#and doing it. because she has nowhere else to go

[corkinavoid]

Thank you, @aceinacorner, for this gem:

You are the inspiration for

DPxDC Ring of Rage? More Like Ring of Engage [pt. 3]

[<- part 2]

Duke narrows his eyes.

He swears Tim was not in the Cave just five seconds ago, and yet, in the brief moment when Duke wasn't looking, he just materialized out of motherfucking aether. Smelling like Chinese food and holding a chicken skewer that looks so good that Duke's mouth waters.

"Can I have a piece?" He asks, the divine smell of food overriding the urge to ask 'where did you get it' or 'how did you get here'.

Tim nods, smiles, and hands Duke the whole skewer before going for the elevator.

Is it Duke's hallucination, or is he really humming something as he goes?.. Actually, that doesn't matter. The chicken tastes even better than it smells, and Duke is perfectly willing to keep his mouth shut in exchange for food.

You don't talk with your mouth full, after all.

~☆~

Cass watches Tim over the table. She hasn't heard him coming into the dinner room - no steps in the hall, no rustle of clothing or breathing. It's like the boy has somehow appeared right in front of the door out of nowhere before entering.

What's more, he seems obviously not hungry, picking at his food with an absent, if a bit dreamy, expression. Granted, Tim always picks at his food, but Cass can see the difference between 'Tim's mind is busy with a new case and therefore too distracted to eat' and 'Tim already had dinner elsewhere and is too full to eat now'.

The bags under his eyes are also not as dark as they usually are. Come to think of it, Cass hasn't seen him in a bad mood for a few weeks now, which shouldn't really be that strange, but it's Tim. The smallest of inconveniences can put him in a bad mood.

Tim notices her looking and raises an eyebrow.

Cass blinks and goes back to her plate. Whatever is keeping her brother happy, it deserves her full approval.

~☆~

Jason is... not so sure as to what is happening.

He did notice that Tim was really chill lately, but this is going a bit overboard.

"Did you spike it with arsenic, Replacement?" He asks, suspiciously looking the offered cup of coffee over without taking it. Tim - surprisingly, actually - doesn't react to the nickname in the slightest, instead giving Jason a deadpan look. Then, he brings the cup up to his mouth, takes a sip, and hands it back again.

Okay, well, that proves no arsenic, at least. It's still very weird. Tim doesn't just buy coffee for people, and he especially doesn't buy coffee for Jason.

"Am I going to owe you something for it, or what?" He asks, slowly reaching for the cup. Tim sighs.

"No. It's just a drink - my boyfriend loves it, and I think you'd like it as well," he explains with a shrug, and Jason is honestly too befuddled to ask about anything. Including the boyfriend part.

No, but since when does Timbers have a boyfriend? He sure hadn't mentioned anything about it to any of the others.

The drink turns out to be not coffee but something else, tangy and thick, and when Jason takes the lid off, it's green like Mountain Dew.

It does taste great, though, and later Jason considers asking Tim for another one. He hadn't had anything better in ages.

~☆~

Damian strikes through the last one of the training holograms, breathing heavily. And yet, just as the 'simulation complete' message pops up in the air, he hears a step behind him.

He turns around faster than a lightning, and-

Finds Timothy's neck at the tip of his katana, with his hands up in surrender.

"What are you doing here?" Damian sneers, lowering his weapon, and Tim swallows. Not because of surprise or fear, though, he clearly had some half chewed up food in his mouth.

"Inaccurate drop off," he says, looking Damian straight in the eyes, "I was aiming for the main floor."

He smells of Indian food and spices, and Damian almost sneezes.

"What do you mean 'aiming'?" He demands, but Drake just waves him off, heading towards the elevator up.

"No worries, I'll do better next time," he shoots a smile over his shoulder, "See you on patrol!" And with that, the elevator doors close after him, leaving Damian alone.

Drake has always been strange, but this is too much even for him.

Not that it's Damian's business. He huffs and starts the simulation over again.

~☆~

If Dick didn't witness it with his own two eyes, he would have never believed it. Alas, he did, and even though the swirling green vortex has already disappeared like it was never there, Tim, whom the strange portal just spat out on the floor of the Cave, is still here.

"What the fuck was that?" He nearly yells, and Tim looks up, a face of perfect innocence.

"What was what?" He returns the question, and Dick can't find the words to explain, so he just wildly gestures to the place where the portal has been less than five seconds ago. Tim blinks, "Oh, that. That was my date."

Dick chokes on his breath.

"Your date?" He parrots, hoarse and breathless, and Tim nods, like there's not a single thing wrong with anything that has just happened. "Since when do you go on dates? Wait, I thought you were engaged, you said it was cheating to date anyone else, even if you didn't know the spouse, you said-" he cuts himself off, feeling his own face slowly falling and his stomach sinking down in horror. "No. No, don't tell me."

But the shit-eating grin on Tim's face is already proof enough.

Dick clears his throat. Takes a deep breath.

Seeing that Tim is still in one piece, and, well, that he did just casually come out of a magic portal in the middle of the Cave, it's probably safe to say that it's not the first time.

And, judging by the mirth in Tim's grin, it's also safe to say he's been rather enjoying it.

Dick releases one long, loud breath and forces a smile on his face as well.

"So, how is it?" He asks, trying in vain to sound light-hearted, not suspicious. Tim's smile gets wider, and there's a glint of excitement in his eyes now, which Dick considers a good thing, all in all.

"Oh, I thought you'd never ask."

~☆~

Bonus Scene (that somehow turned out longer than I planned)

~☆~

"Where's Tim?" Bruce asks when all the rest of his kids are already seated around the table for breakfast.

"At Danny's, probably," Steph shrugs before digging into the waffles on her plate. Bruce frowns.

"Danny's?" He asks. He hasn't heard that name before. Is that a friend of Tim's?

"Drake's paramour," Damian clarifies, not bothering to look up from his own food, and Bruce's mind comes to a screeching halt. He blinks stupidly, looking around the table and sincerely hoping it is some sort of a prank, but Cass smiles and nods, and Dick has an expression of pure exhaustion on his face, and Duke is huffing a snort of laughter at him for it.

"Since when-" Bruce starts, but he is suddenly cut off by a glowing circle that appears just a few feet away from them all.

It grows quickly, morphing into a vortex, a green and ominous tear in reality big enough for a person to walk through, hanging in the air a few inches over the ground. The space around it feels staticky somehow, and the color is too bright to look at directly, and it definitely doesn't belong to their dining room. But before Bruce is able to say another word or do anything at all, Tim steps out of it, his hair and clothes ruffled.

"Oh, fuck," he mutters upon seeing them all, and turns around, sticking his head into the vortex just as it starts to close. The vortex pauses.

Bruce is almost too stunned to move.

His kids don't share the sentiment, though, most of them not paying the portal any attention at all. Bruce would have reprimanded them for the poor awareness of their surroundings if he didn't notice how Damian simply glanced up at it before going back to his food.

They saw the portal. They just didn't deem it dangerous. For some reason.

Tim's face comes back out, and he turns to Bruce. His expression looks different than before: a bit smug, a little mischievous, and just a tad bit nervous.

Then, another head pops up through the surface of the portal. A boy - or at least they look like a boy - with snow white hair that floats in the air and bright, almost neon blue eyes. His skin is far too pale for him to be human, and- he has freckles that look like constellations.

For some reason, that's the part that makes Bruce finally resign to the fact that this is just how his life is. With breakfasts interrupted by green portals and otherworldly boyfriends - because who else might it be, really - before he even had his morning coffee.

"Hi!" Said otherworldly boyfriend grins and waves his hand. "I'm Danny, Tim's fiance," he introduces himself, and Bruce conjures the last scraps of his scattered mind to smile and nod back.

"Good morning, Danny. I'm Bruce." He has no idea what else to say; it seems like a bit late for shovel talk, but a bit early for welcoming speech.

"Would Young Master Danny care to join us for breakfast?" Alfred's calm, but still slightly amused voice comes from the door. Bruce turns to look at the butler with a sense of exasperation - is he really the last one to learn anything in this house? - but the man seems... well, not surprised, at least not on the surface. But his grip on the pitcher of orange juice is just a little too tense for him to have been in the know all along.

Danny turns to him and smiles nicely - his teeth are also way too sharp for a human - before shaking his head, "No, sorry, I was just dropping Tim off."

"For God's sake," Tim rolls his eyes, "Just put on some pants and come out, I refuse to suffer through this alone."

Dick chokes on his toast. Steph gasps, her eyes snapping between Tim and Danny in delight. Cass snorts and kicks her under the table. Damian groans.

"Spare me from the details of your personal life, Drake. Need I remind you that I am thirteen," he narrows his eyes.

The constellations on Danny's cheeks shine just a bit brighter, and Bruce has no idea what that is supposed to mean, but his guess is along the lines of embarrassment. Especially when the boy completes it with rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

"You mean to tell me that, at thirteen years old, you don't know what sex is?" Tim deadpans, running a hand through his hair in a useless effort to smooth it and taking his seat at the table. Dick's coughing fit comes back with renewed force.

"We didn't-" Danny starts, still kind of hovering midway through the portal, but Damian pays him little attention.

"I do. Yet, I prefer my mind free of the knowledge when it applies to you."

"I want all the details, though," Steph pipes up, looking at Danny from her seat, "Can you, like, sprout tentacles or something, because I know for a fact Tim likes that kind of-"

"Steph!" Tim yells at her, face red, and then turns to Danny, who suddenly has a very interested, if a bit mischievous, look on his face, "Don't you dare."

"Yeah, okay," Danny snorts and disappears back in the portal. Bruce half-expects it to close after him, but the vortex stays.

Which probably means the boy - the King of Infinite Realms, Keeper of Unseen Worlds, Eyes of the Universe - is going to be right back.

After he puts on some pants, supposedly.

Bruce watches Tim rub his face in frustration while Steph giggles and elbows him in the side, and sighs. This is so not how he expected this morning to be.

[ladyloveandjustice]

so like I saw this entire argument for the first time when someone reblogged this post a few weeks ago, and was like "well it was two years ago, it's cleary a reach but i'm not that invested, they clearly just REALLY want to yell about this issue of Batgirl rather than go with the most obvious interpretation that was clearly intended, whatever, it's fine" (If they had Jordanna bring up "are you poor" after Steph talked about "her own issues" it is supposed to imply she was poor, whether Steph answers or not (and why would she answer that), otherwise why would the comic bring it up, it's not deep)

but then i was looking at one of my old amvs and

Stephanie's house looks kind of rough there. Yet this was a flashback? No earthquake?

man looks rough there too and this was way before the earthquake. weird that doing-well middle class people wouldn't repair a cracked wall and window.

As I said, that there are plenty of other comics that show Stephanie's house looking run down, this is exhibit A that I just happened to run across. I didn't really have the energy to actually look but turns out I didn't have to.

Steph's dad put the family in a financial hole. That is stated in this very comic. "Using all their money" every time he comes back means a bunch of stuff will pile up and you have to dig yourself out of it. Including the house being in disrepair. In-universe, it's only been like what, a year? less? since the last time he did that in most comics she's in. People don't just automatically recover from that. And that was most of Steph's childhood, Arthur doing that. This is a comic where "we have financial issues" is directly bought up. Steph's Mom likely has very little savings.

That's all I say. Comics are inconsistent. The writers are not as thoughtful about finances as the fans sometimes. It's often hard to nail down a single interpretation. But people think Steph has financial issues because there's more than one comic where her house looks rough, because it's directly stated, it's not out of nowhere.

Like I said, not super invested, I'm not going to say else anything past this post. Steph isn't obviously in danger of being thrown out on the streets, there's miles of difference between her and someone who was literally homeless like Jason, but "struggling" isn't a reach. It's been accepted as a fact for 15 years, since the first time I got into comics, with every fan I talked to, and this is the first time I've seen it so hotly contested, even by people who were following my series of scans on scans_daily (liking it or disliking it), having bits from almost every comic Steph was in right in front of them.

(OH. oh. You don't like Stephanie. that explains the amount of passion here that was confusing for me, I didn't understand why it seemed you were so invested in refuting this. it's like a moral thing now whether she's poor? or a 'financially-concious middle class white girl" is that why white was bought up despite not being relevant to the current conversation about finances? or something? idk what's going on in fandom anymore. anyway.)

If you ever have the time/interest, would you break down the canon surrounding Stephanie’s economic circumstances/home life? It seems like a lot of people have chosen to take it a specific way so I’d love to see your reasoning

Sure. Thanks for asking, it’s honestly a fun topic.

Y’know it’s funny—I actually happen to own something that I think most people, even most Steph fans, haven’t seen: Steph’s first appearance. Not her Robin first appearance, her Detective Comics first appearance, her actual introduction. I happened to pick them up by accident at a con a few years ago because they’re also some of Tim’s first cover appearances. 

Other people might disagree with me on this, but I like to go back to the characters’ origins whenever I can to find the baseline of what they were originally intended to be and try to bring later interpretations in line with that. I like to think of retcons as new revelations, new plot twists in an ongoing story, and not a way to reset aspects of the past just to fit your story. It works especially well for this because Steph’s socio-economic status doesn’t actually change, there’s just kind of a game of telephone that happens across the decades that leads people to misunderstand. 

One thing worth noting in these early issues is just how much Steph, a 16-year-old girl, has at her disposal before she ever even glimpses Batman and Robin. Literally the first shot we ever see of the Spoiler is this: 

And because I am, in fact, that kind of nerd, I have gone in a couple of times and dug out old era-appropriate electronics magazines to figure out what that piece of equipment would cost you in 1992. Baseline for a parabolic microphone is $600, and that price is for much larger, more delicate pieces of equipment meant to be used for like, outdoor nature shoots, which wouldn’t be able to hear through glass. Steph probably dropped $1,000 on that microphone alone. 

Remember also that her costume is homemade—she doesn’t have any other way of getting it. She’s also shown using some pretty elaborate climbing and painting gear, with no indication that they were stolen or borrowed or anything, and you can see that she’s got a pretty well-stocked utility belt there.

Again, for some reason people tend to forget or overlook this but, right up until she demanded Bruce make her Robin, Steph operated as Spoiler with zero Bat support. She got some hand-to-hand training from Cass late in the game and tagged along on some of Tim’s assignments, but was otherwise being actively discouraged from vigilantism for most of her career. She made her own costume, bought her own equipment, and maintained her own motorcycle, all without the financial support of either Batman or her parents. 

So right off the bat we know she’s a teenage girl with a not-insignificant amount of personal disposable income, the only hinted source of which is the implication she works a part-time job somewhere—which I don’t think is ever brought up again when she reappears in Robin. 

We all know minimum wage went further in 1992 than it does now, but it didn’t go that much further. So it’s reasonable to assume that Steph has access to at least some money from her parents to support her vigilante habit, whether that’s in the form of an allowance, gifts that she carefully manages between Christmas and birthdays, or money that she’s able to just, take from Crystal without her noticing. 

But this page is more important to our current interests because it’s also when we see Steph’s neighborhood for the first time. We’re told here that Steph and her mother (who is called Mrs. Agnes Bellinger in this comic, although it’s possible she was using a fake name to visit her ex in prison) live in what is described as “115 South Holden Street, in Manchester.” 

Now keep in mind, the Gotham City map can be extremely fluid and tends to change depending on the needs of the story. But there have been attempts to map it, and “Manchester” has never been on any of those maps, so we have to do some extrapolation. At the very least, we can tell the neighborhood is clearly not in the city, given the very deliberate angle there in the first panel to show that they’re well away from the crowded downtown Gotham skyline.

This implies that Manchester is intended to be one of the mainland suburbs that feeds the island city of Gotham, similar to Bristol Township where the Wayne and Drake Manors are located. It’s not nearly as nice a neighborhood as Bristol—note the fenced-in front lawns, the broken shutters on the neighboring houses, and the vaguely racist lawn ornament on the Brown’s property—but it’s also not some rundown slum. People aren’t afraid to let kids play in their front yards or leave their garage doors standing open. And you’ll note those aren’t trailers, either, they’re decently-sized suburban homes.

Also worth noting: Crystal seems to keep this house perfectly fine on her own as a single mother. Arthur doesn’t live with them; when he’s shown having residences it tends to be apartments in the city by himself, and it’s not like he could support them from prison or with his ill-gotten criminal gains. And yet, we don’t see Steph or Crystal worrying at all about bills or mortgages or anything like that throughout any of their appearances. We see the interior of their house on several occasions and, while it’s often messy, it’s not in disrepair or neglect.

This is a constant portrayal throughout all of Steph’s appearances, from Robin through even her run as Batgirl. So, with that in mind, where does the idea that Steph is poor come from? Well, I’ve got a couple of theories.

One is the usual comics fandom problem: canon is huge, nobody can keep up with all of it, and some people go out of their way to be assholes about it, so misinformation gets spread like wildfire, in no small part because Steph is a character that a lot of people use as a self-insert and therefore she must be the misunderstood underdog in all things.

But on the more-interesting-to-talk-about front… I don’t think it’s controversial to say that Steph’s first big storyline was her pregnancy. Yeah? Like, it’s the first story involving her that really started getting critical attention. Whether it deserves that attention is more open to debate—personally, since reading Icon & Rocket for the first time, I’ve come to view it as Dixon pulling the comic book equivalent of white guys repackaging black music and watering it down—but the important thing right now is that it’s the first time people would’ve been specifically reading the Robin comics for Stephanie Brown. And in those comics, Steph’s house is shown as visibly run-down, covered in cracks and disrepair.

Thing is, there’s a context that people miss if you’re reading for the baby storyline and nothing else: this storyline plays out over the last days of “Aftershock” and early months of “No Man’s Land,” the storyline where Gotham is racked by a destructive earthquake that nearly levels the city and is abandoned by the federal government.

Again, we get the reinforced confirmation that Steph’s house isn’t actually in Gotham because it’s not destroyed in the quake—the neighborhood is damaged and briefly evacuated due to a gas line rupture in the immediate aftermath, but once that’s cleared up they’re free to return home, and their suburb is not part of the federal government’s evacuation. Nearly every building in Gotham is shown with similar damage during this time, including Drake Manor. 

This storyline also plays into, I think, the stereotypes that people jump on when it comes to Steph’s socioeconomic status. Like I’ve mentioned before: Arthur is a criminal, Crystal is a drug addict, and Steph is a teen mom. Therefore, they must be poor, right? Because good middle class families supposedly don’t have those kinds of problems.

But, as I’ve mentioned before, that’s an inaccurate stereotype that ignores reality: plenty of drug addicts, criminals and teen moms live in the suburbs. And the Browns’ specific circumstances are distinctly atypical of the stereotype—Arthur’s not some down-on-his-luck thief pushed to crime by economic hardship, he’s an arrogant former gameshow host who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else and resents the world for not handing him the success he feels entitled to. Crystal’s not some crack addict, she’s a working nurse who used to get her doctor friends to write her scripts for prescription painkillers. And Steph is just a teenage girl who slept with a boy and got pregnant, with the costs of prenatal care and/or childrearing never seeming to be a factor in her decision to bring the child to term and give it up for adoption. 

I could go on but that’s pretty much the long and short of it: Steph is simply not shown as being poor in the comics. Ever. She’s not rich, she does clearly rely on her fists much more than any gadgets or fancy gear and lives with her mother rather than moving out on her own for college, but she’s also never shown worrying about student loans and can apparently pay for all her classes with some government assistance and a part-time job alone.

People just assume that she’s poor because they’re misinformed, or they’re projecting, or they’ve got biases they haven’t examined, or they need her to be an underdog to justify their argument against one of the other characters, or they really want her to be buddy-buds with Jason for some reason. 

Or, y’know, they just don’t want to acknowledge that they’re rooting for a middle-class white girl from the suburbs who commutes into the inner city to pick fights for fun. 

[takes1]

heyy I must tell you all those tsukishima fics were so good😭 i used to literally log on to tumblr everyday just becausd of yoy😭 can I request a mattsun x oblivious reader?? Where he has tried multiple times to tell her thwt he likes her but something or the other happens and he can't and also thr reader has absolutely no idea that he likes her. Maybe in thr end he can be like do you not like me and stuff snd then she is so confused becsue she did not think thwt he'd like her back snd lmao they go out later

mattsun x oblivious!reader

the sheer quantity of tsukki lovers was a shock when i first started posting that old series lemme tell you. i rlly appreciate that!!

warnings. sfw, fluff

details. libero!reader / girls team!reader / mattsun fluff / aoba johsai fluff / oblivious!reader / platonic?cuddling / mattsun is always warm / giving you his jacket trope / rbf!mattsun / thinking he hates you trope / pda / 2k words

links. my masterlist. more haikyuu. my ao3. requests OPEN

There was only so much to be done about the bitter cold tonight. The Aoba Johsai teams had their joint biyearly dinner, but thanks to a last-minute close for renovation at your usual spot, you and at least fifteen others were stuck waiting for a reservation outside on the town square.

"Fuck-k!" Oikawa shuddered loudly, teeth chattering as he stepped out from the restaurant you were all barred from.

Somebody whined, "I just wanna sit down!"

Iwa trailed close behind, steam practically coming off of his head as he stared down at his phone. He kept his foot in the door for an older couple, sparing a passive-aggressive look at how easily they were seated.

"It'll be another 20 minutes at least," You overheard him, quiet but frothing with frustration, to your own team captain.

Only a few were properly dressed for the weather outside. It was getting darker fast, and the wind was picking up.

You were able to catch a glimpse of his phone screen. He had the estimated wait time from the restaurant's website; 5 groups were before you, but they were nowhere to be seen.

A harsh wind howled through the street and inspired you to jump behind the nearest body. You and the other liberos were lucky to have your faces protected by the gathered group of shoulders and chests, but that's where your blessings ended. Your cardigan could've been made of tissue paper, how thin it was.

The wind settled and you glanced to see who you had nestled up to- you jumped back with a muffled yelp. It went ignored because of the symphony of complaints, curses to the weather.

Matsukawa was glowering down at you. God, was he warm, but he was so mean.

He was the most unsettling member of the guys' team by far. You got along fine with everyone else, but there was some unspoken hatred in his eyes every time you had to interact with him.

He often tried to speak with you after practice, about receiving of all things, quizzing you about your methods from the games he watched or practices he caught. You didn't like how his questions were made to make you feel stupid, so you tended to keep it short with him and run away as soon as you could.

His stare was harsh and judgmental, his frown deep and unforgiving. It gave the impression that he was tearing you apart in his mind.

"Awww, (Y/n)," Your captain, whom you had backed into, put her arms around you at once.

She didn't offer as much heat as him, but it helped to make you feel safer, and wanted. You turned and pressed your face against her chest as she pulled her jacket around the both of you.

Most of the girls were huddled similarly, choice of attire more of an issue than the heavy-coated guys.

Matsukawa wore a thick, black work hoodie, nice thick pants, boots, and a utility jacket over that. You squinted, jealous and bitter, at how he wasn't shivering at all.

"Tw- t-twenty- minutes?" You shuddered against her, sniffling.

She hummed, her cold, dead fingers no help against your sides.

The wind was so strong that it stole your breath with every gust. Your ears were throbbing, your nose numb, even when another teammate joined the huddle.

Not only had you not dressed for the cold, but you didn't expect to be standing so much, so your heels were killing your feet. Another twenty minutes wasn't doable.

"Hey! There's some benches over here!" Somebody called from down the sidewalk and around the corner.

Those that knew it would take longer, especially in uncomfortable shoes, instantly started to migrate away from the door of the restaurant.

The benches were a little wet from the light drizzle earlier. It made most of your teammates hesitate to sit down, including you. You gave a dismal sniffle, completely exhausted from shivering, unable to get any colder or more glum. You peeled off your cardigan.

"Hey, wait wait-!"

"Noo!"

Your teammates gasped, grabbing at you, as you used it to wipe the bench dry.

You turned, offering them a seat, your ferocious shaking in direct contrast to the point you were trying to make.

"It- was-wasn't keeping me warm-- anyway," You struggled to declare.

The three of you sat down on the freezing metal. At least it was dry now. You stared, twitching hard, at the soggy ball in your numb fingers and tried to zone out.

Your eyes had been closed when someone big squeezed in next to you, at the end of the bench. It was too much energy to open them to see who it was.

But a heavy, warm, and cozy presence over you shocked you to open your eyes again.

"Put this on before you pass out," Matsukawa muttered, hands grabbing at the back of his own hoodie, too.

Your face would've felt warm if not for the conditions. It was already stinging, but it stung some more.

"Thank you," You shivered.

His lowered, studied stare at you as you struggled to put on his hoodie with numbed limbs made you feel like a dumbass. He probably thought you were an idiot.

His arm was so solid as he took his outer jacket back, to put it on over his long sleeve shirt. You quickly put up the plush hood and pulled the drawstrings, ears pounding at the relief of some heat.

Then his arm was back, around your shoulders, rubbing firm to get you warmed up faster.

"Thank you," You repeated, better now, and all you could possibly think to say.

When you glanced at him, you found him looking around. There was a protective air to him, like he was busy watching for something while he took care of you. He wore it well.

His hoodie smelled distinctly like him and you found that you did not mind it in the slightest. You were subtle, pulling it over your nose -breathing deep now that you weren't struggling to filter this icy cold air-, letting your body get wracked by his strong rubbing, your head steadied a little on the inside of his big shoulder. It slowly fell, heavier, on him as you learned to trust that he was being helpful.

The wind picked up again- this time you felt invulnerable to its brutality, but he squeezed his working arm into your waist and pulled you, shockingly easy, into his side with no space left between your bodies.

At this point, you were feeling guilty for enjoying it so much. There was no ounce of softness in his angry face to indicate he wanted to hold you. His nose crunched more at the wind, now that he had less layers to protect him. You could only assume he was just being chivalrous.

It made the remainder of the wait harder, in a different way.

"Oh," Iwa raised his brow at you as you passed him to go inside.

He didn't look at you for long, because he referred his gaze to Matsukawa and exchanged a smirk you couldn't see.

When you were all seated, nobody went to sit right next to you. The table was full except for the one seat while everyone filed in. At first, Watari pulled the chair out, but took one look at you and also said, "Ooh," before sitting elsewhere.

Matsukawa sat down without so much as a look at you.

Every guy at the table was looking at him, so you knew you were right about something. You just didn't know what, yet.

The whole evening, he was quiet and only spoke a few times when directly referred to. Otherwise, you felt the weight of his subtle, unwavering gaze anytime you mustered up the courage to contribute to the conversation at the table.

Surely he just wanted his hoodie back. He wore it so often, so it must have been how pitiful you looked outside to make him give it up like that.

Bellies full, bill paid, and a little more relaxed after a fun dinner out with friends despite his presence, you were all starting to leave to go home.

You stood still outside for a moment, sniffling but content, pulling up a route on your phone to walk back to the bus stop. It was a subtle way to wait for him to come out, so you could give him back his hoodie and brave the freezing journey back.

"You got somebody to walk you back?"

He leaned down to speak quietly, just to you. You watched his hand close the distance and rest on your shoulder. It made you stutter.

"Not- not officially."

Then he was walking you back to the bus stop, making a silent trek more difficult than it had to be if you had just gone by yourself. When you spared some meager glances at him, he had that same vibe about him- like he was preoccupied, displeased, and would be unpleasant if you tried to say anything.

It would be another five minutes for the bus.

He stood close to you, his arm against yours, because this bench was wet and you weren't going to repeat that mistake.

"Do you- uh," He rocked a little on his heels when you looked at him, "Do you not... like me?"

It was a staggering question. You held yourself, painfully aware that you were only standing because of his hoodie around you.

"Sure, I like you," You said in a stilted tone.

It wasn't enough and you knew it as it rolled off your tongue.

You cleared your throat. He looked away.

"I mean- I thought you hated me before today, so," You gave an empty laugh to help ease the tension.

"Hate you?" He turned towards you, hands in his pockets. It was the most emotion you had ever seen on his face.

Clearly, something was off. You squinted at him but only could hold it for a second, "Well, yeah, you're kinda... mean-,"

The shock on his face made you stumble over your words.

"But- uh, today you were so nice! Thank you, for your hoodie, that was very sweet-," You glanced around his face, confused, trailing off, "-of, you..."

He ran a hand through his hair with a sigh, eyes closed, pained at your words. You felt astoundingly guilty, more cold than ever, in a way.

"I gave you my hoodie because I like you."

He put the hand back in his pocket, turning to face the street, watching the lamp posts with a forlorn air about him, "I've been tryin' to ask you out for months."

Your mouth hung open. You covered it, after a few seconds, with your hand.

Was that what all the looks meant? Was that seriously what he was getting at every time he spoke to you? Your face warmed- a welcome sensation.

"I... didn't know," You said simply, pressing up to his side.

It worked, thank god, and though it took him a second, he put a hefty arm around you.

"You were really that clueless?" He muttered, rubbing his warm face with his other hand.

The truth did feel pretty obvious in hindsight, but you reminded him, "You're more intimidating than you think."

In the quiet, the bus sighed around the corner.

"So... I can keep the hoodie?"

You looked up at him, excited at what you could see now as his nervousness. He pressed a hasty kiss to the top of your head as the bus rolled to a stop in front of you.

"Hell, yeah."

VIP

@integers @yuchacco

my masterlist. my request box.

[comradekarin]

Zuko encouraged katara to murder Yon Rah. Aang didn't want Katara to do something that she would regret. Just because Toph is anti authority doesn't mean she would support katara killing someone.

zuko didn’t encourage katara to do anything of the sort. he didn’t tell her what to do. he actively went to talk to her loved one to inquire about her anger about him because he knew there was something deeper at play (which, ironically, zuko is the first character to do so with katara without being promoted to). aang didn’t want katara to do something that she would regret…. nowhere did katara claim that she would murder that man. and imposing forgiveness on to her, comparing kya’s murder to appa being stolen (which, also ironic considering how he freaked the fuck out on her and toph and was never required by the narrative to say sorry to either of them), and being patronizing is not having someone’s best interest at heart. katara didn’t just lose her mother—she lost part of her self, of her childhood. katara has been haunted by the image of her mother dying for years, and finally she has the chance to confront the man who did it and only zuko stood by her! even her own brother compared her to a madman that tried to murder innocents in his pursuit of “justice”. you would have forgot sokka was katara’s brother the way he was acting like aang’s cheerleader that episode. but ofc it was just big bad katara that needed to say sorry for what she said, right? its just stupid that this was one of the most important moments of katara’s character arc and no one stood by her except for zuko.

aside from the fact that toph (and actually ALL of the gaang) have a body count… toph would have stood by katara because that’s her friend first of all. nevermind how most of their earlier issues with each other wasn’t just personality clashes but the fact that katara babied tf out of aang. but we have an episode where katara is being dogged on by aang and arguably sokka and you make toph a no show? SUKI a no show? and yon rha isn’t just some random dude, he’s a murderer and the cause of katara’s worst nightmare. but the fact that aang thought she was going to do something bad/was going to forgive before she even went and he turned out to be wrong (katara didn’t kill because she has her own moral compass and it’s a kids show duh and she even tells him she’d never forgive that man) tells me everything I need to know.

insinuating anything else tells me you’ve fallen for the misogynistic narrative that katara needed aang or zuko to tell her how to feel or act about one of the most important moments of her life. she needed someone to be there for her, and it gets this fandom so upset when you truthfully say it was only zuko who was.

[neonovember]

This is an idea that’s been on my mind lately because Carmy would be so protective and would 100% treat his gf like a princess, so I thought I’d send it in ifs it’s okay!!🤧

Can I please request Carmy x fem!reader where it’s based off the song “Treat You Better”, where she’s one of his chefs, and Carmy has a biiiig soft spot for her, like soft smiles, hand on the small of her back. Y/n is veryyyy soft spoken and quiet, a very stark contrast to the rest of The Beef/The Bear staff. The staff absolutely love her and are super protective of her: She’s best friends with Sydney (also she’s around the same age as Syd, early 20s), Tina sees her as a daughter, Marcus is always trying to make her laugh and asks her to try his pastries, Richie is more gentle with her than he is with everyone else, Ebra has a calmness around Y/n, Sugar (when she stops by) loves treating Y/n like the little sister she never had, and Carmy… Carmy is head over heels for Y/n. He’s so soft and gentle with her, never raising his voice at her in the kitchen, and he always has the cutest nicknames for her🤧. However… Y/n has a boyfriend, they all know it, and they all share an extreme dislike for him. He’s not very nice, and it all goes to a boiling point when they spot bruises, Y/n letting her hair fall over her face.🥺 Tina and Sydney probably noticing right as she walks in one morning, then the rest of the staff noticing too, the whole kitchen getting eerily quiet, Carmy pulling her aside to his office to talk to her, holding Y/n in his arms while she cries🥺 Carmy 100% taking his bat and beating the crap out of her bf… Now ex, and he offers for Y/n to stay with him because she has nowhere to go? Their relationship growing after that? Y/n kissing him one day, shook at herself, but he kisses her back?

July in December

carmen berzatto x fem! reader

warnings: heavy domestic abuse, controlling fiance, swearing, violence, carmen goes gives absolute no regard for felonies, (assumed) unrequited love, self deprecation, victim blaming

a/n: this entire fic is just time skips l swear, I've written something similar here as well if you liked this which i hope you did! dv is a heavy subject, and not something to trivialise. if you or someone you know is going through dv, please reach out x

banner from @firefly-graphics

The streaks of concealer do little to hide the bloom of dark purples and blues.

They stretch out, clawing up your side and past your ribs, shades of overlapping blotched bruises that were not yet healed.

You were a chef trained in Oslo for god sake, you had friends and family who loved you- and you let out a laugh when the words come out pathetic and dull. 

You were right where he left you.

You suppose from the continuous uphill of your career, the exhaustion had made it easier to just sit still, let it happen. He had proposed and you had said yes unblinking. It was what he told the countless people at dinner parties he dragged you to in attendance, 

“I had finally beat her down enough to finally fall in love with me” He smiled, his eyes shining and his grip on your waist bruising as the people smiled and laughed and you swallowed back his irony.

The cycles of abuse had started before you could truly remember, bouts of angry yelling before the hot dull beat of pain. And he was so kind after, so thoughtful and apologetic, his eyebrows furrowed and his touch gentle as he leaned over you.

Were you still a victim, if you wanted to stay just for the after?

You shake your head, slowly blinking at the reflection of your bloated torso. Peeling away your shirt gently before buttoning up one of your work shirts instead.

Your heart settled when you thought of the Bear. It was your haven, Richie’s rambled drivel, Sugar hovering every so near, Carmen with his eyes and his inked hands and his sweet mouth. It wrapped around you more tightly than those bruises ever could.

You look over to watch your fiancé, fast asleep content with a full stomach and tired fists. He was so vulnerable like that, and the feeling of anger unfurls in your gut. For once, just one time you wanted him to feel it, that gut wrenching frightened feeling.

You look over to the stone doorstep near his desk, the stupid thing that he had revered at one of his art conventions that was left keeping the door open. You wonder, just for a second, what it would feel like to lean over him with it between your hands, waiting for the slight blink of his eyes that clear away the sleep. 

Watch the fear melt into them, and smashing his fucking face with it.

You breathe deeply, arranging your hair so it is out of your face, flattening out the creases in your shit and avoiding your stomach as you stood up and grabbed your bag.

“Where are you going” 

You blink, hands gripping your work bag as his voice bellows “Work”

“Huh. We need to sort that out soon”

You stopped, closing your eyes as you fiddled with the loose threads from the shoulder strap. You knew this conversation, where he would bring up another thing in your life he wanted to talk about, as if your relationship was built on a solid base of understanding and conversation. You would wait until his voice would ripen with jealousy and rage, where thinly veiled inquisition would fall away and reveal what he truly wanted. 

You had given him enough of your life, let him change and control it. But you would soon let yourself be buried then let him take this too from you. No fucking way.

“Sure”

You pass by the door, pushing the stone to the side. It wasn’t heavy at all.

It’s when you enter the back door of the Bear do you realise you’ve spent your whole commute over holding your breath.

The smells of sauces and expensive meats lulls your anxiety into a mummering tremble, and you sigh softly to yourself as you sling your bag into your locker.

You can already hear Richie arguing, and the tired voice of Carmen biting back and you want to slap yourself for all the times you had grown annoyed at them. What you would give to hear them always, to feel this level of safety and comfort without the overhanging timer of when you would eventually have to leave.

You nod towards Sydney, carrying a large tray of roasted pecans over to Sam, her braids intricately wrapped around her head.

The walkway is framed with pictures of the family, from Mickey to the recent Polaroids of Sugar's newborn. You notice a framed picture of the team from years ago, when you had first started working at the Bear. You’re squished between Carmen and Fak, the backdrop of a renovating Bear behind you all. 

The timidiness of being new had not left then, and despite the family enveloping you as their own you had wondered why Carmen had chosen you out of all the decorated chefs that had surely applied. You had asked him this once, after an exhausting dinner rush and he had simply looked up at you from his plate of stolen steak and eggs. 

“You’ve got something, Kid. Maybe it’s because you hadn’t yet gotten the light beaten out from the culinary world but I need that. Need someone who pushes against the boundaries you know?”

You had stayed quiet as he talked

“And you’re a local. Boston isn’t for the faint of heart, you know your diners better than they know themselves. Call it prejudice, I call it a safety cushion.“

You wondered what she would think of you now, her wide eyed dream so close you could see her tight grip on her chef coat in the grainy photograph.

You follow the noise of the crew into the kitchen, when Carmen is hunched over a chopping board and Richie is pointing out problems in the seating arrangement for tonight.

He exhales, ready to start another contingent when he spots your figure walking through the entryway.

“Finally. Someone fucking competent in this place” 

“Hey Richie” You smile, tightening your apron before biting back a wince. The darkness of your life outside of the Bear had a way of seeping in at times, you had grown too comfortable.

“Hey baby, you good? yeah?” Richie replies

“Richie-“ Carmen interrupts, turning his head to face you for the first time in an hour (which you did not realise but Riche surely did) 

“Fuck off. Fuck you. You sure baby? Need me to get you somethin? I got a pack of Marlboros if you need a break”

“Leave her alone, dammit Richie, and a cigarette this early?”

“Oh! Oh! The addict wants to act holier than thou all of a sudden. Just because you slapped on a couple Nic patches-“

“It’s gum and it’s fucking working asshole”

“The L hold you up?” Richie says, throwing the finger at Carmen

“No, no, um, just got in a little fight with David” You reply, cutting your eyes away from him.

Richie rolls his eyes with a groan, a sour expression filters over his face in flash at the mention of your fiance’s name.

“That fuckin’ guy, I swear that boyfriend of yours” Richie groans

“It was my fault really.”

You notice Carmen’s movements stop abruptly, the chopping growing silent with his back turned to you.

“I highly doubt that” Carmen grumbles, before Tina and Sydney come through the door

“Hey, why were you late you missed out on that guy who tried fighting Fak-”

“Her stupid fucking boyfriend”

“Easy” Carmen replies, turning to face you again

“Hey, c’mon Carmen you of all people know that man does not deserve her one fucking bit”

“Darling you need to get rid of that man I’m telling you, he ain't treating you the way you deserve. There's no good keeping an angry man” Tina chides, eyebrows raised as she wipes her fingers on the cloth draped over her shoulder.

“Yeah, he's a dick. And he’s always just…hovering when he comes.” Sydney replies

“And always talk in this condescending tone, adding random words to sound smarter than he is” Marcus’s voice interjects, peeking from around the pastry corner

“Like pseudo-intellectual goddamn-” Tina grumbles, in lightning speed

“Yuppie” Fak continues, and Tina nods 

“All I’m saying doll, is that if you end up dumpin’ him we’d be right behind ya’. Might throw a little party here, a small one…how much does it cost to hire some fireworks?”

“Ease up guys, her love life ain’t got nothing to do with us alright. Let the girl be” Carmen voice bellows “And we got work to do”

He turns to the rest of them, shaking his head feigning annoyance at the team gathering together to gossip. And yet, his hands grip his towel tight enough to leave them white, and his teeth grind against his molars when he thinks of your boyfriend.

You don’t know how they'd react when they find out he proposed, you can’t exactly hide a ring.

“Hey” You smile towards Carmen, who’s twisted features blink into resolve when he hears you

“Hey” He nods, wincing as he pressed his fingers to his temple gingerly.

“Still got that headache?”

“I’ll be fine, just wish it would save the eye stabbing until after dinner service”

“Here”

“I’m alright-“

“Take it” you repeat, pressing some pain killers in his hand.

Carmen nods gratefully, hands clasped around yours for a second longer. Before they part.

He eyes the pills, and for a second you see this puzzled look gleam across his eyes.

He pops them in his mouth, you let out a breath from your chest quietly.

You kept your work and home life separate, Carmen didn’t need nor should carry the burden of this ugly secret that paints you from the inside out.

You had a lid on it. You were sure.

You let yourself get lost in the ingrained memory of moving around the kitchen, letting the slice of your knife against the flesh of meat and fruit melt away everything you had been shouldering the past year.

It gets busy, really busy, Richie and Carmen fail to cohabitate in the hours of the dinner service, multiple plates are dropped, you almost can’t keep up with the never ending orders coming in but its also fucking amazing. The rush of delivering every component of a plate in time, making sure the meat is cooked until just right, making sure the sauce isn't runny, it feels like dancing. 

Your legs and arms ache, you have a headache and your apron is stained and you can’t tell the difference between the end of the dinner service and hitting the last step of a choreographed dance.

The high that buzzes through your body is mirrored by everyone around you, and you take a second to sink in that feeling of euphoria as the last tables are cleared.  

“That was..” You start, un-hunching your shoulders as the rest of the team look up in a daze, surrounding the kitchen

“Fuckin’ amazing, might be our best night yet” Richie grins, bobbing his chin as it rests on his hands

“That was good..we could've been a bit better at turning the tables-” Carmen murmurs

“Oh c’mon Carmy, we can talk about the finalities later but even you can admit that was pretty good” Sydney calls out, leaning her head against the door frame, as exhausted pulls at her every feature

“Yeah…yeah it was good”

“No one go anywhere, I’ve got left over schnitzel and potatoes and I know none of you have taken a break”

“How long has it been since we’ve sat down for family?” Tina mumbles, wiping her stained apron tiredly

“Too long, I don’t mind fixin’ it up” You stretch out your arms, unbuttoning your chef's coat and folding it neatly, despite Sugar throwing them into the sink to soak for the night later.

“I’ll help” Carmen nods to you, doing the same with his apron. His dark crew neck that sticks to him reveals with every button, outlining the indentations of his chest and biceps.

Family usually consists of throwing whatever leftovers from the night's dinner service onto a large plate and proceeding to throw some forks near it. There had been a long trail of food combinations that either delighted the crew or had you throwing your towel in and going to the taco truck nearby.

Today however, the night had gone so well and had distracted you even better. You could at least make up some plates, make ‘em look pretty or whatever else your hands had been trained to do.

The rest of the team move the tables to form one large spanning diner in the middle of the Bear, the scrape of wood against flooring is all that fills the air as you and Carmen work silently. You’re good together, that sort of chemistry that only comes with understanding a person so well you can anticipate their next move. And the night feels like a dance again, moving left and right, handing him pieces of chicken and spoonfuls of sauce, wiping plates clean and centering them right.

It’s only when Richie comes tumbling through the double doors does it cause Carmen to jump, spilling the ladle of hot gravy across your shirt. You wince, Carmen lets out a garbled grunt and Richie cringes.

Carmen is quick, reaching for a nearby cloth as he begins to lift up your shirt gingerly. The sauce isn't boiling, but there is a slight stinging heat that radiates across your midsection and you're too distracted and uncomfortable that you forget yourself, and let Carmen reveal you.

It takes Carmen a second, he's pulling your shirt up just below your underbra, and his fingers pause against the fabric.

You’re confused just for a moment, but it stretches out, and you let yourself sit in the fantasy of unknowing, you let yourself imagine a life where what was sprawled across your skin was just the remnants of a soggy shirt and irritated skin.

The truth of it hits you when you watch Carmen's face change in front of you.

“What the fuck?”

“Don’t-”

“What?” Richie calls, coming closer before throwing his head back

“Jesus fuckin' christ kid” 

“I-I we got into a fight-“

“A fight? He beat you!”

“You don’t understand-”

“Maybe I don’t but this-“ Carmen gestures to the welts and colours that paint your stomach “Is one of the worst things I’ve seen in a long time”

Carmen’s hands are still gripping your shirt, the rag dropped to the floor between you now as you lower your head and let your hair cover your eyes.

“I’m sorry-“ You croak out, tongue heavy and eyes blurring with tears.

“Sorry-?” Carmen circuses down to meet your eyes incredulously “You’re sorry? Why are you fucking sorry, look what he fucking did to you!- what has he done to you?”

“Hey hey, honey you need to tell us what happened. This isn’t right, no fight can justify this” Richie whispers, crouching near you as he watches Carmen carefully.

“It was an accident”

“Do you truly believe that?” Richie murmurs softly, and you look up with a furrow of your brow. 

You turn to Carmen whose face is twisted in anger, his eyes on your midsection, his hands around your sides and around you.

“I don’t know anymore..I’m just so tired” You whimper, your throat growing tight as Carmen’s brows furrow, blinking and grinding his jaw

“I’m going to fucking kill him-“

“Hey, Carmen wait just- wait” Richie is quick to reach Carmen as he rears back

“Look at her- he can’t-FUCK”

“I know, and we will. I want to break his goddamn legs but we got to think of her. We need to get her out of this, we need to think about her first”

Carmen closes his eyes as you watch their interaction, and he turns to you as you blink the tears that drop down your cheek. He frowns and waits for your approval and you nod, and Richie lets go of him and he gathers you in his arms and lets you cry the last of your resolve on his shoulder.

You don’t tell him anything, and he doesn’t ask. He lets you wet his shoulder as the silence that sits in the kitchen is consumed by your muffled cries instead. 

The commotion causes the rest of the team to flood in, putting the pieces together when they see your shoulders shaking with grief and your unbuttoned top. The bear hung with the sick reality of a beat woman, and the once hungry crew now felt the nauseous image in front of them fill their stomach.

Sydney is the one that eases you out of Carmen’s arms, and pulls your hair back as she whispers apologies into your ear. She takes you to the emergency room to make sure nothing is broken. When the nurses greet you by name she waits until you're in the examination room before sobbing into Tina’s arms.

“How did I not notice, I see her every goddamn day, how did I not notice he was hurting her?”

“Don’t do that, don’t blame yourself. There is only one person to blame”

The rest of the team follows, and they all sprawl across the waiting room, heads between their hands.

After one of the junior doctors gives you the all clear, and Carmen and Richie follow up on the police report you make your way down the linoleum hallway in the crumbled stained shirt that had started this all.

You blink as you watch the faces of everyone you love look up in worry, exhaustion is written into their bones and still they sit in the too small waiting chairs for you. You had never felt a love like that before, so profound and overwhelming clear and you breathe it in deeply like it's the last thing you’ll taste.

“I’m so sorry-”

“Don’t you fuckin dare-”

“I know, I know, just please hear me.”

They relent, and you wait until they all nod towards you before continuing

“You guys have taken me as your own, made me feel a part of something greater than myself.  I don’t want you to think I was unloved” Your voice heightens with the wet tears that fill your throat

“Every single time I came through those doors I felt it okay? I never understood the power of it, of love, but I feel it now and I felt it then. It just got muddled in the middle of all of this, of all the things I keep hidden. And that is my fault, but you guys, the Bear? You guys kept me alive” You whisper the last part, your voice caught in your throat as you try to still the shake your hands.

“You did nothing wrong baby, nothing. It’s hard to leave isn’t it? It’s hard to even say it” Ebra is the first one to whisper, holding your hands gently and carefully. You look at him, as his eyes gleam with the heaviness of his past and you don’t quite understand how, but you believe he knows that well. 

“We’re your family, whatever it is that you're dealing with we shoulder it to, we carry that burden. That is what we're here for, and you can take all the time that you need. Let us help you, but you know what happens now, yes?” Richie murmurs

“I need to get out”

“Damn fucking right you do. And fast, I know it's going to be hard but you need to act like everything is normal. Get in, pack a bag and get out.”

You breathe in deeply, remembering all the half packed duffle bags that had been left near the door. This time you wouldn't be able to back out, this time Carmen would make sure of it.

“Where’s Carmen?” You suddenly say, and Richie shifts his gaze to the exit sign.

“Maybe give him a few moments Kid” Richie murmurs, but you ignore him, moving quickly towards and out of the doors into the smoking area in the alleyway.

You spot him hunched over, back against the stone wall, trails of grey smoke filters from his mouth as you tsk loudly when you near him.

He raises his head up, widening his eyes before looking down at the cigarette.

“You were doing so good” You smile softly

“Yeah? Felt like pulling teeth, not grabbing for one every couple hours.”

“But those chewing gums”

Carmen shakes his head “Don’t tell Rich, but they were fucking disgusting”

You let out a hearty laugh, leaning back on the wall beside him.

Carmen takes one last deep drag, before pressing the butt of the stick into the wall that isn't near you.

It’s silent, and you feel him watching you for a long time before his voice replies in a croaky tear filled tone you had never heard come out of his mouth before.

“Goddamn it kid”

“I know” You reply instantly, the tears that you thought had left you were big fat liars.

“I want to blame myself, I will for a long time but this isn’t about me is it”

You shake your head furiously, it was so far apart from him. 

“What can I do? What can I do to make it better?” Carmen whispers, turning to face you fully now, eyes red and blonde curls messy across his brows.

“It’s not something you can fix Carm, you just got to let me do it. Let me walk away completely”

Carmen grits his teeth, “I should’ve made more attention-”

“How? Between renovating the Bear, organising the menu, fucking opening and maintaining the dinner service every night?”

Carmen shakes his head and you tug at his arm gently

“I didn’t let you notice Carm, I hid it well sometimes I even forgot about it. The bear, you? You let me forget, you let me feel so safe I forgot what he was doing to me”

Carmen reaches for your hand, holding onto it gently 

You shake your head, shaking the tears along with it. You hadn’t so much as let yourself hear the truth of what had been happening, but it flowed out of your mouth like a river into Carmen.

“He got drunk one night” You whisper, biting your cheek as you bristle at the memory of it

“He got drunk one night, and started accusing me of these horrible things. Things I would never do. And when I tried talking to him he just turned to me with this look in his eyes, and it was so unlike him Carm. It was like someone else had come and taken his body, and his voice and his mouth”

“And when I reached for him he reached back. And then I suppose I got used to being afraid of him”

“I don’t know what changed that night, but it did. Or maybe he had always been that way and I had been to blind by the feeling of being wanted that I ignored it. But it got worse, he hit me, but he started controlling what I was doing. Always flinging my phone in my face so that he could look for something that wasn’t there, eyes always scrutinising me when I came home fucking exhausted from the Bear.”

“That was how it started, and I guess it never quite ended” You murmur, and when Carmen drags his thumb across your cheek, you understand the rage that he had kept covered for you.

“I’m going to hurt him. And that's more for me than it is for you, I know it and I don’t care. He doesn't get to walk away.” Carmen replies after a beat, and his voice is even. You can see his anger from before slipping into the darkness of his pupils, but his voice is clear and devoid.

“I know” You murmur

“And you’re going to stay with me till we get you a place. Tina and Syd offered and well the whole team, but I can’t-”

“I know, you can’t put them in danger”

“No. I can’t let it happen, you being alone, him somehow getting to you. You being hurt again-” Carmen shakes his head, grinding his jaw as he cuts his eyes away.

“Okay” You mumble, suddenly feeling the exhaustion of your secret that had weighed you down every day fall away.

The month after had passed quicker than any other time in your life. And for that you were grateful. You had packed a bag and moved into Carmen's apartment that night, and he and Richie had made good on their promise. They watched, as well as the rest of the Bear with a sneer as your fiance was carried into the police station, and you watched the mirror of your injuries multiplied across his face. 

The police had been slow in taking action, even you know this, so you suppose their tight lipped expressions at the beaten man they found in your trashed apartment made up for that.

Carmen slept near the door for the first two weeks, a bat in his hand and his notebook of recipes filled with scribbled annotations. Tossing and turning enough times, made you wrap your blanket around yourself and join him by the door. You would wake up some nights, in a sweat from the terror of your nightmare imagining him somehow finding you, and you would join him those times as well.

The truth of all that had happened still had not yet been told, and you doubt that it ever will. But you were okay with that, and Carmen was too. And so when your fiance had been tried and sentenced, and the promise of broken bones hung over him even years after, Carmen had made no mention of finding you a place. 

And so you stayed, and made a home for yourself. Let your shoes get muddled and clutter the hallway, have your toothbrush besides his own. Move in the last pieces of yourself that had been left in that prison to a place that could maybe change them.

You spent Thursdays with Richie, he’d wait at the foyer for you and he'd take you out for lunch like clockwork. Divulging in your week as he did his, he let you steal some of his cigarettes and you let him ramble to you. Richie had surprised you, when all was said and done. He had known what to do, knew how to talk to you, and you think you credit him to a lot of where you were now. You suppose he blames himself a little as well, so you don’t mind that Thursdays were his way of checking up on you.

You let the team act the same way, Tina bringing you plates of food and tupper wares of lasagna till Carmen's fridge was hard to open, Sydney calling every day, Ebra and Marcus making sure you had someone who could walk you home if Carmen had to stay back. And when you had finally had enough, they nodded and backed away and let you out of their grip.

You're crouched in the fire escape of Carmen's building, passing a bottle of wine that you had snuck from service. 

“I visited him today”

“What?” Carmen replies, knowing immediately who you were talking about.

You shrug your shoulders, “I was too much of a mess to confront him, and the court proceedings left me too numb to even face him. But I went today, and I told him. What he had done, how he had changed.”

“But then he laughed and I punched him in his goddamn mouth”

“Atta girl” Carmen grins, his smile filling up the entire bottom of his face.

“So I can’t ever come back to the Boston Corrections facility, and boy am I glad. You know what this means though right?”

“Hm?” Carmen mumbles with a mouthful of street tacos

“You can’t ever get yourself thrown in prison” You chide, and you smile when he throws his head back in laughter

“Seriously Carm?” You bemoan, resting against the living room entryway

“Yes, the bed is strictly meant for you. What do you take me for? Letting a woman sleep on the couch” Carmen gruffs, carefully placing the duvet over the couch cushions.

“It’s been nearly a year since I’ve moved in, Carmen. I don’t think it's ridiculous to assume we can share a bed together”

Carmen grinds his jaw, swallowing back grunt at the thought of sharing a bed with you. As if it was no big thing, as if Carmen would be able to sleep with you next to him.

“It’s called being a host”

“I signed the lease 2 months ago, we’re technically de-facto” You raise your eyebrows, folding your hands across your chest

“The only time I’ll let the government decide what we are is when-if I put a ring on that finger” Carmen replies, the little slip causing him to cut his eyes from you and back to the duvet that was already folded.

You shake your head with a laugh “This you’re way of proposing Carm? Take a girl out for dinner first”

Carmen mumbles under his breath, flattening the duvet with his inked hands before his phone buzzes

“Goddamnit, that’s Richie. 

“Leave that sofa and let's go down to meet our friends and have a nice time. God knows we’ve earned more than a few drinks at Nick’s” You reply, swiping Carmen’s phone

“Hey!”

“You weren’t even going to answer him” You roll your eyes.

You send Richie a text that was all apologetic and none grammatically correct as you shuffle out of your work pants into some jeans. 

The team was already at the bear, halfway through the first round of drinks and you’d be damned if you let Carmen make the both of you late.

Carmen is in jeans as well, and the white shirt he always dons fits around his chest tightly. You can lie to yourself most days, but in times like this, where you both live in this domestic bubble your mind wanders.

You don’t let it too much.

But when you're visiting family, and you pass by the Louisiana welcome sign planted in the roadway, and the weather gets warm and the nights stretch out you let yourself think of him. You let yourself imagine a life where he was entwined, in you, your life, your days while you drink on the porch of your family home.

The thought of being in anything new scares you to no end, your past finds you in moments you least expect and dredges you down to the same feeling you felt when you were with him.

But Carmen was your past too wasn’t he? He was muddled and interlinked with all the memories that make your chest ache and your hands shake. Carmen didn’t feel new..you had already been living with each other for a year now, and you suppose the way you both flow into each other's lives was no different.

You’d be together, in the way you had always been but different also. You’d get to grow familiar of the taste of him, you’d get to feel him under your skin, beneath your fingers, and he’d sleep in that fucking bed for the first time in a year.

Then the sun would dip below the horizon, the sounds of the insects and birds would come back to you, and the creeping shadow of guilt and insecurity would remind you of who you were again. 

You’d taste the bitter embarrassment of forcing Carmen to be that way with you, throwing your head back as you gulp down the beer in your hand as you try to stave away the taste. The dream disappears each time from you, like the oranges and reds that paint the Louisiana sky every evening.

“Hey, we going or what?” Carmen says, his eyes narrowing at, you noticing the way your eyes glaze over.

“Yeah, yes” You nod, swallowing the thoughts of him quickly as you finish tying your boots and let Carmen lock the door behind you. 

The bar is surprisingly crowded on a Tuesday night, and you have to squeeze past crowds of leather wearing bikers before finally seeing the team seated in a long booth at the back.

“Finally!” Richie yells, hands in the air and his beer swishing out of the neck.

“We were about to send a search party” Tina smiles, looking toward you with a glint in her eyes when she notices Carmen’s arm at your back.

“Aren’t you guys like, a 2 minute walk from this place? Fak got here before you” Marcus replied, his old fashioned nursed in your arms.

“I had no involvement in our tardiness, he was too busy fixing his makeshift couch bed”

“Oh don’t tell me your still sleeping on that” Richie’s eyes widen

“You know that ain’t even a good couch right? We found it on the side of the road-“ 

“It’s not good for your back Carmen, all those cushions” Ebra shakes his head disapprovingly.

“It’s perfectly fine Ebra, and who would I be if I let a woman sleep on the couch?” Carmen grumbles, as both slide into the booth next to Sydney.

“I mean, there is an easy straightforward solution” Sydney murmurs, and everyone turns to her quickly.

“You could both just sleep in the same bed together” She replies, after looking at everyone dumbfounded.

“Only married people share a bed, that’s Sicilian tradition”

“Yeah, mixing work and personal life isn’t-“

“Mixing? They already live together!” Sydney replies, defensively.

“Wouldn’t be surprised if they’re already” Four murmured, before snapping his mouth closed when Carmen narrows his eyes to him.

“It’s not about fucking tradition, or whatever. I’m not gonna put her-you in that situation and make you uncomfortable”

“Why would you make me uncomfortable?” You murmur without thinking, and the booth goes quiet.

Carmen shakes his head, blinking as you remain quiet.

You wince at the silence, maneuvering your body quickly out of the booth as you almost fall out.

“Uh-I’m going to get a drink” You reply quickly 

Carmen's body isn’t fast enough for his legs and he stands up from his position on the booth quickly, almost tumbling over.

 “I’ll come with you”

You shake your head, forcing a tight smile as you wave him off.

“It’s okay, I know your order” You reply quickly, turning around without seeing the look on Carmen’s face.

You slide into one of the vacant barstools, signalling to the bartender as they make the rounds across the counter.

The rows of silver bracelets that hang around the bartender's wrists cling as they mix and shake drinks, and you let yourself get lost in the glittering light show of them reflecting off the bar lights. They distract you enough to not notice the man that now leers over you.

You flinch when you feel his hand touch your shoulder, and when you turn expecting one of the guys from the Bear you're taken back when you're met with a five o clock shadow and a stink of vodka.

“What's a girl like you doin’ all alone?” 

“I’m good” You grit out from between your teeth

“Oh c’mon, you girls love to play hard but what you really need-”

“I said leave me alone asswhole” You spit, roughly moving his latched fingers from your shoulder. 

The man sneers, his voice growing louder and sloppy as he begins to swear at you. His hands find their way to your waist, and the shiver of disgust turns into a familiar sharp pain as you shout out.

“You fucking bitch” The man starts, before you see the flash of dirty blonde curls cover your vision and the feeling of his fingers around you is wrenched off.

Carmen’s hands are around his neck, and he slams him into the wooden floors of the Bar with ease. He holds him there before turning to look up at you, his eyes blown out and his eyebrows furrowed behind his curls. Your chest heaves as you meet his gaze, and you watch as his eyes trail down your body, almost surveying the extent of your injuries and filing it into his mind so that it is all he thinks about when he breaks the skin across his knuckles.

You watch Carmen work, watch the way his shoulders and back contorts under every movement that lands a punch into the man's face. The buzzing chatter of the bar increases, as people begin to take notice of the shouts of frazzled swears and slobby slurs that leave the man's mouth. Someone screams there is a fight, and the bartender mutters obscenities as they try to push through the crowd.

Carmen lands punch after punch into his face, with no real sense of stopping as his movements grow more and more crazed with every crack of skin and dribble of blood that paints his hands. Carmen's eyes look determined, like he had a goal to all of this, and when Richie and the rest of the team pushes past the crowd and shouts out to him to stop, he looks up at you do you know.

You didn’t get to see what he had done to your husband, or how. But now, he takes his time with the man under him who kicks and fails, blubbering out blood and drool. He continues to stare at you, and the rest of the patrons look on in horror as the man under Carmen becomes disguised by the brutality of Carmens fists across his body. You hear the crack of bone, and when the man screams out a loose and garbled apology from the swollen tongue of his mouth, does Carmen flick his eyes down to him.

“You’re sorry? Yeah?” Carmen murmurs, softly

The man nods eagerly, his mouth filling with blood and his eyes swollen

“I’m not sure I believe that” Carmen replies, sending his foot into the mans stomach as he keels over

“Okay, Carmen that's enough” Richie calls out

“All I did was ask her a question!” The man screams out, his words jagged and unclear

“Hey, you shut the fuck up” Richie replies, before clocking his head to try and meet Carmens gaze who is back on you

“Look man, I get it. That one time wasn’t enough, but you can’t keep doing this”

Carmen grinds his teeth, as you look on in awe as his knuckles bleed violently, throwing his arm up and swinging down onto the man.

You got what you needed from this, and so when you step closer to Carmen and turn your head to the side you can only think of one thing

“I’m banned for at least 12 months” 

You watch his fingers loosen around the man's bloody shirt, and Carmen wipes his hands across the man's chest before slowly straightening up from his crouched position.

“Get the fuck out, the both of you before the cops get here” The bartender grits out, shaking his head.

Carmen nods, “I’m not fucking sorry”

“Yeah yeah I know” The bartender rolls his eyes, before you grab Carmen's arm and push through the gawking faces of onlookers

You find a door leading out to a side alleyway, and you both fall out from the door into a combined heap.

“I had to do it okay? The way he was looking at you and that fucking hand around your side I couldn’t just let him-“ Carmen starts, chest heaving up and down and the splatter of spit and blood across his jaw

You don’t let him finish the rushed words that fall out of his mouth before you cover it with your own. Gripping onto the loose collar of his shirt, you drink down the anger and violence that had been festering on the both of you.

Carmen tastes sweet, like the cranberry jus he had been preparing, and rough too, like his worn workmen jacket and the pepper taste of his nicotine gum.

You realise then that you would never taste something as great as that, and that you would be chasing the feeling of how Carmen’s lips against your own vibrates through you from head to foot.

You pull away with quickness, chest heaving and eyes wide as you feel Carmen’s mouth warm your chest.

Carmen doesn’t blink, he stares at you, the brittle Chicago winter blowing his hair across his forehead and the distant sound of sirens and he stares at you.

“I’m not sorry” You whisper, pressing your lips together

“Good” Carmen replies before you’ve even uttered the last word.

And when you blink the cold smoke of his breath is over you again, his inked fingers cradle your head and he takes your mouth again.

You don’t stop the crash of your open mouths and dipping tongues until the warmth of Carmen covers you entirely, until November in Chicago feels like July.

taglist !

@kpopgirlbtssvt @hansfics @nolita-fairytale @parmforcarm @rooster-bradshaw

[covenofagatha]

A dance with death (and her wife) (Part 3)

A new murder with a different M.O. has you feeling confused

Word count: 4100

Warnings: fingering, murder

It takes you all of five minutes to leave the motel room after you dig more clothes out of your suitcase. 

You looked everywhere for the clothes you were wearing before your nap, but they’re nowhere to be found. 

It would be incredibly bad if you had stripped down and then left the room to put them somewhere else. 

But you don’t have time to dwell on that right now. 

You go fifteen over the speed limit to get to the location Agatha had texted over after she hung up the phone. 

To the location of another murder. 

You had foolishly hoped that maybe The Witch and Lady Death would slow down once you had gotten to town, maybe out of fear of being caught. 

Clearly you had done little to deter them. 

It’s only ten minutes away from your motel, near a creek on the edge of town. 

Police cars are already parked there, yellow caution tape closing off the perimeter. You slam the door shut to your sedan and hurry over to Agatha. It’s late in the afternoon, but the sun is already setting, making the colors of everything look muted. 

“Was it them?” You ask, a little breathless. Agatha glances up and down and looks like she wants to comment on your outfit change, but doesn’t. 

“Come see and tell us what you think,” she says ominously and you follow her into the trees. “Good doctor’s appointment?” 

You stop walking, forcing her to pause too. “You’re married to Dr. Vidal?” 

She chuckles. “She told you that, didn’t she?”

“Did you know that’s who I was going to see earlier?” You ask, not sure why it matters. 

“I had my suspicions,” is all Agatha chooses to say. She’s taking you further into the woods along the side of the creek and it’s getting colder, but the air starts to feel…alive, almost. 

Like it’s crackling with something. You somehow know you’re getting closer to the body.

Are you imagining it, or can Agatha feel it, too? 

And then she stops so quickly you almost bump into her and she points up ahead. 

In the middle of thin, small trees is a big willow tree. It’s a beautiful sight, if you’re being honest. 

You’re transfixed by the icicles gleaming from the barren branches and it takes you a bit to notice the pool of red snow by the roots. 

You stumble forward to get a better look in the last rays of daylight, eyes traveling up the tree trunk and you gasp. 

A man is tied to it, his pants cut open halfway down his thigh and there's a deep gash through both of his femoral arteries. Most likely the cause of death. The only reason you know what color his pants were supposed to be is because the part near his hips is unstained. 

But that’s not all. 

His flannel shirt has been ripped as well, revealing his bare chest, where a heart has been drawn with a knife. It’s a shallow cut, not too much blood, but it’s clear this was meant to be a message, rather than fatal. His eyes are gray and lifeless.

“I don’t understand, this isn’t their M.O. at all,” you say, the snow behind you crunching as Agatha walks to stand next to you. 

You can feel her eyes on you, regarding you carefully. “So what do you think?” 

You think that you’ve never felt this way before. Something is happening to your body, a heat is spreading through it, and it’s like there’s electricity under your skin. Your scar tingles, but doesn’t hurt. 

“Fuck, I don’t know,” you say in frustration. “Maybe they’re switching it up, it’s like they’re taunting me! It doesn’t make any sense to change tactics now, though. All the other bodies were found in homes and now this one is tied to a tree in the middle of nowhere? Doesn’t seem to be poisoned and they didn’t carve out his heart. I don’t – I don’t know.” 

You’re so suddenly aware of the hot blood pumping through your veins and you want something. You can’t put a name to it yet, though. 

“Do you think it could have been someone else?” She asks and you shake your head immediately. 

“No, this was them. I know it, I can feel it.” There’s a thrumming in your head now, behind your eyes and you just want to get rid of it. 

Agatha’s lips stretch into a slow smile and you can see the darkness in her eyes. “What else do you feel?” 

The question makes you freeze. Maybe you’re not going crazy. “Can you feel it, too?” You whisper; you’re afraid to say it too loudly, like it’ll break the spell. 

She slowly walks around and advances on you and you walk backwards until you hit a tree. Your heart races and you can feel it everywhere, like your entire body is beating in time with it.

“You feel the adrenaline, don’t you? Being this close to death, yet you feel more alive than ever?” She asks, and you choke out an affirmation. “It’s addicting, isn’t it? Tell me how it makes you feel.” 

Agatha leans down again, just how she did in the evidence locker, but this time, she drags her teeth up your neck and nips. The pounding in your head gets worse. “It feels…powerful,” you admit, both to her and yourself, maybe for the first time. 

“There’s an ache inside you, right?” She asks, now sucking bites into your neck and your stance widens just the slightest. 

Hearing her put a name to it makes it ever so clear to you now. “Yes,” you gasp, molten heat growing between your legs. “Please.” You don’t know what you’re asking for, but Agatha does. 

Lips still on your skin, her hands fumble with the waistband of your new pants, trying to unbutton and unzip. She’s finally able to slip her fingers in and when she moves your underwear to the side and cups your pussy, you hiss at the coldness. 

“Fuck,” you swear as she starts to swipe at your clit. You’re so sensitive already, and if you weren’t so needy, you’d take a good, long look at yourself to figure out why you’re so turned on right now. 

“Why don’t you think it was them?” She asks, pushing a finger inside you and your head falls back against the tree. She doesn’t move it, waiting for an answer first. 

The ringing in your head comes back with a vengeance. “They’re messing with me,” you stutter. “They want me to be thrown off their game.” She starts moving, slowly thrusting and curling, and you gasp. The mix of pleasure and pain is a combination you never thought would be a good one. 

“You think they’re doing this just for you?” She muses, shoving another finger inside you and twisting lazily and it pulls a groan out of you. 

“The murders were all the same until I showed up,” you whimper. It feels like your body is about to burst. “Agatha.” 

Her thumb finds your clit again and rubs it. “Shh,” she soothes. “I know, superstar. I’ll give you what you need.” She mouths at your neck, lips traveling upward until she reaches your chin, and then her face pulls away from yours. 

“Please,” you beg again. 

“What if it wasn’t them?” She asks in a low voice, fingers stilling in you. You whine and frantically buck your hips to get some stimulation. You just need more. 

You can’t even think straight. “It had to be them. Who else could it have been?” 

There’s just enough sunlight to see the wicked smirk on her face. “Guess we’ll have to wait and see.” 

And then her lips are on yours and she’s ferociously kissing you like she’s trying to devour you, and the pain in your head completely stops. 

She sets a bruising pace inside you and you’re panting into her open mouth while her tongue thrashes against yours. Your teeth clash and it’s messy and hot and everything that you need, and her fingers are hitting exactly where you need. Your hands are rough as they scramble for purchase around her shoulders, desperate to keep her exactly where she is. You dig your nails into her and she moans against you, and you’re so close. 

Your orgasm is building, only this time, it’s heightened and feels way more intense than any you’ve ever had before. You’re throbbing around Agatha’s fingers, clenching and trying to draw her in even more, and she fits a third one into you. It makes you keen and you babble nonsensically about how you’re going to cum.  

“Cum for me, pet,” she orders and you sink your teeth hard into her lower lip as you do. It’s like a dam breaks all over your body, tension and pleasure exploding through every crack and crevice and it’s easily the best orgasm you’ve ever had. 

It takes a minute for you to recover and when you’re able to think clearly again after Agatha takes her fingers out of you, you notice that her lip is bleeding. 

“Fuck, did I do that?” You ask and she chuckles, tongue darting out to lick it up. You follow the movements and feel the heat inside you coming back. 

She holds the fingers that were inside of you up to your mouth and you suck on them without hesitation. “Don’t worry about it. Not the first time it’s happened,” she teases with a wink and your stomach sinks. Your head moves back so her fingers slip out of you.

“Oh my god, you’re married,” you say and Agatha raises an eyebrow as if to say obviously. “And we’re at a crime scene, what did we just do? There’s a dead body right over there.”

Agatha raises up her hands to disarm the situation. “Hey, don’t think too hard about it. You have a very stressful job, sometimes you just need to blow off some steam.” 

“How are you so calm? You just cheated on your wife!” You snap, quickly zipping and buttoning your pants. The electricity in the air is now gone, completely replaced by cold and fear. You have to get out of here. The Witch and Lady Death are two steps ahead of you and you need to stop them. This was them, and you know it.

You don’t even wait for Agatha to respond, you pick a direction and start walking. She calls your name a few times before you whirl around, tears in your eyes. “Rio and I…have an arrangement of sorts. Trust me, she is completely okay with this.” 

Her words do little to calm you down, but you’re getting closer to the detectives and officers and the coroner’s car has pulled up. “It doesn’t matter. This can’t happen again,” you say sternly. 

“Whatever you want, superstar,” she says and it almost makes you furious. It feels like she’s teasing you, for being with the FBI. Almost as bad as the guys around the station calling you Miami. 

But you don’t argue, you don’t speak at all, you just stand there, a bone-chilling emptiness inside you as you watch the body get wheeled out from the woods after about twenty minutes. Detectives keep searching the surrounding area for any clues, but they find nothing. 

Which doesn’t surprise you at all. Lady Death and The Witch are clever. It just means you have to work harder to catch them. 

“Alright, we got everything here. Forensics is going to do some tests on the blood, see if maybe we can get a DNA match for the killer. Photos of the scene will be printed and ready for us tomorrow,” Agatha says gruffly, walking over to you, the picture of professionalism after being three fingers deep in you not forty-five minutes ago. “You should get home, get some rest.” 

You shake your head and clutch your jacket tighter around you. “I’ve been sleeping for the past few hours. I’m not tired. I can head into the station, if you want. Get a head start on work for tomorrow.” 

Something flickers in Agatha’s eyes, something you don’t quite recognize. “No, that’s okay. Go back to your motel. Even if you don’t sleep, you should still try and relax. Take a warm bath or something. That always helps me clear my head.” 

You frown, but before you can ask what she thinks you need to clear your head from, she pats you on the shoulder and walks to her car. The scene quickly clears out, but there’s something still nagging at you in the back of your mind. 

You can’t leave just yet. 

Grabbing a flashlight from your bag in your car, you wander back through the woods, desperate to find something the officers missed. 

The night passes while you tear up every single rock and leaf and clump of snow on the ground near where the man was murdered. And then you expand the search, walking along the creek edge, flashlight sweeping right and left. Your hands are bright red from the stinging frost, having taken off your gloves ages ago to better dig around, and you’ve lost feeling in your face. Tears are permanently frozen in your eyes it seems, and as the sun starts to break through the darkness, you defeatedly drop to the ground on the bed of the creek. 

You don’t know what you were expecting to find, it was a stupid idea. You’re just about to call it a day and trek back to your car to go into the station, when you see a log just a few yards away. 

Brows crinkling, you wince when you stand up, your joints aching from the cold, and stumble over to it. You shine your flashlight into the opening of the hole and you gasp. 

The light reflects off something shiny. 

This time, you’re smart about it. You put your gloves back on, flashing between your teeth, and you carefully reach inside and brush away the moss to grab onto it and pull it out. 

It’s a knife. 

The discovery makes your heart leap. You found something! This could be your first real break in the case, one step closer to bringing the pair of serial killers down. 

You turn the blade over in your hands to inspect every part of it. Strange, you think. It seems almost like a kitchen knife. The serrated edge isn’t as sharp as it should be if it were meant to be a murder weapon. But when you hold it closer to your face, you can make out specks of blood on it. 

And then there’s something else, an emblem of sorts on the bottom of the blue handle. It says WM with a circle around the letters. 

The first thing you think of is Wanda Maximoff and terror spikes through you. Has she gotten out of jail and come to find you? 

But you are absolutely certain that Tony would’ve called you immediately, so that helps calm you down. Still, you suddenly don’t feel safe in the woods, almost like you’re being watched, so you pocket the knife before sprinting back to your car. 

You slam and lock the doors immediately and you turn the heat all the way up to coax life back into your frozen body. It’s still early, barely even six-thirty am, so you decide to go back to your motel room and shower before you head into the station. 

Your stomach rumbles and you can’t remember the last time you ate. You just pulled an all-nighter (although, you could argue that because you took a nap for about five hours yesterday, that counts as sleep) and you haven’t showered since you’ve been here. 

Tony would kill you. 

Once you get back to your room, you turn on the bath, still feeling the chill deep in your bones. You carefully take the knife out of your coat pocket with a paper towel and lay it on the counter so you can remember to bring it in so Forensics can test it. 

You strip off your sopping wet clothes and get into the bath, moaning out loud at how good the warm water on your tired and shaking body feels. 

Sinking into the tub so every part of you except for your face is submerged, you lean down to turn off the faucet and settle back down. You don’t remember falling asleep, but the next thing you know, you jolt awake and splash about a gallon of water over the edge. 

“Fuck,” you cough, trying to get out of the tub, but your entire body is sore and your head feels awful. 

Apparently there’s consequences for spending over eight hours out in the snow with no gloves and then falling asleep in a bath with water that’s now lukewarm. 

You manage to maneuver yourself out and you quickly grab the robe that was hanging on the bathroom door to wrap around your shivering body. Your phone is on the sink counter and it starts buzzing. It’s Agatha. 

A hand grips the vanity to stable yourself before picking it up. “Hello?” You rasp, grimacing at the effort it takes to speak. 

“Yikes, you sound awful,” she says, teasing tone in her voice. “You okay, superstar? Get a little too much rest last night?”

“I think I’m a little sick,” you admit. You’re usually able to tough it out, but you feel like you died and barely came back to life. “Is it okay if I–” 

“Yes, stay there,” she orders and you almost collapse with relief. 

But then you remember the knife. If you don’t go in, that means it’s another day that The Witch and Lady Death remain free. “I found something last night, in the woods,” you say. “I really need to bring it in.” 

“Whatever it is, it can wait. You just need to take some medicine and get some rest. Do you have anything you can take?” 

You search through the items in your toiletry bag. “I have some Advil.” You pop two in your mouth and swallow it with water from the sink. 

“I’ll text Rio and ask if she can bring over some medicine and maybe some food, too. Go to sleep. I’ll check in with you tomorrow,” she says, and before you can insist that Rio does not come here, she hangs up. 

Groaning, you find that you don’t have it in you to be petulant, so you make your way into bed and you fall asleep the moment your head hits the pillow. 

Snow. 

It’s just started falling, there’s barely an inch on the ground. 

The branches reach for you as you walk through them, trying to grab on and not let you go. The thicket is getting denser and darker, but there’s something calling out to you, so you keep walking. 

There’s a melodic hum, and it lulls you into feeling safe. Is it real? Is it in your head? 

Is there a difference? 

You can barely see three inches in front of you and everything is going black and you can feel wounds being torn into your face and you should really turn back now –

– you break into a clearing. 

Only this time, there’s a willow tree in the middle. You can hear something, it sounds like two women laughing. 

Are they laughing at you? 

It must be the killers, they must be taunting you, rubbing it in how you can’t catch them. 

More people are going to die, and their blood is on your hands. 

The cackling gets louder and louder and then it’s all you can hear and you clamp your hands over your ears begging for it to stop, please, god, let it stop –

– there’s a hand on your shoulder and everything is silent. 

You turn around slowly. Is it them? 

Instead, it’s a man with his eyes closed. He looks vaguely familiar, where have you seen him? 

He opens his eyes and they’re gray and it hits you. 

It’s the dead man. 

He grabs you by the shoulders and his jaw drops to scream, but no sound comes out. And then his hands grab your throat and he starts to squeeze. 

The knocking on the door to your room wakes you up and you fly out of bed, gasping for breath, still feeling the pressure around your throat. It takes a moment to collect your bearings before you realize that you’re safe and the man is dead. 

Still a little shaky, you walk to the door and unlatch it to find Dr. Vidal standing there. 

“Oh, hi,” you greet, stepping to the side so she can come in. It’s hard to meet her eyes after being fucked by her wife the day before. She holds up a container of chicken noodle soup in one hand and a box of cold medicine and a plastic grocery bag in the other. 

“Agatha said you were feeling a little under the weather,” she says, plopping the stuff down on the counter and thankfully avoiding the mounds of photos and case evidence you have right next to it. Including the knife from the woods. “Did I wake you up?” 

You rub your face and feel the pillow indentions in your cheek. “Um, yeah, I was having a bad dream though, so I don’t mind,” you joke and motion for her to take a seat. 

“I would heat up the soup first before eating,” she suggests and you pour it into a bowl and put it in the microwave. “Bad dream? Do you want to talk about it?

“Would it count as a session?”

Dr. Vidal waves her hand. “Not at all. Consider it free advice. So, what happened?” 

The microwave beeps and you open it, the soup steaming. You set it down to cool off a little. “It kind of lines up with those images I had with you and another dream I had yesterday, I think. I don’t really know how to explain it, but I think they’re memories of something? I just don’t remember it. But then there’s some things that change, like today, there was this new dead man. That was recent, so maybe they’re not memories? Maybe I’m just losing my mind.” 

“You’re not losing your mind,” she chuckles. “Dreams and memories, the real and not real, it’s easy to blur the lines. Maybe your unconscious is trying to tell you something, maybe trying to remind you of something that happened to you.” 

That makes you think for a moment. You can see the woods, the snow, whatever you keep seeing, but it’s more of just flashes in time, rather than the whole thing. You can’t see what happens before, or after. “I guess I’ll just have to see if more pieces start coming together,” you say. 

She sighs. “I know it can be confusing and probably really frustrating, but I’ll help you get to the bottom of this. I have some techniques we can try during your session in a few days. I’ll help you claw your way out of whatever this is.” 

“Thank you,” you say gratefully. “What’s in the bag?” You point to the grocery bag and she nods to give you permission. You open it and with a gasp, you find your clothes from yesterday in it, all neatly folded. “How…what…you…” There’s no words. 

“Don’t worry, it’s our little secret,” she says with a wink. 

You have to grab onto the edge of the counter so you don’t pass out. “Wait, did we…” 

“Have sex?” She asks bluntly and you’re too afraid to move. “No, we didn’t. If we did, you would remember it.” 

The thrumming starts to come back behind your eyes, despite the blush at her flirtatious words. “So, how do you have my clothes?” 

“You better eat your soup before it gets cold,” Dr. Vidal sidesteps the question and it’s clear that you’re not getting an answer. 

You slide open the drawer next to the fridge and pull out a spoon from the silverware caddy. A sharp pain sears through your head and your heart starts to race. 

The spoon has the same blue handle and emblem as the knife does. WM. Westview Motel. The spoon clatters to the ground and you begin furiously counting. Six forks. Six spoons. 

Five knives. 

When they were in your room your first night in Westview, they must’ve taken it from here. 

They’re trying to frame you. 

[monsoonceroom]

The drought has ended!

SPY X FAMILY CHAPTER 108!!!!

Picking up where we left off, it was revealed that LunaLuna Selena was none other than Melinda & apparently, she does enjoy dabbling in the occult. She's ashamed of it, but it's probably one of the few things keeping her sane at this point.

Yeah, Anya, that was my reaction too. I bet Melinda would go ga-ga over Anya's abilities & good on Yor for supporting her friend's hobbies.

Moving on, Melinda get's ready to DDDD-Dual read Anya's fortune & admits she has no idea what she's doing. Starting with Four of Cups, she doesn't know it's meaning, moves on to Death & says that the Grim Reaper is beside her (accurate considering Yor's job), & finally the reverse star means she'll never earn another stella.

I don't know how to do tarot cards either, but I have an advantage Melinda doesn't: Google. Let's see what our friendly neighborhood web browser has to offer:

Four of Cups: The readee is overlooking the important things in their life that they already have & they need a change in perspective to value what is already present.

Death: The end of a relationship or interest & increased self-awareness.

Reversed Star: Hopelessness & loss of faith as one is overwhelmed by life's challenges.

What could all this mean in terms of Anya? My interpretation is this: Four of Cups is Anya focusing so much on the Friendship Scheme™ & her dissatisfaction with the lack of progress she's had so far. Death is her realizing that trying to befriend Damian is going nowhere, so she ultimately loses interest in him. Reversed Star is Anya's belief that because she couldn't befriend Damian, she's resigning herself to the thoughts that she'll be sent back to the orphanage again.

Another thought I had is potentially the breakdown of the relationship between Anya & Becky. This doesn't seem as likely to me as I think we would've seen cracks by now if it were the case, but this was the first thing that came to mind.

Anyways, onward!

We get a Donovan jump scare (not pictured) when Melinda has a panic attack when thinking about him & Anya is very Concerned™. Apparently, this may not be Anya's first encounter with domestic abuse as the tension feels familiar. That brings up more questions, but I won't dwell on it right now.

Yor & Anya meet everyone else back at the Beer Garden where the boys are tampering with powers beyond their comprehension. Becky scolds them despite having her fortune told 10 minutes ago. I guess she's jaded now because she didn't get the answer she wanted. Meanwhile Damian listens in hoping the fortune teller mentioned who his future Mrs. Desmond will be.

Don't think you're slick, Damian! Anya can see you!

After a fun-filled day of festivities, it's time to go home & for Damian to make one more jab at Anya for being childish. However, it seems Anya pulled an Uno Reverse™:

Damian runs away screaming & more goodbyes are said. All in all it was a fun day for the Forgers & co.

Looks like we're at the hospital now & Loid is getting a new client:

Melinda is finally getting some help for her issues after some encouragement from Yor & her butler. I know Loid is ultimately using her for intel on Donovan, but I do hope this does help her at least a little bit.

[epickiya722]

I already made my predictions here on the epilogue, but I want to focus on the Yuko Ozawa part since I know some shippers are in panic about it.

Everything I'm about to say is from the POV of someone who did read MHA and been though 431 and someone who does ship ItaFushi. Do I think anyone should agree with me? No. But what I hope what I'm about to say at least ease your panic for the time being.

With that out the way!

Now, I'll reiterate from my other post.

If I were to guess what Yuko's part will be about, I think she may meet Yuji again. It makes sense. However, Gege being unpredictable, I feel like he may not go about making it something "romantic".

If anything, I think he may go the route as to what happened with Hana and Megumi. It's not going anywhere.

A piece of me feels like with this epilogue Yuji and Yuko will have a heart to heart, but Yuko comes out having a new revelation about herself which is to love herself.

If there's one thing about some of the female cast of JJK is that they're unapologetic themselves.

Nobara and Maki are the biggest examples of this. Other examples are Yuki and Uro. Yorozu even is an example as she didn't care what people thought of her.

Miwa may have a little ship tease with Muta, but even that doesn't stop her of being herself. When we do get a bit of her "hiding" herself, it wasn't for a boy. It was because her mother told her to dye her hair black (as it is naturally blue).

Maybe Yuko could get that treatment here and that's why she was chosen. To give closure to her character that allows her to move on.

Again, Gege is unpredictable. I have a feeling that the reveals of the epilogue was to give fans a heads-up and... what is the word I want to use... I can't exactly explain it, but maybe make fans feel like they're getting this possible romance as a "red herring" as to hide that "Actually, no, none of that here".

Think about what happened to Hana (who is no different than Yuko) and Megumi. Most of the story, she was spent crushing on Megumi but that went nowhere.

Thinking about it, when it comes to F/M relationships here, it really doesn't go anywhere romantically.

Miwa and Muta? Muta is dead.

Got a bit of ship tease with Yuki and Choso and guess what? They're both dead.

Nobara deadass states she would never date Yuji (and I'm sure this extends to Megumi, too).

Shoko says Hell would freeze over before she fell in love with either Gojo or Geto. And those two are dead and happy together in the afterlife. 👀

As I mentioned Hana's crush on Megumi? Girl, might as well move on.

Utahime straight up doesn't like Gojo and he's dead now.

Yuta had that childhood romance with Rika and she died and whatever he has with Maki isn't really canon. They're just friends.

Yorozu had a thing for Sukuna, but he was not feeling her at all. And they're both dead now, so...??

See the pattern here? Wouldn't it be odd for Gege to give Yuko and Yuji something explicitly romantic when they haven't done much before?

Out of the four characters, Yuko is one of the most background of background characters (I say that will love before someone comes for me). Nobara, Uraume and Panda all have some involvement with the more active parts of the story. Much like Fumi and Saori was to Nobara and Tsumiki is to Megumi, she was a character part of Yuji's story.

However, what did those other characters have that she didn't?

A close relationship. You know who else was like this to Yuji?

Rin Amai. "But Kiya, he didn't--" Ah! Rin was also someone from Yuji's past that also was affected by Yuji's presence in some way. And he managed to get some bit of closure to his character. He gets this in 270. Rin apologizes to the kid he didn't stand up for and allowed bullies to harass. Despite not getting forgiveness, he still was able to apologize, accept what is done and move on.

Yuko may get this. Last time, she didn't tell Yuji her feelings because she didn't want him to like her for her looks. That's a regret and one time about JJK characters is they don't want to live with regrets. With Yuko, she may need to tell Yuji her feelings so that she can move on from that regret and focus on being her most unapologetic self.

I don't know Gege personally, but I do feel that this could be the case and honestly, I do hope that it is. It would be good for her and yeah, I don't really feel threatened by her presence. I'm going to still ship ItaFushi so...

[crimeronan]

AM i reading too much into it or is the amputation line when lilith takes away amity’s magic also a tongue in cheek reference to Grim!Amity AU

either way it’s so so so good

GOD IS GOOD I'M SO HAPPY SOMEBODY NOTICED THIIIIISSSSSSSSS..... THANK U....

yes it is :D

[fromtheseventhhell]

I don't think anyone who believes Arya is focused on revenge has ever actually read her chapters, it's just been one long game of telephone where people repeat a take they heard so they can pretend they know what they're talking about

[riddlerosehearts]

while my mind is still on the subject of transfem genderfluid taichi. i very recently got around to reading SSR family and my main takeaway after getting through all the backstage stories for it, and then especially after also reading citron's backstage story for devil maid's holiday, was this:

[arolesbianism]

Doodle of my boy

[possibly-eli]

hey guys i think im out of the trauma spiral my ex-quadmate put me in <- he is, in fact, not out of the trauma spiral his ex-quadmate put him in

[musical-chick-13]

.

[autisticlee]

have realized the way my sister talks to me is a trauma trigger and I can't escape it because no matter what I do she still talks to me that way and i've told her to stop because I hate it and it makes me feel horrible so please try to talk to me differently. but she just rolls her eyes and continues to say worse things. she gets to live her best life and be happy because the way she treats me doesn't affect her at all, while I have to spend the next week with trauma related flashbacks and rumination and feeling like shit against my will. and she doesn't care. it's my problem that she's my problem! she doesn't need to take responsibility for anything! she grew up being taught she's invincible and can treat me like shit and never get punished. she learned to fake cry and get me in trouble. no one believes me or cares. i'm the bad kid and she's a perfect angel. because of that, my parents don't care and tell me to "ignore/get over it"

IF CURING TRAUMA WAS EASY AS DECIDING TO GET OVER IT– 😒

[ratspider]

woke up from a dream about a family not accepting a trans kid for who they are to a text where my dad deadnames me :I