#and then on our way home the car suddenly started smelling weird & the check engine light came on

[oncominggstorm]

I was in such a good mood earlier & now I’m legit holding back tears I’m SO sick of this shit

[headinthestaticsky]

Extras for The Dusk Calls for me.

Authors Note: While I plan out the next few chapters of my story, enjoy these memories I did for the re-write I did on Wattpad.

TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions and a attempt of SA

Time: This Takes place a year before the beginning of The Dusk Calls for me.

"Makes me feel like flying

Top-down backstreet driving Dusty road all alone

Tip my hat Puff of smoke, smoke

Makes me feel like flying

I just run ."

American Gurl by: Kilo Kish

I was finally out, those words of bile my mother and sister spew toward me finally pushed me over the edge. Yet those words finally got me back with my father in Forks, where I always belonged.

Flashback: One Week Ago.

"FLEUR! GET DOWN HERE NOW!" My erratic mother Renee yelled from downstairs.

My heart started beating out of my chest, what did I do this time? I walked into the dining room, Renee and Isabella were sitting at the table across from where I was sitting. Bella had a smirk on her face relishing in the tension between Renee and I.

"Yes?" I asked.

"You always have to cause trouble don't you?' She replied back, malice laced her voice.

"What? What are you even talking about?"

"Bella told me you've been saving money to go see your father in Forks." She spat at me.

My rapidly beating heart sunk down into my stomach, I had been trying to see my dad in Forks for a year now. My mother refused to get me a plane ticket herself, she always told me I reminded her too much of my father and that I didn't need to be around him anymore than I already was which wasn't often.

"Mother, it's my money I can do with it as I please," I said calmly though I could feel the rage beginning to boil in my blood.

"YOU AREN'T GOING!" She yelled demandingly.

I couldn't control myself, it was as if someone else had entered my body.

"WHAT IN THE HELL IS SO WRONG FOR WANTING TO SEE MY FATHER!?"

"I'M NOT GOING TO WASTE THAT KIND OF MONEY ON YOU!"

"Well you aren't now aren't you? It's my own money and I will use it however the hell I want to!"

"Oh don't you..." Renee started.

"Are you going to tell me you would be doing the same thing if Bella was the one wanting to go see dad?"

"She isn't a trouble maker." She snapped back.

"How am I a trouble maker? For wanting my mother to be kind and considerate? For wanting my mother to treat me with respect? To get an ounce of love from the frozen, undead heart inside your chest?" I asked, my face heated up it felt like it was burning.

"If you can't stand to be around us so much why don't you just move down there to Forks?"

"I will, just give me the rest of the money for the plane ticket and I swear to god the second I walk out that door I will NEVER come back!"

"Fine..." I turned away from her before she could say anything else. Before I reached the stairs I turned around again, looking directly at Bella.

"Get away from her while you can Isabella, or you're going to end up being just as toxic as she is." I then left before they could say anything else.

Flashback over: 2 years before the Original story begins.

I looked to the side, staring out the window. The desert plains had disappeared while I slept and now the lush green forests overtook the view. The fog wasn't heavy but the skies were covered with dark grey clouds and a downpour of rain. The cold weather was a lot more favorable in my opinion, the sun couldn't burn my skin much here. The plane had begun to shake signaling that the plane was beginning to land. I couldn't wait to see my father again, I hadn't seen him since my 12th birthday. When I got off the plane I stretched, being cramped in a small plane for an almost 3-hour flight wasn't exactly the most comfortable.

I walked through the crowded airport, scanning the area for my father. I bumped into some disgruntled couples and quickly left before I was caught in the crossfires of their mood.

"Petal?" I heard from behind me. I turned around quickly recognizing that voice, it could calm me down before I got into trouble.

"Dad..." I said fondly before running up to hug him.

My heartfelt I little more full, and the pain my mother inflicted on me was healed for the time being. We walked out together, each of us was carrying a bag. The wind was strong today and my hair was flying all of the places. Its cooling touch raised goosebumps on my skin, mom didn't buy any warmer clothes for me so I was stuck in the typical Arizona tank tops and shorts. Luckily for me, the car was already warmed up so I dethawed quickly. We drove for a few minutes in silence, the roar of the engine and other passing cars were the only sounds filling the space.

"So, how have you been? I feel like I haven't seen you in a while." Dad said.

"I've been better, you know how mom is," I mumbled.

"I don't know what happened to her, she wasn't like that in high school. If she was I wouldn't have even wasted a second on her."

"I know you would've dad...she's cruel for sure. She's just good at hiding it from people she wants to impress."

"Yeah, she is."

The drive was a giant wave of nostalgia, being 16 now and seeing all of the familiar sites and views brought back fond memories. The old ice cream shop dad use to take me to, the reservation that Sam and Leah lived on, it all brought me back. It also fueled anger, however, as my mother constantly kept me under the brutal radiation of the sun.  Dad must've seen the look on my face and put his hand on my shoulder.

"It's going to be okay Petal, you're away from her now." He comforted.

"It's not just her dad... Bella's acting like her too."

"That's a shame... it really is."

"Yeah... it is." I sighed.

"I just can't wait to get back home, the attic is calling for me."

Dad chuckled before speaking again.

"You know... I heard you just got your license... So I got you an older car."

"You did not have to do that dad."

"It doesn't get in until next week, so I'll have to drive you to school until then," Dad said as if that would balance out the fact he got me a car.

"That's fine dad. What is it?"

"It's an old Mustang, a Fastback."

"Thank you, dad..."

"No problem Petal.

When we pulled into the driveway of our small but beautiful home the nostalgia fully set in. The colors were exactly the same, and the grass was just as muddy and dead as before.

"Well I cleared off some shelves for you in the bathroom, your room was a bit dusty so I just cleaned it for you," Dad explained as he helped me take my luggage upstairs.

"Sounds good, thank you again, dad, I love you."

"Love you too Petal." He kissed my head before closing the door behind me. The room was bare, I would have to fix it later on. I collapsed on my bed, facing the ceiling.

"I'm home."

September 17th, 2004.

"Dad I have to go, I don't want to be late on my first day!" I exclaimed throwing on a leather jacket.

"Petal I am almost ready, I never knew you were so much of a bookworm." He joked, ruffling my hair.

"Dad I am an entire school year ahead of where I should be... I take my education very seriously." I said, trying to hide the growing smirk on my face.

"Alright alright let's go," Dad said, taking my arm and pulling me out the door.

We were only driving for a little bit when I decided to roll the window down, I placed my arms on where the window used to be and rested my head on them. My hair blew out of my face and the cool mist of Forks hit me. When we arrived at the school dad was scanning the parking lot looking for a place to park when he passed right by a group of people. They were all gorgeous, their faces seemingly perfectly sculpted, and they all had the same colored eyes, golden. My eyes locked with one however, they were filled with pain for a second before melting into shock. something strange filled my chest and my heart began to race. As we drove past them I gave him a smile, hoping to ease his shock.

Timeskip: September 30th, 2004

Something was up, the boy I saw outside that window, Jasper Hale was more than what he seemed. He was freezing cold all the time, and I swore I saw his eyes turn black for a split second when he saw a boy from another make a gesture toward me. It was strange really, we had been friends for a few weeks but he seemingly had a protective...energy over me. But at the same time, I still felt something... I couldn't explain it. It was as if we were connected to each other in some way. My dad had to take my car to the shop and he couldn't pick me up today so I decided to take a trip to the library, hoping to find some new material to read.

I didn't realize how long I had been in the library until I looked out of the small windows of the building. The sky was darkened and daylight was running out, I checked out a few books and left not wanting to be stuck walking in the night. I was a few blocks home when I heard 3 men talking behind me.

"Oh looks at this one..."

"She seems perfect for us."

"Come here girly... we just want to talk."

My heart raced and my pace quickened, speed walking home. I tried taking weird turns and cuts but they wouldn't fall for the bait. I decided to run for it hoping my legs would be quick enough to evade them all. I was then pushed against the wall 2 minutes into my escape again, the smell of alcohol made me want to retch.

"You aren't very good at listening to orders." One murmured, his face was inches away from me, he breathed in my scent and began to chuckle.

"Don't be too hard on her... I like ones that fight." Another said

"Make this easy on yourself girl..."

One reached down to take off my clothes when he was suddenly thrown back a few feet into the air. I just stood against the wall shocked, I saw Jasper standing over the man before making his way over to the other two men. They both took off leaving their "friend" behind but Jasper zoomed toward them. His speed was inhuman and his strength was unprecedented yet I couldn't stop myself from moving from my spot. The other two men were flown into the air and scream on impact. Jasper grabbed them both by the throats.

"If you EVER try to touch her or any woman for that matter like that again... I. will. kill. you!" He growled before releasing them down on the ground. They gasped and ran again, babbling in terror toward one another.

Jasper walked toward me with a guilty look on his face, his hand reached out for mine and I took it without even thinking.

"Come with me Darlin' I have a lot to explain to you." He said softly, his mood had completely changed with me.

We walked for a few moments in silence, I side-eyed him for any shift in behavior, when it didn't I decided to interrogate him.

"How did you do that?" My voice trembled.

He sighed before replying.

"I'm a vampire." He said blatantly.

I looked at him and laughed thinking it was a joke... when he didn't join I stopped and looked at him with shock.

"You're serious?" I said, my eyes widening again.

"Yes I am, I've been 17 for...141 years. I got changed during the Civil War."

"Damn... you're old... wait were you in the Civil War?"

"Yes, I was drafted to the Confederate Army when I was 17..."

"Yikes..."

"You're telling me, I ran away the first chance I got... I wasn't going to fight in some war that was fueled by warped and disgusting ideas just because I was forced to. I never thought the way they did... I never understood why someone could think so low of a human being just because of his skin."

"That's very brave of you."

"I had just made it to Galveston when I decided to take a break... I ended up on a beach... that's when I ran into an immortal named Maria. She was creating an army and decided that I would be a good fit for it."

"She changed you against your will?"

"I didn't even know what she was doing until I felt searing pains from my arms all the way up to my neck." He explained rolling up his sleeves and showing me his scars."

I traced the teeth marks on his forearm before looking up at him again.

"I'm sorry that happened to you..."

He looked up at me in shock.

"You... you feel sympathy for something like me? I'm a monster..." He said sincerely.

"It wasn't even your choice as to what you became... and I don't think a monster would've saved me back there. Face it, Jasper, you're a big softie who's had bad experiences in his long... long life."

He chuckled before glancing at me, we made it back to the house, dad still wasn't home yet. We walked into the backyard, sitting in patio chairs and looking up at the stars.

"There's something else I have to tell you." Jasper admitted in the darkness.

I looked at him in confusion, what else did he have to tell me? He's a werewolf too?

"You're..." He hesitated. "You're my mate." He said quickly.

"What? How... vampires have mates?" I asked in shock.

"Yes we do, and we instantly know when we've met them. Didn't you feel it, when you looked out that window at me? It was enamour... love, something I have never experienced before."

"I haven't either... but I have to admit I felt something too. I just didn't know what it was, I felt connected to you somehow though. But... I'm 16... falling deeply in love isn't exactly something I planned."

"I understand completely. I won't force you to do anything you don't want to do. I understand I am a vampire... this is a lot to take in." Jasper said lowering his head in shame, his curls covered his eyes.

I sat up and turned to him.

"Hey, hey it's not just because you're a vampire honest! I just need to think things through... we can still talk in and out of school I won't push you out." I said a bit faced-paced. I didn't want to hurt his feelings he did just save me after all.

He looked and me and grabbed my hand.

"Take all the time you need Fleur, I will accept your answer no matter what is it." He said sincerely.

"Thank you... Jasper."

"It's not any trouble." His face lit up all of the sudden, car headlights entered my line of view. I felt my hand by dropped by his cold one and a whoosh of wind flew my hair forward. I turned back around and he was gone.

Timeskip: October 16th, 2004.

It was hard, weighing the pros and cons of being with Jasper.

Pros: We were soulmates... destined to be with each other, He knew my limits and respected my boundaries, he gave me a choice, not forcing me into something I might not want to do, and he was a kind and gentle soul. We understood each other, our hearts and souls were connected and I would never find someone else I would be so close to.

Cons: He was a creature who thirsted for blood... a thirst he didn't always have the best control over, Being in a serious relationship at such a young age was a huge commitment I didn't even fully know who I was... would I ever be able to find out who I am being so committed to someone If I did become involved in a relationship two things would happen... I would die and leave him lonely for eternity, or I would be turned into a vampire... leaving my family behind.

My mulling over of the pros and cons was interrupted, a girl had cleared her throat. I looked up realizing I was still in the school library, standing in the back of the constant isles of books. I turned to the voice and my eyes were shocked to see Rosalie Hale looking at me.

"Rosalie? Is there something you need?" I asked.

"Let's go for a walk, I need to talk to you in private." She said she seemed tense about something.

I checked out the books I got before following her to the outside, we walked near the edge of the woods. The dead leaves and grass crunched underneath our feet.

"I know Jasper told you about us... and he told me that you wanted to think somethings over with him." She started.

"Hey... I just wanted to let you know I would never tell anyone about you guys... And I'm not trying to hurt Jasper with me thinking our relationship over. It's just a lot of process." By the time I finished that statement she laughed and patted my shoulder.

"Don't worry Fleur I completely understand why you want to think over some things... I would too if I were in your shoes. Besides, I trust you... I get a good vibe off of you." Rosalie replied smiling at me.

"I want to get into a relationship with Jasper I do but... I don't want to leave my father... he's all I got right now and I'm all he's got."

"Hey, I promise no one would force you into becoming a vampire in our family... I especially wouldn't force you to."

"Really?"

"Yes of course... It's nice to meet someone with a respect for mortality."

"It's just... I always to do certain things... like going to that art school in Cayon City Oregon... the Art Museums down there are amazing... and I always wanted to kid when I was older... a little boy." I explained smiling fondly at the thought.

"I did too... I always wanted a son."

"But at the same time... I wouldn't want to spend all my time with Jasper... only to leave him alone for eternity you know?" I asked her hoping she would get my point of view.

"Of course... I can tell you've been conflicted these past few weeks about it. But I wanted to vouch for Jasper... he's willing to do anything for you, and his thirst for blood has never been more controlled than when he's been with you. He won't take you away from your family either... he would never want to hurt you in any way possible." She explains turning toward me to look me in the eyes so the message could really sink in.

"Thanks, Rosalie..."

"Of course...give Jasper a chance, I promise it'll be worth it." She said.

"I will... I'll talk to him tonight, thanks for the guidance."

"No problem."

Timeskip: October 16th, 2004: 10:12 PM

Dad was gone, he had to work late down at the station tonight. My palms and legs shook nervous to tell Jasper my decision. I was sitting in the same spot I was in when Jasper told me I was his soulmate... the cool air calmed my nerves slightly before I closed my eyes and sighed.

"Fleur? You said you wanted to talk to me... are you okay?" Jasper's voice asked worryingly behind my closed lids.

"Yeah, I'm fine... I just wanted to give you an answer about... everything."

He sat down adjacent to me and nodded, wanting me to continue.

"I will get into a relationship with you... thank you for giving me the time to think about things."

He smiled before asking me if he could kiss my cheek. I said yes of course and it seemed my body melted in bliss and content. All the past weeks' tensions and worrying left me and it was replaced with love... and a sense of stability. We looked up at the stars and I pointed toward the largest one in the sky.

"You see that one?" I said.

"Yes, I do Darlin'."

"That is the star of the path I started with you..."

[laurensprentiss]

Jouska [Hotch x Reader]

Chapter 8:

Warnings: None, really. Emily and Hotch get to know each other, Emily picks up vibes.

------

“Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.” - David Richo

------

You stare absently out of the window, clutching the lapels of Hotch’s blazer that he’d draped over you. Every so often, you feel the dread in your bones again, a brief moment when your stomach drops as you remember back to earlier. You inhale long and deep when you do, trying to ground yourself and the action doesn’t slip Hotch’s attention who sits next to you, gripping the steering wheel so hard, the leather might wear. 

He glances at you. “It’s okay. Sleep. I’ll wake you when we get there.”

Your eyes feel heavy, drooping of their own accord. You try your best to fight your exhaustion, but the exertion only serves to heighten the throbbing in your temple. You glance over at Hotch as you set your head against the cool glass of the window, the buzz of the car engine and the heater lulling you to sleep. 

The sun is almost set when you wake up, your eyes blinking rapidly as you try to adjust to the dark. You’re parked outside of your apartment building and Hotch scribbles something on a notepad next to you, using the streetlight to illuminate the page. 

He clears his throat when he spots you stirring from the corner of his eye. He sits up straight. “Hey.” He whispers with a smile. 

“Hey.” You inhale deeply and adjust in your seat to face him.  “How long have I been out?” You ask. 

He checks his watch and raises his eyebrows in surprise. “About an hour.” 

He’d lost track of time himself and completely screwed protocol. He’ll pay for that later, he thinks.

“An hour?” You exclaim.

“Yeah.” He winces. “I’m sorry. You looked really peaceful, I didn’t want to wake you.” 

Truth is, he had spent the better part of that hour watching you as you’d slept when he’d parked up, the setting sun casting a golden hue on your skin. He’d debated carrying you up to your apartment but didn’t want to chance waking you, even turned his phone off. Another thing he’ll pay for later, he thinks. 

Headlights appear behind you, and a car pulls up to the sidewalk at your rear. Hotch peers at the rear view mirror and squints, the lights almost blinding in the dark. You turn around in your seat to get a better view.

“Emily.” You reassure him when you see the familiar figure in the driving seat. He shoots you a puzzled look, his eyebrows furrowed. “My friend. From the restaurant.” You remind him.

You start to undo your belt and Hotch climbs out of the car, making his way around the front of his car to open your door, offering you a hand as you step out. 

Emily walks towards where you stand next to Hotch, the two of them offering each other polite smiles. Hotch extends his hand to take Emily’s bags from her, as she immediately gathers you into another hug. He holds the doors open for you and Emily, waits until you guys are inside to trail behind you, giving a quick nod to the two undercovers pulling up on either side of the street. 

“Wait. Why were you guys still outside, you should’ve beat me here, right?” Emily asks. 

———

You reach your hands for the main light switch when you step into your apartment, Hotch setting Emily’s bags down on your sofa, turning a table side lamp on and setting his keys down as he does. Emily tracks his movements carefully. 

You catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror in the hallway, your makeup smudged, eyes still puffy from the tears and sleep. 

You groan.“I need a shower.” 

“Are you going to be okay?” Emily asks, concern etched in her face. 

“Yeah, I think I can handle a shower.” You chuckle dryly.

You tell Emily and Hotch to make themselves at home while you freshen yourself up. You shrug off Hotch’s blazer, gathering the sleeves and the lapels and folding it in half, placing it back in Hotch’s arms. His face betrays his cool and collected demeanour, his eyebrows pinched and his eyes wide as he watches you move closer to him. He looks nervous, as though you’re about to break. 

He wants to reach out and hold you close, brush the stray hairs off your face, wipe your eyes. He settles instead for a light brush of your fingers against his when you hand him his blazer - a ghost of a touch, really. That doesn’t stop you both from shivering a little at the contact. 

Once you step into the shower, Hotch and Emily take the chance to get to know one another better. He extends his hand towards her, introducing himself. 

“Agent Hotchner. Aaron.” 

She takes his hand. “Emily. Prentiss.” 

Hotch circles around your couch and to the kitchen, opens the fridge and helps himself to a bottle of water,  Emily’s eyes stay trained on him as he does. He offers her a bottle, she declines with a quick shake of her head. 

He goes on, “So, how do you guys know each other?”

��We’re friends through our parents.” She explains. “I’ve known her since she was a kid.” She stalks over the kitchen island, propping her elbows on the counter, her gaze pointedly falling to his water bottle. “I think the more important question, though, is how do you two know each other? You certainly seem comfortable.” 

Hotch follows her gaze to the water bottle in his hand, stutters guiltily, but can’t really place why he feels that way. 

It throws him off. “I was- I’m. The ambassador, he-” Emily raises her eyebrows challengingly. “I’m a part of the security detail assigned to her after the events of last year.” 

“I thought that was the other guy.” She asks. “The older guy with the beard?” 

He takes a sip of his water and nods. “That’s my partner. Agent McCall. Ben.” She nods approvingly and he relaxes a little. 

“So, where are you with catching this guy?”

He updates Emily and provides her with the profile they’d worked on, a pinch of guilt when he remembers how he’d avoided you for those two weeks. He shakes it off and suggests Emily take a cognitive interview, ushering her to to take a seat, remembering that she would probably be the best witness of this afternoon. 

“I’m going to need to ask you to close your eyes.” She shoots him a doubtful look. “Humour me.” 

She clears her throat, closing her eyes.

He continues, “Okay. Think back to when you’re at the restaurant, what it smells like, what it sounds like, what the weather is like.” 

She nods and inhales slightly, as if breathing in the smells back at the restaurant. She talks him through the warm weather, the sun shining. How she got there first and how she saw undercovers pull up before you and McCall arrived. 

“How did you know they were UC’s?”

Her eyes blink open and she shrugs. “Occupational hazard, I guess.” Hotch frowns. “Well, my mother’s occupation - but, same difference.” She laughs.

“Okay, well, what about afterwards? When you guys sat down?” 

“We were just talking, I don’t know?” 

“Okay, focus. Go back to when you greeted her. You guys sat down? What did you guys talk about? What made her leave?”

She tells Hotch that you just caught each other up after everything you had missed since you briefly lost touch, that you'd told her about your stalker.

“Why did you guys lose touch?”

“My mother was in Rome for a year.” She shrugs. “We tried to keep up but she had school and personal stuff. We talked about her dad’s health scare, her ex-”

“-Her ex?”

Emily blinks at Hotch, gauging his expression carefully. He’s questioning her under the guise of work, but he’s not that good at concealing his microexpressions - yet. She doesn’t miss the way his face falls for a split-second, or the way he tried to nonchalantly question her about Jordan by cutting her off, the bob in his Adam’s apple as he’d swallowed. 

“Yeah..” She trails off. She thinks carefully about how to proceed, still watching him carefully. “They broke up last year and I guess they reconnected recently.” She says the last part flatly, with little intonation, wants to see his real expression. 

She has a sneaking suspicion that there’s something that extends further than just work for him - maybe even more than friendship, especially after she had seen the way he had held you earlier, the way he touches you like fragile glass, the way he swallows when you come too close. But she wants to be sure.

“What’s his name?” He asks, his left eyebrow arched. 

His nostrils flare slightly and he sniffs nonchalantly as he pulls out a notepad and pen from his blazer pocket that’s thrown on the chair. He writes down Jordan’s name and tries his best to keep a hold on himself. He can finally put a name to the face he saw you with after you visited Quantico that day. 

Reconnected? 

What does that mean? Reconnected? 

He takes his details from Emily and asks her some questions about him - he justifies it to himself as procedure. He’s going to have to question this person after all, why not learn a bit more about him to gain the upper hand? Emily just tells him you guys dated on and off until you broke it off for good. 

“And why’s that?” 

“Why’s what?” Emily asks. 

“Why did she break it off?”

“I don’t know. She never really said. He’s just weird. Sleazy.” 

All she really knows about him is that his father’s a congressman and works on the Hill - Ambassador Prentiss has far reaching arms, after all.  She remembers seeing him at dinner parties and society balls growing up, but that’s around it. 

“And what happened next?”

“After that, her mood changed? She was laughing one minute and quiet the next - I could tell something was bothering her.” She picks at her fingernails. “And then she left. After that, I don’t know what happened.” Her voice is almost a whisper, she thinks maybe if she had done something, if she had said something, reached out sooner - maybe none of this would have happened. 

“I know what you’re thinking, alright. Don’t do that, don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault.” 

“Yeah.” 

She hears the words, but it doesn’t alleviate the guilt she’s feeling right now. Her stomach drops suddenly as she thinks back to something she remembered feeling while at the restaurant, the hair on the back of her neck standing up. 

Hotch sits up straight. “You just remembered something, what is it?” 

Emily’s eyes widen. “I felt like someone was watching me.” She says, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “I thought maybe I was being paranoid about the UC’s or your partner.” She trails off again. “But right before you got there, I was just browsing the menu. There was a guy. He bumped into my table but I couldn’t see his face, it was - it was sunny and he- he was wearing a hat.” She rushes out, gesticulating with her hands. “He squeezed my shoulder when he apologised as he walked past, I remember thinking it was gross, because he lingered.” She shudders.

“Okay. You’re doing really good. What else?” 

“Well, when you guys left out the back, I walked back to the front to get my car. I had the feeling somebody was watching me again.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you feel somebody was watching you? Think.”

“I heard a voice. His voice.” She panicks. “Oh my God, he was talking to a cop. I remember hearing him telling the cop that the screaming was so loud. He said it sounded like someone was dying. But he wasn't looking at the cop, he was looking right at me.” She feels nauseous.

He nods. “Excuse me.” He ducks out of your apartment to make a ten minute phone call to Barnes, rattles off the information he got in his cognitive with Emily. “We need to question the staff and any cops that responded today. CCTV, too.” 

He hangs up and sees three missed calls from Haley, groans when he realises the time. She’s probably asleep but he figures he can still call her, at least she’ll know he checked in. He paces the length of the hallway, the phone to his ear and he waits for the inevitable command to leave a message. He’s about to hang up when the receiver clicks, Haley’s voice coming from the other end. 

“Hello?” She pants.

“Hey, it’s me.” He frowns. “Are you alright, why are you out of breath?” 

“I had to run to grab the phone.” She chuckles. “What’s up?”

He’s surprised he isn’t getting the third degree, that she isn’t more mad. He figures they’re still good after their make-up high, both of them vowing to do better. 

Still. 

He clears his throat. “Nothing. I just wanted to check in.” He can hear rustling in the background, figures she’s probably cleaning or about to tuck in for the night. “I don’t think I’ll be home until around 1 or 2am, we had a situation.” 

“Okay. That’s alright, honey. You take your time, I’ll see you when you get home, okay?” She sounds chipper.

“Yeah.” He’s caught a little off guard at how laid back she’s being but he figures he doesn’t want to jinx it and count his blessings too quickly, bids her a quick goodbye. 

He’s about to make the walk back down the hallway into your apartment, when the elevator dings behind him, McCall stepping out. 

“Hey, I wasn’t expecting you for another few hours.” Hotch says patting him on the shoulders. 

“Barnes told me what happened, I figured I’d come and relieve you, it’s 11 o'clock man.” 

Hotch runs a hand over his face and groans. Truth is, he’s shattered and wants nothing more than to just find the closest bed and sleep undisturbed for at least 12 hours.

Inside, you’re rattling around in the kitchen, pulling pots and pans from the cupboards, setting some pasta on the hob when Hotch and McCall walk in. 

“Hey! You’re out of the shower.” Hotch scratches the back of his head sheepishly when he hears his tone, and realises everybody else just heard it too. 

Emily watches him with a smile and McCall just ducks his head and clears his throat, reaches to shake Emily’s hand and introduce himself. 

“Yeah. I- I feel a lot better. Thanks.” You smile. “I realised none of us ate all day though, and cooking soothes me, so pasta it is.” 

Emily reaches up to your cupboards for some more glasses, two already in her hand. “You guys staying?” 

Please stay. 

“Ben will be, but I gotta get home, sorry. Maybe next time?” Hotch offers. 

Oh.

You can’t ignore the disappointment in your chest when Hotch turns to walk out, but you swallow it down and say goodbye, anyway. You weren’t quite ready to let go of him today, he was a comforting presence and you’re not really on even footing yet - for some reason he helps to centre you. The disappointment you hold in your shoulders isn’t missed by Emily who offers you a knowing smile and motions over to the sofa where Hotch’s blazer lies. 

Your eyes widen as you set down the knife and circle around the island to grab the item, shooting her an awkward smile as you do. You click the door shut behind you. 

“Hold the elevator!” 

Hotch’s hand comes up between the two doors as they’re about to close, his eyebrows furrowed when he sees you jogging towards him. He steps out as you close the distance between you. 

“You forgot your blazer!” You sigh. 

“Ah.” He apologises quickly and goes to take it from you, but you open up the lapels and sleeves motioning for him to put in on instead. 

“It’s cold outside.” You whisper.

You hold it out to him and he tucks his arms into the sleeves, stepping into it as you help him put it on as he bends slightly so he can meet your height. You absentmindedly brush some dust off the shoulders as he turns back to you, a small smile on his face. You’re so close to him and he can’t find it in himself to look away, his gaze flitting to your lips. He can smell your soap, feel the heat radiating off your body. 

You clear your throat and step back a little. 

You share a look, a dangerous, vulnerable gaze that feels like it’s stripping you both bare. It’s there in front of you, something that hangs unspoken in the air, glaringly obvious, yet you both neglect to face it. 

“Well. I should-” he points to the elevator behind him. You nod when he presses the button for the elevator to return, the floor numbers appearing above the doors. 

You chew on your lip, frozen in place, unable to leave  but unable to do what you actually want to do. It’s only when he steps on to the elevator and is staring at his shoes that you call out to him again. 

“Aaron?” 

“Yes?” He says almost immediately, head whipping up. 

You try to formulate the words but your head still feels jumbled, too busy and you’re beginning to have an alarming realisation that you desperately want to push to the back of your mind. You don’t know how to say what you’re feeling, panic rising - you only know that your emotions are bubbling over and you want to say something, do something to show your gratitude. 

“I just.” You take a step forward. “Thank you.” You shake your head, not knowing what else to say. 

Almost on instinct, you wrap your arms around his shoulders, stepping on your toes to reach him, burying your face in his neck. The air leaves his chest as you embrace him, the unexpected, but long awaited contact taking him by surprise. His warm hard body is solid against you, as he ducks down, his arms wrapping around your waist, one hand coming around to your ribs. 

He squeezes gently, inhaling the scent of your hair, the two of you just sharing a brief moment, quiet in the chaos. Your arms flex around his shoulders, holding him close - close enough to make him feel what you want to say. His own hands flex and tighten, warm over your sweater, almost radiating heat as he brings you closer to himself. 

He swallows thickly, his heart pounding. Absurd thoughts penetrate his mind, a realisation dawning on him that he tries like hell to push deep back down into the abyss. It doesn’t help that you’re right in front of him, warm and comforting, intoxicating. 

But he can’t. 

It’ll pass he thinks. 

You stay in the moment for what seems like a long while, a ding breaking you out of your moment. You sniff slightly and loosen your grip on him, his arms unwinding from around your waist, the both of you bereft at the loss of contact. Your cheeks brush as you let yourself down, his coarse beard hair scratching pleasantly against your face. Your hands trail down his chest slowly over his dress shirt,  the tip of his nose against your forehead. Your eyes flutter from the gentle contact as you glance up at him, his eyes hooded, one hand still on your rib. His thumb rubs gently, back and forth over your sweater, his gentle eyes staring back at you, taking you in. 

You swallow thickly and force yourself away from his magnetic pull, stepping back gently, before you do something you regret. Your arms cross over your chest in an automatic act of self-preservation and unconscious comfort. He steps back into the elevator, his cheeks a little flushed, a ghost of a smile gracing his lips - but there’s something in his eyes. Something intense, that pulls at you and you daren’t let yourself hope and be carried away by it again. 

You feel it. But he couldn’t possibly, you think. 

He feels it. But you couldn’t possibly, he thinks.

“Goodnight.” He whispers, his voice hoarse. 

“Night, Aaron.” 

———

The lights are off when he gets home around 25 minutes later, only their bedroom window illuminated. He thinks maybe Haley fell asleep waiting up for him, he wasn’t supposed to be home for another few hours yet anyway. He quietly closes the door when he gets in, toes his shoes off and tip toes across the floor to get himself a drink of water before he heads up. He takes special care to remain light on his feet as he walks, he knows the worn old floorboards in their cheap rental home creak horribly, even at the lightest pressure. 

Almost on cue, the floorboards creak upstairs directly above him but travel towards the end of the upstairs hallway. His ears perk up as he follows the sound, travelling back from the end of the upstairs hallway after a few moments, and down the stairs as Hotch walks out of the kitchen curiously, glass still in hand. He walks out to Haley running down the stairs, her face flushed. 

“Hi! Honey! You’re home.” She pants a little. 

She throws herself into his arms and he finds himself a little rigid and unable to fully return her embrace. His face contorts and he finds his mind wandering to the way you’d slotted against his body perfectly, the smell of your hair, your cheek against his. 

He feels a tug at his chest. 

She releases him and plants a kiss on his lips, but his eyes stay open, eyebrow quirked slightly in confusion.

“I thought you’d be asleep. I didn’t hear anything when I got in.” He tells her. 

She grabs his hand and pulls him upstairs. “Well I was getting ready for bed when I heard you pull up.” She chirps. 

It’s odd, he thinks, her tone of voice. Especially at this time of night, and he can’t ever remember her being so happy to see him, especially after a full day of work. She’s usually the opposite, full of biting sarcasm and jabs. She seems on edge now, teetering on the edge of hyper. The bedding is rumpled and he frowns at that, has never known Haley to unmake their bed unless it was right before bed. He can’t find it in himself to think too deeply into it, though, the sight of a bed inviting nonetheless. 

He loosens his tie a little more, and finally lets out a yawn, turning to go to the main bathroom to get ready for bed. 

“Where are you going?” Haley asks, eyebrows raised, a tight smile on her face. 

He points out to the hallway. “To the bathroom?”

She shoots up. “No, no! The faucet. It’s uh, well I don’t know what it is, but it’s not working. Gotta call the plumber, I guess.” She rattles off in a single breath. 

He concedes. “Fine.” He’s exhausted and all he wants is to sleep. 

He ducks into their small not-even-a-half-bath ‘ensuite’, that consists only of a toilet and a sink. He catches sight of himself in the mirror and realises he looks even worse than he feels, he didn’t realise that was possible. He neglects brushing his teeth tonight, settles for swilling some mouthwash and changing into his shorts and calls it.

Haley isn’t there when he emerges from the bathroom, a frown on his forehead soon appears at her almost skittish behaviour. He can’t summon the energy to care too deeply, though, slipping under the covers, sleep calling out to him. She reappears moments later, telling him that they had forgotten to turn the downstairs lights off before they came up. 

“Hm.” He replies, already half asleep. 

He only hums as she slips in next to him, their backs to one another. He dips into an almost instant deep sleep, rest coming easy to him once the thoughts of your warm embrace surrounds him, granting him solace. 

Haley on the other hand, lies perfectly rigid, her hands under her head on the pillow, her mind swimming and heart pounding as she listens for the receding footsteps in their front yard. 

———

< Prev | Next >

Tags: @oreogutz @andromedasstarship @galacticnerd-78 @izzyl13 @trashcan-possum @crying-river @purpledragonturtles @gabbysblogthingy @euphoricmidoriya @archiveofadragon @yoshigguk @acidicbloody​ @jeor​ @ivebeenthinkingboutu​ @bauslut​ @vashanatasha​ @averyhotchner​

[whyarewecalledtheshipname]

kh3, recoded spoilers:

another part to my data boys as gummiphone assistants crack lol. Basic concept: Data Sora and Data Riku get sent to Riku's phone to accompany him on his ventures through unreality.

in this installment: Riku realizes his kh munny doesn't work in Unreality, so Data Riku pulls some bs in order to help Riku win prize money in a motorcycle race.

warnings: some cussing, ig, crack

___

“That’ll be $25.03.”

Riku blinks. He looks down at his munny. He doesn’t know how to divide a single munny into “point three” munny. He’s never needed to do that back home.

He does the next best thing, and holds out twenty-six munny.

The cashier reflexively reaches out his hand, then pulls away. He stares at Riku’s hand, then glares at Riku’s face.

Riku pulls his munny back just an inch. “...I’m sorry, I only have twenty-six.”

The cashier squints, then glares again. “Is this a joke or something?”

Riku’s phone rings in his pocket, but Riku feels himself growing confused, and doesn’t want to add the data kids to the mess. “I don’t understand. What’s wrong? Is it the total?”

The cashier looks to the side, as if attempting to take a mental break from the situation, before turning back to Riku. “Dude, stop with the prank. You already ordered your food, just—”

“What is it?” someone calls from within the kitchen of the restaurant.

“Hold the food,” the cashier calls back. “This guy’s trying to pay in marbles or something.”

“What the fuck?”

Riku blinks. What did that mean? The word, the marbles, the prank, all of it?

“I’m sorry,” Riku apologizes again, and he knows Data Sora is going to give him a talking to for it. “I’m—Cancel my order, I—”

The cashier sighs, and taps on the monitor of the register. “Alright, man, just—don’t do this kinda stuff; no one watches prank videos anymore.”

Riku nods, despite not understanding a word being said, and ducks out of the restaurant, munny in hand.

He wanders the streets for a good while, until his confusion and embarrassment simmer down. Only then does he finally answer his phone, which hasn’t stopped ringing incessantly.

“Hellooo?!”

Riku braces himself. “What is it, Sora—”

“Riku! What was that? What happened? Why didn’t you answer? And what did I tell you about over-apologizing?”

“I was busy,” Riku quickly answers, if only because otherwise, Data Sora would keep asking questions.

“Busy not eating! And right when you finally decided to! Go back!”

Riku thinks about the munny he’d stuffed back in his pocket, and feels his earlier frustration returning. “And what? They wouldn’t take my munny, and I don’t think it’s because of something I did.”

Data Riku scoffs, and it’s the first sound he’s made this whole time. “That’s why I was calling you. Was there a weird “S” looking symbol on the menu?”

Riku doesn’t have to think twice. It had stood out to him instantly. “Yeah.”

“I thought so. That symbol represents the currency here. Your munny from home is different, and it won’t work here.”

“Then why didn’t you warn him?” Data Sora chides, lightly smacking Data Riku's elbow.

“I didn’t check until just a while ago, okay?”

Data Sora gasps, his mild anger seemingly vanishing. “Riku? Not planning ahead?”

Data Riku rolls his eyes, but Data Sora’s antics instantly improve Riku’s mood.

“So now what?” Riku asks, and now there’s less tension in his voice. “I haven’t run into any monsters here, and who’s to say they’d drop munny anyway?”

Data Sora crosses his arms into his usual thinking pose, humming. Data Riku, on the other hand, raises an eyebrow at Riku. The little smirk is back, and Riku can’t believe he used to do such a thing.

“I think I found something,” is all Data Riku says.

Data Sora’s arms fling out beside him in surprise. “Huh?”

Data Riku answers by strolling over to his beloved keyboard, and calling up a holographic display.

Riku blinks, and Data Sora gasps.

“So,” Data Riku asks cheekily, “do you remember how to ride?”

~<~>~

“How did you know about that?” Riku asks as he follows the gps on his phone. He glances up to read a street sign, then looks down at his phone again.

Data Riku scoffs. “Come on. If there’s one adventure of yours I have data of, it’s your time in The Grid.”

“That makes sense.”

Data Sora is turning from one Riku to the other, eyes wide. “Huh? Adventure? Grid? What’re you guys talking about?”

Data Riku points at the hologram in the middle of the room, and Data Sora is transfixed on it once more.

“What I understand so far is that you have to sign up for these things in advance,” Data Riku explains. “Because it’s an official event, which is the only kind that will even give you a chance at winning prize money.”

“Prize munny?” Data Sora asks. “I thought munny was no good here.”

“Currency,” Data Riku clarifies. “Money, different from ours. Or at least this world’s equivalent of munny.”

Riku turns a corner, and suddenly he hears the echoes of squealing tires. It sends a rush of excitement through Riku’s veins.

An obvious hole in their plan then makes itself known.

“How am I supposed to race? I don’t have a bike.”

Riku’s words cause Data Sora to turn back to the hologram from before, and he practically drools over the flickering image of a motorcycle. “Biiike…”

Data Riku keeps typing without missing a beat. “I was going to focus on the process of registering you for the races in the first place, first. But—” and Riku’s screen suddenly shows a different display “it’s done. Almost. Basically.”

Riku scans the webpage on his screen, slightly distracted by the increasing sounds of revving engines and the smell of burning rubber.

“This is the login screen for current racers,” Data Riku’s voice explains. “This will serve as a pathway between the gummiphone and the servers housing the roster data. I’ll do some tweaking, and if all goes well, you should appear on the roster as if you’ve been entered the whole time.”

Something about this situation feels vaguely familiar to Riku, but’s it’s a barely-there sensation that’s interrupted by the sound of Data Sora snoring in the background. Riku smiles. “What do you need me to do?”

The gummiphone screen switches back to the room in the datascape. “Here? Nothing,” Data Riku answers. “What I do want you to do is find me a vessel.”

Riku stops walking midstep. “What?!”

Again, Data Riku doesn’t even blink at his monitor. “It’s not for me. It’s for you. Or, more accurately, your bike.”

At this, Data Sora wakes up from his standing nap. “Bike? What bike?”

Both Riku’s smile.

“Exactly,” Data Riku says. “I can’t just make a bike out of nowhere, not out there. The code needs to exist within something tangible, preferably something which’s code I can simply rewrite.”

Riku nods, and looks around. “Alright. What exactly could you use as this ‘something’?”

The display on Riku’s phone screen changes, flickering between various images of different types of electronics.

“Any smart device should work. They’re like your gummiphone, devices that can be personalized and connect and interact with you as its user and other compatible devices.”

Riku commits the appearance of said devices to memory, and resumes his search. “Where could I find one?”

“...Go into that restaurant.”

Riku looks at his phone to see what Data Riku is referring to. Across the street is what looks like a fast food place, but Riku doesn’t understand.

“Why? I can’t buy anything there. That’s the whole reason we’re going through all this trouble to win prize money at the races.”

Data Riku is grinning, and it’s unsettling. “Just go in.”

Against his better judgement, Riku listens.

Once inside the restaurant, Data Riku instructs Riku to approach one of the booths labeled “self-checkout”. In the booth is a large tablet fixed in place, where it seems customers can place their order themselves without the need for a cashier.

Riku is about to experimentally tap at the display, when suddenly, the tablet starts to seemingly leak pixels—

—until it disappears in a shower of code.

“Oop—”

“Okay, leave the building,” Data Riku instructs.

Riku blinks. “What—Where did the screen go?”

“Don’t worry about it, just leave.”

Riku gapes at his phone. “Are you—Are you stealing?”

“Mind not announcing it to everyone here?” Data Riku’s arms are crossed. “And don’t forget we’re the same person. If I’m stealing, you’re stealing. Now let’s go.”

“Excuse me?” a voice calls, and Riku spots a woman in a uniform walking toward him. “Sir, do you need any—?”

Of course, this is the moment Data Sora decides to join the fun. “We’re stealing?! Awesome!” His voice rings clear from the phone speakers, and the woman balks.

Riku panics for a second, then bolts out the door. Behind him, he hears a voice shout, “What the fuck?”

He isn’t of a mind to ponder the word meaning this time.

On his phone screen, Data Sora is cackling, throwing his arm over Data Riku’s shoulder, who’s having way too much fun at Riku’s expense.

“I can’t believe you just stole a whole tablet,” Riku grunts as he flees the scene.

“Thanks for the vessel,” Data Riku answers, sounding unusually cheerful. “Hurry and get to the track.”

“I’d get there a lot faster with that bike you promised. It’s the least you can do after stealing from that restaurant. I can’t believe—”

Data Sora is still having the time of his life. “Way to go, Riku!” And Data Riku looks way too proud of himself at the praise.

Riku rolls his eyes after glancing over his shoulder for any pursuers. “Teenagers.”

“Alright, jump!”

“What—”

“Jump!”

Riku sees the pixels up ahead, glittering and reforming into a familiar shape.

He jumps.

And he lands on something solid just as the pixels settle into their new form.

People, cars, and buildings all flash past Riku as he crashes down the street, toward his original destination. Data Sora is absolutely losing it as he watches from the gummiphone (which Riku had docked on the console), and looks like he might pass out when Data Riku emulates the scene within their world, with the two of them cruising on a shared bike.

“Wait,” Riku shouts over the wind, and the engine. “Couldn’t I just sell this thing for money?”

“You’d really sell something that you stole?” Data Riku calls back, grinning when Data Sora wraps his arms around his waist.

Riku would swerve into a post if he could focus on the gummiphone for more than a split second at a time. “I didn’t steal anything; that was all you.”

“You keep telling yourself that.”

___

i didn't even get to write him actually racing lol oops. and there's a whole other side to this i'm imagining where sora drags yozora to the very same races riku is about to pop up in, sort of a rapunzel/eugene vibe lmao. yozora really doesn't know why tf his heart tells him to put up with sora's shit but he does it anyway. my poor amnesiac boys.

i also know i didn't really explain my bs logic for how data riku turns a tablet into a motorcycle (i never even mentioned the motorcycle once it appeared either LMAO). i would have, in data riku fashion, but it would've made for a block of text full of made up nonsense lol

[supernaturaldesires]

A Descent Into Insanity - Chapter Two

Based on request by @sweetpotato-97

Could ask for a fic of Yandere Dean with a reader who sees him as a best friend and a form of brother for them, of course in the beginning Dean was not a yandere but he changed with the passage of time?

Note: the reader in a way is innocent and does not know that Dean is in love with them.

Pairing: None (yet)

Characters: Dean & Sam

Warnings: none, other than a slightly protective Dean

Word Count: 1,573

A couple of days after the incident at the bar, the Winchester brothers headed back out on another hunt. You had asked to go with them, but Sam explained that there was another case in Indianapolis that would need investigating once their case was resolved. He told you that there had been at least four cases of seemingly normal people suddenly turning violently on their loved ones, ultimately killing them. Sam asked you to do some more research before they went to investigate, to try and understand what they’d be running into - and promised that you could accompany them on that one.

After spending a day pouring over internet articles you were convinced you were dealing with a siren. The only problem though, was the article didn’t say anything about their weaknesses, only their powers. You did notice, though, that one of the articles you had read was authored by a woman in Lincoln, Nebraska, only a few hours away from the bunker.

You knew the boys wouldn’t be home wouldn’t be home for at least another day, so you decided to pay the woman a visit to see if you could find out anything else from her. You grabbed your phone, a map and a couple of twenties for gas and set off.

When you arrived at the woman’s house, she was a nice enough lady. She invited you in for tea and when you got to talking, it turned out she had crossed paths with John Winchester before. You hadn’t met the man - who was something of a legend in the hunter world - but you’d heard many a story that made you disappointed that you’d never had the opportunity to meet the man, not just because he was Dean and Sam’s father. 

After holding polite conversation with the lady for about an hour, you realised you weren’t going to get any more information than what was in the article, so you said your thank yous and made your excuse to depart. Once you got back into your car, you checked your cell for any messages. Shit. The battery was dead and you’d left your charger back at the bunker. With a sigh, you started the engine and made your way back home.

When you pulled up to the bunker, you were stiff from the long drive and cranky with hunger. You swung the door open and had barely set foot inside when Dean pounced on you, his hands gripping your upper arms and lifting you off the ground, holding you inches from his face.

“Where the hell have you been?” He roared, fury flaming in his eyes. “I have been calling you for hours!”

You struggled against him, but it was useless. Your legs flailed helplessly in the air. “Jesus, Dean, I was following up with a source about this case in Indianapolis. And since when do I have to share my whereabouts with you at all times?”

Dean lowered you to your feet, but pinned you against the wall. “For all I know, you could be in danger,” he growled. “You left no text, not even a note to say where you’d gone.”

“I wasn’t expecting you guys back yet!” You argued, still not understanding why you had to explain yourself. “Will you relax?”

“Y/N!” Sam’s voice came from behind Dean. “See, Dean, I told you she’d be fine. You were so worked up over nothing. Y/N, you should have seen him when he realised you weren’t here. I swear he lost his freakin’ mind.” Dean’s grip released you then, and within seconds he was in his brother’s face. The grin that was on Sam’s face a moment ago suddenly faded.

“Oh yeah, and what if she had been in trouble, Sammy? What if she got hurt, or worse? I bet you wouldn’t find it so amusing then, would you?”

You were a little relieved to see the same confusion that you felt fall upon Sam’s face, confirming that Dean was acting completely unreasonably. “Dude, will you chill? She’s a grown-ass woman, not to mention one who hunted alone for years before she met us. And saving your ass, may I remind you? Give her some cred, yeah?” Dean stepped back from his brother, but the scowl didn’t leave his face. 

"If you’re both quite finished,” you said sharply. “I think I know what we’re dealing with in Indianapolis. So why don’t you go clean yourselves up, then I’ll talk you through what I’ve found out. We can prepare to leave first thing in the morning.”

Dean glared at you before storming off towards his bedroom. Sam scoffed at his older brother’s behaviour before turning to follow.

“Hey, Sam,” you said softly, reaching out and tugging on his sleeve. He turned back to you. “Thanks about that. I didn’t wanna say anything in front of Dean, I know he feels like we gang up on him sometimes. But I appreciate it.” 

Sam gave you a kind smile and a gentle shrug. “Didn’t say nothin’ that wasn’t true.” His smile faltered for a moment and concern tugged at the corner of his eye.

“What’s wrong, Sammy?” You probed. Dean would always poke fun at Sam for being a worry-wort, but you quickly learned that Sam worried based on his gut - and it rarely misled him.

The tall man dragged a hand through his shaggy hair. “I dunno, just Dean was acting a bit weird on the hunt,” he said slowly. “Honestly, I didn’t expect us to be back this early either. But for some reason Dean wouldn’t even sleep while were away. He was constantly checking the time, saying we needed to get back to the bunker. He wouldn’t explain why. But I guess this was our third back-to-back hunt, so he probably just wanted to get back and rest.” You could tell he wasn’t really convinced, so he certainly wasn’t convincing you, but you let it slide. You both shared a concerned smile before Sam turned on his heels and headed to his bedroom.

You followed him down the hallway then took a different turn and stopped outside Dean’s room. You stared at the door for a good five minutes, wondering if you were about to walk into another ambush. Breathing deeply, you knocked gently. “Hey, Dean? It’s me, can we talk?”

A moment later, the door opened and you realised he must have just come out of the shower. He’d thrown some joggers on, but his hair was still wet and there were beads of water dripping down his bare chest. Your mind suddenly went reeling back to that first night you met, when he and Sam took you to the bar to thank you for saving Dean. You found him incredibly attractive. You had watched how each muscle in face flexed and relaxed as he talked, smiled, laughed. Sure, you flirted with him a little, despite the age gap between you. You were closer to Sam’s age, but something in you just sparked with Dean. At some point that evening, when Sam excused himself to the men’s room, you made your move on Dean - some less-than-subtle suggestion that you had a problem with your brake light and could he come look at it. In hindsight, you realised that it was a stupid move - he and Sam had followed you in the Impala back to your motel earlier that day, so he would have known full well there was no issue with your lights. He gave you a soft smile and let you down gently - that you weren’t really his type. That you deserved to settle down with someone, and he wasn’t prepared to be that someone for anyone.

“Did you want something?” Dean’s voice snapped you back to the present and you realised you’d been staring at him in silence uncomfortably long.

“Um, yeah, just that I’m sorry I didn’t text you guys where I was,” you said, toying with a fraying thread on the sleeve of your jacket. You didn’t really feel like you needed to apologise, but you wanted to clear the air with Dean, especially if you’d be going on a hunt together tomorrow. You both needed to be focused. “I understand you were just worried about me.”

Dean sighed and stepped back from the door, letting you in. He scrubbed a hand over his face, looking uncomfortable - as he always did if anyone even breathed the word ‘emotions’. “I just... when we got back to the bunker and you weren’t here, I just panicked. I didn’t know where you were, who you were with. I got sca-” he stopped himself, clearing his throat and straightening up. “Just don’t do that again, ‘kay?”

You nodded and approached him gingerly for a hug. You knew he wasn’t exactly the touchy-feely type. But to your surprise, he welcomed the gesture and embraced you, giving you a squeeze. If you didn’t know better, you could have sworn he just smelled your hair. You stepped back and shook the feeling off.

“Let me go make dinner,” you said with a smile. “I still need to fill you and Sam in on the Indianapolis case, and I know it’s pointless trying to hold your attention on an empty stomach.” You gave him a friendly wink before leaving his room.

Why did you get the feeling he was watching you walk away?

<= Chapter One

Chapter Three =>

Dean tags: @akshi8278

Divider credit: @firefly-graphics​

[serendipityjxmn]

I Hate You, Park Jimin!

Chapter 5

Words Count: 2.6k

TW: None

Link to Chapter 4

Link to Chapter 6

I turned around at the same time Jimin does and saw two girls staring at us. They were whispering to each other but obviously failed to keep it out of our earshot.

I looked at Jimin. He just glared at them and then with his hand still firm on my wrist, he pulled me away from the park. As we made our way out of the campus, I saw people passing by turning their head twice as they saw us, whispering and obviously staring. Oh what do I do with this sudden popularity of mine. But I was just kidding. I hated attention the most. Especially when it relates to boys.

I yanked my hand away from his grip. He frowned at me. “I can walk by myself.” I said and walked ahead of him before stopping after a few steps. I didn’t know where to go.

“Thought you knew where to go.” He smirked at me. God, I hate him so much.

He then led me to his black Audi R8. He asked me to get inside but I refused because there were people looking.

He propped his hand on top of the car. “If you refused to be seen anywhere with me, how the heck are you going to be my study partner?”

He had a point. I cursed myself for being stupid. He slid in smoothly into his car and I followed suit. He started the engine and reversed out of the parking lot smoothly and whew- the car was a beast. While he drove, I peeked at him under my lashes and drank his features. He had a very beautiful side profile. His nose, although not that tall was sharp. His cheeks full but his jawlines were sharp too. His lips were plump.. I gulped as the image of our lips meeting just now popped in my mind.

“Am I that good looking?” He said, interrupting my thought without looking at me.

Caught red-handed. I mentally cursed myself. “Get over yourself.” I said as I crossed my arms and threw my gaze outside the window, letting the breeze gently blow my hair.

I sensed him smirking. The bastard. But good looking son of a bastard.

Soon we arrived at a restaurant. I was puzzled. Why was he bringing me to a restaurant? It doesn’t look that lavish but it sure doesn’t look that cheap too. A mini heart attack hit me. Do I have enough money in my purse?

Jimin casually led me inside the restaurant and chose the very end table for us both. Some girls glanced at him as we walked by and I could see them giggling. I rolled my eyes. Jimin appeared oblivious though.

He gestured me to take a seat in front of him and I did. The waitress came within seconds and she was definitely eyeing Jimin like a hawk. She looked older though!

“What do you want to eat?” He asked me. He seemed to not notice the number of times the waitress bat her eyelashes towards him or the way she inclined her body to face him. The thought made me feel pleasant somehow.

“I’m not hungry.” I said. I didn’t have my lunch but strangely I wasn’t that hungry at the time. Maybe it was his presence that made my whole reason of existence turned into a joke, stars no longer aligning, my hormones in total disarray, my body no longer functioning according to science.

He rolled his eyes but didn’t say a word to me. Instead, he placed an order smoothly for the both of us. When he was done, I was pretty sure the waitress tried to make as much as eye contact with him but his gaze was fixated at me.

I blushed. Not because his gaze was so hot. Definitely not. “Do you come here often?” Shit. My tone was slightly higher than I wished it to be, betraying my effort to sound unaffected by the ‘Jimin effect’.

“Enough.” He answered simply.

“Why did you take me here, Jimin?” I asked.

He paused for a moment before his lips curled into a smile and I almost stopped breathing. Did I ever mention that his smile was blinding? That doesn’t dismiss the fact that he’s a jerk. A little voice inside my head said. “We’re only study partners right?”

What? I nodded slowly while mumbling a hmm. Where is he going with this?

“Then let’s do this.”

Huh?

“Show me whatever thing you’ve prepared for me.”

What? My head hurt. Conversations with this man always take a very different turns. When I saw his expression was serious, I visibly squared up and went all business-like. And so I explained to him all that I’ve prepared for since last night. The waitress came to serve our meals in the middle of my presentation and Jimin asked me to eat first before continuing. I did but I couldn’t take much so I just went on explaining to him. I may seem zen-like calm on the outside, going all the way professional but inside I was flipping. I hated that his presence affected me so much. And the fact that he’s staring intensely at me does not help at all. After what seemed like forever, I finished laying out all that I prepared for him.

I waited for his reply nervously, my fingers fidgeting.

I saw his mouth opening but at that moment, his phone rang. He cursed under his breath as he picked up his phone. He eyed me while he was on the phone and I had no idea why I didn’t back down from his stare either.

“I’ll be there.” He said simply but his expression cold.

“So?” I asked as soon as he was done with his call.

“We’ll just go on with the schedule you planned for for now. Here’s my number so just text me to remind me each time.” He said as he scribbled his phone number in my notebook. Hang on- what did he mean by for now..?

He stood up abruptly. “Let’s go. I’ll send you home. I need to be somewhere else.” He said and went to the counter to pay.

I tried to hand him all the money I had in my purse but he literally rolled his eyes at me.

“Are you kidding me?” Was all he said before turning on his heels exiting the restaurant.

I stood confused for a few seconds then went after him.

The ride with him to my apartment was very much silent. He seemed occupied with his own thoughts so I let mine wander too. Park Jimin. I drew a breath. I wonder what he was currently thinking about. I wonder what kind of life does he live. I wonder what he does during his free time. I wonder why is he a bad boy and not just some normal good looking classmate.

“You know, I should probably start charging you for the amount of time you’re staring at me.” He said all too suddenly, interrupting my flow of thoughts. He looked at me and I turned beet red as I felt myself panic for getting caught. Gee girl, how many times are you going to get caught staring at him?

He smirked. Pfft, his ego must be over the roof now.

I decided not to succumb to his game so I stared intently at the road while crossing my arms. It was almost twilight and the sky looked mesmerizingly pink.

We arrived at my apartment in no time due to the unbelievable speed of his sports car. To my surprise, he parked his car and switched off the engine. I frowned at him but be didn’t look at me as he slid out of the car.

“Why are you out?” I asked as I close the car door.

“I said I’m taking you home, didn’t I?”

Huh. Still frowning, I took the lead and went inside the lobby. As we waited for the elevators, I sneaked a peek at him under my lashes. His face calm. Unlike the scary expression or the flirty expression he always put on.

The elevator arrived and a group of three girls went out. They were laughing but stopped dead when their eyes landed at Jimin. Their eyes visibly widening. As they passed by us, I saw them glancing back at us. I rolled my eyes. Jimin doesn’t seem to notice, as always. Perhaps he was too used to the stares? I shook my head as I pressed the button to floor number 13. Perhaps beauty could be a curse too.

“What are you shaking your head about?” He asked quietly.

I looked at him and he was leaning against the wall, his head tilted. I almost gasp at his ridiculously hot look. I mentally curse my head for judging other girls. Go look in the mirror first Hana!

“Nothing.” I gulped. Perhaps it was the secluded space or the fact that there’s no one else in the elevator or simply the fact that it was Park Jimin, I felt the palpable electrical charge in the air. My eyes unknowingly darted to his lips. It was against mine a few hours ago.

As if reading my thought, he leaned towards me, close enough as if he was about to kiss me. The pleasant smell of his cologne entered my nose again. His eyes still holding me steady and I couldn’t look away.

He inched closer, and closer. A few inches more.. but our lips never touch as the elevator rang at the right moment. The doors opened and he went out as if nothing happened. Was I the only one who ran out of breath here? He stood outside the elevator waiting for me.

I hesitantly took a step forward and made my way to my apartment unit. I turned around to look at him as we reached my door. He was frowning as he scanned the floor. What was he thinking? Does he want me to invite him in or something?

“So we’ve arrived at my place. Thanks for dropping me by.” I said with an awkward smile.

He regarded me for a moment. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” What? Is he for real? His expression was still serious. I frowned but I turned around and punched in my passcode. I pushed the door open and waited for him to enter but he didn’t so I looked up at him.

He was smiling in amusement. Damn it. I knew he was pranking me. He probably thought my visible anxiety a sort of entertainment for him. “Maybe next time.” He said and this time his smile was kind. It gave me a weird feeling.

“Sure.” I said and closed the door without waiting for him to be out of sight. I put two fingers on my wrist, checking my pulse rate. Absolutely abnormal. This isn’t healthy. How am I supposed to survive the rest of my college?

I was in for the night shift at the cafeteria. I worked as part-timer so my manager allowed me flexible times that fit my class schedules. On weekdays I usually got night shifts. I entered the cafe to a sight of my manager talking to a guy in what appeared to be the uniform. New guy? I mentally wondered.

At that moment, his eyes flickered at me. I stood frozen for a moment because of his blinding visual. He was good looking, no kidding. His eyes were round and huge but his facial features were sharp. My manager who let me call her by Kyung Hee eonnie turned to follow his gaze and her eyes found me.

“Ah Hana! You’re here!” She went to me quickly. “Lucky I found your replacement. But you’re not going to quit so soon okay? You have to teach him everything.” She then whispered at me, “A good catch, isn’t it?”

I suppressed a smile. Kyung Hee eonnie was in her early 40s but her energy is always overflowing. More so when she spots young good looking boys. I nodded and gave her a thumbs up.

She giggled. “Then, I’ll leave you two alone! I have to bring my poor husband to his appointment at the hospital today.” She said and rushed to get her handbag.

I simply nodded. “Be careful on your way!” She waved at me without turning her back. I then sensed a stare penetrating me from my back. I turned around to see the new guy staring at me.

Damn, boy is tall.

“Hey there!” I smiled brightly. I extended a hand. “My name is Kim Hana. You can just call me Hana.”

He blinked at me several times before his mouth curved a smile. “Hi Hana. My name is Jeon Jungkook.” His hands clasped mine.

Jungkook huh? I smiled kindly at him. He really is good looking, I thought. “So, let me show you around.” I put my palms together enthusiastically.

And so for the next hour I taught him everything he needed to know. I learnt that he was of the same age as mine. I can see that he wasn’t that talkative but he made an effort to continue our conversation.

“So are you in college now?” I asked as I was wiping the window while he mopped the floor.

“I’ll start soon once I saved enough.” He said.

Oh. My heart fell. I understood how tough it is to fund your way through university. I stopped my work. “Jungkook ah.” I called. We agreed to drop honorifics immediately as we introduced ourselves.

“Yeah?” He didn’t lift his head up.

“If you need some help, just tell me okay?” I said slowly, being cautious as to not offend him.

He stopped his work immediately and looked at me. I suddenly felt embarrassed.

“I mean.. not that I’m rich or something but I understand about financial difficulties students go through. But I’ve saved enough for my college and I might have a bit surplus as savings so if you need my help, you know.. just to top it up, just tell me.” I smiled kindly at him.

He was silent for a moment before his mouth curved into a smile. “Are you an angel or something?”

What?

He shook his head. I could see his bunny teeth as he smiled widely. “You just met me and now you’re offering to lend me some money. The world isn’t that safe anymore okay? You gotta be careful.”

“Yah! I was just saying!” I smacked his arm playfully but at the same time I could feel his toned biceps underneath.

He laughed. “I was just saying too.”

I washed up as soon as I arrived home. I put on my favourite BT21 Chimmy pyjamas and threw myself face down on the bed. Mentally I ran through the events that happened today.

I was happy that Kyung Hee eonnie finally found my replacement because it meant that I can quit soon. I was happier she found Jungkook because he seemed reliable enough and his strength could definitely be of use. I shook my head as the image of him lifting several heavy leather chairs at once just because I was trying to mop the area. It felt easy to click with him perhaps because we were from the same background. He seemed nice enough and the thought made me smile.

The encounter with Jeon Jungkook made me realise that not all guys are jerks.. unlike Park Jimin. Ah Park Jimin. That asshole. Suddenly the image of our lips meeting appeared in my mind. I felt my blood boiled. Park fucking Jimin! I was still mad at his action! How dare he! My first freaking kiss... went by just like that... I kicked my blanket in anger. Someday he’s going to pay for it I swear.

Link to Chapter 6

Posted on 200512 12:31AM

[tetrakys]

MLQC - Victor: Footage number six

This is the first time I’m writing for MLQC, but after completing Victor’s footage I had to rewrite the scene in the car because it left me thirsty af. I like MC but sometimes I wish I could smack some sense into her head. Her self-cockblocking abilities are outstanding. 

I’m gifting this to @itsmymindspeaking for her birthday, happy birthday girl, you deserve to smooch Victor on your special day 💕

---

On the way back from the suburbs, Victor’s car broke down. Unfortunately, it started to rain heavily. We were trapped in the car.

“Sit tight.” Victor said, a resolute look on his face. He ran out into the rain, popped the hood, and checked the engine.

“How is it?” I asked as I lowered the window.

I received no reply, the wind was so strong and the rain so heavy that nothing could be heard over the sound of heavy drops hitting the car roof. Minutes went by as I started getting more and more anxious. Was he still checking the engine? With the hood up I couldn’t see him, what if something wrong had happened? The road was dark and deserted.

I couldn’t wait a second longer, opening the door I rushed into the night, getting completely drenched the moment I stepped out.

As soon as I made my way in front of the car, big hands grabbed me and pushed me roughly back inside the vehicle. Soon after the cover of the hood went down and he came back.

“What part of sit tight don’t you understand?” his tone harsh, his eyes heated.

“You weren’t coming back and when I tried calling for you, you didn’t reply. I was worried.”

He broke eye contact as his cheeks turned a pretty shade of pink, and I heard him mumble something suspiciously similar to the word stupid under his breath.

“The engine’s shot. We’ll have to call a tow truck.” He added after a second.

He dialled as he spoke. Victor was soaking wet, the rain dripped from his hair and cheeks.

“You’re all wet. Hurry and take your coat off or you’ll get sick.” I said worried.

“What about you? You are as wet as me.”

“I have nothing to change into, I’ll do it once I’m back at home.” I explained, but I was starting to feel cold and shivers ran down my spine.

“Nonsense. There’s an extra shirt here, you can have it.”

Reaching to the back seat, he grabbed something and handed it to me. It was a white shirt, the dry-cleaning tag still on.

Victor took off his coat and threw it to the back seat. His black shirt underneath was also soaked with rain. He started undoing his shirt buttons, I felt embarrassed and quickly looked away. He frowned while looking at me.

“I, I didn’t see anything…”

“Never mind, I don’t have anything to change into,” he replied matter-of-factly.

I turned towards him and saw he was now wearing only a black tank top that clung tightly against his chest and waist. I suddenly wasn’t feeling cold anymore.

“P- Please wear your shirt.” I protested as I tried to hand him the garment back, my cheeks on fire. “You will get cold.”

“I would have if you had stayed in the car as I told you. Now you’re wet and need to change. Plus, I’m stronger than you, I don’t fall ill easily.”

“B-but…” I tried to protest again, but he wouldn’t hear it. I had to undress but I was feeling too self-conscious.

“Hurry up or you’re going to catch a cold.” He said in his usual dry and practical tone. I felt very stupid, of course I was the only one getting this worked out, Victor wasn’t the type to get affected by these silly things. Taking off my dress, all I had left on was my white underwear, as I put the shirt on.

I didn’t have the courage to spare even one look at the man at my side, but I had the feeling he was giving me my privacy.

The car was absolutely silent for a while. Then Victor cleared his throat to break the silence.

“Done?”

I was still struggling with the buttons, which seemed too big for their buttonholes. The sleeves were too long for my arms, and kept rolling down over my hands, slowing my movements.

“I… I think I need some help.”

I felt heat rising to my cheeks. Damn… I was going to look like a total idiot to him. I was sure I was going to get one of his usual wry comments, so I was really surprised when he reached out and grabbed the two sides of the shirt without uttering a single word. His movements were quick and efficient, his eyes never once braking from the task at hand.

Why was he looking completely unaffected by the situation while I was getting so worked up? Did he even see me as a woman?

It took him only one minute to button the shirt and he moved back immediately to his seat, putting more distance between us than before, turning his head towards the window. I looked at him curiously, what had gotten into him?

There were still some raindrops clinging to his hair.

“Tissue…?”

I took out the tissue in my bag and handed it to him. I happened to look right into his eyes.

Time paused for a moment. He then hurriedly looked away.

“Thank you.”

There was a delicate tension in the car. The sound of heavy rain outside was so loud, it made the car even more quiet.

“Do you want some music?”

Victor turned on the radio. A soft melody flowed through the air.

We sat in the car saying nothing, but we didn’t feel awkward at all. It was a comfortable, pleasant feeling but not a relaxing one. It was charged of something I wasn’t able to describe.

“Your hair is also wet,” he said after a few minutes. He grabbed the tissue again, but instead of handing it to me, he leaned down and started patting my hair, from the top of my head to the ends of my locks.

Our eyes met again, and this time he didn’t break them away. He kept looking into my eyes as he dried my hair, but at some point I noticed his movements felt more like caresses than anything else. His other hand then, came to cup my cheek, his fingers slowly drawing the shapes of my face, as if he wanted to imprint this moment into his memory. First my cheekbone, then my jaw, and then my lips.

His gaze focused on my mouth, then on my eyes, and then back on my mouth, and I knew what was going to happen. As he lowered further down towards me, I met him halfway and pressed my lips against his.

He tasted like coffee, and rain and something else and, even though it was the first time I tasted him, I recognised him immediately. His taste, his smell, his unique presence was so familiar to me that I leaned into the kiss feeling like I was exactly where I belonged.

As my hands came to his soft, still damp hair, his lips moved tentatively against mine. Slowly at first, as if the moment had caught him by surprise as much as it had me. But soon after he seemed to come back into his senses taking charge of the situation as usual.

Victor kissed like he did everything else in life: with authority, expertise and a pinch of insolence.

And as his lips took possess of mine, over and over again, one hand moved to my naked thigh. The contrast of his warm skin against my cold one as he moved his hand up and down along my curves, gave me goosebumps and a delightful warmth spread right down to my core.

I was feeling dizzy. “Victor…” I whispered against his lips. “I need…”

That’s when we heard a knock against the window. We both jumped into our seats as the tow truck guy started working around the car. 

We looked at each other again, and for one second I thought it was going to be weird. But the moment our eyes met we smiled, a little embarrassed, but I knew it was going to be okay.

“Stay in this time.” He said ad he wore his coat and left the car again.

I’d never had such a good time with Victor like this. I wish that time would’ve gone slower.

[jay-and-dean]

Je ne te mérite pas (I don’t deserve you) EPILOGUE (end)

DeanxReader

Serie MASTERSILST

Warnings : Violence, swearing, Smut, unprotected sex (you are smarter than this), Fluffy fluff.

Words : 3k+

Chapter summary : Is the ring on his pocket going to convince Jody ?

gifs not mine, found on google

Dean’s Pov

My lungs are trying hard but breathing is impossible now ; and that ache in my throat is barely bearable. This vampire’s grip on my neck is so strong I know I won’t stay conscious long. My eyes land on her. She’s crying and screaming but I can’t hear her anymore, even if I can see how loud she yells.

My love.

Two vampires are holding her and she fights like a lion. But those fuckers are strong and twice the number we reckoned, they had a plan, we were reckless…

I don’t want to die.

I’m so happy. I’m so in love. For the first time in a very long time I really don’t want to die. Please Chuck, don’t let them hurt her.

Sammy wake up. Please Sam…

Everything is in slow motion now. The vampire continues talking to me but my entire mind is on her.

Let her go sons of bitches, you’re hurting her arms…

She’s crying. Please Baby don’t cry.

And suddenly something happens. A miracle maybe…

The vampire let go of me and falls on his knees. I take a deep painful breath and try to reach for my knife but the vampire starts to convulse and puke his own blood.

I land my eyes on Y/n.

Wow.

Her beautiful eyes are white and her hair floating like she was underwater. Her arms are reaching out toward me, hands open. She’s screaming like crazy, her mouth wide open, but it’s perfectly silent. All I can hear is the monster at my feet choking.

I can’t move. I look at her and the vampires that were keeping her still both take a step back and try to run. But Sam woke up, he cuts their heads off and run toward me. I’m frozen. Eyes on my girl, my love.

“Y/n !” Sam yells.

Her hair falls on her shoulders and her eyes take their sweet warm color back.

“Dean…” she sobs and I run to hold her in my arms before she faints.

______________________

Baby’s engine purrs gently. Sam’s looking at me, I can feel his stare. She’s still unconscious on the back seat but she looks so peaceful.

“Her powers are coming back…” Sammy finally says.

“I know” I state, looking at the road.

“You do ? You don’t seem so worried, I mean, you’re girlfriend is unconscious on the backseat of your  car. You just, you just carried her here” he talks gesturing things with his hands. “ Have you ever seen her kill a monster with her mind ?”

“No” I admit. “See Sammy, since we’re together, she… Some weird things started to happen. She didn’t even notice at first. I thought I was going crazy but she visited me I my dreams Sammy… It wasn’t me dreaming of her, it was her coming to rescue me from my nightmares of hell, of purgatory, of dad…”

I check on her in the rear-view mirror. It’s time I talk to Sam, she’ll forgive me.

“One night I had trouble sleeping because of a wound on my chest, I had just accidentally rub it on the mattress and it hurt, so I was lying on my back, watching at the ceiling…” I half smile not really knowing why. “And Y/n, she turns and, still sound asleep, she puts her hand on the wound and start whining. Before I realize what’s happening, the pain goes away and she starts bleeding at the exact same place I was hurt an instant before. She literally took my pain Sammy… So I started questioning her about the nightmares, and she knew things, details she just couldn’t know if she hadn’t been there for real, in my bad memories… details from hell…”

Sam is listening carefully, he sighs.

“Why did you never talk to me ?” he asks.

“She wanted to talk to you herself. She’s terrified. She thinks she’s becoming a monster…”

“And what do you think ?” he asks.

“I love her. This last month have been the best of my life… So what my girlfriend has powers ? I mean, we live with Satan’s offspring and he’s a great kid. I don’t care what she can do, I’m glad even. I mean, the things she does, she saved me… again. I say she’s closer to be an angel than actual angels.”

“I think…” Sam says with a smile filled with emotions. “I think you’re healing her. She suffocated her powers out of trauma, right ? And now you two are together…”

I can’t help but smile at the idea that she’s so safe with me.

“Dean ?” she whispers weekly.

I park the Impala and silently ask my brother to drive, he nods with a smile.

She’s in my arms, talking to Sam, telling him she needs helps learning to control her powers and Sam is reassuring her. I don’t speak, I just keep her here, safe against me, my nose in her hair.

Each time he mentions the potential of her powers, I feel her shiver and I squeeze her tighter in my arms. She’s always so brave, but this terrifies her. I’m not going to leave her, ever, or to see her like a monster and she knows that, I told her a thousand times. Still, she’s been tortured for years because of what she was… And all this brings back the past, and her past is not just filled with pain, but with emptiness too. Her name doesn’t mean anything to her, she has no family…

That’s why I want to marry her, make her part of the family, make her a Winchester.

But first, we need to talk to Jody I guess.

 Your Pov

 Shit, this book is boring. You try to stay focused but it’s nearly impossible. You’ve always loved reading, and now that the bunker is your home, you swore you’ll read everything you could. You sigh again.

“You know you could skip that volume” Sam says, putting a coffee in front of you.

“Thank you Sammy. No I can’t, knowing all I can is part of this job”

“You know… the way you take hunting so seriously, I think you’re a real woman of letter…” he says with kindness.

“Yeah except I don’t torture people or show contempt for hunters.” I mutter taking a sip of my coffee.

Sammy sits next to you and starts to push my shoulder. You try to ignore him but he does it again and again, until you almost fall of my chair.

“Fu… Are you insane Winchester ?” you yell.

Since you made fun of Sam for being too serious, he took the habit to randomly attack me to prove me wrong.

“You’re too serious” he mocks you.

You get up and carefully puts your book on the table. He closes it and you scream :

“What ? Why ? I’ll have to read pages again before I found were I was !”

He laughs.

“This is war !” you groan.

“Yeah but Dean’s not here, nobody can defend you !”

And with that you jump on his back, wrapping your arms around his neck and your legs around his waist. He tries to turn to catch you but he doesn’t want to hurt you, so he can’t really use his hunter’s skill.

Suddenly, you feel to strong hands grip you from behind and take you off of Sammy.

Dean.

He kisses your neck and puts you on the ground without letting your waist go.

“Dean, please, I need you to avenge me” you say.

“What did he do ?” he asks, rubbing his delicious scruff on your neck.

“He lost my page” you pout.

Sam laugh and Dean squeezes your waist, kissing below your ear. Humming slightly he starts growing hard on your lower back and you moan despite yourself. Sam roll his eyes and leave with a smirk.

“No time for that, Man, you have to defend my honor !” You try, but Dean turns you in his arms and start kissing you.

“I’ll slay him later, Woman” he murmurs, starting to kiss your throat.

You put your arms around his neck and let your head fall back to grant him full access. Playing with his hair you smile.

“I love you Baby” he says before kissing your mouth again, smiling in the kiss.

“Liar” You say kissing him back. “You won’t ever kill your brother for me.”

He puts his forehead on yours and laugh.

“Hum… Hello”

You jump. Mary.

Mary’s watching you two. How long have she been here ? Dean lets go off you and stumble :

“Oh hum… Hi mom. How, how long have you been here ?”

She smiles although she looks confused and looks at you.

“Long enough. So you two… Can I talk to you Dean ?”

“No” he says, taking you by the waist. “You are going to tell me she’s too young. Save your breath. Mom… You don’t know anything about our story. I love Y/n and she loves me. If you love me you’re going to be happy.”

She seems taken aback by the coldness of her son’s answer, and clear her voice.

“You know I love you…” she says. “Jody ?”

“Not yet” he says. “Tomorrow.”

 _________________________

Mary won’t stop staring at Dean and you. And he won’t stop acting natural, this is awkward because his hands are always on you, he keeps randomly kissing you as usual, and giving you sweet names, except his mother is there.

“Dean and Y/n are in love” Jack says proudly.”Castiel says they may be soul mates. You must be so happy !”

“I am” she says with amusement. “It’s just so new.”

 “Round two ?” Dean asks, rubbing your back.

“You mean round three…”

“The first one didn’t count” he laughs.

“It didn’t ? What ? It did, Dean, I’m sore from that round !” You turn and kiss his eye, just because you love to kiss his face.

“But Baby eating you out is not a round…”

“In this position it is…”

“God it was so sexy… holding your ass up in my arms… Fuck. I’m hard again.”

“Watch your heart old man” You say and you feel a sharp pain on your left ass cheek. “Wow ! Did you just… spank me ?”

“Did you just called me old ?” he groans and you laugh, bending on him.

You look at his face and kiss a freckle. He rubs your back and hums, closing his eyes. He knows how much you love to look at him closely, he knows that particular freckle is your favorite. He knows everything since you found him searching in the precious Dean box one night. You answered all the questions, you let him read my soul, he knows you like no one.

His hand comes to one of your breast and knead it.

“Mh… I love your skin” he whispers.

You look at his strong arm and at his jaw, you see his Adam’s apple move and smell him.

“Dean…” you moan.

His eyes suddenly open to look at you.

“Oh Baby you made that sound !” he says with a wide smile showing the teeth you want to feel on your body.

“What sound ?”

“That sound when you’re suddenly so aroused you can’t talk so you just moan my name with that specific voice”.

Fuck, he knows you so much.

“Take me Baby” you say snuggling up against him. “Hard.”

He groans and sits on the bed, taking your wrists to hold them with force above your head.

“Hard ?” he asks. “You want me to fuck you ?”

“I want you to use me” you say spreading your legs and licking your lips.

“Fuck” he groans low, biting your throat. “I guess you’ll have to ask nicely”.

“Please” you say, opening your mouth to take a deep breath.

With the hand that’s not holding your wrists he takes one of your leg and put it on his shoulder. You wrap the other high on his waist. Before you’re ready, he pushes in one strong movement inside you and you cry in surprise, light pain and pleasure.

“Take me” he orders, his eyes dark and his jaw clenched.

You smile, biting your lower lip. Dean is not often so dominant in bed, that’s what makes it so hot, feeling how strong and dangerous he is. The legendary hunter under the loving man. The darkness within the lights.

He starts trusting so hard your head join your wrists against the wall. You’re one the verge of crying, but not because the pleasure is mixed with pain, not because you’re scared –Dean never scares you- just because it’s so overwhelming.

He groans and bites you everywhere, living marks all over your chest. He’s not holding back and you love it, even if you know you’ll feel him for days.

Each inch of your body is reacting : you toes curl, your legs desperately try to close, you pussy clench hard, your belly tremble, it’s like every single drop of your blood is coming up to your head, you’re dizzy and burning.

And suddenly he’s out of you. You cry in surprise and your legs close as he withdraws. A tear run down your face.

“Dean… Please”.

And you feel him turn you around like you weighted nothing, he lifts your ass and let your head on the mattress. When he slams back into you, you scream in the pillow and grab the sheets, whining.

“I love you so much it hurts sometimes, you know that ?” he roars through his teeth.

“I know, D… Dean. I love you… Ah… you too Baby” you cry, trying not to scream.

And he pounds into you with force, hitting the right spots every time. He grabs your hair and turn your head to see half your face.

“Mine” he groans before his trusts become uneven.

You can’t hold on anymore and let the storm-like orgasm wash over you, making your brain die for a second. You hear him moan manly and he stills. Your legs are soaked, your breathing is short and quick. You feel him come deep inside of you and you whine, unable to think.

He falls besides you, out of breath, sweaty and beautiful ; and takes you in his arms lovingly. You turn toward him and nestle your body against his.

“You okay ?” he asks, kissing your forehead.

“Yeah…” you say in a lazy smile, drawing patterns on his chest.

“Am I still old ?” he asks interwining his fingers with yours.

“Never…”

You feel the need to sleep.

___________________________________

“Hey, Baby…”

You feel a kiss on your cheek. You frown and, without opening your eyes, you reach out to touch Dean. He’s clean and dressed. You whine and grab his arm.

“I think you want to shower before we head to Jody’s”

Your eyes open wide. Fuck, you’re visiting Jody today to tell her you have a relationship with his best friend… And you are covered in sweat and… cum and everything else.

“Fuck ! Are we today already ?” you pout.

“Yep !” he says with a dazzling smile.

“But I can’t walk… You broke me” you say before turning your back on him and hiding under the blanket.

“Baby…” his voice is suddenly really serious. “Did I hurt you ?”

You sigh and surrender, sitting.

“Of course not. I would have stopped you if you were hurting me. I’m just sooooo sore and soooo dirty and…”

“Okay drink that” he hands you a warm coffee. “And go to the bathroom Baby, I swear I’ll give you a massage and cuddle you for hours and find a hotel with a bathtub big enough for the two of us like you asked… But, Y/n, we can’t be late at Jody’s. I can’t be late. She is already going to kill me, I can’t imagine what she’ll do if I’m late or if you smell like sex so much”.

“I smell so much like sex ?" He nods with a smile. "Are you even more nervous than I am ?” you say taking a sip of your coffee.

“I’m panicked” he admits.

 Dean’s Pov

 I knock on the door and she obviously can see how anxious I am, because before the door opens, she slips a hand under my flannel and t-shirt, rubbing my lower back lovingly. When Jody opens the door with a wide smile, she takes it back.

“Hey, Dean !” she greats me. “Y/n, sweetheart you look great !” she hugs her. “Sam is not with you ?”

“Hum, no, he…” I stammer.

“He’s not” she just says.

Jody offers us a drink and sits on her chair, looking at us with that warm smile, while we sit on the sofa. She starts giving us news of the girls and stops herself after a few minutes. Y/n seems calm, I’m so anxious.

“So, Y/n, how is it going, with your powers coming back ? Sam says you’re making real progress.”

“Yeah, I am” she says looking kindly at me. “I can control some things now, like, I don’t break into Dean’s dream every nights anymore…”

I tense.

“Why always Dean ?” Jody asks as I feared.

Y/n doesn’t answer, she looks at me. I can’t talk for a second and Jody looks at us worried, seeing how nervous I am. Then Y/n puts a loving hand on my arm, opening her mouth but I cut her :

“Because we sleep in the same room I guess, or because of the bond…” I say looking at my knees but Jody doesn’t answer. “Jody we… Y/n and I, we are together.”

I finally lift my gaze to see her face, she’s processing, looking between me and Y/n.

“You two are what ?” she says frowning.

“We’re in love” Y/n says.

“Excuse me ?” Jody says coldly.

She looks at me and I nod.

“Y/n, go to your room” she orders sternly.

“I…” Y/n starts but Jody stops her.

“This one time you’ll obey, Y/n !” she almost yell.

Y/n looks at me and I nod.

“Dean…” she says.

“It’s okay Baby” I say immediately regretting using that word out of habit.

Jody wince and Y/n gets up and face Jody.

“I’m not a child. I’m leaving because you want to talk to your friend alone, not because I obey” she says before leaving the room.

“Jody, she… I'm sorry.”

“Stop” she says. “Are you insane, Dean ? Do you know how young she is ? Do you know what she is to me ? Do you…”

“You think I’ll hurt her” I cut her.

“Yes ! I’m sorry Dean but yes  ! What about Sasha ?”

“She broke up with him…” I sigh.

“But she loves him !”

“No. She’s always loved me. Jody I’m not so sure I’m bad for her anymore… Her powers are coming back because she’s happy. I’m… I’m not perfect but…”

“You’re life is…” she says. “Dark.”

“Hers is too. You said yourself that she looks happier than ever, relaxed… Listen, I tried, I tried to stay away from her but I can’t and she can’t either. I love her like I didn’t know it was possible.”

“Shut up !” she yells. “You don’t break my little girl’s heart Dean, you don’t !”

“I won’t. I will spend my life with her, protecting and loving her. Jody look” I take the ring out of my pocket. “I’m asking her to marry me.”

Jody looks at me with tears in her eyes. She takes the ring in her trembling hands and sighs.

"She's too young..."

"Not that much Jody, I mean, she's clearly younger than me but she's not a kid anymore. And let's be honest, she never was. Just like me" I say, taking the little ring back preciously. "Jody she really loves me, for a very long time. I know this must seem strange but I can feel it, everyday, how much she loves me... We're... Cas says we're soulmates."  I can't help but smile at that.

"So it wasn't Sasha..." she murmurs. "I really thought she was in love of him. It was you all this time ? When she said 'I love you' in her dreams when she cried in her bed..."

I nod, remembering what Y/n wrote about hiding her love for me.

"She fell in love with you all those years ago ?" she try to process.

I nod.

"Tell me you waited, Dean." Saying that, a tear run down her cheek.

I get up and come in front of her.

"Jody, hey... Jody. I didn't touch her when she was too young, you already know that. I saw her as a child. I fell in love with her a few months ago. I tried to stay away but she..."

"I need to call Sam" she cuts me and I nod, getting up.

 When I enter the her bedroom. Y/n is smiling. She comes toward me and kisses me with passion.

"You were great" she says between kisses. "She'll be happy for us eventually"

"You heard ?" I ask surprised and a little panicked. "All of it ?"

"You really thought I would go to my room and lock the door..."

My heart is pounding. I take her hand and kiss her lips shyly.

"That's not how I intended to ask you" I whisper.

"I can do as if I heard nothing if you want..." she says with that smile she can't hide.

"No" I say. "You and me we're never pretending. Now you have to answer me, would you be my wife ? I want to be mine."

"I already am yours, Dean. I can't wait to be a Winchester."

Big beautiful tears run down her cheeks as I kiss her slowly.

"Dean is the kindest, more selfless, bravest man I know, Y/n." Jody says at the door, making us jump a little. "Your love seems to be a blessing but being a Winchester is also a curse."

"Let me prove that wrong" my Baby says with a big smile, resting her head on my chest while she looks at her adoptive mom.

"Come here sweetheart" says Jody opening her arms. "You too Dean."

Feedback is soooo appreciated ;)

[likeshipsonthesea]

Nurseydex + 21 + 25. :D

from the mash-up thing, 21. Dystopian AU and 25. Fairytale AU

okay i promised myself i wouldn’t write anymore of these, i have homework goddammit, but i saw these numbers and got THE PERFECT IDEA so here we go

it’s the year 2123. the world has been run over by machinery. there are small pockets of the earth left preserved with grass and trees and stuff, but they are controlled by the super-rich and typical people cannot see them. machines produce the oxygen needed to survive, the streets are littered with tall buildings and pipes and all the kind of steam-punk aesthetics you can think of

enter; dex. a small town boy from maine, in one of the last towns left on the water. he knows he’s privileged to even see the water, but fuck he wishes he could see the trees. maine was one of the last places to be taken over, and his grandparents remember the days of the environment, and show dex scrapbooks with pictures of trees and grass and moss. fuck dex really wants to see moss

and he’s out one day after a job fixing up someone’s O2Buddy (the things that make oxygen) and his car breaks down. it’s broken down a bunch in the past few weeks and he’s waiting on a new part (the post office has gone Downhill in the past hundred years) and so when he gets out to check the engine, he can’t do anything to fix it. it’s fucked beyond repair.

he’s pissed–still angery, 100 years later– and kicks the bumper before walking off in a fit of rage. the side-streets are full of buildings (overpopulation really skyrocketed) but he navigates between the twisting alleyways, furious and not paying attention, when he comes to a dead end.

in his anger, he kicks the wall. he probably would have broken a toe if the wall was solid, but it wasn’t. the wall shivers, and a square of its scrap-metal composition comes loose. dex blinks.

from within the sliver the scrap reveals, there’s glowing. dex cautiously takes a step closer and peers through the crack. his heart starts racing. it’s– green?

he peels back the metal and–he was right. it’s–it’s grass. from the pictures. holy shit.

he pulls back more of the metal until he can fit his body in through it and is suddenly transported into another world. a circular enclosure, maybe twenty feet in radius, full of grass and flowers and–and fuck, is that a tree? the walls of metal stretch up to the sky, where sunlight falls in, unfiltered. dex takes a deep breath– he smells nothing but the air.

it’s so beautiful. he laughs and falls to his knees in the grass. how is this possible? why is there here? what is this–

that’s when dex sees the casket.

okay, it’s not a casket, but it’s basically one. it’s made of glass for some reason? and it’s on some kind of pedestal. dex stands up and makes his way closer and–

“holy shit.” dex stumbles back. there’s a fucking body in it!

…

except it’s perfectly preserved. he gets closer again. this place–preserved and gorgeous as it is– has to be more than forty years old– 2081 is when the last maine preservation bill was struck down, and the machines moved in. how could the body be this perfect if it’s had forty years to decompose?

dex doesn’t realize that he’s still getting closer as he thinks, and all of a sudden he’s right next to the casket. there’s an engraving on the side, with beautiful lettering. ‘for the other half, the simple soul, the touch that will restore what the darkness stole’

..the fuck?

looking away from the engraving (golden and cursive and way dramatic) he finds himself staring at the body. the man. he’s–well, beautiful. this dex has no idea what homophobia is except for the weird fringe people that no one talks to anymore, so he’s v comfortable in his liking of the peen.

the man in the casket has an elegant nose, beautiful slightly parted lips, high cheekbones and a jaw prettier than even the best working engine (dex still loves to Fix) but dex keeps finding himself staring at the black, fanning eyelashes, the soft closed lids. he wonders what color the man’s eyes are.

unthiking, just wanting to get closer, dex reaches out to touch the glass, and the man’s eyes promptly open. (they’re green)

‘what the fuck’ they both yell, simultaneously.

this is where the story really gets going.

nursey is, obviously, really fucking confused at why he’s in a casket with this beautiful ginger boy staring at him with eyes like amber and so many freckles that nursey misses the stars. then, when they both calm down enough for dex to get him out of the casket and– a little later–for dex to tell him the year, nursey freaks out again.

‘it’s 2123? that’s not even a real year!”

“um, yeah it is.”

“oh my god.” … “trump didn’t implode the world?”

“…trump? that guy that got impeached in his third year?”

“oh thank the lord.”

after a brief recap of the 21st century–the capitalists that took over, the strides to protect the environment that turned into hiding it away, the rise of big business and the dissolution of the middle class– nursey is reeling.

“oh my god,” he keeps saying, over and over again, and dex watches him, so confused (and a lil bewitched bc, come on, it’s nursey) and after nursey seems to have settled, as much as one can in this situation, dex asks.

“so, like… why were you in a casket for a hundred years?”

“oh yeah.” nursey blinks. “that dude.”

‘that dude’ turns out to be this asshole elder wizard who didn’t want nursey to become the next ranking wizard– a combination of racism, homphobia, and power-grapping assholery– so he put a curse on nursey’s mind and heart– he wouldn’t be able to survive without his soulmate.

“and, like, even the guy’s curses were antiquated,” nursey says, complaining and gesturing avidly with his hands, “no one did love curses anymore! he could’ve hexed came out of my mouth whenever i tried to talk, but no! he’s gotta go all bs true love. god. no creativity.”

dex just blinks because, like, magic. magic is a thing. wow. okay.

and so long story short, his parents tried so hard to find someone who would work as his soulmate– “because no one has just one,” nursey explains, having read a bunch of books on it bc he’s a Romantique, “there are a bunch of people who sooth your soul, magic or whatever, it has a lot to do with timing and willingness and–i’m losing you, anyway back to the story”– but his parents found no one, and nursey was fading fast

before he could wither away completely, he gave his parents consent to put a stasis spell on him. “they probably put me up here to keep me safe,” nursey says, shrugging, suddenly so sad. his parents, dex realizes, are probably dead.

“maine was one of the last places to go mechanical,” dex says. “they probably kept you close as long as they could.”

nursey nods, and his eyes go all glassy, and dex wants to comfort him but, like, they just met, so he settles with patting comfortingly at nursey’s shoulder. then nursey looks up, eyes wide.

“wait. you woke me up.”

dex squints. “uh, yeah.”

“you’re my soulmate.”

“oh.”

“yeah.”

well.

then a lot of other stuff happens– dex takes nursey home, which causes a bunch of fun antics with out-of-our-time nursey interacting with a plethora of ginger aunts, uncles, and little cousins. nursey tries to relearn living in a world without grass or trees or fresh air. he and dex learn, bit by bit, about one another, and figure that the soulmate thing is probably correct–though they argue constantly, about big things small things and anything else they can find.

(the arguments, the good ones, always come with real good sex, so they’re both p happy about that)

and of course nursey is mourning the loss of his time and friends and family, and he tells dex stories of his teammates and classes and parents, until dex mourns them right along with him. “i think i would have liked them” he says, quiet, one night, while staring up at the glow-stars nursey found in a retro store and put up.

“i think they would’ve liked you too,” nursey says, quiet, pressing a kiss to dex’s starry cheek.

it’s not all cuddles and smiles, though. nursey reawakening sends a ripple through the magic world and guess what–asshole elder wizard is still alive! he siphoned the life source of others or nature or little baby bunnies or something, idk, he’s evil, okay?

turns out he’s living in one of the last green places and, as power dicks are, is very insecure about his place. when he finds out nursey woke up, he immediately sends people to find him and kill him. obviously, it doesn’t work.

so nursey ends up getting tired about all the assholes that show up when he’s trying to just life his best gay life, so he tracks down the elder asshole and challenges him to a duel, or whatever, and the elder loses bc his life source is so weak from siphoning for so long, and nursey wins!! hurray!! and he and dex kiss and it’s great!!! (the screen cuts out before it gets Too Kissy, you know, bc we’re good christians here on tumblr, no tongues for us, no no)

and then nursey and dex make the elder wizard’s patch of green open to the public, and everyone sees the world they could have (maybe the gov was keep everyone in the dark about how good nature was?? the machines are better, less death? idk this isn’t for world building it’s for the Gay) and because everyone loves grass now, they rebel and dismantle all of the machinery and reveal the beautiful (suffering but alive) greenery underneath and everyone starts recycling again and it’s great!

dex finally gets to see moss in real life and he loves it don’t get him wrong, but, like. nursey’s eyes are still the best green he’s ever seen.

and they all lived happily ever after

[xmyxedsheeranfanfiction]

We push and pull like a magnet do ∞Chapter 1∞

“Hana are you ready? We have to go to the airport now” I heard my aunt yell from downstairs, just as I finished writing my first real diary entry. Recently I had decided to keep a diary of my feelings, to keep track of them, hopefully.

“I’m coming, just give me five minutes” I yell back as I zip my last bag up, adding my diary to the rest of my hand luggage. Tonight I was flying back home to Stockholm, although I had a long 7-hour stopover in Qatar, before getting home. I sighed and got up, looking at myself in the mirror briefly. My big dark brown eyes stared back at me as I coated my eyelashes clumsily with some mascara, giving my complexion some life. Lastly, I adjusted the headscarf I had to wear because of the laws in Iran, put some lipgloss on and went downstairs, where my aunt was waiting, an annoyed expression on her face.

“Are you all ready now?” she asked again and I just nodded. We left the house and got into the taxi that was waiting for us outside. The usual busy street was quiet and it was pitch black outside. The driver immediately started his engine and we were on our way to the airport here in Mashhad. On our way there we were both quiet, and I just spent the following half-hour, listening to music and looking out the window. I closed my eyes as the soothing voice of Ed Sheeran filled my ears and I found myself releasing a breath I didn’t know I was holding. I had been listening to his music for years, way before he became as famous as he is now. He always calmed me down, and I could always relate to his music, even the painful ones.

“Stop daydreaming Hana, we are here now,” my aunt said, and pulled my earpods out of my ears. I just blinked and got out of the car, grabbing my suitcase and my hand luggage from the driver. I kept silent as we walked up to the terminal. As we got to the point where my aunt had to leave me, I turned around and gave her a hug.

“Thank you for everything these past two months auntie, I’ve had a really good time” I said and she gave me a small smile.

“Anytime Hana, please make sure to call when you get home, Inshallah (God Willing)” she said and I nodded.

“Don’t worry I will call you as soon as I’m home, Inshallah” I said and gave her one last hug before I left her. I walked towards the check-in and consciously wrapped my headscarf tighter around my hair. I always got nervous at the check-in at this airport, they looked at your headscarf with critical eyes. Thankfully I got through check-in and security smoothly and now I was at my gate, waiting for my first flight. It was currently 4:30 am, and we should be boarding anytime now. I sit myself down and sure enough, about 10 minutes later its time to board. Soon enough, I’m in my seat and I close my eyes and put on music as the air hostess goes through security and the plane starts moving.

Approximately 2,5 hours later

Before I knew it, we had reached Doha, and I was exhausted. I walked towards the airport transit part and sighed as I looked at the clock and realised that I had a full 7 hours to spend here. I walked around until I found an empty row of chairs. I sat myself down at the very edge, giving myself four seats so I could lay down. I took my diary out and started to write a little as I listened to music. About an hour or so later, I noticed a guy approaching this row and my eyes followed him, hoping he would avoid my row. Unfortunately, he sat down at the other end of my row. I sighed and took a look at him. He looked odd. He sported a navy oversized hoodie, baggy jeans and converses. He had the hood up and these big sunglasses on. His luggage purely consisted of this old rucksack and a guitar. I found myself getting curious about him, and why he was hiding his face. After a while I shrugged and returned to my writing, he didn’t seem interested in me anyway.  

Soon I found myself engrossed in my writing and I completely forgot that he was sitting there. I was writing about my deepest feelings and confessions, things I had never told anyone. Halfway through I realised that I still was wearing my headscarf, so I put my pen down, and put my diary on one of the empty seats, as I took off my headscarf. I pulled my hair out of the tight bun I had put it in and I could smell my shampoo as my hair fell down, reaching my waist.  I ran my fingers through my hair, smiling slightly as I finally felt like myself again. Somewhere along the lines, I felt like someone was watching me, so I took my ear pods out of my ears and took a look around. Sure enough, the guy had now moved to one of the seats closer to me and was looking at me with a small smile on his face. I blushed and looked away, why was he being so weird?

Ed’s Pov (briefly)

Damn airports. They’re so cold and empty, especially at this hour. And on top of it all, every shop is closed as well. My original flight from Tokyo had been delayed so I was already in a bad mood as I entered the airport of Doha, on a stopover for three hours until I could finally get on my plane home to London. I have been on a break from everything for a year, travelling, relaxing and just finding myself again, not been on any social media either. It’s been refreshing, but I have to admit, towards the end it’s been lonely and boring. I couldn’t wait to get back into writing and performing now, it had almost been like an itch needed to be scratched after a while.

I shook my head, walking through the transit area. Damn airports, you can never find a place to relax. As I reach the end of the transit area, I sigh as I spot an empty row of chairs. Well, almost empty, there was this girl sat at the very end of the row, and she had her bags on two of the chairs, assumingly so she could lay down. There was something different about her. She was wearing this coat that looked too big on her, hiding her body from peoples view, and she had her hair covered under a tightly wrapped headscarf, a tiny strand of hair peeked through from underneath and I could see her hair was a rich dark brown colour. I was instantly fascinated by her. She had her earpods in so she couldn’t hear me as I approached the row of chairs, and she had this journal type thing that she was writing in. I decided I’d let her be, she seemed busy and from the way she was dressed, I assumed I shouldn’t approach her.

As I sat down, her eyes suddenly snapped up and I could see how she stared at me, well at what she could see of me as I was wearing clothes that would cover my face and my hair up. For a moment she looked at me, but I couldn’t tell what went through her mind before she sighed and went back to her journal and her writing. I looked the other way, figuring out that she wasn’t interested. After a while, I was getting bored so I took my phone out, logging into Instagram for the first time in a good few months. After a while, I was bored again, so I decided to look over to her side again. She seemed completely engrossed in whatever it was she was writing, her hands were moving fast and her brows were furrowed, and I could almost see her eyes glistening with tears. I wondered what she was writing about, and I couldn’t help but want to reach out and give her a hug.

I don’t know how long I spent looking at her before she suddenly put her pen down, and put her journal on the empty seat next to her. I quickly looked away, I didn’t want her to think I was some kind of freak. Suddenly I could smell this lovely scent, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was but it smelled nice, so I looked up and there she was. She had taken the scarf off and let her hair out. And she looked absolutely beautiful. She had long, thick hair, in that same shade of dark brown as that tiny piece of hair I had seen before. Her eyes were big and they were this rich shade of dark brown, almost black, but if you looked close enough you’d see that they were brown. Her lips were full and pink and her hands were tiny, as she ran her finger through her hair. I could feel myself smiling as I observed her. Suddenly she looked up and she saw me and I looked into her eyes for the first time and I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. She took my breath away.

Hana’s Pov

I cleared my throat and he took his sunglasses off. His eyes were piercing blue, and framed by these long blond eyelashes. From what I could see of his eyebrows, they looked ginger. He looked really familiar and I had this weird feeling.

“Uhmm sorry sir, can I help you?” I said quietly, the last thing I wanted was to talk to this guy, he made me feel really uncomfortable. He blinked and cleared his throat before he smiled.

“Uhmm no sorry, I promise I’m not a creep I was just curious that’s all.” He said in a thick british accent and I raised an eyebrow. I think he could tell that I wanted to leave the conversation at that because he suddenly took his hand out.

“I should probably tell you my name, I’m Ed” he said, and I looked at him again before slowly grabbing his hand and shaking it. He smiled at me again.

“Uhmm I’m Hana.” I mumbled and let go of his hand quickly. I tried getting back to my journal, grabbing my pen and making myself comfortable, but he moved to the closest seat next to me and I rolled my eyes.

“So, Hana, where are you headed?” he asked and I could tell he was being careful with what he was saying.

“I’m going back home, to Sweden.” I said, deciding to not be too specific.

“Oh wicked, I’ve been in Sweden a few times, it's lovely there, whereabouts do you live if you don’t mind me asking?” he said and I shook my head.

“I’m sorry I don’t feel comfortable letting you know where I live,” I said slowly and his face dropped. We sat there for a while, in an awkward silence before I sighed and took a look at the time, I still had over 4 hours to go.

“That’s okay, how long until your flight comes?” he said suddenly and I looked up at him again, blinking. This guy really didn’t seem to get it. Why was he so interested in me?

“In over four hours,” I said and I couldn’t help but groan. He laughed at my expression and shook his head.

“Mine goes in about an hour, it’s a pity I can't stay here for long,” he said and for some reason, I felt sad, it was weird but I felt empty at the thought of him leaving me.

“You on your way to London?” I found myself asking without thinking and he nodded.

“Lucky, I love London” I said and he smiled. After that, he didn’t say anything, and I didn’t either. After a while I took out my phone and he looked over to me.

“Uhmm I was wondering if I could have your number?” he asked shyly and I could tell he had been thinking of asking me for a while. I blushed and looked down, but for some reason, I didn’t say no. I handed him my phone and he put his number in and then he handed his to me and I put mine in.

“Well Hana, it was lovely spending time with you, I’ll contact you once I land, and can you make sure you just pop me a text whenever you’re home?” he said and I just nodded. He smiled and said goodbye, grabbing his things, and putting his sunglasses on before he left. He gave me one last look as he walked away and I was filled with the same sad, empty feeling as before.

Who was he? And why did he care?

[echoes-of-the-clockwork]

Detroit: Become Human Connor x Reader

A/n: THERE ARE NO SPOILERS IN THIS ONE SHOT! I've been obsessed with this game from the moment I started playing it, so I've decided to make a one shot book on Wattpad! Love you all!!!

••••••••••••••••

~(Y/n)'s POV~

"Dad, I think you've had enough," I said, snatching the whisky out of his hand and tossing it into the garbage.

"(Y/n), that's a waste of booze!" My dad, Hank Anderson, shouted as he jolted to his feet.

"It's not if I keep you from getting alcohol poisoning," I snap back, hands resting on my hips. He waves me off and moves from the kitchen to the couch. He flopped down on the cushions as a knock came from the door. "I'll get it."

Opening the door, I saw Connor on the other side. He smiled and greeted me with his normal voice. "Good evening, Miss Anderson."

I sigh, "Connor, I've already told you this: call me (Y/n)."

"Ah, yes. Good evening, (Y/n)."

"It is, indeed. Come on in."

Connor walked into the living room and greeted my dad. All he got in response was mumbling and a shooing gesture. Sumo trotted over and sniffed the android, confirming that he was welcome.

Due to my dad's stubbornness, I guide Connor to the kitchen and we sit down at the table. "What brings you here, Connor?"

"A homicide. Workers at the docks found dead bodies in their cargo. They have assigned Lieutenant Anderson to the case, along with myself."

I glanced towards Dad, who was now snoring on the couch. "Would it be alright if I were your partner today?"

Connor looked between me and Dad before nodding with a smile. "Yes. I believe your expertise at reading deviant behavior will be most helpful. I will notify the station of your involvement and give you access to the scene." His LED device changed yellow as he sent the message to headquarters.

"I'll grab my badge and handgun. Meet me in the car," I said, getting up from the table. Connor nods and excuses himself to leave. I grab my things and take the car keys from my dad's room. Before I left, I kissed him on the cheek. "I'll see you later, Dad."

Exiting the house, I hop in the car with Connor. The radio blasted loudly the moment the engine was started and I jumped in my seat. The android quickly turned down the volume when he saw me jump. "Thanks, Connor. Now, to the port."

"Yes. Let's not keep the officers waiting."

-Port of Detroit-

After fifteen minutes of driving, we arrive at the docks. Police officers were crawling everywhere as they investigated the cargo containers and the surrounding area. We exited the car and Connor followed me to the scene.

The gray clouds above covered the sun, creating an eerie atmosphere. The silence between the officers added to the unsettling feeling suffocating us. I heaved a deep sigh as we were approached by Officer Reed. A grin was plastered on his face as he stopped in front of me. "Didn't expect you to be here, (Y/n)."

"What do you want?" I hiss.

"No "hello" for an old friend?"

"Oh, please. You're far from a friend. I'd rather jump off a bridge than become your friend. You're just a selfish prick who's been a pain in the ass for too long."

Gavin gritted his teeth and stepped threateningly towards me. Feeling the hostility, I took a step away from him. Connor suddenly stood in front of me protectively as he faced the man. Gavin glared at the machine as he grabbed him by the collar. "Move, you piece of fuckin' plastic."

"I refuse. If you lay a hand on her, I will not hesitate to strike."

"You're just a damn machine. Since when do you feel compassion towards a human?"

Connor remained silent and Gavin released him. The officer backed away and shuffled to his car. I turn my gaze back to Connor, making sure he was alright. "Are you alright, Connor?"

"I am fine, (Y/n). Shall we?" He gestured towards the open cargo container. I nod and we enter the metal compartment. The smell of iron filled the air as blood was splattered on the metal walls.

"What happened?" I asked a police officer.

"Workers opened the container to find a few members of the county board dead. We haven't found any evidence besides a knife, but there are no fingerprints on the hilt," he responds. 

"A deviant," Connor and I said in unison. We exchanged glances before he scanned the container to see if he could find a lead.

"Three men dead. Do we know how long?" I ask.

"The blood is still fresh," Connor answers.

"If the blood's fresh, our culprit is still nearby. Android or human, having blood on you will be suspicious. I seriously doubt they would've run into a public area. They're hiding somewhere in the port." I turn to the officer beside me. "Tell your team to block all possible exit points of the port. We don't want this deviant to get away."

"Right away, Dr. Anderson."

I pinch the bridge of my nose. "I will never get used to that title."

"You should be proud of it, (Y/n). You've worked hard to get here. Not everyone gets into Harvard," Connor said as he faced me.

"How did you..."

"The Lieutenant talks much about you during investigations. He's very proud to be your father."

"What else has he told you?"

Connor fell silent for a few seconds before answering. "The time you were attacked by a rogue android on your way home. It's also the reason behind his hatred towards them." My hand gravitated towards the scar on my left side. I stared into Connor's chocolate eyes and saw something flicker in them. He took a step towards me and grabbed my hand in his. "I must admit, I am surprised you don't share the same hatred. After all, you were the one attacked."

"You can't define an entire race by just the actions of one individual. Androids may be machines, but they are living beings just like us humans."

Connor smiled at my words. "You truly do care about androids. Most humans don't."

"I am not like 'most humans'. I am the weird one out of the bunch. I'm the one yellow daisy that grows in the field of white lilies."

"(Y/n), I must—"

The sound of banging in the container above this one caught our attention. Connor and I dashed out of the metal compartment to check the top one. Seeing as I wasn't nimble, Connor climbed on top of the bottom container to reach the top one. He slowly unhooked the latch and opened the heavy door. "We know you're in here!"

In response, the deviant shoves Connor aside and jumps out, landing right in front of me. I went to attack, but the android avoids my fist. He runs past and to the warehouse behind me. I run after him just as Connor called out for me to stop. Ignoring him, I rush after the machine as he enters the warehouse.

A loud crack of thunder resounded from the sky as I searched the building for the deviant. With only little light to assist me, I crept my way through the warehouse quietly. When I heard clanking near my position, I pulled out my pistol and had it at the ready. I kept my lips sealed as I maneuvered through a slew of crates to reach the small office in the back of the warehouse.

Gingerly, I open the door and saw a trail of thirium leading to under one of the desks. I holstered my gun and kneeled next to the desk. I didn't show myself as I spoke. "I know you're under the desk and how scared you are. I'm not gonna hurt you. Can I help you?"

"P-Please, I don't wanna die," he begs.

I move to the other side of the desk and kneel in front of the frightened android. "I want to help. You're bleeding badly and will shutdown if you don't get first-aid."

"If I go with you, will the other humans hurt me?"

"No, I'll make sure that doesn't happen." I offer him a hand and he gradually takes it. With a gentle pull, I help him from under the desk and to his feet. "Now, will you tell me why you killed members of the county board?"

"T-They would hit me for being too slow and burned my arms with cigarettes. It wasn't fair!"

"I understand. What's your name?"

"Elijah."

"Nice to meet you, Elijah. I'm (Y/n) and I'm gonna be your alibi through all this."

"Thank you! Thank you so much!"

Just then, Connor bursted into the office. The worry on his face was apparent as our eyes met. He quickly glanced at the deviant before looking back at me. "Are you alright?"

I smile, "I'm fine, Connor. Elijah and I will head back to the station. Could you inform the team of the successful mission?"

"(Y/n), it would be best for me to accompany you back to the station, as well."

"No, I'll be fine. Elijah won't hurt me."

"But, (Y/n)—"

"Connor, please," I beg.

"I... Yes, I will inform the others."

I thank him and help Elijah to my car. He hops in without protesting and I drive us to the station. Inside the building, a couple of officers take the machine to a cell. Captain Fowler called me to his office and we discussed the crime in details. I had told him I would be Elijah's alibi and he surprisingly agreed. Before I left, the Captain called out to me. "Good work today, (Y/n). I'll also send CyberLife a report of Connor's success in the meantime."

"Thank you, Sir. I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day."Jeffrey waves and I close the door behind me.

As I was walking to my dad's desk, I saw Connor sitting in his chair. He was holding a picture my dad had of me on his desk. It was the day I graduated from high school.

I tapped Connor on the shoulder to get his attention. He gently sat the picture frame down before turning the chair to face me. "Did you know only five-point-two percent of those who apply to Harvard get accepted?"

"What's with the sudden statistics?" I ask.

"To show how special you are, (Y/n)."

My eyes widened at the statement. I shook my head a little before sitting on the top of the desk. "Connor, I have a question to ask you."

"Yes?"

"At the port, something Gavin said caught my attention. I want you to be completely honest with me. Do you feel compassion?"

Connor squeezed his hands together tightly. His brown eyes fell to the carpet beneath our feet before he glanced back up at me. "Yes, and... other emotions I'm not familiar with."

"So, you are developing feelings. Fascinating. What other feelings have you developed?"

"Happiness, fear, and... love."

I was completely taken aback when I heard 'love'. I leaned in closer and peered into his chocolate eyes. "I've heard stories of androids falling in love with humans and vice versa. When did you first feel love?"

"The day you defended me from Officer Reed a few months ago. Ever since then, I was unsure of the strange sensation. I approached Lieutenant Anderson and he told me it was love."

"You didn't tell my dad who was the cause of the feeling, did you?"

"No. Should I have?"

"Um, no. He'd probably turn you into a pile of scraps."

Connor stood from the seat and moved to stand in front of me. Even though I was sitting on the desk, he was still a few inches taller than me. He leaned down slightly, our faces mere inches from each other. "I have not encountered such feelings before. They are quite... perplexing."

"Trust me, Connor. It's just as perplexing for humans, too," I sigh.

"I also took the opportunity to learn of this emotion."

"As long as you didn't get your information from my dad, you're fine."

Without warning, Connor moved one of his hands and placed it on my cheek. I was completely embarrassed as he leaned forward even more and our noses were touching. I placed both of my hands on Connor's chest as our lips were about to meet. "Connor, I love you, too, but we shouldn't be doing this in the station."

"Ah, yes. We would not wish to disturb those who are working."

We leave the station and head to my car. I tossed my jacket in the backseat with a sigh before closing the door. The moment I turned to face Connor, he stepped forward and pressed his lips against mine. It was much more intense than I imagined and I felt my entire body heat up. I had to lean against the car to prevent myself from falling to the ground from the intensity of the kiss.

Connor seemed joyful as the kiss continued. Just like in the station, one of his hands laid on my cheek and he stroked the heated skin softly. After minutes of kissing, we pull apart and I recline my head against the car's window. "Where did you learn that? I seriously doubt that's in your programming."

"I read quite an interesting romantic novel. It was filled with much more than kissing."

I sigh, “Oh, dear lord...”

[ravenvsfox]

Prompt: When they get to earth, lance wants to stay.

You were the first in line, so you get prompt numero uno!!

Outside the cabin of the shuttle, pebble stars are tossed out into the dense, black lake of open space, so dark that Lance’s eyes start teasing out imaginary colours. It’s always so still out in the yawning nothingness. If he didn’t know how a bucking shuttle felt beneath him it might be hard to tell that they were moving at all.

Inside, the glow of tech is cool and purple, and if he squints at the light and not the Altean characters, its almost like the Garrison simulators, or the speedometer of the only car on the road at night.

Pidge is punching in coordinates next to him, and she twists her fingers over the frame of her glasses like she’s trying to make them zoom. For all he knows, she might have engineered binoculars into her glasses just like she tucks lifts into her shoes, making modifications to herself just like she does to everything else she can get her hands on.

He squirms, digging his toes down into the unyielding bottom of his boots, wanting to feel something real and movable, something not so claustrophobic. His hands shake on the controls, and he clenches his fists until they can’t.

They’d left the lions on the nearest neutral planet, defences up, Romelle and Krolia at a nearby base. Coran was on patrol duty, winding between their massive paws and craning his neck to speak earnestly up at them. It’s comforting to think of the lions as as they left them, a circle of statues and their sentinel.

It’s the weirdest thing, but sometimes Lance thinks that the way the lions talk to him is the way Gods talk to prophets, and everyone else in the cosmos just has to trust his blind, bruising faith.

He pushes a hand into his hair and just holds it there, steering left-handed and feeling his pulse push anxiously against his fingers.

“Uh oh, are we getting introspective?”

Lance’s hand jerks back to the controls. “Oh—uh. Sorry. We’re just,” he taps their trajectory on the luminous map between them. “So close.” He hadn’t realized how close until he’d checked, but his chest had been getting more and more crowded, like all of Earth’s radio waves and clutter was close enough to hear.

“Less than a light-year,” Pidge agrees quietly. The look in her eyes is so terribly far from home. The part of her that riffled through the desks of authorities and cut all her hair off is still with her brother in the guts of the resistance.

“Then why doesn’t it feel like we’re going home, huh?” Lance asks, smiling through the weirdness in his head. “Where’s the fanfare? Where’s the galaxy-wide fireworks display?” Pidge smiles tightly back at him.

“I didn’t think we’d get to go home until our mission was done, and, well, I don’t know. Maybe we don’t deserve all of that yet.”

“Maybe you don’t,” Lance corrects. The shaking’s only getting worse. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen when they touch down and it’s making his hair stand on end and his teeth chatter. “I’ve deserved it since day one.”

“Oh yeah?” she says, laughing. “All that winking at instructors and seeing how many peanut butter m&m’s you can fit in your mouth paying off for you?”

“Only in every way possible,” he says. “I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention but I’m a galactic superstar. Seriously.”

“Seriously,” Pidge echoes. They lapse into silence, and Lance’s body kicks up a fight when he sees the luminescent blue shape of the Earth drifting into view like a tossed frisbee.

“Jesus,” he breathes. He eases up on the speed, and they spend a suspended minute floating, watching, breathless. “Is she beautiful or what?”

“Usually I don’t trust your taste, but this time—“ she chokes up suddenly, surprising herself, and she tries to shield her face from view. Lance crows at her, his own vision blurring.

“Pidgey,” he says joyfully “We’re home.”

“Shut up.”

“Pidge,” he croons. She looks at him, eyes bright and wet, and neither of them can keep from grinning.

“We were born right down there,” Lance informs her. “The doctors wept with joy when they saw me.”

“They probably didn’t think your big head was gonna come out.”

Lance ignores her, feeling the jitters get brighter, harder to fight. “One moon, seven seas. It rains the kind of water that’s safe to drink. There’s barbecue pizza down there, Pidge.”

“I know,” she says.

“I can’t believe this. My mom’s right there.”

They’re still knee-deep in a revolution. They’ve been hurtling through space at warp speed in close quarters for weeks, and the only home they’ve ever known out in the black was blasted out of the sky, but the idea of setting foot on Earth without crawling into his mother’s arms is unthinkable.

The shuttle comms crackle, and Hunk’s voice comes through, “you guys seeing this?”

“Oh yeah,” Lance says. “You feelin’ as misty as we are, buddy?”

“He’s been crying since we passed pluto,” Keith says flatly.

“Oh yeah, that was an emotional gut-punch,” Hunk says.

“Paladins,” Allura interrupts smoothly, “I trust you’re happy to be home. I know it might be hard to believe considering my situation, but I’m happy for you as well. Pidge, can you set a course for where your father has taken those schematics? It’s of the utmost importance that we not waste any time.”

His heart sinks. “Funny, that feels like all we’ve been doing. A lot of autopilot and Altean uno and drinking whatever was in that funky bottle under the console.”

“Lance,” Allura says disapprovingly. The empty air hums and someone breathes out quickly.

“Princess, you’re not saying that we won’t be able to visit our homes, are you? Our families?” Hunk asks.

“I wish you could,” she says, sighing. “But we’re still fighting a war. I don’t think it’s practical—or safe—“

“No,” Lance says, aborted. “I mean—no.”

“Lance,” Keith says quietly.

“I’m not talking to you,” Lance seethes. “Pidge, put in the coordinates 23° 8′ 22″ N, 81° 17′ 10″ W, will you? I’ve got a couple of errands to run.”

“We’re not splitting up,” Allura says firmly. “I’m so sorry Lance, but the team is more important than—“

“Than my family?” he says, disbelieving. “Sorry, no, absolutely not, agree to disagree. I know that I’m supposed to save the universe or whatever, but I promised my mom—“ he chews his lip savagely, watching the whole world rush up to meet them and feeling helpless want thrash in his stomach. “I won’t be any help at the Holt’s. No one needs a guy with a rifle when you’re trying to put together a whole new teladuv, right? You don’t need me.”

“Yes we do,” Shiro says firmly, and Lance closes his eyes, fleeting. He’s having trouble focusing with his dearest wish and his nightmare both grabbing for a half of his brain.

“How about I go with Lance to Cuba and keep things on schedule,” Hunk offers. “I’d love to see his mom again. She always brings us empanadas.”

“We need your brain,” Shiro says regretfully. “We can’t do anything without your eyes on this.”

There’s a long silence, and Lance eases the thrusters to a more manageable intensity, muscle memory.

“I’ll go,” Keith says finally.

“What?” Lance asks at the same time that Allura says “pardon me?”

“I’ll go,” he repeats, stronger this time. “I’m also a fighter, not a scientist. I don’t have a home to go to, but I can take Lance.”

Lance flushes, not really understanding why. The way Keith said “also a fighter” like they’re cut from the same reversible cloth, red and blue. Sometimes the hot and cold of the two of them gives him whiplash.

“Is that… I mean, Lance,” Allura addresses him directly. He wishes he could see her expression, the wide eyes, the forehead that never really creases no matter how elastic her reactions are. “Is that what you want?”

He doesn’t even care that it’s Keith. He’s staring down the barrel of a mission where he’s fixed permanently in the background, tethered to the earth an eight-hour plane ride from the only place he’s ever felt consistently needed. “Definitely. Keith and I can stay in touch with you guys, and we basically have a super fast private jet if you need us.”

“Sorry, did you just say ‘Keith and I’ without bursting into flames?” Pidge asks, and Lance gives her a sidelong look.

“Right now, Keith is the only one of you who isn’t on my shit list. If Cubans are away from their families for too long, they drop dead. Do you want me to die?”

“Kind of a little at all times,” Pidge says, and he shoves her so hard that she would topple if it weren’t for the harness holding her to her seat.

“Alright,” Allura says definitively. “We’ll touch base at the Holt’s, but really… if I saw Altea again, no one could dream of keeping me from it.”

“Thank you princess,” Lance says gratefully, his chest aching, sweat cooling on his upper lip, hands finally still. “You won’t even notice I’m gone.”

______

Careening through the atmosphere is so surreal that Lance holds his breath all the way down. The clouds swarm the windows like eager fans, and it’s better than any welcoming procession he could have dreamt up. When they sink through the last of the low-slung wisps of water vapour, the burst of smoke-blue sky and human-made buildings stretched out below makes his steering stutter. Pidge laughs brightly at him.

They touch down on earth with the sunset crying out to be noticed, submerging everything in easygoing orange light.

The first step he takes on Earth in a year, and he falls to his knees.

His suit crunches against the dirt, and he takes his gloves off so that he can fist the grass and muck and smell the tang of it in the air. The oxygen is perfectly tuned for his lungs, and even though his body is off-kilter in the gravity, the ache matches the one inside of him. The breeze ruffles his hair, and he feels perfectly understood.

“You gonna kiss it, too?”

He looks up and sees Keith towering over him, looking imposing and amused at once. The rest of the team is staggered behind him, stretching their legs out and moving crates of supplies.

“That’s between me and her,” he sniffs.

Keith rolls his eyes. “Oh, because even the Earth is a girl to you, right?”

“Ge,” Lance says.

Keith blinks. “Uhh…”

“As in, the goddess?” Keith shakes his head. “Man, the amount of time we spend up between constellations and you don’t even know your mythology? She’s Earth? Mother of the Titans? Whatever dude, Ge is a hot goddess and I missed her sweet curves.”

Keith raises an eyebrow. Lance spreads his hand in the dirt and watches the way little buds of weeds and grass fold under his fingers.

“We haven’t even been here five full minutes and you’re already being gross,” Pidge calls.

“This is the prime time to be gross,” Lance calls. “Let me have my sloppy reunion, please and thank you.” His armour sighs as he eases himself down fully onto the Holt’s front lawn, heavy with gravity. He hears a rustle and looks up to find Keith sitting cross-legged a few feet away. He’s tearing out handfuls of grass with both hands, gaze tangled up in something Lance doesn’t think he’d be able to see even if he looked.

Lance watches him over one of his outstretched arms, but Keith catches him.

“What?” he asks.

“Two years,” Lance murmurs, and Keith’s face shifts dramatically. “That’s a long time away from home.”

“I haven’t been back to Earth in three years,” Keith corrects, annoyingly patient, completely obtuse.

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Keith, Lance,” Allura calls. Her hair is pulled back tightly, and she’s still wearing her flight suit. “Stay for a briefing, and then choose whichever shuttle you wish. Pidge assures me that there are supplies inside, and an extra—what was it? cellular phone? If you don’t want to wear your helmets for continuous correspondence, you can instantly message us from this device.”

Lance grins. “Yeah, I’m familiar. Can’t say the same for Keithy boy here. Body of a buff twenty year old, mind of a confused old man.”

“I know what a cellphone is,” Keith says impatiently.

“Good,” Allura says quickly, before they can devolve into bickering. “Use it. Stay safe, stay smart. Do not forget why we’re here.”

“I think the background threat of annihilation should keep us on our toes,” Lance assures her, and Keith snorts. Lance smiles slyly at him.

The briefing is swift and painless.

Watching Pidge reunite with her parents is bittersweet, and he keeps imagining the way his own mother is going to swear and slap him and kiss him. He’ll apologize over and over to her for how he’s made her worry and how he’s going to make her worry. 

He’ll call his abuelita, surprise Marco and Luis in their shared bedroom by doing the secret knock on the doorframe, and bring Veronica the shard of sea glass he found on a planet called Luvesh (the sea was literally made of glass, and when you walked out onto its glittering surface, it spidered like ice. He bent down and picked a piece like a flower).

After the initial business, they change into street clothes and eat homemade lasagna, and Lance almost cries when the tang of tomato and basil hits his tongue. He winds the perfect stretch of real cheese around his fork and raises it in toast: to the only planet that does pasta right.

He and Keith carry fresh supplies between them in a cleaned out cooler, and they climb up into the cockpit of the smallest, fastest shuttle. They squabble briefly about who’s going to pilot until he reminds Keith that he’s the only one who knows where they’re going. 

They wave goodbye to their team, and cruise somewhere between commercial jet speed and the full thrust of an alien vessel, watching the clusters of cities below slither away, like a sheet being continuously pulled out from under them.

_______

The sun is nearly below the horizon in Varadero, but Lance knows every gnarl in every road and every stupid resort, and he knows the way everything intersects at his family home, the beating heart of it all.

Gliding low over the jewel-blue stretch of the ocean is so overwhelming that he’s worked himself up halfway to tears before he remembers that Keith’s with him, that Keith’s seeing the best place in the world for the first time while it’s drooping to sleep for the night.

He starts pointing things out, identifying distant shapes with even more distant memories attached to them. 

That’s the street market where I tried to haggle a boombox down to three dollars. Those are the beaches that the tourists swarm during the day. Most of them are too scared to swim in the ocean at night, so that’s when we always used to go. Somewhere in that block is the gelato place where I broke my tooth on a waffle cone. 

That’s the little theatre where Veronica used to dance. I used to go to all her practices, and I said it was to look at the pretty girls, but it was also to watch my sister out-dance everyone else on stage. We had chickens when I was nine, and we bought them at that farm down there, the one with the hook-shaped driveway? I was obsessed with Celia Cruz and Britney Spears so we called one of the chickens Miss Celia and one of them Brit.

It’s starting to hurt to talk about it. Everything out of his dreams is tangible again, and even though it’s hugged by darkness and silky quiet — not raucous and sunny like it always is in his memories — it’s so close that voltron seems like the dream.

“I didn’t know you could be this genuine for this long,” Keith says honestly, and Lance doesn’t look at him.

“You haven’t really met me until you’ve met me here,” Lance says slowly.

“Well…” Keith starts awkwardly. “Nice to meet you?”

He does look at him this time, incredulous, and when he smiles, so does Keith.

______

As soon as they step foot on his property, he starts crying for real. He’s been tightrope walking over an absence so large that he wouldn’t even look at it. Every time he overcompensated for his grief and did something stupid like fell in love with a complete stranger, he felt like he was lurching over that chasm, trying to find his balance.

It’s impossible to describe the feeling of reaching down to graze your knuckles against the sand outside your favourite place in the world, and feeling the heat from the day baked into it, spotting little footprints tracked up to the rickety staircase.

Keith walks a stride and a half behind him, quiet, pretending he can’t hear the sounds that Lance is making out of the deepest place in his chest.

“Keith, you can’t look at me right now.”

“Why not?”

“Because vulnerability is ugly.” He brushes his fingers over where his own name is written on the mailbox. His bike is propped up against the deck. Luis is probably using it, the bastard.

“I don’t think it’s ugly,” Keith whispers.

He doesn’t know what to say, so he pretends he didn’t hear. He can hear the waves unrolling on the shore like messy, misshapen carpets, the hiss of them wrapping themselves back into the surf. The air has that salt and citrus smell that lived in all his clothes before they were sterilized by months in the gasping, impersonal corners of space.

He walks up the front stoop, and he had really imagined this in the daytime, with the sun at his back, instead of the moonlight and Keith, both of them lonely but constant.

The door is unlocked, and he lets himself in, not breathing.

“Should I wait outside?” Keith asks, and it’s uncharacteristic of him to be so delicate about something.

“I need this,” Lance says quickly, grabbing Keith’s wrist impulsively. “I want— I need someone to back me up if… if they don’t believe me.”

Keith’s brow is an entire storm, thunderclouds and twisters of confusion and fear and discomfort, but his fingers curl to touch the hand Lance has around his wrist, and he nods.

The little clock on their front table ticks merrily, and there are lanyards strewn over the side of the little ceramic meant for keys, messy like his mom hates. His own face is ghostly in the Garrison cadet portraits lining the hallway, and he can see Keith peering at them out of the corner of his eye.

He reaches the place where the hall opens up into the living room, and stops. His mom is curled up in the recliner, asleep, and the home phone is clutched in her hand. He holds his own face in his hands, shoulders shaking, and all the gravity on his head feels like way too much. His knees give out, and Keith steadies him at the last second.

“I really don’t know if I should be here,” he hisses. His arm is around Lance’s waist, and there’s a weird dissonance to it, like he never left home or the castle of lions, or he’s not sure that they’re really that different. 

He feels weirdly like Keith belongs here, that he’s still an arm and Lance is still a leg on one cohesive person, and they could move giants together.

“Then who would’ve caught me just now?” Lance counters. His gaze finds his mom again, another kind of gravity, and he creeps closer, seeing the oven clock and the drawn blinds and feeling familiarity so acute that it’s like deja vu.

He stands over his mother, hand to his lips, ribcage quaking, and reaches down to shake her awake.

“Mamá,” he says hoarsely.

She doesn’t wake up immediately, and the longer he looks down into her lovely, worried face, the more his own face crumples. He can’t help the wounded sound that leaves the back of his throat, and she wakes at the noise, her face dazed and concerned.

“Mijo, what’s wrong?” she asks, her hand halfway up to his face before it hitches and drops.

There’s a beat of disbelieving silence, and then she surges upright, pulling the string on the lamp and squinting hopefully through the flood of light. When her eyes find Lance again, she gives this wavering gasp, her lower lip sucking inwards like it does right before you start sobbing.

“Lance?” She holds him by both his arms, shaking him, and he sinks through her grip to his knees. “Oh darling. My baby,” she says in Spanish. “How could you?”

“I’m sorry mamá,” Lance says, head bowed. “I’m so sorry.” She pulls his face up and smooths both thumbs across his brow.

“Don’t be sorry, mijo, just tell me where you’ve been. We’ve been looking for you. Searching the whole desert. All the stupid Garrison would tell us is that you were missing, presumed—“ she cuts herself off and shakes her head, jaw tight.

“I mean, you’re not going to believe this, mom.”

“My ghost son is sitting before me,” she says, hands in his hair, “more beautiful than ever. I dare you to shock me.”

Lance nods quickly, looking down at his own hands, trying to find a loose thread that will unravel a year’s worth of stories. “There’s… there’s a war.”

“There are many wars,” she replies gently. “Always.”

“No, there’s—do you remember the Kerberos mission, the crew that went missing?”

“It was in the news,” she says distractedly, combing fingers through his choppy bangs. “The boy you like, right? Takashi?”

“Yes,” Lance says, swallowing, hyper-aware of Keith in the doorway. “They didn’t die, they got caught up in a—in a war.”

“I don’t understand.” She’s looking at him with such open concern, and he wishes desperately that he could make thing simpler.

“Your son and I are soldiers,” Keith says from the doorway, and she startles hard, holding a hand to her chest and cursing in Spanish.

“Who—“

“Keith Kogane, former Garrison pilot, current paladin of Voltron.” He frowns. “I think.”

“He’s a friend,” Lance says simply.

“And?”

“And,” he takes a deep breath. “We’ve been fighting pretty much an evil empire in space, and we each pilot these sort of ancient, um, sentient cats, with the help of this princess we found in cryogenic stasis—“

“Ay, lance. Slow down, start again.”

“Mamá,” he says, exasperated.

“You should probably explain again,” Keith says helpfully.

“Thanks Keith,” he says hotly. “So we’ve been fighting in an intergalactic war, right? I’m sort of the unofficial red pilot, and my bayard is a rifle but one time it was kind of a sword which was—“

“Lance,” she interrupts, flicking the back of his head.

“Okay, okay, lo siento, I’ll go slow.”

It takes a long time to lay everything out properly, but his mom is never apprehensive or lost, she just wants to hear the facts, concisely, from different angles, until she finds some sort of solution. She’s always been good at peeling fact from fiction and plucking compromise out of thin air.

At some point, Keith gravitates over to the loveseat and makes himself comfortable, knife glinting from the holster around his thigh so noticeably that his mother purses her lips.

Sometime after midnight, Luis drifts down the stairs wearing boxers and a bathrobe, and when he sees Lance he trips down to the main floor and picks him up off the floor into a crushing hug. They stumble in an awkward square, shaking with euphoric laughter that might as well be crying, until Lance pokes him hard in the side, and they collapse apart, grinning.

Marco must hear the ruckus because he comes skittering down the stairs a minute later, already crying, and he tucks his head in Lance’s shoulder when he hugs him. By the time Veronica comes upstairs, her hair in a long loose braid and her face nearly unrecognizably gaunt, Lance can’t even speak. He nods jerkily and opens his arms, but she shoves him in the chest.

“Nothing to say, little brother?”

“Veronica,” their mother warns.

“They said you were dead,” she hisses.

“They also said I had an attitude problem, which we both know can’t be true,” he jokes. She shakes her head until a tear runs down her cheek and she has to rub it away.

“You are a problem child. I told mamá to stop having children after me, and if she’d listened we could’ve avoided so much mess.”

“But who would’ve gone to see you dance?” and he means it as a joke, but the idea of no one seeing her twisting like a rose towards the sun makes his throat close up.

She holds him by the neck, and then by the back of the head. “Bobo,” she scolds. “Don’t do that again.” She hugs him so carefully, and he screws his eyes shut, thinking about picking up to leave again, sailing back up into the stars and never coming back.

He’d forgotten what it felt like to be warm and safe and missed.

“I should probably leave you to it,” Keith says, rising abruptly, looking so uncomfortable that Lance feels a surge of fondness like flash rain, quick, heavy, and gone.

“No,” his mother informs him, getting to her feet and squeezing Lance’s face tenderly on her way by. “You brought my son home. I’m making you something to eat.”

_______

No one every warned him how intimate it would be to show someone your childhood bedroom. It’s the same feeling you get when you dig up a time capsule, uncomfortable awareness of what you thought was crucial when you were a whole different version of yourself.

Everything that he mentioned in passing in the trenches of the war is suddenly up close, scrutable, and Keith is taking it in like a museum patron, skirting the edge of the old messes, leaning politely in to look at portraits of friends and family.

“You have a picture of me in your room,” Keith points out, and Lance’s shoulders tense until he sees what he’s gesturing towards.

“A class photo, Keith. It’s not exactly a shrine.” He spreads out on the blue plaid bedspread and holds his hands to the pills of the fabric, worn exactly how he remembers.

Keith looks guilty. “No, I know, I just. I don’t know. It’s kind of… nice. To think that I’m this tiny part of your room. It’s stupid.” Lance looks at him blankly. “Forget it,” Keith says forcefully, crossing his arms and scowling.

Lance shrugs, uncomfortable. There are polaroids of him slung between Hunk and Pidge, lopsided from the extreme difference in the heights of their shoulders. He has peace thrown up around their shoulders, and he’s laughing.

He has a cutout about the Kerberos mission on his desk, and the Shiro with dark hair and young eyes stares up at the ceiling. He has the X-Files “I want to Believe’ poster above his bead, which covers Allura and Coran, so the only person who doesn’t really have a spot is Keith. Except one tiny pointed chin and bad haircut in a sea of young, pouty faces.

“Hey,” he says softly. He scoops his polaroid camera off of the desk and fiddles with the buttons, ears burning, heart turning over with the aching slowness of the wounded. “Come here.”

______

He gets up when the first fingers of sun peel back the horizon, red and orange like fire. He leaves Keith in his bed, his chest bare and his face young and pink in the sunrise. He still doesn’t understand anything.

He meets his mother in the kitchen, and she hold him an arm’s length away from her body to trace his features with her fingers. She passes him the perfect café cubano, and he makes a big show of getting on his knees to thank her.

Orange, filtered light comes in through the half-drawn shutters in distorted stripes. His mother recounts her phone conversation with Lance’s father using sound effects and tripping Spanish slang, and something vital inside of him detaches and spills blood-hot feeling everywhere.

He leaves his mother to wander down to the beach. His skin responds to the sun, hair standing on end. His whole body has been like a limb that’s been trapped in a cast, shrunken and pale, and the air and light against it is a terrible relief.

He lets his fingers brush the tall, feathery grass on either side of the path as he walks.

The feeling in his chest is the same one he got when he walked up to the stocky outline of the Galaxy Garrison, or when he settled into Blue’s cockpit for the first time, a sense of rightness so acute that he doesn’t have a name for it.

He scuffs off his flip-flops and sprints down to meet the surf, laughing when the spray gets his shorts wet and spritzes up to his neck. The chunky shells underfoot and the chill on his sleep-sensitive skin is background noise. He wades thigh deep and watches the red of the sky echoed by the churning mosh pit of the waves. He closes his eyes and lets the breeze paw at his hair and clothes, holding his arms out so that his loose buttoned shirt billows out behind him.

He’s out there for a long time, dawn turning into early morning, pale, with spectacular clouds. Red skies always promise wicked storms.

He settles down into the sand, enjoying the little discomforts, the sand tucked just under the hem of his shorts where his skin is clammy wet, the breeze getting a little too forceful with his hair and forcing it in the wrong direction. His house just a little too far away at his back, everything he cares about a few minutes out of reach.

He’s been to so many galaxies and he’s never seen anything like a sunrise over the ocean.

He thinks, I am the best version of myself, right here.

He knows he’s been a liability for the team. He shows up and makes noise and tries to look cool so that it won’t feel so much like the losing battle he’s fighting is coming to a sad, inevitable end. 

He’s the extra pilot that they cycle through the roster and try to find a place for, but he’s not the red paladin. And he’s never going to belong to Blue like Allura does, like her family always will.

Being at home like this makes it really clear that he hasn’t fit anywhere in a very long time. There are so many ugly things twisting and shooting out in space, and he’s seen so many people suffer. He shoots galra sentries dead and he follows his gut instincts to the wrong places and he dreams about home.

It’s so stupid that he thought he could be some sort of soldier. Like he would ever be the guy that saved something instead of ruining it.

He puts his hand out in front of him and watches sun creep between his fingers. Nothing feels real in space. It’s easier to lie to yourself, somehow.

“Hey,” says a voice behind him. When he glances back, Keith is staring at him with the saddest expression he’s ever seen on his face, and only then does Lance realize that he’s crying.

“What are you doing here?”

Keith ignores him. “You’re crying again.” He really sounds like it’s bothering him.

“No I’m not.”

“Your face is wet,” he says matter-of-factly, sitting down close to him in the sand, blotting out the sun.

“I was in the sea, Keith.”

He pauses, then breathes out all at once. “I hate seeing you like this.”

“Well I’m not so fond of looking at you either,” Lance snaps.

“I think we should go back tonight. I texted Allura and she said has a mission for us while the rest of the team is working. Some recon, I think.”

“The rest of the team,” Lance repeats hollowly.

“Yeah,” Keith says. “I mean. We can still be useful. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like sitting still for too long.”

“I do, actually,” he lies. “Harder to break things if you’re not moving around so much.”“What?” Keith looks confused, his eyes darting all over Lance’s face.

“I’m not going back with you.”

He jerks back like he’s been slapped. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I quit,” Lance announces. “I quit voltron, I quit galaxy-saving and jumping in front of laser fire and putting on a fucking— show all the time, I quit killing people because they’re wearing the galra uniform.” Keith flinches. “I quit you. Okay?”

Keith sits, stunned, across from him, and when his head dips, the sun gets into Lance’s eyes, sharp. He looks away.

“Not okay,” Keith says firmly. “Really not— really not okay, Lance, what the fuck? How did you think I was just going to, what, hop on a shuttle without you?”

Lance shakes his head at the ground. “I thought you’d be psyched. You won’t have to deal with me anymore. The red lion is yours. She always has been, actually, she was basically trying to eject me like a disease the whole time.” He looks up at Keith and finds him looking down furiously at him.

“We already talked about this,” Keith says impatiently. “I don’t care how many lions there are, we’ll figure it out. You’re part of the team.”“Only technically though, right?” he says bitterly. “I’ve always been more of a sidekick. Look, you don’t have to pretend to want me here just so you can tell them you tried when you show up empty handed, alright?”

Keith is looking more agitated by the minute, and Lance isn’t used to seeing him in natural light, without his gloves or his jacket or tense, self-assured energy. “I do want you,” he starts, and then he kind of bares his teeth and snaps his head away, fighting through something that Lance can’t see or understand. “You’re a paladin of voltron,” he struggles to say, like it explains everything.

“I tried to be a paladin,” Lance says. “I’m no good at it, okay? Can we stop rubbing it in. I’m being very real with you and you’re being very weird.”

“But you’re our sharpshooter,” Keith says, defiant like a kid. “No one fights like you.” That pulls Lance up short, and he’s shaking again, hands and chattering teeth, and the patches of water on his clothes are suddenly much too cold. Keith’s face is wide open in the plain light, and Lance realizes that he’s not lying, that he’s never been very good at that at all.

All the drawers in his chest shake out over everything, and he’s losing all his reasoning in the mess. He keeps looking back at the horizon and thinking about waking up in his room every day to the smell of coffee, but the image keeps getting confused with the image of Keith, roseate, rolled in his blue comforter.

“I can’t go back,” he whispers. “I won’t survive, and then my family will fall apart.”

“Lance, If anyone’s going to survive, it’s you, do you understand me?”

“No,” Lance says, frustrated. “I don’t know what’s happening right now, at all, actually.”

“You’re smart, and you’re selfless. Do you know how deadly those qualities are in a war? Your plans are low casualty, fast and brilliant, and they save lives. There are entire colonies, entire species that would have died without you.” Lance shakes his head, trying to keep from crying again and embarrassing himself. “None of us would’ve made it this far without you, idiot.”

“My family needs me,” he argues. “You saw them, you know, you know—“ He thinks of his mother trying to memorize him with both hands, his little brother crying softly against his neck.

“Anyone would feel that way if they knew you and lost you, Lance. You can’t honestly think that we wouldn’t be just as messed up without you,” he says incredulously.

“Keith,” Lance says lowly. There’s an epiphany tottering in his chest, and he can’t quite get a grip on it before it slips and bobs away.

“You can’t stay here,” Keith says, and he’s on his knees, reaching for both of Lance’s wrists, eyes wide, almost purple in the sun. “Who’s gonna keep me in line?”

“You—you need to keep yourself in line, dude, you can’t just expect—“

“I know you can’t stay here when the action’s out there. People like us can never sit out on fights.”

“Why do you keep doing that?”

“Doing what?” Keith asks, bewildered, hands tight on Lance’s forearms.

“Acting like we’re the same!”

“How are we different?” Keith demands. The wind ruffles his hair so that a piece gets caught in his mouth, and Lance looks distractedly at it.

“We’re opposites,” he says. “That’s like our whole thing.”

“I’m tired of pretending like we don’t like each other,” Keith sighs.

“I don’t understand,” Lance says quietly, except that he does, all at once, looking at Keith’s hands still squeezing his wrists, his blocky knuckles and uneven fingernails. “Why did you volunteer to take me home, Keith.”

“Honestly?”

“Yes please.”

“I love you,” Keith tells him miserably.

Lance turns his face towards the tree line meandering off to the edge of the coast, feeling every system in his body light up simultaneously. “Keith.”

He lifts his wrists and Keith’s hands follow them up. He shuffles closer on his knees, brow furrowed, mouth turned down, desperate.

“So you can’t expect me to leave you here,” Keith says, “I know that I’m asking you to walk away from your home. But you’re asking me to walk away from mine.”

“Keith,” Lance repeats, choked up. “I don’t know—“

“You don’t have to know, god, you don’t have to know anything, you just have to get on that shuttle with me tonight.” 

He looks up at Keith, wild hair, broad shoulders, eyes like swatches of deep space. He remembers seeing him sitting alone at the Garrison and wondering what it would be like to be made for piloting like that, to have that sort of magic in your hands.

Those hands are still steadying him, gripping the tender insides of his arms like he’s trying to steer him in the right direction.

After his first mission with Red, he sat in the hangar, breathing hard, picturing Keith’s battle-flushed face and missing him badly.

“Don’t do it for me,” Keith says hastily. “I know you like to make people happy, and this isn’t like that. I think staying here would be a mistake. I think you’ll see us leaving the atmosphere and you’ll regret everything. You won’t be able to sit still when you know we’re out there fighting. You’ll be here with your family but you won’t really be here.”

“You’ve really got me figured out, hey,” Lance says ruefully.

“I try to pay attention,” Keith says. “When it matters.”

“I’m trying to do this for you,” Lance tells him, shaking his head, annoyed at his full head and watery voice, the way the force of the ocean has infected him. “You belong with Red, doing your blade gymnastics routines, holding a knife in your mouth or whatever, winning obnoxiously all the time.”

“Then you belong next to me,” Keith counters viciously. “It doesn’t have to be either or. We’re a team.”

The sun punches out from behind a low-hanging cloud. Lance’s vision clears.

“I think we’re probably more than that,” he says.

Keith falters, and his grip slides down an inch, so he’s holding the bottom of Lance’s hands. “You don’t have to—“

“Do you know what I thought when I saw you in my bed this morning?” he asks. Keith’s hands are clammy but fixed, and he has this sweet little mole on the side of his nose, and Lance can’t believe he’s been so stupid. “I thought — it’s not fair that he looks like that when I’m trying to leave. Like, how rude is that.”

Keith’s face does something hopeful and twitchy, a lifting chin and anxious brow. “You’re one to talk.”

“You had all this sunrise in your hair, like, all the places where the light hits you were red. It was so you. I mean, I must’ve been sleep-deprived, because I really thought I was attracted to a mullet for a sec.”

Keith smiles slowly.

“And I was already feeling all mushy from the way you held onto my mom so tightly when she hugged you. It really didn’t look like you were hugging someone’s mom who you’d never met, Keith. You weren’t even uncomfortable in a stranger’s house, do you know how rare that is? It was like you just belonged in my breakfast nook eating pastelitos. God, and the taking me home and listening to my stories. Do you know— in that stupid picture we took? I’m not even looking at the camera. I’m looking at you.”

“Come back with me,” Keith says, pulling Lance’s hands around his neck, hoisting him into his space. “I’m never going to leave you behind now.”

“Kiss me, and I’ll go,” Lance says, bold from the way Keith is all over him like he’s never been touched before.

He cups Lance’s face in both hands. He hasn’t had this much focus on just him for months, and his face goes hot as he reaches up for Keith’s wrists.

When he kisses him, his rushing blood matches the tossing ocean, and nothing else has any sound at all. It’s fatal, the way Keith kisses him like he’s trying to pin the two of them together for good.

They’re both on their knees, and Keith’s hands slide down to grab him closer around the waist, gathering the loose fabric into his fists. His tongue is searing, and his breath is sweet like over-sugared coffee.

All of his suppressed feeling flies up to meet him, double-sided anger and want, rivalry and respect. He finds himself bobbing towards the glow of Keith’s body, chest full and light as a balloon.

He breaks away gasping. “Why have we been fighting?”

“I don’t know,” Keith whines, and Lance can feel the spread of his fingers flexing against his waist. “You started it.”

“I think I wanted you to notice me,” he says, like he can’t believe it.

“I did,” Keith grumbles.

Lance kisses his lax mouth, enjoying the instinctive flicker of his tongue, the scorch of embarrassed desire in his cheeks. “Oh man, If I die in space, you’re going to feel so bad.”

“You’re not gonna die,” Keith says. He pushes their foreheads together with the insistence of a labrador, and lance sighs.

“It’s a war, dude,” he points out.

“I’m not letting you die,” Keith insists. “I’m going to bring you home again, after we’ve destroyed the galra empire and freed everyone. I’m going to bring you back to this beach.”

“Well I’m not letting you die either,” Lance says defensively. He puts a hand against Keith’s chest and feels his heartbeat buck, almost too fast to be human. “Two-way street, buddy. We continue the mission. We’re a little less reckless. I hang that picture of us in my lion. We fight back to back and make out with explosions behind us, I don’t know, I’ve still gotta iron out the details. You keep loving me, I keep loving you.” His voice wobbles. “Everyone wins.”

Keith lowers him all the way back into the sand to kiss him, and the warmth on all sides is almost as disorienting as the weight of Keith’s body, the give of his mouth. Keith breaks away to say, “I can do that.” He swipes a thumb over Lance’s cheekbone and smiles.

A raindrop flattens a piece of Keith’s hair on its way down to Lance’s face, and then another two find his cheeks and parted lips. Keith rears back, propped up on both hands above him like a shield, and rain winds up and starts pouring down, whole torrential sheets of it. Lance lets his head loll back when he laughs, giddy. He twists his hands in the hair at Keith’s neck.

“Isn’t this a bad omen?” Keith asks, voice raised through the chaos of the downpour.

“No,” Lance says, thinking of red mornings and storms blowing in off the coast. “I love the rain.”

[cannibalisticshadows]

Loving The Alien (Part 15)

(Out of three options, Ao3 commenters chose to bring in Hal)

AO3 LINK

Rating: T, with threats of violence.

The apartment feels different.

It’s missing something that had become vital in the natural essence of the environment. Now it feels like some kind of void, a black hole.

Well. Maybe not so dramatic, but as Roxanne sat on the couch, snapping her cell phone off, leaving her in the dark, all she could hear was the silence.

Trusting him to return to her, she laid there and fell asleep before she could really realize she was still tired.

The next time she opens her eyes, though, it’s not to a bubbly blue face hovering over her. It’s to the midday light shining in her face through the balcony window.

Groaning, she sits up and tightens her robe. It’s cold, but the cable box under her TV is flashing, letting her know the power is back on.

She calls out Megamind’s name but there’s no answer. Glancing back at the clock, she finds it’s nine in the morning. Quelling her suddenly worry about being late to work, she remembers she’s off “sick”, and she deserves a little time to herself.

The thing is, that’s the last thing she wants at the moment.

It is hard to ignore the silence of her home. Before, weeks ago, she relished it, especially after coming home to a long day at work (including being kidnapped). It gives her a few blissful moments of peace that she is unable to have outside, it seems.

Yet the only thing she wants is to hear Megamind muddling about. Even when he was conked out, healing, it was something.

So, to stop the sucking silence around her, she turns the TV on to channel eight. James Phillips, an older reporter she’s talked to on a few occasions, is going on about some new bookstore opening. Maybe she should go… Would Megamind want to, as well?

The young reporter tinkers about in her kitchen until she’s brewed a few cups of coffee and a made herself a bowl of cereal, because it’s one of the last few edible things she has left. It was unavoidable; she had to go out today for errands.

Roxanne cracks her neck, stretching and thinking. She should get a shower and ready herself for the day; days spent lounging around doing nothing but eating, talking, and sleeping had pasted. Time to return to the real world.

Making up her mind, yet reluctant to leave incase Megamind leaves, she pulls out a slip of paper out to use once she’s ready to go to the grocery store.

Right as she’s preparing to go upstairs, there’s a knock on her door.

It’s not the loud pounding of a robotic gorilla paw, so she gives a skeptical glower as she goes to peak out the peep hole.

Standing at her doorway is none other than Hal, her cameraman. She frowns, unlocking the door and opening it.

“Hey!” The short ginger-haired man greets, grinning from ear-to-ear. “I heard you were sick and stuff!”

“Yeah, I was ac—“ she doesn’t get a chance to finish talking, as he’s stepping closer as if to come inside. She opens her mouth to protest, because, if she’s sick he shouldn’t want to come inside.

“I’ve got you some medicine!” He announced, pushing past her through the apartment anyway, eyes hungrily eating up her home.

“Hal, you sh—“

He slaps some bag on the table, some common over-the-counter cold medicine, accompanied by a little box of chocolates.They spill onto her marble counter, clacking as they go. She hovers a few feet away, midway to Hal in her kitchen and to the door.

“So, like, I was thinking,” he starts, waddling over on too-skinny legs in proportion to the rest of him. “We could go get that pizza or like, whatever.”

“Hal, that’s sweet b—“

“Awesome! Do you wanna go now—oh wait, you’re probably still sick, right? Haha, I know what that’s like! I had this like, toe fungus the other day and—“

“Hal, you need to lea—“

“What time do you want to go?”

She’s just about ready to pull her hair out. She did not want Hal to be here. She did not want to be having this damn conversation. She just wants to go out to the store and restock in goods so she can cuddle up with Megamind because some weird internal instinct says it’s a great fucking idea to forget the world a little longer.

“Hal,” she says forcefully, once he’s about a few inches away. “Look, you’re sweet, but I can’t go out with you.”

“Well, yeah, you’re sick right now but we can still plan ahead—“

“No,” she snaps, “I mean, never. Ever never. I’m seeing someone. It’s serious.” I hope it’s serious.

His face falls. “Oh. Right. Metro Dude.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

Hal’s face scrunches up. “Wait. So. You have a regular guy?” A weird twinkle in his eyes makes her insides shiver. “Then forget him! Let’s go out!”

“No, Hal!” She’s shouting now. “I happen to love my boyfriend very much, so I’d appreciate it if you left! He’s coming back soon.”

“God, Roxie,” he frowns. “Don’t be such a harpy. I’m trying to be all nice and you’re like yelling at me and stuff!”

Don’t you fucking dare turn this on me.

She’s about ready to demand he leave, to get off the building’s premises, but—but out of the corner of her eye, she sees—

Megamind. He’s finally, finally back, hovering over her balcony on what looks like some black and blue motorcycle but without wheels. There’s a large engine on the front, roaring like a car. She is careful not to stare, as Hal’s back as to him. And Megamind isn’t wearing anything to hide his more alien-likeness. His tail, looking at least an inch longer, wags to the side in caution. She shakes her head.

“Look, babe, all I’m trying to say is ditch this douche. Let’s hang out! I’m a great guy!”

“I’m sure,” and I have three eyes, “but you need to leave—“ Megamind presses his face against the glasses, eyes wide like some puppy that’s been kicked outside after pissing on the rug. Her heart breaks. “You need to leave. Right now.”

Hal steps closer to her. He’s—not usually this assertive. He’s mostly a calm guy with a few flirtatious or slightly creepy comebacks. But—

She smells the sharp tangy scent of alcohol. And realizes he’s been drinking. He’s drunk. His eyes are dilated. Fuck. She glances to Megamind, and he’s still on the balcony, clearly confused and it hurts her to leave him there but they both know he’d rather die than have someone see his actual face. He staggers up to her and grabs her wrist. “Come on, Roxie, it’ll be—“

She pulls her hand out of his grasp. “No, Hal. I already said, I have a—“ He makes another go at her.

Roxanne miscalculates her steps and she’s—falling, falling on her back and Hal is right behind her, grunting as his weight collapses atop her her.

The balcony door flings open and before she knows it, Hal is being yanked off her.

“How dare you!” Megamind shouts, the pitifully honed expression he once had long gone from this feral look he had now. He bares his sharp teeth, wide green eyes ablaze with fury. “You dare force yourself upon a woman that doesn't want your advances!?

With a loud scream, Hal is thrown against the wall, hands up in surrender. "Please don't kill me!"

"Oh, how lucky you are I left the villain busy-ness!" Megamind snarls. "I would have torn your intestines out to decorate a Christmas tree!"

"AHH!"

"And rip our your eyeballs so you can watch me tear your carcus apart!"

"NO PLEASE!"

Megamind opens his maw, god he actually looks terrifying, and hisses like some dying big cat, tongue curling and all. Hal is finally let go, and he collapses on the floor in a violently shaking heap. On all fours he scampers to the door, stumbling to his feet and whing all the way as she leaves.

Roxanne, unable to move, sits there and stares at the empty doorway in shock.

She she turns to Megamind, he's heaving, staring at the floor like it's takening every nerve in his body not to chase after the fucker. Finally, after what feels like a million years, he fades away from his vicious intent. When he looks at her, all thoughts of blood and gore seem to fall away. Instantly, she has her tender Megamind back, and he's scooping her up in his arms to tightly she can't properly breath.

"Oh, my dear!" He cries into her hair, clutching at her like she's the only thing in this world worth fighting for. She hugs tight, too, but not as shaken as he is, apparently. "I'm so sorry I left you alone!"

"M-"

"I'm never leaving your side again!" He picks her up bridal style.

“Megamind!” She laughs. “I’m okay!”

“He touched you,” he seethed.

“I would have taken care of it,” she explains, cupping his worried face. “But I’m a klutz and I just tripped.”

He turns his head to bury his face in her left palm. He kisses her skin as if she was a queen. In his presence, she feels like one. “I should have intervened anyway.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” she kisses his cheeks, his nose, his goatee, his forehead, and finally, his lips. “You are perfect as you are. Granted you did overreact a bit, but you are fine.”

He snorts. “There is nothing fine about me. I think your eyes need to be checked.”

“Have you looked in a mirror lately? Your sexy as hell, honey.”

“Have I? Have you? I am hideous as far as humanity goes.”

She smacks him in the chest and struggles to get down. Once he sets her on her feet, she grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him lightly. “Let me shake some sense in you, Megamind. I find you very attractive. Even if you’re not human, you are more human than half the population.” She leans closer to him. “I would not have fallen in love with you if you weren’t who you are in here.” She puts her hand over his rapidly beating heart.

His eyes go glassy. “Roxanne...”

“I love you, Megamind. I have for a while. It just took me a while to realize it.”

“....Really?”

She gives him a real smile.

But as they embrace in a tight hug and kiss, they are unaware of the camera flash going off.

[meghans-mind-blog1]

The Package

A Short Story by Meghan

 

Jacob,

One can assume by now that you have received the package, ahead of this letter. I hope you took heed of the instructions and have not opened it. It is in your best interests that you remain oblivious to the goings on.

To the best of my knowledge you are fully aware of why you have been selected for this job, therefore I do not need to explain further. Any questions you have, keep them to yourself.

I do not need to stress how vitally important it is, not only for this job, but for you and your family that you DO NOT disclose any of this information to any other persons.

Follow the instructions on the next page.

That was all the letter said. No return address, no signature, not even a stamp. This was hand-delivered to my house. They know where I live. They’ve followed me. They’ve walked straight past our post box at the end of the driveway, through our front gate and physically posted this through the door. I felt a chill run down my spine.

‘What’s that you’ve got?’ Rachel asked. ‘Who sends handwritten letters anymore?’

‘Nothing, just an update of my itinerary for working away. The systems were down for a while.’ I lied. She can’t know what I’ve gotten myself into. The package was sitting in the boot of my car, where she wouldn’t see it.

‘You never told me you were going away.’ She said, trying to grab the paper from my hands. I fold it up quickly and hold it tightly in my hands.

‘I did. You just didn’t listen. I better go get packed.’

I leave the room.

*

The next morning, I’m in my car first thing. Rachel was unimpressed at my quick departure, but I need to get away from her prying eyes and think this over. She can’t see the panic in my eyes or hear the terror in my voice. She’ll know something is wrong. She’ll know I’m in trouble.

I’ve narrowed it down to that shifty guy I met while at the bar. I was out in the alley having a smoke on my break when he approached me. He asked me to pass something on to his mate behind the bar. I refused to take it. He left it beside me, and made me aware that I should take it, if I knew what was good for me. I didn’t take it.

Ever since I did that, I’ve been receiving threats, stupid ones, but that comes with my job as a bouncer. I get them every night, so I brushed it off. This must be the worst one I’ve had… the most serious. This is clearly revenge for not doing what I was told that night. I have to make it up to whoever this is. Why didn’t I just pass that stupid envelope along?

Once I get far enough away from my house, I pull over onto the side of the road. I fish around in my bag until I find the letter again. It was all crumpled and wrinkled now, so I smooth it out on the steering wheel. I glance at the back seat where the package is sitting, with a seatbelt round it. It could be a bomb for all I knew, so I wasn’t taking any chances.

The instructions were brief yet said quite a lot.

Deliver the package.

Don’t let it out of your sight.

Don’t look inside it. We’ll know.

YOU must be the one to deliver it.

It can only exchange hands once.

48 hours.

My hands were shaking.

I’m a drugs mule.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. I need to calm myself down, before I make things worse. How much worse could they really get?

I take a few deep breaths, and count to ten then look again at the paper. I was headed half way across the country, according to the Sat-Nav. It would take me at least twenty hours to drive to the drop off location. Drop off location. Listen to me, I sound like a professional drug dealer already.

I start my engine and look around me before taking off. I have to make sure no one was following me.

Being in a job like mine, I have to be quite scary, serious and make choices. The tables have turned for me, now I feel like a puppet on a string. Someone else is controlling me, telling me what to do, where to go and how to do it. I don’t like it. This better be the end of these little trips they send me on. I can’t do this. Not to Rachel. I didn’t even say goodbye to her this morning because she was pissed at me for leaving without telling her. I didn’t even know myself, so how could I have told her? I won’t even be able to tell her what happened when I get home, because they’ll know. That is if I get home. No, I will. I have to think positive. I’ll deliver the package and get back home to her in a few days.

*

I follow the Sat-Nav for miles on end. Through cities, towns and into the countryside and back into a new city. The sun is beginning to set, and the road is being thrown into an orange glow, headed for dusk soon. I check the time on the dashboard. It was close to dinner time and I am exhausted, so I come off the motorway at the next exit and found a petrol station. A car follows me off the slip road and into the car park. How long were they following me for? I thought I was paying attention. I’m probably just being paranoid. I keep an eye out over my shoulder, as I pull up to the petrol pump and got out.

I pause.

Should I bring the package with me? No, I don’t want to risk it getting stolen or damaged. I’ll just have to keep an eye on the car. I fill the car up to the brim, then go inside to the 24/7 café.

I take a seat in a booth at the back, out of the way of everyone. It was dingy, with low lighting and only two other customers, who were also alone. Truckers.

The table was sticky, as was the floor. This was a bad decision stopping here, but I couldn’t have gone much longer without food or a rest. I peel the menu off the table. It didn’t smell very appetising.

‘What can I get for you, love?’ I looked up from the greasy menu, to find a middle-aged woman looking down at me. She looks as though she could have been pretty when she was younger, but now she’s had some work done to try and preserve that youthful look, but it has only aged her more. She chews on the end of her pen.

‘Do you need another minute?’ She was impatient. I must have interrupted her magazine time, so she was looking to get me in and out as quickly as possible.

‘No, um, I’ll have the…. Steak and chips please.’ I said, gingerly, as nothing else looked edible from the pictures on the menu. I hope it doesn’t kill me.

The waitress nods and walks off, shouting something to a fat, greasy looking man in the kitchen. Clearly, he sets the tone for the place.

I look at my phone while I wait. Nothing from Rachel. I wasn’t surprised. I went to call her but decided against it. I shouldn’t make contact with anyone until this is over.

I take a quick glance outside and see my car. I see the package, highlighted by the streetlamp. No one around. No one has touched it. I need to sort myself out. I was being too paranoid about a stupid cardboard box. I don’t even know what’s in it, yet I’m guarding it with my life, just like the puppet master told me to do.

The waitress scares the life out of me by slamming the plate down in front of me.

‘Sorry, dear. You looked like you were in another world.’

‘Something like that, yeah.’ I unwrap the knife and fork from the napkin and dig in. I was suddenly ravenous. The steak was like cardboard, and the chips were like rocks but I didn’t care. I had the plate cleaned within five minutes.

‘That will be fifteen pounds please.’ The waitress said. That was a seriously overpriced meal. But I had to pay, so I used the contactless option on my bank card. I wonder if they’ll trace me through this transaction if I ever get caught doing this. They’ll probably interview this nice woman. I wonder what she would tell them. I can just picture it now:

“Oh, he was a lovely young handsome fellow! He was a bit weird, mind you. He was on planet cuckoo every time I tried to talk to him!” Well, at least half of that will be correct.

I thank the woman and leave her a few quid as a tip. I move my car over to a darker part of the car park. I put the seat back, pull my jacket over me as a blanket and try to get some sleep for an hour or two. I’d much rather drive at night time when there are less cars on the road. Less paranoia.

I double check the package remained intact, untouched and unopened. I shut my eyes but no matter how much I willed myself to sleep, I couldn’t. I was on edge. I have been for over a week since the package appeared on my doorstep.

Something must have worked in my head, because the next thing I knew, my alarm on my phone was going off. It was one in the morning. Time to hit the road again.

I grab a to-go cup of coffee from the garage shop and set off on the road again. I notice a car pulling out behind me. Was it the same car that followed me here last night? I highly doubt that. This is just a coincidence. Same as last night’s was.

I indicate and change lanes, speeding up to put as much distance between me and the petrol station as possible. I will myself not to look in the rear-view mirror. I don’t want to know if I was being followed. It was probably one of the puppet master’s other puppets, trailing me to see if I’m obeying the rules, to ensure I don’t chuck the package in the bin like I did with the envelope.

Headlights crept up behind me, the glare in my mirror too blinding to look at.

It’s no one, I told myself.

I put my foot down, and drive on, at almost a hundred miles an hour. I have less than 250 miles to go on the journey. I’ll be there by late morning if I keep this speed up.

I ignore the car behind and speed on through the night for god knows how long. Suddenly a horn blasting through the silent night startles me. I look out my window to find the car pulling up alongside me. I can just about make out the two guys: I recognise him instantly. It was the one who passed me the envelope that night. I panic and move over on the motorway, so that there is a lane between us. I realised that it was a stupid idea, as I was now boxed in and nowhere to go. Trapped. My blood pressure was probably off the scale. I can feel the panic setting in. I glance across and he was motioning for me to put my window down. I did as I was told and I was met with him pointing a gun at me.

‘You knew the consequences, Peterson!’ He threatens. The wind carried his voice across to me clear as day.

‘I haven’t done anything wrong! I’m doing everything you’re asking me to!’ I shout back. I try to sound serious, determined, like I was in control of the situation. I hope it played across to his end of the conversation.

‘You left the package unattended for hours! That’s not what we told you to do.’

I glance across at him and see him knock off the safety latch on the gun.

He’s going to murder me.

‘I’m sorry, okay? I needed to get some sleep or else I wouldn’t have made the drop-off. We’re almost there, please, just let me get it delivered so I can go home to my girlfriend.’

‘Sorry, Peterson. We’ve already taken care of he-‘

And that’s when I see the lorry pulling out in front of me.

THE END

[catmint-sketchbook]

Two weeks ago I was on my way to work and my car died in the middle of the street. The oil indicator light and the draining battery indicator light came on at the same time and then the engine cut out. I pulled to the side of the road, got, help, and got a ride (thanks Mom and Dad) to work. That was the last time I would ever drive that car. My parents had been urging me to sell it, but I had been putting it off because I loved that car. Even though it was a humble-at-best, crummy-at-worst car, I loved the way it looked and the way it handled, and all the things I had done in it. It was on its last legs, but I thought I would at least have time to say goodbye to it, and that it wouldn’t kick the bucket for good suddenly and without any fanfare. The day after it died was July 4th, so all the auto shops were closed and I had to wait for a proper diagnosis. I wasn’t very optimistic, but I still secretly hoped that maybe, just maybe it could still be fixed without much expense.

I was right to not be optimistic. It wasn’t completely done for, but the repairs would cost $1500 or more, which was about as much as the car was when we bought it. The next thing I knew, my Dad had sold the car for $250 to a mechanic at the Toyota dealership who was interested in fixing it for himself. The last time I saw it was when I went to go clean it out and turn in the keys.

Little car, there was a lot going on with you.

I got you in 11th or 12th grade because I needed a replacement car. I had been driving a blue Ford Ranger which before that had been my sister’s, which before that had been my Dad’s. I loved that car too. I lost it, though, when I was hit by a drunk driver. One evening I was returning home from watching that week’s new episode of Lost at a friend’s house and I made a left turn on a green light. There was a white F-150 in the oncoming lane but I judged it to be a decent distance away. I committed to the turn and the next thing I knew there was a huge smash like a crystal chandelier being hit by a baseball bat, and I was pivoting. When I got out to inspect the damage the cab was fine, but the truck bed was crushed like a soda can and one of the wheels had come completely off. People who had seen the collision from the restaurant across the street said the other driver had accelerated when he saw me turning.

Your steering wheel made a strangely emotive moaning noise whenever you were turned. Whenever I would take someone new for a drive in the car, they would always notice that sound right away and it would make them laugh every time. It always made the car sound tired and distressed, which it probably was.

When we first bought you there was a strange interior smell present that was kind of like Fruit Loops or a strong floral shampoo. Later a peach was found deep under one of your seats, mummified from heat. It must have fallen out of a grocery bag of the previous owner. After we got rid of the peach, the strange smell (mostly) went away.

You had a dimple on the trunk hood from a quarter-sized chunk of hail from a summer storm when you were parked outside.

Your sunroof visor came off for no particular reason on our way to or from college, I forget which.

The spring mechanism for the gas tank door was broken, so my Dad fixed it with a binder clip.

The foldout cupholder in the backseat was permanently unfolded and eventually just fell off entirely.

The door upholstery on the passenger side door came loose after a while and got worse and worse every summer until eventually it just hung off limply. The tinting on your windows was peeling.

The check engine light was always on because of a problem with the gas tank seal, so I could never really tell when something was wrong with you.

The lid to your driver’s side sun shield fell off, so I could always see myself in my peripheral vision when I needed to use the sun visor.

There were some weird scratches and dents on your sides that I don’t know where they came from. Probably parking lot door mishaps.

Your front bumper was newer than the rest of you because we were in an accident. I was driving back to Oklahoma from Savannah and another driver merged directly into the left lane without looking, pushing me into the median. I went from pavement to grass at 75 miles an hour and lost control of the car in my attempt to get back on the highway. The car spun around across the highway and we ended up partially suspended over a creek by a barbed wire fence. The other vehicle never touched mine, but the front bumper and tires ate so much grass and mud in the process that it had to be completely replaced. Later I found out that the other driver had just been told over the phone that his wife had brain cancer, and he was rushing home to see her.

In college I changed my first tire.  It was midterms, and I had to present my progress on my senior film. Normally I would have taken the bus to class, but I was running very late and took the car instead. The back left tire had been a little low on air, but I didn’t think it would be a big deal. I was scarcely out of the dormitory parking lot when I felt the tire shred and heard the screech of the axel on the pavement. I managed to park in a grocery store parking lot. I was already nervous about my soon-to-be lackluster presentation, so after I shredded the tire I was beside myself. I don’t remember what I did after that very well, but I guess I either caught the bus or called a friend to drive me to class. I got there an hour late and presented last. I was nowhere close to where I needed to be on my senior film, which barely had a coherent vision. I gave one of the worst presentations I have ever given and received one of the most brutally honest critiques I have ever been given. I just barely held myself together long enough to slink out of the building and into one of the community rooms of the next door dormitory, where I camped out in the dark and pitched an F5 panic attack. It was one of the worst days of my life.

Later that weekend, when things had calmed down and I had started to plan what I would do to clean up the mess I had made, I went back to where I had left the car and changed the tire. My friend Livali held the owner’s manual and read the instructions to me, and between the two of us we changed the tire without incident.

You had a problem which caused your battery to sometimes disconnect unexpectedly. The mechanic who helped me fix it said this particular model of Camry has short connector wires, whereas most cars of this size have connector wires with a little extra give to them.

There was a big scrape on your front right bumper because I was in a hurry to get somewhere and I pulled into a parking spot too fast.

Throughout it all, you had the worst suspension of basically any car, and it only got worse over time. I could feel the pavement through you like you can feel the ground through very thin socks. I didn’t mind, though. Possibly my occasional passengers did.

There was a lot wrong with you but you had a bangin’ stereo CD player and your AC could make the inside of the car go from 100 Fahrenheit to 75 in like 5 seconds flat.  Bless you, little car. And good luck in your new life.

[loveisour-resistance]

feel this burning, love of mine

And it happened. I finally made an effort in writing and publishing something. I came up with this idea, then came across Prompt #16 of prompts4all, and just had to put it down into words.

It's my first work in English, and I'm not an experienced writer. A huge thanks to Byzinha, my long time friend and awesome writer. I need to say her stories are a big inspiration for me, I love the way she portrays our favorite characters. Thank you for encouraging me and taking your time to revise this.

Enjoy!

AO3 // FF.Net

April, 1987

           The last semester of sophomore year was stressing El out of her mind. How could the teachers have so many ideas of how to fuck you up with that amount of essays? She was sure she wouldn’t survive the last period that day.

          She had this love-hate relationship with Thursdays. If it had been a nice week, it felt like it was almost Friday, meaning that Saturday was closer than ever and she could spend the day with Mike and her friends. But if it was a bad week, Thursday meant one more day in her way to the weekend.

          It hasn’t been a nice week. After Spring Break, Mrs. Flynn came up with the brilliant idea they should partner up with a classmate until the end of the school year for a project in which they would have to write a review about the designated book every. Fucking. Week. It certainly didn’t help that she got Lori Parsons, the laziest girl in school, to partner up with her, what meant she had to do the whole work by herself and caused her a sleepless night trying to finish the damn excerpt. She wished she had used her powers to pick up Max’s name from the pot. She wished she could use them right now to make Lori choke on her own bubblegum.

          At least she had made Mike promise her they were going to have ice cream after class that day, because she was so tired and thought she deserved it for all the hard work she’d been doing. That was what she was looking forward and what prevented her from knocking her head on the desk. What in fact would be helpful, since she was already feeling dizzy and heavy headed.

          The last period was finally over and she couldn’t believe it when she finally made her way to her locker alongside Max complaining about her own project partner.

           “Really, I don’t know what else to do with Randy!  He’s just so obtuse! Do you believe he- El?” El was dragging her feet so slowly, she didn’t even notice when she started walking with her eyes half-closed. She bumped into Max when she suddenly stopped, worried about her. “El, are you ok?” she nodded with a half-smile.

           “Yeah, just really tired… You’re not the only one with a dickhead of a partner,” El rolled her eyes and Max nodded, understanding.

          They reached their lockers and began tucking their stuff inside it carelessly. El’s movements were really slow and she didn’t notice that her burning eyes were closing again when a pair of arms embraced her from behind, causing her goosebumps.

           “Hey,” she found it weird that she couldn’t smell his perfume, she could usually feel it when he was arriving. He turned her around and gave a quick peck on her lips, leaving them both smiling. “Missed me?” She began nodding in answer when she felt this sudden tingle beneath the bridge of her nose and she couldn’t help the loud sneeze that followed, making sure it didn’t go right into Mike’s face.

           “BLESS YOU!” Dustin shouted, and half the corridor was laughing.

           “Thank you,” El answered laughing a little too, but Mike wasn’t laughing. He was looking intently at her face with scrunched eyebrows. His dark eyes were full of something she’s seen lots of times, but didn’t quite get it at the moment. His freckles looked like they might fall of his face and pour over her, and she didn’t understand why the hell she was thinking that, but she also didn’t care. His hands cupped her jaw, his long fingers touching her neck. She shivered and closed her heavy lidded eyes, lingering on his touch.

           “El, you’re hot,” she smiled at the statement.

           “Hmm thanks, babe, you’re not bad yourself.”

           “Oh, for fuck’s sake, get a room!” she heard Lucas complain and their friends let out some ews.

           “No, El, you’re burning hot! Like, you got a fever! How are you feeling?” Mike continued testing her temperature with his own hand on her forehead. She looked at him and began connecting the dots of why she felt so out of it the whole morning.

           “I-I don’t know… Now that you said it, I feel a little dizzy, my eyes are burning, my head is exploding and my throat is a little scratchy, I think,” she scrunched her eyebrows and matched his. “I thought it was because my lack of sleep last night.”

           “Well, of course it helped,” he pursed his lips, rolling his eyeballs, clearly pissed off. “You should get some rest, let’s go home,” he took her hand and started walking towards the large doors at the end of the corridor. For a millisecond she followed his lead, stopping on her tracks when she remembered.

           “But what about my ice cream?” Mike stared at her in disbelief.

           “You gotta be kidding me. You are kidding, right?”

           “But you promised!” El whined, pouting a little. He took a deep breath.

           “Love, you are obviously sick. I don’t think stuffing your face with ice cream is what you need. I’m taking you home, where you can rest.”

           Will suddenly approached them. In fact, they were all behind them all the time, but El just didn’t notice at all.

           “Yeah, but no one’s home right now. I gotta go to work, mom is at the store and Hopper is out of town doing ‘chief things’ or whatever. The thing is, El would be alone until we got home.”

           “I’ll be with her. I’ll keep her company until you get home.”

          El missed Will’s suspicious look, as she just listened the chitchat not paying attention, for her eyes began to close again while she leaned on Mike’s side. He immediately embraced her shoulders and headed to the exit. Luckily, Mike had just gotten his driver’s license the previous month, and his mother had lent him the car that day, since he told her they were all going to the ice cream shop after class.

           “Get better, El!” Max said when she left on her skateboard with Lucas dragging his bike by her side.

           “You take care of my sis, ok? No funny business, Wheeler.” Even with her headache, El couldn’t help but smile at Will’s protectiveness while she got on the passenger’s seat. She loved her new brother. “You can call me or my mom if anything happens.”

           “Okay, Byers.” Mike rolled his eyes, but smiling at his best friend. Will hopped on his bike and went to his part time job at the local record shop.

           Dustin got on the backseat of the car, as Mike started the engine. As Dustin’s bike had broken down two days ago, he was more than happy to get a ride home.

           “You look really bad, El.”

           “Thank you. I feel like shit.” she stated in a husky and low voice. Her throat hurt. She was quiet for the rest of the ride, and the boys’ small talked a bit. She almost didn’t see Dustin getting off the car and waving them goodbye. Even half asleep, she felt Mike’s eyes on her every two minutes or so. Soon enough, he pulled over her house’s front yard, and she stumbled out of the car before Mike ran to catch her, helping with her heavy backpack.

           “What do you carry inside this, anyway?” She didn’t even mind answering that as they got in the house. She was embracing herself, shivering cold. “You should take a bath. I’ll fill the tub.”

          Mike put her on the sofa and ran to the bathroom to prepare her bath. As the tub filled, he ran into the kitchen, looking for the first-aid kit he knew Joyce kept inside one of the cupboards. After opening all of them, he eventually found it. Of course it would be in the last one. He looked for a thermometer and some antipyretic, checked the dipyrone expiration date and luckily it was recently added to the kit. He then left it on the kitchen table and ran back to the bathroom, where the tub was almost full. Back to the living room, he found El shrunk on the sofa, trembling. Mike was really trying to keep calm, but he was so fucking worried.

           “C’mon, babe, let’s take a bath.” He called trying to pull her up. Surprisingly, she had a weak, mischievous half smile.

           “Will you join me?” He shook his head in disbelief, but smiling, nevertheless.

           “You’re impossible, Hopper.”

          They dragged through the corridor, and El sat on the edge of the tub, pulling her hair up on a messy top knot. Mike helped her out of her white Keds, slowly unbuttoned her loose white shirt, which had a knot at the bottom. With her help, he nervously pulled out the baby blue tank top she had underneath. She got up and took off her jeans. Mike tried to keep it cool, but could not help the blush that crept on his cheeks at the sight of El only on her cute light pink striped underwear. It was not like he hadn’t seen her like that before, but the Wheeler boy had the feeling he would never get used to it. She looked at him through half-lidded eyes, the fever giving her cheeks and plump lips a deep red tone. She then shuddered again and he got to his senses and back to his task. He closed the tap as she took off her bra and panties while he had his back to her. Embracing herself, covering her breasts, she got into the tub, quickly sitting down.

           “Fuck, Mike, it’s too cold!” He then turned to face her again, she was quivering hard.

           “I’m sorry, love, it has to be this way to lower your body temperature. At least that’s what my mom says,” he finished with a questioning and doubtful look. It did work when he was sick, but he didn’t like to inflict discomfort to El. “I’ll get you a dipyrone. Be right back!”

           Mike ran to the kitchen, getting a glass of water and the pill. It really wasn’t necessary to check her temperature before, the fever was pretty obvious. Back to the bathroom, he sat on the tub’s edge facing El and gave her the medicine. She made a face, never too fond of pills, but took it without questioning. Taking the soap from her hands, he washed El’s back very slowly.

           “I wish I could breathe.” Only then he noticed her nasal voice.

           “Yeah, the flu got you hard this time. Maybe you shouldn’t force your body to stay awake when you should be getting a nice sleep. It weakens your immune system.”

           “That’s what you get when you’re assigned with dumb bitch Lori Parsons to do an excerpt of 1984 and the moron tells you the day before she wouldn’t be doing anything because she didn’t fucking ‘feel like it’!” El heavily tried to breathe. “I need to improve my grades in Literature, you know that.”

           “You should talk to Mrs. Flynn, then. She could re-assign you with someone better.”

           “Yeah, like that would happen.” she rolled her eyes, regretting it as she felt the sting of pain.

           “We’ll figure it out. Now you have to rest. Wanna get out?” She nodded and he went to get her towel on the hanger. He helped her up, putting the large towel over her shoulders. She still quivered a bit, but she looked a little better already. Mike gently rubbed her face dry, as she smiled lovingly at him. He smiled back and pecked the tip of her little upturned nose. “Can you get dressed alone?” She nodded and finished drying herself, going to her bedroom.

           Mike took the chance to make her something to eat, as he was starving too. Not really in the mood for her favorite Eggos, he ventured on the Corn Flakes box he’d catch sight earlier. He got two bowls and spoons, and a gallon of milk from the fridge. His girlfriend came in the kitchen wearing sweatpants and a large long sleeved striped shirt he was pretty sure once belonged in his wardrobe. Her hair was on a loose braid over her shoulder.

           “Hungry? I thought we could have these cornflakes, but I can heat you some Eggos, if you prefer.” She shook her head while taking a seat.

           “Cornflakes are okay,” she looked up at him with her large brown eyes. “I would rather have that ice cream, anyway.”

           “Jesus Christ, El! You sound like a broken record!” he sounded a bit mad, but internally, he was fighting the smile, amused by her persistence on this fucking ice cream. Taking a seat by her side, he filled the bowls with the Corn Flakes, pouring a little bit of milk. She wasn’t very cheerful about the meal, finding it hard to chew and breathe at the same time, as well as swallowing it through her sore throat. It didn’t take too long for her to give up on eating the tasteless food.

           “I want to go to bed,” she stated, sighing.

           Mike nodded and finished his bowl, leaving the dishes on the sink. Taking the thermometer he got earlier, they went to her bedroom. He pushed back the blankets from the bed, making room for her to lie down comfortably. She looked like a kitten crawling into bed and rolling under the blankets. He tucked it tightly around her, making her look like a giant burrito.

           “Let’s take your temperature,” he said putting the thermometer in her mouth. He took a seat by her side on the edge of the bed and faced her while the minutes passed. He checked her bodyheat with his hands and, despite her rosy cheeks, she was apparently colder under his touch. She looked very tired, but kept a smile on her lips around the stick. He took it out, and indeed the fever had lowered, almost reaching a normal body temperature. Mike smiled at her, reassuring. “How do you feel?”

           “My body is a bit sore,” El yawned, “and sleepy.”

           He giggled and lied down beside her, putting his arm around her over the blankets.

           “Mind if I stay here?” he asked and she shook her head, just the smallest of movements.

           “You can stay…” El answered, closing her eyes already, “even though you’re an idiot,” she shot, fighting a side smile.

           “Just because I didn’t give you ice cream?” he rolled his eyes in disbelief.

           “Yes.”

           “But you’re sick!” she didn’t have the strength to open her eyes.

           “You’re still an idiot, Wheeler,” her stubbornness kept amusing him, he just grinned at her. Still hard to get air through her lungs, she sighed. “Thank you for taking care of me.”

           Mike gave a protective kiss on her forehead.

           “I’ll always take care of you, El. As long as you want me to.”

           “I will always want you to.”

           He hugged her tighter, as she comfortably fit in his arms, fast asleep.

            By the next week, while El was still recovering from the flu, she forced Hopper to leave her at the Wheeler’s, throwing her puppy eyes to convince her dad on letting her go check on her sick boyfriend. Of course he wouldn’t be immune to that damn virus that was affecting half the school, as she got to know. Even if she still was a little weak, she climbed on his bed and hugged him tightly, facing his back.

           “You shouldn’t be here, you were getting better,” Mike weakly complained, but smiled at her presence, feeling a sudden burning on his chest that had nothing to do with his fever.

           “I’ll take care of you, too,” she stated, caressing his messy raven hair. “And you better get well soon.”

           He slowly turned around to face her. How could he still look so cute?

           “Yeah?”

           “Yeah,” she smiled at his flushed face, “you still owe me that ice cream.”