#and outside of that the conditions she keeps her animals in? horrible. what the hell. that's what you keep 'your babies' in? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mortemoppetere · 2 years ago

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Timing: later in the day after Wait and Sea Feat: @eldritchaccident & @mortemoppetere Warnings: (supernatural) animal cruelty Summary: after becoming suspicious of them during the 'interrogation' on their houseboat, emilio trails teddy to where the demon is keeping his client's daughter. neither of them is very good at using their words.

The events of the morning laid very lightly on the conscience of the demon all things considered. Whereas the detective (Who they didn’t even realize was a detective) was full of a paranoia (that could out conspiracy theory the very greatest in the false conclusion olympics) Teddy notably lacked that sense of self preservation. Most of the time. The perhaps haughty notion that they were the apex predator kept them in a perpetual state of nonchalance and ease.

As much as Ted loved humans and humanity, as much as they admired the fact that humans could accomplish so much with so little, they were still raised to believe that the creatures were somehow below. Humans had an inevitable end. Demons were stronger, more powerful, all around better. And no one could tell them what to do. That was like, devil lesson 101. Watching your back while heading to a secret location however, maybe Teddy just missed that day of class. Or maybe they were too busy with their head in the clouds. That’s not to say that the demon didn’t do any due diligence. Just… not enough to spot the tail they’d sprouted. So to speak. Following them all the way out to the cliffs and the ominous looking building that sat on their edge.

The warehouse looked abandoned from the outside. Maybe under construction was a better way to put it. Joy Avery Cavendish, who Teddy guessed had to be the owner of this horrible place, was trying to make something of it. Trying to set it up as a place where people with enough money could come and gawk at the strange and unseemly. A real modern day P.T. Barnum. But with just a little edge of Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss. Y’know, to keep it fresh.

Going after the heiress surprisingly wasn’t an impulsive decision. Like many of the folks who found themselves at the end of Teddy’s ‘lessons’ they had studied the woman for a while. Made sure the punishment fit the crime. Made sure it was earned. For her, it seemed like the right thing to do was shove her right in the same predicament as the ‘pets’ she tried to collect. Of course, that did mean Teddy had to single handedly figure out what to actually do with the rest of the creatures. At the moment it meant making sure they all had their respective needs met, until they could find a place to let them free. There wasn’t exactly an easy source of legitimate information on this kind of thing, and they didn’t want to upset the already very tumultuous ecosystem inside Wicked’s Rest. But they were determined to do this thing right.

“Alrighty, Fluffy I think I know where you can go next.” Teddy smiled brightly at the Karkaskuttle, a beast that was not at all fluffy in any manner of the word, and did in fact look like a large misshapen crustacean.

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” Joy bellowed, also not living up to her name very well.

“Lots of stuff I’m sure, but what do you mean specifically right now, hmm?” “These are monsters, and you have to let me go. Please. I can pay you, just-” “I dunno, Fluffy, who do you think the monster is here?”

The crab thing did not understand the conversation, therefore, it did not respond.

“It doesn’t even have fur!! You’re insane!! Just let me go!!!” Clearly Joy was getting a little more than a little agitated. These weren’t the kind of conditions she was used to. Her face was streaked with mascara tears, and she certainly looked like she was the poor victim in this situation.

“Do you know what you did wrong?” Teddy tilted their head, waiting for a response and only getting a glare in return. “Ahh, well, then I can’t let you go. Sorry bud.”

—

The safe thing to do would have involved waiting. Trailing someone immediately after an ‘interrogation’ usually saw them at their most paranoid, which meant they were likely to catch you in the act. And that tended to get messy. People did stupid things when they realized they were caught, and the vast majority of those stupid things ran the risk of Emilio not getting the information he needed before shit hit the fan. And in this particular situation, that couldn’t be an option. There was a missing girl, and her father was searching for her. His world had tunneled to the point that he couldn’t see much outside of that. So, yeah. Not getting the information he was after couldn’t be an option here.

But waiting wasn’t much of an option, either.

Right now, there was a chance that Joy Cavendish was still alive. It might not be a particularly large chance, but it was still a chance. And if this ‘Teddy’ guy caught wind of the fact that Emilio had seen that necklace in their houseboat, if they realized the jig was up… They’d have no reason to keep a witness around for him to find.

So, Emilio ran the risk. He weighed his options, and he decided following his suspect now was the best choice on the table. He trailed Teddy for a while, careful to keep himself from being seen, but they didn’t seem to pick up on his presence. In fact, it was one of the easier tails he’d done; a sign of arrogance, maybe, or a hint that he’d managed to play it much cooler than he was usually capable during his earlier conversation with the suspect. There was a hint of anxiety at the ease of it all — was he being played? Was Teddy toying with him, just leading him in circles until they got bored enough to lead him to his death? — but he pushed the feeling down. If it came down to a fight, he’d fight. He liked his odds a lot better than he liked theirs.

Eventually, he followed them up a path leading to the edge of a cliff. It all seemed pretty ominous and, if not for the presence of a warehouse there, he might have assumed he was being toyed with after all. But the warehouse would be a decent place to stash someone, as far removed as it was from the town itself. If Teddy did have Cavendish’s daughter here, it would make this location perhaps the only smart move they’d made. Secluded, isolated, hard to stumble upon accidentally. Emilio was a little disappointed he didn’t have a place like this for himself, if he was being honest.

He watched Teddy enter the warehouse, holding his breath for a moment and counting to ten. People were more likely to let their guard down when they got into their routine and, given the way Teddy had walked towards the warehouse like it wasn’t the first time they’d done so, there was a routine here. After a beat, Emilio moved forward, sliding into the warehouse just in time to catch the tail end of a conversation. A conversation with a woman. He’d never heard Joy Cavendish speak, but he was willing to bet that was her voice carrying through the warehouse.

He took a moment to observe the scene from the shadows. Cages full of various supernatural beasts, Joy in one of her own. Teddy seemed to be talking to a karkaskuttle like it was a puppy. Were they using the animals as torture devices? Had they been collecting pets and decided they needed a human to complete their stockpile? There was certainly something unseemly going on here, but the specifics didn’t matter much. He was here to get Joy back. That was all he could focus on for now.

Emilio wasn’t one for stealth. He couldn’t get his client’s daughter out of here without letting himself be seen. He didn’t even particularly want to. It was more fun, he thought, if Teddy knew it was him. There was a certain satisfaction to it, a little bit of I-told-you-so. Juliana always used to say he had something of a petty streak. Even when they were at their worst, she’d known him better than just about anybody else.

He stepped out into the warehouse, into Joy’s line of sight. Her eyes met his and widened, and he offered her a small nod. The girl had no real poker face; it would be impossible for Teddy not to realize something was up. If Emilio were a little better at quick retorts, now would have been the time for one. As it was, he just glared until Teddy finally turned around. “And you said you’d call me if you saw anything suspicious,” he deadpanned. “This seems like something suspicious, I think.”

—

Oblivious to the fact that they'd been followed, Teddy didn't suspect a thing until the woman's expression changed. Until the now familiar voice called them out. Oops. "Huhn." More than likely it wasn't the reaction the detective was expecting. A look of sudden confusion maybe, but still far too relaxed. Teddy clicked their tongue against the roof of their mouth. Folded their arms across their chest and slumped their weight all onto one hip. "So you are a body guard then? Did you know about all this?"

It was more like the demon was figuring out a puzzle than being caught red handed in what certainly looked like a Bond villain level scheme. Without the context, even their question didn't give any rise to the truth of the matter. That Joy was the one who put the whole shindig together. That Teddy was the one trying to fix it. Not that it really mattered though, from their side it looked like this beefy angry model man was in on it all along. If Emilio knew what she had been doing to these creatures and didn't help them. Well that was a form of guilt too, right?

"So what happens now then?"

—

Teddy’s reaction wasn’t quite what he’d been expecting, but at least they didn’t take a shot at him. Thanks to the fact that the people he went up against most often preferred to fight with teeth and claws rather than human weaponry, Emilio had managed to make it this far in life without being shot, and he wasn’t looking to break that streak now. Bullets always looked like they’d be a bitch to dig out.

The fact that Teddy seemed almost disappointed, like it was a shame someone was shutting down their little game, reignited the fire in Emilio’s chest. Like all of this had just been a fun way to pass the time for them, traumatizing both Joy and the animals they’d caged up in here. The detective, of course, had no idea who the true mastermind behind the warehouse was; from where he stood, things seemed obvious. The bad guy was the person not shoved into a tiny cage. If he’d known the full story, if it wasn’t Joy’s father who’d come to him, if he could go a day without his own daughter’s death replaying like an old film reel in his mind, if, if, if.

There were a thousand ways things could have gone better, but none of them were true.

“Not a body guard, no. And the details are pretty easy to pick up on, I think.” Teddy had told him everything he needed to know the moment they were sloppy enough to leave Joy’s necklace somewhere where Emilio could see it. Even if they hadn’t led him here, he would have found it eventually with enough digging. Of course, by that point, Joy might not have been alive to save. It was hard to say if Teddy had been planning on killing the creatures in their ‘care,’ but human beings were fragile things. They couldn’t survive under conditions like this for long. So this was the preferable option, as far as Emilio was concerned.

“Now?” He glanced over, meeting Joy’s wide eyes from behind the bars of her cage and offering her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Now I’m going to get her out of here. Take her home. You can try to stop me, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

—

"Are they?" Teddy's face scrunched up, trying to think of how exactly any of this came off as easy to understand. Maybe Emilio just meant that he was getting paid enough to not care about the things his employers did. Either way it left a sour sort of taste in their mouth. One that only grew more bitter and unpleasant as the man continued on.

"Ahh come on. Don't you think she deserves this? Just a little? I mean look at her." What might have been a better thing to say would have been, look at the things she's done. Then it might have opened the other man's eyes to what was going on, rather than looking like a deranged insult on top of all this injury. "Do you really care about your paycheck that much?"

The fit of rage Joy pulled after hearing Teddy say all that was fairly called for. In her mind, no. She didn't deserve this, she was being an entrepreneur. A smart business owner capitalizing on the town's obsession with the odd. Something the Joneses could respect, if it didn't come at the cost of the creatures she was trying to show off.

—

“Seems like it.” How much clearer could it be? He’d followed them to a warehouse full of cages, stumbled upon them monologuing to a person locked inside one of said cages. Open and shut cases were pretty rare in Wicked’s Rest, but this was as close to one as Emilio had ever seen.

Of course, Teddy could always make it worse. And that was exactly what they did. To imply that Joy was somehow responsible for her own imprisonment, to take such a sick satisfaction out of seeing her in a cage that they thought looking at her locked behind bars would make Emilio understand, somehow… He’d seen a lot of sick people in his day, but this was starting to take the cake. At least the undead had the excuse of not being entirely human when they did terrible things. From what Emilio could tell, Teddy was just a human being. A seriously fucked up one, but human all the same. That always made things a bit harder.

“Make this easy on yourself,” he said lowly, looking away from Joy’s righteous anger to meet Teddy’s eye instead. “Unlock the cage, and you can disappear. I won’t come after you.” Unless they did something like this again, of course. Emilio killed vampires and other undead without hesitation, but he didn’t tend to go after humans unless he’d done enough research to be sure of the intent behind their actions. Maybe Teddy was just fucked up in the head. Emilio wouldn’t kill someone for that. Especially not when they wouldn’t turn to dust and make the cleanup easy afterwards.

—

Time slowed, not in any sort of dramatic way, just enough that there was a pause. As if the whole room was considering what to do next. All eyes were on the demon. Who stood tall, still, contemplative, and still a bit puzzled. Teddy let out a dramatic sigh. Why couldn’t things just go according to plan? Hmm? Just once. Someone would learn their lesson, and be a better person because of it, and no one would have to actually die or really even get that injured. Honestly. It would be so much easier if the world worked the way it was supposed to.

Behind those red sunglasses, big eyes darted between Emilio and Joy. Between the cages and the animals within them. Making it easy on themself wasn’t high on their priority list. Their hand lifted, gently fiddling with the keys on the loop at their hip. For a moment it looked like the detective’s plea had landed. Hit solid ground.

That is, until Teddy turned heel and took off.

Racing for the opposite end of the warehouse. Knowing very well that those cages were hard to open without the actual key. Emilio might have a better chance with a bonesaw than a lockpick. And that’s even if he knew how to use one. No if he really wanted to lick boots that hard, he was going to have to work for it. Each mighty slap of their flip flops against the cool concrete set the creatures in the menagerie alight. Some barking, some growling, and some looking like they were trying very very hard to make noise, but something around their neck kept that from happening.

Teddy had to get the animals out. That was the most important thing. The control room. One switch that would open up the bay doors, and smaller ones to pop open each individual cell. If all went well, they could get there, let the creatures go, keep Dr. Shithead in her cage, and wreck the controls so Mr. Meathead couldn’t do shit about it. If the Winchester’s lost cousin kept up? Well, maybe they’d just press the big whammy. Open up every door and hope for the best.

—

For a second, it looked like things might go smoothly. And, honestly? It was on Emilio for believing that. Experience should have taught him that things never went smoothly when he was involved. The sooner he learned that lesson, the sooner he’d stop being surprised when things like this happened. Teddy took off running, and the detective let out a groan. One look at the cages told him that brute forcing his way through them was going to be difficult, if it was possible at all. And without knowing where Teddy was going? It added an additional risk. The locks looked to have some kind of remote open feature, and if all the cages were to open while he was trying to get Joy out of hers… Well, none of the animals here would understand that Emilio wasn’t the one who’d stuffed them into cages. Most of them would see him as little more than their next meal.

So he had little choice but to follow after Teddy, moving as fast as his stupid, fucked up knee would allow. Against a vampire, the offending limb tended to make keeping up a near impossible feat to achieve. Against what appeared to be a human in shoes that weren’t exactly sensible for short-distance sprints, it was a little more manageable. He’d be in plenty of pain when he got home tonight, sure, but he could handle that well enough. Especially if he managed to deliver Joy relatively unharmed to her father and earn himself a bonus that would pay for a little extra whiskey to numb the feeling.

Emilio pushed forward, quickly gaining on Teddy. If the other stopped, even for something as simple as opening a door, would mean being met with a hulking mass of angry slayer. If he couldn’t catch the asshole, he’d make sure he could outlast them. Then he’d yank the key off them when they fell over. Solid plan.

—

Fuck, fuck, FUCK. Teddy’s heart was racing. Maybe this is what Siobhan meant about getting caught being fun. They could see that. Kind of. Maybe? Was this fun? It was something. Exhilarating maybe? Each step was a contest and Teddy was very competitive. Ran in their nature, they supposed. Wasn’t that a thing? Devils and games? Okay. Not super helpful to think about. That’s fine. Teddy hopped, taking a precious second to pull their shoes off and use them as improvised weapons. Not that the two dollar flip flops were really going to do much against the wall of angry that was in hot pursuit.

The shoes flipped, flopped, and at least one landed where Ted had wanted it to. YES. Hopefully blinding the chaser so the chase-ey could get some ground. Control room wasn’t going to be an option. At this point Teddy was rapidly running out of space to go. Unless…

Wiry limbs reached up and grabbed for the lowest pipe they could. Ignoring the fact that it was hot and stung their hands as they used it to alleyoop up to the next level of catwalks. And started racing toward the only door available to them. Roof access. Fuck. Great. Love it. Teddy hadn’t been up there yet, not more than to glance outside the hatch. But there had to be a way down right? Fire safety and all that. Eh. It was about 50/50 with this town. With a building like this. And the fact that it was in such disrepair. Maybe 60/40 against. Oh well.

—

He hadn’t been expecting the shoe. If he weren’t so pissed off, he might have been a little impressed at Teddy’s improvisation skills. Or concerned that a shoe was the best weapon they had on them. Emilio’s mother had drilled it into him before he was old enough to speak that a person needed to have at least three weapons on them at all times if they hoped to live long enough to amount to anything. Apparently, Teddy’s parents hadn’t done the same.

But, in any case, they were decent at improvising. The way they slung themself up onto the catwalk, too, was unexpected, though Emilio managed to follow without much issue. Didn’t expect the damn pipe to be hot, but it didn’t really matter. Slayer healing would take care of that easy enough. He figured out where they were going the moment he caught sight of the sign for roof access, cursing silently to himself. Of course they had an escape route planned — this was their building, after all. Who knew what kind of weapons they had stashed up on the roof? Emilio pulled out a knife in preparation, shoving his way onto the roof just a heartbeat after Teddy did.

“Just give me the key, pendejo. We can pretend it never happened. You go your way, I go mine, hm?” For once, he really didn’t feel like a fight.

—

Every fiber, every muscle, every joint was burning. Not in the way they did during a shift, something totally different. A little bit new. Which was always exciting for the demon. Teddy jumped, ran, pulled, and climbed their way higher into the building. Banking as many hard turns as they could to throw Emilio off their trail, though each only bought a second at best. It was enough though, that they had a moment to fiddle with the hatch. Throwing open the heavy metal door and scrambling to get through it.

A loud and bright twaaang reverberated through the metal as the demon pulled themselves skyward. Misjudging the size of the doorway or perhaps the momentum of their limbs; their elbow thwacked against the frame. Thank goodness they were already most of the way out, because the resulting frenzy surely would have toppled them otherwise. A sudden wall of hurt filled Teddy's chest with air. Puffed up their cheeks and bent them in half as they grasped for the afflicted appendage. They bit down hard on their lower lip as they tried in vain to contain the scream they wanted to loose. Kind of like a tea kettle ready to pour. Before they were righted though, a shadow overtook their line of sight.

"Hold on–just–!!" The soft aloof voice strained both with the effort of the chase, and the pain shooting up their arm. "Ahh fuck me, why does that hurt so bad?" Teddy had quite literally felt their body rip apart and knit back together hundreds of times, and yet somehow this was always worse. "Right on the funny bone–" with their free hand, Ted held up a finger. A plea of their own towards the detective. There wasn't much else of a place they could go. And they weren't about to fight this guy. Not up here. Not when they didn't know enough about him to sign a death warrant. He was a prick sure, but so was Teddy half the time. No need to pull out the big guns.

"Are they paying you? Is that it? Didn't wanna– ah fuck– bring it up in front of your boss but I could–" Teddy breathed hard, still playing catch up. They'd be feeling this in the morning for sure. Probably for the next week at this rate. "-- I could double it. Whatever they got you contracted for. Easy. Done."

—

Adrenaline coursed through his veins, allowing him to keep up with Teddy in spite of the way his knee ached. It’d come back to bite him in the ass later, he knew — slayer healing didn’t do as much for chronic pain as he would have liked, and after days of this much physical exertion, he tended to find walking hard for a week after — but in the moment? There was something kind of exhilarating about it all. Easy cases made for nice money, but Emilio had always been the type to get bored easily. And this case certainly hadn’t been boring so far.

He watched Teddy go down with a quiet satisfaction, privately pleased at the evident karma that had come for them. Smacking your elbow against a metal door frame wasn’t exactly quite up to the level of what a person deserved for locking a girl in a cage like an animal, but it was fun to watch anyway. And it allowed Emilio to take his time as he walked over to Teddy, pausing when he stood over them. The hard part was over now. There was nowhere else Teddy could go. Whatever escape they’d planned up here, they couldn’t make it there without him catching up.

So, Emilio gave them a moment. He looked down at them patiently as they squirmed and grappled with the pain in their elbow, though there was no semblance of sympathy in his expression. To a man whose form of fun childhood activity had involved his mother locking him in small spaces with angry undead creatures, this much drama over smacking an elbow on a door frame seemed a little silly. If he’d shown this much pain over anything, he was fairly certain his mother would have rewarded the display with a good deal more pain to put things into perspective. Hard to focus on an aching elbow when someone had snapped a few of your fingers, after all.

But there was no need for that here. He didn’t need to teach Teddy any kind of a lesson. He only needed to get that damn key. Anger flared up in his chest again when they spoke, offering him money like that was the issue here. Like, for the right price, he could excuse what he’d seen in that warehouse, walk away like nothing was wrong. What did they think he was, exactly? “Ay, go fuck yourself, asshole. Give me the fucking key. How’s that for easy?”

—

Loyal to the company, huh? Teddy scoffed. No real saving a henchman like that. What was the use of having a brain if you didn’t use it to make decisions about who you were supporting. This amount of cruelty, the conditions the animals were in before Teddy had got to them? What was he just following orders? If Emilio had some part of that then Ted wanted nothing to do with him. For maybe the first time in this whole debacle their face turned to something serious. A deep draw to their brows, arching over dark eyes. Staring down the other like an actual opponent now. Or maybe a meal.

Like hell they were going to make this easy.

“Just think about this for like, two seconds, okay?” The demon circled, carefully treading on bare feet, still trying to make themselves appear a little less formidable than they actually were. A pretty easy feat considering how human they looked most of the time.

“She’s just as much a beast as the rest of those creatures.” Worse, in Teddy’s mind. The animals were just going about their lives, their only crime was that they were supernatural. Strange. Different. People like Joy Cavendish hated things that were different. Lobbied against them then proclaimed how it was for the greater good. Locking her up was a service as far as Ted was concerned. “What are you even going to do with all of them, huh? Make people pay to come and see?”

The demon was far more ready to just throw the damn key into the ocean below than fork it over. The ocean that loomed behind them, like a yawning maw ready to dine. A nice long fall and then— Well hopefully Teddy wouldn’t have to find out. They’d find another way down. Or maybe, just maybe, Emilio would listen to reason. Grow his heart three times that day or whatever. That or the plunge. Wouldn’t be the worst thing they’d ever dealt with. Unless it was just really shallow next to this cliffside. If that was the case, then… rest in pepperonis Mr. Jones.

—

Just as much a beast as the rest of those creatures. The words ignited a new fire, a new rage. They were one of those, then? The kind of person who saw human beings as animals, as disposable? Emilio had been operating under the assumption that Teddy themself was human, but this shone some doubt onto that. The way they spoke about the very human woman they’d put in a cage, like she was nothing more than a beast…

Maybe, if not for how the case had come to him, Emilio would be able to view this with a clearer head. If it hadn’t been Joy’s father who’d shown up at his door with red-rimmed eyes and a quiet desperation, if Emilio hadn’t been a bottle of whiskey deep at the time and soaked in grief about his own daughter, if he hadn’t stumbled upon Teddy as a suspect before he did the due diligence of investigating Joy to find out why she was missing… But everything Teddy said seemed to back up Emilio’s assumption. There was a double meaning behind all of it, a way to make it all adhere to the narrative that seemed so obvious in his head.

“Why, is that what you were going to do? Lock up an innocent woman in a cage, make her father pay you cash to visit her in your little petting zoo? Vete a la chingada, pendejo. I’m done talking.” He saw the moment Teddy glanced to the ocean behind them, understood what they were planning on doing with those keys. And Emilio couldn’t let it happen. Fumbling with Joy’s cage without the keys, with Teddy running around fully capable of letting all those animals out for dinner and a show… It wasn’t how this case needed to go. It couldn’t be how things went. Whatever happened to Emilio happened. But he wanted to get this girl back to his father. He wanted to save somebody’s daughter, even if it could never be his.

It was an impulsive thing, really. Sliding the knife out of his sleeve and into his hand. It was meant as more of a distraction than anything — a quick slash with one hand while the other went for the keys. He still wasn’t trying to kill Teddy. Not without knowing more about them, in any case. He just wanted to slow them down long enough for him to get Joy free.

—

“Wait what? Father? Pay? She’s not– How do you mean inno-” That was all that was able to escape the demon before their attention returned towards Emilio and Emilio’s knife hit its mark. Eyes darted to the other hand, seeing its trajectory and trying in vain to jerk away from his grasp. Pushing Teddy back a precious few inches toward the edge. All that was needed for their center of gravity to hang too far beyond the safety of the ledge.

What was worse than what the detective had said, was how he reached for Teddy. How in that far too short split second of confusion it seemed like they both realized there was a manner of misplay. A cosmic irony adding layers and layers of miscommunication on top of what could have been just a funny little kismet.

But they had already slipped. Gone too far. And gravity, as always, had its way with Teddy. Sending the demon soaring down below. Almost no time at all between the initial yelp of surprised confusion, and the resulting splash that broke up the waves. Even after a few moments, nothing resurfaced. Barely any bubbles that weren’t washed away by the turbulent waters. For all any observer could tell, Teddy Jones was all but lost to the sea.

One stroke of luck though. Or maybe another layer of dramatic ire, the keys had fallen off of Teddy’s belt during the struggle. Landed safely where their feet had just been.

—

It wasn’t supposed to go this way. It really wasn’t. The knife was a distraction, not an attack. Teddy wasn’t supposed to stumble backwards, the ledge wasn’t supposed to be this close, no one was supposed to fall. But they were tumbling off the side in an instant, and though Emilio scrambled to grab them, the earlier pursuit chose that moment to catch up with him in the form of his damn knee giving out before he could reach.

The result was a dramatic display: Emilio, reaching a hand out and finding open air and Teddy tumbling down to the sea below. Emilio scrambled over to the edge of the roof, but there was no sign of the other at the bottom. Swallowed up into the sea, he figured. Frustrated, he smacked a hand against the roof. Goddammit. Goddammit. Just one time, just one goddamn time, could things not go the way he wanted them to go? Could he manage, just once, to navigate a single goddamn situation without making everything a thousand times worse? Without hurting anyone?

He let his forehead drop onto the roof, letting out a frustrated sigh. What was done was done. Teddy was gone, but Joy wasn’t. There was one person in this scenario that could still be saved. All he had to do was save them.

Gathering himself up, Emilio looked to the roof where the keys now sat, unassuming and innocent as if what had just happened meant nothing at all. He scooped them into his hands before standing up, wincing when he put weight on his bad knee. He’d get Joy out and send her home, then he’d free the animals. And after that… He’d go home and drink himself into a stupor.

Yeah. Hell of a plan, Cortez.

#eldritchaccident #teddy: a joy to be here #animal cruelty tw #wickedswriting #s1 writing #season 1

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gojos-sidepiece-69 · 4 years ago

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Tokyo Tech Training- Chapter 2

Your eyes snapped open and you met eyes with your lover from last night. Fuck. Did that actually happen? It shouldn’t have. Damn it. No, god, no. I got drunk and had an insane fever dream, that’s it. Your brain worked in overdrive trying to rationalize your decisions from last night. Intense waves of shame and guilt washed over you when you realized that you were, indeed, practically sober.

You woke up with no headache. Your hips, however, were a different story altogether. “Morning, sunshine,” your dimpled teacher said intoxicatingly. It was too early for his bullshit. “Please, Gojo. Not now. I’m going to go home and pretend this didn’t happen, okay? Great.” His grin widened as he pointed out, “Oh, so we’re on name-to-name basis now? I thought I was still your Sensei.”

You ignored him and firmly got up only to catch a glance of yourself in a full body mirror. You saw purple peeking out at you from under Gojo’s shirt. You pulled it down slightly and felt at your raw, sore love bites. “Sorry about those, I always like it a bit rough,” Gojo explained, still shamelessly man-spreading in his bed. “I could tell,” you deadpanned. You lifted up the hem of your shirt to inspect the degree of damage he had done to your hips, and it was bad. You could barely even walk straight. You were planning on a pleasant walk-of-shame home, but seeing the state of your condition, that was now out of question. As if he read your mind, he said “I’ll give you a ride back.”

You got a sneak peak into the Strongest Jujutsu Sorcerer’s morning routine, which included putting on his dumb blindfold and dark navy uniform. He handed you your clothes from the previous night, taking extra care to comment about how he was upset he didn’t get to see you in your “cute little lacy bra.” Everyone had left earlier that morning, knowing from previous experience not to wake Gojo in the morning. In addition, they didn’t want to take their chances while their airhead of a teacher took the steering wheel, blasting trap music way too damn early. You, however, had the treat of experiencing this first-hand. “All aboard!” He said childishly as you stepped into his black BMW. He immediately turned the volume of his music all the way up, humming to Pick it Up by Famous Dex.

You closed your eyes, and muttered a silent prayer that you wouldn’t die in a freak accident on the way home. With your luck, Gojo would crash straight through a KFC Drive-Thru and laugh about it.

You were shaken out of this scary afterthought when you realized that Gojo was driving 65 MPH in a 35 zone. “What the hell? Slow down!” You yelled, but your driver only looked at you and laughed. “You didn’t have a problem with me going fast last night.” You gritted your teeth. Of course he was going to make your drive home as sarcastic and filled with as many horrible sex jokes as possible. The worst part was that you, at the back of your mind, were fighting back a small laugh. But you weren’t about to confirm that he was funny. So you slowly exhaled through your nose, until your breath hitched at the back of your throat.

Gojo’s hand had snuck past the gear and onto your knee. Keeping his (inexplicably blindfolded) eyes on the road, it slowly snaked up to your thigh and rested there. He could feel you tense up and smiled to himself. He loved the effect that even just his hands had on women. The sensation gave you flashbacks of the night before. He touched a bruise on your inner thigh that he had licked and sucked so tenderly last night, and you shuddered. He drew small circles, but didn’t go any further.

The tires screeched to a halt right outside Tokyo Tech, and you clambered out of his car as fast as you could. You left in such a rush that you dropped your “cute, lacy bra” on the passenger-side floor. You didn’t even notice. Luckily it was Sunday, and you wouldn’t have to worry about seeing your teacher until tomorrow. “Have a great day!” He yelled after you, and you flipped him off classily without so much as a backwards glance for your superior. As soon as you got to your dorm, you dramatically collapsed onto the mattress.

You were so tired from fooling around the entire day yesterday that you slept through Sunday in its entirety. You arose early Monday morning and groaned when you remembered that it was going to be your first Field Training day. And you were absolutely correct in thinking that you were most definitely not ready.

“Each of you will be assigned a Jujutsu Sorcerer to shadow for your field practice today. Watch how they exorcise curses, take mental notes, and follow each of their directions carefully. Megumi and Nobara, you’ll be going with Nanami. Yuji and Y/n, you’re stuck with me,” Gojo said, keeping eye contact with you for an uncomfortably long amount of time. You thought to yourself, I might as well just start calling it blindfold-contact, if I can’t see his gorgeous eyes. I mean, eyes. Gojo whistled and led you and Yuji back to his black car. Yuji ran like the track-star he was, yelling “SHOTGUN!” so loudly that you didn’t care to argue.

He threw the door open and leaped into the passenger seat, while Gojo took the wheel and you occupied the backseat. Yuji took the liberty of connecting to the aux, this time blasting Tetris by Derek King. Once again, it was way too early in the morning to be listening to songs about ass. But this issue did not seem to exist for the Tokyo Tech’s favorite resident ass men, Yuji and Gojo. Or as you liked to call them, Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dumb-ass.

Not even a comfortable minute into the drive, Yuji energetically bent over and picked up your forgotten bra. “Ooh, looks like Gojo Sensei is getting some! Who’s the unlucky girl?” Yuji joked around. “Oh, Gojo. GOJO,” the pink-haired puppy-boy fake moaned like an animal in pain while poking fun at his teacher. Your sensei, ever the enabler of horrible jokes, chuckled along. He glanced up into the rear view mirror and made eye contact with you, breaking it as soon as he swerved into the wrong lane. “At least tell me what she looked like!” Yuji practically bursted at the seams. Gojo sighed and offered a single comment to his student that was enough to temporarily stave off his curiosity and shut him up. “She had a great ass.”

You heard a genuinely amazed “Wow!” from your fellow first-year as blush once again danced onto your cheeks. You broke the car’s mounting tension by piping up and asking, “So where are we actually going?” Gojo explained that their Field Practice entailed an actual mission to retrieve one of Sukuna’s fingers. What the hell? You thought to yourself. You had barely one day of instruction and you were being thrown into the deep end already? Jesus Christ. But somewhere deep inside your mind, you knew that Gojo cared for his students and would never let any of them get hurt.

Rudely interrupting your thoughts for the millionth time, Gojo interjected, “But we’re stopping by the bakery first. I need my morning fix.” Your stomach grumbled at the thought of food just as you remembered you hadn’t eaten yet today. With one shitty parallel-parking job, you had arrived right outside the Ichiban Pan bakery. The three of you filed into the bakery, the bell on the door ringing as the sweet aromas supplied you with some much-needed serotonin. You walked up to the counter, and immediately noticed how beautiful the cashier was. She had long, dark hair and a figure that anyone would drool over.

To your surprise, she said, “Gojo...back here already? I knew you hadn’t had enough of me yet,” as she eyed him lustfully. “Of course I had to come back for seconds. Your goods were just so...soft and sweet,” he smiled coyly as he leaned onto the counter and shamelessly flirted back. The woman reached over and toyed with Gojo’s blindfold as his smile grew. She said, “So, when are we going to have some more fun?” He answered, “Always so eager, huh? Don’t worry, you’ll get your turn soon.” You couldn’t tell if your face was heating up with annoyance at the thought of Gojo delaying the mission to flirt with one of his girls, or at the fact that you felt...jealous. Jealous that you weren’t the only one he had eyes for, and envious that this girl was older and maybe even more attractive than you. She made you feel plain in more ways than one, and your mind started to wander.

Did Gojo touch her like how he touched me? How many girls has he had before? How many is he with right now? Damn it. You shook off the bothersome thought. Maybe it was your innate competitiveness as a Jujutsu Sorcerer, but you knew you had to get him back. Fair and square. You told yourself it wasn’t because you wanted more from him, but it was because you wanted to make him feel jealous in the exact same way. Whatever it was, whenever the time would come, you were going to leave him frustrated.

Three delicious dangos and thirty minutes later, you found yourself at the site of the curse: a closed off mall. While you were now right outside of the car, you could feel the cursed energy radiating out from its epicenter. “There’s one unregistered first-grade curse that you need to extract Sukuna’s finger from. And I’m going to osbserve,” Gojo said while he sat on the hood of his car. “You’re going to what? I’ve barely had ANY training,” you sputtered angrily, but Yuji was already pulling your arm and dragging you towards the curse. Well, you thought to yourself. Might as well prove yourself a worthy comrade to Yuji and a promising student for...he didn’t matter right now. The two of you sprinted forward as Gojo lowered a dark veil over the area, blackening the sky.

Yuji shoved the front doors open and leapt inside, and you jumped in after him. The lights were broken and flickering, casting an eerie glow over the abandoned mall. The escalators were still running, but you could hear distant crashing sounds. “This way!” Yuji yelled, as the two of you sprinted up the escalator to the second floor. The crashing increased in volume, and it was clearly coming from a destroyed souvenir shop ahead.

You laid eyes on the grotesque curse, which resembled a deformed, melting, red plastic mannequin that was at least twice your height. Its arms immediately extended and shot out at you, but you dodged out of the way. You hadn’t learned any techniques yet, so it seemed like you and Yuji would be teaming up and harnessing your raw cursed energy to deliver blows to the mannequin. The curse opened its mouth to reveal jagged teeth that caged in one of Sukuna’s fingers. “There it is!” you shouted. But in an instant, both you and Yuji were caught off guard and knocked to your feet by the mannequin’s extended arms.

They grew spikes that jutted out and beat into your sides. You yelped and coughed in pain, starting to see blood pool out from under your uniform. You gritted your teeth and tried your best to deliver blows to sever the curse’s arms, but it was useless. Yuji, too, seemed trapped in between the sharp spikes. After ten minutes of intense stabbing pains and useless struggle against this first-grade curse, Yuji piped up. “I think I’m going to have to let Sukuna take over and destroy this curse.” Your eyes widened. You had only heard stories of the demon king, and they were all horrific. But it was between that and death, and you both made the split-second decision. “Do it,” you nodded.

You watched from your position as Yuji let Sukuna take over his body. Black tattoos etched their way across his toned body, which was exposed to you after he carelessly tore his tightening shirt off. His smile grew wide and you heard a malicious laugh. “Fool,” Sukuna said directly to the curse, before ripping its right arm off with brute force. “You think you’re any match for me?” Before its arm could regenerate, Sukuna tore off its other one and freed you before tossing you aside like a corpse while informing you that you were “in his way.” You hit your head against the front window of the store and groaned. You watched the mannequin open it’s mouth and shoot out it’s razor-sharp dagger teeth at Sukuna, but he just grabbed onto the curse’s head and tore it right off with ease.

He reached two fingers into the curse’s mouth and extracted the finger, examining it with a slight grin before swallowing it. “Feels so good,” he murmured while throwing his head back and laughing loudly. A wave of confusion washed over you. If the job was done, why hadn’t Yuji switched back yet? What was going on? You shivered and backed up slightly as Sukuna turned his head to look down at you.

“You know,” he drew out a breath as he kneeled down and picked up a scrap of cloth from Yuji’s torn shirt. “I haven’t taken over a vessel in ages. And that means I haven’t had a woman in a very,” he stepped closer to you, “Very long time.” You looked up at him from the ground, taking in his mouthwatering physique. This curse made you forget about logic for a minute and revert to primal instinct. The first thought that ran through your brain was running your tongue over his abs. However, a second later, you had an even better idea. Why not let Sukuna have his way with me? That would show Gojo. I want him to hear me moaning while he’s still sitting in his stupid BMW, blood rushing to his dick as he thinks about me getting fucked stupid by the undisputed king of curses. That thought alone was enough to push you to answer, “And what do you want me to do about that?”

“You’re going to do as I say. Let me fuck you until you can’t remember your own first name.” Your heat throbbed at that, and Sukuna wasted no time binding your hands together tightly with the scrap of cloth. This was really happening. You were about to get destroyed by the legendary Sukuna in the shattered storefront of a souvenir shop. In the dark. Without any semblance of a warning, Sukuna ripped your uniform top right off of your body, leaving behind only scraps of fabric. You shivered at the sensation of being exposed to the cold. You looked up at him wearing only your plain black bra and uniform skirt, and his eyelids lowered. “Fucking slut,” he said, as he ripped off your bra with the same fervor. He smiled hungrily as your nipples perked from the chills, and groped at your breasts with both hands.

He admired how they fit perfectly within his calloused hands, and how he could feel your heartbeat rapidly soar. With fear. Humans really are useless creatures, aren’t they? He thought before he demanded, “Open your mouth.” You complied, and he slid two long digits all the way inside. You felt one hit the back of your throat and you moaned onto his fingers as they slid back out. He rubbed his fingers back onto your breasts, coating them with the wetness of your own saliva. You moaned loudly with pleasure, positive that your pathetic Sensei could hear you from outside.

“That’s good.” Sukuna approved of your moaning. The thought of him making you arch your back, screaming and crying for him pushed him on further. His hands aggressively found your skirt, tearing it easier than paper. He looked down at your soaked panties and felt the urge to make you feel small and embarrassed. “You’ve gone and made a mess of yourself. I’ll just have to get rid of them,” you saw Sukuna’s tongue move around in his mouth as he forcefully tugged off your panties. His hunger got the best of him, and he bent down to let his tongue take one long lap along your dripping cunt. “Fuck,” he breathed as you threw your head back, hitting against the wall. “I haven’t tasted a woman in so long,” he said, before bending back down and slipping his tongue into your slit.

His strong arms kept your shaking legs pried wide open for him, sharp nails tightly gripping into your thighs, and you could only groan louder. He continued to drink at your slippery juices until you screamed and came into his mouth. He licked his lips as he pushed your thighs back together and lifted himself up. “I’m not even close to finished with you yet,” he growled, sensing you getting slightly tired.

He lifted you up and threw you onto your stomach. You propped yourself up shakily using your elbows while he pushed your head down with one of his hands. You arched your back for him, granting him an easier entrance. Kneeling behind you, he teased his dripping tip at your folds while squeezing at your ass. The buildup was almost too much for you to take, so you began to whine “Suku-,” but before you could finish, he entered you roughly. Sukuna mercilessly railed into your pussy from behind, one hand simultaneously gripping your hair and pushing your head down, while the other dug crescent-shaped nail marks into your hips.

His pace was so fast that you could only scream and curse and whine his name, but he only laughed and threw his head back. “Sl-slower,” you begged, tears spilling down your face, but Sukuna maintained his speed. Your useless request only prompted him to move his hand from your hair to your throat, gripping you tightly. “Don’t ask me that again,” he growled, still thrusting.

You could feel his thrusts become more loose and sporadic, and finally he pulled out and groaned deeply while spilling his cum all over your thighs. You panted and stood up slowly, but you held back a shocked scream. You watched in horror as Gojo Satoru stood before you, blindfolded eyes trailing over the white, creamy liquid dripping down your thighs. You instinctively covered your breasts and cunt, managing a weak, “how long were you watching?” Gojo took a step forward. “Well, I decide to assess the situation for myself when I heard you screaming for mercy, so I came in at about the time...” he mimed checking a fake watch, “a 1000-year-old curse started pounding you from behind.”

You blushed, heart racing from the exposure and accidental voyeurism. You hadn’t expected him to actually come see you for himself. However, your eyes took a quick trip to see a growing bulge in your Sensei’s pants. You smiled to yourself as you thought, mission accomplished.

🌹

#gojo smut #gojo x reader #gojo x y/n #gojo satoru #gojo sensei #jujutsu kaisen #jjk anime #jjk smut #anime #chapter 2 #long fic #fanfic #writing #fanfiction #sukuna x reader #sukuna smut #sukuna

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brilliant-poses · 3 years ago

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Night of the Coyotes

When Dutch Van Der Linde first began to expand his gang, a group of bounty hunters rose to stop a lot of gangs from becoming too big and powerful. The bounty hunters were a successful group, but the Van Der Linde’s and the O’Driscoll’s kept avoiding the rope. You are apart of the bounty hunting group, the Coyotes. You and your older sister, Pride, have been in the group since you were children. Now, you’re faced with the challenges of hunting down each member. When things get out of hand, do you stay loyal or decide a different life?

Chapter 2 - The Town of Blackwater

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“We should ask everyone, not just one person, Pride.” You reminded, beginning to kick the dirt at your feet and move towards the grass, where the others were camping. There was a lot of talk around the camp, mostly because everyone had heard the Van der Linde gang were near. Every bounty hunter in the family wanted to catch them. For some, it was a personal reason, while the thrill of the hunt persuaded them to go after the gang. There were a few different women who worked in the gang, some being close friends of Vivian’s while others joined later on. Pride sighed and walked towards the cooking tent. A chubby woman hummed loudly, beginning to cut meat into bits and preparing it with seasonings.

“Alina! You need anythin’ from Blackwater?” Pride called, causing the woman to yell in surprise.

“Oh, you scared me, Pride! You silly girly! Yes, I do! Give me a moment!” She said with her heavy accent, wiping her hands off and going towards a journal to write down a list. Alina Kruger was basically the one who kept women alive. She was a German immigrant, traveling here when she was about twenty and managing to keep herself afloat, thanks to a bakery business she worked for. She joined the family when Vivian had suggest she come with them, tell her it would be adventure and cooking, two things Alina said she wanted in life. Alina had platinum blonde hair and crystal blue eyes, her eyes were round with joy and she looked so innocent. Her cheeks were always pink and her smile was absolutely wonderful. Her hair was normally tied back in two braids, her saying it was a normal German style.

“Here you go!” She said and handed the list to you.

“Thanks, Alina.” You smiled as she giggled lightly.

“Thank you! I did not want to go into town today, I have much to do!” She said and patted your head before shooing you two out so she could continue to cook. Pride as about to go towards her horse before you grabbed her braid.

“That’s not everyone, Pride.” You reminded, tugging her over towards some more tents, causing her to cuss and hiss in pain. You let her go once you’re sure she’s not going run towards her horse. You glanced around and saw a few of your sisters. Virginia Ross, Mary Mantle, and Yolanda Romero. As you stepped closer, you can see the details of what they’re doing get better.

Virginia was from New York, she was from a rather rich family, but she gave that up when her daddy tried to make her marry someone. She told him she wanted to do whatever she wanted, saying she didn’t need money. Virginia had only been with you for a few months, but she was a good member. She had dark brown hair and vibrant green eyes, she was a rather cute individual. Mary, on the other hand, was a cold blooded individual. Her parents were murdered by robbers and now hunts for the hell of it. She’s a little younger than you, most of the hunters were, but she did what she needed to. She had pale skin and dark blonde hair, her eyes a dark brown. She had a large scar that ran across her cheek and a few others over her body. She was a force to be reckoned with. Yolanda was a mystery. She was fun and always had stories of Mexico, but never spoke about why she wanted to be a bounty hunter. You all enjoyed her, with her dark skin and dark, black hair. Her eyes were actually a lighter brown, which made her emotions show. She was probably the best hunter you had, besides Pride.

“Hey girls, you need anything?” You asked with a smile, looking towards them. The girls glanced up, stopping their weapon cleaning to think for a moment.

“Gun oil.” Mary said after a moment, going back to cleaning. You quickly wrote this down on the paper that Alina gave you.

“Get us some more ammo too! My shotgun is getting low.” Virginia said, her northern accent punctuating every word. You glanced towards Yolanda after you wrote ‘ammo’ down, noticing her grin.

“What do you want, Yola?” You asked, the Hispanic woman letting out a loud sigh as she thought.

“Oh! If you find a tambourine, get that. I love tambourines.” She smiled again, making Pride roll her eyes.

“Is that essential for your hunts?”

“Well, we make noises like coyotes, so yeah. It’s to make noises!”

“You’re the reason I go solo.” Pride said and flicked her nose, causing Virginia to giggle.

“A tambourine… We’ll see if we can find one.” You said, causing Yolanda to let out a yell of excitement. You and Pride nodded them goodbye and went towards the tent closest to the entrance of the camp.

“Zotova! Liu! The fuck y’all want from Blackwater?” Pride yelled, forcing you to hit her and shush her. Zotova didn’t even look up from her writing.

“Four journals, three pencils, and hand these out.” The Russian said in her broken English, handing you a few papers with their bounty hunting on it.

“Put them in stores and sheriff’s office.” She said, leaning back to take off her small glasses. Zotova Stanislavovna was the person who helped bring in the money. She was in charge of receiving bounties and giving them to Vivian. She did her job well, but being a Russian immigrant, she couldn’t speak the best English. Some of you had to be there to help her explain herself. She had only been in America for about a year, but everything was falling into place for her. She had blonde hair and brown eyes, who wears glasses a lot of the time.

“I don’t want anything.” Liu said, smiling towards you two. Liu Shun was another hunter, an expert animal hunter, as well. She was the best at long distance shots and tracking. She was a Chinese immigrant, who’s parents worked tirelessly on the railroad. When her parents were killed in an accident, due to the horrible conditions they faced, Liu found your family and requested to help make things right for people like her. She had a good mission, but you were concerned on how people would view her. She had short, her black hair and brown eyes.

“Isabella doesn’t need anything, does she?” Pride asked, referring to the woman who took care of the horses.

“No, she’s fine. She hasn’t mentioned anything.” Zotova said, waving them off. You and Pride nodded, walking towards your horses to see the red head taking care of the animals. Isabella was the kindest soul you had, orphaned at a young age, she’s been in the gang with you and Pride for a long time. She and Brigit was close, the Irish woman who was close to Vivian. The two red heads bonded over their love for horses. You and Pride mounted your horses, not noticing Isabella walking away to grab more hay. She was quiet, so it wasn’t the most surprising thing that she did. She was sweet, but very to herself.

“You ready, Peppercorn?” You asked, patting the Gypsy Cob. He was the best horse you had, the black and white painted horse was the most loyal horse you could ever have. Pride’s horse was a large, white and brown Shire named Sunshine. She named her that since she’s the most hot tempered horse in the entire camp. You mounted Peppercorn, listening to him pant lightly in excitement. Your spurs jabbed into his side and you began to ride off next to Pride. Blackwater wasn’t too far away.

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“I can’t believe we’re having to be maids and get shit.” Pride said as she let Sunshine trot in the street. You were sighing lightly, rubbing your face when she complained.

“Come on, Pride. Let’s just get the stuff. Let’s go to the general store.” You offered, listening to her grumble lightly. You and Pride hitched your horses outside the general store, heading inside after you got off the horses. You opened the door, hearing the bell ring and the store clerk greeting you.

“Welcome, ladies!” He greeted, causing you to nod in a greeting. You began to gather the few things that Zotova wanted.

“Pride, go get what Alina wanted from the butcher. I’m going to go get the ammo and gun oil.” You said as you paid for the items, handing him the paper for your bounty hunter family.

“Hang this up.” You said softly and left with Pride. When you were putting the items in your saddle bag, Pride whistled towards you. You looked towards her and saw them. Arthur Morgan and Hosea Matthews.

“Good morning, ladies.” Hosea greeted, knowing exactly who you two are.

“It was.” Pride hissed, glaring towards Morgan, who scoffed.

“We heard you boys were here. We were trying to find you.” You offered Hosea, who chuckled lightly.

“Yeah, we figured. You ladies are very good at what you do.” He said, causing you to nod.

“Y’all are too, for criminals.” You said as Hosea laughed.

“Well, I can’t argue with that.” He said, gently hitting Arthur to make him stop glaring at Pride.

“We’re just here to gather supplies. You gonna try to get us?” He asked, causing you to shake your head. You hit Pride after a moment, seeing her reaching towards her gun.

“We’re here for supplies too. It would be stupid to start shit in the middle of the street. We’ll come for y’all soon.” You explained, causing him to nod.

“Thank ya, ladies. You have a good day now.” He offered and waved slightly. When they trotted past you, you heard Arthur and Pride exchange words.

“Heartless bitch.”

“Tiny dick Morgan.” With that, Pride took the list and stomped towards the butcher while you went towards the gunsmith. You were going to have to tell Vivian about this, but you weren’t going to pursue them. Not yet. It would be dumb to. Pride was hot headed and wanted to kill Arthur Morgan so bad that it consumed her. You were her calm, her reason. You had to show her that the time would come. As you entered the gunsmith’s shop, you knew it was going to be a long day.

#rdr2 #red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 oc #red dead redemption 2 x reader #red dead redemption 2 oc #reader insert

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elriell · 4 years ago

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Book Rec’s

Going to try and add a lot of less known books that are amazing and not enough people talk about, this would be too long if I talked about each one in depth, so I am going to leave my fav quotes as that tends to give me a feel for books and whether I will like them and I will link the GR page for more info! Happy reading:)

Fantasy Vibes

From Blood And Ash by Jennifer L Armentrout (CLICK THIS TOO)

“Death is like an old friend who pays a visit, sometimes when it’s least expected and other times when you’re waiting for her. It’s neither the first nor the last time she’ll pay a visit, but that doesn’t make any death less harsh or unforgiving.”

“Fear and bravery are often one and the same. It either makes you a warrior or a coward. The only difference is the person it resides inside.”

“You're an absolutely stunning, murderous little creature.”

Storm And Fury by Jennifer L Armentrout

“What are you going to do if it does get worse?” he asked. “Maybe I’ll get myself a seeing-eye gargoyle.”

(HONESTLY BADASS GARGOYLES. SO UNIQUE AND AWESOME)

Demons At Deadnight by A&E Kirk

“I launched into a graceful ninja-like front roll, then stood my ground to face the monstrous heathen, fearless in my determination to vanquish the deadly foe.

Nah, just kidding. I bolted, discretion being the better part of not getting dead.”

“We are killers,” Matthias said. Bad news.

“Not girls. We don’t kill girls.” Good news.

“She’s no girl.” Insulting news?

“What? Of course she’s a girl.”

“Want me to check?”

“Shut up, Blake,” the rest of them chorused.”

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

“If I cannot be better than them, I will become so much worse.”

“If you hurt me, I wouldn't cry. I would hurt you back.”

“I am going to keep on defying you. I am going to shame you with my defiance. You remind me that I am a mere mortal and you are a prince of Faerie. Well, let me remind you that means you have much to lose and I have nothing. You may win in the end, you may ensorcell me and hurt me and humiliate me, but I will make sure you lose everything I can take from you on the way down. I promise you this is the least of what I can do.”

MM Romance

Him by Sabrina Bowen & Elle Kennedy

“Our mouths fit together so perfectly. Every time we kiss, I fall even more in love with him, and it has nothing to do with sex or lust. It's him. His closeness and his scent and the way he soothes me.”

“I…” He clears his throat. “I’d let you do it, though.” My hand freezes in his hair. “You would?” Wes nods. “I’d let you do anything to me, Canning.”

Misfits by Garrett Leigh (Poly romance, its just so perfect ala herongraystairs!)

“Learn something. Read a book. Explore someone. Anger is just a hole where your life could be.”

In The Absence Of Light by Adrienne Wilder

“The light is a funny thing, Grant. We think it shows us what we need to see, but in reality, it blinds us. That’s why I brought you here. I wanted you to see me.”

“Morgan may be autistic, but he is a normal man with a mental condition, not a mental condition who is a man.”

HOneStly JUST READ IT

The Foxhole Court by Nora Sakavic

“It’s not the world that’s cruel. It’s the people in it.”

“I'm not a math problem." "But I'll still solve you."

“Is your learning curve a horizontal line?”

“Who said 'please' that made you hate the word so much?" Andrew gazed at him in silence for a minute. "I did.”

“I didn't think I was a personal problem. You hate me, remember?" "Every inch of you," Andrew said. "That doesn't mean I wouldn't blow you."

EVERY QOUTE IS ICONIC TBH

Vampires, Angels & Greek Mythology

Bloodlines by Michelle Read

“The greatest changes in history have come when people were able to shake off what others told them to do.”

“Takes a lot of tries before you hit perfection." He paused to reconsider that. "Well, except for my parents. They got it on the first try."

“No, thank you," said Adrian. "These hands don't sully themselves with fighting.”

“Everything's about my personal entertainment. The world is my stage. Keep it up- you're becoming a star performer in the show.”

Angels Blood by Nalini Singh

“Some things were worth the dance with danger.”

“You do realize this makes your wings even more unique." "Are you saying you shot me as a cosmetic procedure?”

“You ask a lot of questions for a dead woman.” “What can I say? I prefer to die well-informed.”

“You don't fear me," he said now. She wasn't stupid enough to lie. "I'm petrified. But I figure you didn't make me come all this way just so you could push me off the roof.”

Dark Lover by J.R Ward (warning OTT vamps if thats not your jazz either skip)

“Some bridges you crossed on your own, no matter who drove you to the edge”

“Vengeance was one hell of a roommate.”

Half-Blood by Jennifer L Armentrout

“Two people see each other across a room or their skin brushes. Their souls recognize the person as their own. It doesn’t need time to figure it. The soul always knows… whether it’s right or wrong.”

“It’s just words and words mean nothing. Only action does.”

“People do the damndest things when they’re in love.”

“There is a difference between love and need. Sometimes, what you feel is immediate and without rhyme or reason.”

Assasin-y Goodness

Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers

“When one consorts with assassins, one must expect to dance along the edge of a knife once or twice.”

“I comfort myself with the knowledge that if Duval ever feels smothered by me, it will be because I am holding a pillow over his face.”

“Surely He does not give us hearts so we may spend our lives ignoring them.”

“There is no shame in scars, Ismae.”

Daughter Of The Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller

“I am me because I choose to be me. I am what I want. Some people say you have to find yourself. Not I. I believe we create ourselves to be what we want.”

“Lass, you've the face of an angel but the tongue of a snake.”

“Everyone has something dark in their past. I suppose it's our job to overcome it. And if we can’t overcome it, then all we can do is make the most of it.”

“Waiting. Not waiting. One lover. A hundred lovers. There should be no judgement either way. A woman is not defined by what she does or doesn‘t do in the bedroom.”

“Even a man who’s spent his whole life at sea has reason to fear her when she’s angry. But not I. I sleep soundly. Listening to her music. The sea watches over me. She protects her own.”

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

“No mourners. No funerals. Among them, it passed for 'good luck.”

“It's not natural for women to fight." "It's not natural for someone to be as stupid as he is tall, and yet there you stand.”

“I will have you without armor, Kaz Brekker. Or I will not have you at all.

“The heart is an arrow. It demands aim to land true.”

“Kaz leaned back. "What's the easiest way to steal a man's wallet?" "Knife to the throat?" asked Inej. "Gun to the back?" said Jesper. "Poison in his cup?" suggested Nina. "You're all horrible," said Matthias.”

The Kiss of Deception by Mary E. Pearson

“It can take years to mold a dream. It takes only a fraction of a second for it to be shattered.”

“Taking another life, she had whispered, even a guilty one, should never be easy. If it were, we'd be little more than animals.”

“Maybe there was no one way to define it. Maybe there were as many shades of love as the blues of the sky,”

“We all have our different skills. You’re patient to a fault, which sometimes doesn’t work to your advantage. I, on the other hand, have the patience of a wet cat. Only on rare occasions does that come in handy.”

“Maybe there were a hundred different ways to fall in love.”

Circus Vibes

Caraval by Stephanie Garber

“Every person has the power to change their fate if they are brave enough to fight for what they desire more than anything.”

“She imagined loving him would feel like falling in love with darkness, frightening and consuming yet utterly beautiful when the stars came out.”

“Some things are worth pursuit regardless of the cost.”

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

“You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.”

“Secrets have power. And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it's really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours.”

Six of Hearts by L.H Cosway

“Note to self: Never try to out-trick a trickster.”

“So why not live with the magic? Be a kid again and believe in the fantastical. Life is more fun with a little smoke and mirrors.”

“We all have thoughts that we would never, ever vocalise. And people who say they don’t are liars.”

“I once read that people who have imaginary friends never reach out to touch them. There’s some part of their brain that subconsciously knows it will break the spell. That’s what it feels like with Jay.”

Amour Amour by Krista & Becca Richie

“We all traverse in and out of people’s worlds, leaving footprints. Some larger, some smaller, but there is always a mark. We can’t sweep it away.”

“Life is a rollercoaster with no volunteers. We’re all forced to take a seat and ride it out.

“I’m average. I’ve been average most of my life, but there are moments where I feel extraordinary. Invincible. Able to conquer any fear and step outside any box. There is no illusion, no fantasy. I can climb a forty-foot pole. I can fly eighty-feet in the air. I can be taller than tall. It’s a dream that I’m living. Every day. With him.”

More M/M Romance

The Song Of Achilles by Madeline Miller

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”

“He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.”

“He is half of my soul, as the poets say.”

Axel’s Pup by Kim Dare (Shifter Romance & BDSM FYI if thats not your jazz)

"I want to screw you, and tie you up, and make you writhe from-you know all that. But I want so much more. I want the whole thing, not just a quick scene. I want twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I want you to be mine. I won't take anything less."

Aristotle And Dante Discover The Secrets Of The Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“In your dream. You were looking for me.""I'm always looking for you,"

“He was funny and focused and fierce. I mean the guy could be fierce. And there wasn’t anything mean about him. I didn’t understand how you could live in a mean world and not have any of that meanness rub off on you.”

“He looked like an angel. And all I wanted to do was put my fist through his jaw. I couldn't stand my own cruelty.”

“One of the secrets of the universe was that our instincts were sometimes stronger than our minds. Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere.”

Shattered Glass by Dani Alexander

"Tell me something good about your life," I whispered, needing to hear that he wasn't as broken as I thought him to be.[...]"You." It was so quiet I almost didn't hear it.”

“Is he my competition?” I asked. “Everyone is your competition.” Peter lifted his hand to his eyes and began lowering it incrementally. “It goes normal human beings, crazies, republicans, my hand, imaginary characters, corpses and then, in a moment of lustful psychosis, you.” By the time he was done, his hand was below the table.

Romance

Kiss The Sky by Krista & Becca Richie

“You’re not a pit stop. You’re my finish line. There’s no one after you.”

“People hope to touch the sky. I dream of kissing it.”

“I love the way he’s staring at me. It makes me feel more than just beautiful. I feel like I’m his. Like no one else could possibly compare to me. He doesn’t even have to say the words. I see it in his eyes. I can practically read it in his mind.”

“I’ve wanted so many things in life,” he says softly, “but you’re the one that has meant the most to me.”

Translation: I love you.”

Wallbanger by Alice Clayton

“You know those moments when everything is exactly the way it was meant to be? When you find yourself and your entire universe aligning in perfect synchronization, and you know you couldn’t possibly be more content? I was inside that very moment, and fully conscious of it.”

“The right woman for you wouldn't want you to change anything about your life. She wouldn't rock your boat, she'd jump right in and sail it with you.”

“It breaks my heart the way young girls pick themselves over, never thinking they're good enough. You make sure you always remember, you're exactly the way you're supposed to be. Exactly. And anyone who says otherwise, well, poppycock.”

Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover

“Ugly love becomes you. Consumes you. Makes you hate it all. Makes you realize that all the beautiful parts aren't even worth it. Without the beautiful, you'll never risk feeling the ugly. So you give it all up. You give it all up. You never want love again, no matter what kind it is, because no type of love will ever be worth living through the ugly love again.”

“Some people they grow wiser as they grow older. Unfortunately, most people just grow older.”

“Sometimes the spirit of a man isn't strong enough to survive the ghosts of his past”

“My grandfather used to say the placement of a birthmark was the story of how a person lost the battle in their past life. I guess you got stabbed in the neck. Bet it was a quick death, though.”

On Dublin Street by Samantha Young

“Gentlemen are gentlemen in bed. They make sure you're having a good time." "I'll make sure you're having a good time, and that you're okay with everything. I just won't be well mannered about it.”

“In truth it’s difficult to describe a broken heart.”

“Sometimes words aren’t needed for you to know a change has come upon you.”

Romance Series

Paper Princess by Erin Watt

“My skill, if I have one, isn’t dancing. It’s my ability to believe that tomorrow can be a better day.”

“My life is mine. I live it. I control it.”

“but a clean knife still makes a painful wound.”

“Fate is for the weak--those people who don't have enough power or will to shape life into what they need it to be.”

Foreplay by Sophie Jordan

“I’m not going to lie to you and convince you that I’m someone good and shiny like your guy that’s going to be a doctor.”

“You can’t even see it. I’m the safest thing you’ll ever find”

“That's what I wanted. Something to enrich me, to make me feel better about the things in my life that I could never change."

Wait for You by J.Lynn. (AKA Jennifer L Armentrout)

“You are really…” “Amazing? Awesome?” He paused, brows raised. “Astonishing?” “I was going to go with bizarre.” “Well, hell, if I had feelings that might actually hurt.”

“As long as the sun’s shining, shit can’t be that bad.”

The Deal by Elle Kennedy

“Sometimes people sneak up on you and suddenly you don’t know how you ever lived without them.”

“I want to murder him in his sleep, A. No, I want to murder him when he’s awake so he can see the joy on my face when I do it.”

“And the most important lesson I learned is that I’m not a victim—I’m a survivor.”

Romance w/ Epic Plots

The Unbecoming Of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

“This was the boy I loved. A little bit messy. A little bit ruined. A beautiful disaster. Just like me.”

“You could start a fire with the heat between you two.""You're mistaking bitter animosity for heartfelt affection.”

“You're supposed to say, 'All I want is your happiness. I'll do whatever it takes, even if it means being without you.'""Sorry," Noah said. "I'm just not that big of a person.”

“I’ll walk forever with stories inside me that the people I love the most can never hear.”

“We are far too screwed up for a goddamned love triangle.”

“You will love him to ruins.”

The Winners Curse by Marie Rutkoski

“He knew the law of such things: people in brightly lit places cannot see into the dark.”

“Isn’t that what stories do, make real things fake, and fake things real?”

“The Winner’s Curse is when you come out on top of the bid, but only by paying a steep price.”

“The god of lies must love you, you see things so clearly.”

Obsidian by Jennifer L Armentrout (are you getting the idea I love everything she writes? because I do!)

“I've always found that the most beautiful people, truly beautiful inside and out, are the ones who are quietly unaware of their effect."

“More books." His eyes went wide. "You have, like, them books you just said you haven't read." "Doesn't mean I won't get more books."

Angelfall by Susan Ee

“I never thought about it before, but I'm proud to be human. We're ever so flawed. We're frail, confused, violent, and we struggle with so many issues. But all in all, I'm proud to be a Daughter of Man.”

“Sometimes, as we're stumbling along in the dark, we hit something good.”

“I knew from the start that your loyalty would get you killed. I just never thought it would be your loyalty to me that would do it.”

Unique Reads

Dont Look Back by Jennifer L Armentrout

“I was stuck in a life I didn't remember, squeezed into the shell of this girl - this Samantha Joe Franco - and the more I learned about her, the more I was starting to hate her.”

“Things aren’t perfect. They are far, far from it,but they are getting there, and I wasn’t looking back. Not when there were so many good things in the future.”

Verity by Colleen Hoover

“I wasn’t heroic. I wasn’t simple. I was difficult. An emotionally challenging puzzle he wasn’t up for solving.”

“A writer should never have the audacity to write about themselves unless they’re willing to separate every layer of protection between the author’s soul and their book. The words should come directly from the center of the gut, tearing through flesh and bone as they break free. Ugly and honest and bloody and a little bit terrifying, but completely exposed.”

“No one is likable from the inside out.”

“Find what you love and let it kill you.”

Painted Faces by L.H Cosway

“We all paint on a face to show the world," Nicholas replies philosophically. "For some of us, that's quite literal.”

“I love him because he makes me laugh when I don't feel like laughing. I love him because he challenges my view of what a man is. I love him because I know I shouldn't love him and that he'll break my heart. I love him because he's a complete and total anomaly. I love him because I want to kill the sadness inside him more than I want anything else in the world.”

“You saw me, changed my life, made it better, and I’m completely fucking in love with you.”

Sorcery of Thorns by Margret Rogerson

“It was always wise to be polite to books, whether or not they could hear you.”

“Knowledge always has the potential to be dangerous. It is a more powerful weapon than any sword or spell.”

“When terrible things have happened to you, sometimes the promise of something good can be just as frightening.”

“You belonged in the library, as much as any book.”

“You unmanageable, contrary creature. You have made me believe in something at last. It feels as wretched as I imagined.”

Obviously not every book is going to suit everyone, everyone has pet peeves, and things that they won’t enjoy but hopefully this gives you some variety and I personally loved them all at some point! Pls feel free to come to my ask/chats to discuss any of them that would make me so happy <3 this took 4 hours damn

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meetthetank · 4 years ago

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Cruciamen Chapter 10: Order of the Devoted

Rating: Mature Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Categories: F/M, Other Fandom: NieR: Automata (Video Game) Relationships: 2B/9S (NieR: Automata), A2/A4 (NieR: Automata) Characters: 2B (NieR: Automata), 9S (NieR: Automata), A2 (NieR: Automata), A4 (NieR: Automata), Emil (NieR: Automata), Kainé (NieR) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, genre typical violence, On the Run, Monster of the Week, 9S is a half demon, 2B and A2 are shapeshifter Dragons, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Smut in the future, inaccurate depictions of medical procedures, Fantasy Biology, A2 is Nonbinary

The first thing A2 notices is how soft the surface they’re sleeping on is. It reminds them of times as a hatchling when they would nuzzle into their mother’s downy feathers, safe and sound while they slept. Something is draped over their body too, just as gentle. For the first time in a long, long time, they are content and unafraid for their safety.

The next thing they realize is that this is not where they lost consciousness, and all of the warmth in their body rushes away, replaced by icy gripping fear.

Their eyes fly open and they sit upright, ready to fight their captors to the death and escape their prison. They expect to see a pit of rotting mud and meat, or a dank cellar of stone. Instead, they find themself in a small cozy room, complete with a mirror and dresser opposite of their bed. A quick scan around the place reveals nothing out of the aggressively ordinary beyond a plate of fruits and other, strange foods that A2 has never seen before.

They don’t lower their guard yet. If their time in the Bog has taught them anything it’s that horrible things can be waiting in every shadow. The soft bed and heavy blankets might be comfortable, the room itself might be bathed in warm sunlight, the foods beside them might smell inviting, and they might not feel like they’re on death’s door anymore… but it could be a trap or an illusion or a horrible dream. Any second their surroundings could shift back to the prison pit, or they could be hallucinating, on the brink of death while some Bog animals gnaw at their limbs.

… They stare around the room for a few minutes. Nothing happens.

Somehow, waking up in a safe and comfortable room is the most unbelievable thing that’s happened to them, in their mind.

A2’s stomach roars, and suddenly they remember that they haven’t eaten in… gods, they don’t know how long. They look over at the plate of… things, on the small table. There’s a bunch of small purple fruits hanging from little vines in a pile, a block of pale yellow stuff, something that looks in between the color of flesh and the writing paper humans use to record things, a cup of warm water, and a couple of bottles of odd colored liquids. The pale colored food has the shape of an oblong rock, but sags when they press their finger to it. Its outer shell crackles enticingly, but they turn their attention to the plants instead. At least they know that the purple orbs are fruits. They pluck one off the vines and roll it between their fingers for a moment. It’s somewhat firm with a thin skin around it, broken where it was connected with what reveals a soft flesh inside that drips with juice. They cautiously sink their teeth into a small portion of one end which explodes in their mouth.

A2 decides they like these purple fruits, and gulps down the rest of them in seconds, followed by the soft yellow block and crunchy but also soft paper colored food. All of it tastes strange, but pleasant. It isn’t as good as fresh kill, but it quells the hunger that gnaws at their gut. The darker portion of their mind chastises them for eating things that could very well be poisoned, but A2 doesn’t care. They’re fed for the first time since going into the Bog.

The sink back into the bed, full of strange new foods and ready to fall back asleep. However just as they begin to get comfortable, their body begins to itch. They groan and drag their nails against the focal points, mainly their thighs and shoulders, to find them wrapped in tight bandages. They hold their arm up to inspect, finding only clean white wrappings and the stink of some sort of chemical. It smells a bit like fermented berries but less sweet. Carefully they pick at the bandages on their elbow, unwinding them bit by bit once they find the end stuck between two layers. As the final layers start to unravel, their arm begins to sting and feel like their skin itself is peeling off. Sure enough, they pull back the last layer to find raw, red skin. Skin, not scales. Portions of their scales stick to the bandages, flake off when the bandage is removed, or cling to their skin by the smallest thread of mucus.

A2 puts the bandages back on as tight as they can.

Suddenly the wooden door to the outside world flies open and in steps a woman with black robes with a mess of curly black hair tied back. She’s much shorter than them, most likely coming up to where their chest would be, and either well fed or muscular under her robes. Probably both, if they had to guess. A2 freezes in place as they watch her cross the room with a ceramic pitcher in her hands. The woman’s green eyes widen when they meet A2’s

“Oh good!” she says, her voice warm and kind. A2 recognizes it as the same voice they heard just before passing out in the Bog. “I didn’t expect you to be awake already.”

They don’t respond. The woman keeps watching them as if waiting for them to say something. A moment later she clears her throat and approaches A2’s bed. They can feel their hair--now much lighter than before--bristle even though this woman doesn’t appear to be a threat.

“... My name is A4. I’m a nun in the Order of Devoted. I’ll be taking care of you while you recover.”

Still A2 remains silent, their eyes never leaving A4.

“You must have some questions. I know it can be scary waking up in an unfamiliar place, but I assure you this is the safest place you can be in this region.”

The only form of movement A2 gives in response is blinking when necessary.

“... You’ve been unconscious for about two and a half days,” the nun begins as she pours the water into a smaller cup. “You were in a very poor state when we found you, but our holy magic has been sufficient in helping you regain your strength.”

She sets the cup on their bedside table. “Unfortunately you seem to have contracted an illness from spending so long in The Great Bog, and it’s not one spells can fix. Bog Rot is something that requires the old medicines. Regular herbal baths, cleaning of infection sites, various salves, and-”

“I don’t need your help,” A2 snaps, brows knit tightly together. They try to look as intimidating as they can, despite how pathetic they feel wrapped up in blankets and bandages.

A4 smirks. “Ah, so you can speak. For a moment I thought you couldn’t or didn’t understand my language. But I’m sorry, you need treatment-”

“I’m not a charity case,” they growl.

The nun’s eyebrows shoot up in shock, but then she puts her hands on her hips and scowls, though her emerald eyes still hold kindness. “I don’t think you understand how serious this disease is. You-”

“I. Don’t. Need. Help.” A2 leans forward and snarls, baring their pointed teeth at A4.

For a split second there’s fear on the nun’s face, a brief flash of pallor across her face. “Yes, you do. This is only the beginning stages of the Rot. Your skin will start to become necrotic. You won’t be able to walk, stand, or even clean yourself. One by one your organs will rot away and shut down. Within a month you will be clinging to life while your body rots from the inside out.”

They scowl, but A4’s little sermon does strike a cord in them. They cross their arms over their chest and stare holes in the floor. Somehow wasting away in a sickbed is a worse fate than starving to death in a mud pit. Unlike in the desert with Emil and Kaine they’re in no condition to assist with anything, so repayment is out of the question for now.

Gods, they hate being stuck like this.

“Look,” A4 says, her stern expression falling into one of genuine concern. “I can tell you’re strong. Most people would have succumbed to the Rot and the pain. I’ve seen many warriors fall into torpor after a mere week, yet you remain conscious and alert. You’d be free to leave once you regain your strength, if you wish.”

A2 chews at their bottom lip as they think, still scowling at the floorboards.

“... Fine,” they huff. “But I’m not letting you wash me. And I can take the medicine myself.”

A4 lights up with a radiant smile that makes A2’s chest tighten. “Great! I’ll leave fresh bandages and salves for you on your table every day. You have to change them each morning or if they get too dirty. The salves will sting a bit but they will prevent further infections. Oh, and exercise is important to the recovery process as well. Helps combat muscle wasting. So I’ll be helping you walk around the Convent grounds every mornin-”

“Like hell you are,” they snap, “I’m not a dog-”

“The walks aren’t negotiable.” A4 doesn’t even look at them as she gathers up old sheets and clothes. “End of story.”

A2 sits back in their bed and scowls, once again, at nothing. Just before A4 leaves their room, they realize something of theirs is missing.

“Where did you take my sword?” It’s a question in technicality, but A2 says it like a command.

“Your sword?”

“Big, black iron blade. Has a…” A lump catches in their throat. “... A black feather on the grip.”

“Oh! Yes, we did recover that from the village.”

“Give it back to me.”

She sighs. “Weapons are not allowed in the medical wards, but…” A4 looks towards the door like a child sneaking treats from under their parents noses. “I can take you to it while we’re on a walk.”

A2 feels a growl rumble in their throat.

“It’s safe, I promise. I won’t let anything happen to it.”

There’s an air of sincerity around the nun that lends credence to her words. That, and A2 simply doesn’t have the energy to press the issue further.

“Mm…” Is all they respond with.

A4 nods, then shuts the door behind her, leaving A2 alone with their thoughts. They sigh and stare up at the ceiling, wondering why the world won’t let them die.

#nier automata #A2 #nier A4 #fantasy au #nier fanfiction #tank fics

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surveys-at-your-service · 3 years ago

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Survey #406

“turned on all the lights, the tv, and the radio / still, i can’t escape the ghost of you”

Have you ever had an ulcer? No. Do you have any rare medical conditions? I believe AvPD is considered to be a rare mental disorder. Do you have to carry an epi pen? No. What color is your mailbox? I think it's black. I don't pay attention. Would you ever want a job working with animals? I'd love to. The thing is, without a degree in something, my duties working with animals would almost certainly involve cleaning up after them, which I am WAY too squeamish with fecal matter and vomit to do. It's extremely embarrassing, but I've never even been able to clean up after my own pets if they ever had an accident or got sick. I obviously couldn't do it with random animals. Did you have a good high school experience? It's... so odd, retrospecting on high school. In some ways, it was the best time of my life because of my memories with my friends and especially Jason, but at the time, I absolutely loathed it and was horribly depressed. But at least I saw a future for myself. I took better care of myself, all that stuff... That Brittany would be fucking mortified to get a glimpse at who she becomes. Have you ever watched any Monty Python movies? Which one is your favourite? I know I've seen some of at least one. Would you ever get a "below the belt" piercing? Nah. If a couple is married, do you think there should be any legal punishment if one person cheats? No...? Like don't get me wrong at all, I am firmly against cheating under any circumstance, but for there to be legal retribution seems extreme. What is the greatest source of anxiety for you? My future. Are there any hallucinogenic drugs you’d like to try? Nah man. What made you choose your current job? I'm unemployed. Do you feel uncomfortable on the dance floor? Or are you confident with you dancing abilities? Oh hunny, you won't see me on the dance floor. Unless MAYBE if the Cha-Cha Slide comes on, or the Cupid Shuffle. That's as skilled as I get, haha. Is it exciting to you to imagine having an affair with a teacher? ... No??????????? It's fucking creepy. Adultery isn't exciting. Do you like your smile? No. I absolutely look high when I smile. What is something silly that you believed to be true when you were a child? That I could invoke the traits of any animal, which I just referred to as my "animal powers." Like for example, if I "called upon" a kangaroo, I could jump higher. I was a weird fucking kid. Have you ever been in a relationship with someone you completely connected with on a mental/emotional level, but did not find physically attractive in any way? Was physical intimacy a problem? How did it work out? I was never really physically attracted to Girt, but it was never a big deal to me. I cared way more about his personality and how much he cared about me. We were never really "intimate," per se, we just would give each other a simple peck. It didn't work out, but not at all because of physical things. He was just too much of a brother to me. What classic or cult movie have you never seen and have no desire to? Hm. I know there's some, but I'm blanking. Does The Human Centipede count here? Like everyone knows about it, so I would assume it does. I have ZERO desire to see a second of that repulsive movie. Have you ever taken a real liking to a band/singer you never ever....ever thought you'd enjoy? Maybe Melanie Martinez? Her voice is so cutesy, as are some of her songs, but I really enjoy how dark her lyrics can be. People who know me would probably be shocked to hear I thoroughly like her. After seeing the movie Avatar did you suddenly view our Earth as ugly and/or boring? If you have not seen the movie, do you think it’s worth your time? I've seen a little bit of it, but I never finished it because I was very tired and chose to go to sleep. I actually do want to see the full thing, though; it looks very good. How helpful are your parents to you? Would they help you to pay for your first apartment? College? Where does the line end? My parents are truly incredible with helping me the best they are capable of. They helped me pay for school, among other things, but I doubt they'd help with my first home, whenever that is. I wouldn't really want them to, either, because that's my responsibility for sure. Do you like playing video games? If so, what do you usually play? I love video games, and horror is absolutely my favorite genre. I also love fantasy games though with deep stories. I've never been the best at playing super long games, like Final Fantasy games, even if I'm seriously invested in the story, though. I burn out. Have you ever sewn a garment? No. Are there any plants in the room you’re in? No. I don't bother with plants. What’s your highest level of education? Some college. What’s the most important thing in any kind of relationship? Proper communication, probably. If you wear lipstick, what’s your favourite colour to wear? I only really put on lipstick to occasionally take a picture, and it's pretty much always black. Is your style feminine, masculine or somewhere in the middle? Somewhere in the middle, I guess? Are there a lot of dragonflies around your house? I've never seen one around this house, and I doubt I ever will because it's too urban. When we lived in the woods, however, I saw them a lot. Of all the Disney couples, which one would you say is your favorite? Kovu and Kiara came to my mind first. Do you think it is cute/funny or disgraceful when a child swears? It's shocking, more than anything. You don't expect it. I don't believe it should be encouraged, but only because children just don't know when swearing really isn't appropriate. If/when you have a baby, how do you think you would want to decorate its room? I don't want kids, but I'll entertain the question and assume this is before the child is born and develops interests. Whether it's a boy or a girl, I'd probably go with a cutesy animal theme. Would you more likely buy a shirt with a picture of Mickey/Minnie Mouse, a Winnie the Pooh character, Snoopy, Hello Kitty, or Tweety Bird on it? None, honestly. Perhaps like, a gothic Hello Kitty. Of all the states you have been to, which one did you have the best experiences? Putting aside the AWFUL heat and humidity, I probably had the best time in Florida. I loved all the palm trees, seeing so many lizards on my grandma's patio, and going to Disney World was a blast. I liked that swimming pools were always warm, too. Have you ever had a crush on someone “too young” for you? No. Do you regret losing your virginity to who you lost it to? No. I was madly in love with him, so no regrets on that. If your boyfriend ever hit you, would you dump him? HA, BYYYYEEEEEEEEE MOTHERFUCKER. ZERO hesitation. Did the one person who hurt you most in your life apologize? He did, but I honestly don't know if he meant it. Is there anything you want to say to someone? It'll probably go unsaid for the rest of my life. If they were to televise a live execution, would you watch it? Yikes, hard pass. If you could be the president of the USA, would you be willing to do it? Noooo thank you. Did you wake up in the middle of the night? I always do. Does your animal sleep with you? My cat does. Venus obviously sleeps in her terrarium, but she is in my room. Last color you dyed your hair? Red. Will you keep your last name when you get married? Very unlikely. I don't like my last name. What are you looking forward to? Hearing back again from the woman whose wedding I shot literally two years ago. I thought she ghosted me, but she messaged me the other day about seeing the pictures again and going through them to actually buy some. I don't know why the hell it took her two years, but whatever, I guess? I spent two whole hours resizing the files and re-adding the preview watermark (I deleted the OneDrive folder for space forever ago, but I have the files still), so I hate to sound like an ass, but she better buy something. Between sweating my ass off on location when I shot the wedding, editing those 100+ pictures two years ago, and now re-doing the previews, I have invested so much goddamn time into them that yeah, I think I have the right to be pretty damn salty if I don't hear back from her again. If your significant other cut sex out of your relationship for any reason, what would you do? It'd be whatever. I mean sure, that sort of intimacy is a very special part of serious romantic relationships to me, but I can live without it pretty easily. What was the last thing you said out loud? "Thank you for dinner" to my mom. She brought home Hardee's. Who are your godparents? I don't believe I have any. Do you like Gushers? omggggg yes Can you touch your nose with your tongue? No. Is there a particular sport you follow on a regular basis? Nope. Are you waiting for something to arrive in the mail? No. Think of the last film you watched. Who was your favourite character? Uhhhh what was it... The Shining, I think? I didn't really develop a favorite. Do you have a friend whose name starts with ‘L’? Describe him/her. Lisa. <3 She's one of my WoW friends. She'll talk your ear off, but I don't really mind. She is SO sweet and caring for other people and loves to cook. She recently had triplets, and seeing as she had a son only months before accidentally getting pregnant with the triplets, she's obviously been MEGA busy so we haven't talked much lately. When you’re being kissed do you like it when they hold your face? Yeah, but not too early on. Doing that has a promise of seriousness and passion in it to me, and it would probably weird me out if that happened too soon. Last thing that made you cry? My health. Would you ever consider getting a piercing in your septum? Nah. I don't think it would look good on me. Do you enjoy being outdoors? If it's cool outside and I have a place to sit when I want to, yeah. Do people tell you that you have an accent? Only sometimes. It's definitely not as bad as your average Southerner, though. Do you enjoy watching fireworks on the 4th of July? Ha, what nice timing. I think they're very pretty, but I believe I went over in a recent survey how I don't encourage their usage in consideration of veterans with PTSD as well as being conscious of animals and the absolute terror it can cause for them. What’re some unspeakable subjects for you? So my sister is a children's social worker, and she shares a LOT of stories with Mom (and me, if I'm present) that I can't listen to. The ones that involve pedophilia and/or rape, especially from the child's very own parent(s), I just cannot listen to. Period. It's so fucking repulsive and just unimaginable to me how even a monster of a human can commit something THAT goddamn vile. What’s your opinion of root beer? I'm not a big fan. I mean I can tolerate drinking some of it, but I don't really *enjoy* it. Have you ever seen The Breakfast Club, and what’s your opinion of it? I have, and I didn't get the appeal at all. Did you have a Furby when you were younger? Oh god, I did. Those things are so creepy. If you had a baby boy, what would you name him? Damien, most likely.

#survey #surveys #random questions #lyrics: ''the ordinary world'' by the hit house

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hopesbarnes · 5 years ago

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Wildest Dreams

Based on the song Wildest Dreams by Taylor Swift.

Summary: Everyone said he was a bad guy, that he broke hearts. But maybe they were wrong about him.

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Warnings: Curse words, SMUT, angst, fluff

A/N: I should be working on the two series I have right now, but I was inspired and this happened...

Everybody gave warnings. Said he broke hearts and left girls dizzy and confused. Your sister recited stories heard around town.

“I heard he got Dot pregnant, that’s why she left,” she stated over ice cream when he was spotted getting off his bike one day. He looked like the stereotypical bad guy. Leather jacket and ripped oil-stained jeans. Hair sticking up in every which direction, and a smirk on his lips.

“Based on what?” you asked snippily.

“Someone saw them in a car together headed out of town, and nobody saw her since then,” she replied half paying attention. You licked your ice cream and ignored her gossip. It was never anything real, just silly rumors that the girls spread.

She started another round of bullshit tales but having enough you announced you were going on a walk. Throwing out the finished ice cream, you secured your purse and walked around the building towards the park a mile or two away. Around the back of the building, he was in view again, a cigarette in hand and a phone in the other.

“Did ya do it on purpose?” you asked before pausing to recognize the words were spoken aloud.

“Do what?” He asked laughing. Realizing a hole was dug you continued on.

“This!” you said motioning to him. “The whole stereotype looks, it’s almost as if you’re asking for those rumors to be spread.” He was hysterical now. His laugh filled the entire alleyway and giggles fell from your lips in response.

“I guess I am a stereotype! Never really looked at it that way. The bike I just like, put it together myself. I wear the jacket as protection when I’m riding.” he said.

“Mechanic huh? That explains the oil on your jeans. The smoking though, I bet you did that to keep up with the image?”

“Definitely. Been wanting to stop, but how will they know I’m the bad boy without it.” A smile crept across your face at the joke.

“I’m Y/N.”

“Bucky,” he responded returning the smile.

“I was going to the park, wanna join?”

“Sure,” he replied stubbing out the smoke and following. “Ya know,” he said. “You look exactly like the stereotypical good girl the bad boy corrupts,” he stated motioning towards your outfit. Dressed in skinny jeans and a pink sweater with a collar sticking out paired with light pink vans it was true.

“Who’s to say I’m not already corrupted and just hiding it?” you asked walking beside him. He smiled and looked down and followed along to the park. The first of many dates.

He said, "Let's get out of this town

Drive out of this city, away from the crowds"

I thought, "Heaven can't help me now"

Nothing lasts forever

But this is gonna take me down

It only took a month for the whole town to catch on to the relationship. Every outing had someone whispering or pointing with snide comments. It didn’t matter that the ‘bad boy’ volunteered at the animal shelter. Or that he took his little sister to play dates. Or even that he had only been with one girl before you, a girl he didn’t get pregnant. A girl he helped go to rehab.

All anyone saw was his image, and from that, they gave him the reputation of a drug runner who slept with countless girls and ditched them the next day. Everyone thought he was ruining you, and it would end in hurt.

The talking was beginning to get to you, and he could tell. Anxiety across your face at the diner and barely talking on the phone that night. He decided a day away from the small town would help. He borrowed his friend’s SUV and drove to your house early the next day, with his little sister Becca in back. He texted announcing his arrival.

“Hey!” you greeted outside. A quick kiss was shared before greeting his sister. “Hey to you too miss Becca,” she said hi and unbuckled to give a hug.

“I know this place is getting to you, so Becs and I decided we’d go to the drive-in movie theater two towns over. Spend a day exploring and watching a movie tonight,” he said nervously.

“Thank you! I’d love to spend a day with my Barnes!” you exclaimed putting your bag in the back and climbing in the front. The drive took an hour and you and Becca talked about school. You loved Bucky’s little sister as your own and saw a lot of yourself in her. She was fierce and ignored what everyone said about her brother.

After arriving in the town, the three of you went to Brunch and ordered a mix of pancakes, eggs, bacon, and fruit to share. After eating you braided Becca’s hair and went window shopping. A few things were bought for the three of you, and things for your sister and mom along with Ms. Barnes.

Eventually, it was time for the movie and everyone piled into the back that was filled with blankets and pillows. Bucky bought popcorn and soda and agreed to watch the new Disney movie you and Becs begged to see.

As the movie went on, with you snuggled against your boyfriend your mind drifted. You hoped this relationship lasted. But even if it didn’t you knew it was worth whatever heartbreak you’d face.

He's so tall and handsome as hell

He's so bad, but he does it so well

I can see the end as it begins

My one condition is

A few more months passed, and with every day you grew more confident in yourself. Wearing the clothes you always wanted, and bright lipsticks. No longer staying quiet when things bothered you. You felt alive. It was all thanks to Bucky. He encouraged self-expression and encompassed you in compassion.

But it was getting hard. The whispers continued and the rumors were horrible.

“I heard he forces her to wear those outfits.”

“She’s only with him because nobody else wanted her.”

“He’ll get bored with her eventually.”

It was horrible. No matter how hard you tried to ignore them, their words filled your head and they would never understand him the way you did. Your sister kept questioning your decision to be with him, and it felt like the world turned against you. The fair had come to town and Bucky suggested a date. It was your favorite thing to do in Fall, and finally, there was someone to share it with.

He picked you up on the motorcycle, which had quickly become one of your favorite things. Starting with the rides you bolted, him barely keeping up. Clinging to him on the Tilt-A-Whirl and giggling as the Scrambler whipped around, it was so much fun. You went on a few more rides before going to the Ferris Wheel. Kissing at the top and it felt like you were in a teen rom-com movie. It was perfect. But like all things, something got in the way.

You couldn’t decide between funnel cake or cotton candy and Bucky suggested to get both. You split up to get the treats and got in line for the funnel cake. A woman a few years older stood in front of you. She turned to see you then looked forward again. She did it again before speaking.

“I can help if you need. You don’t have to stay with him,” she said calmly.

“What?” you asked confused. Was she talking to you?

“You don’t need to stay in a bad relationship. I know it’s hard being on your own. But you don’t have to rely on him,” she continued.

“Why- what? I’m in a great relationship. I don’t wanna leave him. He makes me happy,” you said starting to get irritated.

“I just want to help. Nobody deserves an abusive relationship,” she said reaching out to put her hand on your shoulder.

You flinched back, “Please don’t touch me. I don’t know you. I’m not in an abusive relationship, I don’t know where you heard that but it isn’t true.”

Deciding it wasn’t worth the snack you left the line and bolted for a place to cry without anyone seeing. Everyone in this town judged your relationship and that was hard enough. But now they thought he was hurting you? It was ridiculous.

You found a tree a few feet away that was hidden and slumped down. All the stares and snickers finally got to you. The tears started falling, and you let out everything you have been holding in these past months. You had makeup running down your face, and dirt-stained your clothes but you couldn’t seem to care.

It took Bucky 15 minutes to find you. He looked frantic, eyes panicked holding long-forgotten baby blue cotton candy.

“I-uh went to meet you and you were gone. I freaked. Are you crying? Fuck. What’s wrong baby girl?” He said rushing to sit beside you. You choked out what happened and leaned your head against his chest.

“Fucking hell, I can’t believe she said that. I hate this town so much,” he whispered rubbing your hand. You leaned closer to him, not knowing how much longer you could take the gossip.

Say you'll remember me

Standing in a nice dress

Staring at the sunset, babe

Red lips and rosy cheeks

Say you'll see me again

Even if it's just in your

Wildest dreams, ah-aah, haa

Two more months passed. You stopped going out to crowded places for dates. It just wasn’t worth it. Your phone chimed pulling you from your thoughts.

Bucky: Wear a nice dress, meet outside in an hour.

You looked at your phone confused, but abided and dressed in a flowy maxi dress. You put on red lipstick and finished getting ready. Before long you got a text telling you he was here.

Bucky was dressed in a button-down, his hair slicked back and he was grinning against the SUV he borrowed again. You’ve never seen him this nice, he looked absolutely sinful like this. You smiled to yourself, knowing he was all yours.

“You look… wow,” he said stunned. “I have so many words but none of them are appropriate.”

You giggled, “You’re one to talk! Who knew you could clean up so nice.” He smiled and shook his head bashfully.

“C’mon. God a good date to take my girl on,” he said proudly. He opened up the passenger door for you and you climbed in. Immediately, you went to change the music. He playfully pushed your hand away when he got in.

Anytime music was on it became a game. Him wanting something like AC/DC, and you wanting something more like Lana Del Rey. There were a few rounds of back and forth, but he eventually gave in and handed over the AUX cord. You leaned over, kissed his cheek and put on “Blue Jeans”. He laced his hand in yours and you sang along to the song.

You drove for some time before reaching a cliff-like area that overlooked the town. It was late afternoon, and he reached into the trunk and pulled out a blanket and basket.

“We deserve a fancy picnic, and this way it’s just us,” he said shyly.

“I love it,” you said kissing him.

The picnic went perfectly, and it was nice to be wrapped in a Bucky bubble for some time. But you knew it had to end eventually. Nothing good lasts.

As the sun set, you turned to him.

“If this burns to the ground. If they end up splitting us apart promise me one thing,” you said somberly.

“We’re not going to break up, not now. Not later,” he said stubbornly.

“Bucky,” you pleaded.

“Fine.”

“Remember me like this, dressed pretty and in love with you. With sunset in the background, and my lipstick smeared from your kisses.”

“You love me?” he said barely whispering.

“Yes, you goof. Now kiss me, my love.”

I said, "No one has to know what we do"

His hands are in my hair, his clothes are in my room

And his voice is a familiar sound

Nothing lasts forever

But this is gettin' good now

Despite being together for 8 months, you still hadn’t been together. Your last boyfriend tried to pressure you and it gave you a bad taste in your mouth when you even thought of sex. So you decided to wait. Wait until you found a guy who loved you for you, not who they wanted you to be. And you found him. He’d been a saint. Never brought up going further, and always asked when he put his hands on your legs or waist. He was the epitome of a gentleman, and you knew you wanted it to be him.

You had spent the day babysitting Becs with him. Watching Disney movies, making blanket forts, and baking a lopsided cake. It felt so domestic, and you could see it now. Years later with mini versions of him running around and a wedding ring on your finger.

You were back in his apartment now, and you told him you wanted him. He asked a thousand times if you were sure before moving you into his lap.

“Baby I love you, and if you want to stop at any time just let me know,” he whispered against your skin.

“Bucky, dear. Lovely boy. Stop trying to get me to stop, I want you. Just touch me for Christ’s sake!” you whined and moved his hands to your waist. He laughed, and the sound filled the room and crowded your head. God, you could get used to it.

He stood up and you wrapped your legs around his body. He guided you to his room and put you down long enough to remove his shirt and yours.

“Fuck you’re hot.” he groaned. “Know I should probably call you beautiful and compare you to a flower, but all’s I got is that.” Before you could giggle he had his lips pressed against your neck and a moan slipped out. He slipped his arms around your back and undid your bra, letting it fall to the floor. He took his time mapping out your skin and placing kisses across your chest.

You undid his jeans and pushed them down with shaky hands, and he helped steady them when you took your skirt off too. You slipped your panties down, leaving only his boxers separating you.

He moved you onto the bed and kissed down your body. He nipped gently at your thigh and parted them. You grabbed a hold of his hair and he looked up at you and winked. Before you could process that he had licked you where you needed it most. A moan fell from your lips and he continued the motion a few times. Then he added a finger and sucked on your clit making you see stars. Before long you came, feeling weightless in his arms and he smiled at the sight of you coming undone on his tongue.

“That was the best thing I have ever seen. Hope you’re cool with me doing that like all the time,” he said meeting your lips in a passionate kiss.

“Not gonna complain about that,” you answered.

You tugged his boxers down and he grabbed a condom from the night table and put in on. He aligned your bodies and wordlessly asked if you were ready. When you nodded he slowly pushed in, and you felt every vein and inch of him. It was a stretch, but an inviting one. He stilled and peppered kisses across your skin once he was fully inside you.

“Baby,” you moaned. “Move.”

He wasted no time following your request and started to thrust in at a slow steady movement. You kissed him breathlessly and cherished the feeling of having him completely. It felt right having him with you, no matter what anyone thought. He made you feel complete and loved for the first time.

His breaths got shorter and he let out a deep moan letting you know he was close. You were right behind him and felt another orgasm approaching. Then as if in sync with one another, you both tipped over the edge at the same time and collapsed on the bed in a symphony of pants.

“That was amazing,” you said breathlessly.

“Agreed, now snuggle with me,” he said and pulled you close.

You'll see me in hindsight, tangled up with you all night

Burnin' it down

Someday when you leave me, I'd bet these memories

Follow you around

“Isn’t it time you find a real job and forget this silly dream?” Your mother said one day when you got home from your job at the coffee shop. It didn’t pay much, but it did give experience. You wanted to open your own store. It was a pipe dream, but it was your pipe dream. Your mother would rather you work for her at her accounting firm.

“It is a real job. I enjoy it quite a lot.” You countered.

“Between that job and that troublesome boy you’re going nowhere in life y/n! You dress like a hooker and stay out late all the time. He’s a bad influence on you, and you need to be more like your sister.” It always came down to her, even though she was a gossip she was married and a housewife.

“Leave Bucky out of this! I’m sorry I don’t want to be a Stepford Wife like her.” you huffed. “I’ll be back later I need some air.”

With that, you rushed out of the house and drove towards the auto shop Bucky managed. He would be at work right now, but you didn’t even care. Just being close to him would be enough for now.

When you got there he was fixing an engine in a beat-up car. His eyes lit up when he saw you and he patted his hands on his jeans before pulling you in for a hug.

“Baby girl, what’s wrong?” he said seeing your tear-filled eyes.

“Just my mom. It’s nothing. I just needed to see you, remind me of the only good thing in this town.”

“I gotta work on this car, but I have lunch in an hour. You can wait in my office if you want. Or just pull up a chair and watch me work?”

You nodded and pulled up a chair near the toolbox. You watched him work and listened to his rock music, and before long he was finishing up and ordering Chinese food for lunch. Over lunch, he spoke.

“We could leave.”

“What?” you asked confused.

“We could go. Find a new town, you could open a cafe and I could find a shop to run. I got a friend in New York, bet he’d give me a job.”

“We can’t leave. Our lives are here, your family is here! I’ve never left, I wouldn’t know anyone.”

He frowned for a second, “Ma’s been wanting to move for some time. We’re both miserable here. It would be a fresh start, we deserve one.”

You thought it over, leaving would be good. This place made you feel worthless.

“Okay,” you answered him.

“Okay!” he exclaimed. He dropped his fork and rounded the table to spin you around.

“Let’s start our lives together,” you said finally hopeful for the future.

“Let’s do it,” he said in agreement.

#bucky x reader #marvel #bucky barnes #bucky x reader smut #bucky x reader fluff #wildest dreams #song fic

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dammitadolfnomorecake · 4 years ago

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Once Bitten, Twice Stupid prt.14

Hunk drove a very hyper Pidge home. Letting her mix flavours had been a bad idea, Pidge talking the whole drive home so fast that Lance was surprised she was managing to drink her slushies in between her words. Promising his best buddy he’d fill him in the following morning, Lance felt a little awkward as he let him and Keith into his empty house. His beloved bronco wasn’t back yet, Shiro extremely lucky Lance didn’t have his phone number to hound him about taking care of his baby girl. Hovering at the base of the stairs, both men stood their awkwardly. Lance feeling weird as he knew he needed to say something, but wasn’t sure what that something was. Playing it safe, he opted for an apology. Keith’s life had been thrown in turmoil, just like Lance’s, and the man clearly missed his brother, something Lance couldn’t make better for him. Maybe if they’d met when in college, he and Keith could have been friends. Keith’s anger clearly stemmed from trauma, his repeated fixation on thinking he’d been turned very clearly said that. Lance had the feeling is had something to do with whatever happened to Shiro’s partner, but he wasn’t in the position to pry.

“Hey. I’m sorry we dragged you out. I know I was kind of a pushy, and you can probably put that down to my people pleasing personality, but I hope some part of tonight was enjoyable. It’s no easy, or fun, being on the outside, but Hunk and Pidge are good people. I’m not just using them to blend in, it was never like that. They’re both special to me. I know we’re like strangers and it’s awkward as hell living together, but I think after tonight I like you a little more than I did. I don’t think you’re a fundamentally bad person, and I’m not going to push you to talk to me. I guess what I want to say is, that I swear on Blue I’m not in the habit of hurting people. That doesn’t mean much coming from a vampire, because honestly, most of us are huuuuuuge douche canoes. But as long as you’re under my roof, I’m going to treat you like an actual human being, and not as “Keith the hunter”. I don’t know how many times I can apologise for being what I am, but I’m too much of a coward to off myself. I thinking part of my emotional growth was stunted from being turned... and, well, yeah. I’ll let you head to bed or whatever. If you can’t sleep, help yourself to whatever. I would prefer you stay out of my office for the sake of my clients, but I know you can get in there anyway... yeah... anyway, I’m headed up to bed... I’ll see you in the morning”

Lance’s undead heart leapt when Keith opened his mouth, only to fall when Keith closed his mouth and looked away. He’d probably said too much again. He was trying so damn hard, and he wasn’t exactly sure why it even mattered. Until Shiro came back, both he and Keith were left in limbo... Lance still kind of hoped that Shiro leaving Keith with him meant the older hunter wasn’t about to come for his head in the middle of the night, and that some time apart would make it easy for Shiro to see his brother was very much the human idiot he’d always been.

“How old are you?”

Lance nearly dropped the remnants of his slushy in surprise. Strawberry hadn’t been the smartest choice. Pidge had teased him about looking like a vampire for having red around his lips, and all over his teeth. Honesty was best when dealing with people in trauma

“I’m 44. In human years”

“Okay”

That was it. The limit of Keith’s vocabulary for the night. The hunter trudging towards his room, leaving Lance to walk up the stairs to his own. Stripping down and changing for bed, Blue let out a rumbled purr as she came running into his room and leapt up onto his bed to wait for him. He really must look like the lamest vampire Keith had ever met. Just a lonely vampire and his cat, living in the middle of nowhere. It was a good thing Lance didn’t mind being lame.

Lance’s dreams were horrible. He’d woken half a dozen times unable to escape the feelings flowing through his body. His teeth hurt, cutting into his lip as he huddled against his bedhead. He felt flushed with fever, arm aching as if he’d broken it. The skin had healed over the wound, but it itched so badly Lance wanted to scratch until it bled. Shivering and sick, he’d fallen back to sleep around dawn, waking with a throat feeling as though clogged with his death soil. Blue hadn’t left him, though that might not have been her choice given the door to his bedroom was closed, instead of slightly open so Blue could come and go as she pleased.

Showering only made Lance feel worse, he couldn’t get the temperature to cooperate and nearly tore the tap handle off it’s fitting trying. He ended up feeling like soggy cardboard, all wet and useless, as he towelled off and peered in the least cracked slither of mirror left. Today was definitely a day for make up. No amount of blood was going to bring back colour into his dulled skin. Being the youngest, he’d spent many a time as his older sister Rachel’s model. Mami had beaten her arse red on more than one occasion when Rachel had tried using nail polish as eyeshadow... his sister not the most skilled person to be giving anyone a make over, but his other sister Veronica had grown out of all of that kind of thing by the time Rachel had gotten old enough to be right into all frilly girly things, leaving Lance to be her victim repeatedly. After he’d turned, all of that had stopped. Initially his Papi would gently send everyone away from him, until his Mami took him by the ear and reminded him that though different, Lance was still their baby boy. When he’d been older his Papi apologised, but he never knew how good a vampire‘s memory was, that those days still stayed with Lance no matter how many years had passed. Today was not the day to be looking like a movie extra in a budget film, his whole face felt choked as he smeared his foundation on, before giving his lips a quick coat of waterproof lipstick, though humans had never really got the recipe for that right. Continuing his morning routine, he dressed as nicely as he could shirt wise, then opted for sweats on the bottom. It wasn’t like his conference call was going to be worried about his lack of proper attire when his shirt looked professional enough.

Coming downstairs, Lance darted through to his office, teeth aching all over again as he opened a bag of blood, messily drinking down the contents like he hadn’t been fed for days. Coran had said to expect a low, but this was nearing ridiculous. He wasn’t in any fit condition to entertain Keith with half hearted fighting, let alone provide legal representation to the clients trusting him in. Spilling blood across his laptop came as the final straw, Lance sinking to the floor where he balled himself under his desk, to scared to call Coran, and too scared to sit up and human. Instead he remained hidden there until his laptop started to ring, letting him know he’d spent a good three hours wallowing rather pathetically.

Before the family court, the matter took all of 15 minutes. Lance speaking smoothly, as he bounced his left leg, hands digging into his sweats hard enough that his nails had ripped through. Things would have been different if he’d known he could jump in his car and straight up to Platt, instead of this horrible feeling like he was a prisoner in his own home. The little voice in his head mocked him for not being able to pick up his phone and call Coran, paranoid over how Keith would act if Coran came running because he couldn’t keep his shit together. He didn’t want to die. Not while his Mami still lived. He didn’t want to break her heart, or prove the rest of his siblings right. He didn’t want Coran to be hurt, not that he thought Keith had the power to take Coran down... it was just... sometimes words left a wound that even the deepest blade was left dull in comparison. Keith was lashing out, hitting that target without aiming, like being caught in a spray of bullets. Coran didn’t deserve that with all the good for Lance and those like him. For Keith’s sake, Lance needed to keep all this shit secret. The hunter had signed up for his head, not his sob story.

Leaving the office, Lance headed into the kitchen. Keith at the kitchen bench trying to figure out the coffee machine. Dropping the pod in his hands, the hunter picked it back up without saying anything, but he didn’t need to. Lance knew how weak and pathetic he was, he could see it reflected in Keith’s brilliant eyes. Wordlessly he went to the cupboard, pulling out a can of wet food for Blue, Keith taking half a step away from him as he did. It stung. The not so covert action rubbed him the wrong way, not that he’d say so out loud. Pulling the ring tab back, Lance stubbed his toe on the counter as he reached for Blue’s dish. The act bringing tears to his eyes as he finally broke. Sinking down to the floor, he was showing Keith the most shameful side of him that he humanly could.

“Do you take sugar in your coffee?”

The question hung in the air, Lance’s face hidden behind his hands as he wept.

“Lance, do you take sugar in your coffee?”

Keith had said his name. Without any malice or prompting... he didn’t understand why

“I take three usually”

Why was Keith talking to him?

“Shiro says it too many, but I like three. You seem more like a one person”

“A one person”. Keith, who didn’t even think of him as human, was there in his kitchen calling him a person

“Am I really so useless that you’re wasting time on me?”

Lance regretted the harsh tone in his words. Wiping at his teary eyes, he looked up at the hunter to find him looking down on him

“Well you’re practically an animal, but... I think maybe I don’t hate you as much as I should”

Laughter bubbled up, Lance not blaming Keith for stepping back as his tears turned to laughter

“You can go fuck yourself if you’re going to be like that”

Lance’s laughter sobered, the vampire sniffling loudly. Okay. Keith was acting “Keithy” again, he could understand that

“One. Two if Pidge and Hunk are here”

Keith took a moment before a silent “oh” of realisation formed on his lips, turning back to the coffee machine as he tried to fit the pod in properly

“I... I have nightmares too”

Lance cringed. Asleep he hadn’t been able to consciously hold back. Keith had probably heard him screaming the house down, now taking pity on his undead arse

“I heard you calling for someone... friends or something. You we’re really fucking loud”

“I’m sorry”

“Who were they?”

“People who don’t matter”

They didn’t matter but that didn’t mean they weren’t always on his mind

“Nyma and Rolo?”

Lance shuddered at their names. They’d parted so long ago that it didn’t feel fair he should be forced to remember them

“People you don’t want to meet”

“I gathered from your screams. Are they the ones who turned you? Or were they friends?”

“I don’t want to talk about it”

“You say vampires never forget, does that mean you remember what happened with them?”

Lance shook his head quickly

“I don’t want to talk about it”

“So they sired you?”

Lance put his hands over his ears

“Shut up”

“If they did...”

“Shut up! Just shut the fuck up!”

Screaming in anger, Lance hated Keith in that moment for pushing. Nyma and Rolo had been his friends. The keyword being “had”. He was allowed to have things he didn’t want to talk about. Those two were in his past, not is future. Letting his head dropped back, it smacked against the cupboard without enough force to be satisfying. He wanted to hurt. He wanted to break something. He wanted to tear himself out of his own skin. Nudged with Keith’s foot, he shot a look of rage up at Keith, the hunter holding out a cup of coffee

“Drink this. Shiro said he won’t be back for a while, but he was sending someone out to watch over you until he could be”

“I don’t need watching over”

Taking the coffee cup, the handle snapped before Keith had let go completely. Pulling the mug back, the hunter cut his hand on the protruding porcelain at the bottom. Hit by the smell of Keith’s blood, Lance felt all his senses come alive with the need to feed. Both their eyes widened as they met, both in fear over the situation. Keith feared Lance was about to maul him, as Lance feared how good Keith’s blood smelt.

Lance did the only thing he could do. He ran. Keith left staring as he bolted from the kitchen, his hand snapping through the bottom of the staircase railing as the grabbed it to use his momentum to get up his stairs just that little bit faster, tripping in his rush, but pushing himself on faster in the same heartbeat. Reaching his room, he slammed the door behind him, dragging his dresser over to barricade himself in. He hadn’t needed his phone in the office, so left it up on its charge station. Snatching up the device, he copped a glance of his reflection, disgusted at the sight of himself. His hands shook as he unlocked the device, calling the only number he could, Coran. With first ring, he found he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t run to Coran for help. He couldn’t tell him there was something still wrong with him. His phone thrown in disgust where the force shattered the device on impact, and dented the floorboard it’d hit. He didn’t know what to do, but he did know he was a mistake.

#once bitten twice stupid #ashratherose

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knuffled · 5 years ago

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discipline & punish - chapter 3

no smut in this chapter, but i think there will be in the next chapter. if you enjoyed the chapter, i would appreciate it if you reblogged! i do read all the tags and they bring me great joy.

here’s the ao3 link

chapter three - the greater good

Annabeth woke to the sound of falling rain pattering against a window pane, punctuated intermittently by a shrill, mechanical beeping noise, and an aching pain in her side that was somehow both dull and sharp at the same time. When she opened her eyes, the fluorescent light above her bed nearly blinded her, but when she raised her hand to shield them from the glare, she noticed that her hand was a lot heavier than normal. Her entire body pulsed with pain, making the task of sitting up excruciating, but she managed it all the same and blearily took in her surroundings.

Once she regained some semblance of clarity, her lips curled downwards when she saw the IV drip running down the length of her right arm. Her eyes fell to the heart rate monitor by the window before moving to the bedside table to her right where someone had left a bouquet of flowers with a get-well card taped to the plastic. It was hard to make out the handwriting scrawled across the card even though she was sitting right beside it.

Whatever they had sedated her with made it near impossible to form a coherent thought. To make matters worse, her sensitivity had heightened to an uncomfortable degree. On top of the lights and the awful noise the monitor made every few seconds, someone had taken the liberty of removing her clothes and slipping her into a hospital gown, and the fabric felt starchy and uncomfortable against her bare skin. Even the sterile quality of the air made it painful to inhale.

The pain in her sides didn’t help either. She tentatively probed the affected area with her free hand and inhaled sharply when a horrible piercing pain shot through her. The pain was so vivid, in contrast to how languid everything else was, that it jolted her memory. It felt like Percy’s sword was stabbing her at that very moment. The mere thought of him made her muscles tense immediately.

If she was in the hospital, who was handling him? What sort of chaos was he causing without her there to stop him? It was hard to tell with the heavy downpour outside, but it seemed that New Athens wasn’t burning to the ground, at the very least.

She screwed her eyes shut and took a deep breath. It was useless to worry about the camp when she was in such critical condition. Mentally, she replayed the fight with Percy and tried to fathom how she could have possibly thought intentionally getting stabbed was a good idea, but no answer made itself clear to her.

The clock hanging above the door frame to her left showed that it was early in the evening. With great effort, she pulled the bouquet towards her and examined the card on the front. It was Piper’s messy handwriting informing her that she had dropped by the visit when Annabeth had been asleep before wishing her a speedy recovery and promising to visit her again soon.

Seeing her friend’s familiar handwriting brought a small smile to her face, but her eyelids persistently continued to droop. It was hard to say if it was because of the injuries or all the painkillers flooding through her veins that made her feel so tired even though she had only been awake for a few minutes at best, but already sleep beckoned to her.

She was about to sink back into the bed when there was a commotion outside her door. It sounded like two people were arguing, but she couldn’t make out what was being said. However, only seconds later, the door burst open and a blonde man strode into the room, a dark look on his face, even as an orderly feebly tried to stop him.

Annabeth blinked owlishly and said, “You don’t look very happy to see me, Jason.”

“Gods, look at you. I heard what happened, but I didn’t believe it until now,” Jason said, clenching his jaw. “What were you thinking, Annabeth?”

“Nice to see you too.”

For an instant, Jason’s lips quirked upwards before setting into a hard line again. “This is no time for jokes. You almost died, Annabeth. Will told me that if you had been brought to the hospital even five minutes later, you would’ve been beyond saving.”

Annabeth sighed and said, “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I don’t want you to say anything. I just need you to understand that what you did was very stupid, and I would like it if you didn’t do something like that again,” Jason said.

Despite her heavy injuries, Annabeth found herself glaring at him. “I did what I thought was best. There was a threat, and I dealt with it. That’s all there is to it. Doing nothing would’ve been even more dangerous,” she snapped.

“You can’t mean to tell me there was no better way,” Jason said, frowning.

“Like I said,” Annabeth repeated. “I did what I thought was best.”

Jason stared at her for a while before deflating in front of her. Annabeth felt her heart squeeze in her chest at the look of unabashed concern on his face and instantly felt bad for being so glib with him when he was only worried about her.

Annabeth looked to the orderly who was still hanging awkwardly in between the door-frame and said, “We’re fine. You can leave us.”

The orderly looked between her and Jason before nodding tentatively and leaving. Once he was gone, Jason shot her a look of gratitude before sinking into one of the chairs by the window, cupping his face with his hands. There was a dull roar of thunder and the wind howled against the windows, making the entire building creak in protest.

After a while, Jason exhaled heavily and whispered, “I’m glad you’re okay.”

She stared at her hands, resting on her lap, and mumbled, “Thanks. Sorry for being so bitchy. I’m still really out of it.”

Jason snorted and ran his fingers through his hair. “That’s probably because you’re shot full of enough painkillers to tranquilize a fucking horse.”

Annabeth barked a laugh and said, “Pretty sure that would kill me.”

He studied her face for a moment before giving her a significant look. “You look like shit, by the way,” he said.

“Okay, that was uncalled for.”

“He got you real good, didn’t he?” Jason said, a hint of admiration in his voice. “Never seen you so bruised up before. Must’ve been a hell of a fight.”

A part of her wanted to protest that it was because she had been so out of practice, but, although she would never admit it out loud, Annabeth wasn’t sure she would’ve been able to win if she had been at her best anyways.

“It was,” she admitted quietly.

“I know you’re probably worried about him, but you can rest easy. At least for now. He’s being treated here at the hospital too, although I’ve been told his injuries aren’t nearly as bad as yours. Apparently, he’s been fairly well behaved so far, but I’m not sure how long that’ll last. I can’t stay for long – they need me in New Rome in a week – but I will keep an eye on him until you recover,” Jason explained.

Annabeth breathed a sigh of relief and sank back farther into her bed. “That’s good news,” she said. “Thanks for doing that.”

“So what happened exactly? I haven’t been able to get a straight answer from anyone. Although, I suspect that that’s because they don’t have a clue about what happened either,” Jason said, the hint of an accusation creeping into his voice.

“I know, I know, I should’ve told someone about what was going on, but there was a lot on my mind, so it didn’t really occur to me at the time,” Annabeth said, trying her best to sound apologetic.

Jason nodded, seemingly satisfied with her display of penitence, and leaned back in his seat while he listened to Annabeth relate what had happened since Percy’s arrival at camp. There were parts where he raised his eyebrows and parts where he clenched his jaw, but he didn’t otherwise interrupt her, something she was grateful for. More than anyone else she knew, Jason had the rare capacity to listen to people. It was what made him so good at his job as New Athens’s ambassador to New Rome.

When she finished, he shook his head and said, “I came to New Rome a few days after Percy was driven out of the city, and let me tell you: it was not pretty, Annabeth. It was utter carnage there. Took them nearly two months to fix all the property damage, not mention all the people that he seriously hurt or killed.”

When she was silent, he leaned forward, his hands clasped in his lap, and said gently, “Look, I know you beat him and everything, but from what I’m hearing, it sounded like you were lucky not to get killed. I’m not sure that losing makes him any less of a threat. You haven’t seen the bodies he left behind in his wake in New Rome. He cannot stay here.”

Annabeth shifted in her seat and said, “I– I understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t think that he’s going to try anything.”

“What makes you so sure?” Jason demanded. “You said it yourself – he’s like a wild animal. How long do you think it’ll take before he decides to hurt someone?”

“I don’t know how to explain it, but I think he was trying to figure out where he fit into all this,” she said slowly.

When Jason raised an eyebrow, Annabeth said, “Like, I think he wanted to know where he fit into the pecking order. Since I beat him, he knows that there’s someone stronger than him, someone he has to listen to.”

“I get that you feel that way, but I still think it’s too risky to let him stay,” Jason said, his brow furrowed.

Annabeth made a sound of frustration and grit her teeth when her body screamed out in pain as she sat up straighter.

“He came from the Wolf House, right? Well, I’m not an expert or anything, but wolves live in packs, and packs have their own hierarchies. At the top, there’s an alpha that is in charge and then there are betas that obey the alpha,” Annabeth explained.

Jason frowned and said, “So the fact that he challenged you for the right to be the alpha and lost makes him a beta? You think that’ll be enough for him to listen to you?”

Annabeth shrugged and said, “I don’t know, but if he’s been living with wolves for the last eighteen years, then he’s gotta have picked up some of their behavior.”

Jason didn’t look convinced. “It’s a good guess, but it’s still a guess.”

When Annabeth was silent, Jason sat back in his seat and shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t get why you’re so hesitant about this. As Camp Director, your responsibility is towards all the citizens in New Athens. If there is even the slightest risk to their safety, you are obligated to eliminate it, despite your personal feelings. That’s the burden of leadership.”

Annabeth squirmed in her seat and played with her fingers, unable to think of a way to argue with what he had said.

“I also hope you realize that there are other consequences to letting him stay here too. Like, I can guarantee that Reyna and the Romans won’t sit quietly knowing he’s being sheltered here. They’ll take it as an insult, and it could risk undermining the peace and trust we’ve worked so hard to establish over the last five years,” he argued.

He was right - every point Jason had made was perfectly valid. Even two weeks ago, she would’ve also been vehemently opposed to the idea of letting someone like Percy into camp, but there was still something, some part of her that she couldn’t explain, that silently opposed the idea. As absurd as it was, making Percy leave camp felt wrong.

He had been kicked out of New Rome already. If she chose to exile him as well, then he wouldn’t have anywhere safe to turn to. Leaving him out on his own was basically a death sentence. Annabeth knew without a fraction of a doubt that Percy would draw monsters to him like flies to honey. Even as strong as he was, it would be impossible to survive an endless onslaught forever. At some point, tiredness would get to him and he would let his guard down and that would be more than enough to get him killed.

Keeping him at camp risked the lives of everyone else that lived there, and she couldn’t, given her responsibilities, prioritize the safety of one person over the collective, especially not when it could incur the wrath of New Rome, but at the same time, the image of her first encounter with Percy flashed in her mind. She recalled how haunted and tense and, frankly, how scared he had looked. Percy knew as well as she did that he couldn’t last out there on his own forever. There was a reason he’d traveled the length of the entire country to get here after all.

Furthermore, there was something significant about him, although she couldn’t say what it was. The timing and nature of arrival in conjunction with his raw power and mysterious past all screamed to her that he was important somehow, and if she was the only person he might be willing to listen to, then she had an obligation to keep watch over him.

Annabeth sighed and said, “I understand where you’re coming from, and you are totally right, but I can’t throw him out to the wolves, no pun intended. If we force him out of camp, it’s as good as executing him. I’m not willing to hand out a death sentence so easily.”

Jason scoffed and said, “Annabeth, he’s a criminal! He has hurt and killed people, innocent people. It’s not like you are being asked to turn your back on a normal demigod; he’s already proven beyond the benefit of a doubt that he is too dangerous to stay here. I can’t believe you, of all people, need to be convinced of that considering he nearly killed you!”

“You’re not wrong, but I can’t turn my back on someone who needs my help,” Annabeth said, shaking her head. “You know as well as I do what horrible things have been done in the name of the greater good. If I choose to forsake my sense of morality just because it’s convenient or the situation demands it, then having any morals at all becomes meaningless.”

Jason opened his mouth to say something more before he closed it and stared at her. “You really aren’t going to change your mind about this, are you?” he said quietly.

“I am not,” Annabeth affirmed.

“Even though this could blow up in your face spectacularly?”

“I’ll assume responsibility for whatever happens,” Annabeth said. “Besides, if I’m wrong, you can always tell me ‘I told you so’.”

“Well, let’s hope that day never comes,” Jason muttered.

“I’m a Daughter of Athena. We’re not usually known for being wrong,” Annabeth said, a half-smile on her face.

Jason shook his head in fond exasperation. “I’ve missed you, Annabeth,” he said.

“Me too,” she said, softening. “I take it Reyna is keeping you very busy.”

He breathed a laugh and said, “That’s a gross understatement. It feels like there’s always someone pissed off about something or another. I don’t know how she does it honestly.”

“She’s strong, stronger than either of us,” Annabeth admitted.

Jason nodded, but there was a look of concern on his face. “I worry about her,” he said, sighing. “She tries to do too much on her own. Has trouble depending on people. Like you, I guess.”

“I depend on you,” Annabeth noted.

His lips quirked into a smile. “Not nearly enough though.”

Annabeth cleared her throat and said, “How’s Piper?”

For the first time since he came into her hospital room, a genuine smile crossed Jason’s lips. “She’s good. We’re good. Busy, but we make time for each other,” he said.

“That’s good,” Annabeth said softly.

“Yeah,” Jason said, sounding distant.

“She dropped off some flowers earlier when I was asleep apparently,” Annabeth said, nodding to the bouquet on her bedside table.

“I’m surprised you could read her handwriting,” Jason said, grinning.

“I’ll be sure to let her know you said that,” Annabeth teased.

Jason laughed and looked like he was going to say something more when he stopped and fished his phone out of his pocket. He shot her an apologetic look and had a quick, hushed conversation. Once he was done, he stood up and pocketed his phone, looking suddenly weary.

“I have to get going,” Jason said with a wan smile.

“Duty calls?” Annabeth asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Duty calls,” he said, sighing. “Get better soon, Annabeth. I meant what I said earlier, you know? I’m here for you, so feel free to rely on me more.”

Annabeth nodded, her lips curled in a small smile, and watched as Jason made his way out the room, but he stopped between the doorway for a few seconds before turning to her.

“I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

He left before she could have a chance to respond, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

:::

A cold breeze blew against her face, rousing her in the middle of the night. Annabeth sat up groggily and looked to the window, which was now open even though she could’ve sworn it had been shut when she’d fallen asleep. It wasn’t raining anymore, but the wind was still strong, diffusing the earthy scent of petrichor into the sterile air of the hospital room. The curtains billowed, briefly obscuring the figure sitting on the window sill, staring at the moon. Annabeth froze when she realized that it was Percy and immediately scanned the room for anything she could use as a weapon.

“Relax,” Percy said, still not looking at her. “I’m not here to hurt you. Besides, if I wanted to, I wouldn’t have waited for you to wake up.”

“I wouldn’t put it past you to wait till I’m awake. Your moonlit silhouette suggests that you seem to have a penchant for theatrics,” Annabeth said, trying to keep her tone light.

“Theatrics, huh?” Percy snorted. “That’s amusing coming from someone who intentionally let herself get stabbed to win a fight.”

“I did what I had to,” Annabeth said carefully.

“You’re right. If you hadn’t taken such a risk, I would’ve killed you that night,” Percy said.

“I didn’t peg you for a sore loser.”

Finally, Percy turned to look at her and, as always, meeting his eyes froze her. “I know you’re not stupid enough to think you deserved to win that night. You’re lucky to still be alive, and you know it.”

There wasn’t any venom or heat in his voice. He spoke matter-of-factly, like he was simply relaying the truth of the matter, leaving no room for argument. Not that she could really disagree with him anyways. In her heart, she knew he was right.

“Is that why you’re here? To gloat?” Annabeth asked wearily.

He shook his head with a strangely nervous look on his face. When he spoke, he was unable to hide the quiver in his voice.

“Now that you’ve won, will you force me to leave?” Percy asked.

“That depends on you. Will you behave yourself if I let you stay?”

“I have no choice since I lost,” he said bitterly.

“I don’t know what you’re expecting, but I’m not going to like enslave you or something. I won’t ask anything of you that I don’t ask of anyone else,” Annabeth said. “You’re free to do as you wish as long as you don’t hurt anyone else.” Percy furrowed his brow, seemingly taken aback by her answer, and processed her statement in silence. “But I still have to obey you,” he said slowly.

“If that’s the way you see it.”

A stony look crossed his face as he pursed his lips, making her grit her teeth. Why couldn’t he see how far she was going for him?

“Look, everyone else around me wants you gone. They think you’re too dangerous to keep around. I am the only one in favor of letting you stay, so I need you to understand that I am not your enemy,” Annabeth said, trying not to sound as irritated as she felt.

Percy cocked his head to one side, looking thoroughly unconvinced, and tapped his chin with his index finger. “What if I just kill you right now?” he mused.

Annabeth gave him a cold smile, black rage rising in the pit of her stomach. “You can certainly try, you little shit,” she said, feeling strangely confident despite her injuries.

They stared at each other in silence for a while before Percy looked away and nodded tersely. “Very well,” he said. “I will do as you say.”

Immediately, the anger brewing inside her dissipated and left her feeling oddly pleased. “Good,” she said lightly. “Then there shouldn’t be a problem.”

There was a pause before Annabeth coughed surreptitiously and said, “Will that be all?”

Percy shook his head reluctantly, and when he spoke, there was noticeable frustration in his voice. “No, I also– I wanted to see you.”

Annabeth suppressed the urge to laugh once she saw the conflicted look on Percy’s face, and, despite the situation, found herself studying him instead.

Now that they weren’t trying to kill each other, she was finally able to properly look at him. Again, the word “beautiful” came to mind. His wavy, dark hair, long enough to tickle his eyebrows even after his haircut, was silky and smooth. The wind tousled his hospital gown, teasing her with a glimpse of his bare chest, taut muscle glistening like freshly fallen snow under the glow of the moon. The shocking, feral sea green of his eyes. Everything about him seemed to tempt her.

If only he wasn’t so young, she mused.

Annabeth caught herself and shook her head, trying to dispel that dangerous train of thought, afraid of where it might lead, and tried to focus. Even though he had said he didn’t come to hurt her, it would still be foolish to let her guard down.

She cleared her throat and asked, “And why is that?”

He looked down thoughtfully for a few moments before he said, “Because– Because we are the same. We both have monsters inside us. We would both rather die than submit to someone.”

His words struck a chord in her, confirming the vague sense of kinship she had felt since she’d first seen him. At the same time, she didn’t miss that there was also a tense contradiction in what he had said.

“Yet you yielded,” Annabeth said.

“Yet I yielded,” Percy agreed begrudgingly.

Annabeth frowned and tried to think of where he was going with this before a theory came to mind. “And you don’t know why?” she said.

He nodded, his eyes lighting up, and said, “I was prepared to die if I lost, but when the time came, I hesitated and I don’t know why.”

“It’s not strange to want to live,” Annabeth noted.

Percy withered in front of her and Annabeth couldn’t help feeling like she had just broken his trust. “I thought you of all people would understand,” he said quietly. “I guess I was wrong.”

“Wait! I do,” Annabeth said quickly, strangely desperate not to break whatever this newfound connection was between them. “I do understand.”

When he looked at her suspiciously, Annabeth licked her lips and continued, “The reason I won, the reason I took that crazy risk when we fought was because I couldn’t stand the idea of losing. I couldn’t tolerate the idea of submitting to another person. That was why I took your blade, knowing full well it might kill me, as long as it meant that I wouldn’t lose.”

Percy breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Yes, exactly. That’s why I can’t understand why I chose to surrender.”

There was a lull in the conversation as Annabeth reflected on what he had shared with her. Outside her window, a tree creaked in the wind. Eventually, Annabeth sighed and said, “I don’t really have answers for you.”

Percy shook his head and said, “I didn’t expect you to. I think I came here to confirm something.”

“Confirm what?” Annabeth asked, frowning.

The shadow of a smile crossed his lips, and Annabeth couldn’t help thinking it suited him better than the brooding look he usually wore.

“Confirm what I wonder?” Percy said lightly.

The breeze blowing into the room carried with it that familiar, haunting scent of cedar and elderberry. She probably had the opiates to thank for the fact that she had been unaware of the smell for so long despite Percy sitting so close to her. Still, Annabeth was surprised that it wasn’t overpowering her like she would have expected it to given his proximity. Instead, the sillage was present only ever so slightly, not so subtle that she wouldn’t have been able to detect it, but still weak enough to leave her wanting more.

Annabeth gripped her bedsheets hard as a sudden irresistible impulse to touch him washed over her. More than that, she wanted to possess him, to dominate him. Every time she encountered that scent of his, it unhinged her just a little bit more. Annabeth prided herself in her self-control, but she knew that she was dangerously close to losing it at the rate that things were going.

Images flashed to mind of him handcuffed to her bed frame, blindfolded and gagged and gorgeous, as she fucked him into the mattress hard, her hands wrapped around his porcelain throat. She subtly rubbed her thighs against each other as a flood of want washed over her. Annabeth bit her lip and tried frantically to think of a distraction, anything to dispel the image from her head, but the more she tried, the more it took root there.

This was dangerous.

Christ, he was only eighteen. He was six years younger than her, almost the same age as her step-brothers, but her body already burned with arousal. Annabeth couldn’t remember the last time she felt so turned on by someone who hadn’t even touched her. She forced her gaze away from him and cleared her throat.

“If that’s all you need from me, you should leave. I want to get some rest,” Annabeth said, much sharper than she intended, desperate for any excuse to get him away from her before she did something stupid.

“Of course,” Percy said, but the tone in his voice suggested he knew she was hiding something from him.

The intensity of the scent swelled for a moment and then, just like that, he was gone, and the scent with him. She stiffened for a moment before taking in deep lungfuls of air, part of her desperate to see if she could still smell him while the other part was relieved she couldn’t.

Annabeth couldn’t fall asleep for the rest of the night. The self-loathing bubbling in her stomach made it far too difficult to relax.

#knuffled fic #percabeth fic #percabeth #percabeth angst #PJO #percy jackson #annabeth chase #jason grace

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chickensarentcheap · 5 years ago

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Sanctuary - Chapter Two

Warnings: brief mention of child loss, depression, PTSD

Tagging: @valkyrie-of-the-light (I told you I’d give you more soft Tyler), @c-a-v-a-l-r-y, @alievans007

They work silently and diligently side by side; tearing up the wood planks of the old back deck in preparation for the new one they plan to build. Tyler had opted to take the first three days off after arriving home; no new or existing clients until he had a least seventy hours to spend with his family and to get all the shit done (or at least started) that he’d been putting off for months. The kid -he still calls him that, always having to remind himself that he is in fact, just shy of being a grown man- has been a huge help over the years: always stepping up to the plate when it came to learning new skills, helping Esme with the kids, being the ‘man of the house’ when Tyler was away and keeping an eye on not only the house but his wife and his children. He’s matured: taller, a slim yet strong athletic build, his voice much better. Yet there were times where Tyler still caught a glimpse of someone much younger; that terrified kid he’d been hired to extract, the one he’d had to give a fresh pair of pants to because he’d wet his own, the one who’d clung to him on Gaspar’s steps, sobbing that he wanted to go home.

The trauma had set him back a little. Maturity wise. And he still struggled with PTSD, depression, and severe anxiety. Being in a loving and stable home was helping that. He had responsibilities and priorities there; working hard at reno projects or with the animals and in the gardens. He was treated like he was one of their own; disciplined when he needed to be, expected to pitch in when needed. It had been a struggle at first: his own father had been non existent and an army of servants and other hired help had catered to his every need. He’d never known what it was like to have chores. The feeling of satisfaction it gave when a job was completed and you were given money for it. He’d rebelled at first; mouthy, rude, aggressive. But with the tough love he’d snapped out of it and calmed down.

His moods have settled over the past two years since his mental health diagnosis; mostly due to a host of meds, some of it attributed to a less stressful and more relaxed environment. He is a good kid. A damn good kid in fact. One that was well on his way to becoming a great man.

“Hot today,” Ovi says, as he uses the front of his t-shirt to wipe his brow.

It is mid June and the sun is high and bright in the sky. Hot for a standard summer in Colorado, especially so close to the mountains. But a far cry from the sweltering temperatures and suffocating heat and humidity that Ovi had spent more than half his young life growing up in.

“You’d think you’d be used to. You used to live in a lot worse,” Tyler remarks, as he tosses one of the rotted and weathered planks onto their quickly growing pile. Sweat gathers at his temples and beads on his forehead, and he pushes his baseball cap up and uses his own tank top to clear the perspiration off his brow.

“It never felt this hot there,” Ovi says, as he grabs a bottle of water from the cooler they’d brought out with them. “At least I don’t remember feeling this hot.”

“Probably because you were inside all the time. You didn’t have to do things like this. You could stay inside in the air conditioning all day, playing video games.”

“What did you use to do? When you were my age? Other than wrestle dinosaurs and drag women back to your cave?”

Tyler smirks. “You and Esme just think you’re so funny, don’t you. I turn forty and all the old timer jokes start. I see how it is.”

“I could have made it worse by mentioning all the gray hair that you’re getting,” the kid teases.

“Mate, all these gray hairs have my wife’s name written on them. Believe me.”

Ovi hopes up onto the edge of the deck, sipping his water while swinging those long legs back and forth. “Seriously though, what were you doing when you were my age?”

“I was already in the army. On my first tour in Kuwait.”

“That’s awful young to go to war. You were just a kid.”

“So were you,” Tyler reminds him. “When you fought your own war. I chose to be there. To make it my life. You were a lot younger than I was and you didn’t ask to put in the situation you were in.”

“I suppose…” his voice trails off. And he absentmindedly picks at the label on the bottle in his hands as he watches the kids as they chased each other through the grass; giggling and shrieking with no cares in the world.

“One day you’ll have some of your own,” Tyler says, as he helps himself to a beer in the cooler.

Old habits die hard; he’d gotten back into the booze when they’d gotten home from their second bullshit visit to Dhaka. It wasn’t nearly as bad as before; he kept things in moderation and was able to cut himself off it he felt like things were becoming problematic. He no longer had a reason to drown himself in a mix of alcohol and pain killers. The demons he battled weren’t as prevalent anymore; he was able to shove them back down into hell where they belonged.

“Think so?”

“Why wouldn’t you? Kids love you. You’re great with them. You’d be a good dad.”

His entire face brightens; an enormous grin spreading from ear to ear. “Do you think you’re a good dad?”

“I don’t know,” Tyler admits, and leans back against what remains of the deck. “I know the first time around I was a pretty horrible one.”

He didn’t think about it as often now. He remembers the days when the guilt plagued him; eating away to his core, burrowing through to his very soul. How he’d been struggling with the faded memories of his son until he’d nearly died on the Sultana Kamal Bridge. It had felt as if Austin had been right there with him. The sound of his laugh and his face as clear as day. He often wondered if it was because he’d been so close to death; right on the doorstep of seeing his son again. Now he only thought of him on special days; the anniversary of his death, birthdays, Christmas. And it wasn’t with an overwhelming sense of grief. But a bittersweet recollection of the good times they did have in his short six years.

His kids knew about their half brother; how their dad had been married before their mom and had had a baby. And he had told them -as best as they could comprehend at their tender ages- just what had happened to him: he got very sick and was in the hospital and the doctors couldn’t do anything for him. The twins had been confused; not fully understanding the concept of death. But Millie had been curious and asked a lot of questions. Even now she’d randomly come up with something. Wondering what he’d look like now and if any of them looked like him. If maybe she could go and visit him someday. She understood that he wasn’t an actual physical being any more. And in her mind he was in heaven where he was perfect and beautiful and healthy again. But could they go and visit where he was sleeping?

It was the first time that he had ever cried in front of his daughter. Reduced to tears by the sheer innocence and beauty of her request. And because he had absolutely no idea where Austin was. His ex wife had made sure of that. Her way of punishing him for his shitty, selfish choices.

“If I was a little kid and you were my father, I’d think you were a great dad,” Ovi remarks. “Your kids don’t have a reason to be scared of you. You don’t ever really yell at them, you don’t hit them. They know that they can trust you and that you can fix all their problems. They know they won’t ever have to afraid of coming to you and telling you things.”

The words hit home. Ovi wasn’t just speaking about his own father’s downfalls, but Tyler’s father’s as well. While Mahajan Senior was still rotting away in prison, Tyler’s dad was still back in Australia, as bitter and miserable as ever, and refusing to return any of his son’s phone calls.

“And most of all,” Ovi continues. “They see how you treat their mother. They see that you love her. That you don’t mistreat her. That you respect her. That’s important too. That they see their mother being treated well.”

“Well, she’s a queen,” Tyler reasons. “And she deserves to be treated like one. She’s done a lot for me. Since the first day we met. Putting her own ass on the line to help me. Then giving up her life and moving to Australia. I doubt it was the life she had planned for herself. Meeting some random bloke on the job and giving everything up for him. I’m not the easiest person to live with. I know that. I may not always be the best friend and man for her, but she still sticks around. And she’s given me four amazing children. I wouldn’t give her or them up for anything in the world.”

It’s the first time he’s been that honest with anyone, outside of his wife, about the way he feels about her. About them. About the life they have together. He usually keeps that kind of stuff closely guarded; always wanting to keep his private life just that. Private. But if he’s learned anything in the past five years, it was that life was too damn short to keep anything back. Because everything could be taken away from you in the blink of an eyes and you’d spend the rest of your life regretting that you didn’t say the things that so desperately needed to be said.

“I hope one day I find that,” Ovi says. “Someone that I love that much. Someone that loves me just the same.”

“You’ve got a lot of time left for that, mate. You still have a lot of living left to do before any of that should cross your mind.”

They lapse into a comfortable silence; sipping their drinks and watching as all three kids try to climb into the hammock strung between two trees.

“Can I ask you a question?” Ovi asks. “It’s kind of personal.”

“How personal?”

“It’s about girls. And sex.”

He’s honestly surprised that it’s taken this long for a conversation like that to come up. Not for a lack of trying on his part; he was always trying to get Ovi to open up about the girls he was dating and whether or not he’d had any sexual experience under his belt. And if he did, was he being careful about things? But Ovi would always get embarrassed and change the subject. Another sign of the maturity issues he struggled with, Tyler supposed.

“What about them?”

“When you first had sex, were you in love with the person?”

“I thought I was. But no mate, I wasn’t in love them. Not if I judge by what I know love is now.”

“How old were you?”

“Fifteen.”

“That’s pretty young. Do you regret it? Being that young?”

“I’ve honestly never thought about it. Why? Where’s all this coming from?”

“I’ve been thinking it a lot lately. About wanting to meet someone I love. Someone that I can give myself to in that way.”

“So you’ve never…you know…”

“No!” he exclaims. “Never! I’ve always wanted to be special. With someone special.” He frowns. “Why? Do you think that’s weird?”

“Nah, I don’t find that weird, mate. I find it pretty damn honourable, actually.”

His eyes widen. “You do?”

“It’s a personal thing, yeah? What we do, who we do it with, when we do it. Most guys would have long ago coughed up their V card. Just giving it to the first girl that showed even the remotest bit of interested. I think it’s admirable. That you feel the way you do. And that you’re able to stick with it. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. One day you’ll find the right girl. And you’ll know pretty quick that she’s the one you want to be with and experience that with.”

“Like you and Esme?”

Tyler laughs. “Let’s not kid ourselves. It wasn’t one of those love at first sight bullshit stories you hear about. Lust at first sight, absolutely. But love? No. It took a while for that to happen.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. A few months maybe. She was already pregnant when it happened. One day I just looked at her and she just looked so beautiful with my baby growing inside of her and I knew I felt it. I knew there and then that I was in love with her and I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. Sometimes I think she thinks I only asked her to marry me because she was pregnant and I felt obligated to do it. But that wasn’t the case. I wanted to marry her because I loved her. No other reason.”

He had felt something before then. The inklings of love perhaps. The beginning of the journey of falling in love with someone. He had known he wanted something more than just a sexual relationship; they had chemistry, a bond unlike he’d ever shared before with a woman. And he’d been looking forward to exploring that when Ovi’s extraction was over and they got back from Dhaka. That had been their plan; spend two months travelling together and getting to know one another.

But sometimes life works in mysterious way.

“If someone had have told you five or six years ago that this is how your life would be, would you have believed them?” Ovi inquires.

“Honestly?” he laughs. “I would have told them they were fucking crazy. I never planned on being a husband again. Or having more kids. I thought it was a one and done for me.”

“But you’re glad right? That your life turned out the way it did in the end.”

He smiles as he watches his kids. All three of them now cuddled up together in the hammock, pointing up at the clouds and talking about what animal or shape they thought they were.

“Not just glad, mate,” he says. “Fucking ecstatic.”

****

He sits on the front porch swing watching the sunset; the streaks of vivid pink and orange that paint the sky. His hands behind his head, one foot moving the seat at a slow, even pace. Listening to the chirping of crickets and the croaking of toads and the other various sounds of wildlife waking from their daytime slumber. It’s a peace and a contentment that he’s never known before; being able to take the time and just sit back and listen and observe what most people take for granted. He’s tired; weary to the bone. A mixture of the two week shitshow that is now thankfully behind him and the work that he and Ovi had put in during the day.

He aches; the lingering issues brought on by years of injuries, his freshly cracked ribs, and the touch of sunburn that he sports. He’s glad to be home. Grateful that he’s lived long enough to see this kind of view again. To be able to tuck his kids in bed and kiss them goodnight. To be able to just stand beside his wife while washing dishes and talk about random bullshit. There was no need to talk about the job; he preferred to leave it behind him once he stepped back in the door and she preferred to stay oblivious to just what kind of danger he was putting himself in. She knew of course. How could she not? She had been in the game herself once. But it was easier for her to cope if it was simply out of sight, out of mind.

The front door creaks open and he glances, smiling at his wife as she steps out onto the porch in her bare feet. A mug of a steaming hot beverage in each hand and a faded and worn flannel blanket tucked under her arm. She looks beautiful; no make up on those smooth, youthful features, her hair tossed up into a messy bun, wearing a pair of sweat pants and one of his shirts. Every day he falls more in love with her. Seeing the way she adores and nurtures the children they’ve made together, the respect and love that she shows towards Ovi, that way she just carries herself with a quiet dignity and grace, even if she may be falling apart inside.

“What’cha doing?” she asks, as she hands him a mug of black of coffee and sets her own drink -a honey and ginger tea- on the ground.

This is their ‘thing’. For five years they’ve spent nearly every night -when he’s home and weather permitting- out there on the swing. It was their time together; outside of sex. When the kids were in bed and the world was falling asleep and they got to relax together. Rediscover all those little things that made them tick and had them falling in love with one another in the first place.

“Nothing,” he replies. “Just sitting. Waiting for you.”

She settles down beside him; turning her body towards him and tucking her legs into her core, covering her bare feet with the blanket and then reaching for her drink.

He wraps an arm around her and she scoots a little closer; so her head rests against his shoulder. “Coffee?” he asks with a grin. “Are you trying to keep me up all night?”

“Why would I ever do that?” she counters, and they both laugh. “This is how I seduce you now. There’s no more sexy underwear or dirty talk. It’s a cup of coffee sending you the message that I expect you not to fall asleep after round one.”

He snorts. “When have I ever fallen asleep after round one? You must have me mistaken for your other husband.”

“Awww yes,” she grins. “The rich one that comes over when you’re out of town.”

“What’s he like? Nice enough guy? Big? Could I take him?”

“You absolutely could kick his ass. No doubt about it,” she sips her tea, relaxing under the sensation of his fingertips and thumb softly gliding across her upper arm. “What were you thinking about?”

“Kicking your other husband’s ass.”

“Don’t be jealous, baby. He can’t do the things you do. I’m only with him for the money.”

“I’d like to know where some of this money is, then. Because we need a new roof and a I need a new truck.”

“Money never came through? From the job?” It happens sometimes. You do all the heavy lifting and you get royally fucked in the end. Mahajan Senior wasn’t the first time it happened. And it won’t be the last.

“Definitely won’t be the pay day that Nik promised it would be. But anything is better than nothing, I suppose.”

Financially speaking, they aren’t hurting. They are careful with their money and now that some of Mahajan’s assets had been unfrozen, he’d been sending them some pretty hefty checks in exchange for taking care of his boy. Child support, in a way.

“What happened?” she asks. “It was only supposed to be four days.”

“I’m surprised you want to talk about it. I thought you liked me to leave it on the porch when I got home.”

“Just curious, I guess. I suppose I feel like I have the right to know why Nik keeps sending my husband to these godforsaken shit holes.”

“In all fairness, I’m the one that picks which godforsaken shitholes to go to. She’s just the one that lets on that things are going to be easier than they are.”

“So what did happen?”

“Just a whole bunch of little fuck ups that when added together just made one big fuck up. Problems with the radios, issues with communication on both sides, a lot more hostiles that anyone thought there’d be, a mix up on where the extraction site was supposed to be. Just a regular old shit show. But it got done. Eventually.”

She nods, sipping at her tea. She remembers those days all too well.

“But it’s done. It’s over. I’m home now and that’s all that matters.”

“How long is it for? How long do we actually get you here for?”

“I call the shots, remember. I don’t have to take every job she brings my way. Hopefully she gives it a couple weeks before she’s ringing me or knocking on the door.”

“I hope so, too. Because I really need you to fix the toilet in the basement.”

He grins. “So that’s all you need, huh? You need me to lay a little pipe.”

“You’re such a pig,” she laughs. “And don’t sell yourself short. In your case, it is way more than a little pipe.”

“You’ve always been very good for my ego,” he says, and drops a kiss on the top of her head.

“Hey, I call them as I see them.”

“Kids asleep?”

“Finally. Those little shits. What is wrong with your children? Why do they have to be the way they are?” She’s teasing; saying it with the utmost love in her voice and sparkling in her eyes. “I can’t believe you wanted more than one.”

“Well one was twins,” he points out. “So we have four but technically we only went through it three times. So…”

“Don’t even think of following that up with anything. Nothing good will come after that. If you want another baby, you get your mistress to give you one.”

“Which one of the three?” he jokingly retorts.

“You’re such a dick sometimes.”

“Hey, if you can have another husband, I can have a couple mistresses. Don’t worry, babe. None of them are as good as you. I keep coming home, don’t I?”

“You must be a glutton for punishment. You keep coming back for more. Bet you’re wishing you were back in that little shack with bathroom chicken to keep you company.”

“Naw…” he gives her shoulder a squeeze. “…I’ll take you over bathroom chicken every day.”

****

They remain on the swing long after the sun has set. The moon full and bright; the velvet sky dotted with thousands of clearly visible and glistening stars. He continues to push that swing; one foot moving it back and forth, his arm still wrapped around her, her head on his chest. And he’s just beginning to wonder if she’s fallen asleep and he’s going to have to actually carry her inside when he feels her move against him. And when he opens his eyes, he finds her sitting straight up -facing him- staring at him intently.

“Stop being a creeper,” he teases.

“This coming from a guy who once confessed to smelling my hair.”

“That was five years ago and you took that way out of context. What I said was that you should be standing close enough to me that I could smell your hair. Not that I did I smell your hair.”

‘Bullshit. I bet you would lie awake at night sniffing my hair. You forget that I’ve known you for five years. I know what kind of weird shit you’re into.”

“Well smelling hair is not one of those things. Why are you staring at me?”

“I’m not allowed to stare at my husband?”

“Not if you’re silently plotting my death while you do it, no.”

Frowning, she reaches up and traces her fingers over the cut above his eye.

“It’s fine. I ran into a fist.”

“God I hate when that happens. You should have gotten that looked at. It probably could have used stitches.”

“Medic said it wasn’t deep enough. Just to let it heal on its own.”

“And your ribs?”

“Sore. But nothing much I can do about them either. Other than taping them. And I’m not doing that so…”

“You’re a stubborn shit even now, Tyler Rake. I thought for sure you’d grow out of that. Are you sure they’re just bruised? Because if they’re broken they could cause some serious problems and…”

He silences her with a kiss. Long and soft and sweet. “I’m fine. Honest. I’ve had worse.”

Wasn’t that the truth.

“I was worried,” she confesses. “When the fours days were up and you still weren’t coming home. I thought maybe there was something you weren’t telling me.”

“Like maybe I was with one of my mistresses and not really working?” he teases, and she scowls. “Things just went to shit. Things that were totally beyond my control. Believe me, I wanted to be home after those four days too. Who doesn’t want to get home and have to read Goodnight Moon half a dozen bloody times in a row.”

She smiles at that. “I missed you.”

“I know. You showed me that three times last night.”

“You’re impossible,” she huffs, and when she stands up and attempts to leave, he grabs her by the hips and pulls her onto his lap; her knees settling on either side of his hips.

“I missed you too,” he says. “A lot.”

“So much you had to ‘study’ alone?”

“Now who’s being a smart ass? And yeah…that’s part of it, I guess…but I just missed you. I missed sitting out here every night and just talking. I missed waking up beside you and seeing that sleepy little smile. I even missed hearing you bitch about me leaving the toilet seat up and dirty socks on the floor. I just missed us.”

She smiles, and taking his face in her hands, presses a kiss to his lips. “I can’t help but worry about you. I know you wish I wouldn’t. But I can’t help it.”

“I know,” he runs his hands up her sides and around to her back.

“You’re crazy you know. For going back to it.”

“I know that too.”

“I know I said I’d support you no matter what, that I said I was behind you one hundred percent, but it doesn’t mean that I have to like it. That I have to sit back like a dutiful little wife, ignoring the danger you’re in, pretending that it doesn’t exist.”

“I don’t expect you to,” his palms travel over her shoulders and down her arms, stopping at her wrists. Fingertips tracing a circular pattern on the tops of her hands.

“Aren’t you sick of this life yet, Tyler? Aren’t you sick of the bullshit? Of all the fuck ups and all the worrying and all the wondering if you’re actually going to make it back home?”

“The money’s good.” It sounds pathetic even to him. But it’s the truth.

“Good enough that you’re willing to die for it? When is it going to be enough? When will these goddamn suicide missions stop? A year from now? Two years from now? Ten? When you wind up crippled? Or worse, when you wind up dead?”

“I already told you just one more year.”

“You said that last year. And the year before. And the year before that.”

“Yeah, well this time I mean it. The kids are getting bigger. I’m starting to miss too much. And I see what it’s doing to Millie. When I’m gone for longer than expected and I come home all beaten to shit. I don’t want to have to tell her the truth. About what I’m doing. At least not until she’s older.”

“She idolizes you. There’s no one in this world that she loves more than you. As far as she’s concerned, you can do no wrong.”

“I guess she’s going to be real bloody disappointed years from now when finds out who I really am.”

“Who you really are is her daddy. That’s all that matters to her. That’s all that should matter. Come home, Tyler. To stay. No more running off. No matter how good the money is. Because I can guarantee that we need you a lot more than Nik does. Promise me. This year is the last one. You get this all out of your system and you just come home and stay home.”

“I promise,” he says, and laying a hand on the back of her head, pulls her into him. The kiss is slow at first; closed mouth moving upon closed mouth. His free hand sliding up the bottom of her t-shirt and up her back, fingertips gliding along her spine. And he feels her shudder against him when his feathery touch passes over the small of her back.

What happens next can only be described as a good old fashioned make out session. The type teens get caught up in on the couch in their parents’ basement. Hungry, demanding kisses, greedy hands exploring through the fabrics the still covering their bodies, his hands on her hips as she grinds her pelvis into his. Simple yet sexy enough to get him rock hard in his sweats.

They’re both breathless when he pulls away, running his hands through her hair and taking in her wide pupils and her flushed face and her heaving chest.

“Maybe we should go inside,” she breathlessly suggests.

“Maybe we should. Maybe we can even try for number five.”

She frowns. “Don’t push your luck.”

#tyler rake #tyler rake fan fic #tyler rake fan fiction #sanctuary #extraction

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sonorous-cicada · 4 years ago

Text

Shisui’s Journal #13

Entry #13

November 28th

Shisui,

Tonight is so cold it feels as though the blood has been stolen from my veins. I can see my breath become frost in the air. The cave that my partner and I have taken refuge in is colder than the arctic. Even the water on the stalactites has frozen and made their true length indiscernible. I have been coughing as of late. The current weather worsens my condition.

It is strange that as I am sitting against these walls, I recall your ‘super secret recipe for cough drops’. I believe you used honey, ginger and lemon. I never thanked you for hiding me from my mother when I was ill. She would have worried. Although, I must say, your congee was suspect. I have never seen a more mush-like substance in my life. Certainly not with the amount of soy sauce that was added, either. I miss the taste of it, though. I miss you.

Were you here, I’d be lying on your arms. I wonder if you would make those cough drops once more. Would we be cuddled around your dog? She is well, by the way. I have our summons check on her occasionally. Hana-san keeps her as a companion animal. She rarely takes missions anymore (ever since your passing, in fact). When she does, Chika stays with one of the Inuzuka elders.

Forever yours,

Itachi

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**~*~

Entry #62

January 3rd

It is cold as hell outside today. I think the icicles on my porch have icicles for their icicles. Itachi’s sick too. I’ve been hiding him from his mother. Do you know how scary Mikoto can be? She was best friends with the ‘Hot Habanero’ for a reason. May Uzumaki-san rest in peace.

I’ve been doing my best to nurse him. But there’s a reason I never became a medic. I have zero aptitude for it. Literally. I made him a congee. But it was really bad. Horrendous, in fact. I didn’t eat it… I hope he never finds that out. But that’s what you’re supposed to make sick people, right? Porridge cooked in stock with uh… vegetables?

I did, however, manage to improve Hana-chan’s cough drop recipe. I added lemon juice. It made them much more palatable. The last time I had a cough, she gave me some of the drops and her recipe. And let me tell you, they were horrible. We could probably win entire wars by feeding them to the enemy. They’d withdraw in days. She uses chilis of all things. So gross.

My boyfriend looked really miserable when he was laying in bed. His nose was red and his eyes all watery and puffy. He was coughing up a storm. Actually, he was coughing so loudly, I thought for sure Mikoto-oba was going to find him. So, I just held him closely and turned on the electric blanket. I also bought five boxes of lotionized tissues. I hope that prevents his nose from becoming chapped.

Some people might think it’s gross, holding a sick person. But, I love him. I don’t want him to hurt. And I especially don’t want him to stay sick. Besides, Chika also likes to cuddle up on that blanket. I read his favorite book of poems to him. I don’t particularly care for the volume. The prose is too flowery for my taste. But, he loves it. He’s waking up now. I’m going to try and add soy sauce to this congee… maybe I can salvage it.

*~*~*~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

AN: So much fluff in this chapter. Thank you so much for reading!!! If you like how this is going or you want to see a specific journal prompt, leave a comment/review or even drop a line in the ask me section of tumblr.

Cross-posted to AO3 and fanfiction.net (It’s easiest to catch up on previous chapters on either of those sites. ;) )

#shisui uchiha #itachi uchiha #uchiha clan #naruto fanfiction #naruto fandom #sick #itachi x shisui #shisui x itachi #itashi #shiita #Shisui's Journal #journal

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justjessame · 4 years ago

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Put Me In Coach Chapter 25

Alexandria. I was surprised at how easily we’d found sanctuary. We hadn’t been that far from our starting point, and there it was. The leader, a politician named Deanna Monroe, when we introduce ourselves I see her eyes flash at my name. Great, I thought, one of Mom’s friends.

“I was sorry to hear about Delia and Robert,” she offered, once my trio of travelling companions were scouting houses to see which one would be best for us. “They were good people.”

I nodded, my fingers twisting the diamond necklace that Negan had given me during my graduation dinner, the matching bracelet flashing in the sunlight, and with my hair pulled back the earrings were visible too. I wore the set because each piece had been given to me by someone who wasn’t with me right now.

“The world wasn’t great before,” I muttered, looking around at the shiny new community that seemed too perfect to be trusted. “But this? This is a fucking nightmare.”

Deanna was far more optimistic than I was. She was a politician after all, so she knew how to spin the scenario to best suit our needs. Since I would have gotten my teaching degree had the world not turned to a living horror film, she decided that would be my role in our new group. I’d teach. Mary, Eric, and Steven were given the same types of jobs that they would have had if we’d kept going down our planned path. Mary, who had teased about winning acting awards, took charge of supplies and inventory management. Eric had planned to go to medical school, but after four years and time spent as a medic, became the medical team for supply runs outside of the walls of our community. And Steven worked with Deanna’s husband, since he’d planned on working in architecture.

We settled into our new life, but after only a few months, I knew there was something Mary hadn’t told us. And I confronted her, forcing her to confess to something that I had suspected, but she had feared.

“Yes, alright, I’m pregnant.” She had her forehead pressed to the toilet of our shared bathroom. After a week of hearing her rush to the bathroom at first light and toss her cookies so fucking loud that I nearly joined her, she finally admitted it.

“Mary, who-” She shot me a look and I swallowed the question. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to be the little peanut’s ‘daddy’.” I sat down beside her on the bathroom floor and brushed her hair out of her face. “I mean, not like I’m gonna have any kids of my own, right?”

She rolled her eyes. “Amara, you could meet someone-”

It was my turn to flash her the look. That was dangerous territory and they all knew it. “Or,” I stood up and offered her a hand up. “I could just be a spinster and leave the romance to Eric and Steven.”

“That’s right, bitch!” I heard Eric call from down the hallway. “We do it better than you straight assholes anyway!”

A year and a half, give or take, and our foursome was five, at least for a while. Trey was our little monkey. Adorable, with dark curly hair, eyes so dark they looked black, and an olive complexion that people would kill to have. He had all four of us wrapped around his little finger from day one.

Unfortunately, our lives weren’t guaranteed, not that life was ever to be taken for granted. When Trey’s first birthday drew closer, Mary became insistent that she go on a supply run. I told her it was ridiculous, a one year old doesn’t really care what he gets for his present, all he really wants to play with is the wrapping paper anyway. But she wanted, no she swore, she needed to go out and find him something special.

I didn’t like it or agree with it, but Mary was his mother. She wanted him to have something hand picked by her for his first birthday, then come hell or highwater, she was going to do it. I should have known, between the flash of fear when she said she wanted to go and then the promise she made me make before she walked away with Aiden, Deanna’s son, I should have seen it. The promise was easy to make, of course I’d take care of Trey, and God forbid should something happen, I’d take up his care with the same intensity as Mary had.

Mary didn’t come back. No body. No closer. She was gone. Aiden couldn’t look me in the eye. He definitely didn’t look Eric or Steven in the eye. And as I held Trey to me, knowing that he would feel the tension in our house from Mary’s absence, I knew that he was mine. Forever.

Almost eight months after we lost Mary, as Trey was nearing his second birthday, a new group showed up led by Aaron our resident people finder. They looked haunted, and terrifying, but there was a baby and a teenager in their group so I knew I’d come to know them sooner or later. I was taking Trey for a walk when they showed up, dirty and thousand yard stares all around, but my little boy was excited when he saw they had a little person too.

“Come here, baby,” I whispered, picking up his toddling self and holding him tight as the group passed. “Can you wave at the little girl?” Trey’s fat fist waved and I caught a few of the adults in the group smile despite themselves. Kissing his dark curls, I turned away and walked back home.

I’d been right, of course, I did get to know the group. Rick Grimes became our security/peacekeeper, along with a fierce looking woman named Michonne. She had taken a keen interest in Trey, asking if she could hold him and I trusted her, somehow. Michonne became a welcome visitor to my house, along with Maggie and her husband Glenn. Maggie’s eyes had landed on my rings and asked a question I’d grown to expect.

“Did your husband not-” I smiled sadly, watching Trey play with a set of blocks on the floor.

“We never actually made it to the altar.” I thought about the dress I’d found almost a week before I saw the text that ruined it. “I don’t know if he made it or not.” I left it there, and usually that kept people from asking more questions. Grief was easy to deal with, we ALL lost someone, but the unknown? That was far worse and left people speechless with the worry and fear of the status of their missing loved ones.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and I let our eyes meet. “Glenn and I were separated for awhile, and I thought I lost a piece of myself.”

Nodding, I didn’t share more. Negan and I were a conversation I kept to myself. Even Eric and Steven knew better than to bring him up. Wearing the rings, my diamond set, those were the only evidence that I even thought about him at all.

Trouble seemed to follow the newcomers into our world. The walkers, the dangerous people, and so much upheaval that I couldn’t possibly tell anyone what I taught or who my students were during that clutch of waves. I lost two young students. I watched another lose an eye. I saw our leader die from a walker. Her husband having preceded her to the grave by the hand of another community member, our physician actually. I watched Deanna lose Aiden. I watched our people learn quickly that we were all so very ill prepared for this new reality we arrived in. And I watched as Rick Grimes and his group try to catch us up to speed.

Out of the entire group, even including Michonne and Maggie, I found the most comfort in getting to know the crossbow wielding redneck that needed a shower worse than some of the feral animals still roaming freely. I had a feeling he and Carol had more than a friendship going, but I caught sight of the woman leaving Tobin’s house so I guessed wrong.

Daryl was soft spoken, despite his outward appearance. He listened and he learned quickly. Lacking tact, he almost made me think of Negan, but then he’d blush and duck his head and the flash of memory would go away and I could have peace again. He was amazing with Trey and Judith, Rick’s little girl.

When the horde came, it was Daryl, Sasha, and Abraham that led them away. We lost so many fucking lives that day. I had the children whose parents could be convinced of the danger, hidden with me in the church, the preacher Gabriel keeping me company, creepy though he was. We heard the chaos and could almost FEEL the pain of loss even tucked away.

We all should have known that it wasn’t over. Not when we heard about the attack of motorcycle riding men demanding things on the road. Not when the long haired man who called himself Jesus came along. Not when we lost Denise, or second in line for group doctor since Eric demanded to be allowed to stay with the runners, just in case. He hadn’t been with Mary’s group the day she died, and he still blamed himself. What horrible irony that the one time Denise went out on a run would be the last time she breathed air.

I’m not sure how I missed his name. I’m not sure how Eric and Steven didn’t hear it. Maybe we’d conditioned ourselves to NOT hear his name. Since I wouldn’t say it, they wouldn’t offer it up, then maybe we’d conditioned ourselves to not acknowledge his name at all. That’s the only way I can explain not knowing he was coming. That he was alive. That the man I’d loved was safe and sound, and apparently he was also the biggest bad that anyone in our community had ever fathomed.

#coach negan x student #negan #The Walking Dead #alternative universe #character death

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victorianwestpiano · 5 years ago

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Hi! How do you think Holt and Colette would be if the Spanish Influenza hadn't ended in 1919 but continued into 1920, after they'd met and started working together?

Dreamland 1920:

A lot of people thought that the Spanish Influenza would end on 1919, however, this pandemic lasted a little bit more than everyone had expected. All the plans were either cancelled or postponed and it wasn’t pleasing at all. Now, on 1920, the virus had made its way to New York city and the situation became critical, not as much as the countrysides or fields, but still.

The famous impresario VA Vandevere had just bought a flying baby elephant, who he thinks, it’ll bring his park joy through all this trouble. When he arrived at the circus where the animal is from on the first day, he, his driver and butler Sotheby, bodyguard Skellig and his principal star Colette Marchant, they were all wearing medical masks. Not a very fancy first impression but it was necessary, specially on that circus, since some members already died there.

The meeting with Max Medici, the owner of the circus, was quick but convincing, the ringmaster thought that, outside Dumbo’s future fame, moving his troupe would keep them safer, since the conditions in a city were better than in a field. After a few days, the Medici Bros.Circus moved to New York, not knowing what to expect.

Unfortunately, bad news did arrived after all at Dreamland; the Spanish Influenza dis reached the park and most of the workers became sick because of the epidemic, including the Medici truope. Max, Rongo, Puck, Miss Atlantis, Ivan, Catherine, Pramesh and his nephew Arav caught the virus and all of them stayed in one place at an appartment, so they won’t spread the flu. They stayed at Max’s appartment which fortunately, it was big enough for his friends, but the only ones who hadn’t became sick were Holt, Colette, Milly and Joe, so they stayed in Holt’s own appartment.

Mr Sotheby called a good doctor who VA trusted and went to see the sick workers. The doctor was called Dr Mendes and he suggested to Holt and Colette to help him by deliver the medicine to the troupe and changing the cold compresses, since they were the only ones of the bunch who were still healthy. And Holt was not going to risk his children’s health so he told the kids to stay inside, he was not going to loose them because of this illness… like the way he lost Annie.

The Stallion Star and The Queen of Heavens barely knew eachother, in fact since their first encounter they had a lot of disagreements and tease one another, however, in this situation they had to forget their differences and cooperate to help.

Dr Mendes gave Colette and Holt medic masks and ask them to wear them everytime they were near the patients, there were trays with all the medicine needed on a table.

“Put this masks on now,” Dr Mendes ordered, “use gloves too, is very important and take this trays to your friends, they’ll need this compresses.” the doctor looked directly at the cowboy to make sure he understood. “I’ll take this one to the other group of workers, call me if something happens.”

Holt and Colette nodded and the doctor went with the medicine for the local Dreamland workers. The french woman put her gloves on and tied up behind her head the mask, then she saw Holt who hasn’t put on his medical equipment yet.

“May I help you with that, cavalier?” Colette asked finishing tying her own mask.

Holt’s head turned to see her, “Thank you but… I can do it myself, princess. With a hand behind my back.” he said with pride without humor.

Colette rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, “Trés bien, do it yourself.” she waited for the cowboy to realize he was being ridiculous.

Holt grabbed his glove and leaned his head to his hand so he can put it on with the help of his mouth, but Colette interrupted him.

“Wait, no! Are you an idiot?” she abruptally took Holt’s glove before it touched his lips. “You can’t put this thing in your mouth! Don’t you know there are already bacteria on this? You can also spread them with your own saliva, is gross!” the aerialist scoled the Kentucky rider. “Come on, give me your hand”

Holt rolled his own eyes, “I’m perfectly clean woman,” still, he obeyed and offered his hand and the french woman who placed the glove on his only hand, “just because I have one arm, it doesn’t make me a cripple---”

“Oui, oui, turn around you stoic.” Colette ignored Holt and with her index finger made a swirl as a sign for him to turn his back.

The cowboy sighed, his back facing her while she put the mask carefully in front of his mouth, then she started to form knot at the back of his head. “You are very proud, eh ma cherie?” Colette commented with a teasing tone, her voiced a little low due to the cloth of the mask she was wearing.

However, Holt wasn’t in the mood for joking around, he spun to see the french lady again when she finished tightening up the knot, “For some things I am proud woman, for others… not much.” Holt responded serious while his words pierced his mask wich gave him a nasal tone. “But thank you for the help...c’mon let’s deliver this stuff and get this over with.” he rapidly picked up a tray with his hand and went outside.

Colette made a puzzled look at him while he was leaving, nevertheless, she grabbed the other tray carefully and followed him.

*************************

Hours later, Colette and Holt finally ended thier duty, the Medici troupe were given water, new compresses and some cough syrup. The good news were that, because the troupe admitted early they had the symptoms, the doctor treated them in time and they were going to get better soon. The bad news this was a constant reminder for Holt that he could save his friends but not his wife, thing which hurted his heart. This whole Influenza situation left him numb and tired, he wanted this whole damn thing to end.

The cowbow walked through the hallway inside the hotel where he and his family were living, he stood still, leaning his back on a wall and slid down until he sat on the ground. He stepped on a finger of his glove with his boot, pulling his hand harshly to take it off. Once he managed to do that, Holt removed the mask of his face leaving it below his jaw. He leaned his head back and rested it on the wall, he closed his eyes and let out a big sigh.

Suddenly, Holt heard fotsteps coming towards him, he opened his eyes and saw Colette approaching him. “You are tired now, cavalier?” she responded leaning on the same wall as Holt.

“Please, leave me alone…” the ride exhaled.

“Why are you so serious? You should be happy, your friends are going to recover and your children are not sick.” the aerialist exclaimed with curiousity.

“I know that, but that is not reason to celebrate... not for me.” Holt bowed his head.

Colette rised an eyebrow and started to untie her medical mask. “What’s wrong Holt? Something tells me that there is something you are hiding.”

Holt turned his head again to see how the french aerialist joined him sitting on the floor, taking off her mask, she was smiling at him, maybe to give him confidence to talk.

“I lost somone I love because of this, and I couldn’t even be with her when... it happened.” the voice of the rider was scratchy and sorrowful.

“Who?” Colette looked at him concerned.

Holt took a deep breath, “My wife... Annie was her name...”

“Oh I’m so sorry,” Colette replied with genuine surprise and sadness. “When... did that happened?”

“An year ago,” Holt answered feeling a lump in his throat “I was away in the war while she... she... was dying Colette, and.... it was my foult.”

The french woman rised her eyebrow once more, “Wait, do not tell me you are blaming yourself of her death. Being away in the war or not... she could’ve still caught Influenza, mon amie.” she said softly.

“But I could’ve still be there!” Holt cried out loud. “Since they told me by letter that she died, it was like... losing air from my lungs. And my children... they where there watching her own mother die!! And I wasn’t there!!! I wasn’t there...” Holt’s shoulders were shaking and tears began to fall. “I’m not letting this fucking disease kill Milly and Joe, I won’t let that happen!” then, Holt’s voice broke and started to cry.

Colette could only watch him cry, they had known eachother for a few days but she always saw Holt as someone strong and stoic like she called him before, now she was seeing that man breaking down in tears because he lost the love of his life due to this horrible virus when he was far away from her. It wasn’t his fault, it was true, but who could not feel guilty not being beside their wife when she is saying her last words?

Colette gingerly placed her hand on the man’s shoulder and gently whispered to him, “I’m sorry for your loss. Holt, I really am. Shhh.” she tried to give him comfort “And I know how you feel, because... I also... lost someone I loved because of an illness.”

Hearing what she said, the cowboy slowly lifted his head and looked at the woman’s blue eyes. “You, you lost someone too?... Who was it?” he whimpered.

“My father.” the aerialist mournfully admitted, “But it wasn’t Influenza.”

“Oh,” Holt sniffed loudly. “For what... did he died?.“

“Cancer.” Colette inhaled deeply looking down.

Holt sighed and wipped away his tears to look better at the woman’s sad expression.

“I was only 15...my papa, was the head of the family, he was... the one who encouraged me to do trapeze...” Colette looked at the ceiling to try not to cry “and... I’ve suffered a lot when he died, I saw him having his last breath. My sister, my maman and I went through a lot of difficulties because of that. So, oui, everything went to hell for me too, you are not the only one, cherie.” she bit her lip, not wanting to cry as well.

Holt gulped, he deeply breathed to talk again normally, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I’m so sorry... I didn’t mean to yell at you either.” he said regretful, “Is just... I’m so stressed out right now.” the rider passed his palm on his face.

“I accept your apology, ma cherie, it’s ok” Colette affirmed giving a small smile at him, her hand still caressing his right shoulder. “Will try to defeat this virus, everything will be fine from now, je te le promets.”

Holt gave her a confused look not understanding her mother language, “What did you said?”.

“ ’Je te le promets’, it means that I promise that everything will be fine” Colette said.

“Oh! Now I understand... uhmm thank you...” Holt responded.

“This surprises me of you amie, you went to fight in France in the war and you don’t know nothing of french.” the aerialist showed him a sideway smile.

“Well,” Holt scratched his head “the thing is at the battlefield we already had french guys as allies who spoke english or americans who knew french, so we have them as translators. We didn’t need to learn.” he said a tiny embarassed.

“Oh mon dieu, there is a lot you have to learn.” she said pretending to be insulted in a very exagerated way leaning her back on the wall, then she formed a teasing smile.

Holt couldn’t help but smile too, after the pain they both shared it was completely refreshing to try to have a moment of glee, at least a tiny one. Holt looked deeply into Colette’s eyes again, they were... beautiful, he never saw eyes so blue and so expressive, her smile was so genuine too... and her lips... those were the most cute lips he ever saw, they looked pretty without makeup. In fact, she, this woman, looked beautiful without makeup at all, he didn’t get why she had to wear those big red wigs and tons of makeup on her face. Holt always prefered women’s natural beauty, Annie never used half of the makeup Colette wore on the first day he saw her, and she still looked gorgeous. Colette is the same, the cowboy thought for himself, she’s a gorgeus woman indeed... Suddenly he shook his head at such idea and a tiny blush appeared on the tip of his ears, Did I really thought of that? But his thoughts were interrupted by a sudden voice.

“Mr Farrier, Miss Marchant,” Dr Mendes walked towards them, “Why are you not wearing your masks? It could be dangerous for you, put them on.” he ordered.

Colette and Holt rose up from the floor, the french woman tied up again her own mask whilst Holt put it on before his mouth again.

“Alright, look, I have to tell you something important.” Dr Mendes pointedly replied.

“What is it doc?” Holt talked through his medical mask, sighing.

“Some people of your circus troupe will get better soon, but others won’t be recovering as fast as the rest, the same happens with some of the park’s roustabouts.” the doctor told them.

“So, what does that mean?” Colette asked.

“Well, since you two, your kids Mr Farrier, and Mr Vandevere are the only ones who are not sick or don’t present any symptoms, the thing I ask of you is.... blood samples.” Dr Mendes said.

Holt’s eyes widened and eyebrows rose, “Blood samples? You mean taking blood from us?”

“Exactly,” the doctor affirmed, “I’ll need those samples so I can make an antydote for the patients with a more critical state,” then the doctor opened his firs aid kit and and grabbed something from the inside.

“Aaand, how are you going to do it doc?” Holt asked nervous.

“With this.” in the doctor’s hand there was a huge syrenge with a large needle in it he took from his kit.

At the simple sight of that needle, Holt’s pressure dropped, his knees felt weak and his whole body collapsed. He closed his eyes, he was about to faint into the ground.

“Holt!” but Colette caught him on time. His only arm was around her shoulders while she was carrying his dead weight, Colette grabbed him with all her strength, however, she quickly placed him against a wall. His body slid into the floor again, his head hunging down.

“Holt, please wake up mon dieu!!” Colette knelt and yelled while she was lightly slapping him in the face so he can get back his conciousness.

“Oh my God! I’ll bring him something for his pressure, I’ll be right back.” Dr Mendes left them so he can find what Holt needed for fainting.

Holt little by little started to react and mumbled with his mouth, “Don-don’t let th-that crazy doc-tor get near me-me....” he weakly said to Colette “I- I h-hate needles.”

But Colette rolled her eyes at his statement, “Come on Holt, get up, you are an adult. You are like almost 40 years old and you are afarid of a needle? Act like a grown up... Sacre bleu this is embarrassing!” she sighed indignant, trying to pick him up.

“Okay...I’m sorry.” Holt tried to get up, although he felt his head was still deezy. Because of that he lost his sence of balance when his foot slipped in the shiny floor when he tried to take his first step. When that happened, his body went forward to Colette, landing on her, he grabbed strongly her body, their noses brushed and their masks crushed into eachother,

Colette was frozen at such accident and stood there with eyes wide open. When Holt finally recovered his consciense he fixed his eyes on the french woman’s face, which it was closer than he could’ve expected. Once the cowboy realized in what kind of position he was, he felt Colette’s breath on his mouth, giving away the closeness of thir lips. If it weren’t for the masks, their mouths would’ve touched.. .they would’ve... kissed.

Both adults blushed red on their cheeks and abruptally moved away from eachother, not wanting to look the other’s eyes. Holt felt his collar tight and coughed a bit.

Colette did the same removing a strain of hair and place it behind her ear. “Trés bien!” she wanted the akwardness and the blush to fade away fast, “Let’s give him those samples now, oui?”

“Oui,” Holt nervously agreed, “but I can’t promise you that I won’t faint again, since I was a boy I was afraid of needles, woman....”

With that, Holt and Colette went to the doctor’s place, still not looking at eachother. The silence between them was uncomfortable, their blushes took their time to disappear and both their hearts were pounding uncontrollably.

But, fortunately, they were wearing masks on their moths, because none of them could saw that the other was smiling with pure sincerity and even... joy.

The End.

This was loooonger than I expected but still it was fun to do. Honestly it could’ve been better in my opinion but I’m satisfied with the result. Wow... so this is how it feels to respond an ask with a mini fic?.... This is great ;)

Thank you so much @vandeverefan for this ask, I had a lot of fun being creative with this!!!

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raeynbowboi · 6 years ago

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Top 10 Disney Villains

10. King Candy Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

Although he’s newer to the villain roster, King Candy was a well-written villain who served as a perfect blend of humorous and genuinely threatening. He also tied very nicely into the themes of the film, which makes him stand out in my memory as a good villain, because I take more than just personality and actions into account when judging characters, but also role in the narrative, and how they support the themes and ideas of the story. King Candy is the perfect villain for a story like this, which is why I consider him good enough to be on this list, even if as a villain himself, he might not be the most memorable among the Disney canon.

9. Gaston Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Perhaps the Disney villain we’re most likely to meet in real life, Gaston is the perfect example of toxic masculinity on full display. He’s a great anthithesis to the Beast, though I never saw him all that handsome, which sort of detracts just a little bit from the story. But in a story about how looks don’t matter, but actions do, he’s a great foil to the love interest. He’s a selfish hateful man who is handed everything he wants, and when he doesn’t get his way, he strongarms people until they meet his demands. Yet, despite his personality, he retains a legion of followers who are more-so admirers than actual friends. He never once considers anyone to be his equal or of sufficient worth unless it was helpful in his own endeavors. And anyone who has ever had a friend who basically used them and then ditched them at the soonest convenience can probably recognize that kind of so-called “friend” in Gaston. He’s a great villain to dissect as an analysis of our current culture, but I don’t want to write a five page essay on Gaston for a top 10 list.

8. Yzma Emperor’s New Groove (2000)

Inarguably Disney’s best comedic villain (not counting her henchman Kronk), Yzma is a brilliantly funny character whose exaggurated appearance and over-the-top personality blend well with the fast-paced slapstick comedy that fills the movie. Yet, despite being a funny villainess, she avoids a major pitfall of many comedic villains by also being legitimately threatening and dangerous to our heroes. That, combined with the excellent writing in the movie makes Yzma so memorable and likable.

7. Mother Gothel Tangled (2010)

Although her actual villainous actions in the movie are surprsingly few and far between, I genuinely love Mother Gothel as a villainess. Her motivations are well-established, and she’s the sole reason the story has any plot at all. Comparisons have been made to the living conditions of both Quasimodo and Rapunzel, and I would genuinely agree that Mother Gothel is akin to a diet version of Frollo without all the genocide and religious superiority. She has to be more discreet and pretend to be kind in order to keep her little flower content to remain obedient locked away from the outside world. It makes total sense the way she treats Rapunzel, and her entire character, personality, and role all fit together to enhance the narrative of the story.

6. Long John Silver Treasure Planet (2002)

Arguably one of the most human villains from Disney, Silver is a beautiful complexity as he juggles the duality of being a father-figure to the impressionable young Jim, while also betraying Jim’s trust. Since Jim’s father left when he was a child, Jim closes himself off from people and seems adrift in the world. Silver, who has no need to trick the boy for his mutiny to succeed, still takes the time to take Jim under his wing, nurture the boy’s abilities, and form a bond. Heck, with how relatively apathetic Jim was, he could have manipulated Jim into hating being on the ship, and thus have him be happy when the mutiny sets him free. But instead, he chose to teach the boy and boost his confidence. In the end, Silver is a compelling Anti-Villain where it’s hard to really define him as a good or wicked person. That is honestly more interesting than just being a straight deceitful villain.

5. Bill Sykes Oliver & Company (1988)

Perhaps the most surprising choice on my list, Sykes was a villain from Oliver & Company, a retelling of Oliver Twist with stray dogs and a kitten. However, despite Disney’s family friendly brand, Sykes is a surprisingly menacing character. A loan shark and a cut-throat business man, he spends most of the movie threatening to kill Fagin which is far darker than Disney tends to get. While many Disney villains want to kill people, those desires were driven by personal grievances with that person or people. With Sykes, it’s cold, ruthless business. He doesn’t care about Fagin’s life. All he cares about is getting his money, and Fagin’s life just happens to be the collateral. It’s the purest form of cold-blooded murder, and that’s not a common thing among Disney villains.

4. Ursula The Little Mermaid (1989)

There’s a good reason Ursula is one of the flagship villains of this franchise. She has a strong personality, is a great antagonist, and directly plays off the protagonist’s weaknesses to win. Second only to Scar, and possibly Jafar, Ursula is the classic hand-drawn animated Disney villain to get closest to winning. The fact that she’s based on a drag queen is kind of perfect, since the fairytale was written by Hans Christian Andersen to express his love for Edvard Collin discreetly. He intended to give it to Edvard as a wedding gift, but Edvard and his wife purposefully “forgot” to tell him when the wedding was out of fear that he’d make a scene or announce his love for Edvard in front of everyone. Thus, the mermaid’s taboo love of someone she shouldn’t who comes from an entirely different way of living is a direct parallel to Hans’ feelings for the young Gentleman, and the mermaid being unable to speak and suffering greatly to be near her love is a clear metaphor for Hans’ own feelings of torture. So the inclusion of a drag queen in a movie adaptation of a covert metaphorical gay romantic tragedy is just deliciously fitting.

3. The Horned King The Black Cauldron (1984)

Sykes got a place on this list for being genuinely intimidating, but this villain is living nightmare fuel. One of the best things a genuinely threatening villain can do is successfully scare you, and this villain scared the living daylights out of me as a child. In fact, he was the only Disney villain to truly and completely scare me as a child. The rest of the villains were pretty much just bad characters, but the Horned King was far more terrifying than anything else I’d seen as a kid. Though his movie bombed and the story itself was a bit lacking, the Horned King was a genuinely horrifying presence, and to this day, I can’t think Disney Villains without this guy clawing his way into my mind. Maybe as a villain himself, he’s a bit flat, but he’s a horrific undead murderous monster trying to snuff out all life. He doesn’t need to be that complex for what he is, and that works with the type of villain that he was created to be.

2. Claude Frollo The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1996)

If Sykes made it to number 5 for the cold-blooded attempt at murder on one person, Frollo strolls into 2nd place for his cold-blooded successful mass racial/ethnic genocide of multiple people over a long reign of tyranny. Although we don’t see his treats on-screen, he very verbally implies that he has been executing people one by one for at least twenty years as he crushes ants. We even see him barricade a family with children inside of their house and then proceed to burn it down. This man is not messing around, and I love it. When it coems to dark, twisted, and messed up villains, Frollo takes the cake. He is hands down one of the greatest and most horrible villains out there. And the fact that he does this all in the name of God is a hauntingly dark reminder of the true cruelty of the medieval Christian church. Frollo was written in the original book to be a deliberate critique of the Catholic church, and I for one am grateful that Disney decided to be faithful to Frollo’s horrible nature when adapting to film.

1. Maleficent Sleeping Beauty (1959)

Finally, we reach the leader of the Disney Villains. How could I not put her at the top of this list? She literally fights with all the powers of Hell. But what I like most about her is what you can piece together from the narrative. Out of all the fairies, only Fauna thinks that Maleficent could be reasoned with, and she feels sad at the idea that Maleficent may not even grasp the concept of happiness, or what it feels like to be loved. This opens Maleficent up to being a product of abuse, abandonment, and bitterness. Her hatred for the world and her actions of spite and envy come into a new light with the idea that it’s kindled from neglect and exclusion from others. It offers the question of what would happen if someone did try to just talk to her, and offers a possibly sympathetic reading of her character. But, the true crux of what Maleficent stands for is that she’s evil, and she takes great pleasure in her evil ways. She cursed a baby because she wasn’t invited to a party. When it comes to pure, unfiltered evil, Maleficent has that in spades. So, Maleficent is a perfect character no matter which type you prefer as a villain: the tormented outcast lashing out, or the heartless monster lighting the world on fire for fun. No matter what kind of villain you prefer, there’s a way of reading her narrative to satisfy you.

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