#and hi stolowitski master of sarcasm

[thecupcakeconsumer]

Mistake, Heartbreak, Hoping She’ll Wake - Hi Stolowitski x Claybourne!Reader

A/N: A little bit of a different format to celebrate the fact that I’ve never really had a request before! It’s more organised this way so I can say what I wanna say, I’m stealing the format from my other blog.

Request: “Hey, can you write a Hiram x reader? (Reader and Hiram are bf and gf) Where the @ gamemaster tries to hurt the reader and she almost dies and ends up in the hospital. Hiram serious for once tells her he loves her while she’s in a coma and she wakes up and cheesey shit?” Courtesy of @writers-block0o0

Navigation: Masterlist is here.

Taglist: None of y’all actually asked to be added to my taglist so I feel a bit pretentious here with this, but here goes, I hope y’all lovelies enjoy - @themorrisislandpack, @shelton-devers, @viralgonepsych-o,  @virgosfr3ckles,  @quaintnessandqueerness, @parvovirusxpb-19, @eatsleepcringerepeat, @waterlovescake.

Summary: As Chance Claybourne’s half-sister, life has never been easy - but when someone working against your closest friends kidnaps you, it’s a matter of life and death all dependent on when and if they can get to you. Takes place during Code.

Warnings: Language - “damn”, “bastard”, and I think at least three (3) uses of the Lord’s name in vain, which might offend some people. Also, firearms mentions. Kidnapping. Blood mentions. It’s somewhat violent. Don’t read this to your kids, please. Just a bad idea.

Word Count: 4,008 (I usually don’t add that but damn I wanted you to know this is not a short oneshot!)

Other Notes: I hope I’ve fulfilled this request as well as the requester wanted, considering how long it took me to get around to it! (I’m still sorry!) Anyway, here goes nothing.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” murmured Shelton as they sat in the bunker, gathered around the iPad on which the next clue was scheduled to appear.

“Shelton,” sighed Hi, “you’ve always got a bad feeling. How bad can it…”

He trailed off as the iPad flickered on, revealing a video of a girl that they knew all too well.

“Y/N,” whispered Ben as the Gamemaster’s vile laugh filled the room.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” asked the man rhetorically, face not visible as a knife was dragged across her skin, barely touching it. “Have fun finding her.”

The video stopped, and a timer appeared on screen, giving them four hours.

“No. This can’t be happening. This cannot be happening,” muttered Hi, getting up and starting to pace.

Tory stared in mute disbelief at the screen as the numbers started to count down before finally opening her mouth. “We have to find her. Hi, calm down. I know you’re concerned but this is not the time to be panicking.”

“My girlfriend is being held captive. By a madman!” Hi flailed his arms in the air for emphasis. “By someone who's probably going to kill her, how can I not panic? Why aren’t you panicking? How aren’t you panicking? We were supposed to go on a date, this was supposed to be a normal day, I was finally ready to-”

He sat down, too choked up with tears threatening to fall to continue.

“When was the last time we saw her?” asked Tory. “Shelton, you had tech with her. Do you remember what she said she was going to do?”

“She rode home with Chance,” offered Ben, causing all eyes in the room to turn to him. “Y/N rode home with Chance. She always does on Wednesdays. It’s why she hates them.”

Tory, Ben, Shelton and Hi all knew it was no secret that you weren’t exactly fond of your half brother – since you had been forced to move in with him and your father around the time that Tory moved to Morris Island, the two of you had never quite gotten along.

Not near as well as you got along with the Morris Island crew, anyway – you and Ben were like brother and sister, while you had been dating Hi for six months strong.

“We’ve got to find her. Who knows what he’s-” Hi struggled to keep down a sob “-done to her.” He turned to Tory. “How strong is your nose?”

You aren’t used to things going so fast, but with Hi, it never feels like you’re rushing things – and besides, amidst all of the adventures that your friends have managed to get up to since being infected, it’s hardly like your relationship is the least stable thing in either of your lives.

In fact, as Hi once put it, “it’s nice to have something that feels real for once when the rest of your day feels like a dream.”

Ironically enough, he was eating a Twinkie while saying this and ardently defended the golden snack’s “realness” when you brought it up.

A knock on your door startled you out of your reverie, but the moment you opened your mouth to answer, you frowned.

Who would knock on your door in this house? Currently, only your half-brother, Chance, lived here – not even your father was here anymore, considering his current occupation of serving a life sentence in prison.

Since moving in a few years ago, Chance had never come to your room, considering the two of you did not get along well. In fact, you were about certain that he wasn’t even home at the moment.

“Who’s there?”

Nobody answered, and you started to think that you must have imagined whatever you heard.

Oh well, can’t hurt to be sure. You padded across the carpeted room before pulling open the door.

You don’t even get the chance to scream as a hand claps over your mouth, and despite your struggle, you can’t twist to see the owner of said hand before you pass out.

A combination of Tory’s sense of smell, enhanced by flaring, along with a touch of technological tracing on Shelton’s part had them following a trail of blood through the woods not far from downtown Charleston.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t have gotten backup?” asked Shelton nervously. “Maybe the police would have been good to bring into this, considering he’s probably armed.”

Tory turned to him, yellow eyes gleaming in the darkness of late evening. “Yes, Shelton, and how were we supposed to explain how we found him? It’s better to keep the police out of this. We just solve the puzzle, grab Y/N, and nobody gets hurt.” I hope, was what she didn’t say, but it was what all of them heard anyway.

The four stopped abruptly as the fading sun cast light upon a dark building in the middle of the world, a shack inconspicuous enough that they would never have looked at it twice, but also a shack where the trail ended.

“He’s probably got cameras up around the place,” offered Ben, frowning as he took it in.

“Ben, can you check if there’s any windows? That seems safer than trying to get in through the front door.” He nodded at Tory’s request as she continued to survey it.

Before Ben had moved five steps, a shrill screech came from inside the shack, the scream loud to even the three of the four who hadn’t flared and bringing Tory to her knees, hands clapped over her ears a moment too soon. “Quick.”

The tallest of the boys disappeared into the trees to survey the perimeter as Hi sweated through his shirt, nervously wringing his hands.

“I can’t believe she got dragged into this,” he mumbled under his breath, the sound still audible in the silence of dusk. “This is all my fault. I should have gone all Harry Potter to her Ginny and broken up with her to protect her.”

“Hi.” Shelton grabbed him by the shoulders. “We all know how well that worked. Stop it. Y/N needs you right now.”

The other boy nodded, hardly hearing him as Ben came back. “There’s two windows. One is the room they’re in. One is near it. I think they’ll hear us if we break through there.”

“Front door it is.”

Ignoring the sense of foreboding that came upon them as they approached, the four walked up to the front door, Shelton testing the handle.

Easily, it turned and opened, not even locked.

“Either they just got here, or he was expecting us.” Shelton made to enter but Ben yanked him back by the collar.

“There’s no telling how he’s rigged this place. It’d probably be best if we all flared.”

“But won’t he see?”

Hi rolled his eyes. “Listen. If this Joker is really so mad as to try and steal from us and take Y/N while he’s at it, God knows what other crazy thoughts he’s got going on in his head. Who’s he gonna tell that will believe him?”

He was the first to flare, and soon, four pairs of gleaming yellow stood in the front corridor of a single-story shack that couldn’t have looked more like it was out of a horror movie if it tried.

Firearms from Glocks to AK-47s lined the walls and hung on racks, and a sickening spatter of blood on the floor had splashed onto the couch nearby.

It was a gruesome scene that made Shelton visibly shudder as they continued through the room, Ben grabbing one of the pistols off its rack and switching off the safety.

He hoped to God they wouldn’t have to use it.

“Oh, please, you’re pathetic,” a voice sounded through the walls, so muffled that only Shelton picked up on it at first. “Your friends are going to help you? How cute. You know why they didn’t drag you into this, hm? It’s because they don’t think you’re special. They don’t think you’re strong enough… because there’s always been a line dividing you and those four, huh?”

“They’re AP. They’re special. They’ve always been smarter than you and they didn’t think you would be enough of an asset to help them solve this… it’s a shame, really. If they’d have told you, maybe you wouldn’t have opened a door to a stranger.”

Now in the room next to the one in which the Gamemaster was talking.

“They have an hour and fifteen minutes left. Maybe if they rush enough, they’ll follow the clues and get here in an hour. Are you worth rushing for, sweetheart?”

Now they could hear your hardly there response, not even comprehensible due to the gag in your mouth around which you struggled to speak.

Shelton slowly started to push open the door, the dark-skinned hand trembling on the knob before he took a deep breath, turning it and finally swinging the door open in one fluid motion.

‘Shelton!’ you tried to shout through the duct tape on your mouth, using the distraction to hook your tongue around it and finally using your teeth to take the makeshift gag into your mouth.

“Please tell me my badass girlfriend just managed to eat the duct tape,” whispered Hi.

You turned to him, eyes wide, and found your boyfriend’s almost permanent smile had dropped, even his eyes showing the pain that coming upon you in such a state had brought him.

It was Ben who spoke first of the four, entering the room with his gun pointed straight at the Gamemaster. “Let her go.”

“Let her go?” repeated the man, before latching a hand on your hair and tugging hard enough to elicit a sharp yelp from you. “Sure.”

He dragged you across the room before any of the four could do anything, coming to a staircase you hadn’t known was there before throwing you down the steps, your head knocking painfully against the wall on your way down.

Black swarmed your vision as you heard footsteps scrabble on the floor above, Tory’s almost always confident voice sounding fragile in her next words.

“You’ll pay for this.”

They were an hour early, but even so, the Gamemaster had an escape plan, his final words the last you heard before succumbing to the darkness.

“You’ll have to catch me first.”

The time was nine o'clock – coincidentally, exactly the same time at which Hi had made a reservation for dinner for the two of you.

You hadn’t even gotten the chance to get ready for the night out that he had been planning for weeks, and now you were in a hospital gown.

Between his well-conditioned upper body and the enhancement that flaring provided to him, Ben had managed to carry you back to the car, the four and you fitting awkwardly, considering you were unconscious and bleeding from where the wound on your wrist had reopened – the same wound from which the blood dripping made the trail they had followed.

None of the four had spoken, Hi taking your head in his lap and doing a silent inventory of the bruises on you, trying to find where the blood spatter in the room had originated.

You weren’t spotless, but there was certainly nothing to suggest it had come from you.

They had taken you to the hospital, saying you had fallen down the stairs and gone unconscious, and still, you hadn’t woken up.

It had been an hour and Hi was already worried sick.

“This is all my fault!” he cried, pacing the room. “You heard what he said in there. Maybe I should have told her about this, that there’s a mad psycho on our asses! I’ve never kept anything like this from her before. She knows about us, for God’s sake!”

Visiting hours were over and the four wanted nothing more than to see you.

“Hi. Your mother will be worried sick. We’ve got to get you home.” Ben, always the voice of reason, clapped his hands on the other boy’s shoulders from behind. “She’ll be fine. She needs time to recover after that. Worrying in here won’t get you anywhere.”

Your boyfriend only started pacing faster. “Six months. This is our six month anniversary! We’re supposed to be out on a date, not here! I should never have dragged her into our nonsense. It was all or nothing and I kept things from her and now I’m going to lose her!” He turned back to Ben, unshed tears glimmering in his eyes. “I don’t want to lose her. I can’t lose her! She’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to me and I’m in love with her, damn it! I can’t lose her because of that bastard!”

Exhausted, he fell onto the chair next to Shelton, putting his head in his hands.

“Hi. Let’s get you home. We’ll come back tomorrow, I promise.”

He nodded blankly, getting up and following Tory out, accepting the reassuring squeeze on the shoulder that Ben offered.

Even so, Ben would never stop blaming himself for what had happened to you – for the mess that he had gotten them into.

If I hadn’t told him about her, this would never have happened.

A week’s worth of missed work from your classes piled up on the table next to you - even if you weren’t in AP like the Virals all were, high school was demanding nonetheless - and Hi sighed, glancing at it before sitting next to you.

“Hi, Y/N. It’s me. Hi. I’ve said my name twice now.” He laughed, but even with nobody in the room to hear it, it sounded forced. “You’ve been asleep for a week now. I know even you need your beauty sleep, but you’re worrying me to death and worry is not a good look on me. This bod was not made for stressing.”

Drifting in and out of consciousness, you felt your limbs like dead weights and your boyfriend’s voice, usually light but now heavy with his pain, providing a familiarity in this foreign environment. His next words were the first you heard.

“I need you, Y/N. I like to think I don’t need anyone but I’m wrong. I’m always wrong. I need your voice, your smile, to run my fingers through your hair and to touch your skin and have it warmer than me. I-I’ve been wanting to tell you for ages now, and I finally worked up the guts to do it. I was going to take you out to dinner and then I was going to take you into that one cheese shop that’s always open late and tell you ‘now that I’m surrounded by cheese, it’ll seem a bit less cheesy when I say this: I love you’ and then kiss you amidst all the cheeses whose names I can’t pronounce.”

“I rehearsed that for weeks, Y/N, and I’m honestly shocked that you would take that away from me considering it’s the best thing I ever came up with. It’s been a week but it feels like I’ve gained ten years.”

“I love you. Please come back to me. If it’s the homework you’re hiding from, I’ll pay off Shelton to do it and I might even help him. But please, I can’t lose you.”

You couldn’t fight back your smile anymore, and honestly, considering how long you had slept, you considered it somewhat rude to pretend to do the same.

“What’re you dreaming about?” He had evidently noticed your smile. “Is it Twinkies? Those dreams are the best.”

Your throat felt dry and scratchy with your reply. “Better than a dream. It’s you.”

You finally lifted your eyelids open, struggling to keep them so as you adjusted to the light in the room and the brightness in the eyes of Hiram Stolowitski, who was grinning despite the tears that you could see on his cheeks.

“Y/N.”

“I heard all of that, you sap.”

“Y/N!” He threw his arms around you before loosening them, remembering you were injured. “You jerk. I can’t believe you’d fake being asleep like that after being asleep for a week.”

Odd, his summarizing exactly what you had just been thinking. Then again, that was exactly what made the two of you mesh so well together - you were kindred spirits.

“Water?” You hated the sensation that your words caused as he nodded vigorously, pulling a bottle from his backpack.

“Here. Drink and reflect on your actions.”

He smiled lopsidedly at you as you drank, the water feeling divine as you were parched. “You’re here. I can’t believe you’re here. I thought you’d never wake up, or when you did it’d be like one of those seven-year comas and then you wouldn’t recognize me because I’d be so old and my young attractiveness was gone.”

“Hi. You’re fifteen.”

You shook your head at his antics, struggling to sit up and breathing a sigh of relief as he helped you, adjusting the pillows and grabbing a couple from the floor. “I may or may not have nabbed these from one of the storage rooms.”

Raising your eyebrows, you looked at him doubtfully.

“Fine, fine. It was Ben’s idea.”

Finally able to look him in the eye, you smiled again, before grabbing his face in your hands and kissing him.

Hard.

With tongue.

He’d be talking about this for weeks.

Smiling as you pressed your forehead to this, you whispered, “I love you too, you big dolt.”

“I mean, who couldn’t? Have you seen my muscles?” He pumped his arm as if to prove it, causing the two of you to laugh. “I’m sorry, I should have told you about the Gamemaster, I never expected he would go after you.”

“Hey, it’s the first thing you’ve ever kept from me, aside from your signature pizza recipe.”

“Which you’ll still never get.”

You stuck your tongue out at him, taking another gulp of water. “I’m your badass girlfriend who knows how to get duct tape off her mouth with her hands tied, and you can’t even tell me how to make a pizza? I’m starting to think I’m not good enough for you.”

Pressing a loud, wet kiss to your cheek, Hi replied, “You’re too good for me, Y/N, but you’re still never getting that. Maybe one day when I’m on my deathbed and you’re my next of kin, I’ll whisper it to you dramatically but miss the last ingredient and then the recipe will die with me.”

You pushed him. “No death jokes. Insensitive.”

“Irreplaceable.”

Your boyfriend grinned widely at you and you resisted the urge to gag at his cheesiness. “Where are the others?”

“What, am I not good enough for you?” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I think they’ll be here later. I came right after school. We’ve been in every day. Your brother’s been collecting your homework for you. Chance. He’s been worried sick about you, ya know. Something about how he should’ve been home, shouldn’t have left you in that ginormous place alone.”

You nodded, finding it hard to believe. “Huh. I doubt it’ll last once he realizes I’m back to my old, annoying self again.”

“Please. You could never be annoying.”

Hi’s gaze traveled your face as if he was taking it in for the first time. “I’m so glad you’re back.”

“Me too.” You grinned. “I’m still holding you to that, though. I’m not in any fit state to do all of this work.”

“Please. I’d have done it all if it meant getting you back.”

“Liar. You would at least have delegated some to Shelton.”

He held up his hands in surrender. “What can I say? You know me too well.”

“I’ll never know too much about you. I love you.”

A kick at the door made you look up, revealing the other three of the pack looking sheepish.

“Were you spying on us?” gasped out Hi, pointing an accusatory finger. “Honestly. You’re so depraved.”

“If it helps,” offered Tory, “we’ve only been here since you talked about Chance.”

“You are all horrible eavesdroppers and I don’t know why I’m friends with you,” you murmured, shaking your head with a laugh. “Also, who kicked the door?”

“In my defense, I was aiming for Ben,” retorted Shelton, brushing himself off.

“What? It’s not my fault I can’t stand these two.”

You threw one of the pillows that Ben himself had stolen, scowling as he caught it.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen any of you flare,” you said quietly, even if they could all hear you anyway. “I never knew your eyes went yellow.”

“Hopefully you don’t get yourself into more danger that we have to save you from,” replied Tory. “How are you? Suffering from cavities due to this charmer’s sweetness?”

You shrugged. “Honestly, just tired.”

Hi gasped dramatically. “You’ve been sleeping for a week and you want to sleep more? Honestly, Y/N, priorities.”

“I was joking,” you said with a laugh as the pillow was thrown back at you.

Looking up to the doorway murderously, you saw Ben hold his hands up as if to say ‘I didn’t do it’ and noticed a shadow behind him.

Chance.

“You’re not allowed to do that again,” he spoke, leaning against the doorway as the other three moved to offer him space. “No falling down staircases. In fact, it’s probably a good idea to just avoid them altogether.”

You scowled at him. “Like you avoid me?”

“Yes. Exactly. Good talk.” He left the room, leaving you staring at the door in confusion.

“He cares,” offered Tory, watching his retreating figure. “In his own way.”

You shrugged. “I don’t need him. I have you. And that’s enough.”

Ben mimed throwing up. “Stop listening to Thickburger here,” he laughed, ruffling Hi’s hair as he crossed the room. “I liked you better when you were feisty.”

“Uh-huh. Like you aren’t sappy, mister I-Steal-Pillows-From-Hospitals.”

He turned on Hi. “You, sir, are the biggest snitch.”

“Hey, she was the one who said it couldn’t be me. Checkmate, Ben. She knows what a big sap you are.”

Nodding along with his words, you couldn’t help but smile, glad to be back with Tory and her boys.

Like it or not, Ben and Shelton were like brothers to you, far superior to Chance, in your eyes, and Tory the sister you never had.

Hi was the best boyfriend you could have asked for, and the fact that they were all here and you weren’t still with the Gamemaster just proved that, no matter what he might have said to the contrary.

“So, Y/N, how about we get a jumpstart on that homework?”

“God, Shelton, stop being such a buzzkill,” you sighed, shaking your head. 

“Hey. Hi’s the fun one, Ben’s the strong one, it falls to me to be the boring, smart one,” he replied with a shrug, eyes widening when Tory turned to him with her hands on her hips.

“And what does that make me?”

“The bossy one?”

She punched him lightly on the arm, exchanging a glance with you. “Boys. Honestly. They smell, too.”

“I haven’t showered in a week.”

“Gross!” exclaimed Hi, jumping away from the bed, before laughing. “We should probably let you get dressed. Come on, come on, shoo, guys, give the lady her room.”

He ushered them out, before leaning back into the room to wink at you. “I love you, Y/N.”

“I love you, Hiram.”

You felt warm even under the thin cotton sheets and the flimsy hospital gown, the heat coming from your heart, and the knowledge that no matter what, your friends would always be there for you.

They never made you feel like the weaker one, no matter what the Gamemaster had said.

Having friends like these just made you stronger, and you loved them for it.

“Shut up, Hi! You’re like a lovesick puppy!”

“Yeah? You think we haven’t noticed how you look at - hey! What was that for?”

Quirks and all.

A/N: Fun, fun, fuuuuun! That didn’t take near as long as I expected. Which is a good thing, I wouldn’t want to keep people waiting. Thanks so much for reading!