#and when we try and rearrange for more time she just goes 'maybe after i come back from holidays?' that she hasnt even GONE on

[gohard-or-gohomo]

Make my friends sick of me speedrun any %

[sashaisready]

Chapter Twenty - Of course I did

Bucky Barnes Mob AU x Femme Reader

You're hard at work in Pepper's Bakery when notorious mob boss James 'Bucky' Barnes darkens your doorway one typical afternoon, and life is never the same again.

Warnings: Dark content, mention of guns/shooting, descriptions of dead bodies and blood, threats/suggestions of sexual assault, minor character fatally wounded/dying, reader is frightened/in danger

18+ - see Masterlist for full list of warnings

Chapter 21

Series Masterlist

You’re not sure how much time has passed when you’re awoken by shouting. You must’ve fallen asleep, which makes sense as it’s so late, although you aren’t sure what time it is exactly. You instinctively go to check for your phone but then remember they have it. Your body is exhausted from the stress of all that has happened. You have a headache, the wine from your date has already transitioned into the beginnings of a hangover and you haven’t had any water in hours. The Thai dinner you so enjoyed earlier now feels heavy in your stomach. The gash on your cheek stings sharply, the bleeding has mostly stopped but not entirely. You feel dizzy, losing blood from your wound most likely not helping that.

The sound of yelling again jerks you to attention, the adrenaline coursing through you as your fear unfurls once more. You can’t make out what they’re saying until the door crashes open and bodies rush into the room. You try to count the number of feet you can hear on the floorboards but can’t figure it out. Two of them, you think? Three? They’re shouting out your name, their voices thick with anger. You can’t see them but you know they must have guns raised, searching every square inch for you.

One of them tries the light switch but grunts in frustration when nothing happens. You can hear the snap of plastic as he forces it up and down. Seconds later the room is partially illuminated by flashlights, the circles of light flitting around the room.

You swallow, clasping your hand over your mouth to mask any sounds you might make involuntarily. You stood a good chance in the dark where they couldn’t see you, but once that light hits you…then you’re done for.

“Come on sugar, come out come out wherever you are…” one of them sneers mockingly into the darkness.

You can’t see him but you just know it’s Rumlow.

“I’m gonna ring Jones’ neck for this” snarls another voice.

“Don’t worry, Pierce will take care of him” replies Rumlow darkly.

They chuckle for a moment as they scour the room.

“I’m gonna make this bitch pay when we find her” says the other voice again.

“Let’s just hope she’s not been too used up by Barnes for us to have some fun with her” laughs Rumlow. “I wanna rearrange her guts”.

Your stomach drops and you choke back a wave of nausea as they edge closer to your hiding spot. You’re seconds away from discovery now. Should you leap out? Use the element of surprise against them?

Don’t be stupid. They have guns. They’re infinitely stronger and faster than you. They most likely have combat training based on how they’re dressed. Maybe it would be better to go quickly, though. To be shot in the head and be snuffed out in an instant after you jump out - rather than be slowly tortured and sexually assaulted and God only knows what else.

You think of your family. Your friends. Wanda. Everything you didn’t get a chance to say to them all. All of the love you have for them. You think of the bakery. You think of your contentment as you bake, happily frosting cupcakes and humming to yourself as you sing along to the radio. You’d give anything to be there now. Hell, even baking in your tiny apartment kitchen would be a luxury. You’d never take it for granted again if you made it out alive.

You hold onto that image in your head to help calm you and give you hope, grounding yourself with the memory and keeping yourself sane. One of the flashlights reaches your corner of the room and moves closer to you. Everything goes into slow motion. You hold your breath as the light reaches the edge of your dress...

But then.

A scream cuts through the air. A clear scream. From somewhere beneath you. Rumlow and the other man or maybe men spin round, their flashlights ripping away from where you are and instead turn to face the door.

“What the…” Rumlow starts.

And then there’s another scream which cuts him off, and then the crystal clear roar of gunfire. You tense up. It seems to be coming from the corridors beneath you.

“Jesus Christ” spits out the other man.

In seconds you hear their heavy feet as they stomp out of the door and rush back down the stairs.

You freeze, panting. You can hear more now. There are more bullets, it must be a machine gun the way the sounds are rattling through the air like that. There’s muffled shouting and crying out from below.

It goes on like this for some time, your eyes are wide like saucers as you press your ear to the floorboards. You try to make out something they’re saying. Anything. Any hint as to what’s going on or who is shooting. But it’s all lost in a sea of bullets and yelling.

And then…silence.

Your stomach drops again. You know what that means. There’s nobody left.

Could it be…?

No. Surely not. He said he wasn’t coming. Why would he come? The last thing you said to him was that you were going to give him to the feds.

And if it’s not him, it’s only a matter of time before they find you too. You’re a sitting duck up here. You were lucky enough to get out of it once, but it wouldn’t happen twice.

Against all of your instincts you emerge from your corner and tiptoe across the attic. You’re barely thinking, just on autopilot. You open the door gently, careful not to make any noise. You squint as you leave the darkness and take each stair warily as you descend, listening out for any tell-tale sounds of what’s going on. But there’s only silence.

Your face stings and now you’re back in the light you can see your chest and dress is covered in old blood. You can feel the hardened stain on your cheek too, mixed with the remains of your tears. You’re shrouded in a thick layer dust from your hiding place in the attic, your ripped dress hanging pitifully off you. You can only imagine how you must look.

As you step out into the hallway you gasp. The wall in front of you is decorated with bloodstains. A few feet away a man is slumped onto his front, laying facedown in a pool of his own blood. From the way the blood has hit the wall his insides must be swiss cheese. You deduce that it’s one of the men from the attic. He didn’t get very far.

You’ve never seen a dead body before. It’s frightening. Not like in the movies. He looks almost inhuman with his impossible stillness. Stiller than a person should ever be. You can smell copper in the air from his blood, the stench of sweat and gunpowder lingers in your nose and makes your stomach churn.

You creep around him and swallow back your nausea. Around the next corner you see Rumlow flat on his back. He made it a bit further. His eyes are closed and circles of deep red splatter his torso. You inhale sharply, stepping around him carefully. You notice that his weapon is gone, whoever finished him off must’ve taken it with them.

You nearly scream when you feel a pressure on your ankle as you stalk by. You look down and to your horror Rumlow has his cold fingers gripped around you. He is still alive, but barely. His hand feels like ice. Staring up at you through squinted eyelids, you can see the fear on his face as his lifeforce is gently ebbing away from him. He tries to speak but can only groan, making a nauseating gurgling sound and you realise his internal injuries are taking hold as the light fades from his eyes.

It’s too much. You begin to break into a sprint. All of your fear from the evening comes tumbling out and you can’t stop. You know you should be quiet, carefully inspect what’s around each corner before you come barrelling around them, but all of that dies as the adrenaline courses through you.

As you fling yourself through the hallways you find them littered with more bodies and bloodstains. Puddles of blood are everywhere, stains of grisly footsteps of the retreating victors brazenly weaved around the fallen. There must’ve been even more of them than you saw in the warehouse. You don’t see Pierce amongst them, but then you aren’t really looking too carefully.

There are angry red blemishes splattered across the walls and your bare feet hurt when you step on bullet casings but you can’t stop now. You shimmy around each fallen figure as you aimlessly continue to run, unsure of where you’re going or if you’re turning back on yourself but just knowing that you need to keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Don’t stop.

You don’t know when you started crying but your tears don’t slow you down. You whip around another corner only to find yourself bouncing off something, the force of your speed means the impact is hard and it knocks you onto your back.

You begin to scream as you sit up and realise you’ve hit a person. An alive person, not a body. A man. A man with a gun. And your fear takes over. You can’t even look at him properly as you know this is it now, this is where your luck runs out. End of the line.

There are arms on your shoulders and someone is talking at you but you can’t hear any words, can’t see their face through the haze of your tears. It’s only when they begin to shake you gently when you realise…

Sea blue eyes.

Sea blue eyes looking into yours. You know those eyes.

Bucky.

You gasp as his features finally become clear in your vision. You can see his lips moving but can’t hear what he’s saying as you stare up at him. You reach out and clutch at his chest as if checking it’s really him and he’s really there. His face is contorted in concern and there’s a worrying amount of blood on his shirt. Not his, though. You can guess that. Suddenly it’s like your ears are switched back on and you can hear him again.

“Doll? Doll? Are you alright? Say something, baby?” His voice is panicked, strained with fear as he places his assault rifle onto the ground. You eye it anxiously.

“Bucky?” you ask weakly. 

Maybe you’re hallucinating, maybe you were shot seconds ago and this is your brain’s confused final flourish as you succumb to the darkness.

“Is it really you?”

His concern morphs into a relieved smile and you melt inside.

“Yeah it’s me, Doll. I’ve got you, don’t worry” he soothes.

You hurl yourself at him, clutching at his torso and throwing your arms around his back as you move your head into the crook of his neck. Squeezing him tightly with relief, pawing at him to check he’s really there. He picks up your legs and you wrap them around his waist, clinging onto him for dear life.

“You came” you whisper into his ear.

“Of course I did” he says matter of factly. “Where have you been Doll? We’ve been looking everywhere for you. Have to say I laughed when they told me you’d got loose and they’d lost you somewhere. Those assholes didn’t know who they were dealing with, huh?”

You ignore his question, gazing back at him with confusion.

“But…you said you weren’t coming? In the text?”

Bucky chuckles, his tone soft as he searches your face.

“I knew immediately those messages weren’t you. You know how mushy those fucks made you sound? I knew it was HYDRA and sent a bunch of my guys here with me to get you out. I just wanted to throw Pierce off the scent to buy us time.”

You gawped at him stupidly.

“You really think I’d leave you here, Doll?” He furrowed his brow, studying you.

“Well…yeah. We had that fight. You said…” you muttered.

Bucky narrows his eyes. “I would never leave you to die, Doll. No matter what happened between us”.

He looks at you with a flash of anger and hurt amongst the relief, clearly wounded that you’d think so little of him.

He lowers you off of him and carefully places you on the ground. “Can you stand?”

You nod, steadying yourself on the wall as your feet hit the floor. Bucky keeps a hand firmly on your waist as he inspects your face. You flinch as his finger brushes against your cheek wound. He huffs with rage.

“Those fuckers. Those stupid assholes” he mumbles furiously.

“It was…” you go to tell him about the nail in the attic but he cuts you off.

“They’re never going to hurt you again, alright? I’m so sorry Doll. I’m so sorry this happened, it’s all my fault” his voice sounds small, broken. He cups your chin tenderly. “I’m sorry that I didn’t protect you…”

Your eyes widen as you realise the gravity of his words when they hit you and a rush of emotion surges within.

He was right.

Before you know what’s happening, you reach out and slap his face. He glares back at you in confusion, touching his cheek where you struck him. You can’t stop yourself, pummelling his chests with your fists as you unravel, all of the stress, fear and anger pouring out of you like an unstoppable tidal wave.

He catches your wrists and holds them tightly in place, you howl with frustration at how powerless you feel.

“This IS your fault James” you bark at him. “How the fuck am I caught up in your turf wars?? We aren’t even DATING. I get wrestled into the back of a van and hauled off to some warehouse in the middle of nowhere with some psychopathic gang…tied up and hunted down…and then there’s a fuckin’ massacre…”

You trail off when you notice he’s smiling wistfully at you.

“What?” you scoff in disbelief. “How can you possibly be smiling right now?”

“I’m just happy you’re okay” he says softly. “You can yell at me all you want, hit me all you like, because for a while there I wasn’t sure you’d ever be able to yell at me again”.

You’re caught off guard by that. You hadn’t even thought about how he might’ve felt through this. You feel a twinge in your heart. He was scared. He thought you were dead. You stare into his big blue eyes and your mouth falls open slightly at the intensity of his scrutiny.

Before you know it you’re on him, kissing him for the second time that evening (maybe morning now?) The kiss is desperate and passionate, eager and hungry. He presses you up against the wall and you can feel him panting, his hands are all over you as if doing an audit of your body. It’s as if he’s affirming that all of you is still here. He kisses your neck, your shoulders, your arms. You momentarily forget that you’re covered in your own blood, or that he’s covered in the blood of men he gunned down.

He pulls away and begins to whisper in your ear. He tells you he’s sorry, for this, for all of it. He tells you he’ll never let anything like this happen to you again. He tells you how brave you are, how smart you were to get away. You allow yourself to get swept away by his words, soothing you and comforting you, your eyes closed as your arms are draped around his neck.

“Buck, you here?” comes a voice from around the corner.

Your body tenses as your survival instincts are still heightened but Bucky kisses your cheek after feeling your posture shift. “Don’t worry, it’s just Steve” he whispers soothingly.

“We’re here” he calls back.

Steve emerges from around the corner. He’s sweaty and blood spattered like Bucky, clutching a rifle. His face lightens when he sees you.

“Hey - there you are” he says sunnily.

You smile back at him. A genuine smile, possibly the first one you’d ever given him.

“Here I am”.

He looks you up and down, struck by the contrast to how you looked when he saw you earlier. Then…pretty in your date outfit and heels, hair and make-up slightly askew after a few glasses of wine but still intact. Your eyes fiery and passionate as you gave Bucky a dressing down. And now…your face was bloodied, some sort of injury across your cheek. Your dress ripped and blood soaked, a layer of dust dirtying your arms. You were barefoot. Your mascara had run down your face in thick black streaks and your hair was knotted and tangled. Mainly he was struck by your eyes, now dulled and frightened. No sign of the heat he had seen earlier. You just clung on to Bucky’s side meekly.

But you were alright, that was the main thing, and he was relieved. You may be Bucky’s girl but he had grown fond of you too. He thought you were good for his best friend, challenging him and keeping him on his toes. Buck needed that in his life. A partner to be his equal, not merely a sex toy.

He was also relieved for Bucky’s sake. He had gone wild when he got the messages, throwing his whiskey glass across the room and yelling. They were just leaving for the night, he’d run to him and didn’t understand what had happened. Bucky was apoplectic, shouting and throwing furniture. He knew you’d been taken, he knew it was Pierce. He ordered them to round up as many men as they could, emptying out the weapons storage as they followed the location pin. They’d even called in a favour with Stark who was more than happy to lend a hand after learning that Pepper’s star baker was in danger - sending over reinforcements and a few extra top of the line rifles.

The car ride was quick as they sped, but Bucky was silent throughout, his eyes focused out on the road. The only sign he was tense were his hands, clenched into tight fists at his sides.

“She’ll be alright. We’ll get her out, Buck” Steve had told him.

Bucky just smiled thinly and nodded, the worry etched over his face. He had turned back to look out at the road again…

“Perimeter is clear, Buck” Steve explained.

Bucky nodded “Thanks Steve”. He stepped forward to leave and you gripped him harder. He turned back and took your hand.

“C’mon Doll, let’s go home” he beckoned, guiding you through the halls.

[jamevaa]

I've been wanting to get back into writing, so will try to post a drabble/ficlet every week using a randomized trope generator. Happy Wincest Wednesday!

Week 1 - Fake dating, Exes

Dean steps out of Ms Woodford’s house (just Dahlia, dear) rubbing a hand across his mouth, his skin too-tight and ready to split at the seams. He barely registers sitting behind the wheel, flexing his fingers and feeling his knuckles ache. He waits for Sam to join him, just as quiet. The ride back is heavy, sodden and cold like a blanket forgotten outside during a thunderstorm. Sam tries once - “Dean-”, but goes no further. 

He goes straight for the heavy stuff once they’re back at the motel, takes three healthy swallows from the bottle and doesn’t flinch at the burn when the whiskey hits his throat. 

This wasn’t supposed to go this way. 

When he turns back around Sam is just standing there, shoulders taut like he’s expecting a fight. He’s got an empty plastic cup in his hands; he tips it forward. A silent olive branch. 

Dean pours him a healthy dose and raises the bottle in salute, taking another drag. It warms his belly, but the blood in his veins is already molten from the Mark.

“Dean,” Sam starts again, stops, his jaw working. He drinks. “About what we said–”. He stops again because how do you pick up a conversation like that?

They’d gone in faking, playing a part, nothing unusual. Pretending to be a couple attending marriage counseling was a new one, and uncomfortable, but a case is case. They were just starting to be ok again, the air still fragile and brittle between them. Ms Woodford was a posturing hack, a would-be holistic energy therapist that paled against the real powers they knew, and yet. And yet, within a matter of a few sentences, she’d found the cracks, wedged them open with words, and watched the pus and venom ooze out.

Dean sits on the edge of one of the beds, not-looking at Sam. “It’s fine, it didn’t mean anything,” Dean finally manages, a bit too rough. “She’s just a fraud.”

They have to go back the day after tomorrow, continue their consultations. She’s their only link to the victims. The only suspect, so far. 

“Bullshit.”

Dean does look up then, eyebrows climbing high. 

“Dean, it’s not – a lot of shit’s happened.” Sam is serious but still manages a quirk of lips, wry and raw.

Becoming a demon, hunting his little brother, yeah, you could call that shit. A long, unending stream of shit.

Sam takes two steps forward; he hesitates, but finally sits on the bed beside Dean. He feels his hip dip sideways, his side compensate. Muscle, blood, bones. Components he just couldn’t rearrange as anything but Sam’s. 

“Yeah,” he agrees, managing a snort. “There’s always something.”

“Look,” Sam starts again. Fits and starts, an engine that wants to purr to life but something is misaligned. “I made my decision, ok?”

Dean startles when Sam places a hand on the back of his neck. It’s warm and firm, thumb on his pulse and – they haven’t – cases and injuries and bumps, sure, but not like this. Not in a really long time. He’s almost afraid to move, that Sam will spook. Maybe that he’ll spook.

He looks up at his little brother, because there’s nothing else for it, and there must be more on his face than he wants to show because Sam’s expression solidifies into this intense look he gets sometimes when he really needs Dean to understand what he means.

“I did, Dean. I’m not going back on it.”

There’s whiskey in his belly, poison in his blood, and his brother’s open warmth against his skin and – ok. He looks at Sam and searches his face before he leans, the pull inexorable. They keep trying to break away but they’re in decaying orbits. They were never going to succeed.

The kiss is simple, warm, lips a little wet from alcohol. It’s not a revelation, there are no fireworks, they don’t tumble into each other. It opens up Dean’s ribs and it feels like it’s the first time he can take a proper breath since – he couldn’t even say. Dean pulls away just enough to keep his head against Sam’s, eyes closed. Sam is still holding his neck, his thumb rubbing circles into his skin, and Dean got a hold of his hip along the way. 

“Alright, Sammy,” he answers, questions spoken and unspoken. “Alright.”

[justoneofthoseghosts]

Brettsey and “You say you hate it but your red face is telling me otherwise.” 

This prompt looked interesting!

Okay, honestly, this one was a bit challenging 😅 but hey, I tried my best.

Matt shuffles Julia in his arms as he makes an attempt to grab her bottle from the kitchen table. She coos softly, resting her cheek against his chest. He grins down at her. He loved how she did that every so often, like she liked listening to his heartbeat. He kisses the top of her head earning another soft coo followed by some drool on his shirt.

He glances down at the baby again resisting a groan. He had just changed an hour ago since Julia decided to fling some mashed sweet potato at him during breakfast.

Julia looks up at him with her big, blue eyes and he melts. He could never be mad at her - she was his sweet Julia, light of his life and one of the best things to have ever happened to him.

As he grabs hold of the bottle, his eyes catch something else on the table. It's a letter with the CFD logo on the upper right side. His curiosity gets the better of him. He rearranges Julia again in his arms before taking a seat. He reads the letter slowly while feeding the baby her milk.

For a second, he feels guilty but it wasn't snooping if it was lying there out in the open, right?

His eyebrows shoot up as he continues to read. It's a commendation letter for Sylvie for kickstarting Paramedicine. It mentioned she was going to be honored at the CFD gala in two weeks. He smiles. It was a long overdue recognition in his opinion. Sylvie's program has done wonders for the city of Chicago by making sure CFD paramedics were directed to emergencies while still providing care to other residents with non-life threatening emergencies. It amazed him on a near daily basis, even more so when he decided to ride along with her for a shift. He really felt how many people Sylvie helped out and saved.

"Your mom's a brilliant woman, Jules," he whispers at the baby.

She blinks up at him, one hand still on her half empty bottle.

He grins at her, looking up as the door clicks open.

"Hey," Sylvie greets, smiling warmly at Matt and Julia when she spots them in the kitchen.

She had a bag of groceries in her arms, beginning to explain how she got some banana and strawberries they could make Julia try since she recently started on solids.

He raises an eyebrow at her. Clearly, she wasn't going to tell him about the commendation. Come to think of it, she didn't even mention it when he asked last night if she wanted him to take anything to the dry cleaners in time for the event.

"What?" she questions at the strange look on his face.

"You're getting a commendation, Sylvie," he tells her, pointing to the letter, "we should go out and celebrate."

She laughs, shrugging it off, "oh that - it's not a big deal. You know how I hate being the center of attention."

He truly did.

They were alike in that sense. Both of them did their jobs because they loved it not because they were chasing after recognition and awards. They kept their heads down and did the work but Sylvie deserved to be celebrated. An idea forms in his head. He'll probably have a lot of help planning and executing it but thankfully, he could still count on his 51 family. Ben and Griffin were definitely going to help too.

He gets up just as Julia finishes her bottle. He re-places it on the table, cradling Julia close before walking over to Sylvie.

"Okay - nothing big then," he proposes, "maybe dinner one of these days?"

She smiles at him, leaning close to kiss Julia on the cheek.

"Sure," she agrees, "dinner sounds wonderful."

---

A lot of coordination goes into planning Sylvie's big celebration. Herrmann and Mouch agree to have it at Molly's. All of Sylvie's close friends were coming and more importantly, her parents. He called them the day after he found the letter, explaining how Sylvie was getting this big award. They laughed when he told him how she didn't want a huge celebration, saying it sounded exactly like their daughter. They would be flying in from Indiana, eager to spend more time with the whole family, especially with little Julia.

He had it all accounted for, even making a spreadsheet like the one Sylvie had for their wedding. He kind of understood why she liked them so much but hoped he rarely needed to bust them out ever. They were more of her thing anyway.

What he didn't expect would be a challenge was getting Sylvie to Molly's. They were there most of their nights off but tonight, Sylvie seemed to want to stay at home, cuddling on the couch with Julia while watching an old rom com she loved.

He lets out of breath, thinking of an excuse, any excuse really for them to go. He already arranged for Griffin to take Sylvie's car fitted with the car seat to bring Julia to Molly's after they left. He grumbles when he gets a text from Stella asking where they were, clenching and unclenching his fist.

"What's going on, Matt?" Sylvie asks, having tuned into his anxious energy.

He sighs. He really wants to keep it a secret but all of it was going down the drain if he didn't get her to the bar fast.

Screw it. Some things were meant to be spoiled. It’s for the best.

"Everyone's waiting for us at Molly's."

She raises an eyebrow, "what do you mean?"

"I planned something for you tonight to celebrate your award," he admits.

"Matt -" she begins, eyes going wide, face reddening.

It didn't look like she was angry, maybe more embarrassed that he made a really big deal out of her award. He sees her expression change to one of surprise then wonder.

"You say you hate it but your red face is telling me otherwise," he starts out hopefully. "I just really wanted this chance to celebrate you and all the good things you've done for this city. I hope you're not mad."

She smiles at him before biting down on her lower lip, "I'm not mad."

"No?"

She shakes her head, "it's incredibly sweet of you to do that - unnecessary but incredibly sweet."

He walks over to her, sitting close to her on the couch, "it is always necessary to celebrate you. In fact, we should make that a rule - celebrations are mandatory in this family."

He tickles Julia, "am I right, munchkin?"

Julia giggles happily. He beams.

"She agrees with me," he says proudly.

She lets out a tinkling laugh, shaking her head again.

"I love you," she tells him.

He smiles widely. There was a time when he thought he'd never hear her say that to him ever again. He savors it every time she tells him this, always saying it back.

"I love you too."

He leans in to place a soft kiss on her lips before taking Julia from her.

"Come on, Jules - we need to get ready for Mommy's big party," he says as the baby coos.

Sylvie smiles at him, pinching the baby's cheek lightly, earning a squeal from Julia.

He glances back towards her, "can I ask that you act surprised later? They all put in a lot of effort."

"I can try," she tells him, "but I'm not a very good actress."

They both burst out laughing. It was true but Matt didn't think anyone would notice anyway. He didn't tell her that her parents were coming too so there was still some element of surprise left in the night, one he hopes would be a special and memorable one for Sylvie.

[aamy2100982]

today in: Me trying to forget the current history of the comics and completely ignoring that Venom will meet Spiderman in the movies. A stupid idea of ​​what it would be like if by chance Movie!Eddie and Comic!Eddie switched symbiotes 🎉yiphi🎉

1.- "Let's go for some bad guys"

Venom and Comic!Eddie:

So I keep thinking about Venom constantly bugging Eddie about going after some bad guys. He just replies "Yeah, here we go let me finish this report" the exact same excuse that Movie!Eddie gives them every time. things get strange when Eddie actually saves his report, turns off the computer, gets up from the table and goes to the window leaning until he almost falls, they wait a few seconds and Eddie asks:

– So? Are you going out? Or..

– Wait, really?

– "really" what?

A few more seconds pass and Venom covers Eddie's body to go out to devour some heads, Venom's happiness cannot be explained in those moments.

Venom Symbiont and Movie!Eddie:

The symbiote is not usually begged because Comic!Eddie understands its needs, but this Eddie, Movie!Eddie, oh, if his Eddie was foolish, this was four times as foolish.

– I already said no and it's no

– Come on, I'm dying here!

– Don't be dramatic, have some chocolate bars and shut up, I'm working.

that's enough..

Other than tantrums and complaints, Eddie didn't expect the symbiote to do anything about it. At most he might break some valuable thing like the TV or scratch the couch more than Venom had left it. His surprise was great when he became unconscious and a few hours later he woke up on the roof of a building covered in blood and some bodies around him.

– w-what the fuck did you do?

– Sorry Eddie. Hungry, very hungry, we couldn't contain ourselves

Maybe he would have to rearrange his schedules, because he couldn't afford to be unconscious from time to time and wake up hours later covered in blood in some strange place

2.- Spider web

It had probably been a week since they got together, but Comic!Eddie was still trying to pull cobwebs off his wrists. At first Venom thinks it's weird that he did weird poses with his hands, then they went through Eddie's memories and now they make fun of him every time he tries to pull cobwebs.

While Movie!Eddie was very scared when he realized that cobwebs could come out of his wrists. He had to accept that they are very helpful most of the time, but he is still terrified of flying through the air.

3.- Trust

Venom and Comic!Eddie:

Venom was surprised to feel the trust Eddie placed in them. It was like it was almost impossible for Eddie that something bad could happen between them or that Venom would let something bad happen to him. In part this gave them self-confidence.

Venom Symbiont and Movie!Eddie:

It was difficult for the symbiote to show that Eddie that he could trust them and despite his misunderstandings, he had no reason to fear them. But the symbiote noticed that even with his previous symbiote there was this strange mistrust.

He partly understood, Eddie lives in a world without superheroes or supervillains with superpowers. For him, super powerful beings are just part of movies, series, comics, books...

In general, the fact that one day he was a normal reporter doing his job taking down a large company and the next moment he had a symbiotic alien, with superhuman strength and a fascination for eating brains. at least the Eddie of his universe was somewhat related to the superhumans that lived on his planet, but to this Eddie everything was so new and strange. Maybe things will go slowly, but they will teach this Eddie that he can put his trust in them, come what may.

4.- Anne

Venom and Comic!Eddie:

– Hey, I haven't seen Anne in this universe, where is she?

– Annie? oh amm, she- she died, long long time ago

– WHAT?!!1??1!

Venom Symbiont and Movie!Eddie:

*After Eddie had a call with Anne

– We didn't know that the Anne of this universe was still alive.

– Annie? Well yes, she's not alive in your universe?

– No

– And what happened with her?

– Suicide

*Eddie swallows dry – You say it like you don't care

– Not much really, We don't dislike her or anything, but kept Eddie constantly worried and got in the way of our plans. really annoying.

– oh

Maybe he's considering keeping this symbiote away from Anne.

5.- Flash Thompson

Movie! Eddie and the Venom symbiote are not going to meet Flash in the universe they are in. But I love thinking about Comic!Flash meeting Movie!symbiote, demanding that Eddie give it back.

Venom asking – who is that guy?

and Eddie like – Nobody, don't listen to him, let's just get out of here

6.- Head

Venom Symbiont and Movie!Eddie:

– Why do you always talk in my head?

– ?

– You know, Venom used to stick out a big head and talk to me.

– Oh yeah, we can do something like that

Eddie expected the big head of Venom, big white eyes and long, pointy fangs coated with saliva but instead, a small black tentacle without eyes or mouth came out of his shoulder. It wasn't threatening or creepy, it even seemed kind of cute.

Venom and Comic!Eddie:

Eddie did not comment on the Venom spectacle. But he would like them not to show their teeth so much, he doesn't know if Venom is asking him for things nicely, threatening him or seducing him

I have no ideas anymore, goodbye beautiful people <3

[specialagentlokitty]

Mr Evershed x Student!reader - someone to hear you

Part two:

Mr Evershed had to wait a few days for the response about his idea in order to get you to take the exam and finally he had a response.

Mrs Carter walked into his classroom and made sure it was empty before she’d walked fully in and sat on the edge of his desk.

“So the trust have been aware of (Y/N)s difficulty when it comes to talking to people, and they agree that you can give her the exam under the assumption that she’s preparing for it.”

“Oh thank god, there’s not some sort of catch or anything is there?”

“No, no. No catch this time, they want her to pass and agree it’s the only way.”

He nodded his head and showed her your book of ideas that he was going to use to try and help you come out of your shell a little more.

“Good luck, let me know how it goes.” She smiled.

That day Mr Evershed asked you to come after school so you could carry on your talk from the other day.

As students were happily going home you padded to your English classroom and avoided looking at the teacher as he held the door open for you.

“Thank you for coming, are you alright?”

You gave a nod and sat down at your normal seat while he grabbed you book, some plain paper and a few pens and walked over.

He set them down and you the plain paper and a pen and watched as you immediately started to doodle.

“Did you decide which one you want to talk about?” He asked softly.

You took the workbook from him and circled something before sliding it back, letting him have a look.

“Animals, that’s a nice one. What’s your favourite animal?”

“Crow..”

“Crow, that’s different. I personally like dogs, I think they’re great companions.”

You nodded your head.

“How come you like crows so much?”

You shrugged a little bit, swapping from a black pen to a blue pen as you carried on with your doodle, keeping your arm over the page so he couldn’t see it.

“I always thought crows were kind of scary. We’ve always been told their a sign of death and bad things.”

You flicked your gaze up to him before you turned back to your drawing.

“Change and transformation…” you spoke softly.

“Sorry?”

Mr Evershed was a bit confused about what you had said, and he was trying to understand a bit more about you and why you liked crows so much.

“They symbolise change and transformation. Not death…”

He nodded his head, writing it down under the word crow in your workbook and he pulled out a laptop from his bag and logged in.

He slid it over to you and slid your book over.

“Want to do some research for me? Just some things you think people should know about crows.”

You nodded your head and flipped your drawing around to hide it and pulled the workbook and the laptop closed as you started to type.

While you were doing that, he got up and started to tidy up, giving you some space so you didn’t feel overwhelmed or pressured.

After maybe ten minutes he walked over and crouched down next to you, looking at the laptop.

“Want to share what we’ve got so far?”

You nodded your head and showed him your book and he was amazed at how much you had done and how quickly.

“This is amazing (Y/N)!” He smiled.

He set the book down and stood up.

“All we have to do is set it out as a speech, we can do that next lesson, is that okay?”

You shrugged a little and he smiled, putting your book and the laptop away he watched you pack away your stuff, putting the paper in your bag you handed him his pens back.

“Bye…”

You quickly left and he smiled, he was making progress with you and he made notes and everything so he could keep track of it all.

When it came to the next lesson, he helped some other students and gave you your space so he didn’t draw any attention to you, and you quickly left the classroom when the lesson finished.

He checked you book and saw you had rearranged your notes and he smiled, taking a photo of it so he could send it, and his notes along to the exam board when everything was done.

All that was left was for you to read it, and that was going to be the challenging part.

He got you to meet him after school had finished again, and he sat you down.

“Your speech is amazing, it’s set out perfectly. All you need to do now is read it.”

You looked up horrified and quickly shook your head.

“Hey, hey it’s okay, it’s okay (Y/N), it’s just us okay? No one else?”

You shook your head again.

“I know it’s hard, but I’ve got some things that could help you, alright?”

You didn’t reply and he sighed a little.

“Can we try?”

Your heart was racing in your chest, you could hear it thumping in your eyes and your hands were trembling as you fiddled with the bottom of your jumper, eyes glued to the ground.

Mr Evershed looked at you and set your workbook on the desk.

“Do you have any headphones?”

You pulled some out of your bag.

“Perfect, Perfect. Put them on, okay? Play your music as loudly as you want. Draw while you prepare, keep your back to me, whatever it is you need okay? Don’t rush yourself.”

You put your headphones on want watched as he went and sat down on a chair.

You pulled up your own chair and turned it away from him and sat down, staring at your book on the desk.

Mr Evershed could hear the faint beat of your music through the classroom, and he saw you grasp your book from the desk and he smiled.

He didn’t rush you, he didn’t sit on his phone or do anything to distract himself, he just sat there patiently.

Then he heard you talk.

“I..in my speech I.. I would like to discuss crows… w..why they’re my favourite animal…”

You spoke softly, he could hear how nervous you were and sometimes you would pause for a little while to breathe and calm yourself down.

You talked about how intelligent, how they were able to remember faces and how they could learn to trade things for food. How they had different meanings in different cultures but they meant change and transformation.

You gained a little confidence and you sounded almost excited to be talking about your favourite animal.

Mr Evershed noticed when you stopped talking you would draw, then you’d go back to talking and before you knew it you finished your speech and he put his notes away.

You didn’t turned around to face him, you simply put your book down, grabbed your bag and walk to the door without a word and he laughed a little.

He was so proud of you and he put the chairs back before going to pick up your book he noticed the drawing you had been working on.

“Amazing…” he whispered.

It was a detailed picture of a crow, almost lifelike and he smiled, putting it in the draw of his desk and he went to tell Mrs Carter everything.

He told her how you did and showed her your speech and once everything was complied and ready he sent it all off.

You didn’t know that the speaking exam had already happened, and you had actually forgotten about it after not hearing about it for a few weeks.

Sitting in your English class, you were doodling in your book again.

The bell went and everyone started packing away.

You went to leave but were quickly stopped.

“One second (Y/N).”

Nodding your head you stepped aside to let people leave and Mr Evershed walked over to his desk and grabbed an envelope and walked over with a smile on his face.

He held it out and you looked at it confused.

“Go ahead.” He said softly.

You took it, and opened it, reading what was written in it.

“Congratulations (Y/N), you passed. You did absolutely amazing and you should be so, so proud of yourself.”

You stared at the results in amazement.

“H..how…?”

“The preparation for the exam was your speaking exam. I didn’t want to put you under anymore pressure, stress and anxiety you already were.”

You couldn’t help but smile and you looked up.

For once you didn’t avoid his gaze, you actually looked directly at your teacher, a huge smile on your face as you practically burst with excitement.

“Thank you so much…”

“You’re a wonderful student (Y/N), I knew you could do it. You just needed someone to hear you, to help build your confidence.”

You smiled softly at him and nodded, putting the results in your bag.

“I’m so proud of you (Y/N), congratulations.”

You left the classroom with a smile on your face, you were really happy with your results and you were so, so proud of yourself and you had every reason to be because you smashed it even if it was hard

[cherrys-writings]

Cat-astrophy

Summary: Grayson is on damage control, Jameson is drunk, and OC just wants people to stop making innuendos Word count: 1060 Warnings: Mentions of underage drinking

Deciding what to make for the household of a deceased billionaire was proving more difficult than I originally thought. Aside from the immediate family and the Laughlis, there’s the security team and the small army of workers. I wait for the shower to warm, maybe I should have something sent to them instead. Letting the hot water ease the tightness of my neck, I try to put the worries out of my mind.

I wish I didn’t know what Nash had been implying when he said he’s had, “good friends,” too. It’s possible Grayson and I had been thinking of something along those lines at one point or another. I stepped out of the shower, wrapping myself in a towel as I walked across the heated tile and into my bedroom. It’s possible we had been thinking about it at the same time. If Grayson wanted a friends with benefits arrangement he would have brought it up. Right? He has a way of being direct, yet discreet. But, all this would have been before Emily. 

Why am I even thinking about this? Grayson’s grandfather just died. As I pull on my clothes for the day, my mind wanders to the casual contact that has been ever present between us: leaning against each other, heads bowed over shared work, knees touching under tables, idly messing with each other’s hair, and accidentally falling asleep together on occasion. I need to clear my head of this nonsense before class this afternoon. I brush out the tangled mess and set up my study area. There have been times lately where I’ve started to question whether we are genuinely platonic. He’s started whispering in my ear even when we’re alone, guiding my attention away from what’s in front of me and back to him with a gentle hand, and forehead kisses after every embrace no matter where we are. 

I manage to push those thoughts out of my mind for now, settling into my chair and logging onto the college’s portal. Technically I’m a commuter student, but most lectures are conducted remotely and time on campus is saved for lab work. My phone goes off before I can open the class link.

Gray: Jameson is drunk AF, Nash is with Skye who won’t leave her rooms, and I assume Xander went to school because no one has seen him. 

Me: Be patient. Don’t kill Jamie.

Gray: He and I aren’t speaking at the moment.

I have to call the lawyers and begin funeral arrangements. You have class soon.

Me: If you need to vent that’s fine. I know my professor will understand and even if they don’t the webcam only sees a portion of things.

Gray: Do not rearrange your priorities. This is my responsibility and I can handle it. 

I see no point in arguing and let the conversation die for now. I’ll check on him and his family after class.

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

Barely an hour into class, messages started flooding my phone. I assume a statement was released. Grayson wasn’t kidding about handling things as quickly as possible.

Olive: Make sure you’re available to comfort Grayson *whink* *wink*

It’s obvious you want each other. Tobias Hawthorne probably died to give you two a little nudge

Me: You’re a terrible person

Olive: I don’t hear you denying grief hook-ups

  I exhale forcefully, hoping that I look focused on taking notes and not frustrated that she is the second person today to suggest such a thing.

Me: We are literally in class rn can’t this wait??

“Mx. Davis, you look like you have something to share,” Dr. Richards clearly noticed my frustration, “Given your recent, personal introduction to grieving you must have some insights into the stages.”

Of course everyone had to say where they had graduated from on the first day of class. Of course I, wrongly, assumed no one would care. Of course when Olive asked about grief hook-ups my face said what my voice didn’t. 

“It’s bullshit,” I deadpan, “Yes, the Kubler-Ross model is a reliable foundation that identifies common emotions and behaviors exhibited by grieving people. However, as a society and a field of study, we treat these stages as a roadmap whe-” 

My phone begins buzzing incessantly, Jameson’s name lighting up the screen each time. At that moment my cat launches herself onto the desk, deciding the phone is now her prey. To the amusement of my classmates, I wrestle her into my lap. 

Scratching her head I continue, “when grieving is a prolonged cluster-fuck of overlapping emotions. You can’t accurately predict what someone is going to feel next when helping them through a time of grief. Even if it’s been experienced before.”

Momentary silence followed, my class dumbfounded by either my audacity to attack the respected Kubler-Ross stages of grief model or my horrifyingly unprofessional word choice. 

Dr. Richards collected herself quickly, “That was….well put. And sounds like a great stopping point. Remember tha-”

I shut my laptop quickly. Resting my head against my cat’s I groan. That was not how I should have phrased that at all. I could have said it better; I could have said nothing at all. Good job racking up all that college credit in high school just to give a long winded, unfiltered response to a simple question. Whatever Jameson has to say, it better be important. 

Jameson: Grayson is being mean

                 Please help

               Tell him to pull that stick out of his ass an people respond to things different

Me: Drink water and sleep it off please

Jameson: He keeps talking abou “arrangements”

Me: Oh? Does that mean you want to help?

Jameson: Come fix him

      Please

If Grayson doesn’t kill Jameson, I might. During class and the flood of messages, I missed calls from my aunt and uncle. New arrivals at the antique store need repairs, there is a commission for a book restoration, but beyond that, the note on the box stated the contents are for my eyes only.  I put my laptop, textbook, and supplies into my backpack ready to add to my growing to-do list. I'll go to the antique store first and decide how much fixing each item needs, get supplies to make lasagna and blueberry scones, call Grayson, find sources for an animal intelligence presentation, and revise whatever notes I took during this afternoon's lecture. 

[dracoangel]

It has been a very stressful last couple days. My mother-in-law went into the doctor yesterday to get her foot checked out. For a little background: for the last 2 years my MiL has had gangrene on her toes (I’m pretty sure it was 2 at the beginning), but for the first 8-9months of that 2 years we didn’t know about it; she didn’t want to bother any of us with it and also it’s the ‘if I ignore it, it will go away’ mentality at play here, she only finally told us when the pain became too much for her to bear. We got her to a doctor, was told what it was and options to deal with it: which were either to cut off the 2 toes or do wound care to try and save them. The MiL wanted to try and save them (which I totally get, just meant us doing the wound care on her)

Fast forward a little over a year. Her foot had been looking better, doctor was really happy with it, then about 2 months ago she had a change in medication that made her leg and foot swell. Doctors switched her back, but the damage was done, her foot was worse than ever and it was time to see a surgeon.

She saw the surgeon yesterday and he immediately told her to go to the ER. We kind of figured that she was going to lose toes maybe a little more. What we weren’t expecting was him to tell us that she probably is going to lose the leg to above the knee. Her leg had been cold to the touch, indicating she wasn’t getting circulation and she was on the verge of being septic.

Today she went in for surgery, she got out of surgery about an hour or so ago but we haven’t been able to see her yet; can’t get in until they put her into a room again. And we don’t know how much they actually took, it was a ‘we’ll see what it looks like when we get in there’ situation. She will be in the hospital for 4 days and then after sent for after care and rehab, so we’re not expecting to see her home for a couple weeks, if not a month.

That means using the time to get the house worked on to accommodate this big change: a ramp for the door, a recliner that can lift her out, a new bed (she has been using the current recliner for years instead of an actual bed because the bed she had was just too uncomfortable), rearrange the living room/cubby for these 2 items and setting her up comfortably, fixing the bathroom leak that we’ve had for months that has started to leak into the actual bathroom instead of just staying outside, hopefully fixing the dryer that hasn’t worked right in a few weeks (thanks to someone that doesn’t live here that decided to use us as a laundry mat and run it into the ground, who obviously is not going to help fix or replace it). The list goes on. A lot to do and no money to do it. We hope that her insurance can help with the chair, bed and whatever mobile device she is going to have to use (whether wheel chair or scooter), but we doubt they’ll cover all of it so we still have to find a way of getting what we need. At this point we don’t even know how much of the hospital and rehab is going to be covered.

This has been super stressful for multiple reasons.

[destiny-fics]

i would like to hear more about this juyeon/seonghwa/minho foursome. please share all of your thoughts ty

I'm so glad you asked because I have plenty of them.

Idk why but I really like the idea of you to have been dating one of them. In my head you're dating Minho but honestly feel free to substitute that with either Hwa or Juyeon. Adding one or two people into the bedroom is definitely something you would have talked about and agreed upon before.

Now, how did we get to those people being Juyeon and Seonghwa? Now we know those three are friends (cue that weekly idol clip where Seonghwa is talking about them and Hongjoong gets jealous) so they definitely hang out and Minho trusts them. He trusts them to treat you well and not overstep any boundaries and he trusts you to do the same. So he's not shy about bringing the idea up to the two of them after he gains your approval and enthusiastic consent of course. And they agree. It's not a secret that they find you very attractive and they would be thrilled to have the opportunity to have you for a night.

On to the actual foursome now. You'd invite them over for dinner, cook them a nice meal while the four of you tried to be subtle about the serious sexual tension filling your apartment. You'd lay down some ground rules and safety precautions over dinner of course, you get to cum as much as you'd like to, Seonghwa and Juyeon can both fuck you and cum wherever they want except inside your pussy, Minho will watch and then go last, etc. Etc. And then when both you and Minho are ready, he'd whisper in your ear for you take Seonghwa and Juyeon to your room and entertain them while he cleans the dishes.

As soon as you're in your room Seonghwa has his lips on yours while Juyeon's are trailing down your jaw and neck, leaving little love bites in their wake. Minho would find the three of you tangled on your bed together, both men shirtless and you in just your bra and panties, their lips not leaving one inch of skin unkissed. Minho would go and sit on the chair across from your bed and palm himself as he watched his friends ravish you.

Seonghwa fucks you first while Juyeon takes your mouth. He'd run a comforting hand across your face as you gag on his cock, trying your best to focus on sucking him well while Seonghwa practically rearranges your guts. Then they'd swap, Seonghwa in your mouth while Juyeon fucks into you. All the while Minho is giving you the sweetest mixture of praise and degradation.

Now I'm not the biggest fan of being degraded but if I was going to let anyone do it, it would be Lee Minho himself.

"Such a cock hungry slut huh?"

"Pleasing my friends so well aren't you baby?"

"Needy girl couldn't get enough with just one cock she needed me to invite my friends over too."

I feel like he's super in tune with your emotions so he knows the exact right time to degrade you and the exact right time to praise you.

And when both Juyeon and Seonghwa have cum, Seonghwa in your mouth, Juyeon on your stomach, and you've already had one orgasm, Minho will fuck you.

It's passionate and rough and maybe Minho's feeling a little bit possesive over you and feels the need to show Juyeon and Seonghwa that no matter what happens, your heart belongs to him just as his belongs to you. But he can also see that you're getting tired and clearly need to cum for the final time that night, so he picks up his thrusts until you're creaming around his cock and pulls out to spill all over your breasts and stomach, breathing out an 'I love you,' as he cums.

Then there's the aftercare. These men are kings of aftercare I will take no criticism. Minho goes to get a cloth to clean you up with and Juyeon and Seonghwa and on you in a second, showering you with soft praises and kisses. Juyeon massaging the areas which he knows will be sore tomorrow and Seonghwa pressing little sweet kisses to your hairline, mumbling sweet praises. Then Minho comes back with a damp cloth and cleans all the cum from off your body and between your legs praising you in the sweetest way possible and letting you know how much he cares about and loves you.

This turned out longer than I expected but I hope you enjoyed and agree with me dear anon. Please everyone, feel free to add your own thoughts to this because I'd love to read them!

[sluttyten]

#25, #37 and #181 for Jungwoo or Jaehyun ❤️‍🔥

Jungwoo or Jaehyun + “shit, i forgot just how tight you are.” + meeting them at a house party and sneaking off to fuck them in the bathroom. + you being their best friend’s younger sibling.

When your brother Mark met his best friend, when he moved in with him, you thought for sure you’d cracked it and that your brother was gay and his best friend was his secret boyfriend. They were constantly together--going on trips, going out to dinner, going shopping together--so it wasn’t like it was a crazy leap in logic. But then one night, Mark was out of town, you needed a place to stay, so he told you to go stay at his place. 

Neither you or Jungwoo ever admitted to Mark the truth of that night. How you’d been sitting on the sofa with Jungwoo, venting to him, and when you’d mentioned in an offhand way how he was your brother’s boyfriend (like, obviously), Jungwoo paused and looked at you with the most adorably confused look on his face.

“I’m not his boyfriend. We’re honest to God just friends.” He holds his hand over his heart. “I’m into you, not Mark.”

In the space after those words, your entire worldview rearranged. You looked at Jungwoo, at the way he was looking at you, leaned towards you in comfortable casualness, and you realized that yeah, you could be into him too.

He fucked you right there on that sofa that night, and again in the shower the next morning, and before you left for the day, you made it clear to Jungwoo that sleeping with him meant nothing more than that you found him attractive too. You didn’t want your brother to know, and you didn’t plan to let it happen again. It had been perhaps a lapse in judgement to have sex with your brother’s best friend.

Weeks go by, and then months. You and Jungwoo are perfectly normal around each other, not letting that night interfere in any way. And then Mark throws a housewarming party when he and Jungwoo move out of their cramped apartment and start renting a house together with a few other friends. 

It’s the kind of housewarming that your other family members aren’t invited to. It feels more like a frat party than a housewarming.

There’s people everywhere. All over the lawn, filling every inch of the house you’d just helped your brother move his furniture into. You recognize a few of them as close friends of your brother that you’ve met before, but for the most part, you don’t know these people. You assume many of them are friends of the friends he’s moved in with, but you don’t even know any of those people other than Jungwoo.

So, you do your best to make new friends.

You meet a few lovely people before you finally meet Jaehyun. 

He seems nice, very friendly and handsome. You meet him over a tray of snacks you just know your brother sat out, and you start talking to him, small talk that quickly takes a turn when you both realize a mutual interest. That conversation carries you away from the snacks to standing outside, and once you’ve made it outside, you realize that someone’s set up a game of beer pong.

“Jae!” The guy at one end of the table calls as soon as he spots Jaehyun. “We need someone to play against!”

Jaehyun looks at you. “Want to be my partner?”

You hate the idea of leaving his side, knowing that if you do, some other girl that’s been eyeing him all night would quickly sweep in to try to fill your spot. 

So, it’s possibly one of the best decisions you’ve made yet that night to be his partner for beer pong because you win, and in the joy of victory, Jaehyun sweeps you into a hug and promises you that he owes you a prize. He quickly makes it clear that that prize is a fresh drink that’s not beer with a ball floating in it.

You could care less about getting another drink, but you go along with him as Jaehyun attempts to swim through the crowd of people that have gathered for this party now. You cling to his arm (his bare, well-chiseled biceps), and you never let your eyes leave the sight of his head (a backwards hat resting on his long black hair). 

When Jaehyun finds the way to the kitchen almost impossible to pass through due to it being a small room filled with alcohol and too many people trying to drink that alcohol, he sighs and stops, leaning against the wall and tugging you close to avoid you getting knocked into by the people passing behind you.

“Well, there goes my planned prize for you,” Jaehyun sighs, looking at you with this look that swells a hope inside you. “Guess I should treat you with something else.”

“I have an idea,” you venture, pressing forward a little more, letting your hand slide up his arm. “If you’re interested, you could be my prize, and I’ll be yours.”

“I’ll take that. Gladly.” Jaehyun’s gaze flicks between your eyes and your lips.

Before either of you can back down, decide that maybe you’re too buzzed to make a solid decision right now, you grab his hand and pull him away from the mass of people waiting to get inside the kitchen. You lead him upstairs, heading right for the bathroom you know is at the end of the hallway beside one of Mark’s housemate’s rooms.

You think you hear someone call your name downstairs, but over the music, it’s difficult to tell, and you refuse to let yourself be distracted away from Jaehyun.

You pull him inside the bathroom. Jaehyun closes the door behind him, and as soon as he’s turned to face you again, you all but launch yourself at him. 

Jaehyun’s teeth clack against yours. His warm fingers dig into your ass and thighs, and you clutch desperately at Jaehyun’s face, holding his mouth against yours in a bruising kiss as he stumbles deeper inside the bathroom with you. You feel the plasticky brush of the shower curtain, and then your back hits cool tile. 

Jaehyun has you against the shower wall, the scent of body wash filling your nose, and your moan echoes off the tile when Jaehyun slips his hand inside your panties. His fingers are expert, skilled at getting you off, toying with your clit and then he’s two fingers deep, rubbing your clit now as well as stimulating you from the inside. 

“Told you I’d give you a prize. You gonna cum for me, pretty girl? Gonna cum on my fingers?” Jaehyun kisses his words against your throat, and then he closes his lips around a sensitive spot and sucks.

Not that you want Jaehyun to know, but it’s been months since the last time you had sex, since the last time you orgasmed, so as the climax hits right now, your vision goes white, and your senses are overwhelmed on every side.

The volume in the room increases to a dull roar in your ears, and your fingers dig into Jaehyun’s shoulders, your body arching as he keeps going, pushing your orgasm to last longer and longer on his fingers. You moan his name softly between gasps, like an ecstatic prayer.

Your eyes flutter open, and you realize that the volume in the room isn’t just the buzz of pleasure and the pounding of your heartbeat anymore.

The dull roar of the party cuts out significantly when Jungwoo shuts the door behind him. Jaehyun’s head snaps up from where he’s been trying to leave his mark on your throat. Jungwoo clears his throat, “Don’t mind me, Jae, I just came up for a piss. But you should probably know that’s our housemate’s sister you’re fingering.”

Housemate? Jaehyun’s one of Mark’s new housemates? Shit, you drop your head back, in disbelief that you’ve done this again, fucking with your brother’s friend.

“Shit,” Jaehyun whispers quietly against your skin. “I thought you looked kinda familiar.”

“She has a thing for fucking her brother’s best friends.” Jungwoo turns his back on the pair of you, and you realize that he genuinely is using the toilet right now. Unbelievable. He couldn’t have just walked out to use one of the other two bathrooms in this house when he saw that this one was occupied?

“Jealous, Jungwoo?” You push lightly at Jaehyun’s shoulders until he steps back, freeing up enough space for you to straighten your clothes. “It’s not a good look on you.”

Jungwoo laughs. “Why would I be jealous? We had sex one night, and never spoke about it again.”

“Don’t pretend like you didn’t want it to happen again.” You walk up right behind him. “Do you think I haven’t caught you looking at me?”

Jungwoo turns to face you. “What about you looking at me? Have you not spent any lonely nights since then thinking of me? Remembering the way I touched you, how it felt when you fell apart for me?”

Jaehyun clears his throat. “I’m still standing right here, you know. If you’re gonna have this weird moment, at least let me leave.” He starts to step around you, to squeeze by both you and Jungwoo, but you reach out to touch his arm.

“Don’t go. I want you to stay. You’re the one I brought in here. Not Jungwoo.” You squeeze Jaehyun’s wrist. 

“Maybe you two just need to fuck it out of each other again,” Jaehyun recommends. “Don’t let me get in the way of that.”

You don’t let go of his wrist even when he tugs, instead you hold tighter. Something he said gave you an idea. “Don’t go. I don’t want you to be in the way, Jaehyun. What if, and either of you can say no, but what if we all got what we wanted?”

You know for a fact it would be the end of you if Mark ever learned that you’d had sex with not just one of his bestfriends, and not even just that you had sex with two of his best friends, but the fact that you had sex with two of them at the same time in the bathroom of the house he’s renting with said best friends, yeah, you would be over if he knew.

So you definitely don’t let risk letting him find out.

This time you lock the door. You don’t want anyone walking in when you’re leaning your elbows on the low countertop of the sink in that bathroom, blowing Jungwoo with your panties around your ankles while Jaehyun fucks you. You don’t want anyone to walk in when Jaehyun pulls you back up against his chest, when Jungwoo steps closer and edges his fingers in alongside Jaehyun’s cock.

Something about the coordinated way that they move with each other, the way neither voices a complaint as Jungwoo stretches your pussy around him and Jaehyun’s cocks, something about that strikes you as odd. Not premeditated necessarily, just practiced, like maybe they’ve fucked a girl together before.

If you thought your orgasm on just Jaehyun’s fingers after so long without sex was amazing, then the orgasm you experience on both of their cocks is world-ending. You feel yourself breaking apart at the edges, the pleasure going and going as they neither one stop when they feel you cumming around them. 

Jungwoo kisses you even when your head falls back against Jaehyun’s shoulder, tasting the pathetic whimpers and pleas of more that spill from your lips. Jaehyun snaps his hips forwards harder, driving himself closer and closer to his own orgasm. The feel of his cock pulsing inside you, shooting his load inside you, is enough to have you cumming again.

Jaehyun pulls out, but he stays right there beside you, his chest against your back, his arms around you, holding you up as Jungwoo keeps fucking you. You’re sensitive now, so sensitive and it hurts but it feels so good, and you keep clenching around Jungwoo. 

“Shit, baby,” Jungwoo hisses and groans. “I forgot just how tight you are. I’ve missed you. Fuck, I’ve missed this.”

You feel like a white hot star on the verge of collapse by the time that Jungwoo cums, his fingers twitching over your clit just to draw a final orgasm from you. This is all much more than you’ve felt in a long time, or possibly more than you’ve ever felt. 

Jaehyun supports you against his chest as Jungwoo steps back. Your legs feel useless when your feet touch the floor, and you have Jaehyun to thank for you not completely collapsing. He holds you, slowly leaning back against the wall and sinking even more slowly to the floor with you. You feel like you could never move again and be perfectly happy. 

“I’ve got her, she’s fine,” you hear Jaehyun say. “Go back out to the party. I can help her clean up, can get her to bed. Should I put her in Mark’s room?”

“No,” you murmur, “Put me in Jungwoo’s bed. Mark wouldn’t think that’s weird for me to be there.”

Jaehyun goes a little stiff at the idea of leaving you in another guy’s bed, but you hear the silent agreement between the two. They won’t talk about this outside of here. They won’t let this fuck up a friendship--either the one between them, or the one with Mark. Jaehyun will help you into Jungwoo’s bed tonight, but that doesn’t mean he won’t hope to have you in his on some other night.

And after Jungwoo leaves the bathroom, after you’ve regained some desire to get up off this bathroom floor,  you makeout with Jaehyun in the shower while you both clean up. You sneak out of the bathroom and down the hall to Jungwoo’s room beside your brother’s, and when you climb in between the covers and bury your face in the pillow that smells just like Jungwoo, Jaehyun slides in beside you.

“I really like you,” he tells you. “I know we’ve only known each other for a couple hours now, but I really like you.” 

“I like you a lot too,” you admit. You place a hand lightly on his cheek, drawing Jaehyun into a kiss. 

Jungwoo finds you like that a bit later when he comes to bed; you and Jaehyun asleep in each other’s arms in his bed, and his heart breaks a little knowing that this is something he could have had if he would’ve just fought a little harder a few months ago to make his feelings known to you. He should’ve made a move before tonight, sometime after that night you’d spent with him months ago. But he was scared of what your brother might think.

That’s why he’d come upstairs tonight. He’d seen you walking upstairs, and by the time Jungwoo navigated his way through the crowd and extricated himself from clinging hands trying to drag him in for a drink, he’d followed you upstairs only to find you getting fingered by Jaehyun.

He’s still standing there beside his own bed, looking at you two, when you stir. 

“Jungwoo?” You ask, stretching out a hand to him. “Come to bed.”

The feel of your palm sliding against his, lightly pulling him to join you, that is almost more exhilarating that what happened earlier in the evening. Because you might be cuddling with Jaehyun, but you clearly want him there too, and Jungwoo doesn’t entirely understand what any of this means, but if he can have this moment with you and a million more like it, he doesn’t think he really minds what it means to share you with Jaehyun. 

requests are now closed! Thank you to everyone that sent your requests/prompts in, I really enjoyed writing these drabbles!

[ofallthingsnasty]

Idk if you simp for Jasper but going off the one season when she kidnaps Garnet and that one masterful sing is performed, imagine being her little pet, traveling space with her as he pretty little lap dog. She was originally going to take you home for some intergalactic zoo but you're so perfect that she has to keep you, you're her perfect little lap pet, perfect for giving her a little lovin on long travels and if you're obeintent enough, she'll even return the favor.

You definitely start off in one of those caged though, fearing and hating everything she stands for, eventually you realize that she never tried to hurt you when you listen, she's just a little too rough and doesn't understand her strength at times. When you did disobey through, you were knocked on your ass by that fucking electric stick thing, I have no idea what it's called but it's like a taser for gems anyways- it's safe to say you didn't do that again.

Overall, you get to try exciting and exotic food, knowing that you're loved and cared for all the time because you know that Jasper would rearrange any and all planets looking for you if you ever left her side

 Simp for Jasper? Oh my god I love her with all my heart!! 😵💖 The first discord server I joined was a SU self-ship/reader-insert one and I was so disgustingly in love with her my friends sent me trigger warning dms for ‘Fragments’ 😂😭 I ended up announcing I’d watch it iirc- and then went crying in the server 😂💖 I have SO much art from back then and I wrote a lot of unpublished fic too... 😤 Aaah, good old times (2020 lol)

tw.kidnapping, yandere, noncon mention, physical abuse, dehumanization, minors dni

Oooh, that thought is... something else 👀 I wonder what would make her keep a human pet like this - we know she goes against Homeworld’s orders (fusing with Lapis etc) when she thinks it could benefit her and her goals, but to outright forget about her hate for everything organic for one silly little human? That’s a really interesting thought- I love it when Jasper has a ridiculously soft spot for reader, because it’s so damn cute but first season Jasper AND a human?? I’ve never thought about it in that way, usually it’s more of a... noncon situation where she beats the crap out of you first and then sticks her whole hand somewhere unsavory to use your body like a sock puppet 🤷‍♀️ But to be fair I think about that no matter what Jasper we’re talking about 😂 But let’s get back to your really cute thoughts. Maybe she likes the fight you’re putting up or maybe your sniveling in your little (human-proof) cell gets on her nerves so much that she decides to let you out for a bit- after all, what can you do? You’re just a weak little human, no match for her. There is absolutely no need to keep you caged all the time (but you’re definitely going back in if you decide to swat at her, she has no time for your tantrums)- and before she knows it she actually likes your company, the power she has over you... I do think she’d hurt you sometimes- You’re definitely getting a good hard slap for being disobedient and even when you’re good you’ll be manhandled constantly. I can’t help but see her as someone with at least a tiny sadistic streak - we know she’s deeply insecure about being a beta and very prideful. You can’t tell me she wouldn’t torture you a little, from time to time. Just to show you how much stronger she is and because your tears are so, so cute... Oooh and what if we apply this to the show’s timeline, especially after she gets stranded on earth 👀 Uh oh, you’re somewhere in the middle of nowhere, trapped by a giant alien who’s definitely strong enough to rip you in two- and you’re dependent on her for survival. That has slowburn potential haha (Or what about Malachite... you think you’re free from her but the moment Jasper gains control again, she’s hunting you down. Oops.) A little end note: With all the asks I’ve been getting and the art that’s suddenly coming out of me I really need pick up my Bellow/Reader and pwp with Jasper again 😭💖 Summer project maybe?? 😂

[oddaodd]

· Bishops And Pawns On The Storm ·

Request: by a lovely anon “can you maybe do one where tommy goes to the reader’s place for the first time and sees a chess board, and it turns out she’s really good at it? and she teaches him? ”

Author’s note: I had to do a bit of research on this one because I didn’t know anything about chess, so if I made any mistakes with the rules and such I apologize in advance.

Also, since I love learning new things and since I loved researching on chess, I’ve decided to learn how to play. Wish me luck!

As always I wish you all the loveliest of days.

Warnings: none

·

The sound of the tiny droplets of rain against the old glass of the windows in Y/n’s home in addition to the soft tune that emanated from her gramophone, composed the most relaxing of melodies as she rummaged through her kitchen for something for her and Tommy to drink.

He was supposed to take her out to teach her how to ride a horse, but the sudden torrential rain quashed all pre-made plans, forcing them both to spend the rest of the afternoon in the comfort of Y/n’s apartment.

Tommy had never been inside her home and as he waited there in the parlor he became enraptured by the many things and trinkets that inhabited it. With almost childlike curiosity he admired every vase, painting and book until his eyes fell on a wooden chessboard that rested neatly atop a small table in the center of the room.

The pieces a bit tattered due to use, arranged in perfect order form what Tommy could tell. Some flashbacks of Charlie Strong trying to teach him when he was little and his mom wasn’t right invaded his mind as he admired the board game.

The sound of y/n’s footsteps echoed through the room earning Tommy’s attention, his childhood’s recollections vanishing in the air like smoke.

“Here, I made tea” she said placing the tray next to the chessboard and pouring him a cup before adding milk and sugar and handing him the cup and saucer.

“Thanks” Tommy said taking the cup.

“Do you play?” She asked upon seeing his eyes still studying the board.

“No” he said taking a sip of his tea “Me uncle Charlie tried to teach me when I was younger but I don’t remember much”

“It’s easy” she said sitting down on the floor in front of the table “Come”

Tommy sat down on the opposite side of her “I don’t remember it being easy” he said.

“it is, you just have to remember what every piece can and can’t do” she chuckled before beginning to explain the names of all the pieces and how many squares they could move, in which directions and such, trying to cover all the things a beginner should know about chess.

“So pawns can only move forward, right?” he asked when she had finished.

“Yes, and on their first move they can move two squares, but afterwards they can only move one square at the time”

“And I must protect the king at all costs” Tommy said, more to himself processing the information

“Yes” she smiled watching him “We should just play and I’ll help you on the way. Whites go first so you start”

With practiced confidence Tommy moved his first pawn and turned his attention to Y/n who mimicked his first move. Soon the sound of the pieces being moved joined in to the soft melody that flowed through the room.

Tommy was learning fast making a sense of pride and tenderness flow through Y/n’s veins. Her heart melted at the sight of him playing. His brow was a bit furrowed and his eyes frantic in total focus. She was happy she could share something she loved so much with him.

“You can’t do that” she said after a few minutes, interrupting his latest move and concentration.

“And why the hell not?” he asked miffed turning to look at her.

“Bishops can only move diagonally, not forward or to the sides” she smiled, somehow amused by the way he seemed to deflate at his own mistake.

“Right” he said taking his bishop and moving it to a different square.

Aside from that small interruption, the game flowed flawlessly. Y/n was taking it easy on him after all she was a seasoned player and it would take Tommy time and practice to catch up to her. She won the first two games and let him win the third. By that time, night had fallen upon Small Heath.

“See, it isn’t that hard” she smiled when he checkmated her king.

“So we are going to pretend you didn’t just let me win?” he smiled back.

“If that’s what makes you sleep at night” she teased.

“For how long have you been playing? He asked

“Since I was a girl” she said as she began rearranging the pieces “My father had a book on chess and I practically lived with my nose buried in it”

“It payed off” he complimented, mimicking the piece arrangement with his pieces.

When all the pieces were again in perfect order, Y/n stood up and took the tea tray “let me just take this to the kitchen”

“I should get going, its late” Tommy said, not wanting to overstay his welcome.

Y/n then paused her movements and placed the tray on the table again before going around the table so she stood in front of Tommy, His eyes following her every move with a tenderness that was unlike him.

“Or you can stay” she tempted trailing her hands over his shoulders, not really wanting him to leave “We can play again tomorrow” she said before leaning in and pressing her lips to his.

·

@captivatedbycillianmurphy @peakyxtommy @nyotamalfoy @writeroutoftime @babylooneytoonz @slytherinicequeen @lilymurphy03

[postwarlevi]

Chaise

Content- You and Levi try to spend some time together during your busy days.

an- About 2500 words, don't know how. Is this okay? Don't feel like it's my best but I do like this idea of the chaise. :)

"Hey Captain!" You smile when you see Levi in the hall.

"Morning." He greets, stopping in front of you. "I'm sorry, I can't do breakfast, still behind with work." He's already grabbed a breakfast sandwich to eat in his office.

You frown. "Oh, that sucks." You've already rescheduled twice this week.

"Sorry." He says sincerely, kissing your cheek.

"It's not your fault." You reach for his hand and he gives yours a quick squeeze before saying he'll see you later, heading off.

You are always respectful and use his title in public even though you've been openly dating for a couple months now.

You'd spent the months before getting to know each other professionally and started gravitating towards one another outside work.

It started with things like small talk while eating in the mess hall, you two being the last ones to leave some days. There were times you didn't notice until after the fact that everyone else was gone.

It continued on the outside, sometimes with Levi offering to accompanying you on errands even on his off days, or seeking each other out during group events.

It was even noticeable to others how close you were getting before he finally decided to officially ask you out.

However now that you are exclusive it seems that lately you are actually seeing less of each other. You know it can't be helped but still miss one another.

"Hey!" Connie waves to you, patting the seat next to him. "Thought you were hanging with Captain this morning?" That is obviously not happening as you have a tray of food with you.

"Me too." You say, dejected.

"He bailed again?" Sasha asks.

Jean nudges her. "Sasha, he didn't bail." He knows not on purpose, at least.

"Work, you know."

"That thing that keeps keeping you apart." Sasha says matter-of-factly.

"Well, what are you doing today?" Connie asks.

"Nothing, for a while." You actually have some free time.

"Hang with us!" Sasha says excitedly.

"She doesn't want to hang with us!" Jean rolls his eyes.

"Yes I do." They're your friends.

"No, you want to hang with your boyfriend."

"Well, yeah, but that doesn't-" You get cut off.

"So go hang out with him!" Jean says, as if it's an option.

"He's working."

"He's doing stupid paperwork in his office. Just go sit with him." Jean is sure Levi won't mind you being there and then technically you'd be spending time together.

You think about it while eating and talking with the other three.

Soon they're off and Jean tells you again to go find Levi. He knows it's been hard for you two to find time together.

Now here you are, knocking on Levis office door, just wanting to see him and hoping he won't mind. You've been here before but not for personal reasons.

"Come in." He says automatically.

You step in and close the door behind you, waiting for him to look up.

"What do you..." Levi trails off when he sees who it is. "Is everything okay?" He's up out of his seat.

"Yeah, of course." You hurry and say. You aren't expecting his reaction but you almost smile at seeing the concern.

"So, what's going on?" He's confused to see you, as not that long ago he told you he was busy.

You feel a bit foolish and don't know what to say.

Levis features soften when he sees you struggle and he comes from behind his desk to lead you to sit with him on the chaise lounge. He had requested it a while back instead of a regular chair so he could cat nap during busy times.

"What's wrong?" He asks, hand on your back.

"I just, want to see you. I don't mean to be clingy. I know you're working but one of us is always working and I'm so very happy with were we're at but we haven't even really talked lately."

Now you're rambling on as he's trying to shush you.

"It's fine. You're not clingy. I miss you, too." Levi likes hearing that you want to be with him. He wants nothing more than to shove all the papers out the window and go sit outside with you.

You sigh and lean your head on his shoulder, making him smile. "I'm sorry I interrupted your work. Can I help with anything?" You offer, at least trying to be useful.

"No, no. I know you got up early, why don't you just rest? You can stay here. I don't mind." It's to the point that you're both so tired at the end of the day you barely see each other then, either. He knows you would still be sleeping if it wasn't for him.

"Is it okay? Can I get you anything at least?" You pull back to look at him and he brushes your cheek with his thumb.

"Of course it's okay. I have everything I need." He leaves a kiss on your forehead. How could this man that people were terrified of leave you with butterflies every time?

Levi goes back to his desk while you curl up on the lounge. It seems strange and it takes you half the morning to get comfortable.

Levi sees this but doesn't say anything. Every once in a while you catch each others eye, and you keep looking away, feeling like a distraction.

At some point you've fallen asleep and Levi is glad to see you're able to and eventually he gently shakes you awake.

"Hey, it's almost lunch time. Don't you have somewhere to be soon?" He asks when you open your eyes. He would've let you sleep otherwise.

"Oh!" You sit up suddenly, blinking a few times. "Yeah, sorry. Was I asleep?" You must have been more tired then you realized.

"You can sleep in here anytime." You were never a bother to him.

He pauses his work, wrist hurting from all the writing anyway, so he can walk with you to get a bite to eat.

After grabbing your trays you set them on a near table. You go to sit down but pause when Levi does not.

"I should go eat in my office. There's still so much to do."

"So I am a distraction?" You're partly playing.

"Never." He tells you, reaching out a hand to pat your head, making you smile at least.

"I can't stop thinking about what you said, and I know we haven't even had a decent conversation lately." He says.

"Oh, I didn't mean anything." You hadn't meant for that to come out.

"Well, I'm glad you said it, anyway. You're not wrong."

"I know it's just work."

"I hate that it's getting in our way. We have my favorites talks, I could do it for hours." In fact, you had, which was part of what you were missing. "When you're done, stop back by, okay? If you're not too tired. It's okay if it's late, I'm gonna try to get ahead on things."

If for now the only place you can meet is in the hallways or in his office then that's what you would take.

"I wouldn't miss it." You promise.

Before parting Levi pulls you in for a hug, and your arms wrap around him right there in the mess hall.

"You're the best type of distraction." This makes you chuckle.

You continue your day and it is late before you finish with everything and you take a quick shower before going to see if Levi is still active.

You knock and wait for an answer, pushing the door open and giving a light gasp.

Levi is sitting in his chair with a book, and you see he's been waiting for you.

The room is dark and both the lounge and desk have been pushed back so a blanket could be laid out on the floor with extra pillows set up. There's flowers at diagonal ends and tall candles across from them, a couple plates of petit fours in two spots and tea is set up for both of you on a tray in the middle.

"Hey." Levi greets, hoping you like the spontaneous late night date.

"Expecting someone?" You joke, but are very surprised and don't hide your smile.

He walks over and shuts the door behind you. "Actually, yes." Your eyes widen when his hand grips your neck and suddenly he's giving you your most tender kiss yet. Your fingers reach up to circle his wrist so it doesn't knock you off your feet.

Levi barely pulls away. "I've missed that."

You just hum, and Levi isn't sure if your cheeks are heating up or it's the candle light giving you this color, but you're attractive either way.

He sets you in your spot before sitting across from you, and you share tea and dessert until almost dawn.

The conversation is not littered with insignificant gossip but finally consists of thoughts and ideas, things you would like to do going forward, both in life and with each other. It's easy and neither of you hold back. You support each other, listen, ask questions, share any worries and even challenge one another, ending by making sure the other knows you fully accept them. This is exactly what you've both been wanting.

"To think, we were almost stuck in a rut already." You grin.

Levi smiles back. "Can't let that happen." This was now his absolute favorite night.

After cleaning up there's just enough time for maybe a couple hours sleep, one more sweet kiss before going to your rooms.

You're both still very busy, and you steal simple moments together in passing in crowded hallways or in the yard if Levi is going out on patrol. Even these small things confuse people, seeing Captain Levi being affectionate, but the ones that know you think it's pretty cute that you are happy together.

It's to the point that Levi has set up daily naptime for you on his chaise whenever you have some time. He wants you there and you want to be there. Reading, sleeping, just being near him. There's a blanket and extra pillow always ready, and he's even rearranged both the lounge and his desk to have you closer to him, making it easier for him to lean over for a quick kiss or shoulder rub.

It's true that you really do distract him when he notices how adorable you are when falling asleep or now that he takes a little longer lunch then before so he can talk with you. It's not as intimate as date night, but it's still nice. He assures you he works better now that you at least get to see each other some.

He manages a few minutes to doze off himself at times, leaning back in his chair and propping his feet up by yours. It's not the best position, but it does the trick. It makes your heart happy when you wake with his legs tangled with yours, trying not to disturb him with movement because you know he won't be asleep for long.

Some days you fall asleep waiting for Levi to come back from whatever assignment Erwin has given him or don't get any time at all together because Hange has requested you for longer than usual.

"It looks like we can get away tomorrow, for a little while at least." He tells you one day.

You groan. "I'm on duty with Sasha tomorrow."

This was getting almost laughable. Neither of you can believe your luck. You're starting to believe it'll be office interactions forever.

"We'll see about that." Levi has finally snapped and tells you to stay here while confronting Hange about your schedule, and Erwin about this own.

Though you both relish the part of your routine that gives you some quiet time together, he needs it to be outside this office.

"Erwin! I'm done, you understand me? No more damn paperwork, no patrol, you get someone else tomorrow." He's dead serious, bursting into the commanders office.

Erwin knows he's been giving his most trusted comrade a lot of tasks, but they need to be done and Levi always seems up to it.

"Okay Levi, that's fine, whatever you need." He now sees the toll it is taking and doesn't want it to get worse.

"Hange! Sasha is going to need another partner tomorrow!" Levi tells the one he's usually paired up with during missions after finding them.

"What? But, I need-" Hange doesn't get far.

"Better start looking!" He's already walking away.

You help Levi get the remaining paperwork in order and both call it an early night to prepare for a day out together.

The next morning you've slept a little later than usual since you have the whole day to yourselves. You put on the dress you had on the first time Levi asked you out. He brings you a box of your favorite cookies and gives you a good morning kiss.

"You look beautiful." This might be his favorite dress you own.

"You look pretty handsome yourself." You always think Levi looks quite dashing.

On your way to grab a quick breakfast you run into Jean.

"You owe me." He's offered to help Miche with anything Levi hasn't finished.

"I'll make it up to you." You give him a quick hug.

"Have fun today."

"Thanks! And, tell Connie thanks too, yeah?" You think Hange will regret putting him and Sasha together, but that's not your worry.

Levi nods to your friend as he puts his arm around you, leading you out.

Levi doesn't scare Jean as much as he used to now that you're with him.

"Kirstein!" Miche, however, is a different story.

Your day is full with a long trail walk and Levi rowing you around the lake in a kayak. He's set up outdoor picnic lunch and when you finish you lay together on a blanket and continue your intimate talk. A flock of ducks invades the area and you give them scraps before Levi starts shooing them away when there is no more and they start to make a mess. On the way back you stop for ice cream and watch a group of kids enjoying the park, getting on the swing set yourselves at one point.

Later, the pillow and blanket still stay on Levis office chaise for impromptu afternoon nap sessions, and he gets sad when you're too busy to stay. When you aren't too tired, there's more late night tea talks too.

Your outdoor adventures also continue, with your superiors making sure to give you days off together now.

a/n- This was not the original idea and I kept trying to fix it but kept straying further and just wanted an ending. Hopefully it turns out okay anyway and I'm just overthinking. Maybe we'll turn date day into a fic. Working on the original idea and something else I think will be A++

[silvokrent]

Long Live the King - 3

In their defense, it was an accident.

Or: The kids are convinced that they killed Dedede and Escargoon. From there, everything goes downhill fast.

In the end, neither of them had the energy to do more than hole themselves in their room. By the time evening came, they made their excuses, and went to bed.

Sleep eluded her, and what little she managed to snatch left her even more drained than the day before. Judging by her brother’s disheveled appearance, he hadn’t fared much better.

Breakfast was a quiet affair, not helped in the least by their father’s absence. When asked if they were all right, Tiff insisted they were fine, just a bit under the weather. (When Fololo and Falala stopped by shortly after and asked to hang out, it was the same excuse she gave them, too.)

Predictably, the first search parties came back unsuccessful. Tiff couldn’t decide whether she was relieved, or disappointed.

The townsfolk, on the other hand, had no trouble making that distinction. If the kids had hoped Dedede’s and Escargoon’s disappearances would be downplayed, then they clearly weren’t giving the Cappies enough credit. It was the topic of gossip everywhere. The vast majority of conversations they overheard (when they finally relented, and left the castle do some reconnaissance) all seemed to agree with Chief Bookem: this was just another bid for attention. That, or they needed to get better at reading maps.

By the end of the second day, the next wave of search parties came back empty-handed, and the Cappies bid their neighbors goodnight as they turned in.

By the end of the third day, they were double-checking the locks on their doors.

It wasn’t so much concern for Dedede or Escargoon (“Good riddance,” Mabel had told a crowd of bar-goers) as it was the fear that whatever happened to them, would happen to the townsfolk next.

The panic was a palpable miasma, even from the castle.

Tiff sat on her bed, watching, as Tuff attempted for the fifth time to rearrange the contents of his rucksack. She’d given up on trying to dissuade him from “emergency packing.”

“I’m not saying we should,” she clarified, dejectedly swinging her legs back and forth over the side. “But if we’re going to start preparing for worst-case scenarios, then maybe we should consider who we can talk to—”

“Nuh-uh. Absolutely not.” He squinted between the glowsticks in one hand, the cannister of bug spray in the other, before throwing the bug spray over his shoulder. “The point is to avoid prison, not turn ourselves in.”

“We need advice from a neutral party. Someone we can trust.”

“What, like Kabu?” Tuff snorted. “Unless he’s got bail money stashed somewhere inside him, then I don’t think he’ll be of much help.”

She paused. “What about Meta—”

“If you even think about finishing that sentence, I’m throwing my dirty socks at you.” With a frustrated noise, he tipped the bag’s contents onto his bed. “You do remember he’s sworn his service to Dedede, right?”

Tiff glared at him, which he either didn’t notice, or was choosing to ignore. “He also goes out of his way to protect Kirby.”

“Yeah, Kirby. Not us,” he said. “I’m sorry, sis”—he began to sort his things into piles—“but I think this is one of those times where we don’t go to him. There’s a lot of stuff he puts up with, but I don’t think murder is one of them. For now, we need to keep preparing.” His hands slowed. “Just…just in case.”

She wanted to be angry at him, if only because it was easier than being angry at the fact he was right. Sighing, she lifted the book back to her lap, and flipped the page.

And hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

The door swung open with slightly more force than necessary.

Blade glanced up from the map spread across the table. “How did the search go?”

“How do you think?” The metallic click of his sabatons followed Sword across the room, as he unsheathed the knife belted at his waist. “Another dead end.”

In a single, fluid motion, he stabbed the knife into the parchment. “Again.”

“If you would refrain from putting more holes in my furniture,” said Meta Knight, without looking up, “I would appreciate it.”

Though at this point, the request was mostly a formality. It was a bit difficult to argue with the fourteen other knives already lodged in the table, being used as map-markers. The first time, Blade couldn’t find a pen, and he’d improvised.

By the eighth time, Meta Knight seemed resigned to them using his table as a form of punitive stress relief.

“Well, that’s the southern peninsula off the list.” Blade flicked the pommel, watching as it vibrated. “We’re running out of places to search. If we missed something during the initial sweep, then we ought to consider retracing our steps.”

“Or we could expand our range,” Sword suggested, with no small amount of reluctance. He tapped at the outline of dense forest. “Any further north though and we risk leaving the jurisdiction of the kingdom.”

“If this is an abduction we’re dealing with, then we might not get much of a choice.”

“It isn’t.” With an audible clap, Meta Knight shut his book, and rose. The fabric hissed as his cape dragged over the floor. “Hostages are costly to keep alive. If they were abducted, we would have received the demand for a ransom by now.”

“Unless we’ve misunderstood their motives,” Sword replied uneasily. “A kidnapping by Nightmare could be retaliation for any unpaid debts.”

“At present, His Majesty had no outstanding balance with him,” said Meta Knight, at the same time Blade retorted, “Why would he abduct his best customers?”

Their collective frustration was a physical weight, and it was starting to crush them.

Meta Knight sighed. “Nightmare hasn’t been entirely ruled out,” he conceded, “but it’s unlikely. The transporter has been inactive for weeks. If this is the work of a monster, then I’m not sure where they would have acquired it.”

“On the off-chance it is a monster, is it one you recognize?” Blade asked.

“No.” His gaze slid toward the book perched on the armrest. “And I don’t have enough information to ID it.”

For lack of anything better to do, Sword began to pace.

“Perhaps we ought to shorten the list.” Blade’s fingers drummed against the map. “Let’s start by figuring out what we’re not dealing with.”

“Regicide?” Sword offered on his next pass.

“Doubtful.” Meta Knight inclined his head. “Cappies are fairly…pacifistic in nature.”

“If that’s what you want to call zero self-preservation instincts.”

Blade snorted. “Plenty of people here dislike the king,” he said, “but I can’t see that being enough of a motive. You’d have to profit off of his death somehow.”

“I suppose that makes Escargoon the first suspect, then,” said Sword, a little absently. “Advisors to the monarchy assume stewardship in the king’s absence.”

“It also makes him the last suspect, or did you forget his absence, too?”

Whatever Sword had been about to say in response, he didn’t get the chance before Meta Knight laid a hand on his shoulder.

“I think we can afford a break.” Though judging by his tone, it wasn’t a suggestion.

Sword lowered his head. Out of his periphery, Blade mirrored the gesture. “Yes, sir.”

The hand on his pauldron retreated as he turned toward the door. “I’ll be back shortly. Do as you wish in the meantime.”

The pair waited until it clicked shut before they let out a sigh. The restlessness that had longed for an outlet abruptly drained from him. Spent, Sword fell back into the armchair where Meta Knight had been, and tipped his head to stare at the ceiling.

“I hate this,” he said, the way someone might have commented on the weather.

“You and me both.” Blade hadn’t even bothered with a chair—he slumped forward over the table. “We’re going in circles. And for what?”

“Exercise, apparently.”

Blade made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat, and they lapsed into companionable silence.

“Ebrum?” Sword asked, a little dryly.

The map crinkled as Blade lifted his head to stare at him, at the apparent non sequitur. It took a second before it clicked and startled a laugh out of him.

“That man has no political ambition. If anyone hates this more than us, it’s him.” With a soft grunt, Blade hauled himself upright, propping his chin on the back of his hands. “He already oversees the country in all but name. The last thing he wants is for someone to put a crown on his head.”

“Can’t do any worse. Might be an improvement, actually.”

“An unwilling ruler is no better than a vicious one.” Blade let out an amused huff. “Kirby is more likely to be the killer. At least he’d have a good reason to do it.”

“True.” Sword slunk back a little further into the armchair. “Now that you mention it, I don’t think I’ve seen him in a few days. You?”

“Can’t say I have. He’s usually with the kids, though, and I haven’t seen much of them either.”

“Oh?”

“Last I heard, they’ve been hanging out in the village.”

He snorted. “Yeah, I’d be celebrating too, if I were them.”

“You’d think,” Blade drawled, “but it looks like they’re actually taking things pretty hard. Bookem said that when he spoke to them, they looked like they hadn’t slept in a year.” He shrugged. “Then again, I guess I’d look like that too if I was up late every night.”

“What do you mean?”

He tipped his head to the side. “I saw a light on in the library when I was making the rounds yesterday. I figured it was a Waddle Dee at first.”

“I didn’t think they could read,” Sword admitted.

“Honestly, I have no idea.” Blade gave one of the knives another halfhearted flick. “Anyway, it turned out to be one of the kids. I can’t imagine what was so important that she’d be up in the dead of night…”

Sword let the words wash over him, mulling them over. There was a nagging something to them, like prodding at a loose tooth. A detail that wasn’t clicking.

“Blade.” At the sound of his name, the other knight perked up. “Remind me again what exactly Waddle Doo said when we spoke to him about the disappearances.”

If Blade found the request strange, he didn’t let that stop him from humoring it. A low whoosh of air echoed against the inside of the helmet. “It was just around six in the morning. He told us that he went to wake up the king, and he wasn’t in his quarters. Next place he checked was the dungeons, and then the kitchens. Once he ruled out all the usual spots, he had his guards sweep the armory, library, observatory, and battlements. Last place he searched was the courtyard, where—”

“—where he ran into the kids, who were coming back to the castle.” Sword sat a little straighter. “At the crack of dawn.”

The implication hit, and Blade pushed himself off the table. “You aren’t suggesting…”

“You’re right: Kirby would never willingly harm them.” Sword’s voice dropped. “But that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t benefit from it.”

Blade lowered his head, retreating into his thoughts. “That’s a serious accusation," he said, half to himself.

“I know. But it can’t be a coincidence.”

“Do you really think the kids did something to get rid of them?”

“I think they know something they’re not telling us,” he answered, refusing to clarify. It wasn’t as if he found the idea any more palatable. “At the very least, we need to speak to them, find out what—”

The door eased open.

Meta Knight stood in the entryway, a tray balanced in his hands. Pale wisps of steam spiraled away from the kettle sitting atop it. The greeting in his posture died, as he registered the unspoken tension. His eyes flitted back and forth between them, assessing. “What’s wrong?”

The pair exchanged a look, before Sword stood up. “I think we overlooked something.”

—are typically presided over by tribunals. Despite the age of majority having been redefined multiple times throughout Cappy history, this feature has endured, in one form or another. Although rare, in the event of extreme offenses, a court may waive these protections and try the defendant as an adult. Sentencing under normal parameters —

Tiff yawned. Rubbing at her eyes, she turned the page.

—results in punishment which differs from that of their adult peers. Most legal systems advocate for reform rather than incarceration, and have adopted this model as the standard. Whether or not those standards are upheld, however, is contingent on multiple factors, including—

“Here.” With a soft thump, Tuff dropped his book on top of the growing stack. “This is the one you wanted, right?”

Her eyes darted up from the text and skimmed over the title—Courtal Combat: How to Win Your Case.

“That’s the one,” she said, without much enthusiasm. Research tended to hold less appeal when your future was staked on it. “There’s another I need you to find. I wrote down the ISBN here on this paper—”

“Again?” he asked, and Tiff nearly threw the book at him.

“Yes, again.” She massaged at her temples, forcing herself to lower her volume. At least here, in the castle library, their whispered conversation wouldn’t look out of place. “If things go south and we can’t run, then knowing our rights is the next best thing.”

Tuff leaned against the table. “I thought you said we weren’t running away?”

“We’re not,” she groused. “But if you’re going to prepare for hypothetical outcomes, then so am I. At least my plan doesn’t involve us becoming refugees.”

“My plan was for us to become hermits living in the middle of the wilderness.”

“Tuff, we don’t know the first thing about camping, let alone wilderness survival. We’d be dead in a week, tops.”

“I’d give it two.” Tuff shrugged. “It beats having to represent ourselves in court.” Idly, he picked up one of the several books fanned out around the table, and inspected it. “What’s a habeas corpus?”

Tiff snatched it back.

“I need to keep working,” she told him, not a little peevishly. “If you want to help, you can go get me that book I asked for.” For emphasis, she held out the note.

“Fine.” He accepted the paper, and his lips thinned. “But it’s going to take me a while. Some of the shelves are out of order, and I swear one of them was organized by color.”

He didn’t wait to see her reaction, instead trudging back into the recesses of the library and its labyrinth of shelves. Once his footsteps faded out of hearing, she slumped forward in her seat, and stared down at the book with an uncharacteristic apprehension.

It was one thing, to read about something that didn’t affect her. To turn each page, however, and consider all the ways in which each new fact applied to them…

—the form of government. In the instance of absolute monarchies, for example, the head of state has legal authority to intervene. Such cases—

The words weren’t some novel trivia. They weren’t impersonal any more.

Cupping a hand over her mouth, she stifled another yawn, and turned the page.

“I didn’t know you were interested in law.”

The chair legs scraped over the floor as Tiff jumped. With her back to the open room, and her focus elsewhere, it hadn’t occurred to her to keep tabs on the entrance. The sight of Blade and Sword standing across from her, looking over her assemblage of books, was the price of her inattentiveness. And she was paying for it.

When they glanced up at her with an air of expectation, Tiff realized she hadn’t answered them.

“I’m not. I mean, it’s interesting in general, but not for me, personally,” she explained. “I figured, with Dad filling in for Dedede and Escargoon, maybe I could read and learn something useful. To help him.”

In her defense, it had sounded a lot better in her head.

Scrambling for a change in topic, she asked, a little hastily, “What are you guys doing here?”

“Just passing through,” said Blade. And that should have been the end of that.

It did not mean that Blade was supposed to pull out a chair and sit across from her. Behind him, Sword began to peruse one of the bookcases.

“Forgive me if I’m being intrusive.” The red plume on his helm swept with the tilt of his head. “But you look ill. You’re not sick, are you?”

When Tiff had told Fololo and Falala that they were under the weather, that pill had been a bit harder to swallow. Now, though, after four days with minimal sleep, the dark rings under her eyes made the lie a little easier to sell. If only she didn’t feel as awful as she looked.

“I’m fine. I think it’s just a cold.” Maybe if she coughed for good measure, they’d leave.

Blade folded his hands neatly in his lap. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. Without an obvious visor, it was hard to tell where his gaze lingered. But in the window of silence, Tiff got the distinct impression he was examining her reading material.

Her very incriminating reading material.

In the background, Sword plucked a book off the shelf and flipped it open.

“So”—Tiff cleared her throat—“how’s the search going? You guys have been helping with it too, right?”

“We have. But it’s taking longer than we would like,” Blade admitted.

Thud. Sword closed the book in his hand, and exchanged it for another.

“Though it shouldn’t be long now before they’re located. Dream Land isn’t a large country by any means, and between us and the Waddles Dees, we’ve been able to cover a lot of ground. It’s a bit hard to hide when there are—” He paused. “Come to think of, I’m not sure how many there are. Sword?”

Thud. “Last I heard, the number was in the two thousands. And that was before Waddle Doo lost count.”

Blade shifted back around in his chair to face her. “I’d give it another day or two at most. By then we should have narrowed it down. Don’t worry; we’ll find them.”

It wasn’t a reassuring thought.

“But you guys must have contingency plans,” she pressed. “What’ll happen to the kingdom if you can’t find them?”

“That’s a question you’ll have to ask someone else," Blade said. "We’re not really involved in any of the political talks, so we don't know.”

“Not involved in the—? You’re Dedede's bodyguards,” Tiff pointed out, not without a hint of exasperation.

“And what fine bodyguards we are,” Sword drawled, “with no body to guard.” Thud.

“We may be sworn to His Majesty’s service,” said Blade, “but servants aren’t always privy to that sort of information. Best we can do is speculate.”

She considered his words, turning them over in her head. A second thought had occurred to her, then, tethered to a sudden plummeting sensation in her stomach. “What’s going to happen to you two?”

Sword glanced over his shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“Meta Knight once told me that the only reason you pledged yourselves to Dedede is because it lets you keep an eye on Nightmare. It’s why you came to this planet in the first place.” It wasn’t a thread she had planned on pulling, but now, it unraveled against her will. “If you can’t find him, then that means he won’t be around to order monsters. What will you do then?”

Blade’s armor clicked as he shifted.

“Right now,” he said, and there was a measuring quality to his speech, “we lack the means to leave Popstar, so off-world travel isn’t in the foreseeable future. In the long-run, though, we would eventually need to seek out a new client of Nightmare’s. We’d have to first consult with Sir Meta Knight, but…”

Sword reshelved another book. This time, his arm remained outstretched. “If our lord wills it, we shall go.”

There was an unpleasant lurch in her gut. “Wait, what about Kirby?” she asked. “Meta Knight promised to train him. How is he going to do that when he’s halfway across the galaxy?”

“Oh, that won’t be a problem.” Blade leaned back in his seat. “We would take Kirby with us.”

If there was a word for the sucking void in her chest, she didn’t know it. But when she tried to speak, it stole the breath from her lungs.

“But—” In their haste to get out, the words tripped over each other. “You can’t—”

You can’t punish him for something that’s my fault.

“No one can call the Warp Star except me!” she snapped. “How am I going to help when you leave, and I'm still here?”

Silence.

Then, Blade sat forward. The expressionless metal of his helmet watched her. “When we leave,” he repeated, slowly.

Tiff blinked.

Sword moved to stand at his side. “Tiff,” he said, “we’re not leaving. We have no reason to. There's no proof that either one of them is dead.”

“Unless,” said Blade, “you know otherwise.”

Her eyes widened.

That seemed to be all the confirmation they needed. The two exchanged a meaningful look, before returning the combined intensity of it onto her. “I think,” Blade said, as he began to rise, “we need to go have a talk with Sir Meta Knight—”

The bookcase creaked.

It was all the warning they had before the wood, warping and groaning under its own weight, toppled forward, and they vanished beneath an avalanche of books.

Panting and shaking, Tuff stood where the shelf had been a moment before.

She could feel her knees threatening to give out underneath her. “What did you do?” It came out as a strangled noise.

“I don’t know!” He wrapped his arms around his shoulders. “I panicked!”

“I can't believe y—did we just kill two more people?” she asked—and immediately clapped her hands over her mouth. They met each other’s gaze in the stunned silence.

Tuff swallowed, and he regarded the pile warily. “Do you think they’re—”

A hand burst out of the wreckage.

“Run!”

The adrenaline hit like an electric shot. With her brother a step behind her, they fled.

[tennessoui]

1. Soulmates AU please! It is definitely my guilty pleasure trope

hello im only three months ish late maybe four but this is also 3.4k long and it's just wild i mean we're talking soul mates, superheroes, rushed world building, superhero names this is a trip this is something i wrote after waking up from a four hour nap this ever had a chance and also it's sad

1. Soul Mates (+ 42. Star Crossed Lovers)

“You shouldn’t have come,” Obi-Wan says harshly, pulling the children--they’re just goddamn children--into his apartment and slamming the door behind them. “Did anyone see you?”

The children--all four of them--stay quiet. Obi-Wan wants to wring their necks. He knows why they’re here. He’d rather them die on the streets than suffer through what they’re obviously here about.

But if that were really true, he would have just left them on his doorstep.

“Did anyone see you?” he asks again.

“Not that we noticed,” one of the girls in the middle says. Shili, dressed in a blue and white striped sensible jumpsuit and sporty cape. The leader of the new generation of superheroes and she sounds like she hasn’t even hit puberty yet.

Obi-Wan is suddenly very, very tired.

“Kam,” Shili gestures to the person next to her and a little behind, a tall boy with a helmet covering his face and white and blue armor covering the rest of him, “says he didn’t pick up anything with his sensors. We were safe. We’re not trying to get you caught, sir. We just need to talk to you.”

“You could kick us out,” the other girl points out, crossing her arms over her chest. She’s not even bothering to wear a domino mask, but Obi-Wan doubts very much he’s looking at her real appearance. She’s Mirial, of course.

Which makes the other boy in a padded white and orange suit Mando. Four of the fifty or so remaining Jedi superheroes are in his house.

Obi-Wan sighs and turns to pad down the hallway. “Shoes off,” he calls behind his shoulder. “And does anyone want any tea?”

“No thank you,” Shili responds politely, falling into step behind him.

“Sit,” he tells them roughly when he notices the four of them standing awkwardly in his cramped dining room. “Sit down.”

He puts the kettle on anyway, and bangs around the cabinets for a few seconds to find an unopened bag of chips and a sleeve of probably stale cookies.

He doesn’t have much else to offer them though. Not now.

Weren’t you the one always telling me to eat my vegetables? A laughing voice murmurs into his ear. Look at you now.

Obi-Wan has to stand for a second in his small and dirty kitchen, chips clutched in one hand and cookies in the other, and breathe for an impossibly long moment.

This is why he had not wanted to ever see another Jedi in his life. All they brought with them were questions and ghosts.

Obi-Wan has enough of those as it is.

The kettle goes off and he pours the hot water into his mug. The cowardly part of him that hasn’t faced a fight in ten years now wants to wait here until the tea has finished steeping and then think of a thousand other excuses to not ever leave the kitchen again. He's good at thinking of excuses. He calls them reasons and lives his life with them.

But he has always known someone would eventually come looking for answers. That had always been one of the prices he knew he would eventually have to pay.

He notices immediately upon entering the dining room that they’ve saved him a seat, if it counts as saving someone a seat when they’ve rearranged the chairs so one is on one side of the table and the other two are squeezed opposite it.

“I hope you don’t mind that I’ve brought snacks to my own interrogation,” he says blithely, depositing them onto the table in front of the children.

Kamino stares intently at them for a second, and then nods once to Shili, who reaches out to open the bag of chips. In a show of good faith, she takes one and eats it. Obi-Wan can’t see her eyes underneath the white lenses of her domino mask, but he’s quite sure she hasn’t stopped looking at him once.

“Are you sure you do not want tea, now we have established I am not going to poison you?” he asks, crossing his ankles and taking a sip from his own mug.

“It’s a bit too warm out there for hot tea,” Mirial says disdainfully, looking at her nails. “You know, what with the world on fire.”

“But I’d take an iced one, if you have it,” Shili leans forward.

Obi-Wan pauses, drink halfway to his mouth.

He sets it down gently on the wood of his table. “Ah. Going straight in, aren’t we?”

“There’s not much time for anything else,” Mando says, and at least he sounds a bit apologetic.

“A weighty statement from someone who can manipulate time itself,” Obi-Wan hums.

“Only for a few seconds,” Mando mutters behind his helmet, rubbing at the back of his neck.

“That’s because you don’t have much in the way of training, young man,” Obi-Wan tells him gently with a hint of steel behind it “Back in my day--”

He cuts himself off. He doesn’t know why. Clearly, they know who he used to be. Otherwise they wouldn’t be here. He’s really just delaying the inevitable, but his throat feels tight. This truth, so long unspoken, is hard to drag into his mouth. And yet, every second he doesn’t speak it, it’s bashing itself to death against the backs of his teeth.

“Would you like us to tell you what we’ve found out about your days?” Mirial asks, looking up from her nails. “Would that make it easier for you, Ilum?”

“Meer--” Shili starts to say, reaching out to touch the girl’s arm, rein her in, but it’s too late.

The planes of Mirial’s face change and shift and suddenly for the first time in ten years, Anakin Skywalker is sitting across from him. “Would you like to talk about the old days, or would you like me to talk about the old days?” Mirial in Anakin’s smooth baritone asks.

It’s cruel. It’s so cruel that for a second Obi-Wan wishes his heart could just stop from the pain of it all. “Please put that away,” he tells the tabletop coldly. “And please. Do not call me that.”

“Meer,” Shili murmurs, and there’s a shift in the air.

When Obi-Wan looks back up, Mirial is back to the way she always appears in press releases, green skin and all. “That was a decent impression,” he tells her. She bristles at the perceived slight, but he holds up his hand. “But when I knew him, his eyes weren’t gold. They were blue.”

“Mustafar has had golden eyes since he joined the Imps,” Mirial argues back in a way that reminds Obi-Wan of another young teenager, who never could learn how to take criticism well.

“And he was someone else before then,” he tells the girl. “He had another name and he had a mother and he had a soulmate and a--fiancee and everything.”

His hands have started to shake, so he clasps the mug tightly, though it burns him.

“Tell us,” Shili insists forcefully but compassionately. Obi-Wan had wondered before why they had chosen to make the girl whose only ability is to fly the leader of the newest Jedi team, but it must be that. It must be her compassion. “Please. You’re the only one who can.”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan says. “I know. I’m the only one who is left. But if I am to demask myself, I will not do it to a table of strangers.”

The children turn to look at each other. Kamino cocks his head at Shili, who inclines her own head. Mirial shrugs. Mando shakes his head once, but Shili seems to override him, because she turns back to Obi-Wan and takes off her domino mask.

“My name is Ahsoka Tano,” she says, stumbling over the name. Obi-Wan wonders how many times she’s unmasked herself before. “Or Shili.”

She nudges Mirial, who sighs. “I’m Barriss,” she tells him grudgingly.

Kamino takes off his helmet to reveal a strong-jawed boy with a blond buzzcut. “His name is Rex,” Ahsoka says. “He can’t speak except through minds.”

Obi-Wan blinks in surprise at this. He had known that Kamino had an advanced sense of the senses, could tell something’s molecular makeup just by looking at it, could smell a gas leak from two miles away, etcetera, etcetera, but he hadn’t known the boy could communicate telepathically as well.

“And I’m his twin,” Mando sighs, taking off his own helmet and revealing a startlingly similar face, marred by a scar just across his temple. “Cody.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you all,” Obi-Wan tells them, drumming his fingers on the table. “You know already. I fought under the name Ilum. I could--”

He searches for words to describe his own powers, and settles instead on a demonstration. With a flick of his hand, the liquid in the mug rises and freezes into a miniature wave, suspended in the air.

He lets the ice drop into the mug, and inclines his head to Ahsoka. “Iced tea?” he asks wryly.

“Tell us about Mustafar,” Mando demands. What a heavy thing to carry, Obi-Wan finds himself thinking. The knowledge of all that time.

What Obi-Wan wouldn’t give to be ten years younger again. Not to even change anything, though he would be stupid to not try to. But to just enjoy the moment for what it had been in the end: just a moment.

“We didn’t call him that then,” Obi-Wan sighs and rubs a hand over his face. “We called him Iego in uniform, and Anakin in civvies.

“He was...radiant. In battle and off the field. I was the leader of our team for six years until Anakin came along. And I just knew as soon as I saw him that he would take everything from me. But he wouldn’t have had to take it. I would have given it to him right then.”

“I didn’t think he was that attractive,” Ahsoka mumbles, and then slaps a hand over her mouth as if afraid she’s spoken out of turn and ruined the story so completely that Obi-Wan won’t say anything else.

Instead, Obi-Wan laughs but it doesn’t sound much like a laugh at all. “Well, to each is his own, of course,” he says when he thinks the hysteria has worn off. “And finding out he carried my soul mark certainly helped.”

The room is blissfully silent, which Obi-Wan is beyond thankful for. He just wants to let those never-before admitted truths hang in the air, just for a few more seconds. He almost wants to say them again actually. Anakin Skywalker is my soulmate. Anakin Skywalker carries the same mark I carry, and he always has.

“But…” Barriss says slowly, “But Mustafar’s soulmark is on his neck.”

“It’s not,” Obi-Wan murmurs, staring at the wall behind their heads. “What he has on his neck is an ice burn scar in the shape of a hand. In the shape of my hand. His actual soul mark is on his mid-back, right over his spine.”

“You tried to kill your soulmate?” Ahsoka gasps, looking horrified.

Obi-Wan smiles with no joy behind it. “I tried to save the world,” he corrects her gently.

“You said earlier…” Cody speaks up. “That Mustafar--that Anakin had a fiancee. It wasn’t you, was it?”

“No,” Obi-Wan admits. “I never told him. I...couldn’t. I wanted to wait I suppose. I. Well. My soulmark is identical to his, but it’s on my thigh. And. You know what they say about a soulmatch whose marks aren’t in the same spot.” “Star crossed,” Ahsoka whispers.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan confirms. “I decided to wait. I was a few years older than him, he had so much to learn, he needed a friend more than he needed a soulmate. I had a long list of reasons, all as iron-clad as the next. But they were excuses. I was afraid. This man, my soulmate, could control fire and sunlight itself. He burned with passion, shone with power. And I...I was cold. Too pragmatic, too quick to criticize when he needed praise. The marks were just marks. Maybe they fit together, maybe they matched. But I was terrified that we wouldn’t.

“And by the time I thought to tell him, he came to find me instead. He was in love, he said. He had been seeing a girl for months and was going to ask her to marry him. And I suppose I must have asked about his soulmate, because he told me he would rather never know his soulmate, if knowing meant losing her.”

So. So Obi-Wan had let him go, though that part doesn’t make for a good story. He had distanced himself as much as he could get away with, which is not much really, seeing as how Iego and Ilum fought best when they fought together.

But in the end, his heartbreak had been too much, even for someone as cold as Obi-Wan had been known to be. He’d put in for a temporary transfer. A remedial medical leave, a Jedi-sanctioned sabbatical so he could ostensibly connect with himself and his powers. Nothing longer than a year.

You’ll miss the wedding, Anakin had told him, heartbreak shining in his own eyes.

But his heartbreak had been nothing compared to Obi-Wan’s, and so he had left. He had needed to. It had felt like rending his soul in two, but he had.

Two weeks into his stay at a different Jedi training base, Obi-Wan had died in an explosion. “That hadn’t been Jedi sanctioned,” he tells the children in front of him wryly. “We thought it was an accident at the time, but there were too many coincidences. Too many casualties.” But Obi-Wan’s death had been the only casualty Anakin had felt. It hadn’t mattered that someone had managed to restart his heart only a few minutes later. He had died. He had died and Anakin had felt his soulmate die. He had burned his fiancee in his own uncontrollable agony. She had not survived Obi-Wan’s death, even though Obi-Wan himself had.

“I...I don’t know what happened. Still. It’s been years and I have thought of little else. She may have been standing too close to him when it happened. Or...the house may have caught on fire and she was trapped inside. Or...I don’t know. I don’t know,” he spreads his hands palm up on the table and looks at the faces of the children.

He sighs and continues. There is so little left in the story now. “The Jedi Order decided to tell the press that there had been no survivors, though there had been a few. We couldn’t know if the Imperials were behind the attack or not, so we had to be careful. The survivor’s families were told, and their soulmates. Officially, I had no family. I had...no soulmate. They didn’t tell anyone I had survived. Ilum died in that explosion. Still to this day, he's dead.

“Anakin had always been absurdly powerful...and dangerous. He’d killed the love of his life, had felt his soulmate dying, and then...heard that I too had died. The first two had destabilized him, but my death and the Jedi Order’s staunch rejection of his request to see my body, to give me a funeral...it made him even more vulnerable to outside manipulation.”

“The Imperials….” Cody murmurs.

Obi-Wan nods, lip curling up. “The Imperials,” he agrees. “The timeline is fuzzy. I spent a good part of these weeks partially dead, one foot in both worlds. I didn’t know what was going on. When I was well enough to watch the news, the Jedi told me there was a new super villain working with the Imperials, going by the name Mustafar. I trained to kill him as he was helping the Imps decimate the Jedi. All of my old team was dead. Anakin was missing. I didn’t--”

He cuts himself off and runs a hand down his face. The children are waiting on his words. He’s telling them why they’re fighting wars adults should be fighting. He’s telling them why they’re out in the field after only a month or less of training. He’s trying to tell them why he isn’t out there fighting with them, but he knows already they won’t accept his excuses.

They shouldn’t have to.

“They gave me a new uniform and a new name,” Obi-Wan picks up the story. “Hoth. And I went off to kill my soulmate.”

“But you didn’t,” Barriss says, and she sounds vaguely confused and vaguely accusatory.

“I almost did,” Obi-Wan admits, like it’s a sin, like it's salvation. “Everything about him was different. He was not the passionate but warm boy I had known. He was a forest fire. A volcano. And Mustafar’s fighting style was completely different from Iego’s. I only realized it was Anakin--my Anakin--when I managed to knock his mask off. I had my hand around his throat, but when I realized who I was fighting...I let go. I couldn’t kill him. Even after everything he did. Even knowing...knowing Iego was gone.”

The dining room is silent for a second, before three voices burst out angrily at once.

“Why aren’t you helping the Jedi?” Ahsoka asks the loudest. “Hoth--Ilum, Obi-Wan. We need you. Mustafar--the Imperials...they’re not going to stop. They’ve killed so many Jedi. We need you to help us.”

“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan says. “I cannot.”

“You used to be a hero,” Barriss accuses. “Now what are you? A hollowed out, sad man.”

“I was never a hero,” he snaps. “I followed orders. Anyone can do that.”

“You were the best,” Cody says quietly, cutting Obi-Wan to the bone. “You led the Geonosis team for six years. I studied you in class. You were...the best.”

“I wasn’t,” Obi-Wan disagrees just as quietly. “But perhaps you all are.”

“You haven’t even told us any weakness we could use against him in battle!” Barriss shouts, standing up suddenly, which causes the chair to clatter over. “You’ve been no help at all! I’m leaving, this is a waste of time!”

“Barriss--!” Ahsoka cries after the girl, grabbing her discarded mask and taking after her.

Cody opens his mouth and then closes it. He jams the helmet back onto his head. “The soulmark. You said it’s on his hip?”

Obi-Wan smiles mirthlessly. Cody is trying to see if he can catch him in a lie, if this is actually good tactical information or not. “It’s a few inches below his shoulder blades, right over his spine.”

Cody nods once and then files out, leaving Obi-Wan alone in the room with the silent, still helmetless Rex.

“I just told him how to kill my supervillain soulmate,” Obi-Wan tells Rex, even though he’s really talking to himself. “Soulmarks, even dead ones, are extremely sensitive. If Anakin had hit me with his fire on my other thigh, I would be dead. Not just crippled. Muscle, young man, doesn’t grow back easily.”

He rubs a hand over the leg in question, staring down at the uneven way his pants lay over the old injury. It aches from the walking he’s forced it to do today, from trying to walk normally im front of these powerful strangers.

Rex taps the table to get him to look up, and then gestures to his own eyes.

“I?” Obi-Wan asks, confused.

Rex rolls his eyes and then mimes writing something.

“Ah, there should be a pen and pad in the kitchen?” he trails off as the teenager goes to retrieve the aforementioned things.

It takes a second longer than it should, and he comes out carrying just a slip of paper with his helmet forced back onto his head.

With a flick of his fingers, the paper’s lying on the table and Rex is following his teammates out the door and out of Obi-Wan’s apartment and hopefully out of his life forever.

Curious, Obi-Wan grabs the note and unfolds it to read.

We thought Musta. had yel. eyes because all the top Imps have yel. eyes. But if Ankn had blue eyes, then mybe none of the imps should have yel eyes.

No one knows what sidious power is -> what if it’s mind control?

Obi-Wan puts the note down onto the table with shaking hands. He wishes desperately he had never read it.

Because those words plant a seed of hope in his chest he isn’t sure he’ll be able to live without now.

What if Anakin--his Anakin--what if he’s in there still? What if Obi-Wan had abandoned him to ten years of brainwashing and mind control with not much of a fight at all?

But more pressingly, what if there’s hope for him? For both of them? Still, after all this time?

[talonwings]

Who We Are - Empires SMP writing

a gift for you, empiresblr, courtesy of my now 5 hours of fWhip headcanons. feel free to kill me when you're done. (also sorry i don't yet have an AO3 i can link to, i've been on the wait list foreeevvveerrr).

CW for slight body horror, angst, and i guess suffocation kind of?

“fWhip? Hello? Are you in here?”

He heard the call--how could he not have, when the voice was hers? Still, he did not move, remaining where he slumped against the wall of the underground room. One of the redstone crystals blooming from the stone was jammed against his shoulder blade, but even the pain could not entice him to rise.

“fWhip, come out!” Gem’s voice was a mixture of frustration and concern, a tone he rarely heard from her--well, the frustration he had heard before, but the worry was new. Gem almost never fretted about anything; it was how she had kept him and Sausage so well in line up until now.

“I’m going to come down there!” The threat echoed down the passageway that separated the secret room from the unassuming shopfront above it. “I know where your lair is, it isn’t a secret! Don’t make me come down there!”

“Don’t,” fWhip rasped. “Please.”

Gem either couldn’t or didn’t hear him. “I’m giving you one minute, and then I’m coming down there whether you like it or not!”

“Please,” he tried again, but his voice would not obey him. It petered out almost as soon as it passed his lips. He licked them, swallowed, coughed, tried a third time. “Gem, please, go away.”

This time, it seemed, she did hear, for she answered, “I will not go away! Nobody’s seen you in two weeks, fWhip! We’re worried sick!”

“I’m fine,” he croaked--a lie.

“You don’t sound fine,” she retorted. “I’m coming down.”

He opened his mouth to warn her off again, but the tell-tale sound of the painting door sliding back masked whatever he might have tried to say. Seconds later, her footsteps started up, the familiar click of those heeled purple boots getting ever louder as she marched along the passageway toward his laboratory.

fWhip’s gaze darted around in a panic, searching out anyplace that would be suitable to hide. He hadn’t moved from his current spot in over twelve hours, and his limbs protested as he shoved himself violently to his feet, teetering off-balance from the unfamiliar motion. Finally, he settled on a small cranny near the back of the chamber, and limped over to it, cramming himself inside just as Gem’s footfalls indicated that she had reached the door to the lab itself. He heard her swing it open, and then her voice, much clearer now, softly called, “fWhip? Where are you?”

“Go away,” he replied, hating the stony rasp that he couldn’t seem to get rid of now. “Don’t want to see you.”

“Well, that’s just rude,” she replied. He could imagine the look on her face, and fought against the lump it brought to his throat. He wanted to apologize, to beg for her forgiveness, to throw himself into her arms.

“Didn’t ask you to come,” he croaked instead.

“No, actually, Jimmy did,” Gem replied waspishly. “Your enemy. You remember him? The one you stole his most precious possession from? He sent me a message three days ago to tell me he hadn’t seen or heard from you in over a week. Mind you, this was after I’d been questioned by Sausage, Pearl, and Shrub as to why you’ve missed the last two alliance meetings. fWhip, even your enemies are worried about you. Where have you been?”

Oh, if only you knew. His mouth twisted with a hateful, bitter little smile. “Busy.”

Gem audibly scoffed. “Right.”

“Leave, Gem.” The order tasted strange in his mouth, when he desperately wanted her to stay.

“Not until I see you.” He heard her start moving around the room, picking things up and nudging them with her feet, rearranging boxes and sliding barrels aside as she searched.

“Leave.” The cranny was small, but he squashed himself further inside anyway, stone scraping against all the places where his skin was exposed.

“Are you back there?” His stomach squeezed with terror as he heard her move toward him, squeezing between two of the suspension tubes where he had once stored specimens he was researching. “I can’t see you.”

“Please, leave, please.” If he couldn’t order her, he could at least beg her. “Gem, please, if you care about me at all, go away.”

“fWhip, I do care about you,” she said gently. “That’s why I’m here in the first place. Please come out. I just want to know you’re safe.”

He could feel his heart ripping itself in half--desperation to hide warring violently with the desire to finally be seen, even if it would cost him everything. It felt like it might burn a hole in his chest, and his hands tightened reflexively into fists as he battled himself for what seemed an eternity.

“Please, little brother,” Gem whispered.

It was as if she had caved his chest in. A sob dragged itself from his throat before he could stop it, but he finally let himself unfurl from the cranny to drape limply across the floor, gazing up at his sister’s blue-violet eyes as they widened in shock, which turned to horror, which turned to sorrow.

“Oh, fWhip…” Gem reached out a hand toward him, but hesitated, drawing her fingers back before she could reach him. “What happened?”

“You really want to know?” He had to shove back another sob with a monumental effort, watching the way her fingers trembled as she gazed at him. “Or do you want to leave, like I told you to before?”

“No, I would never,” she gasped. “Not now. Not like this.” She sat down on the floor, her violet cloak flowing behind her like a pool of silky water, and slid closer to him, although not quite close enough for their hands to touch. “Tell me what happened.”

He let his eyes drift away from hers, toward the ceiling and the red crystals dripping from its shadowy recesses. “Well, it began two weeks ago.”

Two weeks earlier…

fWhip was not a stranger to surprises, but he liked receiving them far less than he liked planning them.

It had been a long elytra flight from the undisclosed location of the Wither Rose headquarters back to his home in the Grimlands, and the multiple hours in the air were wearing on his body--even though he had been wearing his scarlet goggles for the duration, his eyeballs still ached as if the wind had been hammering them, as did his shoulder blades from the yank and drift of the elytra against his own muscles.

“Maybe next time I take a horse,” he muttered to himself as he angled in for the landing. The deepslate roofs of the Grimlands were beginning to glide by beneath him now, and he made for the circular patch of dirt at the back of the manor that was his customary landing site, his eyes trained on it until something else caught his attention.

“I am positive that was not there before…” One hand came up to tap his chin as his gaze caught on the massive outcrop of deepslate that had bloomed at the front corner of the manor gardens, studded with glinting redstone crystals. A darker shadow within the ring-shaped formation suggested there might possibly be a hole there, though how deep was indiscernible from this far above.

“If somebody has been trying to steal from me again--wait.” fWhip narrowed his eyes at the spot, investigating it more closely now, for it seemed more familiar the closer he drew. He could vaguely recall setting a circle of rocks within the closed hedges, and in their center, a red container, filled with--

“Damn! Xornoth again!” His breath huffed out harshly as he realized what had happened. First the explosion, and now this…

Veering off-course from his typical spot, he carefully glided down until he was low enough to snap the elytra closed and drop gracefully to the ground between the wide hedge rows. From down here, the deepslate ring seemed much larger than it had from the air, its jagged edges stabbing into the blue sky. He could tell now that there was, indeed, a hole at the center, exactly where he had placed the shulker-box filled with Xornoth’s corruption.

“Damn,” he whispered again. He edged closer, peering carefully at the hole as he neared in an attempt to see what might be at the bottom. It appeared to be deeper than he was tall, however, and he was forced to maneuver up to the very lip of the hole to get a good look at the bottom. Thankfully, there did seem to be a bottom, lurking maybe ten feet below the surface; the depths of the hole were quite dark, though, only dimly illuminated by patches of glimmering red crystals, and he was unable to determine much more than that.

fWhip wondered, briefly, if he ought to just ignore the hole. Common sense would seem to suggest that it was involved with Xornoth in some way, and therefore worthy of at least being avoided for the time being until he could request the help of his allies. fWhip, however, whether fortunately or not, had always been availed of a strong sense of curiosity--it was how he had developed so many of his gadgets and tools. Besides that, there was something about the depths of the small hole that seemed to call to him, and him specifically.

He glanced around, taking stock of who might be nearby in case he needed to call for help, and saw no one in the immediate vicinity. There was a groundskeeper’s cottage just on the other side of the hedge row, but he had no way of knowing whether anyone might be inside.

“Well, I suppose I’ll just have to take a chance,” he murmured. “Here goes.”

Gingerly, he sat down at the edge of the hole, dangling his legs off the side and exploring for possible footholds. It took him a minute, but his toes finally caught on a ledge, and he was able to hoist himself down and into the vertical shaft. Thankfully, the same jagged-edged property of deepslate that made it look menacing also made it excellent for climbing, and he had relatively little difficulty lowering himself the full ten or eleven feet to the bottom, where his feet landed on solid stone. Looking up, he was surprised how dim the sky seemed to be after such a short descent.

Now what? he thought to himself as he gazed around at the narrow walls on all sides. Surely I didn’t make an ass of myself climbing down here for no reason.

He had but a few seconds to wonder, as a strange hiss caught his attention, echoing from the rock walls. He couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but the small hole began rapidly to fill with a reddish mist, which, when he inhaled it, made the inside of his nose and throat burn as if he had inhaled fire. He coughed, accidentally inhaled again, and coughed more violently, and still the stuff spewed into the cavern, and he began to wonder whether this was a trap, and whether he had been an idiot for climbing down here, and whether his allies--his friends, his sister--would find his corpse rotting down here. His hands scrabbled for handholds to lever himself back up, but the mist had filled his eyes now, and it stung, forcing him blindly to his knees. He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, could barely think. Lights danced behind his eyelids, and his throat was a tunnel of fire, and then he was unconscious, and knew no more.

Present day…

“And the next thing I knew, I woke up. And...this.” fWhip gestured down to himself, unable to keep his mouth from curling like he had tasted something sour. “Or, well, part of it.”

“Part of it?” Gem cocked her head. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, it was just the wings at first.” He tugged at the grey-black appendages, hating that he could feel it when his fingers brushed the leathery flesh. “And to be honest, I thought they were awesome. Who hasn’t dreamed of having wings? Sure, they looked a little gargoyle-ish, but it seemed like a small price to pay for not having to use elytra anymore. And it felt like the redstone magic was helping me, maybe giving me a gift to fight against Xornoth. I thought it might be something good.”

“And then…” Gem prompted when he trailed off.

“And then...the rest started,” he whispered. “I tried to ignore it at first. I thought maybe I was hallucinating, or getting sick, because it started with just my eyes, and I felt like maybe it would go away if I just, I don’t know, pretended not to notice. But then it was my skin, and then my hands, and then...and then my face.” He turned away from her as a visible shudder made its way through him. “I look disgusting.”

“Why didn’t you call us for help?” Gem murmured.

“Because it was my fault it happened!” he growled, shaking his head. “Because I was an idiot and went down that hole and breathed in that gas, and now I’m a monster, and I have no one to blame but myself. Because I couldn’t wait for you.”

“fWhip, no!” He could see the glimmer of moisture in her eyes, and he hated himself even more for it, for making her upset. “It isn’t your fault. You didn’t know what would happen, and you’ve always been an investigator. And now you’ve had to suffer alone, and I had no idea, and…” Her voice caught. “I was so worried. I thought maybe the demon…and especially after those dreams...”

He swallowed. “I...I’m sorry. I just...I didn’t know how to face everyone like this.”

They sat in silence for a long moment, simply listening to their own breaths. Finally, Gem said, “It doesn’t look that bad, you know.”

fWhip eyed her dubiously. “Gem, I look like a gargoyle. Like some kind of…” The word demon couldn’t force itself out, but he could see she understood, for she vigorously shook her head.

“No, you don’t look anything like that,” she said. After a long pause, she quietly added, “You look like my little brother.”

He tried, but couldn’t stop the tears from sliding down his cheeks. “Thanks,” he whispered.

She reached over and finally took his hand, and he almost shouted with joy at the touch of another person; her skin was warm and soft, her delicate tiny fingers gentle as they closed around his rough, clawed ones.

“We’ll figure this out,” she promised. “Together.”

He nodded, and squeezed her hand. “Together.”