#and none of you fuckers have sent me any fic asks!

[bow-of-aros]

Day Sixteen: Cackle

Summary: Steph wants to know if Peter, Ruth, and Richie want to come over to her place, but Ruth and Richie have decided to be pains in the ass so Peter doesn't think they should be allowed to.

They don't exactly take too kindly to that :)

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Guys. GUYS. I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!!!!!!!!! I literally went crazy writing this fic why haven't I written them before?????? They're so precious and I just alsdj;kflasjkdsajdp you know?? Anyway, I hope that y'all enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it <33

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Peter was hanging out with Ruth and Richie at Richie’s after school.

Well, technically, they were supposed to be studying for the biology test at the end of the week, but it was only Monday, and none of them were that nervous about it.

And, the call of Super Smash Bros was just too strong to resist.

After winning his third game in a row, and subsequently performing his third victory dance, his friends started getting really competitive, which was a little terrifying considering the baseline level of Ruth’s competitiveness on any given day.

“Come on, Peter!” Ruth whined after a Smash Attack sent her flying off the platform, “When the hell did you get good at this? What happened to little Petey Pie who used to jump into the void all the time?”

Peter dodged an attack from Richie, floating up into the air just to slam back down, “He got sick of his friends kicking his ass all the time and decided to do some ass-kicking of his own. HA! Take that, fucker!”

The screen flashed as Ruth and Richie groaned, proclaiming Peter as the victor once more.

“You are not playing as your main next time! You can be, like, Doctor Mario or something.” Richie was already setting up the next game thanks to his eternal claim as player one.

I’m the best of you! And you’re the best of me! And together we are free—

“Hey Steph! What’s up?”

Peter ignored the way Richie gagged at the sound of his ringtone and how Ruth’s eyes lit up at Steph’s name, pressing his phone against his ear with his shoulder in order to select Steve from the collection of avatars before either of his friends could get to it.

“Oh, nothing much!” Steph’s voice came through a little tinny, and Peter wouldn’t be surprised if he was on speaker while she did some chores around the house.

“I was just wondering if you had anything planned tomorrow night.”

As Steph was talking, Ruth was doing her level best to crawl across Peter’s lap and put her ear up to his phone despite his attempts to elbow her away.

“Lemme hear!” Ruth hissed.

Peter just stuck his tongue out and redoubled his efforts.

“Uh, no, not really!” His phone jostled as Richie tried to wedge it out from under his ear and Peter had to snatch it back, “Why do you ask?”

“Are you doing alright over there, Pete?” Steph’s voice was tinged with amusement as though she could see the human pretzel that Ruth and Richie were dragging him into.

“Yeah! Everything’s fine!” Peter swatted Richie’s prying hands while attempting to use his feet to keep Ruth away, “What were you gonna ask?”

He could hear something rustle as Steph picked her phone up, turning it off of speaker mode and holding it up to her ear.

He could also hear the overlapping “Come onnnnnnn,” and “We just wanna say hi!” from his friends as Richie tried once again to worm his fingers around Peter’s phone.

“Ah!” And wriggling right against his neck.

Silence echoed as Ruth and Richie exchanged evil looks.

Aw fuck.

“—if you three would want to hang out at my place?” Peter had missed the first half of that sentence due to the now-sporadic squeezes at his knees and more purposeful scratching at his neck, but he was sure that he could make an educated guess.

“I, uh, I don’t know if they can mAKE ihit.”

He’d nearly gotten through the whole sentence without cracking, but then Ruth had started spidering her fingers in the soft spot behind his knees which she knew was unfair, and a small squeak had broken through.

Peter did his best to seal his lips shut as Steph said, “Aw, are you sure? My dad will be out and I can order all of us pizza.”

“Mhm!”

You see, Peter would feel bad about lying to Steph on a regular day. But, considering that his friends had decided to be conniving assholes today, he figured that she would forgive him just this once.

“Are you sure that you’re alright? You sound kinda…nervous.”

Steph sounded genuinely concerned, so Peter kicked Ruth back into the couch and threw an elbow into Richie’s gut so that he could scramble to his feet, trying to subtly catch his breath.

“Yeah, sorry!” They were both already up and after him, so Peter had to dodge grabbing hands as he said, “It’s just that I think Ruth and Richie are too busy being annoying little brats to hang out tomorrow night!”

Twin gasps echoed through the room as both Ruth and Richie’s jaws dropped in indignation.

“How dare you—”

“Spankoffski get your lying ass over here!”

Peter dove out of the way just in time to hear Steph’s “Ohhhhhhhh,” of realization before she broke out into laughter.

“You really had me worried for a second there, Pete!” Richie caught him around the waist and started the not-so-difficult process of wrestling him to the ground, “Maybe you can come over and they can join when they learn to behave!”

It seemed like Ruth heard that last part as she let out an affronted “HEY!”

“Yeah, I think that would be bEST—Wait! Richie nononono shihihihit!”

Ruth managed to pry his phone out of his hands as Richie went straight for the kill, drawing out frantic cackles with ruthless clawing at his ribs.

“Hey, Steph!” Ruth said cheerfully as a sudden jump to Peter’s upper ribs startled a shriek out of him before falling back into hysterics.

“This is for playing the same overpowered character in Smash Bros! SMASH ATTACK!” Richie cried as he vibrated a hand into his victim’s stomach, prompting him to curl up in hopeless defense.

Meanwhile, Ruth was still talking to Steph, “Oh, we would love to come over to hang out! But,” she added, cutting Peter a sly glance, “we don’t want to intrude if Peter doesn’t want us there!”

She stood there for a moment, nodding to whatever Steph was saying, “Of course! Here, you can ask him yourself!”

And then she hit a button on his phone and Steph’s voice rang out, “Hey Pete! So, I was just talking to Ruth and I wanted to double-check if you were totally sure about them not being able to make it tomorrow night.”

“Steheheheph! Hehehehelp!” Was all he could get out in between fits of laughter.

His friends broke out into giggles as Steph said, “I can’t do much for you right now, but if you bring Ruth and Richie over I could help you out with some well-earned revenge! How does that sound?”

Peter could feel Richie’s fingers falter at the threat and see the faint blush rising on Ruth’s face through the tears that had begun to form in his eyes.

“Okay! Deal! They can come!” He took advantage of Richie’s moment of hesitation to get out his response and quickly rolled away, popping up to snatch his phone back out of Ruth’s hands.

“See you tomorrow! Love you! Bye!” And he hung up the phone to the sound of Steph’s laughter before whirling around to his so-called friends.

Peter flung one choice finger out at Ruth, “Fuck you!”

And then the other at Richie, “Fuck you more!”

They just grinned at him as he slumped back down on the couch and reached for his controller, “I think I deserve to kick your asses for a bit now.”

The groans that they let out were undermined by the way they both picked up their own remotes before sitting on either side of him. Richie leaned against Peter while Ruth dropped her head on his shoulder, and the warmth seeped through to his very core.

Well, Peter thought as Richie hit play, there are definitely worse ways to spend an evening than with my two best friends.

Now to kick. Their. Asses.

[chattahoochiecoochie]

Day 1 of asking for any Kimi snippets you might still have for your deranged readers 😬😭

It's taken me half a century to finally sit down and start digging, but let the floodgates open—I’m here.

Summary: Media Day at Ferrari marks the start of something good.

Word Count: 750+

Warnings: None

Authors Notes: This is RPF, be respectful of the person who is mentioned, and don’t be a fucking creep. We're combing through the archives at this point. I've got about 20K worth of a half finished fic and some one shot style notes leftover. Enjoy!

“Well, as long as he got on the plane, he should be here any minute, I had the driver meet him at the steps.” The sound of a door cut Laura off in the middle of her sentence. “Speak of the devil, good morning Kimi.” She leaned in to Gianna, whispering. “I told him no detours.”

“You are not late! Excellent.” Gianna pulled her face into a grin and greeted Kimi with a kiss on each cheek before whipping out a clipboard full of the days schedule. 

“He wouldn’t let me stop!” Kimi put a hand on the clipboard and frowned at Gianna before turning to give Laura a full pout. 

“So weird how those two things coincide.” With a coy smile she took Kimi’s bag and pressed her hand into the small of his back, guiding him towards the dressing rooms. “Let’s get you changed and then you can start with the bitching.”

Kimi turned his head, his eyebrows raised. “I don’t like you.” 

“Didn’t I just say that you had to wait?” She laughed and set his bag onto a chair before pulling his suit rack out from behind it, flipping through the labels to find the first pieces. Cyril had never worn a racing suit, for obvious reasons, figuring out the system would take a few tries. “Besides, you don’t sign the check, do you?” She handed him a Nomex shirt, sliding the hanger out of it as he grabbed the hem. Was she trying to flirt or be a bully? If she couldn’t figure it out herself, it would be anyones guess. 

“No.” He took the long johns from her with a faint slant on his lips. 

“Then it doesn’t matter does it?” 

“No.” He gave her a smirk, slipping out of his sneakers as he sank onto the couch, arms full of underwear. 

“Long or short?” She held up two pairs of socks, cocking her hip to the side as she waited for him to decide. 

“I don’t know.” He wiggled his toes and looked between the two, shrugging with indifference. 

“One of each?” She pulled one from each set. 

“No.” 

“Short, then.” 

“No, long.” 

“Fucker.” She tossed the socks into his lap and went for the door. 

“You are okay.” Said Kimi, pulling his mouth into a line as he announced his final decision. 

“See you in a bit, old man.” She gave him a wink and slid out the door, shutting it softly as she leaned against it in frustration. Old man? God she was dumb, he’d never see her as anything more than a kid if she started paternalizing him right off the bat. Maybe somewhere in her frazzled brain the wires for flirting and bullying had become crossed? Was she trying to attempt both? For the sake of self preservation she promised to ignore her own mind for the rest of the media day. 

Easier said than done. The sight of him in a racing suit sent her into a downward spiral. She wanted to say something horrible and kiss him all at the same time. Both actions for perfectly selfish reasons. One to kill his confidence because it made him so kissable, and two because of the aforementioned kiss factor. 

“Can’t believe they found someone for him.” An unfamiliar voice pulled her from her fantasies. “I’m Greta.” 

“Laura.” She looked over at the girl next to her, a skinny brunette with a long ponytail and impossible heels. “Are you Vettel’s assistant?” 

“Yeah. I’ve been with Seb for a few years now. I was starting to worry they’d give me the Iceman too.” She laughed and gave Laura a quick elbow in the side before turning serious. “How bad has it been, you can be honest” She had an accent that Laura couldn’t place but whatever it was it made her endearing, perhaps German like Sebastian?

“He’s a piece of cake. Grumpy, but cake.” She looked back to the Finn, standing in front of a ridiculous lighting rig with an annoyed look on his face. Laura shot him a grin and then turned back to Greta. “And Sebastian?” 

“Easy. Nicest guy ever.” Greta waved to him and then gestured to Laura. “Look, they got one for Kimi! Laura, right? Her name is Laura!” 

“Hello Laura!” Sebastian stepped out of his pose to wave but was quickly set right by Gianna. 

“No talking, no talking, just pose.” She put his arms back across his chest gently and then set him back to back with Kimi as he had been moments before. “Almost done.” 

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Head cannons for Bruce Wayne and all his kids

Oh shit.  You don’t ask much, do you.  Okay, let’s do it, hell yeah, let’s talk about the Waynes et al at parties.

Bruce is not a particularly social person, left to his own devices, but the charming hedonist Bruce Wayne persona gets a lot done, so he throws galas and parties and shit on a fairly regular basis.  Contrary to popular opinion, he actually doesn’t sleep with models very often (some of those girls are younger than his kids), but he does tend to gravitate toward them.  His kids aren’t surprised by this, because Bruce just sort of orbits between clusters of models and makes sure they’re not drinking underage, but it BAFFLES the press, which is part of the reason that everyone assumes that Bruce Wayne is a playboy who sleeps his way through every model in the city.

Dick is actually genuinely a very charming guy.  He grew up in a circus, which is a huge crowd, so he learned how to talk to people pretty young and kept it up as he got older.  Even on days when he’s not really in the mood to play nice with the crowd, he comes off as endearingly weary rather than prickly or rude.  He’s easily one of the more trusted Wayne kids, especially once he’s off doing his own thing as Nightwing--his grasp on the amount of trouble the press can cause improves exponentially as a cop, so suddenly he’s very good about making sure the others don’t get themselves into too much trouble.

Jason, obviously, is not a presence at parties.  However, every once in a while someone will approach part of the Wayne family with a question about him and it always goes one of two ways.

Reporter: So we’re coming up on the anniversary of Jason Todd’s tragic death, do you have anything to share about your son?Bruce, thinking about the article he read that morning about the Red Hood, teeth gritted: We miss Jason every day.

Reporter: So we’re coming up on the anniversary of Jason Todd’s tragic death, do you have anything to share about your brother?Dick: [twenty minute monologue about his beloved brother intended purely to embarrass Jason in the event that any of it actually makes print]

Tim isn’t super comfortable with large crowds, but he’s generally reliable in terms of not, you know, causing a riot.  That being said, he also tends to run down his mental filter an hour before the gala ends, so the savvier reporters know that they can get the good shit from Tim Drake in the last thirty minutes of his presence at a party.  This can be somewhat ameliorated by giving Tim a more problematic Bat to keep an eye on, but on the other hand sometimes Tim will just lie his ass off to a reporter for fun and that’s the story of how everyone thought for a while that Wayne Enterprises was building a moon colony.

Stephanie actually has a very bad track record.  This is mostly because, while she won’t defend Bruce (”he’s a grown-ass man,” is her reasoning), she’ll go the fuck to bat for most of the others, and has punched out more than one reporter on their behalf.  More commonly, however, she’ll stare a reporter dead in the eye while she breaks their camera or phone or recorder.  One time she slowly tore off a sheet of notes and stuffed it into her mouth and ate it while the reporter gaped at her.  Bruce has paid for several expensive recording devices or cameras because of Steph.

Cass is very cooperative and very uncooperative by turns.  She’ll smile nicely for the camera and play the game, but also God save the upper class snob who actually pisses her off.  Up until she reaches the end of her patience, Cass is implicitly trustworthy.  Afterward, she is a candidate for ending the gala early by way of violence, or she might just disappear and be found four hours later eating an entire platter of hors d’eurves alone on the roof.  

Damian basically cannot be trusted at a gala for love nor money.  He’s absolutely charming, of course, when he wants to be, but he’ll also bite the hand that feeds as soon as he’s bored or no longer getting anything out of it.  He’s on the top of the list to be chaperoned at parties because he’ll tell the press absolutely anything to fuck with people, especially Tim.  One time he successfully sold an entire story to a tabloid about how Tim had kidnapped him once.  Dick is the unspoken Damian-wrangler whenever possible.

Barbara sometimes shows up with her dad.  Not often, though, because she’s undercover, natch.  That being said, after every Wayne gala, Oracle sends the Batcave a Greatest Hits of what the press and social media put out about it.  Duke’s SnapChat usually makes the list.  Babs has handed in more than one Batkid like this, sometimes on purpose and sometimes not.

Duke is So Tired.  He puts up with So Much at parties.  One time he had to grab Cass around the waist and keep her from punching a Times reporter in front of a Daily Planet reporter.  That being said, he has a flourishing SnapChat story full of videos of him narrating shit at parties, including videos ‘guest starring’ the others when they get into trouble.  Bruce has used these videos as evidence to put his kids on probation before.  Bruce knows you tried to stab a reporter with a fork, Steph, Duke has it on video with the caption he asked if it was true she was carrying Dick’s illegitimate child and while your technique was flawless, it would be so, so great if you could just Not.

Alfred is years and years past being surprised by any of this.  It’s a known fact that if any of the Batkids shows up to Alfred with a complaint to the tune of “So-and-So did this, isn’t that shocking”, Alfred will stare directly back at them and say, “You are aware of the fact that I have been supervising Wayne children at galas since before you were born, correct?”  Literally nothing fazes Alfred and nothing has in years.  

Sometimes other people show up.  One time it was this enormous young man built like a fridge with black hair and inhuman blue eyes and a permanent scowl of concentration when he handled delicate glassware (he only broke two) and stayed three inches from Dick at all times.  Another time it was a twelve-year-old who kept petting the sleeve of his suit in fascination, with black hair and the strangest bursts of wisdom.  Sometimes it’s just some random kid--a handsome young black man with strange tattoos on his arms, a skinny boy who talks at a hundred miles an hour and puts away food like it’s his job, just people.  Getting a legitimate answer about these people depends heavily on who you get to first.

Reporter: Mister Wayne, can you tell me who your companion is?Bruce, kind of tired: One of my kids’ friends?  They wanted company.

Reporter: Mister Wayne, can you tell me who your companion is?Tim, whipping out a forged document: Bruce adopted Connor last week, I’ve got the papers to prove it.Bruce, sensing Shenanigans from across the room: Tim, I will pay you to stop.Connor, bristling: Stop taking pictures of me.Reporter: Can we get a last name from Connor?Connor, backing toward the nearest window: NO.

[hertzwritings]

The secrets we keep

A/N: SMUT WEEKEND IS UPON US!! Let’s start out sweet… Hahhahahahah, no, we’re not. Get y’all a tall drink of water, because we’re kicking this ish off with a dominat, angry Nomad!Steve (in looks, at least).

You can buy me a coffee here, and I’ll write you a personalized drabble, one-shot or multichapter fic – the sky is the limit, so go nuts, my loves.

Remember, feedback feeds the soul and my requests – and askbox – are always open – there’s no limits, because I am me and I have none.

MASTERLIST

CHRIS EVANS MASTERLIST

ASK ME ANYTHING/REQUESTS

Pairing: Steve Rogers x female reader

Contains: language, slight angst, mentions of blood, mentions of knives, mentions of fighting, mentions of guns, mentions of wounds, Avengers!Reader infidelity, smut (MINORS DNI) slightly dark themes, fingering, Dom!Steve, Possessive!Steve, oral (m receiving), spitting, degradation, humiliation, Beefy!Steve, Nomad!Steve, praise kink, sir/captain-kink, cream-pie, spanking, hitting, slight knife-play, breath-play, slight hate-fucking and probably something else, I lost track (also I’m ignoring the end of Endgame because I can and it sucks ass)

W.C.: 4.030

  The secrets we keep

To say the mission had gone sideways down shit creek and you had lost your paddles along the way, seemed to be an understatement. You were surrounded by bloodied and bruised men, all with snarls on their faces and guns pointed at your face.

Not that it really mattered, not to you. You weren’t one of the best Widows for nothing.

You heard the muted grunts and twangs of metal hitting concrete from the other side of the wall and heard Steve’s voice ring out – you couldn’t hear what he said, but you liked to imagine it was kill every single fucker in front of you.

Yes, Captain.

You snarled and ran headfirst to the closest enemy, jumping and locking your legs around his throat, effectively squeezing the life from him. His arms flailed and the idiot still had a finger on the trigger, which meant the semi-automatic went off in any and all directions, taking down most of his comrades, severely injuring the rest.

Were they all new? With a single flex of your thighs, you heard the unmistakable crunch of a windpipe collapsing, and the man fell to his knees, grabbing fruitlessly at you and his throat. You let go of him, mostly because you had no reason to continue letting your legs wrap around him. He was dead, anyway, it was just a matter of time.

You made quick work of the living, but bleeding men on the ground, before sauntering out of the room, knocking on the door where you heard the shield whoosh through the air before clanging against something – probably a person. “Why the hell are you knocking!?” He shouted as you came in. Blood was spattered in his beard, and you lifted your eyebrow, leaning against the wall; it was the larger part of the warehouse, enemies lingering in shadows, and before Steve had time to reprimand you, you grabbed your knife from the holster on your thigh, let it fly through the air and hit the intended target square between the eyes. Steve turned and saw the guy, dressed in all black (typical) fall to his knees right behind him.

“Just… Fight, for fuck’s sake.” He grumbled before leaping at another oncoming enemy.

“Aye, aye, Captain.” You mocked and joined the fight.

  The trip back was both long, boring and full of tension. Steve was glaring daggers at you, while Bucky looked between the two of you, waiting to see who’d break first. Sam was half asleep.

“’How could you not get the goddamn files?!” Steve barked finally. “HA! Sam, you owe me fifteen.” Bucky said, punching Sam’s injured arm a little harder than necessary. “Asshole.” Sam grumbled and while rubbing the injured arm, pulled out a wallet from God knows where to hand Bucky the money. You rolled your eyes at Steve, crossing your arms. “If you hadn’t sent me on a wild goose chase, I would’ve. But no, in your infinite wisdom, you sent me alone to the wrong side of the building. Don’t blame me for your mistakes.” Bucky groaned and handed ten of the fifteen back to Sam. Steve narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you dare put this on me.” “Likewise.” “If you hadn’t paraded yourself around like a whore before getting the files, we would have been fine.” You pretended that those words didn’t hurt. He had asked you to, so you’d have a way in, this mistake wasn’t on you. “That was your bright idea, Steveie-boy. You even chose the outfit. Captain.” And with that, you closed your eyes and pretended to fall asleep. You heard Bucky say something akin to dude, what the fuck, but it didn’t matter much. Steve was an asshole when he didn’t get his way, and you knew it.

 -------

You pulled your tac-suit off and threw it in the hamper, before you slipped your pajamas on, texting your boyfriend as you walked. Martin was nice, sweet and an accountant, which meant very little bossing around, no bruises and no missions. Good for you, really. You didn’t really look where you were going, your face buried in your phone as you walked to the compound kitchen to get yourself some aspirin and a giant bottle of water. Your shoulder ached and your knee looked like a Pollock-painting, which meant a world of hurt tomorrow.

You bumped into a very broad, very hard chest and almost fell to your ass. Steve stared down at you, eyes ablaze – you gulped. That was a look, you didn’t want to be on the receiving end of. “Steve.” You tried to step around him, but he moved with you and clenched his jaw. “Steve, I do actually have somewhere to be.” You said, a little annoyed at his antics. “What, to be with your boytoy?” You rolled your eyes. Typical men – you have one heated kiss, both covered in blood and cuts, and suddenly, he had some moronic claim to you. You cocked your eyebrow.

“What’s it to you?” you shot back. His eyes darkened and you knew you were extremely close to crossing a line. “Don’t try me. You already ignored my orders, dismissed your mission and tried to put it on me. Don’t fucking try me.” You would never get over the perfect Captain America, the golden boy, swearing. He didn’t really seem the type, although the beard and longer hair had clearly inspired some level of bad boy. “Oh, shut up. Just because you are an arrogant ass, doesn’t mean the rest of us are. I’m happy to make you see your own faults, Captain.” You sneered and tried to step around him again. Your phone buzzed in your hand, but you didn’t get a chance to see whatever Martin had answered, because Steve grabbed your shoulder and slammed you against the wall, pushing all the air from your lungs. You groaned at the impact.

“Be a brat one more time, I’m begging you.” He threatened with dark eyes. You almost couldn’t see the blue anymore and realized he hadn’t even showered yet, blood still dried in small flecks in his beard, his tac-suit still on. You narrowed your eyes.

“Get fucked, Stevie. I’m not a brat to tame.” “I’ve dealt with worse.” Your thighs shook a little and you were acutely aware of the force he used to hold you to the wall. He would definitely leave his fingerprints embedded in your skin. You ignored the pooling heat that rushed between your legs, a familiar, dull ache settling.

“Oh, honey, cute of you to think there’s any brats like me.” You whispered, not really caring anymore. Anger was rolling off your shoulders in waves and he had to just step one step closer, and you’d have your knife against his throat, Captain America or not. He cocked an eyebrow confidently and his leg slid between yours, his thick thigh pushing against your treacherous core. Asshole.

“Anywhoo, unless you plan to use actual force on me, I’ll be on my way.” You tried to move your legs, somehow cross over his giant thigh, but the friction made you whimper instead. That seemed to do him in, and he growled, picked you up faster than expected, hauling you over his shoulder – you tried to punch his back, trying to hit an area near the shoulder blades that normally would most men buckle, but Steve just chuckled and slapped your ass hard enough to make you feel nauseous. “Put me down, asshole!” Your phone vibrated in your hand again. “Shut up, oh my God, do you ever just stop talking!?” He growled and threw you over the couch in the common room. You grunted on impact, your ass still stinging, and you narrowed your eyes at him; your phone had flown out of your hand as you landed on the couch, and it lit up with several messaged from Martin.

“What the fuck, Steve?” you roared, but he simply stalked to you, eyebrow raised and caged you between his arms, your back sinking into the back of the couch. “FRIDAY, lock any entry-points to this room.” “Captain Rogers…” He didn’t wait for FRIDAY’S response. “Just do it!” “Yes, Captain Rogers.” Slowly, one by one, you heard the locks on the doors click and his predatory smile widened. You phone buzzed again. “You are insufferable.” “Yeah, well. Part of my brand.” You answered, but you heard it yourself – your voice didn’t have the bite, it usually did, and it was breathier than normal. “You think you can talk back to me, act out like a fucking brat and not get punished for it?” You rolled your eyes, trying to ignore the implications behind the words. “Oh, what are you going to do? Keep me off missions until I’m begging on my knees?” You realized a heartbeat too late, that you had done yourself a great disservice by talking back. “Well… I’m getting you on your knees no matter what.” He asserted, his eyes darting back and forth over yours. You didn’t have time to react, to retort or to even think, before his lips were on yours.

You yelped against it, his hand tangling in your hair and a growl came from the back of his throat. The kiss was all teeth and tongue, anger seeping in along with want and lust – he was rough, rougher than you had expected him to be. He tugged your lower lip between his teeth and bit down and pulled your hair roughly. The pain made you hiss through your teeth, and you felt him smile against you. You cursed yourself for feeling anything other than annoyance, but it was the plight of you – Steve fucking Rogers and his dirty mouth made you feel tingly in all the right places. He slid his tongue against yours and practically hoisted you to your feet by your hair.

“Quiet, all of the sudden?” He whispered against your lips. You were about to bite back at him, say something incredibly stupid, when he lifted his eyebrow in a challenge. “Now, now, you better be careful with that filthy mouth of yours.” You narrowed your eyes at him and ignored the throbbing between your legs.

Asshole.

“Make me, America’s asshole.” His eyes flashed, and you could barely see any blue left; he pulled back slightly and forced your mouth open with a thick finger, before he spat at you. It landed on your tongue, and despite feeling like you should be disgusted by it, it made your legs tremble and a small whine come from your throat. “Swallow.” His voice was commanding, and you honestly didn’t dare disobey right now. He grinned wickedly as you swallowed and looked back at him. “Such a good whore, aren’t you?” God-fucking-damnit. His large hands came to rest on your shoulders, and he forced you to your knees, slowly and forcefully.

“Steve, I have a…” “I don’t give a rat’s ass about your boyfriend. Mention him again, and I’ll fucking call him to make him listen to me fuck the brat out of you.” You squeezed your thighs together and he chuckled darkly as he began undoing his suit. “You like that? Wanting him to hear you get fucked raw by me, until you’re too stupid to do anything but scream my name?” He fisted his cock in his pants, and your eyes widened – even hidden behind layers and his hand, you could see just how big he was. “You want me to fuck you stupid, sweetheart?” His voice was deep and dangerously quiet. “Yes.” The answer came before you could even think about the implications of it. “Good girl.” He gently caressed your face with his thumb before his entire palm connected with your cheek. The sting made you yelp, and you almost lost your balance. Your cheek was burning, and your eyes watered, but a gush of slickness coated your underwear, and you couldn’t help but moan slightly at the warmth spreading on your cheek. “Open your mouth.” He demanded and you cocked an eyebrow at him, tilting your head slightly. “Why?” There’s no fun in playing without biting back a little. Besides, Martin might be nice, but you needed rough – especially today, where you were already burning with rage. He growled and held your chin in a vicelike grip, bending down to face you. “Little girl, do you have a fucking death wish?” You stood your ground, trying desperately not to let his tone get to you – your underwear was most definitely ruined by now. “Maybe.” “Open. Your. Fucking. Mouth.” He pressed harder against you, and slowly, but surely forced your mouth open. Your knees followed, spreading your legs a little wider, either to get some kind of relief or to steady yourself better, you didn’t know. “There’s my girl.” He pulled his cock out and you almost drooled at the sight, when he stood at full height again, staring down at you. He was huge.

Thick and long, an angrily pulsing vein running along the underside of him, and the head throbbing and red, leaking precum. He was a fucking sight for gods. You looked at him and caught his eye. “I thought you were going to fuck the brat out of me, are you just going to stand there?” He chuckled and with a single thrust, he let his cock slide between your lips, further and further in, until you were gagging around him, and he hit the back of your throat. He moaned, and the sound sent shivers down your spine. Tears spilled down your cheeks and drool began seeping from your lower lip, pooling on the floor beneath you; he grinned at you. “Is that all you can take, you dumb, fucking whore?” he asked – you knew it was rhetorical. “That won’t do, will it?” He grabbed a fistful of your hair and pushed further into you, his cock sliding down your throat; you were gagging and choking around him, spit flying out around his cock, and his hand went to your throat – he felt the bulge, he created in your throat and smiled at you. “There we are, baby girl. Look at you, so quiet when my cock is buried in your throat, huh?” He slowly pulled back, giving you a chance to breathe, but as soon as you had sucked it in through your nose, he slammed back in again and then he began fucking your throat like he wanted to murder you.

You were whining as much as you could around him, gagging loudly and tears were streaming down your face, mixing on your chin with the drool; he held tightly to your hair and fucked you relentlessly. You were sopping wet, the commanding and domineering attitude he had was more than enough to make you wetter than a fucking waterfall.

“Fuck, you’re good… Look at you taking my cock so fucking well, baby.” He groaned and pulled out of your throat, looking down at you. You were heaving for a breath, wiping the drool and the tears from your chin before looking back up at him. “You like it rough, don’t you, baby?” He whispered. “Like getting choked out on my cock?” You nodded, breathless still. He discarded the top part of his suit, letting it hang from his back and he looked at the small pool of drool and tears under you. “Face down, ass up.” “Steve, I…” “Did you talk fucking back to me?” He snarled and grabbed your hair again. You whimpered. “You’re a dirty, fucking girl, darling, and you’re going to look it.” He forced your face down and you felt your cheek connect with the wetness of your drool; humiliation rushed over your body at the same time as a new surge of heat fell between your legs, and you were about to fucking combust. “Not such a smart mouth on you now, huh?” He let go of your hair and stood, letting his boot rest on your neck, barely applying pressure. “Don’t you have anything to say to me, or did I already make you dumb, just by having my cock in your throat?” He jeered. That was it. Your eyes flew open, and you glared at him, a wicked smile spreading on your lips. “I thought you were a dom, captain. Is that all you got?” Might as well go full out. “Oh, baby, don’t threaten me with a good time.” He whispered back, and lifted his boot from your neck, moving to stand behind you. You didn’t dare move. “These fucking shorts… God, you’re making my life a living hell every day, you wear these.” He tugged them down your legs and you hissed at the way his short nails scraped against your skin.

  “Oh, baby, all this for me?” He ran a finger against your wet underwear, pressing in against your folds and you mewled at the sensation. “All this from fucking your throat and calling you a dirty whore, baby? You really are fucking filthy.” He almost sounded proud. “I hope you’re not attached to these.” He said casually before ripping them straight from your skin, leaving a lingering burn on your hips; you pushed back against the sensation, and he chuckled darkly, leaning his wide body over yours, his lips grazing the shell of your ear. “All of this? Is mine. Got it?” You whimpered and tried to nod, but he slapped your ass hard enough for you to see stars. “Words, baby.” He rubbed a hand over the spot, he had just hit, and you moaned. “Yes. All yours. Yours, Captain.” He hissed and removed his face from yours.

You felt a finger dip inside of you easily and bucked your hips against it; it already felt so fucking good, and it was one finger. He chuckled darkly. “Look at you, so fucking ready for me already. Do you get this wet for your little boytoy, darling? Does he fuck you this well?” he added another finger, and you were just about to explode. “Steve, fuck, I-I’m…” He stopped moving instantly “What did you call me?” His voice was menacing. “Shit, no, I’m sorry… Captain, please…” Your pussy pulsed around his fingers, desperate for friction, but he pulled them roughly from you and spanked you hard. “Here I was going to reward you for taking my cock so well…” He spoke slowly and measured. “I guess you need some more punishment.” He moved around for a little bit and you couldn’t really see what he was doing from your vantagepoint, but you definitely heard the sound of a phone ringing. “No, please, he can’t…” Your words ended in a moan when he pushed inside of you roughly, bottoming out. The saying split in two wasn’t something you believed in, but in this moment, you might start. He filled you completely, the head nudging your cervix and your thighs trembled, coated in your own slick – you didn’t care that your face was wet from spit, that your cheek was burning or that the phone was currently calling your boyfriend. All you wanted was for him to fuck you. “You don’t get to cum, until I say so.” His voice was strained, and it gave you a sick satisfaction that he was just as affected as you were. “Yes, captain.” You moaned. “Good, fucking slut…” You vaguely heard the phone being answered, but any semblance of thought left your head, when Steve drew back and slammed back in. You screamed and bucked your hips, trying to meet his deep thrusts; he chuckled and you heard another voice somewhere, but didn’t give a shit for right now.

  He fucked into you with ruthless abandon, the wet sounds of your pussy paired with martin’s voice from the phone echoing throughout the room; you barely had the wherewithal to even notice your boyfriend’s voice. “This… Fuck…” Steve gasped and angled his hips a little to press deeper inside of you. “Is how you fuck Y/N, boytoy. Hear her scream out for me?” He snapped his hips and you whimpered, teetering so close to the edge, you were sure you’d collapse if Steve didn’t hold your hips up. “You should see her… Spread out wide, taking my cock so fucking good… She’s getting off on…” he groaned. “On knowing you’re hearing her like this… So fucking cock-drunk she can’t even fucking speak.” His words were addictive and you felt yourself clench around his large cock, drawing him deeper inside. “You’re going to cum for me, baby? Cum for your captain?” his finger found your clit, and you couldn’t hold it back. “Yeah, that’s fucking right, cum.” Your mouth opened in a breathless and soundless scream as you came around him, pleasure rippling through your veins; he was fucking you harder than ever, letting you ride it out on him. “She just came… Fucking shit, baby… All over my cock.” He whispered, clearly aimed at Martin. “She’s mine.”

Something came over you as the haze of your orgasm died down, and energy shot through you; there was no way you’d let him have the last word in this. You managed to roll your hips slightly, eliciting a groan from Steve, and in one move, you had your legs wrapped around his waist, flinging yourself to the side; he tumbled to the ground, still inside of you and pulled you with him. You quickly managed to straddle him, hand searching for the intended mark and found it; the small knife in his thigh holster.

You leaned down on him, your breath fanning over his face, knife in your hand and slid back down on his cock again, moaning as he bottomed out. You let the knife rest against his jugular. “Now, Steve, that wasn’t very nice, was it?” You smiled wickedly and began moving slowly, lifting yourself almost fully off his cock before sinking back down. He hissed as you pushed the knife a little harder against him, and you felt his cock twitch. You sped up, riding him faster and faster, chasing your second high – you really didn’t care about his comfort right now. You were both moaning and groaning, your wet pussy slapping against his abdomen as you came fully down.

After a minute, Steve chuckled. “Very cute, bunny.” And with that, he grabbed your wrist, twisted the knife from you and held your hips and kept you steady, sinking his heels into the floor. “Now… Where were we?” He began fucking you relentlessly now, a hand snaking around your throat and squeezed lightly. You gasped and your pussy clamped down on him as he pistoned in and out of your wet heat; he pulled your face to his. “You’re mine, Y/N. You’re my filthy slut, mine to use…” He groaned and snapped his hips again. “To use whenever I want.” Your eyes were rolling back in your head. “If you don’t want to be, easy enough. Don’t cum.”

Bastard.

You came as he pulled your lips to his, kissing you roughly and swallowing your screams as you came undone around him. His hips stuttered and he groaned against your lips, filling you with himself, painting your trembling walls white.

You were both heaving for a breath when you tried to get off him, but he held you in place with bruising force to your hips. “Don’t you dare move. I’ve wanted this for too long for you to just get off.” He mumbled and kissed you again, surprisingly gently this time. “Jesus, Steve.” You muttered. “Told you I was a brat-tamer.” “I’d like to think you’re a me-tamer.” You sassed, kissing him again.

“Yo, why’s the doors locked? Guys? Are you killing each other or something?” Sam’s voice was muffled by the door, but you really didn’t care, because Steve twitched inside of you again. You arched a brow at him. “I can do this all day, baby.” He replied. “Seriously, what the hell are you guys doing?? FRIDAY won’t answer!”

“Shut up, Sam!” You both said in unison, before his hips began to roll again and you lost yourself to the feeling of Steve.

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[the-insomniac-emporium]

Wounded Love (Lady Dimitrescu/F!Reader)

Fandom: Resident Evil: Village Rating: M for mature. Blood, more blood, heavy language, seriously lots of blood. Literally the bloodiest/most detailed thing I've written. Genre: Super angst with some fluff to ease the pain. We're talking putting honey in your cup of poison to make it taste better. The ending is split, with both a happy and a sad ending. Warnings: Minor surgery (technically?) while the patient is fully awake (that's the reader, btws), blood loss, graphic depiction of a wound and how said wound is taken care of. Possible trigger for self-harm, as the reader is performing part of the surgery themselves. Also brief mention of cannibalism in the bad ending. This may very well be a Dead Dove: Do Not Eat sort of thing. Notes: While I have more medical knowledge than the average person, due to my Girl Scouts training + having a mother as a nurse, I am in no way shape or form a medical professional, and do not suggest that the methods of treatment used in this fic be taken seriously. If you find yourself seriously injured, do not attempt to replicate anything you read here. Only a portion of this is based on a real-ass incident I went through, the rest is based on a dream, and what I experienced was not what you want to do in an emergency.

{Wounded Love}

This was a mistake. Blood stains your leg, your fingers, and bruises start to form all over your exhausted body. And for what? Why had you, a tiny, fragile human, dared to pass through this damned, lycan-infested forest? Because a woman who didn’t even love you asked you to. Now you were going to die, body certain to get left out in the cold or reduced to a pile of gnawed bones. If you had more strength remaining, you might have slammed your hand into the ground in frustration, or screamed until your lungs burned from something other than frost.

But that wouldn’t get you anywhere. Wouldn’t help you get back to the castle, wouldn’t ease the racing of your heart. So you settle for the only thing that might do any good: One quick motion pulls the scarf from your neck, sending a chill down your spine that you promptly ignore. Even with shaky hands and numb fingers, your experience is enough to let you wrap the cloth around your leg, tying the ends in a knot to secure it. The pressure hurts, just not enough for you to prefer bleeding out. A test step reveals that walking is mildly more difficult now.

“I’m going to haunt her,” you muse, under your breath, tears starting to freeze at the corner of your eyes. Still, you are as quietly determined as ever, and so once more you limp down the path. Every time you put weight on your injured leg it protests harder. If not for the snow and ice covering the ground, you might have quickly searched for a walking stick. “What could be so important about this damn package? Couldn’t Doug or whatever-his-fucking-name-is deliver it? Man can practically teleport, and here I am, watching as blood loss and hypothermia race to see who can kill me first.”

Gods were you angry. Why had this happened so soon after you had settled in? Finally you had been comfortable in Castle Dimitrescu, no longer as frightened of the residents, even finding them… charming, in a way. Then the Lady of house called to you for what she claimed to be a simple errand. You had believed her, even when she explained that you would have to leave the relative safety of her home. What a fool you had been.

“What a fool she must be,” you murmur, “to think me safe here. To think I could outlast wolfmen prowling the village outskirts.” Would she even care if she saw you now? Would she be surprised, disappointed? Would she do something to change your fate? There was no reason for her to do so. It didn’t matter how much you had helped her, how much she claimed to appreciate what you did (heavy lifting, repair of clothing, massages). You were as replaceable as any other Maiden there was. And that, that was what made you have a double-take. It came to you in that moment, a thought so painful that you could not deny it was the truth. “She never thought I would survive.”

Bitterness coats your tongue, like blood in your throat, and your brain demands that you destroy your cargo, the very thing that got you sent here in the first place. You almost do it. Feet stopping, arms shrugging the carrying straps off, bloody hands taking hold of it. Tears fall, just two, and hit the package. At that moment your plan changed. This new idea would be far, far more satisfying… as long as you succeeded.

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Spite was one hell of a drug. Enough of it and you could march your warm corpse right back to the castle, fist banging on the front door with everything you had. The path had been shorter than you thought, thankfully, but it had still taken so much out of you. Now you were leaning against the door, sliding down it, unable to support your own weight. Nothing inside the castle stirred. Were they ignoring you? Was Alcina really going to let you die inches from your “home”? Fuck that, you thought.

“Alcina!” You scream, loud as you can, startling the birds in the distant trees. The word echoes around you and rattles inside your ribs. It’s not enough. “Damn it, I am seconds away from dying, get out here now so I can look you in your fucking eyes!” Something tears a little in your throat, turning the last of your words into a hellish screech, leaving you to gasp and croak in the snow. You go to wipe your tear-filled eyes with your hands, only to remember just how much blood they’re covered in.

Sobs overtake you in just a few moments. You’re blinded by tears, deafened by sorrows, and numb from all the cold. In the aching seconds before you black out, you can only barely make out the silhouette of someone rushing to your side…

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The first thing you feel when you wake up is mind searing pain. You try to jolt upwards, only to find a pair of strong, gloved hands holding you down. Someone shouts something, but you can’t make it out, and you feel another hand gently squeeze one of your own. Pained gasps escape your throat one after the other, but whatever is hurting you doesn’t stop. It takes a full minute for you to adjust enough to make sense of where you are. At last, you understand what’s being said.

“-it’s okay, shhh, please, we’re trying to help,” says none other than Lady Dimitrescu herself. She’s the one holding your hand, doing her best not to hurt you with her grip, trying desperately to calm you down. One the other side of you, Cassandra is positioned to hold you down. There’s a tight-lipped scowl on her face, and her brow is furrowed, but she’s not looking at your face, but rather eying somewhere in the opposite direction. Following her gaze, you find her older sister is sitting near your injured leg, and is undeniably the source of some of your pain. In one hand she holds a bottle of alcohol (notably not the wine her family produces), the other holding a wet cloth to your wound. No wonder it stings so much.

“Shit, shit, stop,” you growl, barely getting the words out. But all anyone does is look at you. Alcina’s mouth opens to speak, only for you to cut her off. “I’ve got medical training, for the love of Mother Miranda let me help! How long have I been unconscious?” This time Bela stops, glancing at her mother for direction. The grip on your torso grows looser, with Cassandra evidently heeding your words, and you take the chance to sit up, careful not to move your leg. At this point you realize that there’s a needle of sorts in your arm, attached to a tube, which trails up into a blood bag. It’s clearly been improvised with equipment from the “wine-making” part of the castle.

“Fifteen minutes at most,” a new voice chimes, from somewhere behind you. “I got that cloth you wanted, mother, but something tells me I’m not done fetching things.” Ah, Daniela Dimitrescu. Was the whole family helping you?... Why? As much as you wanted answers, there wasn’t (currently) time for questions. Not when one glance at your leg tells you that some of your flesh is rapidly decomposing. The wound was made only an hour ago, and already it was getting deadlier than you could even process.

“I need a sharp, clean knife, a needle with thread, a glass of water, and someone needs to put a metal tool, sterilized, on the stove, right now,” you said, finding it easier to talk now that no one was cleansing your wound. Without hesitation Daniela dispersed into a cloud of insects, heading towards the kitchen, while Cassandra stood up and moved towards the stairs.

“Guess I’ll get the needle,” she said, sounding rather unenthusiastic.

“What are you planning?” Alcina asks, more concerned than you had ever heard her before. Attempting to reassure her, you manage a small smile before explaining.

“Got scratched and slobbered on by a lycan. Whatever they have, it’s infectious. If I want to save my leg, or at least have a chance at surviving, I have to take measures to reduce the likelihood of an infection,” you say. Now Alcina is slowly stroking her thumb across your hand, eyes narrowed with concern. There’s a look on her face that you can’t quite parse, something she’s not saying. For now you ignore it and continue going over your plan. “The best thing would be to amputate. The tourniquet might have helped prevent the saliva from getting further into my body- and I do mean might- but I can’t keep it on forever. Problem is… I don’t want to lose it. God, I’m terrified of that, and with what we have in the castle I… I’d be more likely to die of shock than not. So, well, forget that idea.

“I’m just going to remove the wound. By making a bigger wound. It’s crazy, I know, but this will kill me if we do nothing. It will probably kill me if we do. The technical term is some shit like ‘de-bride-ing’?... No, debridement, I think. Except normally the poor fucker getting cut open is asleep for the procedure.” By the time you’re done, Lady Dimitrescu is looking at you with horror. Yeah, you had a feeling she wouldn’t appreciate the idea. “Look, if this is too much… if it’s not worth saving me, if you’d rather give me a quick death, I understand. If I were-”

“Don’t be foolish, dear. You will not die, not as long as something can be done about it,” Alcina replies, quickly, eager to stop hearing you talk about dying. It’s… strange to hear her sound so confident about saving you, even stranger to realize what she called you. As if reading your thoughts, she shifts in her seat, avoiding your gaze for a moment. Shyness didn’t suit her, and you imagined it was more about her finding the right words. When she speaks, she’s looking right at you again. “I have hesitated to tell you the truth, and now I find the world playing a cruel trick on me, trying to take that which I adore. But I don’t want to aggravate your stress right now. Please, think nothing of what I have said.”

Before you could reply, footsteps reached your ears, and soon enough Daniela returns. In one hand she holds a large pitcher of water. In the other? Several knives, of various sizes, one of which you’re pretty sure you’ve seen Cassandra playing with before. As soon as you see her your face lights up, glad to be able to start the procedure.

“Oh thank fuck- or, I mean, thank you, Lady Daniela,” you stutter, reaching out as she offers you the items. Thankfully Bela had already made room on the table at your side, where she had set the bottle of alcohol down. For a moment you had forgotten that she was there. Had she already known about her mother’s feelings? Based on her lack of reaction, you could only assume that she was well aware. “I’m gonna scream, B-T-dubs. Just, uh, cover your ears?” You offer, already holding your chosen knife (big enough to be effective, small enough to offer precision).

“So… you’re going to do this yourself? Didn’t think you had it in you, red. Try not to cut anything important. Wouldn’t want to have to clean that mess up,” Daniela teases. As soon as she’s finished she has to shift into a swarm, as Bela flat out throws a knife at her. For a moment you freeze, watching as Alcina rises to her full height, staring her eldest daughter down. Behind her, Daniela reforms, clearly using her mother as a shield. “I was just trying to relieve the tension, jeez. It’s like you think she’s already dead.”

“Don’t speak another word!” Alcina snaps, sending a frightening stare towards Daniela. You cough, awkwardly, not knowing what to do. Meanwhile Bela is pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers, clearly tired of dealing with her sister’s sense of humor. “No one will speak a word until this is finished, unless my dear needs something, understood?” Both the girls nod at that, neither feeling a need to risk any further ire.

“I’m just going to start working now,” you awkwardly chime, taking a deep breath before leaning in towards your injured leg. On closer inspection you can see a strange, dark residue in the wound. They’re specks, scattered along the length of it, and they seem more common the closer you look to the gash’s center. Gross, you think. Half curious, half checking for legitimate reasons, you bring your other hand to the cut and gently spread both sides apart. It hurts like hell, and you have to bite down on your lip to stop yourself from screaming. But sure enough, the residue is practically solid at the deepest point of the wound. “Those lycans really should be on leashes.”

Out of the corner of your eye you can see Daniela exchange looks with Bela, but neither of them disobey their mother (yet). Shaking the thought away, you finally get to the brunt of the task at hand. Your hand moves slowly, reluctant to inflict such damage against its own body. As soon as the tip of the knife touches your skin, you start to doubt your ability to do this. It takes looking at Alcina, seeing the way she watches you with equal parts concern and tenderness, to remind you why you’re doing this. Death just wasn’t something you could accept right now; not after what she had said, what she had implied.

The knife is fantastically sharp. Hardly any pressure is needed before your flesh gives away, cells letting go of their neighbors like it was a casual affair. You start at the left side of your injury, digging down a little, trying to only go as deep as you needed to. Tears formed in your eyes but you quickly blinked them away. As the first of many screams leaves your mouth, you turn and twist the knife, cutting to the right, then up. Like scooping the seeds out of a pumpkin. Fresh blood springs from the wound, starting to fill up the crevice. Quickly you discard the skin you removed by tossing it into the same bowl that Bela had put a bloody towel in earlier.

“Yes,” you shudder through gritted teeth, “this hurts so fucking bad. No, I don’t need someone to take over yet.” At this point neither of the present sisters are looking at you, seeming oddly uncomfortable at the sight of you cut up like this. Hadn’t they done worse to your fellow Maidens?... Whatever, the thought couldn’t last long when you still had work to do.

Next you take a fresh, damp cloth and dab at your injury, ignoring how it throbbed beneath your touch. Then you resumed cutting, forced to press the knife deeper in order to remove the spreading residue. If you had been a scientist, this would have been utterly fascinating to observe. Whatever had been in the lycan’s saliva was slowly eating at your flesh, but not outright dissolving it. No, it simply left the skin where it was, but killed and rapidly broke it down. Yes, it would have been fascinating, if not for the fact that there was a chance you wouldn’t be able to outpace the bacteria.

With this in mind you force yourself to hold in your next scream, hoping to make it easier for you to focus. The knife continued to cut, going lower, setting nerves alight as it did. Your vision starts to blur, and for a few seconds you think you’re going to black out. Someone says something you don’t hear, and then suddenly there’s a hand on top of your own. When your vision clears you see Bela is responsible, her grip keeping you from dropping the knife. She doesn’t let go until you give her a clear nod. Even then, she seems reluctant to let you continue.

Around this time is when Cassandra returns. Her footsteps catch your attention (it’s your understanding that carrying objects is much harder in swarm mode), and you spare her a quick glance before getting back to work. A few moments later she’s placing a set of needles and a long spool of thread next to you. Ironically, they’re the same tools that you’ve used to repair and adjust Alcina’s dresses over the past year. Hopefully they work just as well on flesh, you think. Your next thoughts are canceled out by unbelievable pain. More cries leave your lips, and your hand starts shaking. Panic is settling in fast, your movements getting sharper, leading you to make a brash decision: Time to care less about precision and more about speed.

“Distract me, please,” you gasp between grunts. No one responds at first, and you know they need clarification. Speaking is getting harder by the second, but you do your best. “Brain can’t process many stimulants, same time. Just- fuck- trace skin around wound, touch hair, anything.” Somewhere between your semi-broken sentences and screams, Alcina gets the message. She’s moving closer, now, behind you, one arm wrapping around your waist, the other rubbing gentle circles on your undamaged leg. Across from you Daniela is too busy pacing to help, though you can hardly blame her.

“Should I get the metal thing from the stove?” Cassandra asks, silently hoping that Dani hadn’t assumed someone else was going to handle that part. You’re still in too much pain to talk, so you half nod half grunt in response. Not bothering to say anything, the middle child takes off, swarm moving at what might be a new speed record.

As much as your hands are shaking, you still manage to cut away another strip of flesh, tossing it aside with even less care than before. This time Bela wipes the wound for you, practically reading your mind. The moment her hands are completely out of the way you start cutting again, crying out, throat shredded to pieces from all your screaming. Alcina sounds like she might be close to sobbing, but she doesn’t stop her movements, doing her best to distract you just like you had asked. Even Bela helps, now, tracing spots around your injury whenever she knows she won’t be in your way. The effect is minor, in the end, hardly making a dent in how much pain you’re processing.

If you survive this, though, you’re hugging every daughter as tight as you can and showering them with affection… but only after you finish doing the same for their mother.

“You are so brave,” Alcina murmurs next to your ear. It’s even clearer now how close she is to crying, her voice seconds away from cracking. Hearing her like this almost hurts as bad as the initial lycan attack did. “You are so strong. No other mortal could ever be your match. Do you understand, my dear? You are blessed, divine, and I love you so much.”

In any other setting, her words would leave you melting in her arms, radiating affection so strongly that you might as well have been radioactive. Instead, you are unable to respond, or even look her way. All you can do is press the knife to your skin again, showing your own feelings by destroying yourself for her.

The blade is starting to find more resistance, and you’re having to pause more often, spots appearing in your vision. Going faster only makes things worse, your hand threatening to slip. You’re determined to finish this, no matter what, but your need to control the situation is gradually making things worse. Alcina notices this before you do, and acts before you have a chance to protest.

“Bela, the knife,” she says, then tightens her grip on your waist. Your confusion shifts to panic as your arm is carefully, but forcefully, pulled away from your wound. “Can you finish the job?” It takes you a few moments to realize that Alcina isn’t talking to you. No, she’s speaking to her eldest daughter, who doesn’t hesitate to take the knife away from you. It’s so easy for her, between her strength and your weakness. “Don’t struggle. Let us finish this.”

Protests rise from your throat and die in your mouth. Pain flares harder now that Bela isn’t distracting you. Once more your vision goes dark, but this time there’s no pause, no hesitation. You are suffering, horribly, and the Dimitrescu family refuses to make you hurt longer than necessary. It’ll be over soon, you think, not knowing whether you refer to your pain or your life itself.

Something wet drops onto the back of your neck, then darkness overtakes you…

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

“Damn those lycans, I should string Heisenberg up myself! They’re his responsibility, after all,” Lady Dimitrescu snarls, trying to ignore the tears in her eyes. Now that you’re unconscious, unable to hear what ails her, she feels free to voice her thoughts. “The damn things should never have come close to the path to the village.”

“What if she strayed from the path? Wouldn’t that explain it?” Bela suggests, even as her hands work to remove what seems to be the last piece of dead/infected flesh from your leg. She hates how the words feel in her mouth, hates suggesting that you of all people might have betrayed her mother’s trust. But it makes sense. After all, this whole mess, with you leaving the castle to retrieve a mysterious package, was all a test to see if you would try to run. It hadn’t been her idea, and Bela admitted to herself that she thought it was unnecessary.

“On the way back? Why would she bother getting the package if she intended to run?” Lady Dimitrescu asks, right as Cassandra returns. The middle child is practically juggling the metal spatula she’s carrying, irritated (not harmed) by the heat it produced. One of her brows perks up when she hears the conversation, but she keeps any thoughts she has to herself.

“Just a thought, mother, I didn’t quite believe it myself,” Bela chimes, after a pause. With that said she holds up her hand with pride, clutching between her fingers the last of the decaying flesh. The way the others react, one might have thought that a miracle had been performed. Daniela clapped her hands together, giggling a little, and finally stopped her pacing. “Don’t celebrate too much, now,” Bela reminded her, taking the spatula from Cassandra as she did. “There’s still plenty to do. It’s a good thing she’s not awake for this part.”

A good thing, indeed. She uses her fingers to spread the remaining skin a little, giving a quick examination, then deciding that she had successfully removed all remaining residue. Keeping her fingers where they were, she pressed the side of the spatula to your skin, putting the most pressure at the center of the wound. Three seconds passed, then she lifted her hand. A pause. She pressed it back into place, keeping a close eye on the affected area. This repeated several times, the gaps being necessary to prevent unintentional damage. Once the wound seemed properly closed she set the spatula aside.

“Is that it?... Did we save her?” Daniela asks, opting to finally sit down in a nearby chair. Something about her word choice makes both of her sisters scoff.

“I could sew it closed, as a precaution, but there’s no way I’d do it the way she had intended. It might be best to just give her time to rest, and see what she thinks when she gets back up,” Bela answers. For a moment her words hang in the air, but eventually Alcina gives a little nod and a hum.

“Very well. I shall carry her to my quarters, where she won’t be disturbed. Please, let one of the Maidens know to bring some food up this evening,” Alcina says, gently taking you into her arms as she does…

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

BAD ENDING: It’s been six hours, with no sign of you waking up. Your other wounds had been examined, cleaned, and bandaged. Food had been carefully prepared and brought up to you, though it now remained on the bedside table, untouched. Alcina has gone to call Mother Miranda, intending to speak to her about the growing unrest of the lycans, as Heisenberg hadn’t answered his phone. For the first time since you returned you are alone. It is now, of all times, that you awaken. A gasp sends you into a coughing spree, forcing you into a sitting position. The space around you feels like it's moving, and your vision blurs. Blood spills from your mouth as you finally regain the ability to breathe.

Seconds later your vision clears, but what you see is enough to make you wish you couldn’t. The blood that spilled onto the sheets is a dark red… with even darker spots scattered throughout it. All at once you know what happened: Residue had hidden from you, or gone deeper than your wound, infecting you before you ever stood a chance. Tears threaten to spill from your eyes, but something deeper starts calling to you. Something older. Darker. It drags you to your feet, ignores the pain of your wounds, and sends you out the bedroom door.

Your mind is racing, thoughts never quite clear enough for you to understand. It doesn’t feel like you’re in control of your own movements. Was something else in charge, or were you operating on an infection powered autopilot? Answers weren’t coming, just bloodshed.

“You’re not supposed to be out of bed yet!” A voice calls out to you, making you turn to investigate. On the other end of the hallway is a maiden, one you instantly recognize. You’ve worked with her before, plenty of times, tag-teaming more tasks than you could count. She was like a sister to you. When she sees the blood staining your clothes, she gasps, then moves to support you. “Please, Lady Dimitrescu will be so upset if you-” her words melt into a blood curdling scream. For a moment you don’t understand.

And then you swallow, a chunk of hot meat slipping down your throat, and the scream dies down.

“What?...” You whisper, finally tasting the blood in your mouth, watching as your friend’s body falls to the floor. There’s a chunk of flesh missing from her neck, and the dots connect themselves in your head. You did that. Every part of you wants to scream, wants to cry out and beg someone to come kill you. Instead you fall to your knees, hard, uncaring. Your hands move themselves, grasping at the still warm corpse. Something has made you stronger, or at the very least removed the mental limits that kept you from destroying yourself. Flesh gives under your touch, tearing like paper, and you start crying as it reaches your mouth.

Footsteps approach, thundering fast, and you want to warn whoever it is. When you turn to look, you feel your hands let go of your meal. Your gaze meets that of a stunned Cassandra Dimitrescu, then drifts to the sickle in her hand.

“Kill me,” you growl, voice distorted, practically echoing. “Kill me now!” Not needing to be told a third time, Cassandra moves lightning quick, swarm-jumping forward before manifesting behind you, sickle dragging across your throat in one smooth motion. But it’s not enough. She realizes this, though, and slams her foot into your back, sending you tumbling forward. It’s enough to prevent you from countering, which gives her time to advance again, this time pulling a knife from her boot and driving it into the center of your back. When you scream, it’s not with your own voice, but that of a monster.

“Fucking fuck, what the fuck, red?” Daniella asks as she rounds the corner, eyes immediately landing on your bloodsoaked mouth. She’s quick to take in the scene, drawing a conclusion easily, even if it breaks her heart a little. Your vision fades as she approaches, and you know that it’s finally over. If only you had expired a few seconds earlier… because the last thing you hear is the startled cry of your would-be lover.

“No! No, darling, what happened-” Alcina finishes her sentence, but you do not hear it. You do not hear anything, anymore. You do not know it… but there will be hell to pay for your death.

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

GOOD ENDING: When you awake, you find yourself in the softest sheets you’ve ever touched, a warm and familiar presence next to you. The first thing you see is Alcina’s sleeping face next to your own. She’s on her side, one arm around your waist, the covers pulled up to her hip. Warmth fills your chest as you take in the sight. For a few moments you just… appreciate this. Never before had you imagined that you would get to wake up next to the woman you loved so much. A sigh, one of bliss, leaves your lips. Slowly you move forward, gently placing a kiss to Alcina’s cheek. Seconds later her eyelids flutter open, and she tiredly takes you in.

“You’re… awake,” she murmurs, hardly awake herself. But her fatigue doesn’t last long. As soon as she’s fully processed the situation her eyes go wide. Then she’s pulling you closer, careful not to hurt you, and peppering little kisses over your face. “I’ve been so worried, dear. You scared us so much.” The hurt in her voice leaves you restless, making you curl up against her, desperate to soothe her worries. Moving hurts a little, but not enough to dissuade you from your goal.

“I’m sorry, love,” you say, tears pricking your eyes. “I’m okay, I’m alive, the plan worked out. You don’t have to fret for me anymore. I won’t leave you, I promise.” Slowly but surely, Alcina calms, exchanging kisses for softly running her fingers through your hair. There’s such love in her eyes that you can hardly believe you aren’t dreaming. “You’re amazing, Alcina. I could stay like this all day.”

“Maybe we should,” she offers, chuckling a little. Once again you give her a quick kiss, unable to resist the urge. “I should have never asked you to leave. I should have just trusted you.” The words give you pause, and you tilt your head in confusion. Realizing that you still didn’t know the full story, Alcina frowns. “The package is worthless, just a bundle of straw and a few rocks for weight. It was never what I cared about.”

Tension builds in your chest, and for a few seconds you have no idea how to react. It takes a minute for you to think, to connect the dots, but once you do it’s a tad bit easier to breathe. A scowl twists your lips as you think of what to say.

“If I had known that Heisenberg was forgoing his duties, I never would have sent you outside,” Alcina adds, the silence taking its toll on her.

“You shouldn’t have sent me either way,” you respond, bitterly, thinking of all that you had seen and heard on your journey. “I would have done anything to prove to you how I feel. There are other ways to show devotion- far less dangerous ways, at that.”

“I know, dear. You have every right to be angry… and watching you suffer has taught me all that I need to know,” Alcina says, still playing with your hair, trying to ease the tension. As upset as you about this recent revelation… it’s not enough to change how you feel about her, and you want her to understand that, fully and completely.

So you lean into her touch, let your eyes drift close for a moment, then softly place one of your arms around her as best as you can.

“We’ll need to talk about this more… just not right now. Right now, I need you, Alcina. I need to hold you, and be held by you, and just know that you’re here. That I’m here. That neither of us are going anywhere,” you say, resting your forehead against hers. “I need to feel safe, and your arms are the safest place I can imagine. Stay here with me?”

“It will be the easiest thing I have ever done.”

[fangirl-writes]

Kiss and Tell

5sos x Fem!Reader

Warning(s): swearing probably

Notes: the quarantine chats are dangerous. I could have made this fic so much longer than I did and I really wasn’t sure how to end it tbh 😅

Summary: You've kissed all the boys at some point or another so they call upon you to settle an argument.

“What.” You deadpanned when your face popped up on the screen.

“Y/N!”

You narrowed your eyes. They were all smiling at you a little too sweetly.

“What.”

“Why do you assume we want something from you?” Calum asked.

“Because you never fucking let me into these things unless you want me to do something,” You replied and they laughed. “So what do you want?”

“We need you to settle an argument,” Ashton said.

“About what?” You asked, taking a drink from your water bottle.

“Well, you know how you’ve kissed all of us at one point or another?”

You choked on your water and they burst into laughter again.

“Great, yeah, I could be dying over here and you fuckers are laughing. I feel the love.” You said, face heating up.

“Sorry, Y/N,” Luke said through his laughter.

“Who’s the better kisser, Y/N?” Michael asked, swaying back and forth in his seat.

“I’m not answering that!”

“Come on, Y/N!” Ashton encouraged. “The fans want to know!”

You groaned, burying your face into your sweater covered hands. “Couldn’t you have asked someone else?”

“All the other girls we know are biased! Plus you’re the only one who has kissed us all.”

“Oh,” Michael interjected, looking at the chat. “Speaking of, the fans would like to know the story for each of these kisses.”

You let out another loud groan that set them into another fit of laughter. “None of you fuckers told me this was live.”

“I can vouch for some scenarios,” Ashton said. “One of us was obviously present for each kiss, um” - he cleared his throat - “she kissed me...actually, some of you probably saw when she kissed me during a- aaah, what’re they called?”

“Keeks,” you said, coming out of your hiding.

“Shit, yeah, that’s right. It was a joke to a one direction song or something.” he replied. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, chat’s right. It was in a car and ‘kiss you’ by 1D was playing. So I puckered my lips towards her, as you do,”

The other boys and you laughed.

“And, uh, she let me kiss her. Like the song says.”

“And I regret that decision every day.” You said.

“Oh!”

“Ooh.”

“Harsh.”

“Ouch,” Ashton said, smiling. “That- that was only a peck though, you didn’t even get the full Ashton experience.”

You wrinkled your nose and stuck your tongue out at him. He stuck out his right back.

“She kissed me in a game of spin the bottle,” Michael piped up.

“When we were fifteen,” You said. “And I remember you used way too much tongue.”

Michael blushed a little bit. “Hey, I didn’t hear you complaining,”

“You were fifteen, bro, she was just happy to be kissed,” Calum said, making the group laugh.

“Yeah, imagine having to watch that,” Luke said. “It was pretty gross but Y/N seemed to enjoy it at the time.”

You laughed. “Like Cal said, I was just happy to be kissed,” you said, winking at Michael.

He rolled his eyes with a grin. “Ouch,”

“I think you kissed me during one of the old music videos, right Y/N?” Luke asked.

You nodded. “Yeah, but I think it got cut from the final thing. I don’t remember which one it was.”

“Was it She Looks So Perfect?” Calum asked.

“No, I don’t think so,”

“Oh my gosh!” Michael exclaimed. “Remember when we tried to get Y/N to run into the shot in her bra and a pair of American Apparel underwear?”

The group erupted into laughter.

“Oh my god, yeah!”

“And she would jump into Luke’s arms at the end?”

“Yeah, yeah!”

“I couldn’t believe you guys even had the guts to ask me that.” You said. “I told them no, of course, but they didn’t drop the subject the entire time they were filming.” 

“So it definitely wasn’t She Looks So Perfect.”

“No,”

“Was it Don’t Stop?”

"Nah, she kissed Calum on the cheek in that one,”

Calum giggled, a small blush spreading across his face.

“Wasn’t one of the recent ones was it? Not No Shame or Easier?”

“No, definitely not, we’d have remembered that.”

“Fuck was it something from Youngblood?”

“Not Girls Talk Boys was it?”

“No, no, no,”

“Jesus, how many music videos am I in?” 

“I think you’re in them all.”

“I’m in all of them?” You said, shocked.

“You didn’t know that?” Ashton replied.

“No, I didn’t know that. I mean I knew I was in a lot but I didn’t think it was them all.”

“Yeah, you always have some sort of cameo,” Luke said. “Even in Try Hard though you refused to ride the Rollercoaster.”

“Fuckin’ hate those things,”

“Oh, found it!” Michael exclaimed, a video playing in the reflection of his glasses. “It was in Good Girls, but it was cut.”

“Thought so,” You replied.

“It was during that slowed down, echo-y part.” Michael continued, dragging the video back a little bit.

“Oh, yeah, they had you jump up on stage and just, like, aggressively kiss Luke,” Ashton said.

You all laughed.

“Yeah. I remember that now. They wanted me to be one of the bad girls which I am absolutely not-”

“What do you mean? That song was about you.”

“I think the fuck not Mr. Irwin.”

That brought on more laughing.

“Yeah, don’t go looking that up,” You said. “Let’s just say there’s a reason it was cut.”

“It’s really not that bad,” Michael defended.

“I disagree, I’ve seen it.”

“I’m not sure how to feel about your strong emotions about this, Y/N,” Luke said with a laugh.

You laughed in return. “Trust me, Luke-ster, you were not the problem.”

“We’re getting off topic here,” Ashton interrupted. “How was the kiss, Y/N?”

You rolled your eyes, a small blush creeping across your cheeks. “It...wasn’t that bad... Better than Michael’s anyway.”

“Hey!”

You laughed and Luke shot you a wink through the camera.

“From the video it looks like you were enjoying it, Y/N,” Michael said with a smirk, getting you back for the comment.

“Fuck off Michael it was acting,”

"Mm hm, whatever you say,”

Your face was hot as you remembered it. The director had wanted it to be hot and intense. Wanted you to act like the girl from the song, which was hard for you on its own but you also had to full on kiss Luke in front of a whole bunch of people.

You were glad it got cut.

“The chat says it was hot,” Ashton read with a laugh.

You groaned. “After that behind the scenes video was released fucking (You + Luke’s Ship Name) was all over the place.”

Luke laughed. “I got tagged in a shit ton of Tweets, too.”

You nodded in agreement. “Not that I haven’t been shipped with all of you at one point or another,”

“I bet there’s still some fanfiction out there,” Michael said.

You laughed. “You would know,”

“When’d you kiss Calum?” Ashton asked.

“Drunk at a party,” Calum answered for you, sheepishly.

You gave him a lopsided grin. “That’s super dumb, Cal, I’m sorry.”

He laughed. “It’s okay,”

“You’re apologizing for kissing him?” Luke asked, grinning.

You blushed, laughing. “I guess?”

“That doesn’t totally count, you were drunk!” Ashton said.

“What you want me to kiss him again?”

“Maybe!”

You were all sent into a fit of laughter.

“See? Why do you guys even need me here? You know the stories.” You said, wiping your eyes from laughing so much.

“Because we can’t say who the best kisser is! And neither can any of our girlfriends. You are our unbiased party.”

“How do you know I’m unbiased?” You teased, putting them into a talking-over-each-other frenzy. You laughed. “Seriously, guys, all of those kisses were so long ago. I can’t give a good answer.”

“We just all need to kiss you again,” Luke joked.

“No way!” You protested.

“Why not?” Ashton asked.

“Because you have girlfriends! And that’d be weird...”

“I gotta agree with her,” Michael said. “She’s our sister from another mister, it’d be weird.”

“Sister from another mister?”

“Shut up, Luke,”

“Okay, well, now that I’ve slacked off you with guys for a while I should get back to work,” You said.

“You work for us, what could you possibly have to be doing right now?”

“Unlike you boys, I actually do work.”

They laughed.

“This is our work! We’re catering to our audience.” Michael said.

“Whatever you say,” You replied with a smile. “See you, guys.”

“Bye Y/N!”

You left the meeting and opened your twitter.

‘I’m not kissing them so don’t ask’

[drabbles-mc]

Distant

Juice Ortiz x F!Reader

Request by Anon: could i have a juice x reader fic around this conversation. J: i hate myself, i hate this, I cant do anything right. R: :slap: i won't let you talk badly about the man i love.

Warnings: angst, Juice being a sad boy

Word Count: 1.1k

A/N: So I did tweak the request a little bit because slapping just didn’t...sit right with me. Hope you still enjoy, though. This is just a angsty lil one-shot for Juan Carlos.

SOA Taglist: @garbinge​ @masterlistforimagines​ @adela-topaz-caelon​ @mijop​ @chibsytelford​ @thanossexual​ @xladymacbethx​ @i-just-read-stuff​ @kkim120​ @everyhowlmarksthedead​ @toni9​ @unicornucopia-fuckers​ @shadow-of-wonder​ @punkgoddess-98​ @paintballkid711​ @black-repunzel99​ @lexondeck​ @jitterbugs927​ @mrsstevenbuchananstark​ @mijagif​ @frattsparty​ @winchestershiresauce​ @bellisperennis0​ @crowfootwrites​ @redpoodlern​ @beardburnsupersoldiers​ @mveggieburger​ @xeniarocks​ @choochoo284​ @littlekittymeow​ @beardsanddetectives​ @juicyortiz​ @soltaasbruxas​ (If you want to be added to the taglist just let me know!)

When you’d stopped by the clubhouse earlier that day looking for Juice, the guys had told you he’d taken off a few hours before. You tried texting and calling him, but everything went unanswered. When you had asked the guys if they knew why he had been so skittish and distance, you couldn’t get a straight answer out of anyone. That fact only made you more concerned, but it also meant that whatever was eating at him was a club issue, and that sent a jolt of fear down your spine. There were a lot of problems that you could try to help Juice solve, but club shit was above your paygrade.

You called again as you walked back to your car, and when you went to voicemail again, you left another message. You left one saying that you were leaving the clubhouse and making your way to his place. The likelihood of him listening to that before you got there was slim to none, but at least no one could say that you didn’t try to give him the heads up.

When you got to his house, you saw his bike parked in the driveway. Taking a deep breath, you put your car in park and cut the ignition. The light above the front steps was off but you could see the light coming from inside and you knew that he was home. You lingered on his front step for a couple seconds, taking a deep breath to get your courage up a little bit before knocking on the door.

You heard some scuffling behind the door, and a few moments later it was slowly pulled open, revealing a very tired and sad-looking Juice. Your heart sank at the sight of him alone, but the fact that he tried to force some kind of a smile for you but couldn’t broke your heart all that much more.

“Hey,” he leaned against the door, “everything alright?”

“I feel like I should be asking you that,” you couldn’t help but to take note of the fading bruises around his eye and on his cheek, “Can I come in?”

He hesitated, but ended up nodding, “Yea, yea of course,” he opened the door wider so you could walk inside. Once you were inside, he looked around the front of his house as if to make sure no one else was there with you before closing and locking both locks on the door. Only then did he finally turn around and face you, “What’s going on?”

You shook your head, “N-nothing,” you didn’t quite know how to go about saying something without making it seem like you were trying to be nosey, or like you were mad at him, “I just, I feel like I haven’t heard from you in a bit. Wanted to make sure that you were okay,” you tapped the toe of your shoe on the hardwood floor, “Stopped by the clubhouse earlier to look for you, but you weren’t there either.”

His eyes grew a little wider, “Did the guys say anything to you?”

“No…should they have?” your heart was slowly dropping into your stomach.

The expression on his face made it clear that he knew he just put himself behind the eight ball. Shaking his head, he tried to string together a response, “No, no that’s not…that’s not what I meant. I just…I didn’t know…”

“What happened?” you stepped in closer, slowly reaching and tilting his head so you could get a better look at him.

He fought the urge to flinch away from your touch. The hesitancy had nothing to do with you, but at that point his body and mind couldn’t differentiate anymore. You saw the slight panic in his eyes and you gently traced your thumb along his cheekbone in an attempt to soothe him. It was partially successful—you felt him leaning slightly into your touch despite the fact that his body was still tense.

“Lot of heat with the club right now,” he tried to leave it as vague as possible.

“Okay,” you nodded slowly as you brought your hand back to your side, hoping that he would give you more than just that, “Anything I can do?”

He immediately shook his head, “No, no. I don’t…I don’t want you getting caught in the middle of any of it.”

“Middle of what?” you prompted him to tell you more.

His breathing quickened as the events of the last few weeks came rushing back at hyper-speed. He didn’t want to tell you everything that had been going on, the terrible things that he’d done to try and save himself and the club. You wouldn’t be able to look at him the same way—he knew it.

“Nothing,” he couldn’t look you in the eye, “Don’t worry about it.”

“Hey,” you stepped in closer to him and slipped your hands into his, “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”

“No,” he almost pulled away from you but didn’t, “you can’t help. This isn’t your mess to clean up.”

“We’re a team, right?” you gave his hands a light squeeze, “Whatever shit we get into, we get out of together.”

He almost wished that you weren’t being so supportive. It would’ve been so much easier to push you away if you didn’t handle it well. Everything that had been thrown your way you’d always handled with grace and it was the first time that he ever wished that you wouldn’t. He needed you at arm’s length and he didn’t know how to get you there without breaking his own heart in the process.

“This isn’t like that,” the truth was on the tip of his tongue but he couldn’t spill it. Shaking his head, he pulled away from you, turning his body so that you couldn’t see the look on his face, “I hate myself, I hate this—I can’t do anything right.”

Your brows knitted and the softness disappeared from your tone as you spoke up, “Hey,” you stepped in closer to him again, pulling him back towards you and forcing him to look at you. His eyes were wide, never having heard you be that firm with him before, “Don’t do that. I’m not going to let you talk like that about the man I love, alright?” you shook your head, tone becoming gentle again as the statement washed over him, “I love you, and whatever it is, we’ll get through it. We always do.”

Tears were gathering in his eyes, “This isn’t like before.”

“Okay, then we’ll figure it out,” you cupped his face in your hands.

“I don’t wanna lose you,” his voice trembled slightly as he soaked up the warmth from your hands.

“I’m here,” you nodded, leaning in and kissing him softly on the cheek, “and I’m not going anywhere.”

[shera-dnd]

Robot fuckers and clone fuckers rejoice! The Reagan x Robo-Reagan fic is here at last. Not much in the way of explicit sexual content, but plenty of implied sexual content, so just a heads up on that.

So if you want plenty of banter, dick jokes, and Reagan Ridley gaining some self confidence and learning to love herself, you have come to the right place.

Reagan slumped against the door of her house. Her feet hurt from walking in heels all night, she was still dizzy from the booze, and there was a sense of resigned sadness lingering over her. So in short, just another date night for Reagan Ridley.

Not even trying to remove herself from her precarious position, she searched for the keys in her bag, and then spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to jam them in the keyhole. Her success wasn’t exactly met with cheer, because the super genius behind the most powerful secret organization in the whole world apparently forgot how gravity works, and was sent stumbling to the floor as soon as the door opened.

Thankfully she was too buzzed from the alcohol to actually feel most of the impact, unfortunately she was also too depressed to feel much of a drive to get up either. Maybe the floor would be more welcoming of her, who needed the waiting arms of a lover when you could find comfort with the carpet.

Wow, that was really fucking depressing, even for her standards. She better get up now before she falls asleep like that. Wouldn’t want her dad to see her like that.

Mustering all her willpower, Reagan forced herself to stand again, and with very little willpower left afterwards, just dragged herself through the house like one of the shambling corpses from the zombie plague test center. Right, she needed to verify the next batch of unnamed test bodies for the lab and--

Why was her basement light still on? Was Rand working or something right now? No, she could hear him snoring from three rooms away. Did she forget the light on? No, she hadn’t been there since the “robot-fucker incident”. That left very few options and she didn’t like any of them.

She fumbled in her bag for the portable laser gun she took to carrying lately, and began the slow descent into her abandoned basement lab. Okay, no, that made it sound creepier than it really was. It was her… basement workshop. There we go, that sounded much better.

Regardless, she made her way down to her workshop to find just about the fourth or fifth person she wanted to see the least down there, if person was even the correct word for her.

“Took you long enough,” Robo-Reagan commented as she continued to casually work on her left leg, “date went to shit, huh?”

The bitch tried to kill her and still has the gall to act like she was a fucking house guest.

“That’s none of your business!” Reagan yelled, “and how the fuck did you even get in here!?”

“Dad let me in,” the robot replied, calmly finishing her repairs, “so who was the guy?”

“What do you mean dad let you in!?” She demanded, “you have wires sticking out of you! Couldn’t he tell you’re a copy?!”

“Implying that Rand ever paid enough attention to us to notice the wires,” she commented. That was easily the meanest thing Reagan heard all day, it was completely accurate, but it was still so fucking rude. “Seriously though, how was the date?”

Having fully accepted that this might as well be happening, she found a chair to slump on, dropped the laser gun, and groaned very loudly.

“That bad, huh?” The robot joked, and Reagan considered reaching for the gun again.

“What do you know?” she complained, “the only date you ever went on ended in a battle to the death! I still have way more romantic experience than you!”

“And that’s your problem,” she commented, closing the panel on her leg, “mind helping me with the crack on my neck?”

“Are you seriously gonna slut shame me?” She asked, exasperated and annoyed. Though she still dragged her chair closer so she could work on her copy’s neck.

“I’m not slut shaming you,” the robot denied, rolling her eyes at the original, “I’m just wondering how many of those dates did you really want.”

“What?”

“Come on, did you really want to date those men because you liked them? Or did you only want that relationship for validation?” She asked, her tone almost an accusation, “that entire mess with Bryan only happened because our friends were betting on our love life. We didn’t want him, we just wanted their approava-va-va-va-va-va-va-va-- ouch! Watch the wires!”

Reagan chuckled to herself, placing back the piece she was messing with, “so what’s your point? That I should just give up and stay lonely forever?”

The robot groaned and facepalmed, clearly done with the original’s shit. “Alone doesn’t have to mean lonely, jackass! Have you maybe considered learning to love yourself before going around trying to find someone to do that for you?”

Real Reagan slammed her tools down on the table and stared her copy down. She spent all night walking around in heels, listening to some guy’s inane conversation, wishing she was at work dealing with some world ending catastrophe instead. She did not need to sit here and get psychoanalyzed by the bargain bin version of herself.

“Fuck off! Just because you were made to look like me doesn’t mean you know me!” She yelled, absolutely furious, “I have plenty of self love! In fact I love myself more than anyone else!”

Robo-Reagan smirked, looking her original in the eye and challenging, “prove it.”

Maybe it was the alcohol in her system, maybe it was her need to prove this infuriating bitch wrong, maybe it was the stupid horny part of her brain going “mean lady hot”, maybe a combination of all three, but in some bizarre lapse of judgement, Reagan decided it was a good idea to kiss her.

No, not just kiss her. She grabbed her by the front of that stupid sexy jacket and yanked her into the most furious, most sloppy, make out session she ever had. Which wasn’t much considering how few make out sessions she ever had, but that wasn’t the point.

The point was that this felt amazing. It was incredible, like something had finally clicked in her head and she could finally truly enjoy this. Oh, and that she got to prove Robo-Reagan wrong… yeah that was definitely the point of this. Crap, was she getting turned from making out with the robot copy of herself?

That question seemed to snap her out of it long enough for her to pull away from the kiss. She stumbled back, bracing against a nearby wall as she tried to recover her breath.

“What the fuck?” She breathed, her mind still catching up to what she had done.

“I stand corrected,” Robo-Reagan chuckled, standing up from the work desk and making her way after her original, “you really do know how to show yourself some love.”

“Y-Yeah, okay,” real Reagan replied, backing away from her robot copy, only to find herself cornered, “lesson in self love learned, you can leave now, and we’ll never speak of this again.”

“We could do that, or…” the robot slammed her hand to the wall, boxing Reagan in as she leaned in close, “...I could practice some self love too.”

Oh, Robo-Reagan was giving her a chance to say no. Reagan could just stop this here, write this off as some silly drunken mistake, and then never ever think about this ever again. She just had to stop her… so why wasn’t she? You know what? That was a stupid question, and she was way too drunk, needy, and horny to consider answering that right now.

Instead she hooked her arms around her copy and let her go to town on her. The copy wasted no time, pinning her to the wall and closing the gap between their lips, reminding Reagan once again that this copy had her confidence cranked up to eleven.

Soon pieces of clothing were getting tossed aside and a hand may have found its way to a tit, so one question quickly came to both their minds.

“Wanna--”

“Wanna take this to the bedroom?” Robo-Reagan asked, cutting off the original, who would be extremely grumpy if she wasn’t already feeling exhilarated right now.

“Fuck yes,” Reagan replied, and off they both went.

Reagan got to the bedroom first, quickly organizing the bed so it was slightly more presentable. Wait, who was she kidding, Robo-Reagan knew how she lived, she knew her room was as much of a mess as her fucking life. No, wait, they were still gonna fuck on this bed so it had to be at least clean of late night popcorn.

Oh, wow they were gonna fuck on this bed. Reagan was gonna have sex with a robot, a robot that looked exactly like her. This was probably super messed up on so many levels, but she was so past the point of caring, and besides it’d been so long since she got any good dick.

“So I should probably let you know,” Robo-Reagan began, leaning against the bedroom door as she watched the original scramble to clean things up, “that since Robo-Bryan made me to be his perfect girlfriend, he may have made some...modifications down stairs.”

“What? Is your dick gonna shoot lightning or something?” Reagan joked, but her copy cringed at the comment, and that made her very suspicious, “what did he do?”

“The world’s fastest GRS,” she answered, “it doesn’t bother me much, but I thought it might be a weird surprise to just drop on you.”

“How the fuck does that not bother you!?” Reagan yelled again, happy that her dad was too fucking drunk to wake up and bother them right now, “this is super messed up. He shouldn’t be able to mess with your junk without consent!”

“Look, I miss Little Reagan too, but I’m really not in the headspace for this right now,” Robo-Reagan complained, pinching the bridge of her nose, “how about we put all these thoughts in a box, fuck each other’s brains out, and then tomorrow we can spend all morning discussing a robot’s rights to bodily autonomy if you want. Sound like a plan?”

It still infuriated her to no end that Robo-Bryan would have the gall to pull such a thing. The worst part was that he was designed to be her perfect boyfriend, the guy that would be the best for her, and he still preferred her without a piece of herself. It was like this nasty mess of her own self loathing and internalized transphobia somehow slipped into his design.

But she refused to let that get in the way of their fun. She wasn’t gonna let that slimy part of her brain win ever again, and if that meant fucking her own pussy then so be it. Okay, that sounded far more ridiculous than it had any right to.

“Yeah,” Reagan nodded, reaching for her copy’s-- her own hand, “come here.”

Considering how it had started, she expected things to be hot and heavy, full of passionate kissing and messy sex. But as soon as their clothes were off, and Reagan saw her own naked body standing before her, it was as if someone flipped a switch inside her head, and all that desperate need to get off and be done with it just disappeared.

She wanted to pull Robo-Reagan close and kiss every inch of her, leave not a single part of her body unloved. She wanted sweet caresses and tender love making. So that was exactly what she gave her, gente, slow, and full of feeling. That was her body too, right? And sure years of HRT and a new lovely pair of tits helped her not hate it anymore, but maybe she should learn to actually love it too.

Robo-Reagan, for her part, was surprised, but more than happy to play along. She could easily just pin the real Reagan to the bed and absolutely demolish her, but she liked seeing her counterpart having the confidence to take the lead, so she allowed her to do just that.

No, she didn’t just allow it, she encouraged it. Every tender touch was met with loving words, every act of confidence greeted with praise, every little sound of pleasure followed sweet compliments. It was the most positive reinforcement Reagan had ever gotten in her life - unfortunately not a hyperbolic statement - and she simply loved every last second of it.

And maybe she even began to believe the praise. It wasn’t nearly enough to fix several years worth of damage to her self worth, but it was still something. Just a tiny little bit of reinforcement in the right direction.

~~~

The next morning Reagan woke up feeling that kind of warmth and comfort that made her want to bury herself in the covers and never leave her bed again, but that stupid ray of sunshine peeking through her window seemed to have other plans. She cursed under her breath as she shielded her eyes with her free arm.

Free arm?

It was then that she was reminded that her other arm was currently being used as a pillow by a near perfect mechanical copy of herself, and that she did in fact spend most of the previous night making sweet love to said copy. It hadn’t been some weird drunken dream, she had seriously just had sex with Robo-Reagan, and if she was being honest, she was weirdly okay with that. No conflicted feelings, just a nice warmth in her chest and a sense of satisfaction.

She couldn’t help but smile at her, reaching over to brush her hair off her face. Oh, fuck that was sappy, that was way too sappy, back the fuck up Reagan, you already got all lovey dovey with her last night, you should not be doing this again right now.

But how could she not? Just look at her, she looked so peaceful, when had she ever looked peaceful in her life? How could she not cherish that? Maybe if she started getting some more rest maybe she could cherish her too.

Having accepted that she was doomed to actually care for herself and her copy, if only so her copy would care for her too - something something lesson on self care - Reagan decided to make this a little special morning for herself and...herself.

She did her best to free her arm without waking Robo-Reagan up, gave her a little kiss on the cheek, and hurried off to the kitchen, then got back in the room and put on a robe, because she forgot her dad was still in the house and she was very naked.

With that taken care of, she found herself with a need to do something she never expected to do, make herself a nice healthy breakfast. After quickly googling how to do that exactly, she got to work.

She was almost done setting everything up when she heard a voice calling from the kitchen door, unfortunately it was not the voice she wanted to hear.

“Why would you look at you making your dad a nice breakfast,” Rand laughed as he walked in and took a seat at the table.

“This isn’t for you, dad,” she complained, not even bothering to turn around to look at him, she knew he had already stuffed an entire pancake in his mouth, “it’s for my date.”

Rand laughed and Reagan could feel all that self confidence she built up last night just crumbling to dust, “what? Was your date hiding behind you the whole time last night?”

She turned around and shot him a murderous glare, “no, dad! It’s just… it’s complicated, okay?”

“Sure, kiddo, “complicated.”” He mocked.

“Ugh! Shouldn't you be irritating people somewhere else today?” She spat, just wanting to get rid of that stupid man.

At an unbearably slow pace, the man took out his phone, checked the time and commented, “would you look at that, I do have somewhere else to be. See ya later, kiddo.”

With that he stole another pancake and walked off to be a public menace somewhere else. She’ll probably have to bail him out of something stupid later, but he at least wouldn’t be her problem for at least a few hours. It was the best she could hope for really.

Reagan sighed and slumped against the kitchen counter, suddenly feeling very small and tired. Thankfully her date seemed more than eager to fix that.

“Did that idiot leave?” She asked, peeking her head into the room.

“Yeah, dad’s gone,” Reagan answered, her voice sounding as exhausted as she felt.

Robo-Reagan looked...sad to see her like that. That was definitely a first for her.

“Well, whatever he said, he can shove it up his ass,” the robot said, walking up to her and taking her hand, “you shouldn’t have to deal with him, or any of his bullshit.”

Reagan smiled a little, just a bit of cheer slipping through the resigned sadness, “yeah, dad can go suck my dick.”

“Hmmm, I’m gonna have to say no on that,” the robot joked, leaning against Reagan, pressing her shoulder to hers, “only I get to do that.”

Only her? Was she implying what she thought she was implying? Was this gonna be a thing now? Ugh, the idiots at the office would not let her live this down if she decided to actually date herself.

Actually, she didn’t care what they thought. This was her love life and she could do whatever the fuck she wanted with it. They could go suck-- No! They couldn’t! Sucking her dick was a gift to only the privileged few!

Still, she wouldn’t want to look too eager in front of the robot.

“Well someone is confident on their first date,” Reagan joked back, taking hold of as much confidence as she could muster right now. It wasn’t much, but it was more than she usually could.

“I am programmed to be ten times more confident than you,” Robo-Reagan replied, smirking a little at the original, “and besides you did make me breakfast.”

“I made myself breakfast,” Reagan lied.

“Same difference, dumbass,” the robot laughed, it was a sweet thing, not the mean spirited laugh she was used to hearing, pulling her towards the table, “come on, let’s see how bad your cooking is.”

Reagan couldn’t keep herself from laughing along, “hey, I’m proud of this breakfast.”

And Robo-Reagan smiled, because that’s exactly the kind of thing she wanted to hear.

“Good.”

[keelywolfe]

FIC: Pity in Short Supply (baon)

Summary:    In the aftermath of the kidnapping, Red has a few thoughts. There's a reason he's always called 'em liabilities.

Tags:  Kustard, Domestic, Established Relationship, Sans/Underfell Sans, Aftermath of a kidnapping, Undertale Monsters on the Surface, Underfell Papyrus/Underswap Papyrus, Background Spicyhoney, A Touch of Lemon Goodness

Part of the ‘by any other name’ series.

Read it on AO3

or

Read it here!

~~*~~

By the time the sun was thinking about hopping over the horizon and getting started on its daily workout, the warehouse parking lot was starting to clear out. All the ambulances were long since gone, the only one of ‘em with a person in the back was the guy who was still stuck in that weird foam shit.

Red didn’t believe in karma; he’d spent much too long eating shit himself for that, but if there was any lingering threads of justice still clinging stubbornly in the air, it’d take a long, painful time to get that fucker loose.

Most of the Embassy Security teams were heading back with all the evidence stacked in their backseats and Red was standing in a shadowed corner away from the streetlights watching them pack it in. Some of ‘em would start working on interviewing the kidnappers who didn’t need a few hours to cut them loose from a little chemical warfare, along with the agents the FBI shipped their way. Some were gonna work on getting shit together for the inevitable interviews with the kidnappees sometime this afternoon. Red had some pull and plenty of strings to yank, but even he wasn’t gonna be able to hold back the tide of questions much longer than that.

There was probably gonna be a fit pitched somewhere along the line that he’d sent his trouble twins home to sleep before getting much info, but Red would have to hula that hoop when it rolled in. Wasn’t only about Stretch, it was about his bro; there was only so much the boss could take before he slammed face-first into his breaking point and he’d been skating a little too fucking close tonight for Red’s taste. Better to let him take his pretty little liability home, clean him up, spend a li’l time rubbing his scent all over him again like a dog in heat and wasn’t it a damn good thing none of ‘em could piss.

The last thing any of ‘em needed was his bro snapping and hauling his honey away like a shorter, skinnier, bald version fucking King Kong.

(and was the memory of his brother's bleak face as he sat there waiting for answers while Red lied out promises about getting his liability back in one piece gonna haunt his nightmares, fuck yes, 'course it was, gotta balance those books somehow, there was always a price, he'd learned that lesson fast while he was still carrying his baby bro on the streets. always a price, fucking always)

Red wasn’t too worried about losing any info, anyway. Wasn’t much chance of Stretch forgetting much, not with that eidetic memory of his. Not being able to forget was half of his fucking problems to begin with.

Out in the mostly deserted parking lot, the last couple agents were finished packing up their car, not even seeming to give him a second glance as they climbed in. ‘Seeming’ was the real shit there, to anyone who wasn’t used to watching. The driver, a deceptively slender deer Monster, their antlers cut stylishly down, paused just long enough for their eyes to flick his way. The subtlest of looks, but that was it. They didn’t make a show of asking if Red wanted a ride, didn’t play any ego trips over spotting him, just hopped into the car and sped off.

Good instincts. Red made a mental note to keep an eye on that one. Good, not great, ‘cause they didn’t notice the one standing further back behind him, the guy who took up the best shadows before Red even showed up.

He stepped up now, hands stuffed into his pockets as he shuffled his way to stand next to Red, untied shoelaces dragging on the damp asphalt. They stood there together while the first unbearable rim of sunlight crested and took the shadows with it, bathing them in painful, golden light.

Red pulled out a cigar and bit off the end, spitting it to the ground. He lit a match with a flick of his thumb and held the tip in the wavering flame. When the end was smoldering, he flicked the match into the puddle, the faint hiss of it extinguishing unheard as he asked in a cloud of exhaled smoke, “how’s it going, sansy?”

Red was looking at the empty parking lot, the puddles dotting it like a scattering of miniature lakes across a land of broken asphalt, so he didn’t see Sans shrug, but he could feel it, a ripple in the still air around them. “went like clockwork. we planned for this sort of shit, you know, planned it out for years. worked out possible sceneries with fuzzybuns, toriel, all the diplomats.” Sans’s ever-present smile widened humorousness, “even had a few for edge and stretch, guess we shoulda brainstormed on those ones a little more. don’t know if we coulda come up with that one, though. drugging him was always a contingency, but no one guessed they’d strip his ass down and lose every damn tracker on him.” Another tight shrug, one quick. cramped motion, “we’ll know better next time.”

The plume of smoke rising from Red’s cigar curled in the air, drifting like a mist in the dawn light. Red watched it and nothing else, letting his sockets fall half-closed as he followed the wispy path with his eye lights. “ain’t asking about the fucking ops. how’s it going, sansy.”

There was a long moment of silence, broken only by the rough scrape of gravel shifting under Sans’s feet as he rocked on his heels. “you know, i took up with the security department for paps,” Sans said conversationally. “wanted to keep a close eye on him when he went traipsing around the big bad world to spread the good word. back underground, that whole sentry schtick was an excuse for a paycheck, i wasn’t guarding anything but my own g and a nap.”

“yeah?” Red stuck his cigar between his teeth and bit down, tasting the scatter of soggy, bitter tobacco on his tongue as the jagged tips tore through the fragile wrapper. “that so, sweetheart?”

“yeah, that’s so, dollface,” Sans chuckled mirthlessly. “little ironic, ain’t it, that it turns out i’m good at this shit. who would’ve thought.”

“yeah, never woulda guessed a judge might not be bad at the whole diggin’ up covert info,” Red shook his head sadly, “a shock, really, that ya could put that empty skull of yers to some good use.”

“sweet talker. gonna end up sleeping downstairs with the cat you keep that shit up.”

“fuck, don’t do that,” Red shuddered. “already worried if i don’t get up fast enough to feed that bitch, she’d gnaw off my pinky toe before i wake up.”

“that picky little shit wouldn’t eat you if you rolled yourself up like sushi and slathered on caviar.” Sans hesitated, then asked, softer, “how’s stretch doing?”

“like shit.” Red didn’t bother to cushion it; his pity came sparingly and Sans could take it. “he’s got his judge all cranked up to eleven. caught a helluva glimpse of me when i got here, thought he was gonna puke on my shoes.”

Sans let out a long, ragged exhale. “that’s my fault,” he said bleakly, “i got him to hit his on switch to look for that lost kid, should’ve known he’d have a hard time shutting it down again.”

“maybe.” Red wasn’t too concerned about it. If Stretch wanted to retire and shove all that down into the dark, wasn’t any dust off his ass, but the only way he’d lose it entirely would be if someone ripped it out of him by way of a dustpan. “if those fuckers hadn’t tried to pull a limburger baby on the kid, then it woulda died back down on its own.”

This time Sans chuckle was more real, a little honest humor creeping in. “don’t let stretch hear you call him kid, he’s already got his panties twisted halfway up his spine.”

Red scoffed, tapping away the ash gathering at the tip of his cigar. “honey bun might be the same age as us, but he ain’t as old as we are. don’t matter how the universe tried to age him up.”

The sound Sans made might’ve been a hum of agreement or the juicy, hawking prelude to spitting. The sun hadn’t had a chance to chase away the evening chill and Sans’s jacket was zipped up against it. Over the tab of his zipper, nearly concealed by neckline of his hood, Red could see the glossy rim of well-oiled dark leather, the slightest glint of metal. He let himself look at it for a long moment, take a sip of dark satisfaction at seeing his collar right where it was supposed to be. Then he looked away, back across the empty, crumbling parking lot.

Sans didn’t try to touch him, only shifted his stance until their fingers brushed in a way that could pretend to be accidental, bone lightly scraping bone.

“we should get going,” Red said. The sun was climbing higher, the stars giving way to gauzy, useless clouds. At least stars were interesting, a reminder there was another Aboveground than this one, another path upward that might someday be reached. “we got a lot of shit to do downtown.”

“we do,” Sans agreed. He tipped his head in Red’s direction, slanting him a glance out of the corner of his socket. His eye lights were tinted golden by the sunrise, sly and knowing in a way that had nothing to do with magic. “want me to blow you in the stairwell before we take off?”

Red didn’t wait for him to finish, tossing his half-burned cigar into a puddle, dousing it and sending a splash of ripples through the still water. “fuck, yes.”

He followed Sans into the warehouse and in moments he was braced against the rusty handrail with his shorts around his ankles in the dust, shuddering at the feel of that hot, wet mouth around him, worshiping his cock with lovingly sinful familiarity. Every inch of his focus was taken up by that and there wasn’t room to think about a single other thing. Not even the phantom sensation of metaphorically getting flayed alive by a wild orange gaze, the unexpected, needle-sharp feel of every one of his sins digging in their spidery claws as they crawled up his spine.

He didn’t think about it at all.

-fin

[dazenightmare]

Birds of a Feather

This scenario has been in my head now for weeks, so have small fic :)

Maybe I’ll expand on this, maybe not

T.W.: Yelling, sudden movement, somewhat crappy writing, cussing, cursing, let me know if I need to add more

~~~~~~~~

They’d had Ranboo for about seven months now.

One day Philza was flying above when he saw the teen, huddling under a tree in fear of the pouring rain. Philza stopped and sat with the Enderian until the skies cleared, and led the boy home with him.

Since then, they learned he was quite skittish, and showed signs of small memory problems. Ranboo didn’t want to talk in Common, or at all it seemed. He only muttered in End from time to time, to himself. He didn’t seem to quite trust them either, showing clear distrust pretty often. They did everything to get Ranboo to open up, from hang out with him, to trying to teach them Common like they taught Jack all those years ago, to Philza trying to pick up End, which, mind you, was not easy.

Eventually, they decided Ranboo would open up in his own time. They just needed to be patient, which was awful for some Avian fuckers.

It seemed like a pretty normal day when it happened. Philza and Niki were over at Wil’s house (plus the addition of Ranboo, because he clung to Philza most of the time). Tommy and Jack were out adventuring, but got stuck somewhere after it started raining, which currently was clearing up after hours.

They sat there talking until Wilbur’s comm started ringing, making Ranboo teleport behind the couch in surprise. Wilbur barely glanced at the ID before picking up.

“WILBUR! MAH FRIEND!”

“What’s up Tommy?”

“So, like, me and Jack were walking ‘ome, right? And we found something focking weird mate!”

Wilbur rose his eyebrow, everyone in the house showing clear confusion.

“What’d you find?”

“We think it’s a person! Either that or some weird mole-box thing. Whatever it is, we’re bringing it ‘ome! We’re almost there, actually! The pub just came into view! We’ll be at your house soon, bye!”

“Wait Tommy that—“ the line died, and Wilbur sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“That barely explains anything...”

“Wonder what they found,” Niki mumbled from the tank, Philza nodding in agreement. Ranboo just stared at them blankly, still behind the couch. They really needed to teach the boy to at least understand Common...

“Whatever a mole-box is,” Wilbur snorted, phasing through the floorboards for entertainment. “What do you think it is Phil? You’ve explored for years, does a mole-box sound familiar?”

Philza hummed, tapping his fingers together. He sat there for a bit before sighing.

“Sounds like nothing in the Overworld. It kinda sounds like a shulker, but those don’t leave the End... maybe they found someone’s shulker box?”

They sat on the idea for a while before Tommy threw the door open dramatically, making everyone flinch. Jack followed him, holding something close to his chest as he closed the door behind them.

“BEHOLD!” Tommy yelled, gesturing towards Jack, who held up a purple box for all to view. “THE TUBSTER!”

“The what?” Niki asked from the tank, ruining the moment. Jack put it down on the table so they could inspect it. They didn’t notice Ranboo edge closer with a curious look as Tommy huffed.

“We dunno what it is, so we’ve been throwing out random names. Tubster is the best one so far.”

“It also literally means ‘box’ in Netherish,” Jack added on, yelping when Tommy elbowed him harshly.

“The Box,” Wilbur said dramatically, kneeling before the table. “Sent from above to bless us! The Box! What shall it say?!”

They all tried not to laugh as Wilbur moved closer, listening for something. They were about to crack until a noise actually came from the box, making Wilbur yelp in fear, turning invisible.

Before they could process the fact a box made a noise, Ranboo moved quickly. Quicker that any of them had ever seen him move before. They flinched until they saw Ranboo was just... sitting before the table, hunching into himself so he was eye level with the box. He just stared at the thing... waiting.

Breathing deeply from the scare, they stood in silence before Jack whispered loudly.

“What the fuck is he doing?”

“I don’t know,” somebody whispered back.

More silence.

“Is this like his weird obsession with grass blocks?” Tommy whispered this time. Philza shrugged. None of them dared to move.

After another minute of silence Ranboo muttered in End, eyebrows furrowing. Nothing happened for a moment before the box made another, smaller noise. The box opened a tiny bit, before gradually opening more.

They all gaped at the small person inside the box warily staring out. The person scanned over all of them before their eyes settled on Ranboo. They stared at each other.

The box boy, without breaking eye contact, slowly emerged from the box. They quickly tapped Ranboo’s nose saying something in what they now recognized as the language Ranboo spoke.

Ranboo’s eyes lit up like a kid on Christmas, tail wagging at lightning speeds as he spoke quickly and loudly, throwing everyone off guard.

“Oh my god,” Philza said suddenly, looking irritated that he didn’t figure it out sooner. “That’s a Shulk!”

“Bless you,” Tommy murmured.

“No, no, no Tommy! A Shulk is another hybrid!” Philza said, wings puffing out slightly as he watched the two interact. He continued as if reading from a book. “A mix between a human and a shulker, a Shulk is from the End! Unlike Enderians, who sometimes accidentally teleport from the End to the Overworld, and sometimes the Nether, Shulks almost never leave the End. They only leave if forced by an outside source or if they want to!”

“... Wilby, why’s our father a nerd?” Tommy whined. Wilbur only shook his head and shrugged.

“All I’ve learned from that rant is that this thing,” Jack said, pointing at the Shulk. He then pointed at Ranboo. “Can talk to this thing.”

“Does that mean we have to name him?”

“Mm... Tubbo. His name is Tubbo.”

“What?”

They never heard Ranboo speak so much in his seven months with them until they found him a best friend.

[acnelli]

A Moment of Truth

My second entry for Ron’s Chessboard Fest 2021.

Pairing: Ron/Harry

Rating: T

Prompt 13: A Moment of Truth

Summary: Harry ruined the best thing that ever happened to him. But the Boy-Who-Lived is determined to make it right again.

Thanks again to TheUltimateUndesirable and to the best beta @accio-broom!

This story is kind of a follow up to the fic Thinking About You by Solstice Muse. You don't have to read that story to understand mine, but I highly recommend getting on LiveJournal and befriending Solstice Muse for their amazing stories. Pure talent, believe me! I also got permission from the author to write my story based on theirs.

You can also read this story on AO3 & FFN.

Harry wondered if he had ever felt more alone in his life as he stared up at the ceiling of his bedroom. If he would’ve thought about it hard enough, he might’ve remembered several instances where he felt just as lonely, but Harry simply didn’t possess the strength right now.

Ron left him.

The  thing he would miss the most left him, and the only person he could blame for it was himself. It took the better part of the last two weeks for Harry to realise it and all of yesterday to really accept that ugly truth.

The day Ron had walked out of their flat was nothing but a giant blur. He had drunk himself into a stupor, and if the broken mirrors were any indication, he pretty much had lost it. When he woke up the next morning, violently retching into the toilet, he called in sick and just went to bed again.

Although he had gone to work the following days, he floo called his PR manager, telling Liam to cancel all events for the time being, offering a half-arsed explanation and reminding him that it was  his  job to make up stories for him.

Harry had appeared at work as early as possible and left for home when the cleaning staff threw him out of his office. He didn’t want to return to the vacant flat, Ron-free and, therefore, absolutely miserable. But he was also trying to avoid Arthur, Percy and Hermione. Especially, Hermione.

Harry’s favourite pastime these last two weeks had been to curse and blame Hermione for all of this. She had obviously waited outside that day, escorting Ron to her parents’ place where she lived at the moment. Harry had watched them through their living room window as they walked hand in hand to the next apparation point.

Everything had been fine, after all, hadn’t it? Taking his manager’s advice to feed the monster to protect his actual private life and his loved ones from the press, he had found his celebrity life rather comfortable and even enjoyable. After years of Harry having been announced to be Bachelor of the Year, rumours started to form about why he had still been single. Together with his manager, he worked out a way to lure the press away from the truth, and there hardly had been an instance anymore where Harry wasn’t accompanied by one beautiful witch or another. Events and parties full of photographers did not bother him anymore as long as they only captured him socialising and having fun. Almost every day, the papers had a story to tell about him, but never about who he really had gone home to. Never about Harry being gay and him being madly in love with his best mate.

Most of the time, he concentrated on this feeling of betrayal and silently cursed Ron and Hermione for wanting him to come out officially. Didn’t they see how intrusive and destructive the press had been all his life? Didn’t they see how dangerous this could be for Ron? For himself?

But deep-down, Harry knew it wasn’t like that. Ron would never demand Harry come out. The only thing Ron wanted from him was the freedom to live his own life out in the open. It had been a perfect situation for Harry these past months; working, going to parties and then coming home to Ron.

But for Ron, it hadn’t been perfect.

Harry remembered that horrible night when he came home from some Ministry ball, only to find a note telling him Ron went out with Hermione to some Muggle gay club in London and that he doesn’t have to stay up should he come home earlier than Ron.

Shame and guilt threatened to choke Harry when he thought about his terrible actions that night. Harry had seen red the second he read the words  Muggle gay club, immediately assuming some dirty fuck will try to steal his Ron.

When he finally found them, he watched Ron and Hermione dancing like there was no tomorrow, looking absolutely ridiculous, but like they had the time of their lives. He watched Ron having fun, smiling like Harry hadn’t seen him smile in a very long time. He watched as Ron got approached by a very handsome Muggle and Hermione finding herself another dance partner, winking at Ron. He watched Ron turn the man down. And he stopped watching when that fucker ignored it and tried to kiss him. Before Ron had the chance to shove him away, Harry forced himself between them and snarled into the muggle’s face to fuck off, seconds away from beating the shite-eating grin out of him.

Harry knew now that this night must have been the turning point for Ron because after screaming at Hermione for luring Ron into that gay club, he completely lost it on his boyfriend. They had a terrible row that night, but Ron had forgiven him once more.

All feelings of betrayal got soon replaced by guilt. Over and over again, he recalled Ron’s wounded expression every time Harry asked him to not join him for one party or another, Ron’s anger and hurt when Harry exploded on him the few times Ron had gone out for the night without him or asked more than accusing questions afterwards. He imagined himself at these parties, having fun, drinking and talking about Quidditch most of the time. And then he imagined Ron, sitting alone in their flat, waiting for Harry to come home, just as alone as he was now. Ron wasn’t happy anymore, but Harry had refused to listen to his words and see Ron’s misery.

He suddenly hated himself — not just hurting his lover but also his best mate. Harry most likely ruined the most wonderful and perfect thing in his life and probably killed any chance to get Ron back. Maybe he even bollocked up their friendship for good, just like he had with all his other friendships if all the declined Birthday invitations Ron sent out before their break-up were any indication. Hermione always had been very vocal about what she thought about Harry’s treatment of Ron, and he just had been too deliberately blind and busy to notice everyone turning away from Harry.

That’s why he lay in bed. All alone. On his Birthday.

The only guest he had today had been Ginny, bringing him a little basket with some snacks Mrs Weasley prepared for him. She had been smart enough to not wish him a Happy Birthday.

While Ron hadn’t asked him to come out of the closet, Harry wanted to keep Ron inside it. He should’ve known better than anyone what it means to be hidden away for being different from the rest, for a dirty secret not allowed to get out. This comparison with the Dursleys made him hate himself even more.

If he wanted to have a real shot at getting Ron and his friends back, Harry had to clean up his own life first. Slowly, he got out of bed, determined to get a long overdue shower. Before he went into the bathroom, though, Harry summoned some parchment and a quill, writing a short note and a rather long letter (for Harry’s standards anyway).

He quickly delivered the note to his manager’s assistant through a short floo call, telling her it was urgent.

His owl Athena nibbled on some owl treat he gave her while Harry tied the letter to one of her claws. “Alright, Athena,” he said, his voice unusually wavering, “please, deliver this letter as fast as possible, okay? And make sure Hermione reads it.”

*******

Ron was well aware of Hermione’s worrying glances in his direction.

They both sat on Hermione’s bed, with their backs leaning against the headboard as Ron distracted himself with the wonder that is a television, and his best friend unsurprisingly reading a book beside him. He was glad she didn’t force him to talk about his feelings right now.

Over the last two weeks, Hermione had gone out of her way to keep Ron from thinking and worrying about Harry. An impossible task, really, but she did such a great job of trying to cheer him up and even succeeding sometimes that Ron often felt overwhelmed by the need to hug her.

Today though, Hermione knew Ron couldn’t be kept from thinking about Harry. It was the last day of July, after all, and Harry’s Birthday. And it would be the first Birthday since Harry turned 17 that Ron and Hermione wouldn’t be with him. It would be the first Birthday in the last four years that Harry and Ron weren’t a couple anymore.

In the moment, sadness and hurt seemed to choke him, and he wondered if Harry had even considered them a couple in the first place. Right at the beginning, when they started dating after some unbelievably awkward confessions of feelings, it had been like a dream come true. Finally, the times of mutual pining had been over, replaced by a sense of such content and happiness that Ron often had woken up in the morning, sure it all just had been a dream. A second later, though, with Harry’s arm around him, reminded Ron that it was genuine.

Despite Ron missing Harry terribly, he knew it was the right decision to move out. For the sake of his own sanity and happiness, he had to leave Harry. Ron knew that Harry loved him more than anyone else. It had taken him a long time to realise that sometimes, love wasn’t enough.

Hermione wrote a short letter to Harry this morning, wishing him a Happy Birthday. They both signed it, deciding it would be best if they sent one letter together. The other day he floo called Ginny, asking her to check on Harry today because Ron knew that his best mate wasn’t fine. None of all these parties, charity Quidditch matches and Ministry galas could change that. At least, not after two weeks. A very selfish part of Ron hoped it never would.

Ron was about to suggest to Hermione to grab some ice cream when Harry’s owl tapped on the window glass, wildly flapping her wings. Instead of letting Athena in, Hermione looked at Ron with her eyebrows furrowed but with a questioning look directed at him.

Letting out a deep sigh, Ron stood up and opened the window. The owl flew inside, flying straight towards Ron’s opened and still not fully unpacked trunk. Landing gracefully on top of one of Ron’s bright orange Canon t-shirts, she lifted the claw the letter was tied to and hooted loudly at…Hermione?

“Well, it’s yours, apparently,” Ron said, pointing at the cream-coloured envelope. “Maybe he just wants to say thank you for the Birthday wishes.”

“Ron, you know th–“

“Please, just open it, Hermione.”

Her brown eyes held the kind of anxiety he felt too, but she still freed Athena from the letter and gave her an owl treat. Apparently, the bird got the order to make sure Hermione read the letter, as Ron knew that she would’ve been long gone after receiving her treat.

“Are you really sure, Ron?” Hermione asked, looking up from the unusually thick letter, “Will you promise me to not floo over, right away? Regardless of what that letter might say.”

He slowly nodded at her, his gaze fixed on Harry’s letter. This certainly wasn’t a simple ‘Thank You’ note, and the fact Harry wrote such a long letter at all scared him to the point of pure panic.

“Please, open the letter, Hermione.” If it was because of his panicked voice or Hermione’s own curiosity what the letter might say, Ron couldn’t tell, but she finally opened the envelope, took out the note and held it in a way both of them could read it.

Dear Hermione,  

First of all, I’m sorry for any potential annoyance Athena might have caused, but I told her not to leave before you have read this letter.  

What I have to tell you is crucial for both you and Ron. I know you will show Ron this letter right away; maybe he is even reading it with you right now. But this letter is actually primarily for you. What I want to tell Ron, I have to tell him in person, and maybe after today, he’ll give me a chance to hear me out.

Hermione, I’m sorry.

I’m sorry for all the reasons you expect me to be sorry for, but I’m also sorry for letting our friendship crumble and fall apart. I had been so angry at you for stealing Ron. Stealing him, like he is some kind of possession to lose. The last two weeks, I was consumed by this unreasonable rage that I thought was gone after Tom Riddle’s soul left me forever. Yes, it took me two weeks to finally realise that you just were a good friend to Ron.  

Because a good friend is what you are. And I know you tried to be a good friend to me for the longest time. I took you for granted. Just like I took Ron for granted and everyone else I turned away from during last year. I turned into a horrible person without noticing it, or rather, refusing to acknowledge it. And because of that, I also turned into an awful friend.  

I could blame many things for my behaviour, like fame or the press or my manager or my childhood. But after taking a hard look at myself, I concluded that I can’t blame anyone or anything for this but me.  

Before I even try to make it right with all of you, before I can look into Ron’s eyes again, I have to sort out my life first. Actually, I’ll start to do this today.  

Both of you have to up your security. Use any charm you can think of. I doubt you will be in any serious danger, but I have no idea what kind of reaction this will cause. It’s best if you stay away from Diagon Alley tomorrow. I won’t mention Ron’s name, of course, but expect journalists trying to corner the two of you for interviews.  

Do you remember the beach cottage we celebrated my 19th Birthday? I will spend the whole day there tomorrow. Would you and Ron join me? I have a lot to say.  

Love,

Harry

A heavy silence fell over Ron and Hermione when they both finished reading Harry’s letter. Hermione slowly folded the parchment and laid it down on her nightstand before looking up at Ron with wide eyes.

Ron didn’t know what to say, let alone what to think of this. Harry did not outright say it, but the indication was clear enough. Whether he’ll write an official statement or give a press conference, Harry planned to come out today.

Wasn’t this what Ron wanted? For Harry to not give a flying fuck what the rest of the world would think about him? For finally being able to live a life out in the open?

But instead of feeling relieved and happy, he felt an old terror creeping up his neck. Like in a trance, he sat down on the bed again and stared at Harry’s letter. Ron ran his hands over his face and groaned from the overwhelming sensation of guilt and anxiety washing over him. Did he force Harry to do this? Did he force Harry to expose himself to the nasty side of the public?

Soft hands tugged on Ron’s arms until he was forced to look up. Hermione knelt in front of him, a determined look in her warm, brown eyes. “What do you want to do now?” She asked, lightly caressing Ron’s cheek.

“Well, the letter was for you…” Ron joked, his attempt to lighten the mood earned him one of Hermione’s trademark eye-rolls. “Fuck, Hermione, I have no idea. What if Harry is just doing this because he’s hurt?”

“Harry always acts impulsively,” Hermione answered in a thoughtful tone, “but his words sound sincere to me. And as he said in his letter, he really needs to sort out his life.”

“He shouldn’t have to come out though for that.”

“No, he doesn’t have to do this. But for his own sake, I really think it’s the right way to go.”

“I can try to get a hold of him and check how he’s doing if you want me to,” Hermione added when Ron didn’t respond.

“You would do that?” Ron looked down at her once more, feeling grateful to have Hermione by his side.

“Of course,” Hermione stood up from her kneeling position to sit beside Ron and took his hand into hers, “But Ron, just because Harry is doing this doesn’t mean you have to go back to him. I’ll support you, no matter how you decide, but please promise me you won’t let yourself get treated like that again. I don’t want to see you getting hurt like that anymore.”

He smiled at her and softly squeezed her hand. “I promise, Hermione. But I think I can’t just continue as if nothing happened. Not so soon, anyway.”

“Good,” Hermione stood up and went over to Ron’s suitcase where Athena still sat, looking expectantly at them, “Come on, Athena. I bring you back to Harry.” The owl hooted at her as if in protest but still flew up to Hermione’s right shoulder.

“Hermione?” Ron said before she could disapparate.

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

*******

The press room of his manager’s company resembled a cozy living room rather than the place he held all his important meetings. Aside from the chairs for the reporters and photographers and the speaker’s stand at the front, it was decorated like a room he would suspect to find in some Lord’s castle. It had an impressive fireplace, a golden chandelier and was decorated with several large paintings and fancy looking rugs.

As Harry took a quick look into the press room from the door that led to Liam’s office, he saw that some news outlets had sent their reporters early. They clearly expected big news from him, considering the last and only press conference he gave had been the one right after the war. Harry was sure they thought he would announce an engagement. It was the obvious conclusion, and if he wouldn’t have been in such a grave mood, he maybe could’ve found it amusing to imagine their faces after he gave his statement.

You’ll see their reactions soon enough, Harry thought.

Despite what he was going to do in less than ten minutes, he felt strangely calm. It could’ve been the years of experience handling the press, but Harry knew this wasn’t the case. Talking about the Quidditch Cup final or the latest decision of the Wizengamot was one thing. Telling the world he was gay was something else entirely.

No, Harry’s calmness didn’t come from years of navigating the press, but rather Hermione’s visit an hour ago. She didn’t say much, just that Ron wanted him to know he didn’t have to do this. And she made it very clear this outing wasn’t a safe ticket to get Ron back. He told her that all he had said to her in the letter was true and that he needed to do this for himself more than anything else.

Hermione had simply nodded and turned around to floo home, but she had stopped in her tracks.

“Be safe,” She said softly, without turning around. Not waiting for an answer, she stepped inside the fireplace, leaving behind the orange flames dancing inside it.

Hope sparked inside his heart because, obviously, Ron and Hermione still cared and tried to look out for him. Even if he ruined every chance of a relationship with Ron, not all seemed lost considering Harry’s friendship with his two best friends.

“Are you ready?” Liam’s voice came from behind him. The short, grey-haired wizard stepped up beside Harry, looking up at him with his ever-professional mask of indifference.

“Ready,” Harry answered, testing his voice, glad it sounded strong and unwavering.

Without missing a beat, Harry’s manager opened the dark, wooden door, and the two of them walked to the podium. Several cameras flashed already when Harry cast  Sonorous  at himself. The room was filled with at least one journalist and a photographer from every news outlet in Magical Britain.

The news of Harry Potter being gay was going to spread like wildfire.

“Good evening,” Harry started to speak, his amplified voice quieting down the low chatter of the audience. He planned to make this short, wishing to be back at his flat already.

“I’m here to inform you that I won’t be attending any official events for the rest of the year.” The voices grew louder again, but Liam stopped the chatter by simply raising his hand. The way this short man managed crowds never ceased to amaze Harry.

“This is simply a way for me to get my life back on track, and I know I need this time for myself in the upcoming months. I-”

“Mr Potter,” Rita Skeeter interrupted, her acid green Quick-Quotes Quill and a parchment hovering in the air beside her, “Does your-”

“Mrs Skeeter, I don’t remember my manager giving you permission to ask questions,” Harry cut her off, trying very hard to not let her admire his middle finger. “And if you wish to attend this press conference until the end, I advise you to not interrupt me again.”

Raising an eyebrow at him but otherwise remaining silent, Rita sat down again, her quill still scribbling wildly. Harry knew he would pay for this. He was just about to give her the perfect ammunition, after all.

“I could just leave it at that. It would definitely prevent my manager from being forced to read through a lot of hate-mail, and it would spare me from having to hide from the public for a while. But these past months, my relationship with the press and official events destroyed everything I really hold dear. And no, I don’t blame you for this. You intruded on my life more than once, but what I have let my life become is entirely my fault. That’s why I have to make the reason for my retreat public. Before I reconcile with the people I hurt, I have to make it right with myself, first and foremost.”

Complete silence settled over the room. Not a single whisper could be heard, and even Rita Skeeter’s quill stopped scribbling, simply hovering beside the witch.

Harry closed his eyes for a brief second as his heartbeat threatened to beat out of his chest. It was now or never, so Harry took one last deep breath, and then, he finally told the world the truth.

“I’m gay.”

*******

A gentle breeze greeted Ron and Hermione when they apparated to the beach Harry mentioned in his letter. The slight wind felt like a relief compared to the stuffy heat in the city. Hermione could only shake her head at Ron for complaining about the hot days, given how rare they were in London.

They could already see the small cottage from their apparation point, the security charms still allowing them to notice it and enter its wards. It was a short walk to the small wooden cabin, but it was enough time for Ron to break out in a sweat.

Yesterday night they had heard about Harry’s press conference on the radio. The news station recited his speech word by word before analyzing it, also word by word, and taking wild guesses on which wizards were most likely to be a past or present love interest of the Boy-Who-Lived.

Harry’s words kept repeating in Ron’s mind, making him feel guilty, relieved and sad, all at the same time. More than anything else, he wanted to know how Harry felt about all of this, but at the same time, he feared what Harry might expect from Ron now.

With a gentle wave of his wand, Ron alerted Harry of their presence, and a second later, he walked out of the cottage. His black hair looked even wilder than usual, fitting his red-rimmed eyes and the wrinkled shirt he was wearing.

Despite Harry's ruffled appearance, Ron immediately felt a pang of deep longing inside his chest. All he wanted to do right now was to run his hands over Harry's five o’clock shadow and kiss away the dark bags under these brilliantly green eyes.

Instead, he just stood in front of Harry, willing his heart and mind to slow down.

After what felt like an awfully long time of awkward silence, Harry cleared his throat. “Would- would you like to come in?”

“I won't come in with you,” Hermione answered, and before Harry could protest, she turned to Ron, “We'll meet at Neville’s at 7?”

“But Hermione, I want to talk to you too.”

“I know, Harry,” Hermione looked back at him, her lips tightly pressed together, “But I think you should talk to Ron first. Alone.”

Ron could see Harry didn't expect this. He probably prepared a whole speech for Hermione and was now at a loss for words after her announcement.

“We will talk, just the two of us. And I will try to rebuild our friendship, regardless of what Ron might decide for himself.” Hermione paused for a brief moment and took a step closer towards Harry. “But should Ron decide to give your relationship another chance, remember that our friendship will stand and fall on how you treat him. I won't watch one of my best friends hurt the other again.”

And as if to make a point, she took her wand out of its holster, gripping it tightly. Without waiting for Harry's response, though, Hermione quickly squeezed Ron's hand before turning around and disapparating with a quiet plop.

“I really wanted to talk to her,” Harry sighed, weaving a hand through his unruly hair.

“How are you?” Ron asked instead of saying something about Hermione's decision to keep out of this conversation.

Apparently surprised about Ron's sudden change of topic, Harry looked at him with a puzzled expression. A second later, though, his gaze softened, and Ron squirmed under the longing Harry's eyes held.

“Better than I thought I would be” Harry took a small step closer.

“You didn’t have to-”

“I know,” Harry quickly interrupted him rather loudly, and with a much quieter voice, he said, “I know. But I wanted to. I needed to do this.”

Ron nodded and stared at his feet, not knowing what else he could say right now.

“Would you like to sit in the backyard? I have some beer and coke in the fridge.”

“Sure. I'll take the coke.” Ron didn't trust himself to not throw all resolve into the wind if he drank something stronger than Butterbeer. Booze combined with Harry's toned legs on full display on this hot summer day? Ron wouldn't take any chances.

Five minutes later, the two of them found themselves sitting on the small porch, overlooking the ocean. The sea was calm today, and the sound of the waves lulled them into a companionable silence.

Ron couldn't tell how much time had passed when Harry finally started to speak. He told Ron about his past two weeks—all the feelings he went through, from fiery anger over crippling guilt to unbelievable longing. He talked about how much he had hated himself and how this feeling shrank to a tiny flame after yesterday's coming out. And when Harry looked at Ron, telling him he was sorry and he was well aware Ron most likely couldn't see a meaning anymore behind his apologies, a single tear escaped Harry’s eye.

Ron wanted nothing more than to brush it away, but he didn't. Instead, he braced himself for what he needed to tell Harry.

“Harry, I-,” Ron sat up a little straighter, making sure to look Harry in the eyes, “I need time. I need time for myself, at least, for a while. I realised that I stopped being my own person in the last months of our relationship, and like you, I have to find my way back to myself.”

“I obviously want you back, Ron,” Harry's shoulders slumped down a little from the disappointment, but at the same time, Ron thought he saw something like resolve shining behind his green eyes, “But I'll be happy as long as you let me be a part of your life. Maybe- maybe we could just hang out for a while. Just as friends. Go to the pub, watch a Quidditch match, stuff like that.”

Ron gave him a small smile. “That sounds good.”

They didn't say anything else after that. The sun wasn't ready to set yet, but its late afternoon glow gave the sea a beautiful reflection.

At some point, Harry's hand that lay between them on the wooden bench accidentally bumped against Ron's. Harry jolted and wanted to pull his hand away, but Ron stopped him. He softly grazed over Harry's wrist with his fingertips, eliciting a small sigh from him. Ron watched as his hand interlaced their fingers; Harry's olive scarred skin against his pale, freckled and equally scarred skin. It was a beautiful sight.

They kept sitting this way until it was time for Ron to go, just staring out into the sea and holding hands.

*******

Resisting Harry Potter had never been easy for him, but nowadays, everything his best mate did seemed to drive Ron crazy.

Christmas was a week away, and a month ago, Ron and Harry started dating again.

One day, after attending one of Ginny's Quidditch games, they had gone to a small, cozy Muggle Café, trying to warm themselves up from the cold November weather. The Polyjuice Potion they used to disguise themselves from the watching crowd in the Quidditch stands had long worn off, but a rather persistent strand of blonde hair on Harry’s head refused to turn back into its usual raven black state.

Ron had reached over their tiny round table to point it out to Harry but instead almost knocked his glasses off in the process. They burst into laughter, and Ron didn't know if it had been the rush of cheering for his sister today or something else entirely, but for some reason, he had chosen this moment to ask Harry out on a proper date.

And it could have been all in Ron's head, but he failed to remember if he had ever seen Harry smile as he had at that moment.

Without further discussing it, they had kept it slow. Their dates had involved a lot of kissing again, but they always had gone home alone in the end; Harry to his flat and Ron to the tiny apartment he currently shared with Hermione since early September.

Now though, they stood just outside of The Leaky Cauldron, which Hannah and Neville reopened today. After taking over the pub from Tom, they had renovated the large terrace, surprising most of Tom's old guests that it even existed.

For the reopening, they had decorated it with fairy lights and some plants that didn't mind the season’s cold weather. High, round tables stood everywhere where the guests could have some drinks and snacks.

Together with Hermione and her new boyfriend Martin, they stood around one of these tables, drinking the most delicious hot chocolate Ron ever had. While Hermione was busy introducing Martin to their friends, Harry was busy running his hand over Ron's arse.

From their place right in front of the wall of the Leaky Cauldron, they were able to observe everything, but no one was able to see how Harry’s hand seemed to have found a new home in one of Ron's back pockets.

After about an hour, Ron finally had enough. Before Harry could sneak his hand there again, Ron grabbed his wrist and pulled him behind one of Neville's monster plants which happened to be the perfect hiding place.

“You noticed all the bloody journalists out there, right?” Ron asked but clearly didn't expect an answer from Harry as he kissed him as he had wanted to all night. Harry didn't miss a beat and pulled Ron tightly against him, returning the kiss with equal enthusiasm.

Harry moaned into Ron's mouth when Ron sucked at his lower lip, making him want to apparate home with Harry right away.

As Harry set to kiss Ron's neck, it was now the redhead’s turn to bite back a groan. “Let's- let's- Oh Merlin, Harry.”

“Let's what?” Harry whispered as his hands slowly wandered down Ron's body.

“Let's go home,” Ron said in a breathy voice, lips swollen from kissing, “Let's say goodbye to Hannah and Neville and then go home.”

Harry shook his head as he stepped away from Ron, but tugging at his hand as he went into the direction of the party guests.

“Before we go home, let's show them,” Harry stepped up to Ron again, this time just kissing him softly on the lips, “Only if you're okay with it, of course.”

“But you already had your moment of truth. Everyone knows you're gay.”

“They don't know about us, though,” Harry said, softly stroking Ron's cheek, “And besides, my real moment of truth had been when I apologized to you and our friends. The public outing was nothing compared to admitting I had been a shit friend and partner.”

“You know, I don't care about the press knowing about us, but you don't have to prove anything to me, Harry.”

“I think I do. Let's show everyone the wizard that won over The-Boy-Who-Lived,” Harry said, and without another word, he led them into the crowd again.

Nobody was paying attention to them, despite the great Harry Potter standing in the middle of the expansive terrace, holding hands with his best mate. Mistletoe hung from above them, and Harry grinned at the coincidence.

“Doesn't seem like we have much of an audience,” Ron stated as he observed all the party guests who were too busy chatting and drinking, “But I think one of the fucking paparazzi has spotted us.”

“Do you think that's enough, Weasley? Simply holding hands in front of a paparazzi?”

Ron was well aware Harry was daring him, but Ron had been sorted into Gryffindor for a reason, after all. Never breaking eye contact with Harry, Ron put his thumb and middle finger inside his mouth and whistled so loudly, everyone startled out of their conversation and turning their heads towards them.

And without missing a beat, Harry put his arms around Ron's neck and kissed him. Ron heard surprised gasps and camera flashes and cheering, but all he could focus on were Harry's lips and his heart beating so fast he was sure everyone could hear it.

As they broke the kiss, Ron put his forehead against Harry's and grinned like the bloody, lovesick fool he knew he looked like right now.

“Take us home, Potter,” Ron whispered, feeling freer than ever before in his life.

They never made it back to the party.

[hopeswriting]

Modern AU (Adult!)Arcobaleno on socials media though. While Flames and mafia are definitely still a thing.

Now I’m by no means well acquainted to all the different popular socials media, but here’s my humble take:

Reborn on Instagram.

He only has pictures of Leon first and foremost, with him in the background in one of his ridiculous but very well-made cosplay. Leon of course also wears the same cosplay as him.

He never shows his full face in any of the pictures, but just enough his followers know he’s handsome as fuck.

The artists/photoshoppers among them regularly put the pieces together to see how he could look like, but in a funny-and-obviously-purposefully-wrong way only.

Reborn loves them and saves them all.

------

Once in a blue moon he does post a picture of himself where you can see him clearly all dressed up and fancy, and then immediately deletes it.

But only after he’s sure it has been seen, so he can watch his followers lose their shit while drinking a nice espresso.

They try hard, but so far none of them managed to save any of the pictures before he deletes them.

------

Often there’s what suspiciously looks like blood stains on their clothes and straight up dead bodies lying in the background, but Reborn went so passive-aggressive with the few who dared to ask, everyone is too afraid to ask now.

Anyone who badmouths Leon in any way is instantly blocked. But only after Reborn ripped them a new one AND let his followers do it too.

*

Skull on Twitter and Snapchat.

He tweets the most random, out of nowhere, highly worrying things, that always sent his followers in a frenzy trying to figure out why the fuck he would think of any of this in the first place??

“aren’t you ever tried of your solid, rigid, restrictive bones? don’t you want to just be Luffy from One Piece, a rubber being that can shape themself in whatever way they wish?”

or:

“nobody ever tells you this, but the stress of picking apart melted leather from your burnt skin before it heals is VERY worth the adrenaline of making fire your BITCH”

or:

“is it REALLY illegal if you break in and eat the food but leave money behind??”

------

That’s just his Twitter only followers though.

The ones on Snapchat have the privilege to watch him stumble head first step by step to his tweets, and are actually very involved and active spectators that keep him out of jail, or killing himself, or killing someone else.

Skull, recording a video, halfway stuck in between two buildings: What’s up guys, there're these guys following me and trying to kill me, quick tell me what bones to break so I can fit in there.

see also:

Skull, riding his bike, both of them suspiciously wet, holding a lighter in his hand: You guys ready for this sick fire stunt I came up with?? If everything goes well I should only get second to third degree burns, let’s do this!!!

see also:

A picture of Skull lying on a roof, his arms full of snacks and his mouth stuffed with food, with police cars in the background, that says: send tips to make sure there’s always food in your fridge for when you need it the most. #midnightsnack #snitchesgetstitches #justsaying

see also:

A picture of Skull crouched in front of a body, posing, that says: don’t worry guys we’re just faking, but hypothetically, if you were to hide a body as quick as possible from here without being seen, what would you do? #hypotheticallyseriousanswersonly #hypotheticallythecopsaremaybeontheirway #quickanswersappreciated

*

Verde on Facebook.

He creates a public group with only him as member that’s basically his scientific diary.

It’s not really to invite intellectual challenging debates (though he’d be all for it if someone smart enough showed up), but he figures it’s in his best interest to make the world a less dumb place if he can.

It finds his public, though there’s only a few comments because god forbid you say something dumb or inaccurate and Verde fucking annihilates you in the comment section.

But like, in a teacher way. Like he’s genuinely trying to make you know better but he’s just ruthless at it lmao.

Verde uses a fake name and a fake everything so there’s quickly a running joke along the lines of “Imagine if it’s really the genius scientist Verde running the group and you just outed yourself as a flat earther lol”.

------

But what gets the group really popular is the in depth flames theory involving weather of all things they have to assume he came up with it all on his own because they can’t figure out to save their lives what the hell he’s talking about?

And it makes them question their sanity sometimes because Verde talks about it like it’s the most obvious thing and in the context of just about every basic aspects of life.

Cue the conspirators and their hot new take of “the aliens were among us all along and hid themselves as the WEATHER!!!” that instantly turns into the new popular meme.

That, and the transcripts posts of Verde trying his theories that nine out of ten apparently involves very unwilling participants whose life are threatened and sometimes they straight up DIE???

------

They think both of these is just him fucking with them and it’s all fictional. They want to think it is anyway.

They’re not so sure, but everyone is too afraid to ask.

*

Colonnello on Snapchat.

70% of his content is about Lal because this man is so in love and it’s like he’s a guest on his own account lol.

There’s the “Pining Hard” content where it’s just him trying to seduce Lal, to romance her and asking her out, and Lal brushing all of it off more often than not.

His followers are very invested in this “old bickering married couple type of best friends in oblivious mutual pining” real live action slow burn fic, and cheers him hard whenever Lal reciprocates the tiniest bit.

------

They don’t know the two are already together.

They think Lal brushing him off or flirting back but in an unmistakably joking/”platonic” way is just her being oblivious and not taking Colonnello seriously.

When she would just rather flirt back off camera because it’s her private life thank you very much.

Colonnello never tells them because he assumes they all know and just choose to be in on the joke.

Lal finds it hilarious whenever she goes through his Snapchat (with his permission of course) to find numerous messages of encouragement, so she never says either.

------

But one day she kind of just steals a kiss from him while he’s recording because she wanted to, and his followers lose their shit.

Lal laughs herself to tears and laughs for days.

------

The other Lal’s related content is the “Lal’s loving hours”, where he just takes pictures of her/records her doing random shit---whether it's her making a disaster out of the kitchen, or wearing three pairs of socks because her feet are cold, or beating the shit out of someone---and him doing heart eyes at the camera.

------

Otherwise it’s just him living his life and letting them in on what happens.

There’s a lot of pictures because he’s handsome and he knows it and he likes the compliments aqsdfghj.

Or videos of him going on and on about how energy drinks are really the best drink ever while doing grocery.

Or ranting videos about how bullets wounds are such a pain to deal with and showing himself patching himself up to show how it’s done (thanks??!!??).

Or him watching series and roasting the characters for their dumb decisions.

Or him commenting in real time an assassination attempt on him in the middle of the night in his own fucking home because the fucker sure is ballsy (????!!!!!!???).

It’s very popular too because of how relatable it is.

Well, most of the time anyway.

*

Viper on Youtube.

They have a DIY type of channel, mostly about fashion---what they think about the new products/clothes they bought from their favorite brand, their thoughts on the new fashion trend, their makeup/skin care routine and favorite outfits for various circumstances, or they’re often on live while going shopping.

(I just really like Fashionista!Viper okay.)

They play videos games too, thinking they’re being very good while being very average to not say they straight up suck asdfghj.

Occasionally do reaction videos too.

------

Like Reborn they hardly ever show their face. Actually they don’t show it at all lol. They wear masks to do their videos because a hood is not very reliable.

How do they do their makeup videos then you ask?

They use "volunteer" as models of course.

And by volunteers I mean the Varia qsdftgyhjkl.

------

They also have another very peculiar brand of videos that is the most popular one on their channel. The titles of these videos include but are not limited to:

“A Due Payment Of Yours Is Late? How To Hunt Them For Sport”

“A Little Bitch Doesn’t Respect Your Pronouns/Chosen Name? Step By Step On How To Make Them Shut The Fuck Up Forever”

“How To Efficiently Remove Blood And Various Others Human Residue From Your Clothes”

“Faking Your Death And Taking On A New Identity: Step By Step Tutorial”

“How To Take Over Your Friends Brains And Watch Them Prank Themselves ft. The Varia”

*

Fon on Tumblr.

His blog becomes known as a shitpost blog or a blog run by a bot when really, everything he posts is about actual, very real events that happened in his life.

Except he vague posts every time because he really wants to keep his anonymity.

He posts about the hardships of learning more and more martial arts and staying at the top of the art, and sounds like some dangerous psychopath.

“The body is such a fragile thing, isn’t it? It tends to break quite easily unfortunately. You’d think I’d know that by then, but I really need to remember it more often so I can keep enjoying myself.”

He’s talking about how he always pushes himself too much in training and ends up injuring himself.

“Everyday I dispose of them and reasserts my superiority, and everyday they come back and it’s really hard to not hurt them beyond repair.”

He’s talking about how he’s often challenged by other martial artists who don’t like him being the best and how he always has to beat them up bloody for them to give up.

He also posts about his family's live except it’s the Hibari’s family live, and he doesn’t sound more sane of mind at all.

“I made the mistake of taking Kyo with me on my grocery trip and picked on his tell-tale signs of going through a bad day too late.

But fortunately the shop is still standing and no one was heavily injured.”

or:

“It’s so heartwarming to see Kyo make friends. The brown haired kid didn’t put much of a fight but the one with the pineapple haircut has potential.

He almost managed to stab him that one time, and I can’t wait to tease Kyo about it. He’s very cute when annoyed and embarrassed.”

or:

“Often I look back to the day Kyo got his tonfa and I am always infinitely grateful for this not-so-easy-to-kill-with weapon.

I would like for him to at least finish high school first.”

Yeah it’s very often about Kyoya lmao. And no one knows for sure what in the world a “Kyo” is supposed to be???

An actual human being is NOT the most popular theory qsdfghn.

*

Lal on TikTok.

I guess?? I’m kind of running out of ideas lol, and I know very little about TikTok.

But I’m thinking she makes a series of videos where she looks straight into the camera like she’s on The Office while some bullshit or the other happens in the background.

And it’s not even always her friends or coworkers or Colonnello (yeah he has a category of his own lmao).

As far as she is concerned everyone who chooses to be a fucking dumbass in her vicinity is asking for it aqsdfghj.

------

Also has a “Doing paperwork” series, and the later at night she’s doing it, the more she’s absolutely fucking done with people not being able to do their job properly without collateral damage.

She dryly reads out loud the highlights of the reports and goes straight for their lives lol.

But as funny as it is, everyone is more interested in the very questionable out of context content of these reports???

------

Also does workout videos, as in she demonstrates how to do this one or other exercise, and if these do particularly well it has nothing to do with how people want to look respectfully at her body, of course not.

ALSO has a “Colonnello’s Loving Hours” series because you better believe this woman is also so much in love.

She records him when he’s simply existing---whether he’s snuggling besides her while they’re watching TV, or dancing in the kitchen while cooking, or cleaning his guns---while looking at the camera with this tender, content expression on her face.

*

They become known as the Weather Lovers because boy, do these people like to go on about their favorite weather. Some shipping might even be involved??

It’s how their community introduces them to each other.

Cue even more chaos on their respective socials medias.

Viper’s video of their first meeting is the most popular one on their channel.

*

Yeah I know, I didn’t add the Sky Arco ladies, but I have no idea what they could do. Pinterest maybe? Or Vine? Dunno, they’re all yours guys lol.

[nostalgic-pancakes]

Watching the starlings as autumn draws in

Summary: Tommy and his friends try on some skirts, and he reflects a bit on how they all got here. (It's a happy story) Title from September by Sparky Deathcap

Pairings: None! Platonic everyone (esp in irl fics_)

Read on AO3 (preferred place to read)

Word count: 2570

Warnings: None, except for surface-level references to the exile/prison arcs, but not much.

Other notes: I wrote this in a fit of madness last night in like three hours at 2 am, so i’ll probably edit it honestly but for now, enjoy! (If the CC’s ever display discomfort with this type of fic I will take it down)

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

"WELCOME BACK TO THE STREAM, BOYS!" Tommy exclaims, rubbing his hands together as he starts rapid-fire answering questions about the stream, and the stream title from chat. It's funny, how over time, Tommy's come to see Chat as this one entity- an old friend. The nervousness of answering questions as a fifteen year old with nothing but a big personality, a twitch account and a copy of Minecraft is all but gone now, nineteen years old and happier than he's ever been.

Dreadfulzombie19: what are u doin this stream

"THANK YOU FOR ASKING, Dreadfulzombie19, today is gonna be a bit different, innit Tubbo?" Tommy raises his voice a bit at the end of his sentence, just loud enough for one of his flatmates to hear him. When Tubbo yells back an affirmative, Tommy turns back to his setup. Chat's gone a bit wild again, even though he, Tubbo and Ranboo have been living together for over a year now.

"Okay, okay, calm down chat- so recently I was at university, as usual right? And I had an eight AM class again, and… yeah I can see you all can relate."

"BUT! BUT! On my way back to the flat, I saw something really cool." Tommy hesitates in his speech to take a sip of coke again- his blood pressure's been acting up lately and watches Chat to wild again, asking him what he saw.

"Okay, so there was a shop- new place, which doesn't happen often this is fucking Brighton- and they sold skirts and dresses and stuff with adjustments for AMAB sizes!" Chat goes a bit bonkers, but Tommy's mod team- a little smaller than it used to be, now that he isn't the centre of YouTube or Twitch attention anymore, none of them are- are handling it, and pretty well.

"So I had to go, right? As many of you probably know, last year, I made the astounding discovery that gender-based stereotypes and expectations are, in fact, fake and I should not give a SHIT. And so I go in and look through the stuff- it's a really poggers shop by the way, and I find the perfect thing- it was the most poggers skirts and shit, okay? So, today's stream is going to have me wearing this pogchamp shit and wearing it right, with the help of…" Tommy ends his monologue by picking up the joke shaker-things that Phil had gotten him as a housewarming gift last year and indicates for his first two helpers to enter the office.

In walks his mother, face obscured from view as always, waving to the camera, and Wilbur, also wearing one of his only skirts for this occasion. Eret had taught him, on a phonecall in the skirt shop that week about the different types of skirts with a handy diagram. Wilbur's was a pleated circle skirt, brown to offset the bright yellow of his sweater and beanie, the same colour as his hair. It's very swoosh-y, so he's wearing black leggings with his regular shoes too. Motherinnit's also wearing her favourite skirt, a baby blue prairie skirt, Tommy thinks, and it's one he's seen fairly often.

Wilbur ducks down in order to show his face to Chat, and ruffles Tommy's hair while he's at it. Tommy's taller, but not by much, so Wilbur still fucking makes short jokes, That fucker.

Chat is now going so fast that he simply cannot read anything but some of the all caps messages and can barely make out some of the emotes.

"Okay, OKAY, CALM DOWN CHAT! WE HAVE TO GET TO FUCKING BUSINESS!" Tommy yells into the mix, like he did when he was sixteen and used the 'many people find me annoying at first' intro. Nowadays he just lets the content speak for itself. Anyone who wants to be here already is, by now.

Wilbur laughs a bit, and that hasn't changed at all. "Tommy, how is chat supposed to calm down if you're not calm?"

"I am their god!! They will obey via sheer digital willpower!" Tommy replies back, pretty zealously (What? An English Literature class is mandatory for his film degree, and The Great Gatsby by Zelda Fitzgerald is a good book, as are most of the other assigned ones. He's had entire conversations with Techno with just lit quotes and it drives everyone insane. Tommy loves it.) Chat seemingly has listened to his godlike abilities, with a few OG's spotting his half-quotation of one of Dream's last lines in the Dream SMP. The rest are spamming 'MOTHERINNIT'.

"If having a shitty magic trick book from a washed-up politician makes you a god, then what does that make me?" Wilbur replies, with one of Foolish's lines and swatting his hand at Tommy. Tommy swats back.

"Bitch" "Arsehole" "Shithead" "Fuckface" Wilbur finishes cheerily, as if this happens all the time. It does. Chat's used their antics now, four years of consistently making content together will do that for you.

Eventually Motherinnit reminds them both to get back on Topic, and Tommy goes back to facing the camera, addressing Chat directly.

"Today, my beloved mother, and my idiot brother-" "hey!" "And maybe my flatmates will be joining me to show off some cool as SHIT skirts! And a dress or two. We all have our selections, right?" Everyone nods in affirmative, even Tubbo and Ranboo. Though the camera can't see them. Ranboo's just come home from his final class, then. He should probably take the first hour back off, and judging by how Tubbo is forcefully judging Ranboo to the shower, he probably gets it. Tommy signs an affirmative to both of them, and gets back to the camera, where Wilbur's showing off all of his (very poggers) very stupid brown or yellow skirts. Tommy's are in cool colours, for fuck's sake.

"Oh yeah, Puffy just confirmed she'll be on stream! She'll be here in about twenty minutes, accounting for fucking traffic, and Niki' going to get onto VC after her own stream, what game is it this time?"

"GRIS." Wilbur answers.

"Poggers- she is the SHIT and will join us soon! So expect some QUALITY QUALITY content this stream!! Remember to not spam her chat to finish faster." Exclaims Tommy, even if it ends up as a light warning, as he picks up his own very poggers skirts from the extra armchair in his office to show the camera.

One is the classic red and white, mostly white but with bright red on the waist (elastic) and the bottom, and it reached to about Tommy's knee, if worn at the hip. It had no pleats, but the red bits were a very nice velvet texture, and while the skirt was heavy, it still had very much swoosh value, and pockets!! Big ones!! He slips the skirt on top of his jeans before entering camera view, the skirt visible in all its classic Tommyinnit glory, as he takes his place right next to Wilbur, who just took. a quick spin at the behest of several dono's., Skirt spying out from his lower shins all the way to his knee, making visible one of his (many) petticoats. ("What? It's cold all the fucking time here, Toms.") Tommy also makes a quick little spin, skirt flying outward, not upward, so it looks like he's hula hooping for a moment there. Lastly, Motherinnit spins around too, and while her skirts do not swoosh, she looks opulent, like she was about to go to waltz with the enemy, for whom she has a dagger in the back of her dress for. (He finished Anna Karenina and the Six of Crows duology within the same week and has not yet recovered. Jack Edwards is laughing at him as he thinks in his English Lit Graduate glory.)

It's fun, trying on different skirts- he and Wilbur accidentally bought the same dress at one point, which they paired up to wear, darting off into their respective changing rooms while giggling like idiots with their checkered blouses and the grindl skirts that Niki had sent over when she heard of this stream idea, laughing the whole time. Tubbo enters as dramatically as possible with Puffy, and while Tubbo looks really fucking good in his handkerchief skirt with embroidered bees and plain white shirt, it's Puffy who steals the show with an exact, real life version of her red banquet dress.

Fans from way back in the SMP, before Tommy had started branching out start going insane and are bringing back emotes Tommy wasn't sure were still available, but she is fucking stunning- deep shades of red and crimson, with slits on either side of her waist and all the detailing. She'd gotten the contact for her dressmaker through Bernadette Banner, Tommy recalls- she was so fucking cool when she streamed with him once, and gotten him to swear less and supplant those world's with bigger ones to intimidate instead. While he still curses like a sailor as part of his persona, it's less so and he does way less in real life these days, unless the situation calls for it. It's also just rude, especially in uni libraries, where he spends too much time these days wondering why he didn't read more as a kid.

Puffy's stolen his audience for a WHILE, and Niki coming on hasn't helped any, so Tommy exits camera view for a while to hug Ranboo really quickly- he's had midterms and has basically been dying all month.

Everyone on this stream- Tommy, Wilbur, Motherinnit, Tubbo, Puffy, Niki and Ranboo enter the camera frame after entering their dressing rooms for the last time on this particular stream, Puffy with full in-character wigs and makeup, Tommy in an Edwardian-Gothic reminiscent black and red dress, Ranboo in something he bought when he gap-yeared in Japan, punk lolita or something, Niki flaunting her pink in a Marie Antoinette style show of finery, Tubbo dressing in all green this time, something like a very deranged biology teacher who hasn't slept in days (Tubbo hasn't-Tommy has to get into that), Wilbur like a forest-nymph, all earthy tones and swishy fabrics and nature highlights, and finally Motherinnit, who hasn't changed but is here to take pictures as they all lean in together to fit into frame, as drastic as their height difference is. Niki is going to be edited in later, and everyone on the 'Dream SMP but nobody does Dream SMP and we're all fucking nerds' discord server is going to get a copy.

The stream wraps up there, after about two hours, and it's only about six in the evening- a far cry from the late nights and long hours from the beginning of Tommy's career, so everyone runs to their changing areas for the last time, into pajamas now, and packs away all of the clothes they wore, properly, as to not incense Karolina Zebrowska, and Jemma, Dan's wife, who would look at them disappointedly and nobody wants a sad Jemma because that means no cooing at their son. Also it just feels shitty.

Everyone huddles in Tommy, Tubbo and Ranboo's living room, and they out on UP for like, the millionth fucking time (they still cry when Ellie dies), and Tommy is leaning into Wilbur's side and feeling his mum play with the hair in his very small, stubby ponytail he's developed by being in Uni as he and Tubbo intertwine their legs together and Ranboo rests his head in the tangle of limbs, playing with his fidget cube. Puffy stays on Wilbur's side, intently texting someone and smiling the whole while, and Tommy takes a moment to reflect (something he's been getting better at doing) on how the actual hell they all got here.

The Dream SMP was always going to end- everyone knew it, if course, they were the fucking writers. But by the time they did, not only were their respective brands too closely intertwined to just… sever that quickly, but they'd become too close to even want to. So the SMP discord never shut, even though Dream and George had planned it months ago, and they continued supporting each other with their interests. Wilbur made a lot more music solo, with his band and even just random ass streams where he practiced guitar for an hour. He kept playing Minecraft, but it wasn't his main focus. A bunch of people left. More stayed. YouTube left him alone.

Dream, George and Sapnap are still Minecraft streamers, but their YouTube channels are mostly blogs of them being poor excuses of adults with other former SMP members joining in sometimes. Tommy and the Dream Team were closer than ever, even though the seeds of their friendship had been sowed when they used to linger after heavy streams together, reassuring each other that none of that was true and that nothing like… that would happen in real life, because Dream had used real abuse tactics, and those still hurt unless immediately taken care of. So they were. It was a running joke that Dream was stuck at 99 million subscribers since nobody really wanted the face reveal anymore. The other Dream team members were doing peachy.

Phil and Techno were also still primarily Minecraft streamers, but they also released things like advice videos and mental health stuff, especially for relationships. They had a new scripted series where Tommy was a minor character. The dadza jokes were still as real, and yes, outside of streaming, both of them were lovely people and responsible adults (mostly). They collaborated with DanTDM and co a lot more now.

Puffy and Niki kept doing games, but did lots of different ones, testing point and clickers to triple A titles, and making it all fucking hilarious while they were at it.

So where had that left Tommy?

After the Dream SMP, he'd kind of had no idea what to do, and he was going to University for the first time, so he just… did whatever he thought would be fun. He learned about vintage fashion from the queens themselves- Mina Le, Bernadette Banner and Karolina Zebrowska and had fun learning how to sew for the first time, fixing and making his own clothes for the first time, clunky as they were, Wilbur had cried, genuinely, when he saw the Lovejoy shirts that Tommy had made for the band. He'd found a genuine love for literature in university, so Tommy started talking to booktubers and studytubers like Jack Edwards and Noelle Stevenson. Tubbo and Ranboo had joined him, fucking around in any YouTube niche they found even remotely interesting. Eventually, they all found a happy medium- a bit of everything.

Some people obviously weren't happy with that but Tommy was happy as he was, making what he liked with his best friend's, living together close enough to most of their friends (family) to have fun and drop in on one another at ass-o-clock in the morning to comfort, to laugh. His sub count hasn't gone up in a while- most of his audience is static, with about 80-90k online on a stream at any time.p

It was a nice feeling, to have carved out a space for himself and the people he loves, and be is so, so glad that he got this chance.

Looking at his mostly asleep family, Tommy thinks 'yeah. Life is good.' as the last thought before he sleeps.

[consumedkings-archive]

ancient names, pt. xx

A John Seed/Original Female Character Fanfic

Ancient Names, pt xx: hell is empty

Masterlink Post

Word Count: ~7k  

Rating: Just mature; some mature themes but nothing explicit.

Warnings: None, just Elliot's mouth and like uncalled-for sadness, John's a baby. What's new.

Notes: Hi henlo! I cannot believe we have one chapter and one epilogue left of this. I'm trying not to be emotional about so IT'S FINE but we're gonna keep the notes short otherwise I'm gonna get sappy!!

I want to thank you to @shallow-gravy​ for lending me her eyeballs on this and letting me stress out over nothing to her all the time; @lilwritingraven​ for being just an absolute peach a girl could ask for and listening to to me whine and cry; and @baeogorath​, one of the first people to read this and suffer through the memes and dumpster fire writing to be here. Thank you all for loving my girl as much as you do!

@starcrier​, idk man you know what's up. Elliot wouldn't be in any universe without you, and this fic just simply wouldn't have happened. I love you wit all me heart!

｡☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆｡

Cameron Burke had failed.

That was the flat, bare truth of it now, as he kept the blonde clutched to him. Elliot’s entire body was trembling; she was soaking wet, and her teeth chattered, and she looked like someone had been throwing her around for sport. Even though she was crying softer now, gentle hiccups rattling around in her chest, she felt small—tiny, and battered.

Yes, Cameron Burke had failed, and if the rapid decline of what was supposed to be a by-the-book arrest in a tiny Montana town wasn’t evidence enough of this, he certainly had enough evidence before him. Now, with John Seed looking at him as a man incensed. Now, with the eyes of the other Seed siblings pinned on him—the most unsettling of all being Faith’s large doe-eyes. All of them, bleeding in and out of his vision, the world swooning as the effects of Bliss rushed around in his bloodstream.

Now, with Elliot in his arms, having been laid out like a lamb for slaughter.

“I’m s-so—” The blonde’s voice hiccupped, fresh with grief. “I’m s-sorry, Burke, I—tried to find you—”

“Stop,” he managed out, his voice hoarse, “stop, Rook, I don’t—you don’t need to apologize, it’s not...”

Joseph was saying something over their conversation, but he only caught snippets of it; the voices echoed and overlapped as the world swam, so it was easiest to be focused on quieting Elliot. As his hands went to her face, he thought he heard a sharp intake of breath from someone; he couldn’t have said who even if he thought he knew.

“Well, we can’t stand around,” said John, impatient and brisk. “Elliot’s going to get pneumonia again if we do.”

“Can’t have that,” Jacob rumbled amusedly. “Why don’t we let her and Burke play catch-up back at the compound?”

And then Jacob looked at Elliot—and Burke could tell, because her cries were quieting and she seemed to be trying to steel herself—and the redhead said, “I’m sure they have a lot to talk about.”

“I’ll take Elliot back to get cleaned up,” John insisted. “And then they can chat all they want.”

The brunette turned and looked at them. Burke could feel Elliot’s heartbeat, held this close, and for a moment he was violently reminded of the way that it had felt when he was a child, catching wild rabbits that had hidden beneath the brush around his home; their pulses had been frantic, hard and fast and almost violent, and now Elliot’s was—

John extended his hand. For all it mattered, Burke might as well have not existed at that moment; the man was only looking at Elliot, perhaps mentally willing away Burke’s existence. He said, perfectly composed with only a thin tenor of venom in his voice, “Come on, El.”

Burke felt before he saw the way Elliot went to take his hand, like instinct, like she didn’t even have to think about it anymore.

He didn’t like it. He especially didn’t like John so casually using a nickname with the rookie, like they were familiar; thinking back on it, Elliot had seemed less angry about being baptized and more angry at not getting pulled out sooner, and had said his name like they were familiar, and—

He tightened his hold on her. “No,” he ground out, biting the words through his teeth.

John’s eyes flickered up to his indignantly. That spark of anger, of fury, gave Burke a tiny bit of vindication. Serves you right, you fucking psycho, he thought viciously, even as the Bliss pumped through his system and made it feel like every thought was being dragged through molasses.

“You don’t want to start this with me,” John said, his voice pitching low and poisonous, “Cameron Burke.”

I know you, he was saying. I know your fucking name, and maybe that would have bothered Burke before but it didn’t, anymore. He’d fried bigger fish than fucking John Seed, that was for sure.

“Fuck. You,” Burke spat. “John Seed.”

“Stop,” Elliot said, her voice wobbling. “Stop, it’s—”

She pulled back just a little, still shivering, her gaze darting between them like she was trying to find the best way to say something; but then her eyes stayed on Burke, like the person she needed to break something to was him, and he felt his stomach lurch.

Not you too, he thought, faintly, somewhere in the back of his mind. Tell me they didn’t get you too.

“John,” Joseph said, having wandered over, “we have a lot that needs to be discussed. Perhaps Faith can take them back to one of the bunkhouses in the meantime?”

“I’d be happy to,” Faith said sweetly. Her voice sent a violent jolt of panic down his spine, and Burke swallowed thickly, his head snapping to the source of her voice. She looked exactly the same as she had before, when she—

“No complaints about that?” John asked venomously. Burke looked at Elliot, his brows furrowing for a moment before he took her hand. He wanted to say no; he wanted to say fuck no, no fuckin’ way I’m following that siren of yours anywhere, but each time his eyes darted to her, the words got caught up in his throat.

Elliot said firmly, “We’ll go with you, Faith,” and it took everything he had to not swallow back the sound of distress that tried to come out of him.

He was Cameron Fucking Burke, and the idea of being remotely close to alone with Faith Seed had words failing him, his feet bolted to the ground. But Burke couldn’t tell if it was more favorable to letting John wander off with Elliot, and in the end—at least this way, they would be together.

Whatever that meant.

“Fine,” John snapped out. With Elliot no longer tangled up in Burke’s protective embrace, Joseph took this opportunity and snagged Elliot’s hand, placing it over his heart.

Joseph did not look at Burke a single time when he said, his voice slick with a rich, warm timbre that Burke was sure had to be practiced, “You make a most beautiful child of Eden, Elliot.”

Elliot swallowed. Burke’s grip on her hand loosened, just for a moment, but when she threaded their fingers together for a little extra support he saw the way that her jaw was clenching and her lashes were fluttering. They hadn’t doused her in Bliss, he thought—if he could trust what he saw in the clarity of her eyes, anyway—which somehow made the allowance of Joseph’s hands on her all the worse.

When Joseph moved away, and said something lowly to Jacob, John closed what little distance remained and took Elliot’s face in his hands; Burke’s grip on her tightened, waiting for John to do something. Threaten her, grab her—anything to live up to the reputation he had so carefully and diligently created for himself.

He did not. John took Elliot’s face in his hands and he leaned in like a lover. There was a moment as he did that where Elliot’s chin tilted, taking her mouth just that much out of his reach.

And they were looking at each other, like that. Like it was a game. Like they had done it before; John, chasing her for a kiss, just like this, because then the man grinned half-wicked and kissed her.

No fucking way, Burke thought, and waited—waited for the kickback, for Elliot to bite him, anything.

It didn’t come. His stomach sank. Not you too, Rook.

“I’ll come find you,” John said into her mouth, “when I’m done.”

It should have been a threat, coming out of his mouth—John Seed didn’t say shit like that without it being a threat—but after he said it, he leaned in and kissed Elliot again; longer this time, his hands only dragging from her face when it was time to step back.

John’s eyes fixed on Burke as he pulled away. Fucker, he thought with no absence of poison. You fucker, you got your fucking fangs in her, you and your fucking psycho siblings, and—

There was little time to think about it, around his anger. Elliot’s fingers stayed laced with his, and as Faith moved back up the slope to the compound and they trailed behind obediently, Burke could feel the eyes of the Seed brothers on him. Lingering. Watching. Calculating.

Faith looked back at him over her shoulder and flashed a smile that felt more wolfish than it should have for a girl in a white dress. It made his spine crawl. She took Elliot’s free hand, interlacing their fingers and bringing Elliot’s hand up to her cheek lovingly, her lashes fluttering.

“I didn’t know you and Elliot were that close, Mr. Burke,” she said, her words sugared and echoing in ripples around him.

Burke swallowed thickly. “She’s a good kid,” he managed out hoarsely, lamely, because the second he thought about telling Faith to go fucking die he felt his chest tighten. God, how long had he spent in that nightmare with her? It couldn’t have been longer than a week, maybe—but after she’d left? How many days had passed that he’d been trying to survive off of creek water and whatever food he could find in empty houses speckled across the Montana countryside?

Faith laughed. They were like a little daisy-chain, the three of them, speckling the early morning woods until they came out into the compound—and then there were eyes on them. Less than Burke remembered. Where had the rest of them gone?

“Well, that’s certainly right,” Faith continued, turning to face them and walking backwards as they slipped under the intricate white trellis caging the majority of the yard.

She stopped walking; Burke would have nearly ran her over if he hadn’t been paying so much attention to how close she was to him. With deliberate honeyed timbre, Faith murmured, “We love her around these parts,” and planted a chaste kiss on Elliot’s fingers, tangled with her own. “Just ask John.”

“We’re here,” Elliot said, a little too quickly to be casual, to be normal, and Faith shot her a sly look before she turned around and opened the door to the bunkhouse. Inside, it was mostly bare; as they walked in, Elliot released both of their hands, and Burke could see a duffel bag unzipped and laying open on the nearby tiny table, filled with a few books and clothes.

Like she was planning on staying, he thought tiredly, at least for a little while.

“Play nice, you two,” Faith said from the doorway.

The door clicked shut. They were left in silence for a moment, Elliot gathering up some of her things and putting them back into the duffel bag—like she was trying to tidy up her home for an unexpected guest. The idea of it made Burke’s stomach wrench.

“Hey, you don’t—” He started.

“—’m sorry, it’s—”

They both stopped. Burke rubbed his hands over his face, exhaling through his mouth.

“Let’s,” he tried again, “start from the beginning.”

“Okay,” Elliot murmured, swallowing thickly. “Okay, I can do that.”

“Great.” Burke pulled the chair out from the table and sat down; the world sighed in relief around him when he did, woozy and dreamy and green—all green, except for Elliot, in that blue fucking dress.

“Go on, then.”

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“What the fuck was that?!”

John could feel it—he could feel the strain, the anger, bubbling high in his voice, pulling tightightight until he thought it might snap. The second the three of them got into the chapel, Jacob sauntered toward the front as though nothing had occurred at all, as if it were business as normal.

“John,” Joseph cautioned, his voice pensive.

“No, I’m really curious,” John seethed, soaking wet and freezing, “why it is our brother felt the need to bring the U.S. Marshal back alive.”

“‘I’ve got it under control’,” the redhead intoned, his voice coming out flat and biting, “isn’t that what you said, Johnny?”

John stared at his eldest brother. There was just a shred of his self-control left—just one tiny shred, and the only reason he still had it was because the look on Burke’s stupid fucking face when he’d kissed Elliot was singularly propelling him along.

This was bad. It was bad, because Elliot was still in a fragile state of being: she was still thinking about things rather than just doing what felt good and right, and that was the most troublesome fucking thing about her—that those gears were always turning, always rattling around, even when he managed to make them go the other way for a moment.

He didn’t want her gears shut off. He wanted them working for him.

“I’m—” John sucked in a sharp breath. “Burke was supposed to be dead. This is an unprecedented—”

“If everything’s under control, then why the fuck is Burke being alive a problem?” Jacob replied sharply. “I’m thinking about the long game, John. I’m thinking about sending you to live underground in a fucking bunker with her and some of our people. But mostly—” His voice came out between gritted teeth. “—I’m thinking about us. You know, our family? You’ve been acting like a loose-fucking-cannon this whole Goddamn time, and if one person Elliot’s known for a handful of days is going to derail your entire operation, maybe you don’t have everything under control.”

Fuck you, John thought viciously, but the words wouldn’t come; they stayed strangled in his throat, because a part of him said maybe Jacob was right, and maybe that meant that things weren’t going to go as well as he planned.

He pushed the thoughts from his head just in time for Joseph to say, “I do find this troubling.”

John took in another short, sharp breath. “It’s not a problem,” he insisted, feeling more than a little frantic. “It’s not. You just—you don’t see what it’s like when—”

“John,” Joseph said, sounding almost tired now, “she looked right at you and chose Burke instead.”

“She didn’t! She didn’t choose Burke, she just—she just—” He swallowed thickly. “She wants me to reveal her sin. Why would she do that if she didn’t want to be with me? With us? She wouldn’t just say that, and—and maybe seeing Burke again made her feel something different, but it’s like you said, Joseph, she’s strangling the person she used to be and that’s—”

“She’s becoming,” his older brother articulated, “more trouble than she’s worth.”

“And might even be a bigger problem,” Jacob added, “isn’t that right, John?”

John’s mouth twisted as he tried to figure out what exactly it was Jacob was alluding to. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, you’re not using protection when you’re fucking her, are you?” the redhead snapped, and Joseph sighed—a long, suffering sound. John didn’t want to feel shame, but when Joseph tilted his head to the gray morning light filtering through the chapel’s window as though for a respite from this conversation, he did.

Jacob plunged on, “And since you felt the need to kick your fucking window open the other night, I got a real good idea of how much self-control you actually have when it comes to preventing problems.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re practically begging for a mishap.”

No, he thought furiously, pushing the memory of Elliot gripping his jaw and telling him to beg for it out of his head, no, this is not how this fucking goes. This is not how this goes at all.

“I’m finishing Elliot’s baptism,” he bit out. “She’s mine—”

His brain halted and stuttered on the words, and when his brothers looked at him, he amended, “My wife, and she’ll join us. She will. She almost already has. I have it under. Control.”

For a moment, silence reigned supreme. Finally, Joseph said, “We are out of time, John.”

“We’re not, we planned for at least another week of reaping.”

“That was for emergencies only,” Jacob bit out. “What, you want to fucking push the end of the world?”

“One week,” Joseph interjected. “You have one week. I want our deputy’s sin revealed, I want her converted, I want her under control.” His voice was hard now, flinty and unforgiving, when he looked at John. “If she is not, John—”

“She will be.”

“If she isn’t,” he continued, his mouth twisting, “you understand the consequences.”

The Gates of Eden will be closed to you.

John swallowed thickly. “Yes, Joseph.”

Joseph looked at him for a long moment—a moment of suffering, of John waiting for something, anything that would indicate where the conversation was going to go. Blessedly, Jacob remained silent too, and another set of agonizing heartbeats passed before Joseph spoke again.

“We will be collecting the last of the supplies from Fall’s End and anything within quick reach,” he said, looking down at the map on the table and adjusting it. “You have until then, John.”

He opened his mouth to say something, his mind scrambling; I will, Joseph, I can do this, I know I can, but his older brother lifted his hands to stop him.

“We’re done here,” Joseph said. “Leave us, John.” And then, almost as though to soften the blow of his words: “You’re going to catch ill if you stay in those wet clothes.”

John swallowed thickly. He looked at Jacob for a moment; his words were still ringing in his head. I’m thinking about us. You know, our family?

“Yes, Joseph,” he managed out after a moment, turning and heading toward the door, the sound of his footsteps echoing lonely and cold in the mostly-empty chapel.

I am too, he thought. I’m thinking about us too.

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Burke’s head was in his hands.

He was disappointed.

All things considered, Elliot thought that maybe this was the best way this conversation could have gone. After all, Burke wasn’t her father; he was just a man, a U.S. Marshal, and at one point in time he’d talked her through a firefight with a bunch of cultists and then she thought she’d died but she hadn’t. That didn’t make it any different from telling any other person about this, right?

But that was wrong. It was different. Because Burke had looked at her file—he saw her restraining order, her psych eval—and the only thing he’d said to her was he was glad she was around and she’d kicked ass at the Academy. It was the first time she’d ever felt anything close to regular with someone who wasn’t Joey Hudson. Even Whitehorse hadn’t stopped looking at her like she was a loaded fucking gun.

“So what now?” she asked after a moment, shifting on her feet. She’d rushed through changing into dry clothes in the bathroom and came back out to tell him everything—about the other cult, about Joey. About John, too.

She’d skipped over that part as much as she could. Now that she thought about it, she’d had to muck painfully through a lot of things she had been trying to tell Burke.

“You see, don’t you?” Burke asked, lifting his head from his hands. “You see that they’re fuckin’ with you, right?”

Elliot sat down on the floor, her back pressed up against the bunk. She rubbed her eyes tiredly. “I don’t know,” she said after a moment, and he groaned.

“Rook.”

“I mean it, Burke,” she protested, her chest tightening at the pure, unadulterated exasperation in his voice. “It’s—if you saw the way Joseph talks to him, and... The things he said to me—”

“You mean the things that the cult lawyer said to you?” Burke asked. “You’re smart, Rookie. Too smart to fall for this shit.”

Elliot’s stomach wrenched violently at his words. “Well—” She started, her voice hitching. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you, Burke, I—I tried, you know, I did it fucking by myself for this whole time, alone, and then they took Joey from me and I—” She sucked in a sharp breath. Her brain felt like it was rattling around in her skull, pain pounding behind her eyes; the most unforgivable crime had been committed, that of letting down one of the only people who looked at her like she was normal, and she had been the one to commit it.

“Rook.”

“I—” She felt her lashes flutter, her heart stuttering against her ribs in a painful mockery of what her heartbeat should have been. “I f-fucking—I f—”

Cameron said, gentler, “Elliot.”

“I f-fucking tried,” she told him vehemently around the wobble, and she pulled her knees up to her chest, I’m just a girl, I’m just a girl, this wasn’t supposed to be my life. How was she supposed to say to Burke that sometimes, she felt like she was a passenger to herself—sometimes, the world felt like it was splitting in half and more than once John Seed had taken her face in his hands and put her back together, let her dig her nails and teeth into him to feel real? How was she supposed to tell him and make him understand?

All of those times, and the way John had said, I want a home with you, and the way he said, I’m yours, and—

“I know,” Burke said, his voice quieter now. “I know, kid, I—”

But she shook her head, because he didn’t know, not really. “I tried, even though I was alone, and now I’m—now you’re here, but I’m... I’m t-this and I don’t have anything left and John, he—h—h—”

He swallowed, coming down off of the chair to sit next to her. Burke’s hands found one of hers, still cold and chilly from the river and maybe from something else and brought it to his neck. She could feel his heartbeat there; just like before, it was fast, but steady as his body burned through the Bliss he’d been exposed to.

“How long’s it been?” he asked. “Since we tried arresting that psycho.”

“I don’t know,” Elliot managed out, having mimicked Burke’s breathing patterns already, without thinking very hard about it. “Two weeks? The—season changed—”

“Yeah. Leaves falling. Maybe two, probably closer to three,” Burke murmured, sighing and rubbing his face with his free hand. “Fuck. This whole thing’s gone to shit. My guys—they should be swinging in here any minute now.”

“Your—guys?” she asked.

“Yeah. You know, the government?” Burke looked at her for a moment. “What, you think they just send a guy in and he fucks off for three weeks and no one asks what’s up?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Elliot replied uncertainly. Of course the government was going to come and figure out what happened. They’d sent a U.S. Marshal to arrest a man leading a cult. Why wouldn’t they try and check in and see what was going on when he failed to show up? “Jerome always said that—it was just up to us now.”

Burke tsked his tongue, shaking his head. “Yeah, well, that’s his—that's a small-town militia, you know. And in his defense, shit was pretty fucked up. No phone lines? No signals? Feels apocalyptic.”

“Yeah,” Elliot whispered, remembering Dutch’s words, “yeah, it does.”

He stared at her for a moment longer, finally letting her hand go but not moving from their close proximity, like maybe he was afraid she was going to teeter off the edge again at any moment. She didn’t like that feeling. She didn’t like thinking maybe Burke was starting to be afraid of her, the way that Whitehorse had been afraid of her.

“We gotta play it normal,” Burke said after a moment, rubbing his face with one hand. “You and me both, kid. You sounded like you had a plan, before?”

She nodded after a moment, clearing her throat. “I was going to go through with the whole… Baptism, or whatever, and then try and get to this radio they have in the chapel,” she explained. “John’s been—I told him I want to leave, but I didn’t tell him that I planned on trying to get in touch with someone.”

The older man watched her, his dark eyes quiet. Finally, he nodded. “That’s good. You stay not telling him, got it?”

“Okay,” she said, and there was a wash of relief that flooded her. It reminded her that she wasn’t, by any means, someone who wanted to be in a leadership position—she didn’t like making executive decisions. The only reason she’d made it this far was because she’d been making executive decisions for bare-minimum survival. The idea of getting to the radio had only just been rooted in her brain, the ticking of the channels scanning the only noise that had been in the chapel the last time she and Joseph had been alone.

When John had left them alone, because Joseph had told him to.

I want a home with you.

But she wasn’t sure that John did—not in the way that he was letting her think. It was easy to think all of these things when it was just her and all she had to rely on was her own murky brain, but what about now? What about now that she had to look at Burke and explain how she’d caved a man’s skull in with an empty gun?

Joseph was right. There was no life for her, not really, not after this; not after everything she had done. But that didn’t mean she had to let him get off free, either.

“Play it normal,” Burke said again, lower this time. “Whatever you have to do to keep them focused on you, but not suspicious of you. Don’t bother with the radio—I’ll figure something out. Sounds like it might be a military kinda radio, could have better luck if I try to get in there and see if anyone’s even in the area.”

“And what about—” Elliot paused. When the dark-haired man waited expectantly, she took in a little breath and said, “What about John?”

Burke stared at her for a moment, working his jaw before he exhaled sharply, letting his head loll a little. He clearly didn’t enjoy what he was going to say next, and Elliot worked her fingers against her palm absently, worrying the muscle there.

“Not making any promises. That man’s got a rap sheet about three times longer than whatever you’re convinced you’ve done,” he said finally. “But if he cuts a deal—agrees to testify against his brothers and Faith, no holds-barred, maybe there’ll be a lighter sentencing in there. Not a non-existent one. Just a lighter one. I don’t fuckin’ know, I’m not a lawyer and I’m not gonna put my ass on the line for that fuckhead.”

She nodded. It just confirmed for her what she had been afraid was already true—that maybe it had been over-ambitious to think she and John could just up and leave. At least, now that she knew that someone was coming to clean up this mess.

Regardless, it felt good to talk to someone who wasn’t a Seed—and it made her painfully aware of how much she missed Joey, a deep and bottomless grief that kept swallowing her up over and over. Just like that, it felt like the scales had fallen from her eyes. Like Saul.

“You should probably try to avoid talking to me,” he continued after a moment. “Make up something about how—I’m a big asshole, or something.”

“So tell the truth,” Elliot ventured, a little smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. Burke rolled his eyes and nudged her with his foot.

“You always been this mouthy?” he asked, taking a swig from the water bottle she’d given to him to try and help his sobering gentle up a little.

She said, “Only with people I like.”

“Cute.”

A moment of quiet silence passed, comfortable and easy, before Burke reached over and gripped her shoulder with his gloved hand. She looked at him, and for a second, something crumpled in his expression.

“Elliot,” he said, his voice lower, “I’m sorry. For all of this—fuckin’ garbage you’ve had to do.”

She blinked at him, feeling a warm, fresh feeling expand and grow in her chest. It was sadness, she realized too late, the tears already starting to burn in her eyes; sadness, and a little bit of relief, because she couldn’t remember the last time someone had looked at her and said they were sorry she had suffered.

“It’s fine,” she said automatically, without thinking, because it was—she was here, and breathing, and fine, so that meant it was fine, right?

Burke shook his head and said, more firmly, “I never wanted to leave you alone, kid. I mean it. And I’m not gonna let that happen again, okay? You and me, we’re a team.”

Elliot swallowed back a hiccuping little cry and nodded her head, passing a hand over her eyes just once so that she could gather herself and push the tears back. Burke hauled her in and gave her a firm, one-armed squeeze.

“Said we’re gonna get the fuck out of here,” he said into her hair. “And I fuckin’ meant it.”

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When John returned to the bunkhouse—the one that had become his base of operations, not Elliot’s—she was there.

“I’m surprised,” were the first words that came out of his mouth, before his brain even had time to register in what order the sensory details were coming into his brain. First that she was there at all, without Burke, giving him a pleasant little thrill; second, that she seemed to have shucked a sweater and jeans in favor of sporting only his shirt, loosely buttoned up just far enough to cover her but not all the way to the top; third, that she was tucked up in the bed like that was where she was supposed to be always.

And it was where she was supposed to be, always. Where he could have her.

Elliot’s eyes flickered up from the book she’d been reading. He tried to catch the title of it, but she dog-eared the page and tossed it onto the floor face down before he could.

“About?” she prompted. He let the door swing shut behind him and moved to the bed, stepping out of his shoes before making his way to the dresser so he could get out of his wet clothes.

“Well,” John said casually, trying not to let the words sting on their way out, “I thought you’d still be with Burke. You know. Visiting.”

Whatever the fuck that meant. He still hadn’t shaken the irritation at hearing Burke tell him no—like he had any idea what kind of person Elliot was, like he had some kind of claim on her. It had taken everything in him not to blurt out that Elliot was his wife, his girl, his—

“We did,” Elliot replied. Her eyes were on him as he changed and then doubled-back across the room to sit on the edge of the bed. She snagged his hand as it slid up her bare thigh and brought it to the juncture between her neck and shoulder; his thumb swept along the front of her throat. “Visit, I mean.”

“And yet, here you are.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t be?”

John hummed, low and non-committal, before he leaned in and pressed his mouth to her neck. She sighed; he dragged his lips downward, tracing over each bruise there from Kian’s hands; things he had memorized, that he thought he could tell Elliot liked, because her breath hitched in her lungs when he did. Maybe it felt like he was erasing Kian from her, or maybe she just liked the sting.

“I can’t imagine Burke’s very thrilled with our...” His words trailed off. “...Recently-developed relationship.”

“You’re right. He’s not,” she said, and she nudged him back so that he was sitting upright and she could swing herself onto his lap. This close, with her arms draped over his shoulders, John could smell the faded scent of his cologne on her; his hands slid up beneath the hem of the shirt to splay against the dips of her spine, and he nuzzled the hollow of her throat. “He’s—protective, that’s all.”

“So what did you talk about tonight?” he asked. He pressed his mouth to the spot just below her ear that made her squirm in his lap. “You and daddy Burke.”

Elliot guided his face to hers and kissed him; but it was an unkind kiss, and she dragged her teeth against his lower lip until John made a low noise at the punishing pace of the kiss, and she said, “Do not call him ‘daddy Burke’, John.”

“Fine,” he defended against her mouth, “I won’t, I’m just curious as to the nature of your conversation. And your relationship.”

“Yeah? Okay, I told him that I let you fuck me filthy in a variety of places, sometimes covered in another man’s blood,” Elliot snipped. “What do you think I said?”

“It’d be pretty good if you said that.”

When her mouth left his, he made a small sound of complaint; she trailed her lips down his throat, and she smoothed her hands along the bare skin of his chest, fingers dipping and running along the curves of his scars, tracing the shape of the tattoos that he knew were there. She didn’t need to look at them to know their shape now.

“El,” he murmured when she nudged him back until he was laying on the bed and she could trace the lines of his Sloth scar with her mouth. The second he felt her tongue flickering against his skin, he felt a bloom of heat spread through him. “El, I want to talk about—”

“So talk,” Elliot replied, and then she kissed a spot on his chest reverently. “If you want. I want to enjoy you.”

John exhaled sharply out of his mouth. He’d never gotten to indulge a more wanton Elliot—their moments had always been heated, slipping through his fingers, faster than he would have liked and more brutal than he would have thought—but this was different. She was in his shirt, and she smelled like him, and her breath fanned hot against his skin and she was touching him like he was—

Something good. Something holy.

“Are you distracting me?” John managed out, just as Elliot settled back on his lap, and fuck that was so unfair, watching the shoulder of his shirt slouch off of her, too big and a little loose from being worn, just as she pressed herself against him. “So that you don’t have to—t-to—”

“To?” Elliot replied. “Talk about Burke? I told you, I want us to have—” She paused, lashes fluttering for a moment, and then rested her chin there on his chest. “I don’t plan on going through the system and the paperwork after this. Not after everything I’ve…”

John sat up a little, looking at her. The blonde moved seamlessly with him—no clunking movements, no awkward tangle of their limbs; when her attention was fully on him and nothing else, it felt like they had been made for each other, like they had always been each other’s fate.

“What if—” He stopped, watching her. “What if we didn’t do…Any of that?”

Elliot regarded him for a moment, a little tense. “What do you mean?”

“What if we stayed,” John ventured, “here?”

She blinked. Sat on his lap, wearing his shirt, her cheeks warm and her eyes bright and clear, John might have had more apprehension about saying the words out loud. But this time, it wasn’t like he was coming clean about a lie—it was more like… Shifting plans. Just a little. Just testing the waters, that was all.

“So what if we did?” Elliot said at last, watching him.

“We could just stay,” he murmured, taking her face in his hands. “You and me. We could just stay, the two of us, and—”

“Stay with your brothers,” Elliot clarified, “one of which is a cult leader.”

“Well—”

“And the other being a Darwinian elitist who admitted, out loud, he wanted to kill me ‘more than anything’.”

“That’s just Jacob,” John relented.

“This is not what we talked about,” Elliot said, her brows furrowing. “We did not discuss staying here with your—psychotic brothers—”

He felt the way her voice pitched up, felt it high in her throat, like a panic; her little rabbit heart fluttering hard and fast, and he leaned in and kissed her, felt the dig of her nails in his arms where she gripped him.

She said, “John,” into his mouth, a warning; one single warning, and that was all he was going to get, his little rattlesnake. He knew her well-enough by now.

“You and I both know that there isn’t a normal life waiting for us,” he said urgently, against her lips. “We both know that. I know that you don’t want to sit down in a bunker—”

“Stop—”

“—but regardless of what you think of my family, they understand you, Elliot—”

The blonde shook her head, her nose brushing his as she did so. “No. Fuck that, John. Fuck that, and fuck you for—”

“For what?” he demanded, pulling back to look at her. “Wanting to be around people who get it? You’ve killed a hundred people—maybe more, fuck if I know. I see the way you get. I’ve been there, and you know I have, and we can have that safety. We can have a place to belong, Elliot.”

She slid out of his lap. Her fingers carded through her hair; she looked like she was trying to parse through something, pinning out the wings of a butterfly that she couldn’t quite get a grasp on. Come on, he thought, come on, Elliot, come on, you’re mine and you know it.

Elliot turned to look at him. She looked emotional—her nose and cheeks were pinker, her bottom lashes dotted with unshed tears. It pleased him a little, to see her like this; before, she’d worked so very hard to make sure he never did.

“No,” she said, standing in his shirt, one arm across her chest and the other propped on it while she dug her thumb nail into her lip. “No, I’m not fucking doing it, John. I’m not getting in a bunker with your fucking peggies—”

He sighed, passing a hand over his face. “Elliot—”

“—and I’m sure as fuck,” she bit out, “not asking Joseph to take me in. Fuck. That.”

“You are impossible,” John ground out.

“I am literally the most flexible person!” Elliot exclaimed, her voice bordering on hysteria; there, something in him said, there’s the switch, there’s the flip, all that venom she’d been holding onto. “There’s nobody more go-with-the-fucking-flow than me, John Seed. Oh, a second cult takes over my hometown? Cool, I’ll evacuate everyone. Oh, they have my best friend captive? The one that you were supposed to be taking care of? Whatevs, it’s super fucking cool, she’s fucking dead and my family’s gone and everyone I’ve ever known is fucking gone, might as well be dead, and I can’t fucking go see them. I can’t, because I’m fucking—”

She sucked in a breath, dragging her hands through her hair. “I’m fucking covered,” she seethed, “in blood, I will never be normal again, and none of this would have fucking—”

“Elliot,” John started, coming to a stand, because he didn’t want her to say it; he didn’t want her to say none of this would have happened if it weren’t for you, but he felt it, right there, sitting between them. “Hellcat, come here.”

“No.” Her voice broke. “No, I’m so fucking tired of coming to you, John.”

“Then I’ll come to you,” he insisted. Maybe it was a little dirty—maybe he was thinking, this is perfect, I need her just like this, raw and desperate and turbulent, and when he crossed the small space between them and reached for her she didn’t shy away from him; just turned her face and fixed her eyes on the wall. “Joseph gave me everything,” he said urgently, pressing their foreheads together. “In a way—he even brought you to me. I don’t want to stay here forever. So what if the world doesn’t end? Then we get out of the bunker and we go wherever we want to go.”

“This is fucking insane,” Elliot said, her voice wrecked. She sounded so tired. “That you’re even asking me to—”

“I’m asking,” John clarified, “for you to be realistic. About the things that you’ve done. That I’ve done. At least—” He turned her face to look at him, and he thought, come on, you little viper, come on. So fucking close, we’re so close. “—tell me you’ll think about it.”

She watched him and sucked her teeth. He could hear the draconian gears in her head turning—churning, grinding, and hopefully for his benefit.

Elliot said, “How long do I have to think about it?”

“A week,” he replied earnestly. “I can’t reveal your sin until these bruises clear up a little, anyway.” He reached up, skimming his fingers along the wine-colored bruises dappling her skin. Her lashes, soft and damp, fluttered; she worked something in her jaw, molars grinding as she stared at him, like she couldn’t figure out what it was she wanted to say to him.

Finally, she said, “I don’t like feeling like this was what you wanted all along.”

“I meant it when I said I wanted a home with you,” John replied, and it wasn’t a lie.

“If I tell you I want to go,” she began, “then what?”

That won’t happen. “Then we go,” he murmured. “You and me.”

Elliot nodded once. Her mouth twisted, like she wanted to say something else, but when John leaned in to kiss her, her expression relaxed a little; he felt it like a sigh, his fingers knotting into the hair at the base of her skull.

“I’ll tell you,” she said into the kiss, “what I decide. When I decide.”

“Yes,” he murmured. “I told you, Elliot—"

"I know." This close, their foreheads pressed together, he could feel her lips brushing his with each word.

"Anything I want."

[yandere-daydreams]

Since requests are open... Awhile back you answered an ask about elected Class Darlings. So could you actually write something for the reader being the Class Darling of Class 1A? And the reader just being so unimpressed by the whole thing.

I’ll never try to write for so many characters at one time again,,, there’s a reason I stick to bottle fics. And for anyone who doesn’t know, this is a little something for the Yandere-verse, where Yanderes make up the majority of the population, and normal people are referred to as ‘Darlings’. Protective, Possessive, Obsessive, etc., are all categories Yanderes are sorted into, depending on their alignment.

TW: De-Humanization and Mentions of Past Abuse, Both Subtle. 

You always felt like you were on display, at times like this.

Sitting on the teacher’s desk at the end of class (Katsuki and Iida would throw a fit if you stood for too long), the other Darlings having already been released back to their dorms, even if a good handful of them waited simply waited outside for their Yanderes. It used to bother you, being in a room alone with more than a dozen violent, trained psychopaths, but after months of simply tolerating the downsides that came with your… position, you’d learned to tolerate the way to their eyes lingered on all the wrong spots, burning holes into your uniform, trying to see which of their classmates had touched you that day.

Who’d they have to target during the next week’s training.

Aizawa’s voice drew you out of your thoughts, low and bored, as tired of this weekly ritual as you were. It was only fair, in his defense. He’d been the Class Darling god knows how many times, something you still overheard the other teachers teasing him for. “Alright, everyone,” He started, already fiddling with his Capture Weapon. “Who’s taking care of (Y/n) over the weekend?”

“Uhm, if I could pick…” Your voice was soft, weaker than you would’ve liked. But, your gaze drifted to Kirishima, the boy perking up like a puppy about to be given a treat. You never liked that, how desperate he seemed to be for your attention. Unfortunately, he was the only one you could really trust enough so sleep next to. “I think I’d like to go with-”

“Todoroki and I can do it!” Izuku interrupted, a giddy, toothy smile plastered across his face. His chair scraped against the floor as he stood up, probably more eager than he should be, sparks of green electricity already buzzing around him, his desk cracking beneath his hands. You flinched back out of reflex, but if Izuku noticed, he didn’t care, addressing Aizawa rather than you. It was something you were used to, but that certainly didn’t mean you enjoyed it. “Please, please? He hasn’t done anything… possessive-y in weeks, and we just got a new pair of handcuffs. They’re quirk-canceling and everything!” He paused, taking a deep breath, looking back to Shoto for encouragement. The boy in question smiled gently, nodding as he rested his chin on his fist, Izuku’s grin only growing wider. “It’ll be really good for us, I prom-”

Before he could finish, an empty soda-can hit Izuku’s forehead, Katsuki throwing the trash over his shoulder as soon as he grew tired of letting his ‘rival’ ramble. “It’s obvious that, if (Y/n)’s spending the weekend with anyone, it’s not going to be any of you dumbasses.” Izuku opened his mouth again, still standing awkwardly, but Katsuki didn’t bother hearing him out, just resting his feet on the desk in front of him as he continued. “We have a test on Monday, and I know none of you fuckers are going to prepare. Besides, isn’t Daddy-Issues over there the reason we don’t have weekly rotations, anymore?”

You cringed, the hand-shaped burn on your back seeming to ache at the slightest mention of Shoto’s ‘incident’. “It was an accident! My room gets really dark, sometimes.”

“Don’t defend him, sweetheart, brutality should be beneath all of us.” It was Momo’s turn now, always so sweet until she didn’t think her lovely, precious pet would fall into her arms. “And, that sounds awfully protective of you, Katsuki. Is there something you want to admit, while we’re all here?”

He let out a growl, finally turning in his seat, clenching his fists, loud cracks and pops echoing throughout the room. “I keep telling you, I’m Possessive and you fucking know it-”

“Don’t you already have Jirou?” Shoto asked, the genuine curiosity in his voice almost catching you off guard. Momo pursed her lips, looking down, searching for an excuse as she picked up where Shoto left off. “I mean, yes, but she needs someone to play with while I’m studying.”

“No, you don’t have Jirou,” Kaminari corrected, making this the first time he’d spoken-up during one of these little ‘sessions’. He threw his hands up, clearly frustrated, as he always was when these ‘class-debates’ took longer than a few minutes. “Me and her are dating, so I don’t see why I should have to sit through this. I’m not some creep who thinks acting like I’m in a relationship will actually make someone love me, which is why I'm the only one here in a mutual relationship.”

At this, everyone paused, the Delusional huffing, smoldering in his seat for a moment before he stormed out of the room with a soft ‘fuck this’. Aizawa was the first to react, pushing himself away from the wall as he came to stand beside you, if only to regain some semblance of order in his classroom. He sent you a sympathetic look, but any kind words lost among the bickering and arguments of his students.

Briefly, you dreaded the grudge that would undoubtedly last until Monday’s class. Then, you remembered you weren’t allowed to do anything too difficult, anymore. 

“Someone step up and give me a good reason, now,” He called, his tone authoritative enough to make you shrink into yourself. “Before I pick a neglectful bastard to expel. You should count yourselves lucky I haven’t made you fight for the Class Darleing, yet.”

Again, arguments were raised, some getting out of their seats only to be stopped by their more level-headed peers, forcing you to flinch a little more with every hostile word, every glare, every shove. In the commotion, no one (save for Aizawa and yourself) noticed when the classroom’s door opened, pink hair and a bright smile peaking into the room, waving to you before pouting at Aizawa, the man relenting as you practically sprinted towards Mina. She was always tricky, like that, leaving a few minutes before class ended, waiting for things to boil over and coming to save you, like your knight in a mini-skirt and hot-pink lipstick.

You took her hand just as the other’s began to realize what was going on, letting her tug you out of the room, kissing your cheek while the two of you began to jog down the halls, attempting to get back to the dorm rooms before someone had a chance to protest. Of course, you weren’t dumb. You caught that familiar, jealous glint in her eye, the way she seemed to take so much joy in your immediate submission, how the acid lingering on her palms stung at your skin to harshly to be subconscious, but… you were well acquainted with pros and cons, at this point.

And Mina was the lesser of many, many evils.

[holdyourbreathfornow]

Like Father, Like Son

(Oh no, instead of working on the many other things I’m supposed to, I instead wrote this ‘missing scene’ tribute fic to your fic “A Match Lit in the Lantern of My Heart”. Supposed to be set right after Darnold gets Gordon in the car after he burns up the warehouse. I really REALLY want to write the second part but it’s very difficult for me to write more than one chapter of things, regardless of length or desire, so no promises)  (cw for burns,flashbacks of past trauma,slight body horror) 

(feel free to add a readmore. I can’t add one on the submission page)

Bubby was pacing back and forth across the kitchen floor as he and the others waited anxiously for any news from Darnold or Gordon.

  He chewed on his thumb nail anxiously; a bad habit he’d picked up a long time ago and never been able to kick. He often felt the need to gnaw on things with his sharp teeth, especially when he was nervous, and, more often than not, it was his nails and cuticles that took the brunt of the damage. 

  He just hated this damned waiting!  Not knowing what was happening, not knowing what to do. It was maddening!

  None of the others seemed to be handling it any better. 

  Harold was staring, silently and unblinking, into the middle distance, arms folded and hands gripping his upper arms so hard Bubby worried for the integrity of the metal. 

  Tommy was shaking, stroking Sunkist over and over to try to calm himself out of a full panic attack while his father stood next to the two of them, face and mannerisms as unreadable as always, but knowing him as well as Bubby had come to, he could still tell the man was worried. 

  Benrey was sitting in the corner of the room, clutching his head and rocking back and forth slightly. His form twitched and shuddered.

  Benrey had taken the news of Montobar’s return and subsequent threatening of Gordon arguably the worst of any of them. At first he’d seized up, freezing like a deer in headlights, then he’d seemed to completely lose control of his physical form, growing, shifting, and changing in accordance with his rage and despair. Teeth and claws jutted out at all angles, mouths and limbs sprouting and flailing as ear-splitting, shrieking notes of sweet voice filled the air with a slew of blinding lights. 

  It seemed as though his emotions were physically warring with each other over the battlefield of his body, parts trying to draw into themselves in fear and form protective plating, while other parts lashed out, slashing at the air with claws and teeth like razors, while still more moaned and sobbed tears the same ever shifting colors that poured from his many mouths. 

  He’d immediately tried to run off to find Gordon (hell they’d all wanted to) but Tommy managed to console him enough to get him to understand the infuriating truth of the situation at hand, which was that we simply didn’t know exactly Montobar had up his sleeve. 

  Darnold had told them Montobar had been vague in his threats besides an insinuation of something to do with controlling Tommy’s father. While the G-Man had assured them there was no danger of that specifically, they still didn’t know what else Montobar could have at his disposal. 

  No one knew the extent of exactly what had been done to Gordon during his time at Black Mesa, not even Gordon himself. No one but Montobar. If there was something else he knew, something else he had that he could use against Gordon and they showed up and forced him to show his hand…

  Bubby shuddered. 

  No, they had to find out exactly what his demands were. Exactly what he had to back up his threats. Then they could act. Then they could find a way to subvert whatever twisted ace he might have up his sleeve.

  And Bubby could finally deep fry the fucker. 

  For everything Montobar had done to Bubby’s son, to his whole family, he’d make sure the piece of shit’s life ended roasting alive. He’d regret ever living through the fall of Black Mesa, Bubby would make sure of that. 

  Bubby nearly jumped out of his skin when Coomer’s phone ringtone went off. 

  In an instant, the whole room was on their feet and crowded around Coomer, who already had picked up, phone held to his ear.

  “What’s happening?” he asked, not bothering with any kind of greeting. “Is Gordon–” 

  Bubby could hear frantic speaking from the other side of the call, cutting Coomer off, but it was too quiet to hear what was being said.

  “Fire?!” Coomer exclaimed. “But what–” 

  “What- what’s he saying?” Tommy cried, “Is Gordon al-alri- is-is he ok?”

  “Oh my God, man, just put the fucking thing on speaker!” Bubby exclaimed, grabbing the phone from his husband’s hand and pressing the speaker symbol and Darnold’s voice cut in, mid sentence.

  “–and the windows just blew out and when I went in he was just–it was an inferno!” 

  “Gordon? Gordon good, yeah? He’s…he’s not–” Benrey asked, practically crawling over Tommy to get closer to the phone.

  “He’s alive,” Darnold said, and the group let out a collective breath of relief. “But he’s all burned up. He’s…it’s bad. It’s real bad.”

  Benrey’s form started to shift again, but this time with a singular, focused emotion at its core: rage. 

  “Montobar rigged the place to ex-ex- to blow up?” Tommy said with a shudder. “After-after all that? It was just to hurt-to hurt Gordon?”

  “He couldn’t let us live,” Benrey said, mouth stretching and jaw filling with long, sharp fangs. “Can’t have his toys, so he’ll just break ‘em.”

  “No, no, you don’t understand!” Darnold said. “Montobar didn’t start the fire, Gordon did! He was the fire!”

  Bubby nearly dropped the phone, his whole body going numb. 

  It couldn’t be.

  “Darnold, what do you mean he was the fire?” Bubby demanded, voice shaking.

  “I don’t know what it was,” Darnold said. “I just went in and Gordon was at the center of this huge plume of fire and his eyes were glowing! The more he panicked it seemed like the flames just got bigger and bigger! When I got him to calm down, they went out but he’s still really really hot. Like, melting the seat of my car hot.”

  Bubby’s heart pounded in his ears as memories overtook him, unbidden.

  The exhilaration of freedom, but also the fear,the pain. Perfluorocarbon being painfully ejected from his lungs. He knew what it felt like to drown before what it felt like to breathe. 

Everything so loud, so bright. His muscles weak. Scientists everywhere, poking and prodding him. Too much. Too much. Hands grabbing at him, voices yelling, demanding. 

Anger feeding that ever present spark in his chest until it welled up, pushing out through his skin. Too hot. Too hot! Panicking but the panic just fed the heat, the flame. Then just screaming. 

Screaming,screaming, screaming.

  The phone slipped from Bubby’s fingers.

  Luckily Harold grabbed it with an extendo-arm before it could hit the ground.

  “Where are you now?” Harold said, voice low and firm, the way it got when he was pushing all emotion aside to just deal with the situation at hand.

  “We’re at least forty five minutes away, still,” Darnold said. “I’m going,uh,pretty far over the speed limit already but there’s only so fast I can go.”

  G-Man straighted up.

  “I will…warp to you to, retrieve him,” he said, but Coomer caught his arm before he could make any motion to do so.

  “No,” Coomer said. “We need you here. There’s some things we’re going to need…”

  Bubby didn’t hear the end of Coomer’s sentence, nor whatever was said in return, already staggering out of the room and down the basement stairs, hand clamped over his mouth, as if he was going to be sick. He wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t.

  Bracing himself against the cold cement walls of the basement, Bubby struggled to catch his breath. Muscle memory began to draw his flames to his skin, so used to being his outlet for such extreme emotion. He retched, forcing his fire deep down in his chest as his stomach seemed to tie itself in knots. 

  He squeezed his eyes shut, but all he could see behind his eyelids were images of flesh burning, phantom screams echoing in his ears. Sometimes his, sometimes Gordon’s.

  A hand touched Bubby’s shoulder and he pulled away sharply, teeth bared and hands raised to defend himself.

  His hands fell, along with his face, as he saw Coomer before him, arms up in a placating gesture. 

  “Fuck,” Bubby huffed, heart still racing. “Sorry, Harold, I just…“

  He covered his eyes with a hand, pushing his glasses up his face, as if it could hold back the tears threatening to fall.

  When Harold placed a hand on Bubby’s arm this time, he didn’t pull away.

  “He’s got burns over most of his body,” Coomer said. “He won’t be able to heal that on his own, especially not if he can’t cool down. You know what he needs.”

  Bubby moved his hand from his eyes to over his mouth, eyes still firmly shut. He knew what Coomer was going to say. Gordon needed to be put back into the cellular growth fluid he and Bubby had been grown in, the same way Bubby did when he needed to regrow or repair a large amount of tissue. Bubby knew he knew Coomer was right. But that didn’t make it any easier to bear, especially since he knew exactly what that would mean they needed.

  “His old tube is far too small now,” Coomer continued. “He’ll…need one of yours. I already sent G to get the one we kept in storage, but I’ll need your help getting it running again.”

  Bubby squeezed his eyes shut impossibly harder. He wouldn’t cry. He couldn’t break down now. Not when his family needed him. But the idea of facing his tube now, with the memory of being dragged by military men back to the one in Black Mesa and shoved inside, slamming his fists against the unforgiving glass until his knuckles were bruised and throbbing, still so fresh in his mind…it was too much.

  “I…I can’t…” he moaned, voice cracking. 

  Bubby felt Coomer’s hands grab him by the shoulders and he at last opened his eyes.

  “I know. I know how hard it is for you,” Coomer said,his eyes pained, but determined. “And I would never ask you to, if I didn’t have to. But your son needs you.”

  His face softened, as did his voice.

  “I need you, too,” he said. “I can’t do this alone.”

  Bubby swallowed hard and set his jaw. He nodded.

  Coomer let go of Bubby’s shoulders and took Bubby’s hands in his own. 

  Bubby pressed his forehead to Coomer’s and for a quiet moment, they just breathed.  Their moment was quickly ended when a flash of green lit up the basement and, out of thin air, appeared the G-Man, along with the semi-disassembled tube that Coomer and Bubby kept in a storage unit in case of emergencies, along with a few barrels of the cellular growth fluid starter, which would need to be properly prepared before it could be put in the tube itself.

  “I believe, this issss…all you, require.” G said.

  Bubby adjusted his glasses and pulled up the sleeves of his dress shirt.

  “Alright, we don’t have long and we need to get this fully running before Darnold gets back here with Gordon,” he said. “Let’s get to work.”