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snowdice · 3 years ago

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Big Bang (Sort of) Editing Story [Day 67]

I started writing this fic while editing my Big Bang story, but am going to continue doing it for other things now that Kill Dear is out. I will write and publish 100 words of the story every time I finish doing whatever task I’m doing. If you’d like to block these proceedings, please feel free to block the tag proofread stories. I will reblog this post with the parts of the story I do today. Edited chapters are linked; everything else I’ve done so far is under the cut.

My Master Post Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21 Part 22 Part 23 Part 24 Part 25 Part 26 Part 27 Part 28 Part 29 Part 30

Got many things to do today, though I do have a meeting in a bit over an hours, so there will be a break.

Chapter 31

Logan waited for a while after Patton left to check on Virgil, but the two never resurfaced. It was odd, Patton would usually remember to come back and get Logan or at least tell them where they were. With a sigh, Logan climbed to his feet to go find them. It took him a while to weave his way through the maze of bushes to them especially because they were suspiciously quiet (Well, suspicious for Patton. Virgil was often unnervingly quiet when alone.) Luckily, he knew the bushes enough after all of these years not to get lost and managed to find the two after a few minutes.

“Ah,” he said, immediately identifying the reason for Patton disappearing.

“Logan!” Patton said, his voice excited, but also quieter than normal. “We found a kitty!”

“I can see that,” Logan responded, taking a step closer. The cat hissed at him in response. The hissing was so intense and wild that he’d suspect the thing was feral if it wasn’t happily on Virgil’s lap having had it’s head in Patton’s lap before Logan had approached.

“No,” Virgil told the animal as though it could understand words. “That’s Logan. Be nice.”

The cat still glared at him and swished it’s tail back and forth threateningly. Virgil pet the top of it’s head and it broke eye contact with Logan to purr.

Patton seemed delighted by the purring, reaching to stroke under the thing’s chin carefully. “We should give her a name!” Patton said.

Virgil frowned. “I thought her name was Ghost Kitty.”

“That is ‘Ghost Kitty’?” Logan asked skeptically. From what Patton had said about that cat, it was terrified of people and no one could ever get near it, even him. Now it was in Virgil’s lap?

“But that was a temporary name,” Patton said, “for before we officially met her. Now we have to give her a real name.”

“Do not give it a name,” Logan said. “You will get attached.”

“How do you name a cat?” Virgil asked.

“Do not name it,” Logan said.

“You give them names based on their personalities, how they look, or even just because it’s a cute name,” Patton explained. “Like, remember Mittens? I named her Mittens because she has white fur and black paws!”

Virgil looked at the cat. “She’s completely black,” he said.

Patton hummed. “So, we could give her a name based on that like Midnight or Shadow.”

“Those are fine,” Virgil said.

“No, no,” Patton said. “I’m just giving you examples. You get to name her yourself.”

“This is a bad idea,” Logan said.

“Just throw out some names,” Patton said. “Anything you can think of.”

“Uh,” Virgil said. “Knife.”

“…Just Knife?” Patton asked.

“Nightmare.” Virgil seemed to think about it. “No, that’s mean.”

“How about things you like?” Patton suggested.

“Alfredo?”

Oh no, Logan thought, he was worse than Patton at cat naming.

“Good start,” Patton said. “Logan, do you have any suggestions.”

“Cat,” Logan said.

“Real suggestions,” Patton scolded.

Logan sighed and thought for a moment. “Aphrodite.”

“Catphrodite!”

Logan glared at him. “Helena.”

“Helenpaw.”

“Claudia.”

“Clawdia.”

“Persephone.”

Patton smiled at him, cheerfully.

“…Damnit!”

Patton turned to Virgil again. “Like that! They don’t even have to be serious. Like, uh, you could name her Madam Fluffywuffykins the Great!”

“Do not name her that,” Logan said, scrunching up his nose.

Logan sat on the ground, the cat eyeing him, but no longer hissing. Logan gently guided them towards more sensible names despite Patton trying his hardest to drag them into stupidity.

Virgil still didn’t quite get it. He mostly tried to name it after foodstuff, and often not even appropriate foodstuff such as “Corn” and “Acorn Squash” and “Sandwich” and occasionally would drop in semi violent ones such as “Razor,” “Nightshade” and “Void.” Patton suggested names like “Fluffers,” “Bobette” and “Darling” as well as some that were puns. Logan tried to direct them towards more sensible ones like “Salem” and even went so low as to suggest the contrary “Snowball.”

It quickly seemed to become less about actually naming the cat and more of a game. Patton had taught Virgil about playing with cats and had even gotten out a ball of yarn he cared around for his crafts. Both Virgil and the cat seemed to find endless entertainment with that. Logan hoped Patton had another ball of yarn that color because, he was never going to get that ball back.

The barrage of names fizzled out into naming things around them like “Leaf” and “Bush” until they stopped suggesting names altogether. Patton and Logan sat back and watched Virgil play with the cat.

Logan watched as they stopped playing suddenly and Virgil and the cat squinted at each other. “Marisol,” Virgil said, pulling the name out of nowhere. “That’s her name.” He said it with a certainty that was surprising considering how he’d treated the naming process with confusion and caution earlier. If Logan did not know better, his tone of voice would indicate that the cat, or Marisol he guessed, had gotten bored of them coming up with stupid names and decided to tell him her actual name herself.

The cat made a sound and batted at Virgil’s face without claws to grab back his attention.

He turned back to it and bopped its face with a finger in kind. It attacked his finger, but in a clearly playful matter as it still did not extend it’s claws and its teeth did not draw blood.

“That’s a great name, Virgil,” Patton said.

“Much more pleasant than any that Patton suggested all afternoon,” Logan said. He received an elbow to the side for his quip.

“A pretty name for a pretty kitty,” Patton said, scooting over to where Virgil was sat and attempting to pet Marisol’s head. Marisol, however, was too keyed up and batted at the hand.

“I love you too!” Patton said.

Logan rolled his eyes, but he had long since resigned himself to watching the two of them play with and coo over the cat for the rest of the day.

Eventually, though, it started to get darker. Even after Logan pointed this out, it still took over an hour for them to relent and leave the bush maze to go to the door. The problem was of course, that the cat had managed to grow very attached to Virgil in the last few hours and she followed them all the way to the door with manipulatively heart breaking mews.

“You’ve got to stay out here,” Virgil said, when they got to the castle door. He pet her ear softly and she shoved her head into his hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t have anywhere to put you.” He sounded horribly sad about that fact and Logan felt himself shift uncomfortably. “I basically live in a closet and Logan doesn’t like cats in his room anyway.”

Logan immediately felt unreasonably guilty, probably more so because Logan did not think Virgil was trying to make him feel guilty. “…Bring the dammed thing inside.”

Virgil blinked up at him. “What?”

“It will get cold soon anyway,” Logan said.

He frowned at Logan from where he was crouched. “But you don’t like fur in your room…”

“I will have to find a potion that works,” he said with a sigh, “and we’ll have to say it’s mine to the guards and Father since it will be staying in my room, but it is yours in every other way. That means you are going to feed it, clean it, and clean up after it.”

Virgil nodded immediately and swooped Marisol up in his arms. The cat went without complaint. “Thank you!” he said. “I love her.”

“I know you do,” Logan said, already regretting it already. Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to even consider recanting the offer considering how happy Virgil seemed to be. They had a cat now, he guessed.

Chapter 32

“What are you doing?” Helen asked a few minutes after her son walked into the kitchen and started looking around as though he were trying to find something. It was a few hours into the afternoon, and she and a few workers were already prepping for dinner.

“Uh,” Patton said. “Have you seen Virgil?”

“No,” Helen said. “Why.”

“Er… Logan and I sorta, lost him,” Patton said. He was wringing his hands anxiously. Helen put down the knife in her hand.

“What do you mean you lost him?” she asked.

“Well, see, we were trying to teach him how to play hide and seek, um, but then we didn’t think to tell him that he eventually had to come out if we didn’t find him, and now we haven’t seen him since breakfast.”

“He didn’t know what tag is?” she asked. That was just one more thing to add to the list of why Helen worried about Virgil and where he came from. Every morsel of information she’d managed to wring from Patton despite his evasions made her lists of concerns grow larger, even little things like him not knowing about simple childhood games. Actually, thinking of concerning things having to do with Virgil. “Wait, so he hasn’t eaten lunch.”

“Um, we don’t know that,” Patton’s mouth said while his eyes said ‘no.’

“He needs to be on a consistent diet, especially when he’s still taking the malnutrition potion,” she scolded.

“I know, Mama, I know,” Patton said. “I’m trying to find him. I’d kinda hoped he’d gotten hungry and snuck down here. He probably wouldn’t want to risk being caught stealing food though.”

Helen grimaced. Yet another concerning thing.

“Wait! I have an idea, I’ll be right back.” Patton turned and ran out of the room. Helen frowned at the space he’d been and finished chopping the carrot on the cutting board in front of her. If it had been any other person in the castle missing, Helen wouldn’t have worried, but she had literally never seen Virgil without Patton and/or Logan by his side. Even when he’d gone to help Jeff can some fruit, Logan had reportedly hung around to read a book.

Considering that Logan had never exactly been clingy even with Patton, she imagined that either Virgil asked, or Logan thought he should stay with him for his comfort. So, she was surprised that he was apparently hidden away somewhere in the castle where neither of the other kids could find him.

Still thinking about this, she walked over to the entrance to the cellar below the kitchen where they stored most of the vegetables, planning to grab some more carrots. She was confused for a moment when she heard movement from deeper in the pantry. She reached over and touched the panel near the door that controlled the magic lights.

The newly illuminated figure startled as the lights came on, whipping around to stare at her with wide eyes.

“Virgil?” she asked.

“Sorry,” he said immediately, taking a step back.

“It’s fine,” she said immediately, “but what are you doing here?”

He considered her for a long moment, but apparently, she passed some sort of mental test, because he relaxed, at least as much as he’d ever relaxed in her presence. “Where are we?” he asked.

Her brow knit together. “The cellar under the kitchen,” she said, “You don’t know that?”

He shook his head.

“The only entrance is from the kitchen.” Now that she thought about it, she hadn’t seen him go through the kitchen at any point.

“No, it’s not,” Virgil said. “There’s a tunnel.”

“A-a tunnel?” she asked. Actually, taking a closer look at him, he seemed a bit grimy. He had dust all over his front and dirt on his nose. She thought he might even have a couple of cobwebs in his hair.

“Yep,” he said.

“Where’s the tunnel?” she asked.

“It’s right over here,” he said. He took a couple of steps and pointed to the ground. There was an open square hole there that clearly had been made a long time ago but which she had never noticed in all of her time working here.

“How did you find this?” she asked.

“We were playing hide and seek,” Virgil explained. “Logan said I could hide anywhere inside the castle. I hid on top of a dresser upstairs in some unused sitting room. There was a hole in the wall above it, so I climbed into it. Then, I crawled a little bit and it let out into a hidden passage in the walls. I wandered around in it until I found another hole in one of the walls. I thought it was a way out, so I squeezed into it, but it took me to a different hallway where I found an old room. There was a different hole in that room that had probably been covered by something because it was in the floor but whatever it was had rotted away. I crawled though it into a tunnel and came out here.”

She couldn’t help but laugh a bit at his explanation. “Well, it sounds like you went on an adventure,” she said, “but Patton and Logan have been trying to find you. You missed lunch.”

He tilted his head at her. “I know. I was supposed to hide.”

“Yes,” she explained, “but you are supposed to come out at some point if they can’t find you for things like food.”

“Oh,” he said.

“They probably should have explained,” she said. “For now, why don’t we get you something to eat? You must be hungry.”

Virgil frowned. “But I missed lunch.”

“You can still eat even though it’s not in normal hours,” she said. “You could even if you had made it to lunch.”

“Really?” he asked, he looked tragically confused by this offer.

“Of course, sweetie,” she said. “In fact, I insist you get something good to eat right now. How about I made you a grilled ham and cheese sandwich? Maybe some cookies too!”

Virgil titled his head. “You are Patton’s mother,” he stated.

Helen laughed softly. “He gets its all from me,” she said. “We should probably go find him and tell him you’re okay. He was worried.”

“I didn’t mean to worry him,” Virgil said with a frown.

“I know,” Helen said. “It’s okay. He’ll probably laugh when he figures out where you’ve been, and Logan will interrogate you all about the secret passageways.” He seemed happy about the prospect of seeing his friends. “Come on, let’s go upstairs for a bit,” she said.

Chapter 33

Patton’s mom had already made Virgil sit down at the small table in the corner of the kitchen and had handed him a sandwich by the time Patton barreled into the kitchen, Logan coming after him at a more sedate pace.

“Virgil!” he said, sounding surprised and relieved.

“Patton,” Patton’s mom scolded. “No cats in the kitchen.” Patton had brought Marisol in with him and had let her go as soon as he’d seen Virgil. She immediately plodded over to him and hoped onto the table to sniff at his face in greeting.

“But she’s the princess!” Patton argued.

“No,” Logan said.

“Yes, she is!” Patton said.

“The stupid cat is not a princess.”

“Don’t be mean to your little sister, Logan.”

“I regret every life decision that has led me to this point.”

While Logan and Patton were distracted squabbling and Patton’s mom was distracted watching them squabble, Virgil tore off a bit of the ham in his sandwich and offered it to Marisol. Marisol gracefully took it from his grip and ate it.

“So, this is Logan’s new cat I’ve been hearing about?” Patton’s mom asked.

“Indeed,” Logan said, his lips thinned. He and Marisol were mostly amicable when alone with just them and Virgil, but Patton had a habit of cooing over the kitten and needling Logan into being irritated.

“Mmm, yeah,” Patton’s mom said. She glanced over at Virgil right as Marisol basically slammed her face into his chin in a bid to get pets. “Your cat.” She shook her head. “But Princess Kitten or not, I do not want fur in dinner,” she said.

“Sorry,” Patton said, honestly not sounding sorry at all. Virgil was always a bit surprised when the insolent shrug garnered nothing more that a scowl that did not reach Patton’s mom’s eyes. “I thought she could help me find Virgil, but you already found him.” He turned to Virgil. “Where have you been all day?”

“Found a tunnel,” Virgil said. He had to use one hand to hold Marisol back from his sandwich as he took another bite, but then gave her a bite of cheese.

“You found what?” Logan asked.

“There’s a tunnel under the cellar,” Virgil said. “It goes to an old closed up room and also to a set of secret passageways.” It was a bit of a security risk honestly, though clearly no one had used it in years by how dirty it was. He did plan to go back into it and make sure the sprawling tunnels didn’t go to anywhere more dangerous like the royal wing.

“A closed-up room?” Logan said. He could see a bit of curiosity already building in his eyes.

“Yeah,” Virgil said. “Where the door used to be seemed like it had been bricked over.”

“Really? Can you show me.”

“Sure,” Virgil answered.

“Ah, perhaps we should be a bit more cautious about climbing through random tunnels we don’t know the stability of,” Patton’s mom said.

Logan’s frown edged on a pout.

“Talk to your father,” she said. “I’m sure he can get someone who understands these things so you can safely investigate.”

“It was safe enough for Virgil,” Logan pointed out.

“No, Logan.”

He sighed but seemed to concede. That was another strange thing about living here. By all rights Logan didn’t have to obey anyone except the king, but he often listened to those around him, not just the adults but Patton as well. It was interesting though it sometimes made the hierarchy hard to figure out. Virgil did sometimes stress out about the hypothetical situation where he got conflicting orders from two people, and he wouldn’t know which one to obey. So far it hadn’t been a problem luckily. They always seemed to work it out amongst themselves in some give and take social interaction that was a bit too complex for him to understand.

Patton walked over to where Virgil was sitting. “I’m glad your safe,” he said. “We should probably put a time limit on hide and seek in the future, so you know when to come out.”

“Did I win?” Virgil asked. He’d honestly forgotten they’d been playing a game until Patton’s mom had asked how he’d found his way into the cellar.

Patton laughed. “I’d say so, yeah,” he replied. He leaned over to kiss Virgil’s forehead, but drew back immediately with a pinched expression. “You are… very dirty,” he said, rubbing his mouth.

Virgil nodded. “Your mom made me sit on a tablecloth,” he said gesturing to the fabric she’d laid over the chair.

Patton snorted out a laugh. “We’ll get you into the bath when you’re done eating and you can tell us all about your little adventure.”

“I would also like to hear about your discoveries,” Logan said. “Though you are not allowed to sit on the bed until you do not have spider webs in your hair.”

Patton’s eyes widened and he jumped away from Virgil, startling both Virgil and Marisol. The latter hopped from the table onto Virgil’s lap. “Spiders?!”

Virgil tilted his head at him in confusion.

“He isn’t a fan of spiders,” Logan informed him, his voice amused at Patton’s reaction.

Apparently deciding that she was no longer startled, but more confused by the noises Patton had just made, Marisol jumped out of Virgil’s lap to investigate, wrapping her way around Patton’s legs. He bent down to pat her back, though he still looked a bit startled.

“Your cat, huh?” Patton’s mom asked Logan once again. Virgil studied her. She had apparently missed Logan mentioning that he allowed Virgil on the bed. Or perhaps Logan was correct in his insistence that it wasn’t actually that big of a deal here. Virgil would rather not test that assumption, however, so was glad that it had been distracted from by Patton’s outburst.

“Creepy, crawly death dealers,” Patton mumbled into Marisol’s fur, having picked her back up. Virgil made a note to not inform Patton of all of the different types of spiders he’d seen skittering around in the castle walls today. Maybe he’d talk about them with Logan once Patton left. He’d probably be interested. Virgil had seen some he’d never seen before! Logan probably could even help him figure out what their names were. “You’ll protect me, won’t you kitty?” Patton asked Marisol.

She made a little ‘burrrr’ sound in response, which Patton seemed to take a confirmation.

“Aw thank you, baby! Such a good baby.”

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Virgil popped the rest of the sandwich into his mouth. Patton’s mom turned away and grabbed a plate stacked with cookies. She handed it to Logan. “Take these, and please get the health hazards out of my kitchen,” she requested.

Logan took them without complaint. “Come on, Virgil,” he said. “Let’s go get you clean.”

“We’re going to need so much soap,” Patton said.

Virgil looked down at himself. “I can go outside and get most of it off if you get me a bucket of water,” he offered.

“Virgil, it’s below freezing,” Logan said as though that had a baring on what he’d just said. Logan sighed. “No. Bathtub.” Virgil shrugged. “Honestly,” Logan said. He turned with the plate of cookies in his hand, clearly expecting to be followed. “You’re not going to catch your death pouring a bucket of water over yourself in the cold when there are literally over a hundred perfectly good bathtubs in this castle. For goodness sakes.” And well, Virgil wasn’t going to complain.

Chapter 34

Patton, to be completely honest, was not all that interested in the room that Virgil had found. Beyond just the fact that it would definitely have creepy crawly death dealers in it, he really did not understand the intrigue. If it had just been him, he probably would have just let a castle worker deal with it, but it was not just him. Logan was ecstatic with the prospect of investigating a secret in the castle. People who didn’t know him well may not believe it considering he spent most of his time with his nose in a book, but he was an adventurer at heart.

Thomas had been easily swayed into finding someone to help tear down part of the wall into the secret tunnel near the room (so no one would have to crawl through the kitchen cellar like Virgil). It had taken a few days, however, and Logan was practically bouncing off the walls waiting. Virgil, despite having already seen the room before, also seemed excited, though if that was because of his own curiosity or because he was just excited that Logan seemed so exited remained to be seen.

“They are silly, aren’t they,” Patton asked Princess Marisol. He was laying on his stomach on Logan’s bed and Princess Marisol had just put her little paw on his nose.

“Yes, I agree,” he said. “Don’t they know that we’re literally going to be 2 feet away from the normal hallway?”

“It is not silly,” Logan defended himself. “Any number of things could go wrong.” He sounded far too excited about the prospect of something going terribly wrong. “The tunnels could cave in and block off the exit or there could be some unknown pathogen in the air.”

Patton did not ruin his fun by mentioning that Logan’s dad had definitely basically baby proofed the tunnels for them ahead of time. Instead, he just said, “Don’t let Virgil hear you say that sort of thing. It will just stress him out.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” he said, waving off Patton’s concerns as he mulled over two different weird green planty things (potion ingredients, Patton assumed) before setting one aside and sticking the other in his bag.

“So silly,” Patton cooed at the cat. Logan let out a huff but did not choose to say anything about it this time.

Speaking of silly, Virgil came back from Logan’s bathroom then, and Patton tried not to giggle. “Is this right?” Virgil asked, sounding and looking confused. Logan, in his overexcitement about adventure had commissioned Virgil an outfit that actually fit. Said outfit, however, very much made it look more like Virgil was going on a safari instead of a two-foot detour from the normal castle hallway.

“Almost,” Logan said, “Here, let me.” Logan started straightening everything out and flattening the collar, reminding Patton of an overbearing parent on picture day. Virgil accepted the fussing without protest. It was adorable. Well, the outfit was ridiculous, but still, adorable. “There,” Logan said. “I think we’re ready to go now.”

It was about time. Patton was sure people were already waiting for them downstairs. Patton got up and patted Princess Marisol on the head. She looked up at them with interest.

“You can stay here, sweetie,” Patton told here. She seemed to consider it and then hopped down from the bed to go rub up against Virgil.

Patton guessed she was coming. It didn’t matter too much since Logan had given her a magical collar that allowed her to open most doors in the castle and everyone knew she was the royal cat now, so if she decided she wanted to come back to the room and nap, she could. (She was very aware of the power she held.)

She pranced happily by Virgil’s side all the way down the steps to the first floor of the castle. She was such a good kitty.

Well, she did hiss angrily at everyone who came too close to them, but still, a very good kitty.

Patton did lean down and pick her up so they could actually talk to the man waiting for them at the large hole in the wall. Logan went to talk to the castle worker while Virgil half hid behind Patton. He was clearly listening very intently to the conversation however, at least more intently than Patton was. Patton was busy shaking his head fondly.

“Yes, yes, Princess,” he said to the cat. “I know we do not trust the strangers, but I promise this stranger is perfectly safe.”

“How do you know?” Virgil asked.

“His name is Chester and I’ve known him since I was 9.”

This seemed to slightly alleviate Virgil’s suspicion, but Princess Marisol still seemed antsy. Patton really needed to start slowly introducing the both of them to more people.

Logan finished talking with Chester after a few moments and it was time to climb through the hole in the wall. He wished he saw in the tunnel whatever Logan with his excited eyes and bounce to his step obviously saw. Or even that was more comfortable in the dark closed in space as Virgil obviously was. As it was, Patton’s nose scrunched up at the thought off all of the spiders that could be living everywhere in the secret tunnel, but he pushed through.

The entrance to the tunnel had been made only a little bit from the room Virgil had mentioned and Chester had led them through it after only a couple of seconds. As Patton had suspected, the room was already lit up and probably cleaned a little bit by the people who had cut into the wall, not that he was complaining.

Virgil was still clinging a bit to Patton’s shirt, though it seemed to be less out of anxiety at this point and more out of a desire to stick close. He was peering around curiously at the lit-up space. He probably hadn’t seen much of it in the dark when he’d been here before.

Yet, his curiosity was nothing compared to how excited Logan seemed to be. Now Patton may have not been interested in the room itself, but he was entertained by how interested Logan was and was happy to encourage that.

“What do you think this place is?” he asked Logan.

Logan hummed contemplatively, eyes looking around. “Well,” he said. “It’s a bedroom clearly, and old. Considering the location it is in in the castle, the size, the decorations, and it’s likely age, I’d imagine it was a bedroom of a royal family member. This used to be the royal wing three royal lines ago.”

“Bearing that in mind, there are a couple of likely possibilities for the origin of the room as well as the reason it was sealed up, but we will need to investigate more in order to come to an actual conclusion.” He had already placed the bag he’d brought on the ground and was going through it, pulling out things that Patton did not recognize. He also got a piece of paper and sat on the floor to start to sketch.

“What are you doing?” Virgil asked.

“I’m sketching the floorplan of the room,” Logan said. “I will then put a grid on it so we can investigate while being sure that we aren’t missing anything.”

Virgil seemed uninterested in this part of the adventure, instead electing to go poking around by himself. Princess Marisol squirmed out of Patton’s arms to go follow him. Patton swore that he only looked away from those two for 5 seconds, but the next thing he knew he heard metal clicking against metal.

“Oh,” Patton said, eyes wide when he saw what Virgil was fiddling with. “Honey, you probably shouldn’t touch…”

The old but fancy looking chest that had been at the end of the remains of the bed creaked open. Virgil sneezed as a cloud of dust puffed out of it. “Huh,” he said studying the contents. “There’s a skull in here.”

“Oh, I don’t like this adventure anymore,” Patton commented.

Logan was on his feet within moments. “Let me see,” he said eagerly.

“What if it’s cursed?” Patton pointed out.

“Then I’ll just break the curse,” Logan waved him off. “Oh, it’s just a horse skull,” Logan said, sounding disappointed. “And also what seemed to be potion ingredients. Though they seem very fresh considering the state of the room.”

“Maybe we should get someone else to…”

Logan already had both arms inside the chest and was pulling things out of it. “This chest must have some sort of stasis effect to it.”

He started pulling things out to look at them before setting them on the floor with no caution. “Well,” he said, “that answers the question of what this room is.”

“It does?” Patton asked.

“Ah, yes, between the horse skull and the potion ingredients, this is obviously the bedroom of Princess Marianne Elicia. She was the third child of King Simon IV and was quite the fan of horses.”

“…So she kept a horse skull in a stasis chest in her bedroom?” Patton asked.

“Of course,” Logan said. “Back when her family was in power, magic was outlawed and had quite the stigma against it, but she ended up learning magic and become quite proficient.”

“It’s debated what exactly happened when her father found out about her activities. Some sources say that she was executed silently by her father, but others say she managed to escape with the head of the stables but not before putting a curse on the country of Prijaznia. That is until she or one of her bloodline sits on the throne, every royal line will end in madness and blood by the 5th seated monarch before an heir is born.”

“Isn’t that something you should be worried about?” Virgil asked.

Logan shrugged. “It’s just a myth,” he said. “Besides I’m 6th in the line, so there really isn’t any concern.”

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“There are a lot of interesting things in here,” Logan said, still focused on the chest. “Not to mention the books. We’ll have to be careful with those though since they don’t appear to be in stasis.”

Logan pulled the horse skull out and set it on the floor making Patton wince.

“Marisol no!” he said as Princess Marisol immediately went to go sniff at it. He swooped her up in his arms. “How long are we staying in this creepy room?” Patton asked.

“Patton, we just got here,” Logan said.

“We just got here and already found a skull!”

“Yes! Exactly!”

Patton groaned into Princess Marisol’s fur even as she tried wiggle away to go back and investigate the skull. This was going to be a long day.

Chapter 35

Logan was surprised when he woke up alone in bed. He’d grown to anticipate waking to a smaller body unrelentingly clinging to his in the past couple of weeks. Confused he sat up and peered around his bedroom. He wouldn’t have seen Virgil with the way he melted into the darkness if it he hadn’t heard the sound of purring coming from near the window. He could just barely make out a dark blob shifting up and down at the cat kneaded at a different blob sitting mostly hidden behind the thick curtain.

“Virgil?” Logan questioned. “What are you doing?”

“It’s snowing,” was the answer.

“That is not an answer,” Logan grumbled at the ceiling. With a sigh, he pulled himself out of bed. It was a bit chilly in here, he thought. The temperature must have dipped suddenly and intensely enough that the runes keeping the castle at a warm enough temperature hadn’t caught up yet. He pulled one of the blankets off of the top of his bed to wrap around his shoulders as he approached the window. There wasn’t much light outside, the stars and moon covered by clouds, but there were some lanterns lit for the night guard who patrolled the outside. “Oh,” he said in surprise. “It’s really snowing.”

It had been colder but not quite cold enough for snow to stick the day before, so it came as a surprise when he saw snow was piling up quite high to the point where familiar paths outside his window had disappeared.

“I don’t like it,” Virgil informed him.

“Why not?” Logan asked.

“It’s cold,” Virgil answered. It was clear in his tone that in Virgil’s opinion ‘cold’ was a horrible insult to the concept of snow. Logan quirked a half smile and his attention was drawn to the fact that it was quite cold right here close to the window.

Frowning, he pulled at the blanket around his shoulder so he could wrap it and his arm around the lump that was Virgil. He brushed the boy’s hand when he did so and found it was like ice.

“You’re freezing!” Logan said. “How long have you been by the window?”

“I dunno,” he replied.

Logan was already tugging at him. “You need to get back in bed,” he said.

Virgil obeyed the pulling at his arms even as he frowned. “I’ve been colder than this before,” he said.

“That actually doesn’t make me feel better,” Logan replied dryly as he shooed him towards the bed.

He took the thicker blanket that usually stayed folded at the end of the bed and pulled it up over Virgil before climbing into bed beside him.

“There,” Logan said, rubbing Virgil’s arms through the fabric of the sweater he wore to bed. He was glad he wasn’t wearing a t-shirt at least. “The runes for heating the castle should catch up within a few hours, but until then this should do. Assuming we don’t sit by the freezing window for an undetermined amount of time.”

“I don’t like the cold,” Virgil told him.

Logan sighed. “Then why did you sit by the window?”

Virgil shrugged and ducked his head a bit. Logan reached out to grab his hands to help him warm more but was surprised when one of the hands was much warmer than the other. He found his fingers were clutching a crescent shaped stone: the protection charm they’d made. Logan knew that he kept it in his pocket most of the time, but he didn’t normally see him holding it like this. It was warm to the touch, of course, indicating the safety of the room around them.

Logan looked over his face. “Are you…” he said. “Scared of the snow?”

“I don’t like the cold,” he said once again.

“You’re scared of the winter,” Logan concluded. He looked at Virgil who was far too small for his age and seemed surprised at every casual act of kindness. It was clear that his basic needs were far from being met before he came here. Logan had to wonder what winter usually meant for him. His experiences were doubtlessly very different from Logan’s own. “That makes sense,” he acknowledged, “but you don’t need to be scared of it here. The castle is always perfectly warm and safe in the winter and Mr. Deknis and Ms. Heart work hard during the other seasons to make sure we have plenty of food. There is nothing to fear here.”

He did not seem convinced.

“You don’t even have to go outside if you don’t want to,” Logan promised. “The castle is plenty big if you’d like to stay inside all winter long. It was made for the winter even without the magic devices that keep it warm. We have fireplaces and well insulated rooms even if those that ends up failing.” Logan pulled open the hand that had the protection charm just to transfer it to his other hand to warm it. “Though, while no one would force you to go outside, the snow isn’t always bad.”

“Yes it is,” Virgil said, his voice sure.

“Not all the time,” Logan insisted. “Some people love the snow.”

“They’re stupid.”

Logan laughed. “It can be fun for a while with the right equipment if you have someplace to get warm again afterwards. Royal duties slow down during the winter and Patton tends to come up with all sorts of games for both the inside and the outside to pass the time. He’s particularly proficient at snowball fights, at least against me.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Play fighting,” Logan answered. “Like pillow fights, but snow.”

“I’ll stick with the pillows,” he replied.

“And then there’s a hill to sled down on the western side of the castle, and people like to build snowmen along the path.”

“What are snowmen?” Virgil asked.

They’re temporary statues made out of packed snow,” Logan explained. “Typically, they’re made of three different sized balls of snow: the largest being the base and the smallest the ‘head’ though there are some variations. After building them one typically decorates them with different articles of clothing and objects found lying around. It’s usually sticks and rocks for the face and then things like extra hats and scarfs for decoration.” He smiled softly. “When my Pa was alive, we used to steal my Dad’s crown and fanciest robes. Sometimes Pa would steal it right off of Dad’s head and we’d run away. We’d find a secluded area of the castle yards and build the biggest snowman we could as quickly as we could before we got caught. He’d usually end up letting us keep the robes, but we’d have to give the crown back since some of the metals in it would rust when wet.”

“That sounds…” Virgil’s nose twitched. “fun if you take away the touching snow part.”

Logan laughed. “It is fun,” he said. “Even with the touching snow part. Though, I admit that some of the ability for it to be entertaining does come from the fact that we could warm up afterwards with ease. You’ll enjoy Patton’s mother’s constant offering of hot chocolate during the season even if you never go outside, I’m sure.”

“Hot chocolate?” Virgil asked intrigued. His dark eyes shone brightly in the little light coming through the window. It was clear he could guess something about the drink just by the name and enjoyed the implications.

Logan smiled fondly. “It is a hot drink,” he explained. “It’s a warm drink made out of milk and chocolate. I can get you some to try in the morning.”

Virgil nodded, eyes still wide with interest.

“For now, we should sleep though,” Logan said. “Are you warm enough? I can get more blankets.”

“I’m fine,” he said.

“Good,” Logan said, reaching up and adjusting the blanket over them once more, tucking it around Virgil a little bit for good measure. “Goodnight Virgil,” he said.

“Goodnight,” he replied softly. Logan reached under the blankets to grab the hand that was still slightly chilly from the window between his own. Virgil’s eyes slipped closed after a moment as he nuzzle his face into the pillow. At some point they both drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 36

Thomas had already been well aware that winter was on the way, but he and the rest of the castle occupants had been surprised at how intensely and suddenly it had come on. Most things were ready for the winter, but not all of them had been initiated. The fireplaces that took some pressure off the castle heating runes were cleaned out and ready, but they hadn’t been started yet. The stables for different animals on the grounds had been checked over and staff assignments had been made, but most were still in far out fields. Staff that went home for the winter months had been dismissed, but there were a few stragglers that would have to be helped home before things got worse.

He’d gone out to the main stable to talk to the three workers that were the heads of different areas of animal husbandry to make sure a plan to get everything to where it needed to be soon was in place. It took a while to figure out considering that they’d expected a little more time before the first major snowfall. Thomas also asked them to make sure all of the workers’ homes were in good enough condition for the weather. Ranch hands typically had homes on castle grounds but not in the castle themselves since they needed to be close to the animals. Thomas knew at least half a dozen of those who spent most of their times out in the fields were the type to forgot to maintain their homes because they preferred camping amongst the animals in the summer months and then would be in for a bad time when snow began to fall.

There should be enough extra rooms in the castle if they needed a place to stay until repairs could be done.

Those conversations took a good couple of hours, before Thomas was satisfied. Before trudging back to the castle through the still falling snow, he made a point to stop at one specific horse stall in the main stable. The horse turned his head to see Thomas when he stopped in front of his stall and puffed out a rather disaffected snort before sticking his head over the gate so Thomas could pat his nose. “Hello, Mr. Apples,” Thomas said.

The horse seemed to conclude he’d tolerated Thomas’s petting enough and ducked his head to nudge at his torso. Thomas rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes,” he said. “I brought you an apple. Some things never change.” He reached into his pocket to grab the red apple he’d brought the white Arabian. “At least you don’t bite me anymore.” He paused, apple slice in hand and eyed the horse’s nose suspiciously. “Do not bite me,” he said even though he hadn’t felt the animal’s teeth in a decade. It would be just like Mr. Apples to wait until his guard was down.

After a bit of scrutiny, he offered an apple slice. It was snatched out of his hand and there was a loud crunch as it was bit into.

“It’s snowing out,” he told the horse. The horse seemed to roll his eyes at the statement of the obvious. “I’ll remind again that if you run out in a snowstorm, I’m not running after you, so you’d be out of luck.”

Mr. Apples snorted.

“You’re old now. You’d probably not survive long enough for people to find you. Besides, you blend in with that white fur of yours. They’d probably walk right past you a few times.”

He went back to nosing for treats as soon as he finished his first and Thomas sighed, pulling out another apple slice. “What are they not feeding you enough?” The gusto with which the horse snatched the apple slice was a very clear answer. “Well, we both know that’s not true.” Thomas fed the horse a third slice of apple when he was done with his second. “I have to get back to the castle now. Don’t be a devil horse.”

Mr. Apples threw his head a bit, splattering apple smelling foamy spittle all over Thomas’s front.

“Understood. Have a nice afternoon.”

He left Mr. Apples in his stall then, knowing he’d be well cared for no matter how ill-tempered he could be at times. He’d been a king’s horse once, after all, no matter that said king had been dead for more than a decade now.

Winters were hard.

Winters were the times when things always slowed down at the castle, where royal duties were often thin. There were a lot of memories in winter.

The trip back to the castle was not particularly long, but it was also not particularly pleasant. The snow had not been cleared away considering it was still snowing which meant his feet and legs were wet and cold by the time he made it to the nearest castle door.

He wasn’t sure if, when he entered, the castle heating runes had started to work in earnest or if he’d just been so cold that any measure of warmth was appreciated, but he was relieved to be out of the snow either way.

He decided to check up on the progress of the castle staff lighting the fireplaces. With any luck, they’d be lit already, and he could warm up even more. That in mind, he headed towards the main foyer where the largest fireplace in the castle sat to take off the chill brought in by the large front doors.

The main foyer was bustling with activity when he snuck in along the sides, giving the guards stationed around nods as he passed. The main fire in the room was burning brightly, though only one of the two smaller ones near the side exits from the room was lit. The other one was still being set up with safety mechanisms. It was good progress and assuming other areas of the castle were being set up as efficiently, he assumed they’d all be set up by nightfall.

He’d need to go check around to be sure, but for now, he walked up to the main fireplace to warm his hands.

He’d gotten into the habit when he was younger to every so often glance upwards. There had been a certain stable boy who had a propensity for climbing trees. These days, he usually found nothing when he did so, often not even consciously noticing that he’d turned his gaze momentarily skywards. Yet, today, he was startled out of his own idleness by dark brown eyes looking back at him from a small ledge in the shadows high above him.

He froze as he met the young boy’s gaze. Virgil seemed as surprised to be caught as Thomas was to have caught him.

Slowly Thomas raised one hand and waved to the boy. He slunk back into the shadows at the acknowledgment. If Thomas peered hard enough, he could see a shadow stretch up towards the third-floor balcony in the darkness and disappear over the railing.

Interesting boy.

Thomas found himself smiling despite the oddity. They still had not found out much about Virgil. He would speak to Jeffers about many things apparently, but often could not be redirected to invasive topics and he was still a bit skittish around Helen. He hadn’t willingly existed in a room with Thomas. Thomas hoped that changed at some point. There was something about him that made Thomas like him.

Chapter 37

Virgil had not spent a lot of time out of Logan’s room. What little time he had spent outside of it was either with Patton and/or Logan or tucked away in secret corridors he found in the walls where no one would stumble upon him. Yet, here he was willingly in a, well, not public by any means place, but one that was still more exposed than he was used to being in. Somehow, he was managing to not care at all.

It was helped by the fact that both Logan and Patton had been in the room at the start, but they had gone off to go… somewhere. Food sounded like it might have been the reason.

He liked food, and usually he would have been all for going to get some, but between them promising to bring him back some and the fact that he was never going to move ever again, he’d decided to stay.

Princess Marisol seemed to be the only other rational being in the whole castle because she had also not moved since discovering the contents of this room. She was currently laying on his chest purring happily.

The fireplace was a wonderful invention. Now, Virgil had, of course, warmed up by a fire before when it was cold, but this was much different. There was a grate that blocked off the fire a bit keeping it from burning the person in front of it and there was a plush rug right by it, perfect for laying down on. Someone had known what they were doing when designing this room.

He didn’t even care that the king had access to this sitting room as well as Logan.

…

Okay, so he did care a little bit, but he was ignoring that. He was probably busy this time of day anyway, right?

…

He really didn’t want to run into him after being caught watching the castle workers set up the bigger fireplaces. Kings probably didn’t like people sneaking around watching things from the shadows even when they didn’t know that the person sneaking around was literally sent to kill them.

Princess Marisol must have had a sixth sense for his anxieties (or he’d just started breathing faster and disturbed her) because she stirred a bit.

#proofread stories #not writing

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gumnut-logic · 4 years ago

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Fabio Blue Nose

Aaaargh, this was supposed to be a short, but it has demanded to be longer and I’ve run out of time. I did not want another WIP!

But anyway, here be Fabio Blue Nose, or a start of some kind at least. I hope you enjoy this random fluff so far.

Many thanks to @tsarinatorment and @janetm74 for their support.

It should also be noted that no sea shanties were harmed in the creation of this fic. Nor are their any sea shanties in it, despite there being an urge to add one.

Aaaargh, it is 12.45am. I gotta go sleep, damnit.

-o-o-o-

The first time was an accident.

None of the brothers owned up to it but chances were it was Gordon, no matter how many times he swore complete innocence.

Though, come to think of it, Scott was rather more compliant than expected, so Virgil threw a little unspoken suspicion his way as well.

But anyway, it happened and it was a good thing.

There was always press at rescues that they could reach. Scott was fully aware of the importance of the media, particularly where communication and, to a certain extent, promotions were concerned. But when they got in the way of a rescue, the commander was well known to be intolerant.

This particular time, however, the press was managed by the GDF who were also onsite due to the scale of the disaster and possible sabotage, so International Rescue didn’t have to worry about them so much while they dug fifty miners out of a kilometre deep hole.

All but John were on the rescue. All but John were dirty, sweaty and ever so tired. There had been a chunk of rock that had needed demolition charges to get through, causing enough headache that even Virgil had been heard to spit profanity over comms when one of the charges misfired and nearly took his head off with shrapnel in the tunnel.

Eleven of the fifty men didn’t make it and there was some body recovery after the far too many trips it took to get them all back to the surface. In short, it had been an ugly, hard day. All the Tracys just wanted to go home and disappear into whatever distraction worked best for them.

Scott had to liaise with the GDF regarding red tape and reporting circumstances in the mine...that they should probably go down and see for themselves instead of relying on a civilian rescue organisation to do their dirty work for them. But whatever the reason, Virgil, Gordon and Alan were left to pack up and wait while all the dots and crosses were applied to appropriate Ts and Is.

It took longer than expected.

Virgil, sporting an aching shoulder, was reduced to pacing the length of Two’s open hatch. He should just take his brothers home and leave Scott to tackle the GDF.

But Scott was just as tired as they were and he had only just returned from another rescue when this callout came in. His big brother was exhausted and Virgil feared that if he left him behind they might end up a few GDF personnel short before the sun went down.

And the press were watching.

It was probably at this point the photo was taken.

It was iconic, even Virgil had to admit it. Emotive and made a statement about who they were and what they did.

The shot was from a forty-five degree angle, using a zoom lens that caught every detail of Two’s open module. Virgil stood in the middle of the ramp, paused mid-pace and staring off at something, probably Scott, in the distance. The shadow of Two in the evening light had his head in shadow, adding a heroic seriousness to his expression.

That alone was dramatic, but behind him from the camera angle, sitting on the top of the ramp to one side of the open hatch were Gordon and Alan.

Gordon had his arm around his little brother as they both stared in the same direction as Virgil. All three brothers were grimy and exhausted, Alan’s head was resting on Gordon’s shoulder.

It must have been an extraordinary lens to capture the detail because the media were fenced off a considerable distance away, but there was enough clarity to see one tear track in the dust on Alan’s face.

Their littlest brother claimed he had scratched his cheek, but they all knew better.

So, yes, this photo was taken and thrown across the planet as an illustration of three heroes of International Rescue.

There were rave reviews. Whole swaths of text praising everything their organisation did, what had been achieved that day and what had been achieved in the past. Inevitably, the history of International Rescue did the rounds again, their father’s legacy and all that. An unfortunate reminder of both the parents they had lost in the process. Being proud didn’t negate the pain that came along with it.

But due to the quirkiness of human attention, none of the above was the source of the impact the photo finally had.

It wasn’t Thunderbird Two or any of the three brothers photographed that captured most of the public’s attention.

It was a teddy bear.

Virgil kept a number of cuddly toys on Two. Some he had knitted himself, or purchased, a few were donated, but all were kept and given to children and occasionally adults, who were terrified during a rescue or evacuation and found themselves secured in Two’s module.

Perhaps the bear had fallen out of its storage, perhaps one of the brothers had shoved it aside. Whatever had happened, in the iconic photograph of three hardworking Tracy brothers, right at the back, inside the module sat a dark grey teddy bear with a blue nose and shiny eyes that caught the setting sun.

Staring right at the camera.

And the world went nuts for this bear.

It took less than a day for the fame of the teddy bear to become enough to alert Thunderbird Five and, in turn, roust Virgil out of bed - it’s lunchtime, Virgil, time enough to wake up.

Virgil’s answer to that was clear, precise and rated for adults only.

John triggered the coffee maker in the kitchen to start working its magic before his brother busted up something other than the English language.

Eventually, Virgil made it down to Two and dug out the bear responsible.

It was still sitting on top of the storage locker, which added kudos to Virgil’s flying skill.

He was going to shove it back into the locker when John asked him not to. Apparently, the bear had a following on social media.

So, Virgil picked it up and took it back up to the comms room. He placed it beside him at their father’s desk and pulled up a search screen and typed in ‘bear’ and ‘International Rescue’. He could, of course, ask John to forward him whatever his brother had obviously found, but he didn’t.

The search results that sprung up made it very clear that the world was most definitely obsessed with that bear.

There were zoomed in pictures of the inside of the module – a fact that had Virgil a little worried regarding security until he realised that anything that could possibly be compromised was just that little bit blurred. No doubt that was Eos at work. Probably snared the original photo before it could perpetuate.

But even then it was obvious that the posters had no interest in the technology. Several photos had the bear circled in red.

Various comments attempted to give reasons as to why the bear was there. The explanations were rather fantastical in the majority. A few were actually disturbing and linked Alan’s tear track to the bear – Virgil threw that bit of information at Thunderbird Five and that line of thought suddenly disappeared from the results. Some suggested the photograph was posed, a few mentioned that Thunderbird Two did carry such things and that was followed by a wave of genuine thanks and admiration for what they did…and then completely ignored when more fascinating ideas were presented.

Virgil was quite frankly amazed at what people could concoct from a photograph of a bear.

Said bear sat and stared at him the entire time. Its nose was very blue.

But ultimately the outcome that had occurred somewhere between all four brothers making it home last night and the time John dragged Virgil out of bed, Fabio Blue Nose had become a mascot for International Rescue.

Yes, ‘Fabio’.

Some inspired person had mentioned ‘F.A.B.’ as IR’s callsign and it went downhill from there.

Fabio stared at Virgil almost accusingly. His curly fur was a shade darker than Scott’s baldric and his eyes as golden as Gordon’s. His blue nose shone in the sunlight.

They had a teddy bear with a fan base, fan art and a dash of fan fiction.

Virgil caught his own name in one of them and shut it down so fast the browser crashed.

It didn’t help that an hour later Gordon found the same story and promptly paraded it around the villa for all to see and hear whether they wanted to or not. Apparently, because Virgil was the pilot of Thunderbird Two, Fabio was his crewmate.

A very heroic crewmate at that.

Could a teddy bear really rappel down a grapple like that?

He shook his head and threw a lounge cushion at his brother’s head. He really didn’t need to know.

But in any case, they now had a mascot that wasn’t Alan.

Gordon was hit in the head again for that assessment.

So, Fabio found his way to being sat on Two’s dash and accompanying them out on rescues.

The second photo was more than they had ever expected.

-o-o-o-

TBC?

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds fanfiction #thunderbirds #Virgil Tracy #fabio blue nose #Gordon Tracy #I don't know what the hell I was thinking

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inevitably-johnlocked · 4 years ago

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Hi Steph!

I’m sorry it’s my first time sending you an ask, so I dunno which button I clicked man. Sorry about that.

Ok, so what I wanted to request! I love your blog. You’re really kind and genuine, and I’ve found some great fics to light up my day from here. But sometimes, the posts are suuupppeeerr long, and I may not be looking for this info exactly? Like it clogs up a lot of my dash. So I wanted to request if you could use a “read more” feature after a brief, at least for the fic rec posts.

I hope I didn’t offend or anything. Thank u for all the kindness you put into the world each day. Have a good day fren!

Hey Nonny!

Ahh, okay, you’re not going to like what I am going to say, but you are very respectful and were smart and sandwiched your issue in compliments, so Ahhhh, I feel conflicted now.

With all due respect Nonny, this is my blog and I get more engagement on my lists if people can see the full list; many people prefer it that way, and honestly I get crapped on either way, so I’ve made the executive decision to not cut my posts. The only time I do is on “second” reblog on super long LONG lists so that I have a “cut” and “uncut” version of the post, but even those I’ve been reducing.

I’ve tried both ways, and full posts get better notice. All I want to do is share my love of fics and content with y’all, and the best way to do that is to just have it all there so people know what they’re getting.

Plus, am I to just “readmore” every single reply on my posts? A lot of the reason my blog has stayed as long as it has is because I’ve always been a very interactive blog. People LIKE seeing their replies added to a comment thread on my post, and it helps smaller blogs get noticed. It’s not much on the surface, but I’ve had smaller blogs come to me DELIGHTED that their name is now attached to one of my posts that are going through a “popular reblog cycle” (that is, a post that is being interacted with for a good few days before I actually finally add it to the month-reblog queue). It helps create a sense of community, I feel, and that’s one of the things I am very honoured to be: a starting place for community.

And this is just in a general sense and NOT directed at you, more at the people who shit on me in the notes of my long posts, but I don’t GET people getting upset about my TEXT BASED POST WITH NO IMAGES IN IT, but not on any of the image or playlist posts I reblog, which take FOREVER to load on mobile. I GENUINELY don’t get it. I don’t even use the app on my phone, I’m logged into the browser on my phone, because the app is garbage.

The problem is the app, in my opinion. That’s the gist of it. It loads slow, it scrolls terribly, and the UI is annoying, but instead app users blame the bloggers and not the fact that Tumblr staff ignore every suggestion we make. And because more of the newer people use their mobiles these days, us old-time Tumblr users are expected to microblog like the shitty sites that are Twitter or Facebook. Tumblr is a blogging platform, like LiveJournal, laid out all nicely and clean and honestly, (the royal you) you’re getting exactly what you signed up for: long posts, opinions, and interaction. If one wants shitty layouts, shitty comment threads you can’t follow and reactionaries, go to Twitter. Call me a boomer, whatever, I just find Tumblr so much more appealing now more than ever.

Sorry, I’ve needed to get this off my chest for awhile now. I don’t know. Maybe I’m being pedantic. I don’t care, really. My thoughts on this: if (the royal) you don’t like the content, or find stuff annoying, don’t follow me.

Because you know what a lot of my longest posts are? Helpline numbers at the bottom of posts. Useful links. And just stuff that make people happy. People in despair are not going to click on a read more of a post. People who want links to resources aren’t going to click on a read more. People who just want happiness after a stressful day are literally just scrolling to smile, and they ain’t gonna click a read more.

YES, there are reasons read mores are good, absolutely. I just PERSONALLY don’t like them because I like engagement. I don’t get much of it anymore on my posts, EXCEPT the fic rec posts, and THOSE work better as a full view.

BUT NONNY PLEASE KNOW I AM NOT UPSET AT ALL WITH YOU, and you’ve given me a great opportunity to discuss this thing that I’ve put off for awhile because the other people were less-than-kind, and it only made me NOT address it out of simple spite because I’m nothing if not a passive aggressive old lady.

So, here are a few ideas you can implement:

If you like my posts but not the longest ones, I always tag them “long post”. Tumblr finally has its own tag blocking feature, so just block “long post”. All of my very long lists will be blocked, and you can decide if you want to click on them based on what the additional tags are. I try my best to tag all my lists appropriately.

Similarly, you can “tag block” my username, and only click on the posts you like the tags for.

DON’T TAKE THIS THE WRONG WAY, PLEASE, this isn’t a “so there!” comment, I promise!!: You can unfollow me if you’re only following me for the fic lists, and instead follow me on Twitter at @inevitablyjohn1, which is used only to promote my new lists and art. Every Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday I post up the Wednesday Reblog, Five Fics Friday, Fic Rec Roundup, and Fic Rec Sunday, with a link to each post :) Then you’ll get all the lovely full lists I post 4 times a week. OF COURSE, this is the option I don’t want to happen, because I love all my lovelies and you’ll miss out on the random fics, insightful asks, and suggestions I get throughout the week, BUT I want you to enjoy your time on Tumblr, and if my blog is causing you stress, it’s the last thing I want to happen. I love all of y’all too much to see that!

THAT ALL SAID, Nonny, I’m really sorry to disappoint you, and I hope you understand my POV on this. I just don’t see any benefit on my part, for MY blog, which I run for MY happiness which has the side effect of making other people happy. I also hope you will still stick around regardless, but I care about your well being and I understand if you have to leave.

AND everyone, please don’t be harsh on this Nonny! They asked a question respectfully and deserve our respect in kind.

I truly wish you the loveliest of days, Nonny, and have a great week! <3

#steph replies #my blog #blog things #tumblr things #ironically:#long post #Anonymous

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notarelationship · 4 years ago

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Shang-A-Lang

A Klaine Drabble-ish for the July 2021 @todaydreambelievers Tan Hands and Tan Lines Summer Fic Challenge

Link to all the tumblr entries

Day 2: Judicious

Rated: G

Word count: 488

Warnings: None

I wrote this last night but it was literal gibberish. I hope it’s at least readable now.

When it turns out that the hiring process isn’t all that rigorous - the complex is just looking for nominally responsible warm bodies to cover all the positions, Kurt, Mercedes and Tina start their new jobs two days later.

“Kurt it is a state regulation,” Tina pleads with him. “If you’re going to work in food service you need to cover your head so hair doesn’t get in peoples’ food.”

“I am absolutely not wearing a hair net, unless it’s for a role in Hairspray. I’ll quit first.” Kurt touches the perfectly set swoop on top of his head, a determined look on his face. He works hard on his hair. Mercedes knows better than to fight with him about this, but for some reason Tina is still arguing about it. At least they don’t have uniforms. “Besides, Steve said I can wear this -” he sets his favorite newsboy style cap on his head. “He said I can wear any hat I want as long as I check with him first.” Kurt can work with hats, but he has to be judicious in selecting hats that are appropriate for the athletic complex. He needs to look smashing in it, of course, and it needs to be able to stand up to the rigors of working food service and cleaning out locker rooms without getting ruined. He thinks Tina is just jealous that he looks so good in hats, and she opens her mouth to object again, but thankfully someone walks up to the snack counter and interrupts.

“Hey little brother, cool hat.” It’s Finn.

“What are you doing here Finn? Don’t you have to work?” Kurt could have sworn he heard Finn leave with Burt to go to the garage this morning. He normally doesn’t mind Finn being around, but he is going to a readjustment period to get used to having him around all the time again.

“Yeah I do. I mean, some days, but not today. Thought I would check this place out.” Kurt waited for him to go on. “I’m meeting Sam here to do some weightlifting.”

Kurt doesn’t turn to look at Mercedes, but out of the corner of his eye he can see her lift her head to hear what Finn has to say. Mercedes and Sam broke up before graduation, and she swears she isn’t interested in rekindling anything, but Kurt also knows they hung out together only a few days after she got back to Lima, so honestly anything is possible.

“Well when you are done sweating or lifting or whatever it is you are doing here, you should bring Sam by. I haven’t seen him since last fall.” Finn says he will, then ambles off to wherever he’s going. Kurt turns to look at Mercedes, who is filling the candy display with bags of Swedish Fish.

“Not a word about that, Kurt Hummel,” she directs, so he backs off. For now.

#shang-a-lang #tan hands and tan lines #judicious #so many tags #i am so rusty at this #yikes #shang a lang #no dashes apparently

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army-of-mai-lovers · 4 years ago

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ATLA Fic Recs part 2!

part 1 (consider this link a re-rec of everything I recced in part 1, bc those fics are still amazing and at this point many of them that weren’t complete are finished now which is cool!)

So I’m structuring this fic recs list a little differently than I did the first one. First one was just “fics I like” with no regard to how popular the fics were and a little bit of thought as to balancing gen fics with ship fics and trying to have a diversity of ships listed. This time, I am paying attention to how popular the fics are, and while I’m probably still going to rec popular fics/fic authors, I’m hoping to also expose people to some new authors with this list (as well as exposing people to work from their favorite authors that they may not have read)! Expanding your horizons is a really good thing, it’s how I’ve found basically every fic I love, and I hope y’all will love each of the fics I’m reccing as much as I do! In no particular order:

1. her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you by @aangsblush I said that I was going to rec this a couple days ago and here I am doing it because HOW ON EARTH IS THIS FIC AS BRILLIANT AS IT IS AND NOT LIGHTING THE FANDOM ON FIRE RIGHT NOW. I’ve genuinely never read a fic like this before. Never in my life. It’s a collection of vignettes, mostly dealing with Hakoda and Sokka’s various experiences of grief with Kya and Yue (and there’s a little bit of cute bakoda and sukka sprinkled in there as well). Like I said, the chapters were vignettes, some of them as short as two or three sentences, and yet somehow I was crying after every single chapter???? The author uses language so sparingly and so impactfully and I truly cannot get over how brilliant this is like bruh. who gave you the right. Who. Who. Tbh I could make a whole post about this fic (and I have!) but instead, I’m going to direct you to the fic, bc really, it speaks for itself.

2. laughter lines by @bi-suki To be completely real, I tend not to read sad fics, or seek out sad media in general, but I read this fic and I’m so glad I did. It’s a modern au about Sokka and his family moving to Anchorage, separating him from his childhood best friend, Yue. Make sure you read the tags before you read this fic, please. It’s really sad. I started tearing up while writing out just that quick summary. Keep a box of tissues handy. I’ve read a lot of this author’s fics and they all have a habit of sticking in my head long after I’ve read them, but this one really packs a punch. Sokka’s grief and his friendship with Yue is written in such an intimate and beautiful way, and yes, I literally am crying right now thinking about it. I do think it’s hard to pull off writing yukka, especially in a modern au, while giving appropriate depth to both Sokka and Yue, but this fic really managed it so well. Even though this fic made me sad, I don’t regret reading it one bit.

3. call it fate by @bluberry-spicehead y’all are really converting me into a maiko shipper and honestly I’m so here for it. Mai’s one of my favorite characters in ATLA, and the care that the fic takes in portraying her perspective as well as her relationships with Zuko, Azula, and Ty Lee (despite the fact that Zuko isn’t even there when the fic takes place)--I mean, it’s honestly just incredible work. I’ve seen a lot of joke-y posts about “oh what if x happened with Aunt Wu instead of what happened in canon?” but never with Maiko and never quite the way this fic describes it. It’s really original and really carefully done, with all the complexity and nuance of their relationship infused into the details of the fic. And the way that Mai is written is both in character for her and expands on existing canon in a way that I really believe works for her. The writing is so immediate and really roots you in the world and in Mai’s head and I love it I love it I love it!

4. i am your savior, your last serving daughter by @gays4korra *sokka voice* SUKI! Bruh. BRUH. The amount that I love both Suki and Kyoshi cannot be overstated, they’re both such fascinating and complex characters, and yet some people (*cough* the fandom *cough*) don’t want to see them in their full and complete brilliance. Enter this fic, which shows Suki and Kyoshi meeting, like someone saw my wildest dreams and was like “hey that’s a cool fic idea!” The TEARS I cried reading this fic (yes, I am aware that this is the fourth time I’ve mentioned crying over a fic in just this one post, these fic authors are incredibly talented and I have three planets in Cancer, fight me) Suki and Kyoshi, icons themselves, conversing across time???? iconic. simply iconic. And then the fact that Sokka orchestrated the whole thing because he wanted to make Suki happy? I love them, your honor. And Kyoshi being happy that Suki looks up to her because really Kyoshi’s a fluffy dork with self-esteem issues.... I’m crying again it’s so beautiful I’ve looked at it for five hours now. Gosh. read this fic.

5. Balance My Heart in The Palm of Your Hands by @spookysukki ok while looking for this person’s tumblr I found out that this was their first work in the fandom and can I just say pal you POPPED OFF with this one fic and I hope that you write more because this was. This was awesome. Mailee is def in my top 5 (possibly top 2) ATLA ships but unfortunately I have a hard time finding content for it. Fortunately, every time I do find content for it it’s incredibly cute and this was absolutely no exception. It’s also the rare Mai & Sokka friendship fic which is not something I knew I needed in my life but is a concept that I am completely obsessed with having read this. Basically, Mai’s jealous of Sokka because Ty Lee keeps talking about Sokka being attractive, and shenanigans ensue. And you know me, I love shenanigans. This is also a Mai perspective fic which is awesome because as I said earlier, I love love LOVE Mai, and she’s so sweet and broody in this lsfjskdfjk I love her so much what an icon.

5. earth system history by @pianjeong I have read this fic. So many times. I could honestly probably recite it from memory (jfdksjflsd ok that’s not true but at this rate I probably will be able to soon). It is an absolutely stunning fic. It’s like all my favorite parts of college condensed into one story (running around buildings you probably shouldn’t be in in the middle of the night with the person you have a crush on, coming out to your professor who is also gay, all iconic college moods). I’m simply obsessed with the way each character is written, and it’s so clear that the author knows what she’s talking about when it comes to geology, and that in general this fic was written with a lot of love for the characters of ATLA and also for rocks. It’s that love that keeps me coming back to this one. Cannot recommend it enough.

6. the end is barely beginning by @katarahairloopies gosh I don’t even know where to start with this one other than I cannot believe that it almost wasn’t posted and I’m so glad that it was because you truly can never have enough father/son moments between Hakoda and Sokka and I care them. I care them so much. Also can I just say Hakoda not remembering all of Sokka and Katara’s friends’ names and having to really think about it is such a dad mood. I can’t remember a single time in my life where my dad could remember all of my friends’ names (and there were points in my life where he would have only had to remember one name and yet. and yet.) I really love ATLA fics that are character studies because they tend to really retain the complexity of the characters as they’re depicted in the show (or make them more complex) and this one is no exception. There were so many lines of this that were just really poignant and beautiful. Again, cannot recommend it enough.

#atla fic recs #gosh so many of these are hakoda focused bless #hakoda #sokka #yue #suki #yukka #sukka #mai #maiko #kyoshi #zukka #mailee #ty lee #caps tw

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the-wild-wolves-around-you · 4 years ago

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Carry Me Home (A Din Djarin/Reader Fic)

Summary: Din and Reader find themselves on a jungle planet hunting a bounty, but nothing goes as planned, and secrets are shared.

***Based off this line from a previous fic in this series: "Then the mysterious bounty hunter told you his name one day when you were trying to hold his femoral artery together with nothing but bacta gel and hope."

No spoilers. Set in Season 1 between Episode 6 (The Prisoner) & Episode 7 (The Reckoning)

Pairings: Din Djarin/Reader; Din Djarin/You

Rating: M(ature)

Warnings: Blood, gore, & violence. Brief mentions of past slavery.

A/N: In true Star Wars fashion, I'm just writing shit out of order lol. But the idea for this fic kept bugging me, so i just had to get it out on the page.

You don't need to read the previous fics to understand this one, though (since the others are set in s2.) I have some more ideas for out of order stories, too, so I'll most likely be continuing this series.But let me know if you'd be interested in a fic from Din's POV! I think that could be fun, but if y'all are digging Reader POV, I'll stick to that.

And in case anyone cares, the title is taken from the lyrics of Arcade by Duncan Lawrence, which I was listening to on repeat as I wrote this.

As always, I’ve posted this piece on Ao3, but I’ll paste the text below.

Ao3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28763814

I’ll also include the links to the other two fics here:

The Sea Like Glass Ch 1: Here

The Sea Like Glass Ch 2 (includes smut): Here

“Dank farrik!” you hissed as the wire in front of you sparked and sent a jolt of electricity through your already singed fingers. Not for the first time, you wished you could wear your gloves, but some of the pieces that needed repairing were too small to feel through the bulky material, so you could do nothing more than sacrifice your flesh for the cause.

Didn’t make it hurt less, though. You sucked the smarting tips into your mouth, glaring at the trashed circuit board in front of you, but the ruined hardware only crackled in response.

If you were back in Hanger 3-5 in Mos Eisley, you would have probably trashed the whole part and dug through Peli’s stock for a replacement, or gone down to the market and haggled for something newer, but you weren’t on Tatooine. You were smack dab in the middle of a jungle planetoid you couldn’t remember the name of, and it was up to you to get the Razor Crest running again on what you had available.

Which, admittedly, wasn’t a lot.

You sighed as you sat back on your haunches, using the back of your wrist to swipe at the sweat trailing down your temple. The pre-Empire ship towered over you as you dug into her innards, having pried off one of the semi-melted lower side panels to access the appropriate circuits. Your thin tank top was already drenched, and the hair sticking to the back of your neck kept giving you phantom itches. You wanted nothing more than to tie it up completely, but you always felt naked when your nape was exposed. You weren’t necessarily ashamed of the scar there, or the past connected to it, since it wasn’t your fault you were born into shackles, but… still. It was a… personal story to tell, and you weren’t sure you were ready to share it with your new boss.

Well, “new” was relative. You’d been employed on the Razor Crest for several months now, but you didn’t know much more about the Mandalorian than you did when you’d first set foot onto his ship. You knew he was a bounty hunter, from a race of legendary warriors. You knew he had a partially sordid, and dangerous, past if your encounter with Ran and his crew of mercenaries was any indication. You knew the green baby was his ward, or foundling as he called it, and Mando was tasked with returning the little guy to his people. And you knew his Creed forbid him from removing his helmet.

That was about it. The Mandalorian didn’t talk much, but it didn’t particularly bother you. You’d always been a quieter person, and after years of Peli’s constant chattering, you were kind of relieved for the silence.

Most of the time, anyway.

“How’s it looking?”

You gasped in alarm, jolting yourself off balance and falling back onto your ass in the dirt.

“Maker, Mando,” you panted as you craned your neck back to stare up at the bounty hunter. “What have I told you about sneaking up on me when I’m working on electrics?”

The impervious mask of the Mandalorian stared down at you silently, blotting out the sweltering sun and providing you a modicum of relief. A moment passed, then two, and you shifted uneasily under his unblinking gaze.

“I thought you heard me approach,” he said finally, his modulated voice flat and unaffected, but he didn’t move from where he was looming over you.

“Well, I didn’t,” you grumbled as you flopped your head forward and popped your neck, stretching your legs out in the dirt.

The tight leggings you wore ended not too far past your knees, so your shins were streaked with the red soil of this planetoid. The dirt didn’t bother you, but the heat sure did. It was different than Tatooine’s dry desert. This heat was oppressive, stifling, almost cloying, and every time you took a deep breath, a small part of your brain panicked, images of drowning flashing through your mind even though you knew it was irrational. You were just grateful your clothes didn’t look a fraction as hot as the Mandalorian’s all black get-up and what had to be twenty-five kilos of armor.

“So,” the bounty hunter said after a few more moments of silence, interrupted only by the call of exotic birds in the canopy, “how are things looking?”

“Honestly?” you sighed as you pushed yourself off the ground, dusting the red dirt off your hands but not even bothering with your pants. “Not good. The bounty’s guns must have grazed us when we were still outside orbit, and entering the atmosphere certainly didn’t help matters. Some of the side paneling has been melted beyond repair, and a lot of the wiring is fried, too.”

“Can you get it flying?” Mando asked, crossing his arms over his chest and making his silhouette all the more imposing. The sun glinted off his silver beskar, and you squinted in the glare.

“Maybe.” You pursed your lips and averted your gaze, turning back to stare at the charred panels and sparking wires. Sweat trickled down your neck, and you reached back to cup your nape, feeling the bounty hunter’s eyes on you.

“Didn’t know I was paying you for maybes.”

“You’re not paying me at all if you can’t even catch that quarry,” you snorted before your brain could catch up to your mouth.

You froze when the words finally registered, nails digging into the back of your neck. Stupid. Your mouth always did get the better of you. You used to mouth-off to your former owner until he backhanded you into silence, and now you’re starting shit with a bounty hunter you’d seen kill half a dozen men in just as many seconds.

Stupid.

You waited for Mando to say something, staring at the Razor Crest without even seeing it, and even if you didn’t really believe he’d hurt you for a simple off-handed comment, your body didn’t get the message. Muscle memory was a hard thing to forget, and every fiber in you braced for the blow.

The birds chittered in the towering blue-green canopy above your head as sweat poured from every single one of your pores, and you were just about to come out of your skin when the Mandalorian finally spoke.

“Well, to catch the quarry, I need my ship to fly,” he said, and when you chanced a glance over your shoulder, you discovered he’d somehow moved further away from you, like he took several steps back.

Was he… giving you space?

His tone was still flat, but after several months spent in close proximity with the bounty hunter, you were now able to parse out several different minor inflections in his modulated voice. You were by no means an expert, but you knew for a fact he didn’t sound angry in this moment. When he was angry, his voice took on a softer, menacing quality. The few times you’d heard it—thankfully never directed at you—every hair on your body stood on end, and the lizard part of your brain had screamed to run and not stop running until you were in a completely different star system.

This wasn’t anger. This was… something else. You almost wanted to say… amusement, but that would have been crazy.

Still, the tension bled out of your shoulders like sand through a sieve, and you dropped your arms as you turned to face the Mandalorian fully again.

“Alright, this is the best I can do,” you said. “I can get her flying again, I think I can even get her shielded enough to withstand leaving the atmosphere when we’re done here, but it’s gonna take some time.”

“How much time?” he asked.

You glanced over your shoulder again at the damage, did some calculations in your head, and added some padding to give yourself a margin for error. Then you turned back to the bounty hunter.

“At least two days,” you replied, confident in your abilities. “Anything less, and we risk blowing ourselves to the Inner Core and back when I go to start her up.”

“Hmm.” Mando stared at you for a moment and then shifted to gaze into the jungle. “The bounty will most likely be off planet by then.”

“I don’t think so,” you contradicted him, and your heart actually skipped a beat when the T of his visor turned to look at you. There was something nerve-wracking about staring into the dark, reflective glass, but then you noticed your red-streaked appearance, and you cringed self-consciously as you looked away.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Because,” you started, stooping down to pick up the tablet beside your tool bag, “when I first came out here and saw the damage, I was afraid we’d end up in this situation. But then I remembered that the quarry’s ship took more damage than we did in our little space battle. I know for a fact we landed at least one solid hit, I saw it myself.”

“And?”

“Well,” you said as you tapped at the screen, “given the make and model of his vessel, and the location of where we struck the ship, I was able to deduce that we most likely damaged his engines. If his engines are damaged, then there is a maximum distance he could have gone before he would have been forced to land, or even crash landed. With all this information, plus the fact that I knew the general location of where we lost visual of him when we entered the atmosphere, I’ve estimated the quarry can’t be farther than five klicks from our current coordinates. And with his entry trajectory, he’s most likely in this triangulated area three and a half klicks to the west, which should be easily reachable on foot.”

You turned the map on the tablet to face the Mandalorian, and he stepped forward to take the device from you. His gloved fingers brushed across your singed ones, remnant electricity shooting through your veins, and you stifled a flinch as you dropped your arm.

Mando studied the map for a long moment, cocking his head and zooming in to get a better look. You shifted uneasily in the silence, scuffing the tip of your boot into the red soil, but then the bounty hunter finally looked back up at you.

“When did you have time to do this?” he asked, and he actually sounded… impressed. “You were out here for less than ten minutes after we landed.”

“It wasn’t that hard.” You shrugged as your cheeks flushed with heat, but you blamed the sweltering sun overhead and the soup-like air.

“I didn’t realize you were so good with numbers,” he said, his helmet staring directly at you.

“Numbers are easy,” you replied, shrugging again as you raised your hand to chew nervously on your nails, but you stopped yourself when you saw the crimson dirt still caked on your skin. “They don’t lie, once you understand the rules.”

“Did Peli teach you how to do this?” he inquired, and you were surprised by all these questions. Most of the time, the bounty hunter asked you one-or-two-word questions and expected one-or-two-word answers. You couldn’t figure out why this situation was any different, but you found yourself responding anyway.

“Partially,” you explained, and you wondered how you could phrase your answer to be vague but satisfactory. “She… taught me a lot of the specifics for bigger jobs like ships and larger machines, but I’ve always been good at numbers and tinkering.”

That seemed good enough. You didn’t think it was relevant that you first started tinkering because your former owner used to lock you in his shop’s basement with broken droids when you misbehaved, and putting the discarded machines back together kept you from going crazy when your punishments lasted days. You also didn’t think it relevant that when your former owner found out and realized he could profit off your skills, you fine-tuned your abilities to become indispensable. The bastard still hit you occasionally, and his other slaves weren’t treated any better, but you had to admit, him locking you in the basement all those years had saved your life. If you hadn’t cultivated the skills you had, Peli wouldn’t have bought you at auction when the bastard bit the sand, and she wouldn’t have dug out your transmitter chip and effectively freed you the moment you walked into Hanger 3-5. The tiny woman had said she needed an apprentice, not a slave, and so that was what you became. Now, you were a mechanic in your own right, and a damn good one if you did say so yourself. Mando just didn’t need to know how you’d gotten there.

The bounty hunter seemed to think the same thing, too, because he nodded once before he looked back at the tablet.

“This is good work,” he said, and something in your chest preened at his words before you squashed it down. “If these calculations are correct—”

“They are,” you interjected before you could stop yourself.

“Then I think I can set out on foot, find the quarry, and bring him back tomorrow just as you’re finishing the repairs,” Mando went on, and he glanced up at you again. “Does that time frame sound right to you?”

“Maybe.” You shrugged. “Should work for me, but it could take you a little longer. I’m unfamiliar with this terrain, and there are too many other variables, like jungle beasts or indigenous species, for me to be sure.”

“The terrain won’t be a problem,” the Mandalorian said as he handed you the tablet back. “And neither will any beasts or natives.”

You cocked an eyebrow at the bounty hunter but didn’t contradict his confidence. “Alright. Then, yes, I should have the ship up and running by the time you get back. Are you leaving now?”

“Once I grab some supplies,” Mando replied before he paused and seemed to consider you. “Will you be… okay until I return?”

It was a familiar question, albeit still surprising. The Mandalorian was a stoic, usually silent warrior, literally a wall of beskar steel. You’d seen him kill men as easy as breathing, and he threw each bounty into carbonite without an ounce of remorse.

And yet, every time he had to leave the ship alone, he asked you if you would be alright until he got back. The question and concern would have made no sense… if you hadn’t seen the bounty hunter interact with his foundling. He tried to hide it, but he treated the little green baby so gently you knew there had to be a warm, beating heart beneath all that beskar. You just never expected any tenderness to be aimed at you, so it drew you up short every time.

“Yeah.” You smiled. “I’ll be fine. Besides—”

You trailed off as you felt something touch your lower leg, and when you looked down, big brown eyes set in a little green face blinked back up at you. Then little green hands lifted in your direction, and you laughed as you swooped down, picked him up, and set him on your hip.

“Besides,” you continued, still chuckling as you booped the child on the nose and left a smudge of red dirt behind, “I’ll have this little guy to keep me company. Right, kid?”

The baby cooed and reached out, his three tiny fingers settling on the bridge of your nose as he tried to boop you back. When he withdrew his hand, though, his skin was dyed black.

“Huh?” You frowned at the slick ooze on his fingers, your eyes crossing as you tried to bring his hand into focus. “What’s on your hand there, bud?”

“It’s grease,” Mando supplied.

“What?” you asked as you turned your head to the bounty hunter.

“Grease,” he repeated, and he touched the intersection on the glass T of his visor, right over where the bridge of his nose would sit. “You’ve got some just there.”

“Oh.” You blushed, your hand flying up to cover your face. Not only were you covered in dirt and sweat, but grease now, too. Typical. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I thought you knew,” the Mandalorian said, but there was that faint undercurrent in his voice that you were sure was amusement now. “Don’t you have any rags?”

“I did,” you muttered as you tried to rub at your face with your shoulder, “but I had to throw most of them out after that oil leak we had on the moon we left about a week ago. It’s fine. I’m already a mess anyhow, and I’m just going to get dirtier as I fix up the ship.”

Mando seemed to stare at you intensely for a moment, and you had the feeling he was taking in just how filthy your clothes were. You could read nothing from his body language, though, and since he wasn’t speaking, there was nothing to infer from his voice, either. Embarrassed heat crawled up your neck, and you suddenly felt naked in your tank top and leggings. You shifted the child in your arms a little to bring him more in front of you and block more of you from view, but the effort was useless because Mando was abruptly spinning on heel and marching toward the ship’s ramp.

“I’m going to gather supplies,” he said gruffly over his shoulder. “Don’t let the kid touch any of the wires.”

And then he was gone, his cape flapping behind him as he disappeared into the bowels of the Razor Crest.

“Okay, bye,” you muttered, and you frowned after him before looking down at the kid and lowering your voice. “Your dad’s a little weird, you know that?”

The child blinked up at you and then seemed to nod his head in solemn agreement.

You laughed and kissed the top of his head even though you knew you were toeing a dangerous line here. You knew you were just the ship mechanic, the hired help, but you and the foundling had spent a lot of time together when the Mandalorian was out hunting bounties, and you couldn’t help loving the adorable baby like he was your own. He was mischievous and always looking to put things in his mouth that he shouldn’t, but something about his presence was calming, soothing. Plus, those big brown eyes were to die for. You weren’t even that surprised the kid had managed to wiggle his way under Mando’s beskar. It had only been a few months, but you knew without a shadow of a doubt that if it came down to it, you would give your life to save this child.

Which was wildly inappropriate, but you chose to ignore that fact.

“It’s just gonna be the two of us again for a bit, little man,” you told the foundling, turning back to face the Razor Crest. “But we’re gonna have some fun, yeah? Do you want to help me fix up the ship?”

The child gurgled into your ear and patted your cheek, which you took as an affirmative.

“Alright,” you laughed as you set him on a large root right next to your tool bag. You dug around until you found a tool you would need eventually, and then you handed it to the kid. “Here, hold this until I need it, okay? But don’t put it in your mouth.”

The foundling seemed to pout at that last bit, but he dutifully wrapped his three little fingers around the tool and held it firmly.

“Thank you.” You smiled. Then you turned back to the ship, put your hands on your hips, and furrowed your brow. “Now, where to start?”

You spent the next ten minutes assessing what was completely ruined, what was salvageable, and what you had on hand that wasn’t necessary and could possibly be retrofitted to fix the damage. The skeletal beginnings of a plan were already forming in your mind by the time the Mandalorian was clomping down the ramp again. You set down the tablet you’d been tapping away at and picked up the child once more, and the foundling babbled as he waved around the tool he was still holding.

“Be careful with that,” you chuckled, and you craned your head back to avoid getting smacked in the temple. “I’ll need it soon, so keep holding onto it.”

The child cooed and then shifted to wave the tool at the bounty hunter as he approached.

“Putting the kid to work now?” Mando asked as he stopped a few feet away. The crescent-shaped hilt of his favored Amban rifle jutted out over his left shoulder, and a small bag was slung over his right, probably filled with spare ammo, cuffs for the bounty, and possibly some food. You’d never personally seen the Mandalorian eat, though, and a part of you was convinced he didn’t, even if you rationally knew that wasn’t possible.

“Nah, I’m just teaching him a thing or two,” you said as you settled the foundling more soundly on your hip. “You’re never too young to learn something new, and on the plus side, being my little helper keeps him out of trouble. For the most part, anyway.”

“Thank you for watching him,” the bounty hunter said, tilting his visor down minutely to stare at the child, who grinned a gummy grin and waved the silver tool again. “I know it isn’t exactly what I hired you for—”

“I don’t mind,” you cut him off, and you glanced down to smile at the kid. “He’s pretty good company, and some of Peli’s droids have given me more trouble than he does. It’s really no problem.”

“Well, regardless,” Mando replied as his visor returned to studying you. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” You nodded, flushing again under his scrutiny. Then you cleared your throat and gestured at the bag on his back. “All ready?”

“Yes,” the bounty hunter said. “Days are longer here, but the sun will set eventually, and I want to try and find the quarry before moonrise. If all goes well, I should be back tomorrow before sunset.”

“Good luck, then,” you told him, and you lifted your chin with confidence. “I should have the ship ready when you return.”

“Thank you.” He inclined his helmet.

The baby suddenly burst out babbling something, and you glanced down to see him reaching out with his free hand toward the Mandalorian. His three little fingers made grabby motions, and the bounty hunter sighed.

“Listen to her while I’m gone, okay?” Mando murmured as he stepped closer into your personal bubble and held out his finger for the foundling to latch on to.

The child cooed, swinging the Mandalorian’s finger from side to side, and the breath stilled in your lungs as the bounty hunter’s glove brushed the edge of your mouth. You smelled something like leather and smoke, probably blaster residue, but then Mando was stepping back again, and the baby was forced to drop his finger.

“Keep alert,” he addressed you as he adjusted the pack on his shoulder. “We’re pretty far from any civilization out here, so I don’t think you should encounter anyone, but don’t assume you’re safe. And get inside the ship once the sun sets. The jungle will be more dangerous at night. I’ll have my comlink on me, but it’s affected by proximity, so you most likely won’t be able to contact me until I’m on my way back.”

“Don’t worry, Mando,” you said, and you patted the blaster he’d given you that was almost permanently attached to your hip. “I can defend myself if need be, and I have no desire to be caught outside after dark. We’ll be fine.”

“I know,” he replied, but you weren’t sure if he was trying to convince you or himself. Either way, he seemed to compose himself because he nodded once. “I’ll be back soon.”

“We’ll keep a weather eye on the horizon.” You smiled. “Try not to die of heat stroke.”

“I’ll try my best,” he said dryly, but after one more moment of staring at you and the foundling, he turned on heel and marched off into the jungle without another word. The multi-colored trees swallowed him almost instantly, and suddenly you were alone.

The child cooed sadly as he stared after the Mandalorian, and he turned his big brown eyes on you as if to say, Where’d he go?

“Don’t worry, bud,” you said, turning back to the ship. “He’ll be fine and back before you know it. Now, let’s take a look at those power converters, shall we?”

You set the foundling down beside your tool bag again, but you couldn’t help glancing over your shoulder in the direction the bounty hunter had disappeared in.

He’ll be fine and back before you know it, you repeated silently to yourself.

~~~~~

Two days later, you were starting to doubt the validity of your statements.

The sun had set and risen twice, and there was still no sign of Mando. Now, the celestial orb was steadily making its way across the horizon for the third time, and you sat on the ramp of the ship and glared up at the chattering canopy.

The child was down for a nap in the hammock the Mandalorian had set up in his own bunk, and your eyes burned with a similar exhaustion, but the anxiety slowly mounting in you made it impossible to sleep. The past two days had passed uneventfully. You’d spent every hour of sunlight you had at your disposal patching together the ship, and since days were longer on this planetoid, you estimated you’d spent over seventy-two hours getting the Razor Crest in working order again.

And you’d done it. It wasn’t perfect, but the ship could fly, and you were ninety-eight percent certain it would withstand leaving the atmosphere.

Now, all that was missing was the Mandalorian and his bounty.

“Dank farrik, Mando,” you grumbled under your breath as you dragged your singed, cut-up, and bandaged fingers through your hair. “Where the Maker are you?”

The chittering birds and critters in the underbrush didn’t have an answer for you, and you huffed out an aggravated breath as another bead of sweat dripped into your eyes.

By your estimate, there were about six hours left before the sun set again. Part of you, the illogical, irrational part, wanted to charge into the jungle in search of the Mandalorian. You had a general direction and location he should be in. Maybe you could find him.

But the rational side of your brain thankfully pointed out all the problems with that plan. For one, leaving the ship unattended was dangerous. You hadn’t seen anyone in the past two days, but that didn’t mean you were alone in the jungle, and now that the ship could fly again, someone could potentially walk right in and steal the vessel if you weren’t here to stop them.

Then there was the issue of the foundling. Sometimes, Mando took you and the kid along with him when he was hunting a bounty in a more populated area, but he was always there to protect the two of you if something went wrong. What happened if you brought the child with you into the jungle and you couldn’t protect him? And you couldn’t exactly leave him behind. Someone could steal both the child and the Razor Crest in that scenario.

The most compelling reason to stay with the ship, though, was Mando himself. Before he left, he’d confidently declared that neither the jungle itself nor the beasts or peoples therein would pose any problem for him. If he was wrong, and these things had posed a problem for the bounty hunter, what luck did you have of doing something he could not?

Anddddd that’s where the irrational side of you chimed in again with, Well, if he did run into an issue, he could need your help, so you should go look for him.

It was a vicious cycle, and your head was pounding with how fast it was running in circles.

You groaned as you dropped your face into your hands, digging the heels of your palms into your eye sockets.

“Fine,” you sighed into the darkness. “I’ll give him until morning.”

If the Mandalorian hadn’t returned by then, you’d start up the ship and fly over the area you’d triangulated for him. If you couldn’t find him from the air… well, you’d cross that bridge when you came to it.

~~~~~

You huffed in irritation as you tossed and turned in Mando’s bunk that night. You turned one way, rolled another, but then you found yourself with your nose buried in his pillow, and you instantly flipped back over, face hot with embarrassment even though it was dark and you were practically alone. You weren’t sure if he slept with his helmet on when he was alone in the closed confines of the bunk, but either way, the small space smelled of him intensely. You tried not to put words to his scent, told yourself it was inappropriate and he was your boss, a Mandalorian to boot, and you had no room or right to think of him in any way other than strictly professional… but that apparently didn’t work because you knew he smelled like the cheap soap from the fresher, and the rest was a blend of smoke, leather, and metal, the degrees of which varied by the day and yet was still always uniquely him.

You knew you were playing a losing game even just having these thoughts, but you somehow couldn’t help yourself, couldn’t stop yourself. Ever since Mando stepped between you and Ran’s crew all those months ago, blocking you with his body, a startling, protective rage in every inch of his armored silhouette, this little voice had come to life in the back of your head and wouldn’t shut the kriff up.

What if? the little voice whispered. What if it’s not just you having these thoughts? What if you could have him in more than just your dreams and fantasies in the darkness of this bunk?

Usually, you shoved the voice into the deep, dark recesses of your thoughts and recited equations until it grew quiet. You knew that was nothing but wishful thinking at best and delusion at worst. The Mandalorian was just that: a warrior closed off from the world by a shell of silver beskar. He cared for the foundling, yes, but that was entirely different and bore no correlation to the bounty hunter’s relationship with you. There was little he could possibly want from a former slave turned mechanic, aside from your skills, of course, so you clenched your eyes closed and tried to take shallow breaths through your mouth, but nothing you did could get his scent out of your nose, your memory.

You sighed for the umpteenth time and rolled to face the wall of the bunk.

When the bounty hunter was on the ship, the two of you usually slept in shifts so you could share the bunk, though sometimes the Mandalorian slept upright in the cockpit. It had been his idea originally. You’d been fine with a thin sleeping mat on the floor of the cargo bay, but he’d insisted in his strange, stoic, nonchalant way. So, you shared, and when it was just you and the kid on the ship, the two of you had the run of the place.

The child was currently in the hammock above your head, but you were pretty sure he wasn’t asleep, either. Every so often, he’d gurgle or make some other noise, and more than once you peeked up to find big brown eyes staring down at you in the dimness. You wondered if he could sense your anxiety, and you shifted so you could glare past your feet, out of the bunk, and at the closed ramp door.

You wanted to be angry with Mando, but by the time the sun set a few hours ago, you’d moved past that anger and straight into worry. The bounty hunter had never been gone this long before without contact, and your gut told you something was wrong and wouldn’t let you sleep. You wished you could blame your insomnia completely on your concern, but sadly, that wasn’t the case.

As if on cue, a sudden, piercing shriek echoed through the ship, and all the muscles in your body locked up on reflex.

The child gasped and made a worried noise as he poked his head over the edge of his hammock and stared down at you, and you tried to plaster on a fake, reassuring smile.

“It’s alright,” you murmured, reaching up to gently rock the foundling. “The ship’s closed and locked up. They can’t get us in here.”

The baby made an unconvinced sound, but he settled back into his bed without any further argument.

You sighed as you continued to rock the child, and you did your best not to flinch when another high-pitched screech sounded outside the ship.

You weren’t entirely sure what “they” were, but you knew they were nocturnal and carnivorous. And hungry. The past two mornings, you’d found bloody animal remains torn to bits and strewn along the edges of the clearing the Razor Crest was parked in like gory, crimson confetti. You’d kept the child practically glued to your side during the days because of this, but nothing ever attacked you during the day. They just circled the ship incessantly at night, howling and screeching and keeping you from finding a moment’s peace or rest. They hadn’t outright attacked the ship yet, but you were ready for it, your borrowed blaster a cold and heavy weight tucked under your pillow.

Reaching for it now, you curled your fingers around the familiar hilt and tried to block out the crescendoing, bloodthirsty shrieks of the mysterious jungle beasts.

You didn’t know how or when, but you must have dozed off at some point because all of the sudden, you jolted awake with a panicked gasp.

The bunk was dark and close around you, but since you’d left the door open at your feet, it wasn’t claustrophobic. Your vision was still blurry with sleep, so you swiped at your eyes with the back of your left wrist as you scrambled into a seated position. In your right hand you grasped the blaster, and you pointed it blindly in front of you, toward the rear of the ship.

You couldn’t remember what had woken you up, but it had been something. Your heart pounded a frantic tattoo into the underside of your ribcage, your arm shaking minutely with adrenaline. The ramp was still closed in front of you, so it hadn’t been Mando opening the door and returning. You squinted in the darkness but couldn’t see anything beyond shadows and vague shapes in pale, muted moonlight. It must have still been night, then.

You strained your ears, listening for the howling, but it was quiet. Suspiciously quiet. The jungle beasts usually didn’t go silent until right before dawn, but it was dark enough in the ship that you estimated it was still the middle of the night.

Where had they gone?

Your heart rose up into your throat, sweat beading at every one of your pores, and your mouth was so dry that your throat clicked when you swallowed.

The child made a noise of inquiry above you, barely louder than a breath, but it still made you jump all the same. Your gaze darted upward to find brown eyes staring down at you, but they were wide in an alarmed sort of way. One three-fingered hand poked over the edge of the hammock, making grabby motions at you, and the noise he made this time was more urgent, louder.

Had he heard something, too?

“What is it, little guy?�� you whispered, reaching up with your free hand and awkwardly grappling him from his sling-bed.

He tumbled gently into your lap with a soft “oof,” but almost immediately he was standing up, turning around, and frantically patting at your cheek.

“What?” you asked with a frown.

He babbled and continued to tap the side of your face, and his noises grew increasingly distressed until he was grunting with frustration.

Then his tiny palm actually slapped down right across your ear canal so hard that both of your ears rang, and you hissed as you jerked your head back.

“Kriff, what was that fo—” you started to ask, but another hiss cut you off, and this one wasn’t from you.

Your heart stuttered, eyes skipping over the child’s head and out into the cargo bay, and your right hand tightened around the blaster you’d lowered to your side.

But there was nothing there. Nothing moved in the shadowy ship beyond you, and you frowned, thinking your mind was playing tricks on your startled and sleep-addled mind, but then the hiss came again.

And this time, you recognized it.

“Oh, pfassk!” you cursed as you craned around and shoved your hand under the pillow. Your fingers scrambled wildly across the sheet but encountered nothing, and you growled in aggravation, shifting the child off your lap and coming onto your hands and knees. You tossed the pillow over your shoulder in a fit of frustration, and your right hand slapped at the wall around your head until the bunk light came on.

You squinted in the flood of harsh light, the child gurgling behind you, but when your vision cleared, you spotted the thumb-sized comlink off the edge of the cot, shoved up into the far corner of the bunk. You lunged forward and wrapped your fingers around the small device, and the words were falling out of your mouth before you were even sure you had hit the button.

“Mando?” you called into the comlink, cringing when your loud voice echoed back to you in the close confines of the bunk. “Mando, can you hear me?”

Mild static crackled back for a moment as you huddled around the tiny communicator, but then a louder burst of static—the hiss from earlier—exploded to life.

And you were sure you heard Mando’s voice in there.

“Mando!” you shouted as you heart did its best imitation of a speeder, and you cupped both hands around the comlink like that would help him hear you better. “Mando, it’s me! I’m here. Can you hear me?”

Another burst of static. Then…

Mando yelled your name, clear as day, followed by a scream of what sounded like “help” and a chorus of familiar howling, and your stomach bottomed out inside of you.

“Mando!” You were gripping the communicator so hard you were afraid you were going to break it. “Mando, where are you? What’s wrong?”

He didn’t respond. You sat there frozen for a full minute, ears straining to the point of ringing, but only quiet static crackled back at you.

“Dank farrik!” you cursed, punching the side of your fist into the bunk wall.

The child cooed at you, brown eyes big with concern, and he put his tiny hand on your knee as you raked a shaking hand through your hair.

Your chest heaved up and down as you fought for breath, your mind spinning off into a million directions at once.

Mando was in trouble. Mando needed your help. He was fighting jungle beasts, and he was far enough away that you couldn’t hear the shrieking with your own ears, but close enough that he could partially reach you over the comlink. You had to do something. You had to go help him.

But what about the child? What about the ship? You couldn’t take the Razor Crest. It was pitch black outside, and you wouldn’t be able to see Mando below the thick, dark canopy. You had to go on foot.

And you had to take the kid with you.

“Come on,” you said as you tucked the communicator into your pocket, grabbed the foundling and blaster, and scooted to the edge of the bunk. Your boots were on the ground below you, and you shoved your feet in them blindly, tying the laces in three deft movements.

Then you were on your feet, turning on the cargo lights, and jogging the child over to his floating silver carrier. You grabbed the spare remote on top of it, pressing the button and watching the top slide open with a hiss. Then you set the foundling down inside of it, and in the same motion you were tucking the remote into your pocket, turning on heel, and striding for the armory.

Another button press, followed by the hiss of hydraulics, and you were left staring at several walls of guns and weaponry. Some of them you knew. Mando had even taught you how to shoot a few, but those were typically smaller blasters.

And based on those howling screeches, you needed something with more of a kick.

Your eyes skipped over the blaster pistols since you already had the one on your hip, and after a moment’s indecision, your gaze settled on a midsized rifle you’d shot once before. You hadn’t been very good at it, only hit four of the ten targets Mando set out, and you remember it being very heavy.

But it was better than nothing, and you needed something to fight back against the dark jungle.

So, you took the rifle down and looped it around your shoulder, pursing your lips as the strap dug into your skin. You spent a moment checking the power cell and gas canister, and even though both were full, you still stuck a few spares into a belt that you wrapped around your hips. You also added a few grenades to your arsenal, both explosive and ones set to stun, plus a pair of Mando’s vibroknives, as a last defense measure. If you were being honest, if the rifle and grenades failed you, you probably wouldn’t live long enough to use the knives, but it made you feel better to clip their sheaths unto your belt.

The rifle and belt weighed you down with an extra five to six kilos, but you had lugged far heavier burdens through Tatooine’s desert, so you knew you could handle it.

The last two things you grabbed were the head lamp you typically wore when working under or inside ships and the cuff you’d programmed to work the twin lights—along with a variety of other tasks aboard the Razor Crest—resting at each of your temples. The cuff was a haphazard creation of yours made of old leather, metal, and glass, but it worked and was comfortable, which was all that mattered. It also had a small magnetic slot that was specifically meant for the remote of the foundling’s floating carrier, so you fished that out of your pocket and felt it snap into place with a satisfying click.

You were armed and ready now. All you had to do was move.

“Mando,” you said as you stuck the comlink in your ear and synced it to your cuff, which had a built-in frequency booster. You were already moving toward the ramp, tapping at your wrist and listening to the foundling’s carrier humming after you. The rifle felt heavy as you maneuvered it into your slick palms, and your heart hammered a war song in your ears. “Mando, I’m coming for you. Just hold on, okay?”

Static crackled in your ear, and your chest began to heave up and down as adrenaline flooded through you.

“Okay, little man, you’re going to take a nap, alright?” you said as you looked down at the child in his pod, your voice shaking even though you tried to stop it. “And when you wake up, your dad will be back with us.”

He cooed up at you with a fearful expression on his face, but you only spared a moment to press a kiss to his head before you were tapping at your wrist again. The lid of the pod started to hiss close as the ramp of the ship began to clank open, and you slid your finger onto the rifle’s trigger as the door slowly lowered before you.

The ramp finally thudded to the jungle floor, and you took a moment to stare out into the foreboding darkness. The moon was pale and wan in the purple-tinted sky, and all you could see were shadows along the edges of the clearing. Your eyes darted back and forth, every muscle in your body locked and braced for an attack, but nothing happened. Nothing moved save the indigo clouds over head, and the only sound you heard was the muted chirps and hums of insects.

“Okay, come on, quit stalling,” you muttered to yourself even though your heart felt like it was about to roll off your tongue. “Mando doesn’t have time for this.”

At the sound of his name—or at least, the only name you had ever known the bounty hunter by—some of the fear inside you vanished, and you were suddenly jogging down the ramp without further thought. The child’s carrier trailed after you quietly, and you jabbed at your wrist to close and lock up the Razor Crest.

You spared half a glance over your shoulder to make sure the ramp was secured, and then you looked down at your cuff. Mando’s comlink had a built in GPS transmitter, but its range was limited. However, if he was close enough to briefly contact you…

A dot flickered in and out on the grungy screen on your wrist, and you spun in a circle to figure out which direction had the strongest connection. The dot flared brightly when you angled toward the west, and you started running before you even had a plan.

You crashed through the underbrush with the child’s pod hot on your heels, and the thick, humid air sawed in and out of your heaving lungs as you gasped for breath. The lights at your temples provided enough illumination to see several steps ahead of you but not much else, and you tripped and careened over root and vine as you tried not to lose your grip on the rifle.

The good news was the dot on your read-out was no longer flickering, and it was now a strong red point about a kilometer ahead of you.

The bad news?

The jungle was no longer quiet around you.

As your feet pounded into the red soil and carried you forward, static crackled loudly in your ear, and the howling returned, faint at first but growing closer. Shivers wracked your sweat-slicked spine, and every fiber of your being was screaming to run the other way.

But you couldn’t. Because now you could hear Mando grunting and shouting over the comlink, clearer and clearer with each step, and as you vaulted over a protruding root in your path, you distinctly heard a roar of rage directly ahead of you.

You would have shouted his name if there was any breath left in your lungs, but instead you just lowered your head and sprinted as fast as you could.

The howling was nearly deafening now, echoing all around you, seeming to come from every shadow in the jungle. Your ears rang with the soul-piercing shrieks, and the cacophony was so disorienting, you tripped over your own feet and crashed into the dirt.

“Kriff!” you gasped, your knees and palms stinging as you skidded to a halt. Dots danced in front of your eyes as you panted harshly, and the rifle knocked painfully against your sternum.

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw the child’s pod come to a stop several feet away, the silver orb glinting in the pale moonlight barely filtering through the canopy.

Then you saw something else shift in the shadows behind the floating carrier.

At first, you thought it was your swimming vision, but then the weak lights of your headlamp reflected off several glinting eyes, and the breath stalled in your lungs.

A guttural, wet growl echoed out of the bushes beyond the foundling’s pod, and in the next instant the beast was lunging forward, vaulting over the carrier in one bound.

You yelped as you scrambled backward, fumbling for the rifle’s trigger, and you got the barrel up just in time to block a bifurcated jaw of gnashing fangs. The beast let out a piercing shriek as it snapped at your face, and the familiar sound nearly popped your eardrum at this proximity, but the pain barely even registered as you wedged your legs up under the creature’s chest and heaved it off you.

The beast let out a high-pitched yip as it smacked into a tree trunk, but you didn’t give it the chance to regain its feet. In one swift movement, you brought the rifle up, sighted down the barrel, and pulled the trigger.

The blaster must have been set on full-auto because a continuous stream of energy screamed out of the weapon, and the barrel jerked upward with the recoil. Bolts of energy shredded through the vines and branches overhead, and some kind of bat-bird creature screeched as it dove out of the canopy and swooped over you. It thankfully wasn’t trying to attack, merely flee, and the avian-beast cawed angrily as it disappeared into the jungle.

“P-Pfassk,” you panted, your voice as jittery as your racing pulse. Still, you scrambled to your feet, with the smoking rifle held tight in your shaking grasp, and you stared wide-eyed at the corpse of the beast that had attacked you.

The thing was almost two meters long, and six disjointed looking limbs jutted out from underneath it. Your would-be-killer looked vaguely canine yet also insect-like, with its long snout and what looked like scaled plates along its spine. The combination made your stomach churn. The blaster had carved smoldering holes into most of the creature’s flesh, but the uncharred remains were blackish-purple, mottled with spots of blue and green that matched the jungle’s underbrush. The beast was entirely hairless and slick-looking like an oil spill, and its bifurcated maw hung open to reveal rows of rotted black fangs. Two pairs of pale white eyes stared blindly up at the dark sky, and purplish blood seeped out around the carcass to stain the jungle floor.

Bile rose in your throat, but before you could even process your fear, terror, and revulsion, a very human sounding scream echoed through the dark night, and you whipped your head in the direction it had come from.

“Mando,” you breathed, and you spared the dead beast one last glance before you took off running again, every sense on high alert.

You didn’t dare blink as you crashed through the underbrush, and you pushed your aching limbs as fast as they would go. The din of snarling and howling was so loud now it was rattling your teeth, and all of the sudden you were stumbling out of the thick tree line and into a small clearing.

A clearing riddled with bodies, both living and dead.

Your brain stuttered as it tried to assess the scene before you. The canopy overhead was broken in a perfect circle, so the moonlight here was strong and bright after the deep shadows of the jungle, and it illuminated everything perfectly. The Mandalorian stood in the center of the carnage, half collapsed against a rotten log twice as tall as he was. Carcasses of the canine-like beasts were piled up in mounds around the clearing, some shot but some charred into blackened skeletons, and the stench of burnt flesh invaded your nose and sat heavy on the back of your tongue.

For every dead beast, though, there were two more still snarling, and boy, were they pissed.

The pack of creatures prowled in a semi-circle before the bounty hunter, all their attention centered on him, and they growled and snapped their bifurcated jaws in his direction. They didn’t seem to want to attack him head on, and a moment later you saw why.

One of the beasts must have reached its breaking point, because with the same piercing shriek that had kept you up the past two nights, it lunged for the Mandalorian, the moonlight glinting off the armored plates along its spine.

The poor bastard never made it.

While the creature was still in mid-air, Mando jerked his wrist up, and a blast of flames roared out of his vambrace. The beast screeched as it was swallowed by the inferno, and its charred corpse crashed to the ground at Mando’s feet a moment later. The remainder of the pack snarled in fury as they paced in front of the bounty hunter, but you felt your throat tighten with fear.

The flamethrower was obviously a great weapon at repelling these creatures, but judging by the radius on that last spurt of fire, you estimated Mando had enough fuel for one, maybe two more attacks.

And there were dozens of the beasts left.

What were you going to do?

You heaved for breath as your eyes darted around the clearing, trying to look for a solution, but you knew the answer was obvious: you were going to have to fight.

You blindly tapped at your wrist, and a moment later the child’s carrier rose up above your head and nestled against the lowest branch of the tree you were standing under. You didn’t know if the beasts could climb, but the pod was made of a strong, reinforced metal, so as long as the creatures didn’t notice the kid, he should be fine.

The same couldn’t be said for you.

Maker, you were going to regret this, weren’t you?

You didn’t give yourself the chance to change your mind.

“Hey!” you shouted as you stepped further into the clearing, one of your hands dropping to the belt on your waist.

The chorus of snarls and growls tapered off for a moment as the pack whipped around in unison to face you, and the saliva evaporated in your mouth as you stared at the dozens of glowing white eyes.

At the sound of your voice, you could see Mando jerk upright in your peripherals, but you didn’t dare tear your eyes off the pack as they started to stalk toward you. Sweat dripped down your face and trickled along your spine as you palmed a cold, heavy orb in your right hand, and you watched the distance between you and the creatures shrink bit by bit.

Mando shouted your name, but you ignored him.

“Yeah, that’s right!” you yelled at the beasts instead. “You guys hungry? Why don’t you come and get me?”

“What are you doing?” Mando roared, but you still didn’t pay him any mind as you tracked the pack. There were maybe three dozen left alive, and they bared their black fangs at you as they drew closer and closer.

Twenty meters… fifteen… ten…

Now.

“Take this!” You heaved your arm back, aimed at the beast in the center of the pack’s line, and threw with all your might, and the creature yelped as the stun grenade struck him in the skull.

A moment later, a web of electricity exploded out of the orb and arced through half of the pack, and the poor bastards screeched and screamed as they fell spasming to the jungle floor. The beasts on the edges snarled as they jumped away from their sparking brethren, and you saw some of the canine-monsters retreat into the shadows of the clearing.

This was your chance.

You darted forward the moment you had a clear path to take, and you vaulted over the pack’s twitching bodies in three swift strides. When you landed on the other side of them, you spun around and faced the fallen creatures as they whined and spasmed on the ground. Then you lifted your rifle, aimed haphazardly, and pulled the trigger. You swept the barrel from side to side for a moment, energy bolts tearing and searing through flesh, but then you whirled back around and sprinted toward the Mandalorian’s prone form.

He was propped up against the log with his legs splayed out in front of him, and you inhaled sharply when you saw the dark stain of blood on the ground beneath his right thigh. His Amban rifle lay beside him, but since he wasn’t using it, you assumed he was out of ammo. The bounty hunter listed heavily onto what you first thought was a rock of some kind, but as you skidded to a stop in front of him, you realized the lump was the body of another humanoid, except it didn’t look to be breathing.

“Mando!” you gasped as you crouched down in front of him. “Maker, w-what happened—”

“What are you doing here?” he cut you off with a snarl, and the absolute rage in his voice drew you up short.

You gaped at his visor, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. “W-What… you called—”

“I didn’t call you, he did, right before they tore out his throat,” Mando growled and shoved the prone form beside him.

The body flopped over with a thud, and you stifled a gag when you realized the poor bastard had been eviscerated. He was torn open from gut to gullet, intestines and innards gleaming wetly in the dark, and his bulging black eyes stared up unseeingly at the moon.

“Dank farrik, Mando,” you breathed in horror. “What happened?”

The Mandalorian tilted his helmet up to look at you, but then his gaze seemed to shift over your shoulder, and he was suddenly latching onto your wrist with an iron grip and tugging you forward.

“Watch out!” he shouted as you tripped over his legs and landed on the other side of him, and a moment later you heard and felt the roar of flames at your back as another beast met a smoldering end.

You scrambled up onto your knees and whirled around, rifle held at the ready, but there were only the two new dead creatures sprawled at Mando’s feet. Their corpses smoked as their blackened flesh crackled, and this time you weren’t successful in stifling your gag. You dry-heaved off to the side, tears blurring your vision, but when the chorus of bone-chilling howls started up again, you blinked away the tears and clenched your rifle in a white-knuckled grip.

“We gotta get out of here,” you panted, your eyes darting from place to place as you tried to track the beasts slithering through the shadows.

“Can’t,” Mando grunted, and all of the sudden, you realized his voice sounded off, slurred.

You whipped back around to face the bounty hunter, and your gaze immediately fell to the dark stain under his leg. It had grown since you’d first seen it, and then you realized a haphazard tourniquet was lashed around the top of his leg, right above the metal plate that covered the front of his thigh.

“You’re hurt,” you breathed. It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah.” Mando’s head jerked up and down in an unsteady nod. “Just… happened. One of them got me… when I was trying to save the bounty. Pretty sure they nicked my femoral.”

His words were softer and definitely slurred now, and panic rose up in your throat like a burning coal.

“Then we need to get back to the Razor Crest now,” you said as you reached for his shoulders, but the Mandalorian sluggishly shoved you away.

“I’ll… only slow you down,” he grunted. “The bounty and I… are easy meals. The pack should stay to finish us off while you make a break for the sh—”

“No,” you cut him off, and the snarl in your voice surprised even you. “No, Mando. I’m not leaving you to die. We’re only a kilometer away from the Razor Crest. I have extra power cells and grenades. We can make it.”

Mando’s head thunked back against the log he leaned on as he stared up at you, and even if you couldn’t see the face underneath the visor, you could see the resignation in every inch of him.

And it ignited a fury in you unlike anything you had ever known.

“So, what?” you growled, bending down to bare your teeth in his face. “You’re just gonna sit here and die? What about the kid? You just gonna abandon him?”

You’re just going to abandon me? you didn’t say, but the words rattled against the backs of your clenched teeth.

“He’ll… have you,” Mando said, and suddenly his gloved hand reached up as if to touch your face, but he didn’t seem to have the strength, and the tip of his index finger barely grazed the edge of your jaw. His touch left behind a warm streak on your skin, and you didn’t have to look to know it was blood.

“That’s not good enough,” you snarled before you stooped down and grabbed the ends of his makeshift tourniquet, yanking tightly on both ends until Mando groaned in pain and latched onto your shoulders.

He murmured your name, his modulator crackling in your ear, but you ignored him as you looped his spent Amban rifle over his shoulder and shifted to slide your left arm behind his back, throwing his right arm over your shoulders. You took two deep breaths to brace yourself, and then you dug your fingers into his waist as you tried to leverage the both of you onto your feet.

It was nearly impossible. The Mandalorian had to weigh nearly ninety kilos in his beskar, and with the added weight of the weapons and grenades you carried, you could feel the muscles in your legs, core, and back scream at the strain.

“Dank… farrik,” you hissed out between clenched teeth, but you managed to get the two of you upright, even if Mando was practically limp against you. Still, you had to leverage your back against the log behind you to keep from collapsing.

“We’ll never make it… back to the ship like this,” Mando panted, his cold helmet brushing against the shell of your ear.

“Shut up,” you gritted out, listening to the howling beasts closing in again like they could sense your weakness. “I refuse to leave you behind. So, unless you want to kill us both, you need to get your ass in gear, Mando. I can keep them off our backs as we go, but you need to walk with me. Understand?”

“Cyare,” he slurred, and the unfamiliar word sounded pained as his helmet thunked into your temple. “I… don’t want you to die.”

“Then walk,” you grunted as you tightened your grip on his waist and lurched forward a step.

Mando staggered behind you, half draped over your back, but you widened your stance and refused to go down.

“Please… Mando,” you panted, shoving the barrel of your rifle into the loamy red soil to act as a crutch. “Help me save us. Just… just put one foot in front of the other.”

“Wait,” the Mandalorian said, and he actually lifted his head off your shoulder. “The bounty…”

“The bounty’s dead,” you grunted as your eyes darted to the trees again. You could see the sinuous shapes of the pack weaving between the towering trunks, but they kept their distance for the moment. They’d lost more than half of their numbers by your estimate, and you prayed to the Maker they would just give up, but you knew that would be way too convenient for your life.

“The puck… said dead or alive,” Mando sighed, his arm weighing down on the nape of your neck like a yoke, and it reminded you of the slave’s collar you once wore.

“I can’t carry both of you back, Mando,” you growled in frustration. “I can barely drag you.”

“Don’t need the whole body,” he clarified. “Just… the head. It’s… a big bounty.”

You groaned as you glanced down at the quarry’s corpse, and then you tilted your head back to try and look at Mando.

“Can you stand by yourself for a minute?” you asked.

“Maybe,” Mando grunted, but he shifted his weight off you bit by bit and leaned up against the tall log at your backs. His boots slid a few inches in the blood-soaked dirt as he almost collapsed, but he dug his gloved fingers into the rigid bark and stood there shaking.

“Didn’t know I was paying you for maybes,” you parroted his words from days ago back at him in an attempt to take his mind off the pain, and it seemed to work because he actually huffed out a strained-sounding chuckle.

“Hurry,” he panted, and you nodded as you quickly stepped away from him, stood over the bounty’s corpse, and shoved the barrel of your rifle between his shoulder and neck.

It was so dark, and you were running on so much adrenaline you couldn’t even be sure of what species the man used to be, but you pushed the thought away as you took a deep breath and held down the trigger.

The rifle screeched as it tore through flesh like a hot knife through butter, and you tried to ignore the feeling of lukewarm blood splattering across your lower legs. Moments later, the jittery, rapid-fire motions of the gun ceased, and the bounty’s head rolled away from the smoldering stump of his neck.

Bile rose up in your throat again, but you swallowed it down as you picked up the decapitated head and started punching buttons on your cuff.

Instantly, you heard the familiar hum of the child’s pod drone closer and closer, and behind you Mando inhaled sharply as the jungle dogs yipped in curiosity from the shadows.

“You brought the kid?” he growled.

“Well, it wasn’t like you left me much kriffing choice, but you can fire me later for child endangerment,” you snapped as the carrier floated down to stop in front of you. Then you turned to the Mandalorian and held out your bloodied hand. “I need your fibercord whip. Eject it.”

Mando didn’t even question you, he just did as he was bid. Within moments, you had the thin but strong wire wound up in your palm, and then you started the gory process of wrapping it securely around the bounty’s bloody head. Your stomach churned at the slick warm goo covering your skin, but you swallowed the saliva pooling in your mouth as you tapped at your wrist again.

The child’s pod opened with a hiss, and you made sure to lower the decapitated head so it was below the carrier and out of the foundling’s line of sight.

“Hey there, bud,” you said as you leaned down and tucked the end of the fibercord into the interior of the pod near the hinges. “Look who I found.”

The foundling cooed and gurgled happily when he caught sight of the Mandalorian, and he lifted his arms and made grabby motions at the bounty hunter.

“Not yet,” you said as you stepped forward and blocked Mando from view. “First, we need to get back to the ship, so I need to close you up again. Don’t worry about anything you hear, though, okay? I promise we’ll be fine.”

The child murmured a soft sound as you bent down and kissed his wrinkled brow, but then you tapped at your wrist, and the pod closed with another hiss, locking the wire with the dangling head in place. You keyed in a few more commands, and the carrier rose up high above you, hovering at least six meters off the ground. Blood dripped from the severed stump of the quarry’s neck as it dangled from the pod, and you flinched when a speck of it landed on your cheek. It might be disgusting, but this way, the child and the remainder of the bounty would hopefully be out of reach of any of the beasts, and you could focus all your energy on getting you and Mando back to the Razor Crest.

“Alright.” You tore your gaze away from the silver pod and shifted your grasp on the rifle, wedging the stock against your right shoulder as tight as you could. You knew your aim would be abysmal since you were going have to shoot one handed while dragging Mando, but you hoped the full-auto setting would grant you some leeway. “Let’s go.”

“You really should—” the Mandalorian started, but you clicked your tongue to cut him off.

“That wasn’t a request,” you said as you sidled up against the bounty hunter and double checked that his tourniquet was secure.

“Fine.” He reluctantly draped his right arm over your shoulder, and you wrapped your left one around his waist. Then the two of you pushed off the log at your backs, and you staggered forward several steps, trying not to trip on any dead jungle dogs.

Mando’s cold beskar felt like it was burning you wherever it brushed against your bare, hot flesh, and he groaned in your ear as he practically dragged his injured leg behind him. The agony of his voice made you want to stop and sprint forward all at the same time, but you settled for stumbling several more steps.

“That’s it,” you panted in encouragement. “One step at a time.”

The pack howled and shrieked as you painstakingly shuffled your way across the clearing, but you haphazardly aimed your rifle into the jungle and held down the trigger. Rapid-fire bolts of energy careened into the darkness, illuminating white eyes and flashes of twining vines and snarling beasts, but several yowls echoed through the night, so you knew you’d hit at least some of them.

“Mando,” you gritted out as you neared the tree line. “I need you to hit my cuff. There’s a button on the side that will turn up my headlamp. I want it at maximum. Since these bastards are nocturnal, I’m guessing they don’t like the light.”

The Mandalorian grunted something that sounded like an affirmative, and then his left hand was swatting blindly at your cuff. After fumbling for a moment, his thick, gloved fingers encircled your wrist, his thumb brushing faintly over your thudding pulse point.

Your feet nearly tangled beneath you, but then Mando found the button on your cuff, and he pressed on it until the lights at your temple were bright enough to blind. The beams of white light cut through the oppressive darkness of the jungle, and the canine creatures yelped in pain as they darted back into the shadows. You swung your gaze back and forth, your lamp dragging over the scenery like a burning laser, and the beasts whimpered as their tails disappeared into the bushes.

“Come on,” you groaned as you dragged Mando forward, and the two of you finally stumbled into the thick of the trees.

You didn’t know how much time passed as you and the Mandalorian struggled back to the ship. Seconds seemed like minutes, minutes hours. The moon appeared frozen in the sky above your head, and more than once you had the thought that you were already dead, and this was some messed up version of an afterlife where you were tortured for eternity.

In the end, though, you knew you were alive.

If you weren’t, it wouldn’t hurt so much.

“Left,” Mando slurred in your ear, half draped over your back, and your feet stuttered as you swung both of you around to the left.

The rifle screeched as it fired off into the darkness, followed by the yelps of dying dogs, and you hissed as the stock dug into your already sore shoulder. The pack snarled and gurgled as they encircled you, but they were hesitant now that you’d killed a majority of them. You wondered why they just didn’t give up, but you realized they could most likely sense you weakening, slowing.

Sweat ran in rivers down your face and spine, and every tendon in your body felt like it was on the edge of snapping. You could tell Mando was trying to take some of his weight off you, but he was becoming more and more unsteady with each step, his breath jagged and uneven as it rasped out of his helmet. He probably wouldn’t remain conscious for much longer, and if he passed out before you reached the ship, you were both dead. You couldn’t fully carry him, and you would not even entertain the idea of leaving him, so it was all or nothing.

Either you both reached the ship together, or neither of you did.

But, as you glanced up at the child’s pod hovering high over your head, you knew the second choice wasn’t really an option. The kid needed you. Needed both of you.

So, you were going to kriffing live, even if you had to break your body down to achieve your goal.

“Come on,” you encouraged as you stumbled over a tree root. “Come on, Mando. We’re almost there. Stay with me, okay?”

You had no idea if you were almost there or not. The homing beacon on your cuff was beeping steadily, but with all the howling, and the blood pounding through your ears, you couldn’t approximate how close you were to the Razor Crest.

“I’m… trying,” Mando mumbled, lifting his head just slightly. “B-Behind us.”

You cursed under your breath, letting the rifle dangle against your chest as you fumbled at your waist. Your fingers curled around a cold, metal orb, and you clicked the button in its center before you lobbed the grenade over your shoulder with all the strength you had left, which wasn’t much.

Then you staggered forward a little faster, dragging the bounty hunter behind you, and five seconds later, you heard the stun grenade go off, followed by the crackling of static and the yelping of beasts.

“That’s my last… stun grenade,” you panted, and the hair on your arms stood on end with all the electricity in the moist air. “I have some explosive ones… but…”

“But we’re not fast enough to get out of range in time,” Mando finished for you, his helmet bumping into the crown of your head as he sagged a little more.

“Yeah,” you huffed, but then a crunch to your right had you whirling and firing in one motion.

The canine yipped and screeched as the energy bolts tore through its chest mid-lunge, and it crashed into the ground at your feet as you staggered into a tree. The bark scraped painfully across your bare shoulder blades, and Mando groaned as you almost lost your grip on him.

“No,” you growled, tightening your arm around the bounty hunter and tugging you both upright. “Dank… farrik!”

The muscles in your arm burned hotly from the strain of keeping the Mandalorian on his feet, and you bit through your tongue to keep from crying out, the metallic taste of blood coating your teeth and whetting your parched mouth.

You stumbled forward blindly as you tried to work through the pain, but all the sudden, the claustrophobic darkness caused by the towering trees lessened a few degrees. You thought you were hallucinating it at first, but then you lifted your head a fraction and realized the trees were thinning out ahead of you.

And the beacon in your cuff was beeping like mad.

You were almost there. The Razor Crest was so close.

Of course, that’s when the snarling behind you reached new frantic heights, and you knew the pack was gearing up for one final assault.

“Mando, listen to me,” you gasped as you shifted to shove him against a tree, using your palm to keep him rooted at the sternum and on his feet.

He groaned as he listed there, mumbling something that didn’t sound like it was in Basic, but he remained upright, so you seized the opportunity to jab at the screen on your wrist. A moment later, the child’s pod swooped down from where it had been hovering near the canopy, and the bounty’s head dragged against the jungle floor with a dull crunch. You tweaked the carrier’s settings half blind, one eye on the encroaching darkness and the beasts therein, and then you grabbed the floating orb and shoved it against Mando’s gut.

“Ugh,” the bounty hunter grunted, his feet starting to slide out from under him.

“No, lean forward,” you rushed out, grabbing one of his shoulders and tugging him toward you.

Mando moaned as he collapsed onto the child’s pod, but since you’d cranked up the carrier’s power output to the max, the bounty hunter didn’t crash to the ground. Instead, he hung there half suspended, the pod whirling angrily from his added weight, his feet limp and dragging behind him.

“Mando,” you said as you tapped the side of his helmet, eyes still on the shadowy trees. “Mando, I need you to hold onto that pod as tight as you can, okay? Can you hear me?”

“Hear… you,” the Mandalorian just barely breathed, and you saw his arms wrap around the bottom of the silver carrier.

“Hold on like your life depends on it,” you instructed as you tapped at your wrist again. “Because it does.”

“What—” he started to ask, but he didn’t get to finish the question because the pod was suddenly surging forward, in the direction of the ship. The bounty’s head and Mando’s feet dragged loudly against the ground, but with one last jolt of power, the pod lifted away from the jungle floor and began to float away.

The pod would probably have just enough power to get Mando back to the ship before it died, but that was fine. That was just what you needed.

The jungle dogs howled and shrieked as they watched the Mandalorian drifting away through the trees, but as you listened to them start to skirt around you in his direction, you finally gripped the rifle with two hands and aimed into the dark.

Then you pulled the trigger, full-auto, and the shrieking of the energy bolts collided with the screeching of the canines and crescendoed into a deafening cacophony. You sprayed the jungle in wide sweeps as you slowly started to walk backward toward the Razor Crest, the rifle stock jolting into your shoulder in time with your racing heart. You just needed to give Mando time to reach the ship. You had programmed the pod to open the ramp at a certain distance, so they would just fly on into the cargo bay, and it would close behind them. Once they were safe, you could make a break for it and—

Suddenly, one of the shadows broke away from the trunk directly to your right, and you turned too late to see it was a slavering beast, its bifurcated jaw wide open and aimed for your throat.

“Ahh!” You stumbled back, trying to crane away from those jagged black fangs, but your feet got tangled up beneath you, and you came crashing down. A root slammed into one of your rear ribs so hard you heard and felt the snap as the bone gave, but you didn’t even have time to register that pain before the jungle dog smashed into your chest.

You instinctively shoved your arms outward, wedging the rifle between those deadly, snapping jaws. One of the beast’s jagged fangs scraped down your forearm as you tried to keep the bastard from swallowing you whole, and you screamed in fury and pain as blood spilled from your rending flesh.

Then you brought your knee up and smashed it as hard as you could into the jungle dog’s ribcage, and this time you felt its rib snap, and grim satisfaction burned like a wildfire through your blood. The warmth filled your limbs until you thought you would burst into flame, and you kicked the beast again and again as it yipped.

You were just starting to think you had the upper hand when the creature’s jaw started to close with a creaking sound of bone on metal, and your eyes widened in horror as the canine jerked its head back, taking your rifle with it. Then its bifurcated jaw snapped close with a horrible crunch, and the rifle shattered into shards of metal and sparks.

The beast roared in pain and rage as it tossed the remains of your rifle aside, but now you were acting on pure survival instinct, not thought, not logic, and you were already wrenching two grenades and a vibroknife off your belt when the nightmare dog finally settled its four milky white eyes on your face.

“Eat this, you bastard,” you snarled as its terrible jaws, rowed with serrated teeth, descended on you.

Then with one hand you stabbed the vibroknife into its neck just above the shoulder, and with the other you activated the grenades and shoved both of them down the jungle dog’s throat.

Warm blood sprayed down on you like humid rainfall, and you twisted the blade in to the hilt, feeling as it tore through flesh in a jittery fashion. The creature gagged and gurgled as its throat muscles convulsed around your other wrist for just an instant, but then you yanked your arms back with all your might, teeth catching on your elbow again, before you crashed into the dirt.

You were scrambling up in the next instant, barely listening to the creature heaving and choking behind you as you staggered forward into a clumsy sprint.

The rest of the pack howled at your back, but you were flat out running now, and you could see the Razor Crest through the trees. The pounding of paws on dirt sounded at your heels, and you couldn’t tell if you were gasping for breath or sobbing as you tore the final grenades off your belt, activated them, and let them fall through your numb fingers.

In the next instant, you broke through the tree line, and you could see the ramp of the Razor Crest, closing. You slapped at your wrist blindly as you sprinted as fast as you could, lungs heaving to the point of seizures, legs at the point of collapse. You didn’t know if the dogs were still right behind you, but the grenades…

You must have finally hit the right command because the ramp suddenly shuddered before it started to lower again, and you were ten meters away when the grenades went off like dominoes falling.

The first two explosions—of the grenades you shoved into the jungle dog—only shook the ground hard enough to make you stumble forward, but then the rest of them detonated much closer, and the combined shockwave hit you moments later and catapulted you into the air.

Thankfully, the ramp was just low enough that you scraped over it and crashed into the ship, smashing into a bulkhead with a dull crunch. The howling shrieks of dying dogs reached you through the ringing in your ears, and you felt a wave of heat hit you as the grenades engulfed the jungle trees. You curled into a ball on the cargo bay floor, your back to the ramp, and you just barely had the presence of mind to tap at your wrist one last time. A moment later, you heard the whirling of the ramp closing, and when it clanked shut a moment later, you rolled over onto your back and stared blindly above you.

You could just barely hear the roar of the building wildfire outside the ship, and the screeching of the jungle dogs died down within seconds. Your entire body—your lungs, your heart—heaved up and down as adrenaline pulsed through you like a bad hit of spice, and your ears ached in the relative silence.

Then the child cooed, and Mando groaned weakly, and you jolted upright like you had just been struck by lightning.

“Mando,” you rasped, flipping over onto your raw hands and bruised knees.

The bounty hunter half-sat, half-sprawled on the floor at the foot of his bunk. The foundling’s pod lay askew on the ground in front of the fresher like it had crash landed there when it finally died, but the child stood unharmed beside the Mandalorian.

Who was currently bleeding out on the floor of the cargo bay.

“Kriff!” You scrambled forward when you saw the spreading stain of blood below his leg, and as you drew closer, you realized his tourniquet must have been loosened when he collapsed.

The Mandalorian barely even seemed conscious at this point. His chest stirred only slightly beneath his beskar chest plate, and if it weren’t for the soft groans he was exhaling, you would have thought him dead.

“Mando!” you shouted as you shakily rose onto your feet and staggered the rest of the way to the fresher. Your hands were shaking as you tore one of the storage compartments open in search of a med kit, and your voice cracked when you said his name again. “Mando! Stay with me. We made it back. We’re on the ship. Just stay with me for a few more moments. Please.”

You crashed down onto your knees beside the bounty hunter, tearing the med kit open with bloody hands and broken nails. His helmeted head lolled onto the edge of the bunk behind him, and you could barely hear his raspy breaths through the modulator.

The child stood between Mando’s splayed boots, eyes large and frightened, but you couldn’t pay him any mind right now. Your frantic gaze darted between the bacta gel patch in your hand and Mando’s bleeding leg, and even though it felt crazy, you set the patch down for a moment and reached for the last vibroknife on your belt.

Suddenly, Mando jerked awake with a gasp, and you reached out without thinking, pressing your left palm over his heart and feeling his faint, fluttering pulse.

“Mando, I’m right here,” you murmured soothingly. “Keep breathing for me.”

The Mandalorian muttered your name as his head lolled toward you.

“Yes, that’s me, I’m here,” you said, rising up on your knees and leaning over him. The vibroknife glimmered in your hand, looking like a real-life glitch, but you shook off the unsettling feeling and fixed your eyes on Mando’s visor.

“Mesh’la,” the Mandalorian slurred. The word was soft and elongated to the point of sounding like gibberish, but his hand settled firmly on the wrist you still had pressed to his heart, like he was talking directly to you.

In any other situation, your own heart would be fluttering with a feeling you didn’t want to name, but as the bounty hunter’s blood started to soak into the knees of your pants, all you could feel was dread.

“I need you to stay still, okay?” you said as you dropped your hand from his chest to grip the top of his injured thigh. “I need to cut your pants away from the wound.”

“O… kay,” he muttered, and his hand fell to settle over yours again on his leg like he was grounding himself by touching you.

“Nice and easy,” you cooed, trying to blink the tears out of your eyes so you could see to cut through his pants and not his flesh. “I’ll have that bacta patch on in just a moment. Why don’t you talk to me, huh? Mando, talk to me. Tell me something. J-Just stay awake.”

“Aw…ake,” he whispered, but it sounded like he was just repeating you now, barely clinging to consciousness.

Your hand shook as you slowly sawed through the blood-soaked fabric, and an aborted sob rose in your throat. But you shoved your hysteria down, down, down, you had no time for it, you had to stay level-headed, steady-handed, Mando was counting on you, Mando was dying.

“Mando,” you choked as you finally pulled the cloth away from his wound. Three parallel gashes, each nearly five centimeters deep, ran from his hip crease and nearly all the way to his knee, and blood pulsed sluggishly from the wounds in crimson gobs. “Oh, Maker, Mando.”

You dropped the vibroknife with a loud clang as you lunged for the bacta patch, and out of your peripherals you could see the child waddling closer, standing in between the Mandalorian’s knees, the hem of his little robe slowly staining scarlet. You didn’t have the heart or the strength to shove the child away now, so instead you focused on settling the bacta patch over the bounty hunter’s grisly injuries.

Mando twitched and inhaled sharply as the bacta adhered to his skin, and you sent up a million prayers to the Maker that you had administered aid in time.

“There y-you go,” you sniffled, unable to stop the tears from coursing down your cheeks now. “I got the patch on, Mando. You’re going t-to be okay. You… you have to be okay. Do you hear me, Mando?”

You felt like a glitching holotape repeating his name over and over, but you couldn’t stop yourself. You wanted, no needed, him to stay awake, and every time you said his name, he seemed to jerk a little, like he’d been recalled from a long distance at the sound of your voice.

For a moment, there was only the faint, raspy wheeze of the Mandalorian’s breath through his helmet, but then he suddenly mumbled something.

“What?” You shuffled closer, slipping in blood. You practically had your ear pressed against his visor. “What was that, Mando? Say it again. Come on, talk to me, Mando.”

“Not… Mando.”

The words were stilted, sluggish, and you frowned in confusion. “Huh? I-I don’t understand.”

“My… name isn’t… Mando,” the bounty hunter struggled out, and his helmet tilted forward a fraction like he had lifted his head and was looking right at you. “It’s… Din. Din Djarin.”

The shock you felt was muted, distant and removed, like a crack that formed deep in the heart of a glacier, buried beneath the adrenaline, horror, and helplessness warring within you.

“Din,” you breathed, and the word somehow tasted like the exact moment Peli dug out your transmitter chip. It tasted like freedom, like infinite possibility, and you didn’t understand why.

Mando—no, Din, Din Djarin—exhaled heavily as his head thunked back against the bunk, and even if you couldn’t see it, you could tell his eyes were slipping closed. “I… wanted at least someone to know before I—”

“No,” you cut him off vehemently, reaching out to cradle the sides of his helmet like you were cupping his face. “No, you’re not going to die. Not now. Not when… no, do you hear me, Din Djarin? I will not allow you to die. Not when I worked my ass off to fix this ship and drag you back onto it by the skin of my kriffing teeth.”

“Mmmm.” Din’s head lolled in your grasp, the weight of him growing heavier and heavier. “I knew I would like the way… you say my name.”

Oh, Maker. He was nonsensical now, and terror gripped you by the throat and squeezed.

“Then stay awake, Din,” you begged, and your heart felt like it was on the edge of a great precipice. “Stay awake for me.”

“’m so… tired,” he sighed.

“I know,” you breathed as you guided his head back to rest against the bunk, and you couldn’t speak above a whisper because your voice was thick with tears. “I know, but just listen to my voice, Din. Just—”

You trailed off as the child suddenly waddled into your line of sight, and you dropped your gaze slightly to find him standing between the Mandalorian’s thighs, right next to the bacta covered wounds. The foundling stared up at the bounty hunter with a furrowed, seemingly determined expression, and then he closed his big brown eyes as he reached for Din’s leg.

“Oh, buddy, don’t,” you started, reaching out to stop him, but Din—Maker, his name felt delicious and forbidden even in your mind—weakly placed his hand on your wrist to stop you.

“It’s… okay,” he panted. “He can help.”

“Help?” You frowned down at the child. How could he help? Was this one of the “powers” the bounty hunter had vaguely mentioned before? You thought the foundling’s ability dealt with physically moving things, not healing, but honestly you could do for a miracle right about now.

The child gurgled a small noise as his three fingers settled over Din’s wound, and the Mandalorian inhaled sharply at the same time that you felt… something. You weren’t sure what it was, but it was like the very air shifted, became magnetic, charged somehow. The air stilled in your lungs as you feared even the barest breath would fracture this fragile spell you were bearing witness to, and you watched with wide eyes as the gashes on the bounty hunter’s legs began to close right in front of you.

Bacta worked fast… but not that fast.

Several still, endless seconds passed as the foundling healed the Mandalorian, but then just as soon as it began, the moment ended. The atmosphere snapped almost tangibly, time jolted back into motion, and the child suddenly started to pitch backward.

“Oh!” you gasped as you lunged forward, your hands cupping the baby and bringing him close to your body. The foundling’s eyes were closed, his face slack, but his little chest still moved up and down with breath.

“He’s okay.”

You snapped your head up, more tears spilling down your cheeks with the motion.

Din was sitting up a little straighter, and his helmet looked squarely at you. His voice sounded stronger, too, and you gaped at him in bewilderment.

“He’s okay,” the Mandalorian repeated when you continued to blink at him. “He usually… tires himself out when he uses his powers.”

“I d-didn’t know he could do that,” you breathed, and your tongue felt like a disembodied lump of flesh in your mouth. “I… wait, how do you feel? A-Are you okay?”

You suddenly realized how close you still were to the bounty hunter, practically kneeling in his lap, but you ignored this as your eyes darted back to his leg. It was a little hard to tell through the dried blood and blue bacta, but it looked like the three gashes had closed altogether, leaving behind faint pink lines.

“I’ll survive,” the bounty hunter sighed, thunking his head back against the bunk again, but he tilted it to the side to regard you still. “Thanks to you.”

“I-I’m not the one who just healed you with magic,” you stuttered incredulously as your cheeks flared hot, and you cuddled the child against your chest even though you realized you knew almost nothing about the apparently powerful foundling.

“No,” Mando said evenly, “but you did charge out into a dark, unknown, dangerous jungle, fight off a pack of wild dogs, and drag both me and the bounty back safely.”

“Well,” you snorted with an edge of hysteria in your voice, and you gestured to the discarded head that lay sprawled against the corner of the fresher. “I don’t know if I’d say he got here safely.”

Maker, you felt a little crazy, hollowed out and wrung dry by the sheer amount of emotions you’d just experienced in a span of a few minutes.

“I’m serious,” the Mandalorian replied. “You… saved my life. I am in your debt.”

“I-I’m not one for debts.” You shook your head to try and clear it, dropping your gaze to the foundling’s face, nuzzled against your sternum. “I don’t like to owe anyone or be owed. You’ve stuck your neck out for me before, so let’s just call it even… Din.”

You saw the bounty hunter freeze out of the corner of your eye, and you bit your cheek until you tasted blood.

You should have known that was too much to ask for.

“Sorry,” you muttered, peeking up at the Mandalorian through your lashes. “You… mentioned your name when you were—”

“I remember,” Mando said, cutting you off, but you couldn’t tell what he was thinking, his expression hidden as always and his voice pitched in a way you didn’t recognize, couldn’t identify.

“Right.” You cleared your throat, feeling the adrenaline starting to drain out of you and be replaced by every ache and pain you had ignored in lieu of survival. “Of course, I can just forget about it. You weren’t exactly in your right mind, after all. I’ll just… using ‘Mando’ is fine for me.”

The Mandalorian’s visor stared you down unflinchingly for what felt like an eternity. Then…

“You can… use my name, if you like,” he said haltingly, then quickly amended himself. “But only when we’re alone, on the ship. I… my name could be a dangerous thing in the hands of my enemies.”

You blinked in shock at the bounty hunter.

“A-Are you sure?” you asked, and you tried to keep the hope out of your voice, but you knew you failed miserably. “O-Only if you’re sure. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

You’d thought giving up his name had just been a delusional, dying declaration, and you didn’t want him to regret it. What you said had been true enough. You were fine using “Mando,” even if the traitorous feelings buried deep in your chest said otherwise.

“I’m sure.” The bounty hunter nodded minutely. “I… trust you.”

The admission flooded your whole body with warmth, and goosebumps broke out across your skin. You’d known the Mandalorian trusted you, he wouldn’t have left his ship or his foundling in your care otherwise, but hearing him say the words felt like something out of a dream.

“Okay, then.” You smiled, heart thudding against where the child was pressed into your chest. “Din.”

At the sound of his name, the tension in the Mandalorian’s worn body seemed to bleed out of him entirely, and he sighed as his helmet fell back again.

“Let’s get off this Maker-forsaken planet,” he grumbled.

“I second that,” you chuckled dryly before you slowly clambered to your feet, careful not to slip in Din’s tacky blood or jostle the sleeping baby in your arms. You very gingerly leaned over the prone Mandalorian to set the foundling in his hammock, but you hissed when the movement jarred the bruised or fractured rib in your back.

“What’s wrong?” Din asked below you, and he was so close you could feel the rumble of his modulated voice against the bare skin of your stomach, your tank top having lifted up a fraction.

“Nothing.” You took a quick step backward, trying to put distance between you and the bounty hunter, but now that he was no longer actively dying, you were starting to realize you were a little more beat up then you’d previously thought.

The moment you stepped back on your right leg, your hamstring seized up, and when you went to grab at it, you realized your fingers were a little numb. You glanced down and saw fresh blood dripping down your forearm—your blood, not Mando’s—and the sight of the wound seemed to flip a switch in your brain because a moment later, pain crashed over you like a wave.

“Dank farrik,” Mando cursed lowly as he tried to shove himself up.

“No, no, no, no,” you babbled, holding out your less injured left hand in a gesture to stop him. “Don’t get up so fast.”

“You’re hurt,” he grunted, and you could practically hear the scowl in his voice as he tilted his helmet back to stare at you. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m fine,” you stressed, even though you could still taste blood on the back of your tongue. “Also, you seriously have no room to talk. You were literally just bleeding out less than five minutes ago.”

“How much bacta do we have left?” he asked, completely ignoring your statement. “We should take care of your injuries before they get any worse.”

“Maker, you’re not even listening to me, are you?” You rolled your eyes as you leaned your shoulder against the bulkhead, but when the Mandalorian started to get up again, you held your hand out once more. “Alright! Alright. Let me at least set the coordinates to meet up with the client and get the ship in the air. I’m pretty sure the jungle is burning down around us as we speak anyway, so the sooner we lift off, the better.”

Din stared up at you silently for a moment like he wanted to argue.

“It will take me two minutes, max,” you reasoned with him. “I won’t pass out or die in that time frame, okay?”

“Fine,” he finally sighed and dropped his chin to his chest. “Just… be careful climbing up there.”

“I’ll try my best,” you snorted, wincing when pain flared through your body, but you still slowly made your way to the ladder.

It took you way longer to climb five rungs than it should have, but you thought not falling back into the cargo bay was a feat in itself, given how every muscle in your arms and legs twitched in pain. The blood pouring down your arm also did nothing to help your grip, nor did your scraped up palms, but you still made it into the cockpit relatively unscathed.

Dawn was just breaking beyond the windows, but you could barely see it through the black smoke that hung thick in the air. Guilt sat heavy in your chest as you saw the charred trees and the birds fleeing the flames overhead, but you told yourself you did what you had to in order to survive.

And it wasn’t like you were walking away scot-free, either. Your arm pounded painfully in time with your slowing pulse, and every time you took a deep breath, you became a little surer that the rib in your back was, in fact, broken.

You punched in the client’s rendezvous coordinates without sitting in the pilot’s chair since you knew if you sat down now there was no way you were getting back up. While you waited for the Razor Crest to power up, you cringed at the blood you were dripping all over the floor, but there was nothing for it at this point. The whole ship would need a thorough scrub down the next time you made a pit stop, but that was a future-you problem. Right now, you were mainly focused on getting off this planetoid and out into orbit without crashing and burning.

You held your breath as the pre-Empire ship rose up above the now smoldering jungle, but no warning alarms or messages sounded. The Razor Crest glided steadily upward, and you leaned heavily on the control panel as you breeched first the clouds and then the atmosphere. Entering orbit rattled the ship and you more than you cared for, but nothing broke off or burst into flame, and before you knew it, you were drifting through the familiar black void of space.

“Thank the kriffing Maker,” you sighed as the autopilot took over, and then you turned and shuffled back to the ladder, exhaustion starting to make the edges of your vision go fuzzy.

Or maybe that was blood loss?

You were a little less graceful with the descent than you were with the ascent, but you at least landed on your feet before you nearly collapsed into the fresher.

“Careful,” Mando’s modulated voice murmured, and suddenly his bare hand was on your left, uninjured elbow, skin against warm skin.

“What are… you doing up?” You frowned as you studied the Mandalorian, trying to make sense of what you were seeing as he led you to sit in the open mouth of his bunk.

“I told you,” he said, reaching over and grabbing another med kit from the fresher. “We need to take care of your injuries before they get any worse.”

“You should be resting,” you grumbled, but you were too tired to put any real heat behind your voice.

“I’m fine,” Din parroted your earlier proclamation back at you. “The kid did a thorough job.”

Then the bounty hunter sat on a crate before you, a crate that hadn’t been there before, and you realized he was no longer wearing a majority of his beskar, save the ever-present helmet, of course. Instead, a faded but clean pair of duraweave clothes covered his body, and the bloodied outfit you’d basically sliced off him was piled up between his feet. It also looked like he had haphazardly tried to mop up some of his blood with the dirty clothes, and you wondered if you’d been up in the cockpit longer than you thought.

“Hey,” you chuckled suddenly, and you distantly noted that your voice was a little slurred with exhaustion. “Looks like I’ll have some new rags after all.”

You giggled a little loopily as you gestured to the Mandalorian’s blood-soaked clothes and then to the blood and dirt your outfit was also currently coated in, but Mando didn’t seem as amused as you were.

“Let me see your arm,” he said as his helmet stared at you impassively, but then he paused and added, “Please.”

“It’s really not that bad,” you tried to argue as you held out your injured limb, but since it was still actively dripping blood, your words didn’t carry much weight. Then the bounty hunter gingerly gripped your wrist with tentative fingers, and you hissed through your teeth as pain lanced up your arm.

“Osik,” Din cursed in a language you didn’t recognize, slowly rotating your arm to take in the extent of the damage. “Did one of those dogs get you? The bastard almost flayed you to the bone in some spots.”

“Yeah, well I shoved two grenades down his throat, so I think we’re even,” you gritted out.

Din froze and lifted his head, your blood, sweat, and dirt-streaked face reflecting back at you from his visor. “You what?”

He must have really been on death’s door if he didn’t notice or remember you literally blowing the jungle dogs to Tatooine and back, but you just shook your head.

“Story time later,” you huffed, narrowing your eyes as you tried to breathe through the pain. “Bacta time now, please.”

“Right.” Mando jerked back into action, and in the next moment he was shifting into medic-droid mode.

Few words were shared between you two as the Mandalorian tended to your bumps and scrapes. Beside the deep lacerations on your forearm, your palms and knees were scraped bloody from tripping your way through a dangerous jungle in the dead of night. Your upper back was in the same condition since you’d been wearing a tank top when you decided to grapple with blood-thirsty hounds, and when Din accidentally brushed against your lower back, a small whimper squeezed out between your clenched teeth.

“This rib is probably broken,” the bounty hunter said, and there was a heavy quality to his quiet voice.

“Thought as much,” you grunted, trying to sit up straight without breathing too deeply. “Too bad we don’t have a full bacta tank to soak in.”

“I could always… drop you back off on Tatooine,” Mando muttered. “With the payment that I owe you, of course. Should be enough to pay for a full treatment and then some.”

You froze sitting there in the doorway of his bunk. The Mandalorian wasn’t looking at you, too busy double checking the bandage he’d wrapped over the bacta on your forearm, but you could see how rigid his body was as he awaited your answer.

“Do you… want to drop me back off on Tatooine?” you asked hesitantly, the breath shallow in your lungs. You could hear the child snoring softly in the hammock directly behind your head, and the thought of leaving him opened a dark pit inside you.

And that was nothing to say of the thought of leaving the Mandalorian. Of leaving… Din.

Now that you knew his name, the feelings you had done your best to ignore came surging up to the surface, that little voice whispering sweet nothings in your ear.

He told you his name. He trusts you. He wants you here. Maybe he wants you for more than just your skills.

You shoved the thoughts away as quickly as they cropped up, but that didn’t stop something small and fragile from unfurling in your chest. You almost wanted to call it hope.

“I—” Mando started, stopped, fidgeted on his crate, and then sighed as he scooted back a little to stretch out his injured leg. “No, I don’t want to do that. You’re a talented mechanic and… good company. I’ve… enjoyed having you on my crew.”

“Oh.” You blushed as the breath whooshed out of your lungs, leaving you feeling lightheaded and buoyant. “T-Thank you. Current circumstances notwithstanding, I’ve enjoyed being on your crew, too. A-And not just for the payment. Seeing new worlds, as dangerous as they are, was something I never thought I’d get to experience. So, even if the price to pay is a few bumps and scrapes, I think that’s a fair deal.”

“You have a skewed idea of ‘fair,’” the Mandalorian chuckled dryly as he reached down beside him, picked up a pair of his gloves, and slipped them back on.

“No kriff,” you snorted, the scar on the nape of your neck tingling. “But it works out in your favor, so I wouldn’t question it too much.”

“Fine.” Din held up his hands, but then he lowered them to his knees and cocked his head at you.

“What?” you asked when he didn’t say anything for a full minute. His gaze made your skin prickle even if you couldn’t see his eyes, and with each passing moment, you grew acutely more and more aware of how dirty and disheveled you looked and felt.

“Nothing,” he said, fingers flexing against his knees. “Just… thank you. Again. For saving me, the kid, the bounty, and the ship.”

You fidgeted in discomfort. You didn’t know what to do with praise and compliments, having never really received them before, so you shrugged your shoulders as you picked at the bandage on your arm.

“I told you, we’re even,” you muttered.

“It doesn’t feel that way to me,” he argued, and something about his tone told you he wasn’t going to let this go. “So, how about this: after we drop off this bounty with the client, you can pick the next planet we stop on.”

“Really?” Your eyes flicked up to the bounty hunter and widened. He’d never let you pick a destination before. You’d always just been along for the ride.

Mando nodded. “And make a list of parts and stuff you need to keep the ship running. We’ll stock up wherever we stop off next.”

“Okay.” You grinned as your heart did a little jig in your chest, and you stuck out your bacta-wrapped hand to shake on it. “You’ve got yourself a deal, Din Djarin.”

His name rolled off your tongue like a grain of sand spiraling down a dune, picking up momentum as it went, and it sent a shiver of pleasure straight down your spine. You knew you were playing a losing game with your own heart here, but as you stared into Mando’s visor, you also knew there was no stopping yourself now. You would just have to deal with the future heartbreak.

The Mandalorian tentatively reached out and grasped your fingers in his gloved ones.

“Deal,” he rumbled back.

“Good.” You nodded as a yawn cracked open your jaw, and you reached up to cover your gaping mouth and scratch your nose. “Now, given the client’s rendezvous coordinates, we should have a few days of rest before we reach our destination, and if you don’t mind, I think I’m going to start right now by taking a well-deserved nap.”

You made to stand up, but Din gently placed his hand on your shoulder to keep you seated on the edge of the bunk.

“Take the cot,” he said as he nodded behind you. “I’m going up to the cockpit to send a message to the client anyway.”

“Are you sure?” you murmured around another yawn.

“I’m sure,” he said, but then his gloved fingers were suddenly ghosting over the bridge of your nose. “By the way, you’ve got a little grease right here. Just thought you should know.”

You went cross-eyed as you tried to draw his finger into focus, but when he stepped back, you noticed the fingertips of his glove were shiny, and glancing down at the hand you used to shake his revealed that your palm bore the same black sheen.

“Hey, this is your grease,” you muttered indignantly, but then Din was pressing gently on your shoulder, guiding you to lay back on the cot, and you went willingly.

“Get some rest,” he said, turning off the bunk lights. “We’ll worry about cleaning up later.”

You tried to grumble something, but exhaustion was starting to tug at your limbs and eyelids, and your body unwound bit by bit as you buried your face in the bounty hunter’s pillow with no remorse.

A moment later, Mando’s boots were clomping up the ladder to the cockpit, but he left some of the cargo bay lights on and the door to the bunk open, like he somehow knew you were afraid of the dark.

The beginnings of a smile tugged at your lips, but you spiraled into sleep before you could fully process the thought.

#din djarin #din djarin/reader #din djarin/you #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian/you #the mandalorian/reader #pedro pascal #star wars #fanfiction #fanfic #my writings

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ageless-aislynn · 4 years ago

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Title: “Cupid’s Kiss” (Chapter 2/3) Author: @ageless-aislynn Characters/fandom: Caitlin Snow/Eobard Thawne | Harrison Wells,The Flash Summary: It's been a week since the Cupid's Kiss incident and the hallucinations have stopped. But in their place are very, very vivid dreams... Caitlin's going to get to the bottom of this mystery. Um, just give her a minute. Rating: Explicit Length: 3,476 Spoilers/warnings: Just like the first chapter, this is more explicit than most of my other fics, so if you're not interested in a higher level of explicitness/a plot revolving around sex, then please do skip this one. :D Also, please do not read if you are under the appropriate age for your country. Disclaimer: Definitely not mine but I do enjoy borrowing them just for a bit! ;) A/N: Okay, so my muse is hopping around between all of my WIPs right now, what can I say? I'm just trying to keep up! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ;) That said, this one has been waiting for chapter 2 for quite a while. I hope to have the next and final chapter ready to go soon(-ish). ;)

If you read, I hope you enjoy! ♥♥♥

PS - The link has been messed up ever since I started trying to post it here. It SEEMS to be working now but if it’s not, here’s another direct link to chapter 2. If that doesn’t work either, please let me know. Thanks! :D

#the flash #snowells #reversesnow #eobard thawne x caitlin snow #aislynn's fics #aislynn's fic

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ve1vetyoongi · 5 years ago

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lay down your weakness | jhs

pairing: hoseok x reader

genre: smut, angst, fluff here and there

au: bestfriend!hobi, friends to lovers (kind of)

word count: 6.5k

summary: Hoseok had imagined this moment more than enough times. Except in his head it took place somewhere more romantic than the back seat of his car and you always loved him back.

warnings: dom/sub themes, dom!hobi, sub!reader, hoseok is a sweetheart tho, dry humping, fingering, multiple orgasms, size kink, unprotected penetrative sex, semi public sex, possessiveness, but also kinda tender fucking, some dirty talk, creampie, pining and a whole lotta angst (i warned you.)

a/n: this fic is based on the song “howling” by RY X. i hope you enjoy! <3

playlist: visit my playlist page and select “lay down your weakness”. (links to be added later)

When Hoseok's phone vibrated on his night stand at an ungodly hour of the morning, his heavy eyes had widened at the sight of your name lighting up the screen.

He wasn't expecting you to call tonight. You'd texted him nearly eight hours ago -- not that he was counting or anything -- to tell him you were leaving for your date with some guy from one of your classes, even sending him a mirror picture to prove it that made his breath hitch when his eyes glossed over the black dress which hugged your figure just right.

You were always asking if you looked okay. He told you that you looked lovely. Even sent one of the silly little thumbs up emojis, as if to say go get your man like a supportive friend should.

But what he really wanted to say was that you looked perfect in that dress and that you would have no trouble catching Jungkook's eye looking like that. After all you managed to catch Hoseok's eyes in your sweats and one of his over sized jumpers playing games at midnight on his couch.

Except that is the exact opposite of what you're supposed to say to your best friend, so he swallowed the words like he always did.

Anyway, he'd turned in for an early night after that, hoping to get the image of Jungkook's hands stripping you out of that sinful dress out of his mind before it led to even more scandalous images of you without the dress, sat in Jungkook's lap and wishing it were him underneath you. His mind liked to taunt him, saying that it really could have been him if he hadn't left it too long to make a move, falling so deep into the friend zone that he knew there was no way back out.

So receiving a call from you this late at night surprised him to say the least.

Sleepy fingers fumbled to hit the green answer button before you rang off on the other end of the line, the selfie you had forced him to take way back when your hair was long and his hair was blonde that he had set as your contact picture disappearing, quickly replaced by the sounds of your sniffles crackling down the line and suddenly he was upright in bed.

"Can you come pick me up?"

"What happened?"

"Don't wanna talk about it." Another sniffle, Hoseok already throwing a hoodie over his pajamas.

"I'm on my way. Hang tight."

A pang of worry throbbed in his chest as he envisioned you stood shivering somewhere on the side of the road while he hastily shoved his feet into the first pair of shoes he found. Or at least that's what he told himself it was as he started his car, bumping up the heat for when you would slide into the seat next to him.

Because somewhere deep down, he knew the reason he was speeding down city roads at 01:37 as the dashboard clock liked to remind him, was simply because he wanted to be the one to tell you everything was going to be okay. A part of him was even a little glad that things hadn't worked out with Jungkook. And he hated himself for it.

It was like his eyes were alert to you, spotting your hunched figure leaning against a scuffed wall outside some scummy bar before he was even close enough to see the tears streaking your cheeks. You didn't give a little wave like you usually did when he pulled up, no coy smile making his heart do little flips, just that same pang of miserable sympathy in equal measure to his niggling guilt. Instantly he knew that this one was bad.

Still, he leaned across the center console and pushed the door open in a welcoming gesture for you to hop on in like he always did because you said it was gentlemanly and he was a sucker for praise when it came from you.

"Y/N?" He asked simply, expecting a hello or a reassuring smile at the least.

But when you slumped into the passenger seat, bare arms hugging your torso, he was met with nothing but a glum vacant stare.

While you usually seemed to fill the room with your presence, the way your eyes crinkled when you laughed or the way you hummed along to the radio under your breath enough to brighten his mood instantly like a perfect spell. Now you seemed small as you pressed your forehead to the window and watched the blurry orange glow of streetlights pass by with watery eyes.

The funny ache in his chest was back but this time it was an overwhelming longing to reach out and hold you, wipe away the tracks that stained your cheeks. But he feared that if he did you would shatter into a million pieces right in front of him so he tightened his grip on the steering wheel until the veins in his hands strained in the dark and focused his eyes on the road.

Unspoken words were thick in the air. Silence didn't usually bother him, not with you. You spent copious amounts of time in each others quiet company all the time. It was comforting.

Not this, though. Even the hum of the car engine and the click of the indicators seemed deafening. But he knew you well enough to know that pushing you to talk wouldn't make a difference and you'd let him in when you were ready. His job was just to be there when the time came, like a best friend should be.

Hoseok wasn't sure if he was supposed to be dropping you off at your place — honestly the thought of leaving you alone when you were still shaking with muffled sobs made him sick to his stomach — but it didn't feel right to take you back to his apartment either.

So he let the wheels of the car drive a journey every inch of which he had burned to memory, until he was pulling into the far most parking space in a darkened lot, otherwise vacant due to the hour, that overlooked the sea and the little slip of beach beside it.

All concerns were out of the window now. Hoseok didn't care if it was late and he should have been sleeping or that he was going to be tired at work tomorrow. This place was only called upon for special occasions. Or emergencies.

It was your place. Where the two of you came when you received good news or bad news; wanted to laugh or wanted to cry; when it was sunny or when it was raining; when you got your college acceptance letter or the day Hoseok's dog died to name a few.

Hoseok cut the engine, plunging you into complete silence, apart from the tranquil crash of waves which seemed to comfort you somewhat.

If he strained to look over he dashboard he could see the overgrown steps which led down onto the pebbled sand, water beyond it black with the reflection of the cloudy night sky, apart from a slither of moonlight which glistened across its surface.

Hoseok always thought it felt different here at night. Melancholy. You said you liked it better without the bustle of people — it was a popular spot for couples which always made Hoseok burn from the inside out with a yearning to hold your hand like they did — more so now it was just you and him and the rolling waves.

After a few long minutes of watching the tide, you finally permeated the hush with a shaky sigh.

Hoseok wanted to wrap you in his arms there and then like he usually would without hesitation. But something felt different so he refrained. Spoke tentatively instead. "Are you okay?"

You scoffed and he worried he'd said the wrong thing but then again it was the most he'd gotten out of you since you'd left the bar. "I'm pretty shit, actually."

Moonlight highlighted the way you threw your head back against the headrest in self reproach, pressing your knuckles to your eyes but failing to stop the fat tears that slipped out anyway.

Hoseok bit his lip. "Want to talk about it?"

"Turns out the date was just a stupid bet with one of his friends." Your laugh was hollow, shake of your head sorrowful. "We didn't even make it to movies before he was running off with some other girl he met at the bar"

Hoseok's heart shattered. He knew first hand how excited you had been for this stupid date; you'd been blabbing on about it all week. About how much you liked Jungkook. About how much he liked you.

"Fucking bastard." Hoseok gritted, fists clenching as he envisioned all the ways he could fuck up Jungkook's pretty face for making you hurt. "You're better than him, Y/N."

"But I'm not!" A hand slammed on the dashboard, making Hoseok jolt when your voice raised incredulously. "Jungkook was supposed to be the best thing that ever happened to me but he doesn't want me, Hobi. No one ever does."

I want you. The words died on his tongue before they could be spoken, Hoseok sucking in a breath as he mulled over something more appropriate instead.

"Don't be ridiculous," the anger lacing Hoseok's tone made you finally loll your head in his direction, taking in the way he tensed beneath your gaze. "Everybody wants you around here."

It was true, at least in Hoseok's eyes; he had to deal with sleazy men looking you up and down when you danced with him in a strictly PG fashion on nights out or the campus guys who always interrupted your conversations while you ate lunch together. Even he caught himself staring at you from time to time. Or all the time, actually.

"Then explain why I'm some fraternity joke, Hobi?" Tears were salty on your tongue, voice unnaturally croaky. "Twenty bucks was all I was worth."

Hoseok's hand flew out to squeeze your hand comfortingly before he could think better of it. When you didn't pull away he had to fight to string a sentence together, too caught up in the way your hand felt soft beneath his larger calloused one.

"You're worth so much more than that." His words were laced with a sincerity that made the hurt ache a little less. "Everything. To me."

You sniffed, lacing his fingers with yours and letting the drag of his thumb across your knuckles soothe the ache in your temples from the cheap alcohol at the bar and the tear in your heart.

"Sometimes I think that nobody will ever love me."

The confession lay heavy in the air, nearly making Hoseok choke, or perhaps that was the I LOVE YOU's which were fluttering against his ribs like a bird in a cage.

"You know that's not true." The words were hoarse, Hoseok barely able to think through the blood pounding in his ears when you rested your head on his shoulder. From this angle he could see the rise and fall of your chest, slightly calmer now. The lashes pressed to your cheeks which glistened with a dampness in the dim lighting. And the perfect curve of your lips which he could easily capture between his own if he just cupped your cheek and leaned down a little -- no, definitely not thoughts that you should be having about your best friend, especially not like this. Selfishness won out though as he still could not bare to push you away, pushing his face into your hair instead and chastising himself for savoring the moment.

"I love you." It was barely a whisper against your temple and it should have dissipated on his tongue like the sea foam below but the way you hugged your knees to your chest filled him with an unstoppable desperation to make your hurt go away, even if it would twist the ache in his own heart like the point of a knife.

Your sigh was soft. "Yeah, but not like that."

If only you knew...

A hard swallow, another twist of the knife. "How is it any different?"

You averted your gaze and every second that ticked by in silence made his pulse race. Until you were pulling his face into your hands carefully, eyes zoning in on his parted mouth determinedly and before he could question your intentions his lips were pressed against yours in a hard kiss that made his head spin with a lethal mixture of relief and infatuation.

The plushness of your lips was softer than anything he had ever imagined late at night while you slept in his bed and he slept on the couch. It was barely a delicate brush at first, warm breath mingling with his before your lips were molding to his like you knew them well.

The sour taste of vodka lingered on your tongue as it swiped languidly over his bottom lip and he was silently glad he brushed his teeth before picking you up, never expecting to have his mouth on yours ever let alone tonight of all nights.

You broke away with a gentle pressure on his chest, teeth sinking into his lower lip before letting it go with a barely audible pop. When your eyes fluttered open, Hoseok was stiff, lips slightly more swollen than before and you had to admit he looked good with his hair still tousled from sleep and his chest rising with labored breaths.

"That." You murmured, releasing his hand from yours to swing your leg over his lap, mounting yourself on his thighs and ignoring the way the steering wheel pressed into your back. Hoseok's legs parted instinctively. "You don't love me like that."

Hoseok couldn't help the way his breath hitched when your groin landed in his lap, a red flush creeping up his neck when he felt his own crotch begin to stir at the visual image -- his dreams literally coming true -- squeezing his eyes shut and focusing on his ragged breathing to stop himself filling out his pants and making things awkward between you.

"What are you doing?" It was all but a rasp, tongue snaking out to dampen his lips, head pounding with alarm bells which couldn't quite drown out the desire warming in his chest.

"You said that you love me..." His nod was violent, never an action more truthful. You noticed the way he trembled beneath you when your fingers trailed down the front of his hoodie, testing the waters. "Can I trust you to help me forget?"

He very nearly groaned when he felt your breath ghost hotly across his neck to whisper the insinuation into his ear with what you hoped sounded like confidence, seductiveness but what Hoseok recognised as torment and recklessness.

"You can always trust me." You knew he meant it, though you didn't know it stretched as far as this. Neither did he, usually confident in his own self control but not now, as you leaned down to capture his mouth for the second time and maybe the last for all he knew so why not at least try to enjoy it?

Except before your lips could touch and he knew he wouldn't be able to stop himself, Hoseok hesitated.

Deep down he knew that you didn't love him back, that this was the sadness or the alcohol or both talking and that he should tell you to think about if this is what you really wanted and drop you home instead. But the way you looked at him with a dark intensity, almost pleading, shattered and fragile, made him want to do whatever he could to put you back together. He knew that he could make you feel good, even if it would be a temporary reprieve and it would hurt him more in the long run.

But mostly, Hoseok was a selfish person. It was too tempting to let himself believe you wanted him truly in this moment. He was weak and he couldn't resist.

He leaned in a little closer, your foreheads touching. Dear god, he couldn't fight his thoughts, too enamored with the fact that you were really sat in his lap right now, the smell of the perfume he knew all too well overwhelming his senses.

"Okay." Was what his shaky voice managed to stutter. "If you're sure?"

"I'm sure." It was spoken against the corner of his mouth, your fists tangling in his hoodie and pulling him up to meet your mouth in a kiss more intense than the last that made you fizz with an excitement that dulled the hollowness because he was so so warm, pulling you from the cold water in which you drowned and keeping you afloat in his comforting embrace instead.

You kissed him like you always wanted to be kissed, with an urgency that told him how much you wanted -- needed -- to feel him everywhere, a burning in your lower belly that had you tangling your fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck, arching into his chest and seeking a further closeness.

It was hot and breathy and the most sensual sensation Hoseok had ever experienced when your tongue pressed against his with an electric curiosity, steeping him in a passion that set him alight, the flesh of his cheeks burning where your lips caressed them and where your exhales tickled his nose.

His hands hovered nervously over your body, not quite sure where they were supposed to go, and when you smirked into the kiss and pressed his hands firmly to your inner thighs, he quickly got to work rubbing circles into the bare skin which peeked out from beneath your dress. Even when a blush crept onto his cheeks as his fingers brushed the edge of your lace panties, making him forget how to move his lips for a second and clashing your teeth together awkwardly.

Hoseok still couldn't quite believe this was really happening and he mentally chastised himself for messing up. This had to be perfect. Something told him there wouldn't be an opportunity for a do over.

You didn't seem to care though, soft laughter tinkling into his mouth as you wrapped your arms around his neck and found his lips again in the darkness like a perfect puzzle piece. The sound was simultaneously the prettiest and the hottest thing he'd ever heard when it faded into a shallow whine when your clothed heat bumped against his hardness lightly.

"Shit, y/n." Even Hoseok couldn't curb the growl that left his throat when you started to grind in circles against his crotch, the agonizingly slow pace not helping the half hard situation he had going on.

By this point your panties were starting to stick to your folds, a lewd wet spot appearing on Hoseok's grey sweats where you tried to gain some friction on your swollen clit which throbbed for attention every time you felt his cock twitch through the fabric.

"You're so hot." He couldn't help it. The real thing was better than any of the ways he imagined you getting off above him when he was alone with his own hand wrapped around his cock.

The husk in his voice went straight to your heat. If the tent in his pants was anything to go by, his own hips stuttering up to meet the pace of your thrusts, Hoseok wanted you and the knowledge was enough to have you clutching at his hoodie strings, hole clenching for him to fill you up and make you feel whole again. Feel wanted.

Hot palms were kneading the flesh of your ass now, sliding beneath your dress until the fabric was bunched up around your waist. The way Hoseok's eyes widened at your black underwear was cute, distracting you from the reminder that you'd worn them especially for Jungkook. His mouth fell agape when you guided his hand underneath the waistband. "Like them?"

"Love them." He'd seen your underwear a few times before by accident, when you changed at his place and chucked one of his huge hoodies over top of your otherwise bare body, the image burned into his memory enough to get him hot and bothered, mouth dry as he remembered that this time it was a purposeful display, all for him.

The smirk on your lips was wiped away when the feeling of his hand cupping your mound made you whimper, skin on skin much better than the rough friction from his sweats.

Hoseok let out a gasp of his own when the pads of his fingers circled your hole teasingly, surprised to find your arousal already drenching his fingers and making his cock throb painfully against his pants but he wanted this to be about you so he kept his thighs firmly planted to the seat. The idea that it was him who got you so wet was enough to satisfy him anyway. He never thought he, your best friend, could have this sort of effect on you.

"P-please." Impatience was clouding your vision, falling forward to grip the car seat when Hoseok's knuckle dragged your arousal up your slit, brushing briefly across your swollen clit and making you jolt at the electric touch. "Need you so bad, Hobi."

The way you slurred over your words, eyes squeezed shut and chasing the feeling of fullness between your legs made him groan. Even more so the broken way his name escaped your lips, practically begging him to touch you. As much as he would have liked to tease, make you writhe and plead for his fingers, he was too curious to see how fast he could make you fall apart.

The pads of his fingers made quick work of your clit, rubbing fast circles into the bud which made you buck off his lap, head thrown back and exposing the expanse of your neck which Hoseok longed to mark up all nice and pretty and claim as his own but he knew you weren't his so he refrained.

The strangled noise which left you when he slipped his middle finger inside you, promptly followed by a second, nearly tipped him over the edge, clasping the base of his cock through his sweats before he blew his load right then and there at the sheer visual of you using his hand to fuck yourself nice and slow by bracing yourself on the seat behind him.

Not that he could really see much in the dark what with with your panties obscuring your core from view but the lewd squelch as he curled his fingers inside you and the shaky breaths next to his ear punctuated by a string of blissful moans was enough to have him palming himself a little too excitedly, momentarily losing sight of his guilt and succumbing to the moment.

"Mmf, Hoseok gonna cum." The warning only encouraged him more, his wrist snapping at a sinful pace while his thumb toyed with your clit, alternating applying a firm pressure and rubbing it back and forth when he felt it throb deliciously against the pad of his finger.

"Let me see you, baby." There was something about the way he coaxed you through your high, almost commanding as he challenged you to fall over the edge that made the coil in your stomach tighten and suddenly your vision was fading to black and you could barely hear his encouraging but authoritative rasps as your head lolled against the window. "Cum for me, that's it."

He watched with an apt fascination as you came around his fingers, like he'd never seen anything like it before; and it was true, Hoseok was sure you had never looked so pretty and he had never felt so alive as in this moment with you clenching around his fingers, the pretty sighs fogging up the glass all his doing.

The emptiness inside you was back when he slipped out his fingers and wiped them on his hoodie, careful not to stain you with any of your arousal when he wrapped you in his arms, hearts beating in time now.

You stayed like that for a few moments. Him rubbing soothing circles into your back and trying to comprehend what just happened, nerves kicking in at your silence. You breathing in the scent of his woody cologne as your breathing softened.

"Are you okay?" He finally whispered, unable to stop his thumb from tracing your bottom lip when you sat back to look at him, wide eyed and still shaking from the come down of your orgasm.

"Mhm." Your nod was tentative, a funny warmth spreading across your chest at the way his eyes lit up, giving away the grin he was biting his cheek to suppress. "Remind me again why we haven't done this before?"

He stiffened. Because this means more to me than you will ever know...

The tension creeping into the cracks between your bodies made you shift, surprised when you brushed over something which made Hoseok groan.

Adrenaline made you flush as you reached between your legs to grip him through his pants curiously.

"You're still hard." You bit your lip. It drove him crazy.

"Don't worry about me." His laugh was breathy but it faltered when you squeezed his length over the fabric. "I-I'm fine like this."

His cock felt huge in your grip and another bout of lust pooled in your stomach when you realised that you could just slide your panties to the side, loosen the strings of his sweats and easily ride him right there, sure that his girth would stretch you out just how you liked it. And maybe, just maybe, fill the emptiness for good.

"Wanna feel you, though. All of you." Hoseok felt himself melt at the pout on your lips, putty in your hands. Whatever you wanted he'd let you do it. Even if you still weren't his, he knew in that moment that he was irrevocably yours. "Please?"

Your hands found his waistband and he gripped your wrists firmly. You silently wondered what it would be like if he pinned them above your head and had his way with you. But then you caught his concerned expression.

"Are you sure about this? Once we do this we can't go back."

Hoseok still didn't let go after you gave an affirming nod, wanting verbal consent. "I want you, Hoseok."

You could tell that broke him by the fucked out look on his face.

Weak. He was weak when it came to you. And, as he was learning, weak for the way you shimmied his sweats around his thighs and whimpered when his girthy length slapped against the expanse of toned stomach which peeked from below his hoodie. You'd always expected him to be big, the one time you caught him sneaking out of bed after one of your movie nights with a loud and proud boner confirmation enough. But the real thing made you burn with a hunger to sink onto his already leaking cock.

Your small palm was cold when it finally wrapped around his throbbing cock, the sensation a euphoric relief from both the neglect and the years of lusting after this moment. He threw his arm over his eyes, losing himself to the sensation and letting his hips buck into your touch.

Now he was actually here he couldn't think of anything other than the slow slide of your palm down his length, how he wanted to husk that his cock was made for your hand but he knew it wasn't true so he pressed his lips together and listened to the sharp huffs of air which pushed through his nose with every twist of your palm around his engorged head.

"Wait!" Hoseok lurched forward suddenly, fingers digging into your shoulder, face buried and panting in your chest. "Gonna blow my load if you keep that up."

"You don't want to?"

Strands of his hair stuck to his damp forehead and he shook them out of his eyes. His sudden grip on your hips was bruising as he pulled you down into his lap, breath hot against your neck. "Wanna see you fall apart on my cock first."

Hoseok had no idea were the sudden surge of confidence came from. The hormones perhaps or maybe he was just like any other guy, losing himself once he got a hand around his cock. It definitely shouldn't have been the fact that he had his best friend, the girl of his dreams, in his lap and his head was swimming with thoughts of how right this felt even though it was supposed to be so wrong.

"Oh. O-okay." Your core was pulsing again, the authority in Hoseok's voice different from how you were used to. You were quickly realizing you liked the way he smirked when you writhed at his words and braced yourself on his shoulders to pull your panties to the side, ready to just sink down onto his cock then and there.

"Don't." It was firm, commanding. Made you shiver. "Back seat. Now."

You obeyed, practically throwing yourself through the gap in the seats with anticipation, missing Hoseok's warmth during your brief separation until he was hovering over you with a hunger in his eyes that took your breath away. Like he wanted to devour you completely. If he'd asked, you would have let him.

"T-take this off." You mumbled, tugging at the bottom of his hoodie which he pulled over his head with his t-shirt in tow. Hands instantly trailed up his chest, taking in the slight firmness of his shoulders in the dark, not quite remembering when your best friend gotten this broad. There was a pang in your chest. It felt safe here with him, like nothing was wrong with his strong form hovering over you.

By the time he was throwing the pile of fabric in the front seat you were working on your panties, Hoseok's eyes darkening with lust as he watched you kick them off and slide the thin straps of your dress down your arms.

The night air was cool against your nipples, making you gasp. It was a small bliss but you were thankful you didn't wear a bra when Hoseok's bare chest pressed against you skin on skin, instantly warming you.

The drum in Hoseok's chest intensified when he took in your bareness for the first time. His imagination had done no justice. He wanted to commit every inch of you to memory; the perfect swell of your breasts, each soft rise and fall of your chest, soft thighs squeezing around his waist as he gripped the flesh of your ass with a roughness he could no longer curb. Skin warm and flushed and shivering lightly with every delicate touch of his fingers, hair fanned out on the seat like a halo.

Hoseok wanted to say that you were perfect, that he felt like the luckiest man on the planet right now with you laughing at him breathily from where you hid self consciously behind your fingers, a shyness he didn't understand when you looked like this.

He wanted to say that he loved you. To open the car window and scream it into the salty air so that every crashing wave and every grain of sand and every droplet of rain which had started to best down on the car knew it.

But the words wouldn't come so he simply placed a careful kiss to your cheek, roaming downwards and mumbling against your jaw. "Don't hide from me."

The dip of your collar bones proved too enticing to resist, his lips attacking the slightly damp skin and sucking harshly until you were left with a plethora of purple bruises across your neck, the way his teeth grazed your flesh and his tongue laved the burn making your core ache. It was passionate and hungry but somehow tender, as if he wanted to worship every inch of you.

"Hoseok!" You gasped when he found the sweet spot behind your ear as easily as if he had done it a million times before. Like he knew it was there. "What are you doing?"

"Mine." The single word was growled against your jaw line as Hoseok pressed a series of kisses up to your chin, skipping your lips when they parted in waiting in favor of leaving another pretty bruise on the opposite side of your neck. "You hear me? All mine."

Maybe you were lost to the moment or maybe Hoseok's possessive side was the reason your heart started to race, moaning unabashedly now. "Y-yours! I'm yours."

Hoseok couldn't tell if the words went straight to his heart or to his rock hard cock.

Something inside him snapped and he just couldn't hold back any longer, hands running up and down your sides as he kissed down to your breasts, taking a nipple into the heat of his mouth and smirking when you arched into the touch. "Look at you, getting all worked up from just my mouth."

Hands spread your legs roughly and you were at his mercy, enjoying the way he hummed in admiration at your glistening folds.

"All for you." You breathed, believing your words wholeheartedly.

Hoseok's fingers found your sticky clit, stroking with his fingertips lightly. "All for me." He flushed with pride.

"Please fuck me now."

The words he'd always imagined spilling from your lips, breathier in real life he noted. It made him wonder how the other three more sentimental words he wanted to hear would sound.

"Since you asked so nicely." Nerves wracked Hoseok's frame when he realised that this was actually happening, hands shaking as he gripped the base of his cock to line it up with your clenching entrance.

When he finally pushed inside, your warmth swallowing his cock until his hips were flush to yours, it felt like you were finally whole.

The stretch burned, but it soon faded to something close to bliss as you felt every inch of his cock drag against your velvety walls, the head hitting so deep inside you that each thrust took your breath away. It grazed your sweet spot just right, like your bodies were made for one another.

Hoseok didn't give you much time to adjust, wanting to see the way your face twisted with every thrust. Wanting to see how quickly his cock could reduce you to a fucked out mess. "Bet he couldn't fuck you like this."

"W-What?"

"Jungkook." Hoseok licked his lips, trying not to cum when his words made you clench around his sensitive cock. "You were made to take my cock."

"Fuck, Hoseok."

You followed his gaze to where his length slipped out of you, glistening with your arousal, Hoseok running the head through your slit to nudge your clit before it was disappearing into your entrance again. "Look at you, taking my cock so well, hm?"

"Yours." Tears sprung at the corners of your eyes, overwhelmed by the fullness and his sinful mouth. "Only yours."

"Bet he feels so fucking stupid for missing his chance to feel this pretty pussy."

Arms wrapped around his neck, fingers cupping his face and slotting your lips together. Your eyes were shut and it was almost instinctive — did he lean in or did you? — expressing how much you wanted him and how good he was making you feel with a long press to his puckered mouth that felt like rain on a hot summer evening, water breaking a dam. Relief. Like falling into one another's skin.

And every time your hips met skin on skin and you sighed into his mouth, Hoseok felt his heart swell. Even with the expletives slipping past his lips every now and again, he fucked you with a fondness that consumed every inch of his being, one which he felt when he saw you from across the room or when you turned up at his door unexpectedly in the middle of the night.

Love. He hoped you could feel it with every roll of his hips because he couldn't make the words come out.

Then you were reaching a second high, eyes rolling back and soft mewls of overstimulation caressing his ears as you clenched impossibly tight around him and he fell over the edge alongside you, face falling into the crook of your neck as he coated your walls.

In the few moments after, with you pulling him close and his chest pressed to yours, he could feel your erratic heart beat against his skin; and Hoseok swore the final pieces of his own heart fluttered straight out of his chest and into your palms.

Just you, him, and the rolling waves that swelled and crashed achingly in time with every pump of his heart.

But all good things have to end eventually. It was late. You were tired. He had work in the morning. You weren't in love.

There were tissues in the glove box and he helped you clean up, pulling his hoodie over your head when you started to shiver. If you closed your eyes and breathed in his scent it was like his arms were still around you. Hoseok never complained when his own arms prickled with a chill at the loss of your warm body pressed to his.

Then your head was on his shoulder again, both arms wrapped around his waist as you gazed off across the ocean, breathing soft with a hazy smile resting on your lips. The you he was used to back somewhat, if he ignored how much better he knew you now than ever before.

"I love you, you know." Hoseok sounded choked. He didn't mean to.

"I know." A few beats of silence. "Thank you. For making me feel better."

His inhale was shaky as he brushed a few strands of hair from your face, unable to stop the corners of his lips turning up when you glanced up at him through your lashes even despite the hollowness in his chest. "How about I take you to see that movie instead, huh?"

"I'd like that."

And for a blissful moment Hoseok thought that things might be different now.

He clung to that maybe for the short drive home and while he carried your sleeping form into your apartment, letting himself in with the spare key he kept on his keychain and when he tucked you into bed with your shoes placed neatly beside the door.

He believed it even harder when you gave him a sleepy kiss goodbye.

And even when you sent him a mirror picture nearly a week later and he said you looked lovely like he always did while he hoped and he hoped that your date with Park Jimin would be as disastrous as the last, he maintained a slither of hope.

Because one thing would never be different: Hoseok was weak when it came to you.

#btssmutclub #bts smut #hoseok smut #bts #hoseok fanfiction #hoseok angst #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #bts imagine #hoseok imagine #bts scenario #hoseok scenario #kwordsmiths #btswriterscollective #<3 love

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snowdice · 3 years ago

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Big Bang (Sort of) Editing Story [Day 68]

Had an early doctor’s appointment today so I’m tired, and the tests done made things feel worse, so idk how long this is going to go, but I want to get at least a bit of my work done. Also brain is not running at full capacity... so if I just disappear it means I forgot I was doing something, laid down, and fell asleep and/or zoned out.