seems like a reasonable explanation to you?”

He was ridiculous, but he was really clean. There was fat on his bones, and his nails were neat. Pangzi let go of the gun, considering. The guy clearly got in here very recently, which meant there was a way out. Could Pangzi humor the lunatic to get out of a literal death trap? Hell yes.

“Oookay,” he drawled, “So you’re a god. I can see you. What do you need my help for, your holiness?”

Immediately, Xiao Er Ye sat close beside him. “I can’t leave here because someone is here in a trap meant for me. I can’t free him because the trap is meant for me.” He paused to see if Pangzi was following. Pangzi smiled wide. Apparently reassured, Xiao Er Ye went on, “and I’m having a hard enough time keeping the trap from doing what it’s supposed to do, which is make the whole thing even more inescapable. You’re mortal, so you can free him”.

Taking a drink, Pangzi considered. So yes, Xiao Er Ye was off his rocker. He put the cap back on and asked,

“But do you know a way out of here?”

“Yes, many.”

“And you’re still here.”

Xiao Er Ye set his jaw, obstinate. “I need help.”

Pangzi tapped the bottle. So, do one nonsensical thing and finally get out? Or do nothing and lose what might be a chance. He remembered red hands, gleaming wetly.  

“Okay,” he said, and watched Xiao Er Ye light up. He was ridiculously easy to read. “Say I believe you. How does this work?”  

“I lead you to the trap, and you follow my instructions. Then we get out.”

Pangzi eyed him incredulously. “Then we get out. No real plan for that?”

Xiao Er Ye grinned, gestured at the tomb around them, and said, “That’s the easy part.”

Pangzi snorted. “Easy he says.” He made a production of standing up, and folded, “You better not screw me over, your holiness.”

“Thank you.” Pangzi paused. Xiao Er Ye’s voice was soft, earnest, “Thank you Wang Pangzi.”

Pangzi huffed a laugh. Atleast this was a harmless idiot. “Yeah, you’re welcome, let’s go get your boyfriend, or whatever, and get out of here.”

Xiao Er Ye’s voice pitched up, “my whatever?” and he kept talking.

Ignoring him, Pangzi faced the door. Damn it, he had to shift it again.

 . . .

Pangzi reconsidered this decision. He reconsidered it strongly. Ripping another lotus arrow out of his shirt he threw it at Xiao Er Ye. Xiao Er Ye dodged, and it clicked on the floor with all the others. This was trap number six. He tried to stay calm.

“And why,” he hissed, “Are you setting off every trap in this godsdamned tomb? How are there even this many left? Didn’t you come this way? Why aren’t you dead? Are you dead? Are you a fucking ghost because so help me I will hit you.”

Turns out, Xiao Er Ye was right about the corridor earlier being inaccessible from that level, but you could climb up another pit trap. Pangzi was getting very tired of squeezing up pit traps, and apparently this guy just clambered up and down them? Without getting dirty? Without seeming flustered in the least? Maybe his people put him in the hole on purpose. Was this all just enrichment? Even the spear traps? It was a fucking blessing that they seemed to be malfunctioning, or aged past effectiveness.

Xiao Er Ye looked sheepish, shrugging. “I forgot to worry about them? I’m usually not materially here when I walk around, but you need to see me and get past them so...”

Pangzi took a deep breath and counted to ten. “I need a drink”.

“Are you hurt though?” and now Xiao Er Ye was all sharp-eyed and attentive, all his focus on Pangzi, on his bruises and battered ego. Pangzi’s shoulders slumped.

“From this?” he shook his head and clapped a hand on Xiao Er Ye’s shoulder, “I’m fine. Can we just—what is THAT?”

There were hands, white, emaciated hands pressing through the stones at their feet. Black writhed up. Shrieking, Pangzi stomped, and stomped again.

Xiao Er Ye was stomping too, ranting, “Oh not again, no no I will not humor you. Do you want to be dead? Really? I told you no!”

The hands shrank back with a plaintive keen and one last lingering caress on Xiao Er Ye’s leg.

Pangzi and Xiao Er Ye stood there, breathing heavily. Their eyes met. Xiao Er Ye wore a strained smile and he looked, desperate.  

“So,” Pangzi stepped past Xiao Er Ye, careful not to step on any cracks, “Where next?” He didn’t look back, but he heard Xiao Er Ye take a shaky breath.

“Down this way. We’re almost there.”

. . .

“Almost there” was a lie. Pangzi sympathized, he did. It seemed Xiao Er Ye really believed a friend of his was down here; but the longer it took to reach, whatever it was, the more Pangzi worried he wouldn’t get the chance to talk Xiao Er Ye down, and nudge him towards showing both of them out of the tomb. He did not want to wander until he starved, or end up like his former team mates, spattered across the walls of a noisome pit.

The corridors were getting smoother, more ornate, and Pangzi swore he could feel fresh air vented in from somewhere. Xiao Er Ye was silent now, heading doggedly forward. Finally, he turned a corner, and, in the light of Pangzi’s flashlight, there were massive doors, green gold bronze with jade inset panels. They glimmered, untouched by dust. In fact, and here Pangzi swung his flashlight around, splendor wasn’t confined to the doors. There were murals faded but intricate all over the walls of the corridor.

There was no way to smuggle those doors out, but Pangzi wanted. His fingers twitched. Why had the expedition come in on a lower grade? If they’d realized the tomb was mostly vertical, that stuff like this was at the top, well, this would have been a different raid altogether. It was quiet, hushed but for the sound of Pangzi’s and Xiao Er Ye’s foot steps, the sound of their breathing, and the rustle of Xiao Er Ye’s ornate coat as he strode forward.

The doors swung open at a touch, soundlessly, and, hesitating in the corridor, Pangzi believed for the first time, that maybe Xiao Er Ye was non-human, at least a little. Was this really real? He pinched himself, which hurt. Nothing changed.

What prayers had he used, when he lit the incense? He lost track sometimes. Was he even doing any of them correctly? “Pangzi?” Xiao Er Ye’s voice echoed.

Pangzi swallowed his nerves, steeled his gut and called back, “Yeah, yeah I’m coming.” Inside was a riot of gold statues, positioned as an audience, a circle of jade set into a stone platform, intact the whole way around, and a man suspended in the air, curled defensively, dark hair falling over his shoulders. Long sleeves of richest, deepest blue, hung from his slender frame, and as Pangzi crept closer, rapt, he saw that the man’s face was ridiculously pretty. He seemed asleep. He was definitely, no doubt about it, floating.

“What.”

“I told you,” that was Xiao Er Ye, his voice grim. He was standing at the edge of the jade circle, intent on the characters carved inside it. He was holding out his hands, and for the first time, in the weird eldritch light the whole thing gave off, Pangzi could see scars on Xiao Er Ye’s palms and wrists, as if they’d but cut with a straight blade. Xiao Er ye shook, straining to reach with everything in him.

“Please, Pangzi, you can break it.” 

Pangzi felt, calm, as if he was in his home town, standing outside the Lucky Frog bar, staring into the fervid eyes of old man Wei. His voice was even,

“What happened to your hands?”

“My hands?” Xiao Er Ye drew back, glancing at his palms, “What does it matter?” he looked back at the circle, “I tried to put more of me in the circle, to get it to grab me but blood didn’t work, or hair. They just, evaporated, or fell apart on contact and nothing works. Please, break it.”

“How long have you, right—What do I do?”

Xiao Er Ye’s instructions apparently, amounted to “break it” all his easy words gone. Pangzi tried wedging the jade up, but he couldn’t get any purchase, and blunt force didn’t even dent it. He sat, panting, and chugged the last of his water. Xiao Er Ye stood by, fretting.

“I can’t, not like this.”

“What?” Xiao Er Ye hunched, looking very small.

Pangzi stood with effort, and stretched, turning to loosen the muscles of his core. “So you’re a god huh, sure it’s not that guy? He looks more, holy.”

Xiao Er Ye’s face was stone. It was unnatural. “I’m a god. He’s Xiao ge” and he said Xiao ge as if, of all things in the world, that he was most sure of.

“So you can get us out, if say, I blow up the room?”

Xiao Er Ye burst forward, breathless and all glimmering silk, “You can do that?”

Pangzi bared his teeth, “Oh hell yeah.”

. . .

Turns out it was a good thing he’d lugged all those incendiaries up so many floors. It took a while, but Xiao Er Ye had surprisingly steady hands once he had something to do with them. He talked to Xiao ge as he worked, but it wasn’t any dialect Pangzi knew, and he didn’t ask. At the last, Xiao Er Ye made Pangzi stand close, so close that he could smell incense and something like petrichor.

Xiao Er Ye met his eyes and Pangzi hit the trigger.

. . .

The world was dust. Dust and nothing. No sound or feeling, like the world fell away. It cut back in as a blade to the throat.

A literal blade. Pangzi was suddenly, viscerally aware of sun, beaming down on him, of the rumble and clatter of stone as the chamber collapsed around them, radiating outward. He ached, he was thirtsy, his stomach drew in, his breath caught, and they were out.

Xiao Er Ye was standing behind Xiao-ge, who was awake, with a predatory gaze pinned on Pangzi’s face. He held a black and gold sword against Pangzi’s throat and one arm was held out in front of Xiao Er Ye. Xiao Er Ye blinked, looking dazed.

“Uh” Pangzi tried again, throat dry, “Xiao Er Ye?”

The god shook his head, drew a deep breath, and noticed Xiao ge. “Xiao ge!”

He threw himself on him dragging him away from Pangzi. Xiao ge went willingly raising a long fingered hand to Xiao Er Ye’s arm, gazing into his face with an intensity that hurt to look at. Xiao Er Ye, reverent, cupped his face, grazing his thumbs beneath ink dark eyes. He breathed out, bright eyed, “You’re awake.”

Pangzi found somewhere else to look. All that shattered gold looked promising.

. . .

The chamber they’d broken was indeed, at the top of the tomb, and had seemingly been built atop an older structure, carved out from inside the tomb so that it was built on top of a place of death, so that it would draw Xiao Er Ye up. From where, Pangzi didn’t ask. What he knew was that there were trees, green and rustling, and sunlight warm on his face. The underbrush was thick, but they managed to find a route that wouldn’t exhaust them within an hour. Pangzi got out his kukri, and Xiao-ge put his sword to better use.

Together, they made their way through the trees, Xiao-ge going ahead, presumably to clear the way of threats, like squirrels. He’d tied back his heavy sleeves and accepted a torn bit of silk from Xiao Er Ye to pull back his hair. Pangzi watched him go, then turned to Xiao Er Ye, who practically glowed. Was he literally glowing? It was hard to tell. The god stood on his toes, soft eyed and open, watching where Xiao ge went.

Pangzi cleared his throat, and asked, “So if you’re a god, what’s he?”

Xiao Er Ye started, then settled back on his heels. “Oh! He’s a Hafuri vessesl!” Pangzi looked at him, dead eyed. “Oh, it means he is the most loyal and, potent? Of shinki, of named spirits that serve a god.”

Pangzi mulled that over. He dug out a few protein bars and made to hand one to Xiao Er Ye, who declined. “Named spirits?”

“Gods give spirits a new existence with a name. He is Xiao ge. He becomes a tattoo! It’s beautiful.”

Pangzi unwrapped his bar and replied, “Right. A tattoo.” He drew himself up, and bit the bullet, asking, “And what god are you?”

But it was Xiao-ge who answered, stealthy as a cat creeping up on them, regarding Xiao Er Ye with a warm gaze, “Qinguang Wang”.

Pangzi choked. “What?”

The God of death and misfortune ducked his head, then smirked impishly, leaning into Pangzi’s personal space. Neatly, he swung Pangzi around to face forward, and rested his with an arm over Pangzi’s shoulders. “And you’re a Priest now!”

Pangzi stopped dead. “What.” He blinked, raised a hand to his chin, and asked carefully, “Are there perks?”

The god’s laughter pealed out, obnoxiously loud. Xiao ge’s lip twitched upward. He glanced at Pangzi, and intoned, nodding gravely, “Do well.” He resumed his walk ahead of them.

Pangzi shrugged off the—his god’s arm and stomped after him, “And what is that supposed to mean? I haven’t even agreed to this yet!”

. . .

Pangzi insisted that the shrine have a full size kitchen and more than one Hello Kitty egg timer.

Fin

[sugarmaplewings-fics]

Hot Cakes

Pairing: Midoriya (Deku) x reader

Warnings: Slight suggestive content; groping; slight language

Author’s Note:

So for the next two weeks or so, all regular oneshots (aside from DBF) are going to have Izuku in them. This wasn’t really intentional, it just kind of happened, but here you go. This one was my least favorite, so I’m posting it first. It’s short, goofy, kinda nasty, and just really stupid, and I promise I have better stuff for later.

And for safety, I’ll say you’re both in your . . . second year. Yeah. But for reals, this is less suggestive than some of my other stuff soo . . . ?

Whatever, I’m going to stop thinking about it.

Enjoy, I guess?

-Sugar

|     )    )ԅ(‾⌣‾ԅ)

The two of you were goofing around at your house, attempting to bake cupcakes. Somehow you managed to get everything covered in a fine layer of flour, only broken up by flecks of batter splattered haphazardly on both of your arms and shirts.

You finally slid the last pan into the oven, setting your timer for when to take them out.

"Wow, (Y/N), those smell amazing," Izuku said, leaning back against the counter and inhaling deeply, a dreamy smile crawling over his lips. He turned to a separate batch that was cooling on the counter, leaning over to inspect them. "These cupcakes look perfect!"

Wound up from the last half hour of joking around and flirting, your eyes flicked down to his pants. Damn, he was fine, and you smirked at the idea of letting him know it.

"There are some other perfect cakes I'm thinking about," you said, sidling up next to him with a flirtatious glint in your eyes.

"Huh?" Izuku asked, not catching on.

In a sudden spike of adrenaline, you pulled your bottom lip between your teeth and landed a good smack over his behind. It was in no way harsh, but you had purposely cupped your hand so it would make the most satisfyingly loud noise possible.

The green-haired boy suddenly straightened in surprise, his eyes growing wide with shock. He finally roved his gaze back toward you, green irises meeting yours. His face went completely red, complimenting his high tops well, as the realization of what you'd done sank over the both of you.

He swallowed, trying to process your advance. "You—y-y-you, um—just—"

Your face heated with a blush of your own, and you had to fight to keep yourself from panicking. "I-I'm sorry!" you finally said, attempting to hide your burning face in your hands. "I went too far—"

"No."

You peeked out at your boyfriend from between your fingers, not sure if you'd heard him correctly. "What?"

His blush deepened even further, averting his eyes from yours. "Would it be weird if I kinda wanted you to . . . do it again?"

You finally lowered your hands from your face, and Deku suddenly snorted with laughter, clapping a hand over his mouth.

"What?" you asked again, still trying to get over your embarrassment from before.

"You've got a little—there's ah,—" he stopped, bursting out into full-on giggles now.

You frowned, bending towards him in hopes to gain his attention. "What is it?" you asked, still oblivious to why Izuku was cracking up.

"Your hands," he finally said. "They had flour on them. And now it's all over your face!"

You reached two fingers up and experimentally dragged them over your cheek, finding that he was, in fact, correct. A slightly grainy film was dusted upon you, and you must have looked like an idiot.

You burst out laughing too, your face still warmed with mirth blended with leftover embarrassment.

A thought made you choke, pausing in your moment of joy. "Hold up," you said, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Turn around."

Deku lifted a green brow at you, suspicious, but finally complied.

A completely new wave of laughter crashed over you, your legs almost weak with how much of it you were experiencing.

"What?" Izuku asked, trying to turn his head so he could see you.

A white handprint laid solidly on his posterior, vividly contrasting his dark wash jeans.

"Um," you said, trying to catch your breath, "I think I'm going to have to clean you up before you go home, because there's evidence that my hand was on your ass."

"Oh, crap, really?" Izuku blushed again, but he still kept himself positioned so you had a nice view of it.

You whipped out your phone and took a picture of the offending print, showing your accidental art to Izuku. He laughed and grabbed your phone, going to your messaging app so he could send it to himself.

You bent over and started brushing him off, watching as the flour only lightened and smeared around more. At least now you might be able to say he had just backed up into a flour-covered counter, but it also kinda looked like you'd went crazy on him. Maybe that was just your mind leaping into a gutter at the context of the situation.

You also couldn't help but notice that he'd changed his breathing as you ran your hands over him, even though your motions had no double meaning behind them. You experimentally poked a finger at his cheek, watching as it slightly sunk in before stopping at hard muscle. You glanced up for a response, noticing how his face had stilled and he subtly rocked back towards you.

"Not gonna lie," you murmured just loud enough for him to hear, glancing back down, "you really do have a nice mass up in here."

Izuku locked your phone and set it on the counter beside him, keeping his eyes on you. "You . . . like it?"

You blushed and nodded, giving him a gentle squeeze.

He gulped, unsure of what to say. "I'm . . . glad you do."

Both of you resembled tomatoes while you stood there in silence, him letting you softly grope him in a slight daze. It wasn't as though you'd never wanted to do this before, it was just that it was never at a good time. And besides, the two of you were quite shy when it came to public affection in your relationship, opting for long hugs and brief, sweet kisses in the comfort of being together behind a closed door. But now you finally had the chance to live out your fantasy, your mind focused on his ample hindquarters.

A beeping sound made the both of you jump and you straightened, taking your hands back to your sides. "That would mean the cakes are done!" you said, maybe a little too high pitched. "The cupcakes, that is. You—um . . . hi. Pardon me."

He practically leaped out of the way, letting you get into your kitchen drawer to find your trusty oven mit. You walked back to the oven and pulled out the pan, setting them on a cooling rack on the counter.

"They're done," you ruled after poking them with a toothpick and seeing it come out clean. You moved your hand to hover over the first set, checking their temperature. "These are still too hot to ice yet. We're going to have to wait another five minutes or so."

You suddenly felt a large hand hesitantly press itself against your lower cheek, gently massaging the soft and malleable flesh beneath it. You involuntarily pushed back, savoring the feeling of each finger sink into your plush clothed skin.

"While we wait," Izuku's shaky warm breath tickled the back of your ear as he shuffled closer, "I believe I have a bit of a favor to repay."

|     )   )ԅ(‾⌣‾ԅ)

Author’s Note: 

Oop—

This was really stupid and I don’t love it. Sorry for messing up our pure, innocent green bean.

-Sugar

Taglist: @basicaegyo​ @iiminibattlehero​ @pyrofanatic​​ @sokkasangel​ @xoxopam4​​

[secretlystephaniebrown]

The Sacrifice Part III: Revelations

One day I will be able to correctly outline so that I don't have to add an extra chapter at the end. This is not that time.

Thanks to everyone who stuck through the last chapter; we're back to a lot... nicer stuff now, I promise.

Anyways, TUCKER POINT OF VIEW TIME! What have the Reds and Blues been up to? Let's find out!

Warnings for: Off-screen torture, past character death, discussions thereof, and some mild horror.

Also on Ao3

The weeks after Sam Locus leaves are… difficult. Tucker’s not afraid to admit that.

They’re all jumpy, angry, and hurt. There’s… a lot to handle. There’s an absence where he should be and the complicated, twisted, hurt feelings that have been left in his wake.

And the feeling of violation, because they had let him into their home, they had trusted him, even after everything he’d done. They’d given him a place, and how had he repaid them?

He’d stolen Tucker’s sword out from under his pillow. And then he’d left.

They’re trying to pretend things are normal, but it’s… not quite right. They all fight more—Sarge has declared war on the Blues at least five times.

And to make matters worse, Grif and Caboose refuse to believe it.

Even with all the evidence, even with the missing pictures, the cleaned out room, the deleted messages, even with Tucker’s sword, they both keep insisting Locus wouldn’t have done that. Grif has even gone so far as to suggest they go after him.

Whatever. Tucker doesn’t care. He’s retired; it’s not like he really needs the sword.

Even though he feels off balance without it.

Months pass. Caboose stops looking for Locus in the showers and under the beds. They don’t hear anything, and they all kind of just… accept that the next time they hear from Locus, it’s gonna be because Kimball’s finally gotten her hands on him and put him on trial. Or they just won’t hear from him ever again.

It’s a nice, normal morning. Grif and Simmons are watching Grifball on the sofa, bickering about something that Tucker doesn’t care about. Wash and Sarge are arguing about the crossword puzzle, and Carolina is helping Tucker in the kitchen. Donut is braiding Caboose’s hair, while Lopez comments on his progress in Spanish, and honestly Tucker isn’t sure where Doc is—he thinks he remembers the guy saying something about frying tomatoes up for breakfast, so he might be in the garden.

And that’s when the TV fizzles and lets out a loud, horrible screech, like nails against a chalkboard. Tucker drops the spatula, clapping his hands over his ears. “What the fuck?”

The image of the players on the Grifball field is gone completely, replaced by an ominous looking black screen, with a single green horizontal line through it.

“What the Samhill is going on—”

Then it starts to speak.

“You could end this, you know.” The voice is artificial, strange, filtered. Absurdly, Tucker is reminded of the way that Locus’ voice sounds when speaking through the filter of his helmet.

“Simmons!” Wash barks.

“It’s not me! It’s some sort of… recording?” Simmons has gotten to the TV, and is fiddling with the wires attached to the receiver. “I don’t know what’s happening!”

“No.” Locus’ voice comes out next, and they all stop flat. The line on the screen jumps with his voice. His voice is unfiltered by his helmet, and there’s something off about it, but Tucker can’t figure out why…

“Let’s try this again,” the voice says, and suddenly, Locus screams.

“Tell me about how the Epsilon A.I. was destroyed.”

There’s a loud crashing noise, and he sees, out of the corner of his eye, that Carolina has broken a coffee mug.

Tucker’s stomach drops, and his head pounds, as Epsilon’s words pound in his head.

Not this time, buddy. He reaches out, and Wash is there, and he grabs onto his shoulder, not even looking at him, just… holding. He told Locus about that, he remembers. It had been a rough night, with Epsilon ripping himself to pieces inside his brain, over and over again, and he couldn’t go to Wash about this, because Wash gets it, but it’s... different.

So instead he had talked it over with Locus, in the kitchen, drinking coffee at three in the morning.

“No.” And Tucker knows why his voice sounds wrong now—he’s in pain, this is… this is…

There’s an awful, loud buzzing sounds, and Locus screams again—louder this time, and it goes on for longer.

“You can end this,” the voice says softly. “Just tell me what I want to know about the Reds and Blues, and this all stops.”

“I said no.”  

“Turn it off!” Tucker yells at Simmons. “Jesus, turn it—”

“I can’t!” Simmons yells. “I can’t tell where it’s coming from, it’s too strong—”

Locus keeps screaming as they argue, and Caboose is just staring at the TV, the broken remains of a chair in front of him. Tucker can’t even be mad—he wants to break a chair too, wants to destroy everything in the fucking kitchen, because what is this, this is—

“Your loyalty is sweet. But we both know it won’t last.”

“It will,” Locus snarls, and his voice is ferocious and angry and protective and—

The recording ends abruptly.

Five seconds later, Grif throws a chair into the TV.

“Damn it!”

“We are going now, right?” Caboose says, his voice very flat and dangerous. It feels wrong to hear Caboose talk like that. “Sam is in trouble, and we need to help him.”

“Caboose…” Tucker says, floundering for words. He wants to puke. He wants to ask Wash if he knows what those noises were, what they were doing to Locus. He wants to pretend that the last few minutes haven’t even happened.

The eggs are burning on the stove, and Tucker can’t even start to make himself care.

“No, we’re not going to rescue him!” Simmons says, his voice high but uncertain. “I mean, he betrayed us… right?”

“He left, Caboose,” Wash says, his expression completely blank. “He made his choice.”

“But he’s our friend!”

“No, he’s not!” Tucker says. He’s rattled, rattled to his core, but he manages to pull himself together. Why the fuck should he care about Locus? The guy left, he fucking left, just like— “Look Caboose, didn’t you fucking pay attention? He left. He didn’t say goodbye! He burned the pictures! And he fucking stole my sword, so he could sell it on the alien black market!”

Caboose just sighs loudly, turning to face him. “Tucker, you are very bad at the finding game. I found your sword ages ago! Sam will be very sad that you could not find it.”

Tucker freezes.

“What?”

“Caboose,” Wash says in that strangled, careful way that he gets when things are very wrong but he doesn’t want them to know about it. “I think you should show us where you found Tucker’s sword.”

Caboose crosses his arms, looking extremely put out. “But that is not how the finding game goes!”

“Yeah,” Grif says, nodding, as if what Caboose said makes perfect sense, “but you see, Tucker’s already lost. So the game’s over, so you need to show us where it is now, so we can call Sam and tell him that he won.”

“Oh!” Caboose lights up. “Then he’ll come home, right?”

Grif hesitates, not looking at the others. “Maybe.”

That’s good enough for Caboose. He immediately charges out of the base, barreling towards the heart of the island.

“Maybe it’s his sword,” Tucker says as they follow Caboose out, after several reminders to him to slow down. “I mean it can’t be mine, right? Why would he just… move it? Maybe he lost his and thought mine would work for him, or he could sell it, or something.” There’s something unpleasantly heavy in his gut. He doesn’t know what to make of this, how to handle this.

Locus had used them to lay low, had gained their trust, used the time to heal, and then gone back to his mercenary life, burning all evidence that he had been there, and stealing Tucker’s sword to fence to shady collectors. That’s what they’d figured out, from reconstructing the remains that he had left behind.

He hadn’t really cared, or if he had, it didn’t mean anything. Tucker had told him where he kept his sword, and then Locus had taken it. And Tucker had been stupid and trusting and thought that he could open up to this guy, just because he also had nightmares about Felix.

“Or,” Grif says, “Maybe bad guys wanted his sword, and like, threatened Locus to get him to bring it to them so they could use it, but he didn’t want them to get it, so he took yours and hid his! To pull one over on the bad guys!”

“They’d have to kill him to get that to work,” Simmons says, and all of them flinch at that. The screams from the audio recording seems to bounce between all of them, louder every second. They’re all tense and upset. None of them have any idea how to handle this, not even Wash and Carolina, who know how to handle everything.

Grif visibly deflates. “Okay, so let’s hope it’s not that.”

Caboose leads them past the meth-shroom fields, past the dinosaur graveyard, and to a cave, tucked between two mountains, guarded by jagged looking rocks. It doesn’t look very big, but Caboose moves between the rocks and then turns a sharp right, and Tucker realizes it’s basically a full-on cavern, hidden in plain sight.

And sure enough, perched carefully on a flat, smooth grey rock that resembles a bench, is Tucker’s sword.

It’s definitely his, not Locus’. After all these years, Tucker knows his sword. He knows the nicks and imperfections of it and the way it sits in his hand just right. The weight of Locus’ sword is different; just a little off, the grip doesn’t fit in his hand correctly. Tucker had grabbed it from Locus a few times, as a joke or during sparring, and he knows, even before he flicks his wrist in just the right way… Locus stole Tucker’s sword from under his pillow, only to hide it in a cave.

The sword springs to life in his hand, and Tucker should feel relieved more than he is. But there’s a knot of something in his chest. Because now, he has even less understanding about why Locus left.

There had definitely been searches on his computer about the value of the swords. Simmons had shown the evidence to all of them, nervous and stuttering and not wanting to look at them.

It could have been an accident, but Tucker can’t think of how.

Had Locus… wanted Tucker to think he had stolen it? Why would he do such a thing?

“Wash,” Carolina says, her voice odd and distant. She’s down on one knee, one hand pressed against the dirt floor of the cave. “Someone’s been digging here.”

“Oh, the shovel is in the corner,” Caboose says, sitting on the rock. Looking closer, Tucker can see the lines are too clean, too artificial. Locus must have cut the stone with his sword to make a seat.

This was his place, Tucker realizes. This was… all of them had a little place on the island, just for them. He had a rock up on the cliffs, Wash had clearing that overlooked the sea, Simmons had a room in the basement of the Red Base…

And Locus had hidden his sword here.

It feels like a message; like there’s something that Tucker should know, that there are answers here, just outside of Tucker’s reach.

Tucker goes to get more shovels from Blue Base, because if Locus has buried anything, Tucker is going to help them find it.

It doesn’t take too long for them to excavate the floor of the cave. But what they find makes Tucker sick to his stomach, because it’s not what he expected at all.

Somehow, because it’s Locus, Tucker had expected… buried treasure, or maybe a body, or something dark and sinister. Maybe even a carved stone tablet with an explanation, because Locus is dramatic as fuck like that, and totally would.

But he didn’t expect this.

It’s everything that’s missing from the base, or at least most of it. Locus had buried his life, not destroyed it like Tucker and the others had assumed.

“Fuck,” Grif calls, stopping Tucker from finishing his thought. He’s standing on the edge of the hole. He hadn’t helped, of course, instead making digging noises with his mouth while sitting on Locus’ bench, but he’s been watching the whole thing with an expression that Tucker can’t quite place.

Grif jumps into the hole, which delights Donut inordinately, and grabs a large, heavy duty, black box. He pulls it towards him, and opens it.

“That was locked,” Carolina says, leaning against her shovel. She’s streaked with sweat like the rest of them, but her eyes are sharply focused on Grif.

“Locus’ code for everything is 2-4-1-1-0,” Grif says absently, and Tucker really wants to know that story. Grif and Locus’ friendship is something that he never quite managed to understand, but how the hell had Grif managed to learn Locus’ lock code? “Guys. He buried his guns.”

Tucker stops cold, as does everyone else. They all look at each other, trying to process what they’ve just heard, and Tucker has no idea where even to begin.

“So,” Carolina drawls, almost casually, but her spine is ramrod straight and her mouth is a thin, dangerous line. “I think we can safely say he didn’t leave to do mercenary work.”

“He didn’t take Tucker’s sword, or his other weapons,” Wash says. He opened one of the other containers and holds Locus’ old tea mug in his hands. “So why did he leave?”

“To protect us,” Grif snaps. “Didn’t you guys listen? They were asking him questions about us. He must have figured out that we were in trouble and was… fucking scared they’d use him or something, so he ran, so we wouldn’t get hurt.”

“We don’t know how long they’ve had him,” Simmons points out. “For all we know, they just randomly captured him.”

“And asked him questions about us? We haven’t exactly been telling people that he’s our friend!”

“He’s not,” Tucker mutters, but it’s half-hearted.

“Bullshit,” Grif snaps. “Don’t you guys get it? He didn’t betray us; he did this to protect us.”

“Oh come off it,” Tucker scoffs, walking over to Wash to look through the box where the mug had been in. In it is every weird flavor of tea that Doc had bought for him. Even the ones that Tucker knew Locus had hated, even the ones that had smelled like gasoline and tasted like ass. He had kept them all and buried them in this box. “If we were in danger, why wouldn’t he just tell us?”

“Fuck if I know! But he’s somewhere, being tortured for information about us. He’s our friend, and he’s being hurt, and we need to help him!” Grif can move quickly when he wants to, and he’s right up in Tucker’s space, arms crossed, something genuinely furious and righteous in Grif’s face. It’s rare to see Grif like this, and Tucker has no idea what to do.

“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” Wash says, stepping between them and using a voice which totally means he thinks Grif is wrong, “But we have no idea where to start looking for him. They didn’t exactly give us an address.”

“Oh, don’t get your cerulean knickers in a twist about that, Agent Washington,” Sarge says. He’d left a while ago, but now he’s back, Donut on one side, Doc on the other. “I called that reporter lady, an’ she called someone who called a fellow who had a third cousin once removed who knows a gal whose roommate knows how to pinpoint the origin of a radio signal.”

Tucker stares at Sarge, and he’s not the only one.

“We can’t let a Red remain in enemy hands!” Sarge says proudly. “I’ve got the location!”

“He’s not a red,” Tucker says automatically. He should point out that Locus left, that he betrayed them, but God, he’s not sure if he believes that anymore, and that’s…

He doesn’t know what to do with that.

His fingers curl around the hilt of his sword.

“Yes,” Caboose agrees with him. “He is a blue.”

“He’s not either,” Wash interrupts.

“Yay neutral!”

“Shut up, Doc. Do we really want to do this?” Wash’s hand is unexpected on Tucker’s shoulder, but it’s not unwelcome. Tucker leans back into the touch, closing his eyes. “We could be walking into a trap.”

None of them say “again”, but they’re all thinking it. Tucker wants to turn to Wash, to put his hands all over Wash’s scars, to remind himself that he’s still there, but instead he does nothing, because the others are around, and Wash is alive…

Because of Locus.

“I want answers,” Tucker hears himself saying. “I don’t care about that guy—” Grif makes a cough that suspiciously sounds like bullshit “—but I want to know what the fuck is going on here.”

“Look,” Simmons says, looking nervous, glancing between Tucker and Grif. “No offense, but like… Locus is scary-good at this stuff. Like… fighting. And not getting caught by the proper authorities.” He clears his throat. “Whoever… this is, they either scared him enough into leaving—”

“To protect us,” Grif says. He’s holding Locus’ sniper rifle in his hands.

“Maybe,” Simmons says, doubtful. “Or at least, they caught him. Chorus couldn’t do that, and his armor isn’t here—”

“It’s not?” Tucker blinks, glancing at the other containers, which he had assumed would contain the infamous Locus armor. But Caboose and Donut have opened all of them. And instead of the familiar helmet, Tucker sees balls of string, glittering keychains, pressed flowers, and weirdly shaped rocks.

They have his weapons—the sniper rifle that Grif is holding, the shotgun he uses in close quarters combat, several combat knives, and a magnum which Tucker has never seen Locus use. But there’s no sword, and there’s no armor.

Tucker can’t figure out what this means.

It would be nice to believe Grif. To be able to put to rest months of hurt.

It would be nice, if he could pretend that the morning, when he’d reached under his pillow to hold his sword, only to find it missing, along with photos on the wall, and Sam Locus… it would be really nice if he could pretend that it had never happened.

It would be nice to pretend that Locus hadn’t wanted to leave.

But Tucker wasn’t sure that he was capable of that.

“It’s probably a trap,” Wash repeats. “Do we really want to walk into that?”

“Oh c’mon Wash!” Donut calls. “If we can’t deal with a whole roomful of guys—”

Wash lets out a small laugh and presses his forehead against the back of Tucker’s head briefly.

“Alright then,” he says. “Let’s go.”

Sarge’s coordinates take them to a civilized planet, in the middle of fucking suburbia.

“This is it?” Tucker says, incredulous. All the houses look identical. There are lawns.  

“Oh! I know what to do!” Caboose gasps. “We need to knock on doors and ask them if they have seen Locus!”

“He’s not a dog, Caboose—”

But Caboose has already bounded up the steps to the door of the nearest house, and is ringing the doorbell excitedly.

“They might have seen something,” Carolina says, sounding vaguely amused. “This was probably a drop point, to throw us off the scent. But we might be able to pick up the trail here.”

Sighing, Tucker moves up the steps to join Caboose.

The door opens, and there is a woman on the other side.

Her hair is the color of steel, trimmed into a severe bob cut. Her face is lined and worn, and she holds herself like Wash does sometimes.

Tired, wary, but ready to fight if need be.

“What do you want?” It’s only then that Tucker realizes that they’re all in full armor, and how that must look to this woman, wearing a neat looking suit.

Wash recovers first, stepping forward. “Sorry to bother you, ma’am. But a friend of ours went missing around here.”

Her eyes soften slightly, and her arm drops down from behind her back, where she’s probably got a pistol tucked. “Do you have a picture? I can’t say I remember anything, but maybe I’ve seen him around.”

Just as Tucker is about to say no, because Locus destroyed their pictures of him, Grif produces one. “Here,” he says, and Tucker realizes with a jolt that Grif must have pilfered one of the pictures which Locus had buried.

Tucker wishes for a moment that he’d thought of it.

It’s a good picture. Caboose had taken it; Caboose has a shockingly good eye for photos. Even though half of his pictures are of weird shit that Tucker can’t understand, usually of random objects in strange focuses.

Caboose calls them his blue period.

The photo is of Sam, and only Sam, cradling his mug of tea, the corners of his eyes crinkled in a smile, although his mouth barely has twitched upwards, responding to some joke of Donut’s that Tucker can’t even remember. The light from the windows pours over him, rich and gold and soft. He looks peaceful, at home with himself for once, his eyes looking right at the camera, his long hair flowing over his shoulder, out of its ponytail.

Grif hands the photo over to her, and the woman immediately gasps. “Sam?”

The picture tumbles from her hands, falling to the ground, and she looks at them with wide, horrified eyes.

“You know him?” Grif demands.

“He was friends with my husband,” she whispers. “He’s—I didn’t even know he was alive.”

“Your husband?” The only friend Locus had that Tucker knows of is Felix. And this woman looks too… normal. And not dead. To be married to Felix.

“Yes. He went missing about ten years ago.” Her face is pale as a sheet. She bends over to pick up the picture of Locus, holding it like its something delicate and precious. “I got his head in the mail three months later.” Tucker flinches. God, he hopes they’re not dealing with the same people. She looks up at all of them. “I’m sorry, how do you know him?”

“We’re… friends,” Wash says. “I’m Washington, this is—”

“You’re the Reds and Blues,” she says, realization dawning on her face. “I’m Megan Wu. You better come inside.”

There are pictures on the walls as Megan leads them in, all of them self-conscious and awkward in their armor. The pictures show three kids, growing up slowly, going from babies to kids to teenagers to adults in the photos, with the newest looking ones showing them in their early twenties.

Megan is in most of these photos, and there’s a man in some of the older ones, but he vanishes once the oldest looking kid looks to be about high school age. There’s a military portrait, and at least one of the photos shows that he’s got a mechanical leg. He’s got an expressive face, with a scar going through one of his eyebrows.

She leads them into the living room, where she picks up one picture from above the mantelpiece, and wordlessly hands it to Tucker, who is standing closest to her. He nearly breaks the frame in shock.

Felix’s face stares out at him, smirking as he sits on the couch that’s in this room. One of his arms is tossed over Locus’ shoulder, while his other arm is around the man from the photos in the hallway, who must be Megan’s husband.

“I haven’t seen Sam in about… ten years or so?” Megan says, sitting down in one of the armchairs, and gestured for them all to do the same. “He didn’t come by often—he was shy. I don’t think he liked kids much. And when Mason left the life, he stopped calling.” She shakes her head. “Honestly, I thought he was dead.”

“The life?” Carolina takes the picture from Tucker, examining it.

“Bounty hunting,” she says wryly. “He went by Siris on that circuit—the three of them were so strange with their code names, especially Sam. Isaac was nearly as bad though.”

“Isaac?” Tucker says, feeling like there’s a blockage in his throat, trying to choke him. He hasn’t seen Felix’s face, outside of his nightmares at least, since before the betrayal. Seeing it now… he’s caught off guard. He feels dizzy, and sits down on another one of the chairs, only just reminding himself to be careful so his armor doesn’t crush it.

“Felix was what he called himself, when it was that sort of business,” she says, her expression strangely blanked. “He was… trouble. More so than Sam.”

“I’m sure,” Wash says. He passes the photo to Grif, barely sparing it a glance.

She looks up, something sharp in her eyes that reminds Tucker of the fact that she had brought a gun to the door. He had spotted the gun when she’d picked up the photo; military issue, and new enough that he doubts it’s her dead husband’s. There’s something dangerous about this woman. “Don’t tell me he’s missing too,” she says. “I’d hate to have to kick you out of here for trying to rescue that son of a bitch.”

“He’s dead,” Tucker says.

Her eyes flicker to him, and he sees a small smile. “Good. Did you do it?”

“Good?” Grif echoes. Doc is looking at the photo now. “I thought this guy was your friend.”

“He was Mason’s friend,” she says, her eyes flickering to Grif. “About three months after Mason left, before he went missing, Isaac came to visit. Without Sam, which was always odd. Those two were practically attached at the hip.” She accepted the photo back from Donut, and stood up to place it on the fireplace mantel again. “They… fought. I’m not sure what about. All I know is that I came home from work and my daughter was crying, because Uncle Isaac and Daddy had been yelling and calling each other names, and Mason wouldn’t talk to me about what had happened.”

Her mouth thins into a line. “He was… different, after that. Jumpy. He thought someone was following him, so one day, he got up and left. He left me a note. Said it was safer this way.” She sat down hard. “Later, I figure out that he’d gone to ground. He had a safehouse, in the city. But it didn’t matter. Whoever it was that killed him,” her voice left it perfectly clear that she didn’t consider that to be a great mystery, “they knew where it was. And three months after he walked out of that door, my oldest wakes up the entire house screaming because she opened a package on our doorstep, with Mason’s head inside.”

“… you think Felix killed him?” Tucker says. He looks up to the picture, and Felix’s grin.

“I know he did,” she snaps.

Tucker glances at Locus in the picture. He looks… young. There’s no hints of silver in his hair and fewer worry lines around his mouth and eyes. The smile on his face seems a bit wider, a bit less cautious, and he’s not flinching away from Felix’s arm like he almost always would when Tucker or the others would touch him. Felix is younger too, but there’s something almost ageless about the way he is. The smile is the same; smarmy and confident and charming.

He wonders why Megan kept the picture, if she thinks Felix killed her husband.

Simmons groans. “Great. If Locus isn’t here, this is a dead end!”

“No,” Wash says softly. “It’s not.” He takes off his helmet. “Ms. Wu. I’m sorry to have to ask you this but… do you know the address for that safe house?”

Her mouth is a thin line as she looks at Wash. Her expression is completely unreadable. “Why do you think he’d be there?”

“Because we were lead here for a reason,” Wash says. “We were sent a… recording, of Locus, and it supposedly originated just outside of your house. And I think they wanted us to hear this story. They wanted us to find you.”

“… it’s been three months since Locus left,” Tucker says, the pieces sliding into place. His stomach churns at the thought of it.

Her eyes turn to him, horrified, and her chin goes up. “He’s the one on the news, isn’t he? Wanted for war crimes on that planet?”

They all look at each other and don’t say anything.

“Who has him?”

Carolina is the one to speak this time. Her body is a stiff line, uncomfortable in this setting, sitting in one of the plush purple armchairs, her arms awkwardly folded in her lap. “We’re not sure.”

Megan gets to her feet, and crosses the room to a coffee table, with a pad of paper and a pen lying on it. She scribbles out an address and holds it out to Tucker. Her handwriting is clear, precise, and large, and the address is not too far from here.

“When you find him,” she says, her voice booking no argument. “Tell him Megan would like a word.”

“You sure you don’t want to come with us?” Tucker asks. He can see the pistol, tucked into the waistband of her skirt still, and the scars on her hands tell him that she’s an old soldier too, even if he hasn’t spotted a picture of her in her uniform yet.

She looks away, and she looks exhausted and old. “I’ve been there once. The things I saw… I’m not going back there. Never.” She sits back down, smoothing out the lines of her skirt. “You should hurry,” she says, her voice distant. “They’re probably keeping an eye on this house, whoever they are. And they might not wait until you’re there to finish things.”

“Yes! We need to go find him!” Caboose says, all excited now. He’s been uncharacteristically silent through all of this, but he grabs Tucker and pulls him towards the door. “Thank you, Missus Megan!”

They all file out of the house, lost in their thoughts.

“So,” Tucker finally says as they pile into the pelican. “Do we think that Locus helped Felix kill that guy?”

“Yes,” Grif says immediately.

“Oh duh.”

“No question.”

“I thought that went without saying.”

Something sour slides into his stomach at that. Tucker knows that Locus has done far worse things than killing an old friend, but…

It’s that old saying, isn’t it? A million is a statistic. Tucker can’t even begin to try to understand the scope of what happened on Chorus. He’s seen the reports, the estimates of damage, of lives lost, and he’s heard Kimball’s speeches about lost culture and progress, but it’s so big, that he can’t quite connect with it.

But there is something personal about this.

He touches his sword again, just to reassure himself that it is there, as Grif starts up the pelican and they fly towards the safehouse.

Tucker takes a deep breath, takes his sword into his hands, and tries to steel himself for whatever it is that he’s about to find, inside of that place.

[ridleymocki]

Control Your Fear, It’s Clear

Written for Pynch Week 17, Day 3. Prompt:  “Am I dreaming?” // “What are you doing here?” // “Dance with me”

Summary:  The day has come for Adam to begin his final exams, the culmination of all his hard work, and now that it's here, he's freaking out in the boys' bathroom, of all places. But he doesn't have to deal with this stuff alone, anymore. Ronan surprises him and reminds Adam how rewarding taking risks can be.

Notes: Apparently I just have no restraint at all because this has, like, ALL the kissing. Hopefully it has plot as well, haha.Title is from Matt Corby's 'Resolution', which, if you haven't heard it yet will probably change your life.Thank you for reading! Enjoy!

also on ao3

In twenty minutes, Adam’s future would start to be determined. In twenty minutes he’d sit at a table that would probably have a tilt in it and pour out the contents of his intellect on flimsy white pieces of paper. His hand would probably cramp, or he’d misread something and it would all go to shit. At the end of more hours than he wanted to think about, he’d hand over a piece of his soul and it would be weighed and measured to see if all his hard work had done any good. He’d do that again tomorrow and the next day until it was all over and his fate was sealed.

 “You’re being an idiot,” he said to his reflection, and growled at himself as he splashed his face with cold water again. “Everything will be fine. Stop being dramatic.” He pressed his forehead to the glass of the mirror and took deep breaths. He was usually fine with assessments, could walk in, secure in the knowledge that he’d done the hard work, and complete the task with a militant calm. But these were his final exams, and just a few weeks ago he’d been possessed by a demon and his friend had died, then been revived by a magical forest. So all in all, his stress was high. Sue him.

It wasn’t even that he thought he would do badly, necessarily. He knew he would do well, stored all the information correctly and knew how to convey it. But doubt is a tricky thing that doesn’t care about the facts at hand, self-doubt doubly so. As he scraped a paper towel over his face, Adam felt like he wanted to run. He’d spent so long running towards Aglionby and the future it promised, and now it just made him feel sick. “Stop it, stop it, stop it…”

 He was meant to have more control than this. Adam had built himself up through discipline and determination and he’d be damned if he failed now because he panicked. As he looked at himself sternly in the mirror, he felt the warring forces in him scrabble for his attention. His control usually gave him balance. The contradictions that made up his character only rested in balance because he kept them strictly apart, no mingling, no polluting. What he wanted was untouched by what he needed. What he loved was untouched by what he hated. What made him safe could never be what made him afraid. But now, looking down the barrel of his possible future, things began to overlap. Academic success was always going to be his way out, the way that he would make up for the bad of his past with an almost inevitable good. The surety of what this school and then college could do for him always represented safety – he knew the path ahead, he just had to follow. But now, he was goddamn terrified. And he didn’t know how to want something at the same time he was scared of it.

 He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to know.

 The door to the boys’ bathroom burst suddenly open, the bang of it ringing off the walls, and Adam reared back, busied himself with scrunching up the towel and tossing it, not casting the intruder a single glance.

 “You’re not freaking out are you?”

 Adam whirled. Ronan was standing at the end of the row of sinks, arms crossed but his smile smug. Adam blinked. “What are you doing here?” His heart leapt excitedly in his chest, a nice reprieve from the nervous lurching, and Ronan smiled wider at his obvious surprise. He looked good, frustratingly so, in black head to toe and his brilliant blue eyes turned liquid in the light from the window. Adam felt drawn to him by the unique gravity of that smile. And annoyed; Ronan was a unique creature that could elicit both emotions at the same time.

 “Figured you’d need a distraction,” Ronan said lowly, and began to step forward, crowding into Adam’s space. The way he moved, fluid but sharp, a coiled whip, would have scared anyone in their right mind. But Adam was a little crazy over Ronan Lynch, and as his shoulders dropped in relief at seeing him, he moved forward too, just to touch him all the sooner.

 Ronan’s hands came up to frame his face and he kissed him hard, bodies pressing immediately together. There had been a number of times over the last weeks where their kisses had managed to wipe Adam’s mind absolutely clean, and this was one of them. They wound around each other, Ronan licking into his mouth and getting a groan out of him.

 At first, when Adam had first kissed him and they’d begun this, the feeling of being circled in someone’s arms, feeling their laughter against his lips, had made Adam nervous. Too close, too heady, too vulnerable. But he’d realised soon enough it was a power all its own, to occupy someone’s attention so completely. And to occupy Ronan’s attention like this was a very powerful thing, indeed. Adam craved it, the give and take, this cherished feeling.

 He felt the movement of the muscles in Ronan’s shoulder as he slid a hand down Adam’s spine, curling his arm around his waist. Adam scratched at the edge of Ronan’s buzzed hair, the prickle of it grounding and perfect as their mouths worked to make him forget. After too many minutes and too few breaths, Ronan withdrew, but kept passing a hand up and down Adam’s back, warm and reassuring.

 “Distracted?” Ronan said, and his voice was a mess. Adam huffed, pressed another firm but quick kiss to Ronan’s reddened lips, biting at the bottom one before leaning back to scowl at him.

 “How the fuck am I supposed to do this exam, now?” He watched Ronan’s grin grow wide and pleased, his perfect teeth infuriating.

 “Same way you do everything,” he bent his head and nipped at the hinge of Adam’s jaw, “stubbornly.” Ronan continued to kiss down his neck, not seeing the way Adam rolled his eyes, though he probably knew anyway.

 It occurred to Adam as he lost himself in the fact of Ronan, the smell and shape of him, that his exams weren’t the first time he’d wanted something and been scared of it, too. Don’t break him, Adam, Gansey had said. But when Adam had first kissed him, replying to the question Ronan had left hanging on his lip earlier that night, Adam was sure that it was going to be himself that shook apart. When they lounged in silence and Ronan pressed Adam’s fingers to his mouth, Adam was afraid. No one had told Ronan not to break Adam. No one had told Adam what to do with someone’s love, how to treat it well. He’d wanted it violently, wanted it with a white hot need that he’d never felt before, not for doing well at school, not for breaking free of this town. He’d wanted Ronan like nothing else and it was still, in its own way, the scariest thing he’d ever done.

 He nudged his nose into Ronan’s throat and breathed him in, allowing himself to be held. Weeks ago, what he wanted had won out against what he feared. It could do so again, he figured.

 “I have to go,” he mumbled. Ronan made a noise of assent and squeezed him once before moving away. He still wore a smirk, but it was smaller, private.

 “You’re an idiot if you think you’re not gonna beat all of them,” he said quietly.

 Adam smiled. “Trust you to make me stop being an idiot, then.”

 Ronan clapped him on the shoulder and grinned, apparently glad he’d succeeded. Adam’s chest felt warm at the idea that his boyfriend would’ve had to drive up from the Barns – and early in the morning, too – just to give him a pep talk. It was so uncharacteristic on one level, and so predictable on another. As Ronan steered him towards the door, Adam got caught up in imagining them being able to celebrate at the end of the week, the whole group of them together and laughing, with a weight off his own mind. He didn’t think about his exam at all as they walked down the corridor towards the great hall, just enjoyed the weight of Ronan’s arm over his shoulders and his musing.

 As they approached, a few boys in the line waiting to enter caught sight of Ronan and began to whisper amongst themselves. “God, you’d think they had nothing better to gossip about,” Ronan said.

 “Well since you left they probably haven’t,” and Adam poked him in the ribs, laughing under his breath. They came to a stop and suddenly Ronan was tugging at his hand, getting him to turn into Ronan’s body and in a heartbeat he was being kissed, again. Adam heard a choked off noise from behind them but it didn’t matter, none of it mattered. They parted breathless and smiling.

 “There,” Ronan said, “they can gossip about that.” Adam laughed and swatted him away, protesting that he really had to go. He felt Ronan slide a hand down his back one more time before he stepped back. To the boys still looking over at them, Ronan gave what could only be described as a threatening nod, which Adam found quietly hilarious, and then he was off, walking out with a sway to his hips and a smirk over his shoulder that Adam vowed to pay him back for at his earliest opportunity.

 Adam joined the line, basking in the reproachful looks from a few, and checked in with himself. His nerves were all but gone, sensible concern taking their place, and the knowledge he needed for this exam felt like it was all there, just waiting for summons. He might be able to do this, after all.

 He shifted in place as he waited and frowned when he felt something in his back pocket, quickly digging it out. It took a few seconds for him to realise what he was seeing, but when he understood, he couldn’t have helped his smile if he tried. In his palm was the single, pale coloured card of The Magician from the deck Persephone had left him. Ronan must have snuck it into his pocket just before he left.

 “Bastard,” Adam said to himself, staring reverently at the card. The magician was a figure who could do anything, who harnessed everything available to him and used it well, who determined his own destiny with sheer force of will. The magician was Adam, and Ronan had driven more than an hour in the early morning just to remind him of that. “You absolute bastard,” he muttered, but his chest was impossibly warm.

[kyungsowll]

ULTRAVIOLET

Parts: I II III IV V

Genre: Smut

Do Kyungsoo X Own Character

Prologue:  Water me I promise I can grow tall When making love is free

A room filled with a bunch of young adults and a clock nailed to the wall. That was definitely the stupidest class Violet could choose among the two years she has been going to college. Five hours to draw the weirdest and useless clock ever, because she hadn't even started to draw its numbers and the fucking clock didn't ticked a single minute.

Alright, it wasn't the clock’s fault that Violet was anxious as never. It was Friday, she was finally going to meet Sehun again, and she didn't need drawing lessons, she just enrolled in this subject because of the cute professor that didn't seem so cute right now.

She huffed, there was at least one hour until classes were over and if she wanted a diploma it would be better to draw that ridiculous clock fast. She started by drawing the cycle that surrounds the whole structure with a compass, it was very important in her future career to draw cycles, angles and straight lines correctly. Nobody wants to hire an architect that doesn't draw beautiful and straight houses.  

The following step was drawing the geometric figures of the print of the clock, and it would be a simple step if there wasn't at least a hundred of figures.

She didn't care much about anything since the airplane accident that killed her parents. She wasn't a traumatized girl, she was just living the life she always wanted to live, and living a reckless life seemed perfect for her. But Architecture was something she couldn't just not care, she was in love for it since she was a little farm girl traveling to big cities and she always knew it was the right career for her. When her uncle came to her room in that rainy Thursday to give her the news was when she got a letter from university warning her that she was accepted, and since then drawing houses and buildings was her escape.

But the clock ticked five p.m and the class was over. She stuck her stuff inside the folder and run out of the classroom like if it was on fire, Sehun was waiting for her in the parking lot for about thirty minutes and she was excited to see him. Once inside the car, the both souls greeted each other with a single “hey” and stared at each other faces. What should they do? They weren’t a coupe, so greeting with a kiss was out of question, but they weren't friends too, so saying “hey” and give a high five didn't seem correct also.

“Where are we going?” she was the first to speak. Sehun didn't tell her where they were going when he called her last night and Violet was so eager to accept his invitation that she forgot to ask. She fastened the seat belt and glanced at him while he started the car.

“It’s Baekhyun’s birthday, so we’re going to have a drink and celebrate.” He answered and she nodded, showing him a smile. That was the perfect moment for him to remove his right hand from the steering wheel and spread it on her left thigh, it’s a good form for a couple to keep in touch while driving. But once again, Sehun got himself thinking if they were really a couple. He shook his head lightly and smiled backwards. “I thought it would be a good idea to invite you since the boys like you”

“Baekhyun likes me, you meant” she corrected him and he automatically rolled his eyes. They exchanged an emotive glance and he quickly spread his hand and messed up her hair under her giggles. “Kyungsoo hates me”

Sehun shook his head once again and parked the car in the front of the bar. If only she knew how much Kyungsoo could hate her… She didn't expect any chivalry and opened the door by herself and they entered the establishment side to side, with no holding hands or intertwined arms. Baekhyun and Kyungsoo were sitting at a table in a bad illuminated corner drinking a beer and laughing like the good friends they were, the newest one seemed like a star with that beautiful smile shining in his lips… he was so beautiful when he wasn't being a complete douchebag around her that she almost felt sorry for ending with his good mood. He was sat with his back to the entrance, so he didn't notice when the young couple got closer, but when Baekhyun lifted to greet them Kyungsoo looked back, his pearled smile fading little by little as he observed Violet. She wanted to run away and go back home, but an unrest in her head always showed up when she saw Kyungsoo face tied, and she just felt the need to tease him as much as she could.

“Happy birthday, Byun” she said with a smile while hugging the birthday boy. Her position was perfect for looking inside his eyes as she spoke. “I would've brought a present but Sehun didn't tell me it was your birthday.”

“Don’t worry, just pay me a fine drink and I'll be happy” he replied, pulling out a giggle from the girl.

Sehun and Violet sat side to side, facing the two older friends as they drank and laughed at subjects Violet couldn't find funny. They’ve met for a whole life and the girl only met them for about weeks... this is why she decided to got drunk when she stole a huge gulp of her boyfriend’s soju.

It happens that getting Violet drunk was a hard assignment. The girl had a surprisingly resistance to the alcohol, she was probably drinking her sixth beer can and she wasn't even feeling dizzy. As for Kyungsoo, he was the sober one who had to drive everyone home. So, while Baekhyun and Sehun were showing their teeth and laughing at the walls crack, Kyungsoo and Violet looked at the scene bored as they could be, just waiting for one of them to call out the night and go home, what didn't take much longer since Baekhyun couldn't barely stay with his eyes opened.

“Kyungsoo” she called while the man was distracted observing the movement across the bar. He frowned and glanced at her, she didn't say it loud and it was hard to listen with the two men laughing like gazelles. “Do you think they have ice creams? I really wanted one.”

He laughed low. Her boyfriend was about to pass out from the booze and she was worried about ice cream… so undisciplined. He called for a waitress and she ordered a petit gateau, a type of desert composed by a ball of ice cream and a little creamy chocolate cake. When her plate came, her eyes glimmered and she clapped her hands, just like those girls do when they are with other girls.

“Can I ask you a question?” she asked with her mouth filled with cake. She had a little bit of ice cream in the corner of her mouth and Kyungsoo’s hand itched to clean it, but he just raised an eyebrow and nodded his head. “Why you act so weird around me?” Kyungsoo knew she asked a simple question and wasn't expecting for anything less than simple as an answer but he had the perfect chance to leave a taste hanging in her ears. He frowned and fixed his posture against the wood chair, his throat started to itch and he felt like if he was about to throw up a hurricane of words against her, but he locked every possible word inside his guts. “I feel like there’s this huge iceberg between both of us, and I can't understand why.” She left the spoon leaning on the plate and twined her hands, both thumbs fighting against each other while her eyeballs didn't leave his. Violet wanted to know why his beautiful smile always faded away when she was around and something inside her knew Kyungsoo was aware of the causes.

“Why do you think there is an iceberg between us?” He mirrored her movements and twined his fingers too, he was excited to hear her guess. It was not a secret to anyone that he desired her and he didn't expect that she wouldn’t know. He wanted her to know that behind every one of his moves was the wish to caress and spoil her, but he could only do that if she could correspond his wills. And Kyungsoo knew she wanted to be spoiled like the little girl she still was. She lifted her eyebrows and shrugged, the little spoon started to travel to her mouth again bringing ice cream and cake with it, it would be better to fill her mouth again than being disrespectful with an older man like she was wishing to.

“I don't know, Kyungsoo” She deviated her gaze from the dessert, there was about half cake on her plate but her stomach was already filled. She hated smarty answers to sincere questions and wasn't really good at ignoring things she hated. A huff of air went out of his lungs, he shook his head and made a signal to the waitress ordering the bill, but she wasn't in the mood for letting him scape before giving her an answer. Her long fingers twined around his pulse and an electric shook went through his veins, he couldn't remember a single time that he felt such a good feeling. “Where are you going? Answer me.”

“This subject ends here, Violet.” Even under his mind’s protests Daddy Kyungsoo had spoken. He took a deep breath, looked inside her eyes and passed Baekhyun’s arms around his neck to help his drunk friend. His words echoed through her ears and she really couldn't react… she shook her head and let his arm go.

“Are you in love with me or what? Just tell me.” She said in a mocking tone, she was a curious girl and loved to defy orders, and Kyungsoo’s voice sounded like an order she was dying to dare… he looked inside her eyes again, with his hooded, his balls seemed darker than before like if he wanted her to understand that he meant what he said.

“I told you this subject was over, stop defying me or you will be punished.”