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cheyisagirlkisser · 3 months ago

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MY KINK IS KARMA

MODERN AU ELLIE ONESHOT (Ellie Williams x Fem! reader)

Content: NSFW themes, Ellie's a bit toxic tbh, vaginal fingering and tribbing (no strap-on in this, sorry..), mentions of alcohol and weed, college setting, I love cannon Ellie but this isn't gonna be that type of fic, body hair. Word count: 3.3K

Description: Based on My Kink is Karma by Chappell Roan. After Ellie breaks up with you in the most cruel way possible, time passes and leaves you in a better place. However, after a run-in with her during an awkward situation, you forget how well you had seemed to move on..

You were sitting on your bathroom counter, your hands holding a small eyeliner pencil. You studied yourself intensely, wondering if you should actually get all dressed up tonight. It didn't matter either way, since you knew you weren't trying to impress anyone. You hadn't cared too much about that after Ellie Williams had stormed her way into your life.

You had met her through Dina and you thought her rugged look was attractive; something about the way she always carried herself in a careless manner had you on the edge of your seat with her, and you did enjoy it in the beginning. But Ellie wasn't the best partner, you had come to learn. She would come home late at night drunk and mean and you could always tell things weren't gonna end well. But did you stay? Absolutely. You stayed for a total of two months, which was enough time for the two of you to rent out an apartment together after she insisted. She confidently told you she was gonna put a pretty little ring on your finger and that you just needed to trust in her. And so you did. But living with her caused you to see sides of her you hated to be involved with. And after one, final altercation, she snapped. She had yelled in your face and ushered you out of the door. She screamed as you stormed down the hall, telling you she hated you and that you were the worst. For about a week, you had to stay in Dina's dorm room where you cried to her, telling her just how much Ellie had ruined your life. But things hadn't remained like that and life went on..

You moved into your old dorm and though it was never the same feeling as when you had first moved in, the feeling of innocence and excitement, you still enjoyed putting the pieces of your messy life back together. You got a job at the local library and you began regularly attending parties with your friends. Dina told you that you were glowing again, and Ellie hadn't seemed to matter at all anymore. She barely showed up to any classes and you had heard humors that she would get into fights at the bar downtown for running her mouth about you. To tell the truth, part of you enjoyed that. You enjoyed knowing that as much as Ellie may have hurt you, she just had to have known that you were moving past her, your life full of bliss and healing while hers was spiraling. But you were still dumb and you actually believed that you had moved on from Ellie Williams..

You heard a knock on your door and you quickly jumped off of your counter, still in your towel from your previous shower. However, you knew who it was. You opened the door to see Dina standing in front of it, smiling at you and creating a low whistle sound like one you'd probably hear at a gas station from some pervy old man.

"No clothes on, huh? I'm not complaining one bit but you should get ready soon babes. We gotta go soon, remember?", she spoke teasingly. You and Dina were as close as friends could be and anyone else talking to you like this would've made you uncomfortable. But Dina had Jesse and she was smitten, and girls like Dina weren't as much your type anyway.

You responded in the same playful tone, "Sorry, Dina. I just had to give you a little show, ya know? Let me get these clothes on and let's hurry, I wanna get there before everyone buys up all the joints from that sketchy guy!!" Dina laughed at your comment and she entered, waiting patiently on your couch. You quickly got ready, slipping on a short, black skirt along with a mesh tank top that only really had some solid fabric around your breasts. You wore a grey leather jacket on top of this and a pair of heeled boots. You looked sexy as fuck and you knew you could get laid tonight, finally get some action after Ellie..But did you want to? You'd just have to wait and find out where the night takes you.

You and Dina had finally arrived and you stepped into the apartment building looking for room number 20. That was the location the two of you were given, afterall. The building was older and kind of run down, and the faint scent of alcohol and weed spread throughout. But that probably signified that you were at the right place.

Dina grabbed your shoulder and turned to you before you before speaking sweetly, "I know you've had a rough couple months, babes. Please promise me tonight that you will at least TRY to get some action?"

You smiled at Dina, a reassurance that you were gonna at least try. "Yeah, yeah, I'll try.. why do you think I got all dressed up tonight?", you replied, your voice relaxed and quiet. And unbeknownst to you, you were gonna get some action that night. But who you took you home that night was someone who you would never had guessed.

As you finally entered the party, you quickly spotted Jesse. You and Dina approached him and Dina gave him a quick kiss before greeting him. You turned away and gagged in mock disgust, pretending to be offended by their PDA. You were a little jelly, but you thought they were cute together.

The party made time go on fast even though you hadn't even stolen a single shot from the kitchen. You figured you'd wanna be sober for the girl who you'd be hooking up with tonight, if you did find her. You danced with Dina who was quite tipsy for about 30 minutes before you pulled away, breathless and in the mood for some adventure.

Your voice was loud over the multiple others that crowded the cheap apartment. "Hey, Dina, I'm gonna go piss."

She laughed heartily and gave you a little wave, "Aw babes, I hope you come back. If not I'm calling you tomorrow and asking how good the sex was", she teased.

You roll your eyes at her suggestion and squeeze your way through the crowd to the bathroom. You knock on the door first. No answer. You then try to open it but it won't budge. You groan, really needing to piss now. Some guy with a couple piercings and a large tattoo on his arm sees you and confidently walks toward you.

"Hey princess, that bathroom's off limits." His voice was low and gross.

"Where am I supposed to piss then?!" You hear yourself slip an attitude into your tone but he kind of deserved it because of what he said next.

"I don't know, but that's not my problem, is it, babe?.." The way his words drip with shameless flirtation make you want to slap away the smug look on his face, but you decide to be responsible and resist the temptation. He sees you turn away and grabs your hand. "Listen, there's someone who lives at room 21. She's a bitch but she likes pretty girls. Just be nice to her and maybe she'll let you use hers."

You quickly slip out of his touch and find yourself out of that smelly apartment. You walk down the hall, the lights flickering above you. You see a room, room 21 to be exact. You brace yourself and knock softly on the door, standing outside and impatiently waiting for this girl to open the door. Part of you was nervous from that guy's words. She was into pretty girls? Maybe you could land some action tonight. But when she opens the door, you see Ellie staring back.

She looks at you with the most disgusted expression, a hint of irritation in her face. But also something else that you can't quite ignore, like a hint of sadness.

"Ellie?! What the fuck are you doing in this shitty apartment? You just kicked me out of ours so you could move here?" You yelled loudly at her. Part of you, though, deep down inside of your heart, wanted her to just drag you back into her shitty apartment and never let you go. You hadn't even realized how much you missed her gorgeous face and her messy auburn hair until now, but your hatred for her was still apparent.

"Well..I guess things change. I lost my job," she mutters out, her voice low and uninterested in this conversation. However, there was a twine of embarrassment, as if she hated admitting to you of all people that she had lost her job. "What the fuck are YOU doing here?"

You swallow back any feelings you were holding onto and try your best to sound just as laid back as her. "I had to use the bathroom and someone directed me here. Said you were a bitch, which checks out."

Her eyes meet yours and you could tell that hit a nerve. There was something different in her expression, something that you had never imagined to witness in Ellie before. She was vulnerable. "Why should I let you, huh? And you're no better." she snorted, her voice still low and irritated.

You realized that if you did wanna relieve yourself, you'd have to at least try to be civil. "Look, I don't wanna argue. I just want to piss. Can I please use your bathroom?"

You saw her sigh, and you could tell she was gonna give up. "Fine. Hurry up. I don't really like that you're knocking on my door and insulting me, but I guess you can come in." You noticed a slight softness to the words that made you wanna crumble. It made you want to take her back as if you were the one who dumped her, because in the moment, that's what it felt like. You never imagined when she kicked you out that she'd set herself up in a way that left you better off. She practically ruined your credit months ago, though! You couldn't exactly pretend like she didn't deserve this.

Instead of dropping to your knees and confessing how much you've dreamt of her since the breakup, you walk past her and enter her apartment. She guides you to her bedroom, into her bathroom, and walks back out. You wanna ask her to stay, to take you back and kiss you. Part of her imagines that too, to have you again. But Ellie, she was too far gone for that.

You, from Ellie's perspective, were a fake bitch. At least that's what she told herself. When she kicked you out, she felt like shit. She wanted to beg you to come back and to hold you tight, to at least attempt to fix her mistakes. But she indulged in her ways. She believed that was gonna kill her in some way. However, Ellie Williams was far too stubborn to admit that, or to even give much of her time to thinking about that. Instead, she lost it when she found out you were doing better. Dina had informed her that you had been doing amazing and moved back into the college setting, while she was slipping back, smoking weed on the regular and passing out, dreams of you and her in bed together always preventing her from waking back up. She was pissed off, hating herself, hating you for being so hard to forget, hating all her emotions for running at insane speeds in her head. What she hated about herself most of all was that she had let you go.

You finally relieved yourself and washed your hands. Part of you wanted to stall, to take your time and try to experience Ellie's presence again. But you still hurried, unable to face Ellie's griping if you had taken your sweet time. When you opened the door, Ellie was sitting back on the bed with a neutral expression. It pained you to see her so differently, so stone cold. Many people in her life witnessed her like that, but she was soft for you. She used to be, at least. She'd hold you close to her and kiss you at all hours of the night. She'd always make sure you were happy, all before her recklessness ruined your relationship. But now, seeing her on the bed, memories flooded back to you.

She was gorgeous, but a mess. You noticed now that she was in black jeans and a dirty wife beater. Her hair was messy and her appearance overall was disheveled. But her face was another story. Her arms and hands, and her perfect skin. Even at her sleep deprived, lowest look, you found her strangely angelic looking. Her warm, freckled skin had always filled your senses in ways not imaginable to anyone else, and in that moment, you swore she was probably the one for you. You wondered if that was just some passing thought that would fade with time, however, you were quickly snapped out of your head with her confession.

"You know, when you left, it was easy for me to pretend you didn't exist." Her voice was low and pained, but clear. You tried to bite back at the agonizing feeling of want inside you, telling you to step closer to her.

"But when Dina told me how happy you were, how you dressed up all pretty tonight to go get fucked by some other girl, it pissed me off. It pissed me off, also, to hear about your new job. How well you were doing without me.." As she spoke, her fingers wiggled, telling you to even dare to step toward. You obeyed, your body heating up as you stood in front of the beautiful woman.

"You kicked me out. You pushed me away and I bet you fucked other girls after it too!" you attempt to defend yourself from the obviously in-the-wrong auburnette.

She quickly catches your hands and growls. "Oh really, is that why you're acting all high and mighty? You think I've been fucking random girls? I haven't touched a single girl after you and you know it. God, this is why I kicked you out. You're always bitching and moaning." Part of you wanted to turn away and cry, to forget you came here in the first place. You could already feel tears welling up in your eyes at her harsh words, but it made you feel butterflies hearing that she was just as heated about the breakup as you.

"Is that really it, Ellie? Are you pissed about me doing better in life? That I'm happy without you?" Your voice is strained and quiet and you can feel tears gather in the corner of your eyes. A moment of thick silence before her lips met yours.

Ellie closed the distance with a kiss that you didn't know existed. It was soft, yet so rough in all the right ways. her plump, slightly chapped lips moved against yours hungrily, pouring out all of her emotions onto your lips. You swallowed every bit of her need into your own mouth, desperate to show her how much you missed her too. It's only a few minutes of desperate kisses before her hands snake inside your shirt to massage your tits, her mouth leaving yours to leave wet kisses all over your neck. You can't help but moan at the feeling of Ellie's touch; you missed more than anything. You shimmy off your leather jacket and Ellie pulls your tank top over your head. Her eyes immediately take in your braless state, and you feel your face redden.

"No bra, babe? Were you planning on getting fucked tonight?" She tries to sound demeaning, but the girl is too far gone thinking about how good your pussy would feel against hers to put any real degradation into her tone.

Your response to that was only silence, and Ellie's impatience led to your tits in her mouth. When she'd lavish her attention to one nipple, her thumb would graze over the other. It was a cycle that lasted until you were aching for her.

"El, I've missed you so much..please fuck me again." You felt a hint of shame at the way you so quickly begged for her, especially after all she had done. However, that shame soon vanished out of thin air as she laid you down onto her bed and began to slip off your skirt, her thumb finding your clit to rub softly over it through your panties. You let out a soft moan and Ellie lost all patience. She looked up at you to make sure you wanted this and when you nodded, she hooked her fingers into your panties and pulled them down your thighs, throwing them carelessly across the room. She stared down at your bare cunt in awe, fingers immediately grazing over your wet folds with care.

"You're so fuckin' wet, baby," she teases and without warning slips two fingers into your sopping cunt. You let out a shamelessly loud whine, forgetting how thin her new apartment walls must've been. But god, you could never forget the feeling of Ellie's fingers buried deep inside you. The way they always stroked your g-spot like your pussy was her religion, her tongue slipping into your open mouth at the same time. She fucked open your tight hole until you were in absolute bliss. You missed the way she fucked you so passionately, and Ellie missed how your walls fluttered around her digits as you got close. However, right before you could cum, Ellie pulled her fingers out and licked up your arousal on them. You groaned and Ellie just laughed at your frustration.

"Nuh uh baby, I wanna make you cum against my pussy..." You felt your need come back only more at the thought of her cunt fucking yours and Ellie began to undress.

Fuck, you missed her body. Ellie was skinny with her ribs visible and her hip bones jutting out; to anyone else, she wasn't the conventionally attractive. However, to you, she was perfection. The way freckles splattered across her broad shoulder should've been illegal because you couldn't resist the urge to plant kisses all over them as she moved to grind her arguably wetter cunt onto yours.

Ellie's bedroom was soon filled with the sound of breathless moans and sharp gasps at the feeling of being connected again. You had felt her like this countless times before, yet nothing could prepare you for what it'd feel like to have her clit bumping so deliciously against yours after so long, her bush tickling your skin as her hips rolled against yours. You couldn't help but buck your hips against hers, feeling so fucked out before you two had truly even been aquatinted again. It wasn't long before both of you had erupted into a series of pleas.

“Please, please, please… I’m wanna cum for you, Els..”

“Fuck, you feel so wet, babe… you’re doing so good, gonna make me cum all over your pretty pussy.”

“Ellie!!!”

Ellie was sliding her cunt against you ruthlessly, now chasing her own pleasure, obsessed with the way your voice went raspy with pleasure as you moaned her name. It wasn’t long before she came, covering both of your cunts with her essence and causing you to see stars as you hit your climax as well. You continued to ride out the orgasm with your hips frantically grinding against Ellie’s before the overstimulation began and your movements finally ceased.

Then, you two were left with the feeling of being back in each other’s arms after so long. You didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, if things would last or end in chaos like last time. But one thing you did know was that you felt so warm with Ellie’s soft skin pressing against yours, and all worries were left for tomorrow as you drifted off to sleep in her strong arms.

#ellie x y/n #ellie williams #ellie tlou #ellie smut #ellie the last of us #ellie x you

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intern-seraph · 3 months ago

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forget-me-not (Chp 1)

also on ao3

Summary: For the first time in your seven years alive, you meet someone new in your small town. Little do either of you know that your brief friendship will bind you together long, long after you are forced to part ways.

A/N: hi :)

shoutout to matcha twstjam for being my cheerleader thru this insane, ongoing journey

For those who have been following me on my socials, i'm sorry you know that this fic has been in the works for over a year as of last month. I was originally intending on publishing it only when it was complete, but it very quickly grew way out of hand and I realized that it would definitely not be complete any time soon. Still, I wanted to put it out into the world! So I decided to publish the first chapter! When will the rest come out? Who knows? I certainly don't lol ALSO the presence of forget-me-nots in the actual fic is, at most, debatable lmao i just thought it was a cool and fitting title

Anyways, I have a deep, desperate need for more jewishness in fan content, so I'm filling that dearth myself.

————

You peer out from behind the gnarled oak tree at the edge of the town park. Its trunk is almost half as wide as you are tall, and its boughs are so thick and heavy that the branches droop under their own weight. Once, there was a rope swing that hung from one of the thicker branches. It was destroyed in a storm a few years ago, and nobody has bothered to replace it since. As one of the few children living here, you don’t mind its absence much. After all, you only ever come here to read. Usually you sit on the other side of this very tree, enjoying the shade and the rustling leaves. However, today someone’s taken your spot. The stranger seems to be only a few years older than you, dressed entirely in black. Their clothes shimmer as light filters through the leaves, and you know that the fabric must be fine and expensive. Slivers of their pale skin peek out from the ends of their sleeves and the hem of their robe. It’s a far cry from the homespun woolen garments and rough, sun-kissed skin of your neighbors. The most bizarre thing about them, however, are their spiraling black horns.

You hug your book to your chest, unsure of what to do. You’ve never seen this child before, after all, and you know all of the other kids in town (all four of them, that is). Even worse, you just know that whoever this is must be rich and therefore important. Why are they here, of all places?

“Um…” You tiptoe over the tree’s massive roots and draw closer to the stranger. “Are you from around here?”

The stranger startles, and you yelp as the world burns bright green for a moment. With a grunt, you fall back and land squarely on your butt. You lie there for a second, blinking away the spots in your vision before your throat begins to tighten and tears form at the corners of your eyes. Beside you, the stranger’s blurry face appears. Your sniffling turns into sobs, and you cover your face with both hands as you start crying.

“H-hey,” says the stranger, touching you lightly, “don’t cry! I didn’t mean to scare you!”

You wail even louder, rolling onto your side and curling up into a ball. The stranger pats your shoulder stiffly.

“I’m sorry,” they whisper, voice breaking. “Please don’t be scared.”

Finally, your crying peters out. You hiccup as you wipe your tears away on your sleeve. “I-I’m sorry for scaring you,” you say. The stranger remains silent. “That was magic, right? I scared you and you used your magic…”

“That’s okay. Are you hurt?” The stranger extends a hand into your field of view and hauls you up onto your feet with little effort. Now that you can see clearly, you lean closer to examine his face. He’s a boy around your age, you think. His cheeks are round and soft but you can see where his baby fat is starting to recede. His lips curl into a small pout, accentuated by the embarrassed flush coloring his cheeks. You can’t help but gawk at his electric green eyes. They’re so distinct that, without taking his horns into account, their color and slit pupils alone would tell you that he’s not human. When he notices you’re staring, he shifts back in discomfort. You jolt and giggle abashedly.

“No, I’m okay. Uh, who are you? Are you from around here?” You start to circle him, eyeing his odd features with interest. Are those scales crawling up the back of his neck? Why is the back of his robe moving so weirdly?

“No,” he mumbles. He holds something close to his chest. A book! “I’m… from really far away. My grandmother brought me with her to do some —” his nose scrunches up “— official business. But that’s boring so I left.”

“Won’t your grandma be worried?”

He puffs up like a particularly proud pigeon. “Nuh-uh. I’m big and strong so I can take care of myself!” As he speaks, the thing moving under his robe finally lifts enough to reveal itself: a thick, scaly black tail. It swishes from side to side as he practically preens. Cute. “What about you? You’re here all alone!”

��I know everyone here, duh.” You crouch down and pick up your book, then trot over to sit in your usual spot now that it’s empty. The stranger pouts at you, puffing out his cheeks. You turn your nose up at him. “This was my spot first.”

“Says who?”

“Says me. You can sit next to me, I guess.”

He blinks slowly at you, fingers tightening on his book, before he breaks out into a brilliant smile and plops down at your side. You take note of his sharp fangs. Part of you is tempted to touch them, but you restrain yourself well enough. “What’s your name?” asks the stranger.

You give it to him immediately, pausing to spell it out letter-by-letter just to show off. He nods, but when you ask him the same question, he balks.

“Is it okay if I don’t tell you? I don’t wanna… uh…” He waves his hands for emphasis. “I don’t want my grandmother to hear about me.”

“Well then what should I call you?”

“Hmm…” He furrows his brow and scrunches his eyes shut. Then, he gasps and beams at you. “Nickname! You can gimme a nickname!”

“A nickname, huh? How about…” Your voice trails off. You stare at him, pursing your lips. First, you glance up at his horns, then his tail (thumping against one of the oak tree’s roots), then back up at his horns. “Horn…ton? Yeah, Hornton!”

“That sounds weird.”

“Too bad! You’re Hornton now!”

Hornton rolls his eyes. He opens the book in his lap, clearly trying (and failing) to look smart and above-it-all, but you can see the pointed tips of his ears turning red. Giggling, you follow his lead and open your own book. Out of the corner of your eye, you watch his petulant expression melt into contentment while he reads. He’s cute like this. He’s cute in general — which is a thought that makes you want to gag — but you especially like his sweet little smile. Although you were loath to share your spot beneath the tree, he does make for good reading company. That is, he’s quiet and doesn’t take up too much of your personal space. Before you know it, the sun is setting.

You dog-ear your page and nudge Hornton. “Hey, it’s getting late. You should go back to your grandma.” Hornton jolts, but doesn’t react as violently as he did earlier. His tail thuds against the tree trunk.

“Oh, yeah. I gotta go!” He doesn’t move, only fidgeting with his robe. “Uh, thanks for sitting with me.”

“Why’re you thanking me? It’s no problem.” You pause and look away. Feeling your face grow hot, you say, “Will you be back again?”

“C-Can I?”

“Yeah! I mean, you’re a pretty decent reading buddy, so… yeah.”

“Yes! I’ll be back tomorrow!” He smiles so broadly that you think it must hurt.

“Cool! I’ll be here after noon, that’s when our classes are over.” You stand up and start patting your clothes to get rid of any dirt. Then, you turn and give Hornton a grin of your own. “‘S nice meeting you! See ya!”

He waves timidly, eyes wide and almost shimmering. You don’t give it too much thought, you just start sprinting back down the dirt road leading into town.

—

“Mister Crowley!”

You slam the front door open, practically vibrating with excitement. The schoolmaster yelps from further inside your house, then rushes over to greet you. He’s pouting, feathers positively ruffled. Gently, he grabs you by the shoulders and gives you a once-over.

“Now, where have you been? I’ve been worried sick about you!”

“I was at the park!” You grin and hold up your book.

Crowley sighs and shakes his head. He wags his finger at you as he starts walking you to the dining room. “Now, child, what have we said about staying out late?”

“Uh… tell you?”

“Indeed! I have been very generous with allowing you free reign of the town! Nevermind all your tchotchkes and trinkets! If you’ll be gallivanting around like this in the future, make sure to inform your very magnanimous guardian beforehand! I was about to send the entire neighborhood out to look for you!”

He probably wasn’t. You know him well enough to know that. But the concern is appreciated. “Sorry,” you say.

“As long as it doesn’t happen again,” Crowley mutters. He pulls out your seat at your little dining table and returns to his own chair. Just at a glance, you can tell that he’d tucked in to his dinner before you came home. As you pick up your fork, a soft little body butts up against your calf. You squeal with delight and duck under the table to scoop up Grim, your bratty street cat. He mrows petulantly, but lets you cuddle him. It had taken a week of relentless begging for Crowley to let you take Grim in, and you had to pinky promise to take good care of him. Then, your friends got the bright idea of trying to bind the cat to you as a familiar (despite your lack of magic), and while it hasn’t worked yet, it certainly helped warm Crowley up to the idea. Something about his sweet baby becoming a beast tamer. You’re not sure what that is, and you’re definitely not a baby, but if it works, it works.

The air is filled with the quiet clink of silverware. After a while, you speak up. “I met someone today.”

Crowley nearly chokes. He pounds on his chest, coughing into his fist. It takes a second for him to recover. “You what?”

“There was a boy at the park,” you explain, “we read together.”

“What did I tell you about talking to strangers?”

“Nothing, we already know everyone in town.”

His mouth opens and closes silently. Then, sighing, he shakes his head. “Well, yes, but you were supposed to say that we don’t talk to strangers.”

“He wasn’t scary or anything,” you lie, remembering how you startled each other.

“Very well! Be careful, though. If something were to happen to you, I don’t even know what I would say, er, do!”

You pointedly ignore that slip-up in favor of finishing your meal. Pushing your chair away from the table with a screech, you grab your dishes and your cat and say a quick “good night!” to your guardian.

—

First thing in the morning when you and Crowley arrive at the schoolhouse, you’re accosted by Ace and Deuce. It’s mostly Ace doing the accosting, really, but Deuce joins him in hanging on your back like the world’s heaviest and most annoying koalas. You shake them off and whip around to start wrestling with Ace. Deuce takes his loss better, choosing to sit on the grass and watch you and Ace play fight. Crowley clears his throat several times, probably to get your attention, but you’re preoccupied and he gives up quickly in favor of unlocking the door and stepping inside. There’s a holler nearby, a series of rapid footsteps, and another heavy body falls on you with a grunt.

“Epel!” you wheeze out, squirming on top of the also-squirming Ace. “Can’t breathe!”

“Oh!” Epel rolls off of you, and you roll off of Ace. “Sorry, looked like you were havin’ fun!”

“Was fun,” Ace mumbles, “until you two crushed me.”

“Oops.”

“You didn’t die, though,” you say before you get up. “Also you started it!”

“Did not!”

“Did too!”

“How do you guys do this every morning?” says Jack as he trots up to join you all on the lawn. He rolls his eyes in a remarkable impression of his mother when she’s scolding all five of you. “We’ve gotta go to class.”

“Ace started it!” you repeat.

“Whatever, c’mon.” Jack hauls both you and Ace up by your forearms while you both giggle. He shakes his head, marching you both into the schoolhouse with Epel and Deuce hot on your tails.

"Ah, there you are! I was wondering what was taking you all so long. Take your seats! We have Professor Trein visiting from the city today for our lesson."

Ace groans as he flops into his seat. You lean over and smack his shoulder. Deuce takes his own seat beside you, trying his best to look enthused.

Professor Trein works in the capitol as a history professor for the university. While he's nice enough (and his familiar Lucius is cute and fluffy), every time he comes to give a lesson at your schoolhouse is somehow more boring than the last. You sink down in your seat, ready to daydream until class lets out. When Professor Trein takes Crowley’s place in front of the blackboard, you feel a tap on your shoulder. Without looking at him, you take the slip of paper Ace passes.

‘my mom wants u to come to a party tonite’

Aside from a time scribbled beneath the words, there’s no other information. Great. History lessons with Professor Trein followed by a party where you’ll be stuck at the kids’ table. Again. At least you have a few hours to hang out with your new friend after school.

—

After class, Epel hands out little brown sacks full of apples to everyone. “Ma ‘n Pa said that they’re ‘not fit to sell’ or somethin’, and Meemaw said I should give ‘em to all of you.” You sling your sack over your shoulder, say your “see you later!”s to your friends, and march off to the park.

Beneath your tree, Hornton is waiting. You sprint towards him, grinning, and he looks up at you with wide eyes before returning the smile. He has his book in his lap, open to a different page than he left on.

“Hi,” you say shyly, hugging your sack of apples to your chest. “Were you waiting long?”

“Not really. I mean, maybe? Dunno, I didn’t really notice.”

You sit next to him and set the apples between your splayed legs. Fishing a plump red one out, you wipe it on your blouse and offer it to him. “Here!”

“Why do you have apples?” He eyes it curiously, hand hovering over it.

“My friend’s family has an orchard so he gave us all some after class.” You wave the apple around. “Take it! They’re good!”

Hornton takes the apple. He inspects it in the sunlight for a moment, then takes a bite. His eyes light up as he sinks his teeth into the apple’s hard skin, and he demolishes the fruit in less than a minute. Licking the juice off of his lips and fangs, he mumbles a messy thanks. You just smile and bop your temple against his. As you pull your novel out of your bookbag, you take another apple from the sack and shine it on your trousers. Out of the corner of your eye, you spy Hornton staring longingly at the sack.

“You can take another if you want,” you say.

He jumps, green eyes going comically wide. Cheeks flushed a bright ruby-red, he snatches another apple from the sack and rubs it clumsily on his very expensive robes.

“Do you like apples?”

“I do now,” he replies. He’s visibly struggling to keep his attention both on you and the book in his lap.

Curious, you lean over his shoulder and try to make sense of the foreign words in his book. Your brow scrunches up. “What’re you reading?”

His body goes tense the moment you touch him, but he doesn’t flinch away. When you glance up at his face, his expression is more severe and excited than you’ve seen yet. “It’s about arky… archee… uh, it’s about buildings and art! And this is the chapter about gargoyles!” He jabs an excited claw against an illustration of a beastly statue whose jaw hangs open. Water pours down its chin. The page (and the ones preceding and succeeding it) is clearly more worn than the rest of the book. “We have a bunch at the — I mean, at home — and Grandmother saw that I really liked them so she gave me this book!”

“What’s a gargoyle?”

He looks at you like you just confessed to murder. Shaking his head, he flips back a few pages. “They’re ‘ornamental stone carvings of animals or people that project from the side of a building and serve as the spout of a gutter.’ You’ve seen one before, right?”

“No.” You lean in closer to inspect another illustration. “They’re weird.” He stares at you, aghast. You roll your eyes. “Cool weird. We don’t have these out here.”

"Oh… that's a shame. Maybe one day you could come see the ones in my home."

You peer up at him. "Maybe. I gotta ask Mister Crowley."

"Who's that?"

"I live with him. He's weird."

"Cool weird?"

"Weird weird." You nudge him with your shoulder. "Do you live with your grandma?"

"Yeah."

"So it's you and her and your parents?"

Hornton goes completely quiet. He fingers the gilded edge of the page. Softly, he mumbles, "They aren't here anymore."

"Oh. Mine too. That's why I'm with Mister Crowley."

“... Do you know what happened to them?”

You shrug and pluck another apple out of the sack. As you wipe it on your trousers, you reply, “Nah. I dunno if Mister Crowley knows, either. He says he found me in a box left outside the school. There was a note, but it only said my name.”

“Oh.” Hornton looks away. “That’s sad.”

“I guess.” You shrug again. “If they didn’t want me, I don’t want them neither.”

He stares at you, wide-eyed. All he manages is another quiet, “Oh.”

Scowling, you take a bite out of your apple. “I don’t wanna talk about it anymore. Let’s just read.”

“Okay. I… I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” He seems to wilt at your curt statement. You add, “Really, it’s fine. Please, I wanna get through another chapter before I have to go.”

“You’re going somewhere?”

“Yeah, some party at my friend’s house. It’s not even for him, so I dunno why I’m invited, but I think his mom invited everyone in town.” Another bite. You look over the words on the page, not really processing them. “So I gotta go in a couple hours.”

“That must be nice,” Hornton sighs. “Getting invited to parties all the time.”

“What? No, it’s boring. It’s just boring grownup stuff most of the time. It’s only fun when it’s a birthday party, and there’s only four other kids in town so those never happen.” You emphasize this with a long groan.

“Really?” He thinks on this for a moment. “I guess it’s like the parties Grandmother throws.”

“What kinda parties?”

“Uh, they’re… big and fancy, but there aren’t any kids at all. And I can’t go dance or talk to people. And… um… it’s a lot. I don’t like them that much.”

You watch him as his voice shrinks and his head droops. Gently, you bop your temple against his. He perks up a little. With a small smile, you say, “Maybe I can invite you to my birthday party this year. It’d be fun!”

For a moment, you’d swear his eyes water. He beams at you, reaching out to grasp your hand. “I’d like that.”

—

The party at Ace's house is full of tipsy adults while you and your friends drink your juice in a corner. Well, everyone except Ace. His mother parades him around to talk to the other adults who apparently know him. None of you envy him — he looks miserable.

It turns out that the party is for Ace's brother. He emerges from a side room with his girlfriend on his arm and introduces her as his fiancée. When Deuce gives you a questioning look, you lean over and tell him that that means they're going to get married. The adults cheer and sing and dance for hours longer; the celebration only pauses for bedtime (which is fine with you, the party was boring anyways).

The next morning, Crowley wobbles out of his room with most of his weight held up by his cane. He has a faint green tinge to his face, but that doesn't stop him from walking with you to the schoolhouse. This is all, of course, just to announce that class is canceled for the day. You gather with your friends and, after a brief argument, decide to play in the park together.

That's how you find yourself nearly tripping over a familiar figure sitting beneath the oak tree. Hornton looks up from his book, gasps, and reaches out to help steady you. You wheel your arms around haphazardly for a moment before you breathe out a sigh of relief. Then, you take in Hornton's face and gasp.

"Oh! You're here today!"

Before you can give a proper greeting, Ace hollers your name. Both you and Hornton turn to look at the four boys coming to join you. Ace stops, bare toes curling in the grass. He eyes Hornton warily, the sloppy heart painted around his left eye scrunching up. "Who're you?"

"Uh…"

"He's Hornton and he's my friend," you say for him.

"'Hornton?'" Epel repeats. He snorts. "That's a stupid name."

"It isn't my real name," mumbles Hornton.

"Your name is stupid, Epel," you snap. You cross your arms and stick out your tongue. He returns the gesture.

"You guys are children," says Jack. Epel appears comically devastated at the deadpan insult. You huff softly.

Deuce snorts. "You're the youngest!"

"By a month!"

"Your friends are loud," Hornton whispers. You nod. He picks at the page he's on, a tiny film of gold foil flaking onto his black claw. "Should I go?"

"No!" Your friends turn to stare at you. Hornton blinks slowly, pink tinting his cheeks. He smiles bashfully, shrinking a little into his robes. Ace, meanwhile, gets that certain spark in his eye that instantly makes you shoot him a glare in warning. He grins, showing off one of his missing baby teeth, but keeps his mouth otherwise shut.

"Wait, is this the kid you mentioned yesterday?" Deuce asks. He peers over at Hornton. "I thought you were kidding."

"Why would I kid about that? That'd be weird."

"'Cause you're weird," Epel mutters, and you lunge for him while he shrieks with laughter and ducks away.

"You've got pointy ears," says Jack, his own fluffy white ears swiveling towards Hornton before he turns to look at you, "kinda like your dad."

Ew. From your spot on the grass wrestling with Epel, you sit up. "Mister Crowley is not my dad."

"But you live with him?"

"So?"

"I live with my Meemaw," Epel adds. "She's not my mom."

"See?"

Hornton observes your conversation. He tilts his head and hums thoughtfully. "I live with my grandmother, that doesn't make her my mother."

"You talk funny."

"Epel!"

"What? It's true! He talks all fancy like Professor Trein!"

"Fancy?"

"Fancy!"

You roll your eyes and shove Epel. Ignoring his indignant squawk, you scurry over to sit beside Hornton. "Wanna hang out with us?"

He stares at you, mouth agape. Again, he smiles shyly. "You're really inviting me?"

"Duh," Ace drawls. "Why else would they ask?"

Hornton tucks his book into his robe. A tiny green light sparks at his fingertips for a moment as he does so. Then, he stands up. He holds his curled fists close to his chest, guarding. Ignoring his nerves, you grab his hands and use him as leverage to stand, too.

"Whaddya wanna play? Or talk about?"

"Uh… I don't know?"

"Do you guys think you'll ever get married?" Deuce blurts out. All 5 of you turn to stare at him. He goes pale before blushing furiously. "Wait, no, I mean —! Since Ace's brother's gonna get married I was thinking about it!"

You hum. "I'unno. Maybe? Mister Crowley cried last night when I asked him if I'd ever get married."

"Ew."

"Yeah."

"I'm gonna get married," Jack asserts. His tail swishes with excitement. "My mom and dad said that I'll know when I found 'the one.'"

"What does that mean?"

He shrugs. "Dunno. But they've been together for forever."

"True. Ace?"

He makes an exaggerated gagging sound. Complete with gestures. "No way! My brother and his fiancée are so gross with each other all the time! It's weird."

"It's gross 'cause he's your brother, dummy."

"And?"

"My mom's not married," Deuce says, plucking at the grass. "She says my dad was a… uh… a 'good-for-nothing scumbag'. She gets all sad when she talks about him, so I dunno about getting married."

"My Grandmother told me that I have to get married one day." Hornton shrugs. "But I don't really think about it."

"So you've never thought about your wedding?" you ask.

Ace shoves you. "You're the only one who has! You're always reading those kissing books."

"So?"

"Kissing books?" Hornton repeats.

"They're called romance and they're good!"

"Real life is grosser," says Ace. You shove him. "Hey!"

"What if we did our own wedding?" Jack interjects. Everyone pauses to look at him. "It can be like training. For when Ace's brother has his, I mean."

"Yeah but who would be who?" Deuce glances over at you, then Hornton. "Why don't you guys play the people getting married?"

"Huh?"

"Oh, yeah! Me 'n Ace 'n Jack 'n Deuce will put up the… the thing!"

"Thing?"

"A chuppah! We gotta make a chuppah!"

"We gotta get some big sticks!"

"I think I saw some branches over on the other side of the tree."

"Nice, Jack! Hey, you 'n Hornton should make some rings! We'll be right back!" Deuce scurries off with the other boys, leaving you and Hornton standing in a stunned silence.

“What?”

“I guess we’re playing wedding?” You shrug and start looking for wildflowers. Hornton watches you with wide eyes. You glance over at him. “C’mon! Help me make the rings!”

He crouches down next to you. Giving you a helpless look, he holds his hands to his chest in hesitation. “Um… how do we do that?”

“We’ll get some flowers and tie the stems! Like making flower crowns! Oh oh oh! We should make flower crowns, too!”

“Oh. I’ve never made a flower crown before. Can you show me?”

“Yeah!” You kneel next to him with a fistful of brightly-colored wildflowers. Hornton watches in rapt attention as you slowly weave their stems together, forming a ring just big enough to fit you as a bracelet. He claps when you present it. Then, without a word, you reach up and drop it onto one of his horns. Hornton sits in stunned silence for a moment before he blushes and mumbles a quiet thanks. He takes the leftover flowers and carefully weaves a crown for you, this one large enough to actually be a crown. His brow furrows as he finishes the crown and then places it on your head. Giggling, you touch the petals. “Thank you, honey!” “H-Honey?”

“Yeah! That’s what the ladies in my romance books call their gentlemen! If we’re getting married I should call you that!”

“Oh!” He smiles, shoulders hunched, then grabs one of the few remaining flowers. “Here, uh, honey. I’ll make your ring.” He winds the stem around your left ring finger, sticking his tongue out in deep concentration. Once he’s knotted the stem, he uses a claw to snip off the excess. Without your prompting, he holds out his own left hand for you to do the same.

“We match!” you whisper-shout, holding your hand next to his.

“Mhm!” His tail thump thump thumps behind him. “Wait, let me try something…” Hornton leans over and touches your flower crown and ring. A bright green light envelops the both of you, and you gasp and squeeze your eyes shut. Once it fades, you crack open one eye. The flowers seem unchanged.

“What’d you do?”

“I tried a spell my Grandmother taught me. It’s s’posed to keep plants from withering!” He twists the flower ring on his finger. “I mean, I don’t know if I did it right, but if I did then we’ll always have these!”

“I like that.” You take off your own ring and cradle it in your palm. “I like it.”

A holler from Epel breaks your focus, and you turn to look at the oak. Beneath it, the boys have stuck four massive branches in the ground. Now, they’re arguing over who will give up their jacket to use as a canopy. Beside you, Hornton sighs and takes off his cloak. With a flick of his wrist, it floats up to rest atop the branches and shade the ground beneath it. The boys shut up, seeing the matter settled.

“Okay, I think we gotta start with… uh…” Deuce frowns and scrunches up his nose. After a long moment of deliberation, he looks at the rest of you helplessly.

“You gotta give each other your rings!” Ace shouts.

You tilt your head. “But we already did that while you were getting the sticks.”

“Then give them back and do it again!”

“Why?”

“‘Cause you gotta!”

You roll your eyes but slide the flower ring off your finger. Hornton does the same, cradling his delicately in his palm. You drop yours in his hand and take his. Pinching the stem between your fingers, you glance over at Ace. “Aren’t you supposed to say something?”

“I’m not the one who’s… uh…” His nose scrunches up as he thinks for a moment. “Mom called them an o-fish-ant?”

“You’re not a fish,” Deuce supplies helpfully.

“It’s ‘officiant’, stupid,” you interject. “Did you guys even pick someone for that?”

“I’ll do it,” says Jack, “‘cause if I don’t, this’ll never be done. And then I’ll miss lunch and my mom will yell at me.”

“You’re taking this way too seriously.” Ace folds his arms behind his head. “We’re just playing!”

“A wedding’s a wedding.”

“Whatever, do your fish thing!” “It’s ‘officiant’!”

Jack clears his throat. You and Hornton turn to give him your rapt attention. His nose scrunches up and one fluffy ear flicks at the air a few times before he begins speaking. “Uh, we’re gonna… start with you giving each other your rings.” He pauses, pursing his lips. “... Go on. Do it.”

You raise your left hand dutifully, and Hornton slides the flower ring onto your finger. You do the same for him. Both he and Jack look so serious about this that it’s hard not to giggle. “Okay, now what?”

“Um…”

“Oh! I remember one’a my cousins got married and she walked ‘round her husband a bunch!”

“That sounds weird.”

“It was! But she did it!”

“How many times did she do it?”

“I dunno.”

“Wouldn’t you get dizzy?” Deuce mumbles.

“I mean, she seemed fine.”

You glance at Epel, shrug, then look back at Hornton. “Wanna do it?” He nods eagerly. Again, you try not to giggle. Hornton beams. “Okay, I’ll go first! Epel, how many times should I do it?”

“Uh… I dunno, until you start getting dizzy?”

“Bet I can do more than you,” you whisper to Hornton. He stares at you, wide-eyed, then grins so sharply you barely recognize him.

“Bet you’re wrong.”

You both laugh. Taking a deep breath, you start to walk around and around and around Hornton. He spins with you, wobbling. Meanwhile, your friends count every lap. One, two, three, four — you get to seven, and decide to tap out. Hornton puffs out his chest and, a little green in the face, starts circling you, instead. He also makes it to seven.

“Aw,” you mutter. “It’s a tie.”

“I totally could’ve beat you if I went first.” You stick your tongue out at Hornton. He giggles to himself. Then, he turns to Jack. “So, uh, what next?”

“Umm…” Jack’s face screws up in contemplation. His ears swivel back and forth for a moment, before he hesitantly replies, “Uh… you’re married now?”

“I don’t think that’s it,” you say.

“Aren’t we s’posed to… kiss?”

You stare at Hornton, who appears just as flustered as you now feel. “I think so.”

“Wait!” Ace reaches into his coat pocket and retrieves a small pinecone. He sets it on the ground between you and Hornton. “You’re supposed’ta crush it first!”

“Isn’t it supposed to be glass?” Jack asks, and Ace shoves him. “Hey!”

“Do you wanna go get glass to step on?”

“... No.”

“‘Kay, then pinecone it is!” He gestures enthusiastically at the pinecone. “Crush it! Go! Go! Go!”

You squeeze Hornton’s hand, giggling, and in unison you both lift a foot and crush the pinecone under your feet. It gives a loud, crackling crunch, and its little seed pockets burst and go flying. Your friends hoot and holler in celebration.

“‘Kay, now you need to kiss!” Ace declares.

Hornton turns beet red. “Kiss?”

“Like, for real?” you squeak.

“Uh, yeah, otherwise it’s not a wedding.”

You fidget with your ring, face hot. Hornton stares at you with wide, uncertain eyes. All the while, your friends (well, everyone but Jack) chant, “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”

You’re the one to take the initiative. Squeezing your eyes shut, you lean in and give Hornton a brief, chaste kiss. It lasts only for a second, and from his startled squeak, it’s almost as if he expected that nothing would ever happen. Behind you, Epel and Ace gag dramatically.

“Ewww, you actually did it!” Epel shakes you by the shoulders and cackles through his words. “Gross!”

“You wanted us to kiss!” you protest. Before you can say more, he lifts you on his shoulders. Your words become a shrill squeal, and you can see Ace and Deuce struggling to lift Hornton, as well. “EPEL! PUT ME DOWN!”

“You’re married!” he crows. “You kissed someone!”

For his part, Hornton buries his face in his hands while Ace and Deuce finally manage to lift him up together.

“Uh… mazel tov,” Jack mumbles.

“We’re not actually married!” Even as you say this, you can’t help your rosy cheeks, nor the way your heart races as you meet Hornton’s electric gaze. He smiles bashfully as he grips Ace and Deuce’s shoulders for balance.

Hours later, after you and Hornton and your friends have spent the rest of the day dancing together and chatting and playing tag, you and Hornton are the only ones left at the park. Everyone else went home as the sun began to set. You run your fingers over your ring’s petals, fascinated by their softness.

“Did you have fun?” you ask, voice small. “I know my friends can be a lot…”

“Yeah.” A faint flush brings life to Hornton’s pale face. He smiles, and the sun casts him in gold. “I haven’t had this much fun in forever. Thank you.” For a moment, he hesitates, then he reaches to grab your hand. “Um… will you be here tomorrow?”

You nod, perhaps a little too enthusiastically. “Mhm! Do you… wanna read together, maybe?”

It’s as if the sun is rising again when he beams. He gives your hand a squeeze. “I’d like that.”

Though you’re loath to leave, you force yourself to give Hornton a squeeze in return before you pull back. “I gotta go before Mister Crowley starts worrying. Bye, Hornton.”

“Goodbye.”

—

When you go home, you can’t stop yourself from spinning the flower ring on your finger. Crowley asks you what you’re giggling about over dinner, and all you do is grin and show him the ring and crown. He rolls his eyes, muttering about children and their whimsies (whatever that means), and shoos you off to bed once you’ve finished and cleaned up. Before you crawl under the covers, you take off the flowers and place both pieces delicately on your nightstand.

The next day, once school is over, you run to your oak tree. You’re wearing your ring again, unable to stop looking at it and its perfectly-maintained petals. With an excited shout of “HORNTON!” you swing around to the other side of the tree.

And it’s empty.

Your heart drops.

‘Maybe he’s doing something with his grandma?’

The next day, you approach your tree again, less enthused and more nervous. He’s not there.

‘I thought we were gonna play together again.’

Day after day, you check your tree. Day after day, you’re greeted with no sign of the boy you’d started to befriend. Spring turns into summer. Ace’s brother gets married, and all you can think about during the ceremony is a scaly black tail thump thump thumping against the ground. When the leaves of your oak tree begin to turn gold and orange and red, you stop checking.

The ring and the flower crown remain just as pristine as they were the day they were made. You leave the crown on your dresser and wear the ring to class every day.

Years pass. You grow up. Your friends start taking extra lessons after classes a few times a week to train their magic. A new teacher from the city starts to visit, a young man named Divus Crewel. He teaches chemistry and alchemy, and you take to it like a fish to water. The private lessons you get from him almost help to soothe the beast of envy that grows in your chest every time you leave your friends to their magic classes. By the time you turn 13, the ring no longer fits. You keep it and the crown in a little wooden box tucked lovingly beneath your bed. Sometimes, you take them out and marvel at how little they’ve changed. Your friends, however, change just as rapidly as you do. Their magical prowess grows at a startling rate. You content yourself with cheering from the sidelines and working on your alchemical skills. Ace and Deuce try to bind Grim to you as a familiar first when you’re 16 (It doesn’t work, but your hair briefly catches fire). They next try when you’re 18 (It almost works. Crowley says it may have to do with your utter lack of any magic. You try not to feel resentful.). At last, on your 19th birthday, they succeed. It’s quite possibly the best gift you’ve ever gotten; Grim’s life is prolonged for as long as he’s bound to you.

By 20, you and your friends (by some miracle) all get accepted to the university in the city, the same one that Professors Trein and Crewel teach at. You start working under Crewel as a student alchemist (He says you’re one of his most promising students, especially because you have no magic to use as a shortcut. For once, you don’t wilt at the mention of magic.). You see your first real gargoyle on one of the older campus buildings. You take a photo, your mind conjuring up a fanged grin and excited electric green eyes. ‘Does Hornton still like gargoyles?’ you wonder as you save the photo. Years later, at your graduation ceremony, you take another photo of the gargoyle. Now, it’s decorated with a few fabric-flower leis that your fellow graduates managed to get over its head. ‘Look, Hornton, the gargoyle is celebrating, too!’

You return to your hometown after receiving your degree. Crowley graciously allows you to stay at home (although you suspect he might just like having another hand to help around the house) while you continue your work as an alchemist. Crewel has hired you full-time as a lab assistant. Every day you take the train into the city for work. Sometimes, when you get all caught up in your head and the novelty of watching the world pass by through the window, you find yourself reaching for your left ring finger to twist a ring that isn’t there.

‘It’s been almost twenty years,’ you chastise yourself, ‘why are you still thinking about that boy?’

Despite your age, your experience in romance is limited to the cheesy romance novels and cheap bodice-rippers that populate your bookshelf, interspersed between your textbooks and notebooks. For some reason, you could never bring yourself to try dating. Every time the thought comes to you, you feel the phantom sensation of a soft stem wrapped around your finger. Your friends tease you about it. Ace calls you a dweeb. Epel says you’re acting foolish over a stupid game you played as children. Deuce laughs and does a pantomime of your fake wedding. Jack just shakes his head knowingly. He’s the most understanding about it — wolves mate for life, and he gets why you would take a play-wedding to heart. That doesn’t stop him from getting a jab or two in on occasion, though.Some days, you pull the box out from under your bed and look at the flowers. As always, they look just as perfect as the day they were picked. Now that you’re older, you’ve learned more about magic. The spell required to make and maintain such perfect preservation requires both skill and a wellspring of magic. The amount of magic alone would send most experienced mages into overblot. This only stokes your curiosity. How did Hornton, a child hardly older than you, cast such a spell with ease? Who was he? It’s a question that haunts you. It’s a question you know you’ll never get an answer to.

#malleus x reader #malleus draconia #malleus x yuu #twst wonderland #twisted wonderland #twst fic #twisted wonderland fic #my writing #seraph speaks

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jelzorz · 1 year ago

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158.

"Hey, you know how to pick locks, right?"

It's an odd thing to ask. Callum's always been weird like that, Rayla supposes, and usually his weird questions are related to magic, and Xadia, and elven script and Rayla is (generally) happy to oblige. What can she say? He likes to learn, and the lilt in his voice and the light in his eyes and the excitement in his smile is endearing, and she's never been particularly good at saying no, at least not to him.

But this one is weird because it's not a Xadia thing, or a magic thing, or an elven script thing, and when he asks, he's not nearly as upbeat about it. At first, she doesn't get it. It's a useful skill to have, and a fun skill to master—it's like a puzzle but more fiddly, and Rayla had taught herself years and years ago because she didn't like it when Ethari and Runaan tried to keep her out of places, so of course she learned (in part) to spite them. Callum's never really had the same restrictions because he's a prince, and all he has to do to unlock anything is ask, usually, and yet—

"Can you teach me?"

"Er. Sure?" Rayla tilts her head at him curiously. "You planning a heist or something?"

Callum chuckles a little. "Or something," he says cryptically. "What, you don't think I can do it?"

"I don't think it's your style," says Rayla. "You're a prince and high mage, why on earth would you need to know how to pick a lock?"

He smirks then. "Ancient tomes, forbidden libraries, old abandoned ruins, jellytart runs... All sorts of reasons. Just feels like a necessary skill for adventure, y'know?"

Rayla laughs at that. "I mean, I guess. How often are you intending to break into forbidden libraries and old abandoned ruins?"

"As often as I need to, thank you very much. I have a whole life of adventure ahead of me, and I'll be damned if not being able to pick locks is the thing that stops me."

Rayla shakes her head at him, trying not to laugh at the way he wheedles. She was never going to say no, and he knows it, and he's far too smug about it for it not to be funny. For a second, she actually forgets that it's a weird thing to ask and teases him back: "Fine, but you'll have to ask Opeli for the handcuffs. I'm sure she won't wonder why you want them."

Callum snickers loudly at that, and it's that simple, that easy, just jokes between the two of them about a skill they don't really need, until later, when Rayla's showing him the mechanics of a lock and a thought occurs to her that reminds her why the whole thing feels a bit off-kilter.

"You know, we've only really had problems with locks, like, twice," she muses. "There was that one time Opeli arrested me, and then that time on Sea Legs, but I mean, you managed fine."

Something flickers across Callum's face. His smile twitches, falters, and if Rayla didn't know him so well, she might have missed it because she can see how hard he's trying to make it less of a deal than it is.

"Yeah, well." He shifts uncomfortably, the memory just as unpleasant for him. "I don't want repeats. I don't want anyone else trying to feed you to any sea leviathans."

"Somehow I think that was a one time thing." Rayla pauses, her smile fading a little as she fiddles with the manacles on his wrists. "How'd you get out of the chains Finnegrin put you in anyway? You apparently didn't pick them."

There's a pause. Callum looks away, and the whole world stills as the realisation dawns over Rayla, as cold as the way her blood froze in her veins that same day.

"...Callum."

"I had to do," he says quietly. He meets her gaze then, and the storm in his eyes makes her intestines writhe like snakes. "I couldn't let him hurt you."

Rayla says nothing for a moment, fingers hovering over the chains locked around his wrists. Her heart thumps heavily. Her breath shudders out. "Well," she says after a moment. "I guess we have to make sure you don't end up in that position a third time."

"You're not angry?"

"I don't know." She touches his hand then and finds herself relieved that it's still warm under her fingers. She doesn't know how to feel about it, but they're both alive and they're both safe so... that must count for something. "It doesn't matter," she says in the end. "I'm just... Glad we're okay. You won't do it again anyway."

Callum looks up at her. "Won't I?"

"No." Rayla hands him the lockpick. "I won't let you."

#this is a mess but im sleep deprived which is always my excuse and always valid #rayllum #in anticipation

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sugar-omi · 1 year ago

Note

Can we know some Baxter thoughts on the scenario with MC leaving Cove and Baxter and MC eloping after the split? I'm invested

bro i think we're all mentally connected bc i just mention is this post that i forgot to add some stuff abt how baxter acts. tysm for sending this and omg i find it so funny everyone's so invested in this little story!! i never knew itd end up like this lmaooo

tags : Angst, (emotional) cheating, y'all live in delulu land, multiple choice dialogue, your moms distance themselves/disown you

[read "leaving cove for baxter" here]

synopsis : how does baxter act when you leave cove for him?

baxter feels so bad...

honestly he doesn't understand why you're doing this, he's so confused

he's happy that you still love him

but he see's how great of a man cove is and it kills him more than anything

he begs you not to do this

"y/n please! be rational!" baxter's fingers dig into his palms. he's trying to keep calm, but he's heard the best and worst news of his life.

you sit across from him, hands in your lap and crying. "i am. i... i love cove, and he's amazing. but you are everything i want."

baxter gapes, watching you cry with wide eyes. "i tried to forget about you, but I just can't.. I love you. I love you so much more than him!" you sob, hands covering your face.

baxter's hands are shaking.

he's happy to hear that you love him but you're engaged.

you're supposed to be married soon, all that's left is to pick out your outfits and the dance lessons and now...

baxter swallows. "and you've... thought about it?"

you nod.

baxter sighs, rubbing his sweaty palms on his dress pants. "...okay."

baxter is waiting for you that night when you break it off.

and when you walk through his door, with tears in your eyes he wraps his arms around you as you cry and tell him about how it went.

cove was distraught, to say the least. and after much crying and "why"'s, cove stopped crying and was just mad...

a quiet man's scorn is a scary thing..

"get out." cove doesn't look at you, he can't. if he does he'll actually combust and explode.

you gape, "..what?"

cove looks at you, suddenly enraged by your oblivion. "I said get out!" cove stands up, hands fisted at his side. you didn't believe he'd hit you or harm you in anyway, but you've very rarely seen him angry.

"why are you sitting there looking dumb? you just said you love someone else! our fucking WEDDING planner at that!" cove yells. "what? did you wanna stay and play happy family with me while you fuck him!?"

cove laughs humorlessly. "I can't believe you... don't you wanna be with him? you should just leave." what cove says next shakes you.

"or maybe you want to fuck him in our bed, in our home!" cove is crying again, frustrated and angry.

you start crying, "no! i-" you don't know what you're trying to say, if anything at all and your sobs cut you off.

"then leave, get your shit and leave!"

cove storms to your bedroom as you cry. when you finally get enough strength in your legs again you go upstairs to see him roughly packing your things into the bags and suitcases.

you shake, starting to grab some of your other things and packing them shakily into the bags.

cove starts hauling the suitcases to the car, quiet as can be.

once most things that can fit into your car are closed up, cove stands on the porch of your home. or what used to be your home.

you stand in front of him, shaking.

cove stopped crying awhile ago, and his anger fell off him awhile ago too. now he just looks calm, but if you know him worth anything than you know that once the door closes he'll break.

cove hands you his engagement ring. "sell it, or keep it, propose to your new boyfriend."

cove hands you his half of the $20 bill. you gape at him, god you made a fool of yourself today. "throw it away. burn it. I don't care anymore, so don't hold onto it."

cove crosses his arms, "sell the ring. i don't want it."

cove hands you his engagement ring. "sell the rings, i don't want mine. marry your new boyfriend instead."

he slams the door.

baxter lets you weep. he doesn't feel upset that you're mourning the relationship, you've known him for 15 years and even if you wanted for him, you loved cove everyday until now..

when your family cuts you off and distances themselves, he watches you fall apart.

you just got off the phone with your ma, who chewed you out for choosing baxter of cover. he could hear her yells through the phone since you had it on speaker.

you were going to grocery shop together and cook for a date, but with your shaking hands and puffy eyes, you're in no shape to do anything.

so he lets you cry.

when miranda calls you, he watches the shock on your face morph to shame and pure emptiness.

miranda is screaming, cussing you out for hurting cove.

"why did you have to ruin everything for him?! what's so good about him?!"

you just cry, mumbling sorry's in between miranda's yells.

he holds your hand while you curl in on yourself, tears soaking into the rug under your feet...

baxter helps you pack away the last of your furniture in the house.

when he first entered it, he could tell the love had been ripped off the walls...

there was so much decoration missing.

there weren't any pictures on the walls.

in fact, he found your photo album and your sister takes it from his hands, not looking or speaking to him as she packs it into her bag..

many of the photos he saw were of cove with you and your family. too many memories you won't want and will hide in a dusty corner anyway if you did keep it.

he just carries the boxes to the u-haul, watching the house bleed with everything that comes out of it.

something about the dark house in the distance kills him, and he sits silently in his shame...

over the next few months you finally stop crying.

the phone calls stop coming and you're cheer comes back.

it's definitely different compared to when you were younger, and a far cry from what it was when you were still with cove, but you both act like it never happened.

maybe you're deluding yourselves, but when baxter wakes up and his heart bumps in his chest, it increases his anxiety and he feels like his throat is closing up..

baxter throws the covers off himself, getting up to wash up and find you.

whenever silence comes to him, the shame always finds him...

after changing into new clothes, baxter goes to find you in the kitchen, and when you greet him with a brilliant smile and a kiss, the shame melts away.

this is okay.

baxter stirs, warmed up by your hand caressing his face.

he blinks through blurry vision, smiling as he admires you. "good morning.."

you smile, running your finger along the angle of his nose. "g'morning handsome..." you lean forward n lay a kiss on his cheek.

baxter lets the warmth of your palm sink into his skin, sleep creeping back into him.

"let's get married."

baxter's eyes fly open, gaping at you like a fish.

"w-what?"

you sit up wordlessly, reaching into your nightstand and pulling out a dark purple fabric box, cracking it open to present a ring.

"i love you, and i wanna make sure i keep waking up to you everyday so.. baxter, will you marry me?"

when you come back from your short honeymoon, just a small weekend trip a quick run away from home, to match your quick wedding, your joy seeps through the floor..

for the weekend you didn't look at your phones, or at least didn't check social media and there wasn't any missed phone calls or messages.

but when baxter comes home from work he found you crying softly on the couch, trying to wipe away your tears before baxter could see but it was useless.

he crouched in front of you. "whats wrong?"

you show him derek's message, and once he finishes reading that, you show him one more...

COVE: hey. COVE: congrats on your marriage i guess... just wanted to tell you the house is sold, i gave dad back what he gifted for the down payment and the rest is yours. COVE: bye [you can no longer send messages to this user]

baxter blinks at it slowly... even though he's been so badly betrayed, cove still wishes you congratulations.

cove is a better man than baxter will ever be.

...

baxter sets your phone down, pulling you up and leading you down the hall.

"what do you think about me washing your hair, and after i'll prepare us a nice meal. what do you think?"

it's fine. shame is eating baxter up from his head to his feet, but everything is fine.

even when he pets your hair while you sleep, and whispers into the night. "i'm sorry... you've lost you're family because of me..."

even if he frets about how you've given up everything for him, it's fine.

you're happy together. maybe you can be happy with just the two of you? maybe. maybe...

#our life: beginnings & always #olba #our life baxter #baxter ward x reader #baxter x reader #baxter ward #baxter ward x reader angst #baxter ward x mc #angst #baxter ward angst #baxter ward x mc angst #baxter our life

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mistress-ofmagic · 2 years ago

Text

Around the Realms in 80 days- Chapter 18

Pairing: Reader x Loki

Story summary: You have fallen through a portal during the convergence into Asgard and come face to face with Thor, and his brother Loki. With no way to return, you must travel with the two men and their hoard of asgardian soldiers to get back home. Things get from bad to worse when you have to share a tent with the god of mischief himself.

Notes: Oh hi there! Welcome to another chapter (this Is pretty good timing for me, two chapters in a month? Who says I don't feed you! This was a fun chapter to write, I did a lil bit of breaking the 4th wall here lol! I know a lot of you hated Latte to begin with because she was a lil nervy and didn’t always stick up for herself (Im only going off on what I would be like guys lmao some of us are very soft and not at all brave or heroic) and I know she’s a bit of a reluctant hero or an anti-hero, she'd much rather be chilling somewhere with her coffee than faced with this shit!

Anyway, enjoy!

Read this story on a03!

find all parts to this story on Tumblr here

Jesus Christ…” You muttered under your breath as you stormed off, leaving Stark Towers behind you.

“Uh…Latte?”

You span round to face Oliver, who was having to do a fast pace walk to catch up with you.

“What?” You asked rather sharper than you intended.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, that’s so embarrassing. It’s been…”

“Stressful morning?” Oliver grinned good-naturedly.

You sighed. “Kind of.”

“I can’t imagine. Where do you want to go?”

“Honestly I don’t know the city at all.” You forced a smile, trying to forget L-O-K-I and enjoy the rest of your day.

“Where would you recommend?”

Oliver smiled again. He was a smiley person, you noticed. Unlike he-who-shall-not-be-named who usually looked unimpressed at best, especially when you were around. He looked cute again today; it felt strange seeing him without his lab coat on, as if he was missing something somehow. He was wearing jeans and a graphic tee-shirt, his brown hair tousled again as if he constantly runs his hands through it, and his hazel eyes seemed to light up when he smiled. His face was open and sincere, again unlike Loki who was closed and harsh. Maybe there was something to be said of their life experiences though; while you didn’t know much about Oliver and his life, you doubted he had ever tried to take over an entire planet and been defeated and imprisoned.

Still…suppose you can never be too careful. Enough tinder dates had taught you that.

You realised you had been staring at him and hadn’t listened at all to his response.

“Sorry, what did you say?” You asked sheepishly.

He laughed, “I suggested we could go to the museum of modern art? Or if you would prefer to just see some sights we could go to times square…?”

“Museum sounds good. Sorry, I’m a little distracted.”

He chucked as you started heading off in the direction of the museum together. The day continued to be pleasant enough and you actually began to enjoy your stroll despite the way the morning had gone.

Oliver broke the cordial silence.

“So then, I guess the number one question…how did you get landed with the task of being Loki’s…companion?”

“Companion?” You screwed your face up.

Oliver laughed, “well, whatever you’d call your relationship.”

“I try not to call it anything.” You muttered under your breath.

You begin to explain the situation to Oliver, and the rollercoaster that was yours and Loki’s so called “relationship”.

Oliver gave a low whistle after you finally finished regaling him with your sorry tale of woe.

“Man…that’s heavy.”

“Horrible isn’t it.” You sighed glumly.

“I can’t believe you got kidnapped!”

“Kidnapped, bullied by trolls, meeting Loki, it’s been the worst of times.”

He laughed and you scowled at him.

“It’s not funny, my life is a Shakespearen tragedy.”

“No no, of course not, I’m sorry. Is meeting Loki really as bad as being attacked by trolls?”

“Far, far worse.”

For some reason, Oliver seemed to think you were joking and laughed.

But…you do seem to find yourself in some scrapes don’t you.”

“Scrapes find me, I am merely a passive entity to which disaster finds.”

“I find that a little difficult to believe, given that by the sounds of it you basically begged to stay here.” Olivers eyes twinkled with good-hearted mirth.

“That’s…that’s beside the point.”

“Of course, of course. You know…I’m not so sure though.”

“About what?”

“If I didn’t know any better, and despite all your complaining, I’d say you rather enjoy traveling around with Loki.”

You spluttered, “What? What are you trying to say?”

“Loki this, Loki that. I’m just saying, for someone who hates him so, you do enjoy talking about him.”

You stared at him, horrified. An awful though suddenly appeared…over the past few weeks had you managed to pass the Bechdel test?

“That’s not…” The words got stuck in your throat.

Maybe Oliver could tell how nauseated you were because he said gently,

“I’m joking Latte. It sounds like you’ve been through hell and back. You’ve been so brave I’m not sure many people could do what you have done.”

You blushed and stuttered for a different reason.

“I’m sure that’s not true. Besides I didn’t really have a choice. Sink or swim I guess. I was pretty cowardly to begin with, I let Loki scare the shit out of me. I’m not…a brave person, I’m not particularly tough.”

“I would disagree, the story you just told me would suggest otherwise. Jesus knows I couldn’t have done half the things you did, I would have laid in the corner and cried.”

You snorted.

“Arguably, that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing.”

“You’re the hero, you have to go through some sort of journey.” Oliver winked at you.

“Oh please, I’m definitely the anti-hero, the people at home watching the inevitable film of my life will be screaming at the tv I’m sure.”

“Well, anti-hero or not, I’d watch that movie.”

You really wanted to make a snide comment about that making Loki the villain in this particular story, but you kept your mouth shut given that Oliver seemed to think you were infatuated with the Asgardian God. Definitely not true, by the way.

“Sure, ‘my life as the worlds worst avenger’ coming to cinemas soon.”

“I think I’d prefer ‘How to train your fire demon.’” Oliver joined in.

“Or, ‘Asgardian Psycho.” You snorted, thinking back to Loki.

“What about ‘An Earthling in Asgard?”

You grinned, “it’s good, but a little on the nose, plus I’m not just in Asgard anymore, I’m quite the realm traveler.”

“Fine then, how about ‘Around the Realms in 80 days.”

You laughed, “That’s not bad, you never know with the rate things are going I might end up doing just that.”

“How are you feeling about your upcoming trip?”

You sighed, a little wave of anxiety settling into your stomach.

“Pretty nervous. I’m not sure who I think I’m kidding being here in the first place, and now apparently I’m traveling to a dangerous realm of fire and brimstone, where I’ll probably get myself killed no doubt.” You paused,

“Sorry, I don’t mean to offload! It can’t be much worse than the current state of things anyway.”

“Please, don’t feel bad!”

“Maybe some modern art will cheer me up. Hey, actually, how did you find out my stupid nickname?” You asked, realising he had been calling you your misnomer.

Oliver laughed sheepishly,

“Well, I heard Thor call you that when he was talking to Stark yesterday.”

“Oh god, what did he say?”

“Only good things!” Oliver hurried to reassure you. “Just discussing your amazing performance with the demon in the cell.”

“Hm, I don’t believe you but for the sake of my self-esteem I won’t press further.”

After a short walk, you made it to the museum and followed Oliver inside. You insisted on paying for your own ticket, of course.

You had just about settled into an enjoyable afternoon, wandering around the exhibits when your phone starting beeping. You ignored it at first and then your phone started ringing.

You stared at it and blinked twice as Loki’s named popped up on your phone. It had also been him texting you apparently. The message flashed on your screen.

Loki: There’s an emergency

“Is everything okay? You look ill.” Oliver asked.

“This can’t be good.” You sighed. “Let me take this.”

You walked over to the entrance of the exhibit as to not disturb everyone there.

“Loki?”

“Hello little mortal, enjoying yourself on your, what do the young midgardians call it, A date?” Loki spoke lazily.

“Its not a date!” You hissed loudly into the phone, raising some eyebrows around you.

“It’s not a date.” You repeated again quietly as you turned your back.

“I think the lady doth protest too much.”

“Seriously what is wrong with you?”

“Not much, what’s up with you?”

You could basically feel Loki’s irritating grin through the phone.

“God you give me whiplash. What do you want Loki I’m busy.”

“Not too busy to pick up the phone I see.” You could hear a smug tone to his voice.

“I only picked it up because you said it was an emergency.”

“What emergency could I possibly need your help with.”

“Okay, goodbye Loki.”

“Wait, actually there is an emergency.”

You sighed and rubbed your forehead. Man, this god was going to turn you grey.

“What?” You snapped. You were in no doubt there was no emergency and Loki was ringing you to just mess with you.

There was a pause on the phone. You considered hanging up before he finally continued,

“Stark has arranged for a movie night tonight and we all have to attend.” In his defence Loki sounded very glum, as if something horrible had truly happened.

“That’s not an emergency Loki. Now excuse me while I go back to my not date.”

“Where are you?” He asked.

Your eyes narrowed suspiciously, and you looked around you, scared incase he popped up from behind a statue or something.

“Were in the museum of modern art. Why?”

“No need to sound so distrustful.” Loki sounded amused, “I had no idea you were such a connoisseur of fine art, you never struck me as the type.”

You bristled at his insinuation that you were not sophisticated enough to enjoy art.

“I actually love going to museums. Just because I don’t walk around acting like I’m the dogs bollocks doesn’t mean I’m not cultured.”

“Do you have to use such crass language when we speak?”

“Do we have to speak at all?” You retorted back, still scanning the room slightly just incase he showed up.

“I visited your planet with Odin and Thor when I was a child and we visited a place called Rome, they had a great number of many museums.”

“Oh? Was this when Julius Caesar was still in power?”

Loki ignored your comment,

“Of course, not as many as we have on Asgard. Since you are so interested in museums I can visit together the next time we visit.” He spoke lightly.

You paused, was Loki asking you out? And not just because he had to because of the whole babysitting thing?

“Uh, yeah. I guess I didn’t think that I would go back though, to Asgard. Odin wasn’t mighty pleased I was there in the first place.”

“Odin is not usually mighty pleased about anything, especially if I’m involved.” He kept his voice light and humorous, but there was something deeper underneath.

The admission came as a surprise, you weren’t that used to Loki speaking about his feelings (kind of) so easily and you were stumped for a response.

“Well New York has plenty of museums too.” You offered, unsure of what else to say.

“Indeed.”

The phone went quiet again. It really was unsettling how quickly the two of you seemed to go from arguing to tolerating each other, and even more unsettling, the occasional moments of companionship with a hint of friendship.

Not that you were sure he would put you in that category with the way he had recently snapped at you; when you’d tried to enquire about his parenthood and just before you came on this not date. Although he had also magicked your up a new wardrobe and seemed to get very upset when he thought you were dying so that had to count for something, right?

Come to think of it, you never actually really addressed the whole “friendship” thing after that long talk the other night on the balcony, where Loki had finally stopped acting like a dick for long enough as to apologise for his actions and have a serious conversation about where you stood with him. He had really opened up then, about how he felt about getting close to mortals. You supposed you couldn’t really be too shocked then, when he seemed to distance himself from you a little the last few days.

The hot and cold act was not enjoyable but was almost understandable if you saw things from his perspective. You just had to be careful not to get burnt or frozen in the process.

Not that anyone wants to look at things from Lokis perspective for too long, they’d get a migraine.

Look at you being all mature and shit!

You thought back to those nights of sharing a tent with Loki, it felt so long ago now despite not being long ago at all. You had been so scared of him then, so unsure of how he would react next.

Now? Well he was still a mystery and could still be a complete arse, but perhaps he was opening up to you, slowly. You needed to be patient but only to an extent right, he was obviously a complex guy; not that that gave him a right of passage to be a knob.

“What are you up to then now?” You asked.

To your surprise, Loki played along.

“Well now you’re gone I get to enjoy some peace and quiet for once, reading my books.”

You almost hit back with “so that’s why you called me then, is it?” But stopped yourself. You realised then that Loki was bored. That’s why he’d been so annoyed that you had spent the afternoon with Oliver. Probably.

I mean, aside from you and Thor, it’s not like he had a lot of friends from what you had seen. Another thing the two of you actually had in common. You didn’t have a lot of friends here either.

You bit down on your nails, an old habit you had whenever you felt anxious about something.

“Stop that dreadful noise or I shall put the phone down.”

Only paying half attention, you stepped back into someone and banged your side pretty hard.

“Ow, dickhead.” You muttered as they shot you a dirty look and walked off.

“What? What’s happening?” Loki barked.

“Oh nothing, just this asshole walking into me.”

“Was it that Midgardian boy?”

“What midgardian boy?” You asked absent-mindedly. “Oh shit, Oliver.” You suddenly remembered your not-date probably wondering what the hell you were doing.

“Anyway, I should get back to…I’ll see you later.”

“yes.” Loki said stiffly “I’d hate to keep you from your beau.”

“Nobody says beau anymore by the way. S’later.”

“Goodbye mortal.”

You hung up your phone and quickly went to rejoin Oliver.

“Hey, sorry I took so long.”

“Everything okay?”

“Literally fine, he just wanted to complain about Tonys movie night or something.”

“Look at you, movie nights with the Avengers!”

“I know, I’m going up in the world. Careful what you say to me now, I’ve got the force of Earths defenders on my side.”

Oliver chuckled and held his hands up.

“I see that. Remind me not to get on the wrong side of you.”

You turned back to the photography exhibit, wondering what it would actually be like to visit a museum with Loki one day.

***

You wandered back into the towers later that evening. After the museum, you had gone for a few drinks with Oliver and, as it was, you were feeling rather tipsy.

Actually, this was the second time you had been tipsy in the last few days, you reminded yourself, better not make it a habit.

Still, Oliver was cute, right?

Not rip-my-clothes-off-and-take-me cute, but cute all the same.

He was very sweet and funny too and although you maybe saw him as friend-material at the moment, that didn’t mean something couldn’t happen in the future. Plus it was nice to have a friend that wasn’t a hundred year plus old god.

You could get used to the city living, although there was a part of you that missed the Asgardian country side too.

The atrium into Stark Towers took your breath away, you felt far too unsophisticated to be staying there. It was not the sort of place you’d ever particularly imagined yourself but you were going to enjoy your time for as long as you had. Grinning, probably overly familiarly in your slightly drunken state, at the security and receptionists on the ground floor you made your way over to the lift, preparing to stand there for all of eternity due to the many floors. You decided to turn your phone back on to check for any messages you missed after turning your phone off earlier to save battery.

Two missed calls and a few texts from Loki?

Loki: When are you retuning mortal it is nearly dark?

Loki: Mortal?

Loki: Answer my calls right this instance or there will be consequences.

Loki: Loki, Prince of Asgard.

You snorted and replied.

You: Why did you text me your own name, weirdo. What’s up?

And for the fun of it, you sent him a little gif of the “wazup” scene in Scary Movie.

Making your way up the many floors in Starks state of the art lift, you waited for Loki to reply.

Loki: How dare you not answer me when I asked you to. Clearly, you needed reminding of who I am. Secondly, what, in all of the nine realms is that?

You: Firstly, I’m not just at your beck and call Loki, I was a bit busy. Secondly, It’s a gif. It’s just like a moving picture that you send to be funny.

Loki: Busy? With that midgardian boy? Disgusting. I didn’t find the moving picture particularly amusing. Please don’t send me one again.

You: Get your mind out of the gutter.

You were hit with a sudden inspiration. You quickly searched for the gif you wanted and found it. Who knew there were so many Loki gifs. The particular one you were after was Loki shouting “kneel” to the ground in Stuttgart during his last soiree to Earth.

Loki: ?

Loki: It is imperative that you tell me how you acquired this.

You laughed out loud to yourself, as you put your phone away wishing you could see Loki’s face as you had send that gif.

You figured, given the time, that Stark would have already started the film night, so you headed towards the most likely lounge areas on the penultimate floor. Your guess was right, and you could see through the glass doors the Avengers sat around watching what you were pretty sure was Kill Bill.

The sight made you giggle, and you remembered you needed to try very hard at not being a little bit drunk. You were pretty sure the Avengers all thought you were slightly strange to begin with, you needed to change their mind.

You shushed yourself aloud, and prepared to enter quietly and normally. Quietly and normally. Quietly and normally.

You pushed the door slightly and entered. So far so good, no one had particularly noticed you entering. Quiet and normal. Excellent. You scanned the room, looking for an empty seat. Your long distance eye sight wasn’t great as it is thanks to years of starting at screens and it was pretty dark, but you thought there was one free near Thor so you headed over silently.

That was, until, someone very rudely had put a pouff right in your way and you tripped up, slamming your knees into the side of a sofa.

“Shit” You yelled, rather loudly.

All the Avengers in the room turned and started at you.

“Nice of you to join us Wonderland, please come in.” Stark said, dryly.

You grinned wildly, deciding it best not to say anything, and took the closest seat.

“Mortal.” A low voice spoke to your left.

“Oh for gods sake” You muttered and glared at Loki for the audacity of sitting where you were now forced to sit.

Loki seemed amused by this reaction and smirked at you irritatingly. You glared even harder and then faced the TV.

“You’re back very late.” Loki spoke softly next to you, with a note of contention in his voice.

You decided to ignore him, and tried to focus on the film. You’d never actually seen Kill Bill all the way through and coming in half way was pretty confusing. Loki tried again.

“I hope you haven’t been fraternising with your mortal boy?”

“Stop accusing me of fraternising every three seconds, and it’s none of your business even if I was." You huffed out of the corner of your mouth, as to not disturb the rest of them.

Loki looked annoyingly happy that you had risen to the bait.

“I’m going to get popcorn.” You mumbled, and stood up to head towards the back of the room where the snacks and were.

You stood up too quickly and had to grab the sofa and a blink a couple of times until the black dots stopped floating in front of you. You suppressed the need to giggle and made your way over to the back, being very careful to watch where you placed your feet.

The lights were on towards the back and you squinted to get used to the light change. You hummed about the snack bar; Stark, or more likely someone who worked for him, had thought of literally every snack you might need to watch a film.

Pick and Mix, chocolate, popcorn, and plenty of treats you’d never even seen before.

“What are these?” A voice spoke behind you.

You jumped in the air, very nearly spilling the popcorn you had picked up.

“Jesus Loki.”

You looked around to see if anyone had noticed, but you were pretty far back and out of ear shot around this area.

“Can you not?”

“Not what? He asked, with a fake innocence.

“Not…do whatever you’re doing now.”

“I’m merely standing here.”

“And here I was thinking you had better things to do than stand and talk to Midgardians.” You repeated his words from earlier back at him.

Loki rolled his eyes at you.

“You surely know how to hold a grudge.”

“I surely do bitch.”

He didn’t find this very funny and shot you a displeased look.

“You are drunk again.”

You tutted and made double sure no one was listening.

“I’m not drunk Low-key.” You elongated his name as you helped yourself to some more sweets “I am a little tipsy maybe. Also you make it sound like all I do is constantly drink.”

“Well you have been drunk twice in barely as many days.”

“That was your brothers fault remember?”

He let out a long suffering sigh, as if he didn’t particularly want to remember.

“What are you eating?” He crinkled his nose up as you scuffed another gobful of popcorn.

“Popcorn.” You said, with your mouth half full.

“Are mortals taught any table manners at all?” He asked, disapprovingly.

“Do you not have popcorn on Asgard.”

He looked down at the spread of snacks.

“No.” He said carefully.

“Well what do you eat for sweets then?”

“I suppose we have nuts and grapes.”

“Some nuts and grapes? Christ no wonder you’re so highly strung.”

You gathered a plate up for him with selection of all the amazing confectionary Earth had to offer. “Here, try these.”

You stared at him in excitement as he ate a handful of Haribos.

“Well?”

“Hm. I’m not sure I enjoy this texture.”

“Try this next!” You very nearly shoved some popcorn into his mouth in your excitement and then realised that would probably get you killed, which would have been messy in Starks fancy lounge; so you just pointed to it instead.

Watching Loki try new things was surprisingly very entertaining to you. It was unusual to see Loki look so unsure of himself, as normally he swanned around cocky as anything.

You sighed, thinking back once again to the other night on the balcony. Loki was very good at brushing over any moments of vulnerability, even though he occasionally showed it in moments like this.

With his slightly furrowed forehead and quizzical expression as he tried earthly sweets was the epitome of vulnerable.

Loki made eye contact with you while you stared at him and swallowed his sweets down.

“Why are you looking at me like that mortal?” He asked, suspiciously.

“Nothing.” You smiled to yourself

“Now you are smiling like a loon. I hope you are not loosing your mind over that boy. We have a mission to complete, or have you forgotten?” He frowned at you, disgruntled.

“How could I forget the fact I’m heading to a burning wasteland soon.” You said sadly, thinking of your up and coming trip which, at best, ends in your death.

“There is no reason to be nervous. You have proved yourself rather difficult to maim.” Loki stated, deliberately.

“Physically maybe but I’m going to need a hell of a lot of therapy when this is over.” You muttered. “Suppose I should enjoy this last moment of calm before the storm.”

“What storm?” Loki asked cautiously.

“It’s just a figure of speech.”

“Hm.” Loki made a non committal humming noise.

“Let’s go finish off the film, I need the escapism.”

You sat back down together and tried to refocus on the film. You mind kept wandering however and you remained restless.

Were things between you and Loki changing? How many Loki gifs could you send of himself before he murdered you in your sleep?

And, most importantly, what fresh hell awaited you in the realm of fire?

A/N: Who enjoyed my fourth wall break (kinda?) haha! Also keep tuned folks for some more plot (finally) after a couple of plot-less chapters!

Taglist:

@creationsbyme @kikster606 @slytherinintj13 @th0rswh0res @huntress-artemiss @jannieka394 @stefffrs @misswimberly @thedistractedagglomeration @yoongissidebitchh @purplekitten30 @mischief2sarawr @johnmurphys-sass

@lonadane @imalovernotahater @lokisgoodgirl @laliceee @dlwrish @paetonnn

#loki #loki odinson #loki of asgard #loki x you #loki x y/n #loki x reader #loki x reader insert #loki smut #loki fanfic #tom hiddleston #loki laufyson #loki (marvel)#loki series

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elvriuh · 1 year ago

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Ticci Toby pulling pranks on the Proxies || Head Cannons and Scenarios! || MY AU

✦˚₊꒷︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵୨♡୧︵︵︵︵︵︵︵꒷₊˚✦

MASKY

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Masky hates pranks with a passion, especially when they’re on him.

He’ll lose his mind if someone pranks him, and he’ll swear to the gods that he’ll punch their lights out and maybe snap their neck, nothing harmless. Just a payback.

He’ll track down the prankster and storm into their room to start a rumble. Poor man.

He’s usually pretty smart though, since a lot of pastas, and sometimes even PROXIES- try to prank him (despite them being scared of him), but they usually flop. HEHEHHAHAHAHAAA.

Masky, hidden behind his white mask, let out a yawn that could wake the dead. He was so beat because of the mission; he could’ve snoozed standing up. He ambled into the Mansion, barely noticing anyone else, and made a beeline for his room.

Something was nagging at him… Did he forget something? Eh, it could wait.

Another yawn escaped him as he nudged the door open and stepped inside. But then, he froze. There was someone in his room, holding something light-grey…

Hold up, was that Toby?

And was that a bucke-

SPLASHHHHH!!!

Laughter filled the room.

Masky just stood there, wide awake now and fuming.

Toby had just given him an impromptu shower with a bucket.

Nice one, dude.

Masky looked down at his drenched clothes, then back up at Toby.

“YOU!! YOU PATHETIC /PROXY/!” Masky roared, lunging at Toby.

Well… Toby let out a scream that could shatter glass and Masky gave him a thrashing he wouldn’t forget anytime soon… maybe even broke a bone or two…

Jack was not amused.

✦˚₊꒷︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵୨♡୧︵︵︵︵︵︵︵꒷₊˚✦

HOODY

✦˚₊꒷︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵୨♡୧︵︵︵︵︵︵︵꒷₊˚✦

Not too bothered, as long as it doesn't mess with his goals.

He finds them entertaining and all, but not into pranks that cause actual harm. That's just not his style.

He might pull some pranks on them, BUT! They'd be more… you know, sly and maybe a little mind-bending? *evil laugh*

Yeah, he's cool with pranks, and truth be told, he's never been pranked himself, what with his sharp eye for details and all.

Hoody and Masky were out for a night walk in the woods.

It was pretty chill, to be honest. A break from the madness of the mansion, soaking in the sights… snapping a few pics here and there… It felt good, made him feel more alive.

And the best part? SUPER SILENT NATURE WALK!! YEAH!!

As he strolled alongside Masky, he felt something heavy in his pocket. Again. But he brushed it off, it had been like that for HOURS…? He was pretty sure he’d put something in there, but he couldn’t remember… too lazy to check anyway.

Hoody scanned the surroundings, Masky just picking up rocks and tossing them around…

One page missing.

Hoody nudged Masky, pointing at a tree with a missing page.

Masky squinted at where Hoody was pointing, then his mouth formed an ‘O’ behind his mask. He grumbled, dropped a rock from his hand and nodded.

Time to deal with the culprits… What a way to ruin a walk.

But before Masky could even split up-

“HEY LOSERS!!! Hehe.” A high-pitched voice echoed inside Hoody, startling both him and Masky.

Masky shot Hoody a look that screamed ‘What the heck, Hoody!?’

Hoody shrugged innocently at Masky. It wasn’t him!

Masky rolled his eyes. Weird… Hoody doesn’t sound like that, but whatever.

“What are you guys up to? Where are youuu.” The high-pitched voice came again and Masky shot Hoody another look.

Hoody just stared back.

…

Speaking of that random voice, it sounded like it came from his pocket-

Hoody reached into his pocket and pulled out an object.

Oh, a walkie-talkie.

Both Masky and Hoody stared at it.

“Oh, that was rogers…” Masky muttered. Before Hoody could even respond, Masky snatched it from his hand, threw it on the ground and started stomping on it.

The high-pitched voice distorted and glitched out.

Hoody just watched.

Masky grumbled. “Stupid thing.” He said, earning an amused snort from Hoody.

✦˚₊꒷︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵୨♡୧︵︵︵︵︵︵︵꒷₊˚✦

KATE THE CHASER

✦˚₊꒷︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵୨♡୧︵︵︵︵︵︵︵꒷₊˚✦

Absolutely loathes them!

Thinks they're just downright wicked, like, who's got the time to make someone cry for laughs?

Kate's the ultimate prank-avoider. If they ever came her way, she'd be devastated, like, what did she do to deserve this cosmic joke?

She won't go all superhero on the prankster, just... let it slide and sob dramatically in her room.

(Geez, poor Kate needs a hug and a comedy show ASAP!)

Toby was grinning like a Cheshire cat as he swapped pens with Kate… without her knowing, of course… She was out of the room, so it was the perfect opportunity.

He switched the pens, both looking identical. He pocketed the original one and sneaked out of her room.

FAST FORWARD TO KATE ENTERING HER ROOM, GRABBING HER PEN AND PAPER AND STUFFING THEM INTO HER POCKET!! AND THEN WALKING DOWN THE HALL

Kate was strolling down the hallway, watching Jeff yell at Ben about ‘cheating’ or something, when she suddenly yelped.

She heard a familiar male grunt…

She stumbled backwards, landing on her butt. She looked up to see who she’d bumped into.

Hoody.

Hoody was bent over a bit, like he’d been taken by surprise and was trying to balance himself.

Kate nervously pushed herself up with her arms, then a hand reached out- Hoody’s hand.

She looked at him, then at his hand. She placed her gloved hand in his, and he helped her up.

That was … odd. Hoody usually never bumps into things?

‘Maybe Hoody’s just having one of those days.’ She looked up at his masked face, all she could see were sad eyes on a ski mask staring back at her.

Suddenly, it hit her. Oh no! She needed to apologize for bumping into him!

She pulled out her paper and pen, quickly scribbling something… except… her pen wasn’t writing?

Hoody tilted his head, wondering why she’d stopped writing?

Kate grumbled, maybe she wasn’t pressing hard enough. She tried again, but still, it didn’t write.

What the heck?

Again and again, the pen WASN’T writing. She looked at Hoody, did she really have to speak? Oh man, how else was she going to apologize?

THUD, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAAAA

Kate quickly turned around at the sound of a thud… Oh, it was Toby on the floor, laughing his head off.

What’s so funn-

Then it dawned on her… oh…invisible ink...

She looked at her pen, and Hoody let out an amused little chuckle. He patted her on the head before leaving her with a hysterical Toby.

Kate took a deep breath. She’d been pranked… And to make matters worse! She hadn’t even apologized to Hoody! ...

Was Hoody in on this too?

✦˚₊꒷︵︵︵︵︵︵︵︵୨♡୧︵︵︵︵︵︵︵꒷₊˚✦

Hahaha, oopsie! Sorry for disappearing for, like, ages! I was totally blanking on what to share, you know? But then, while scrolling through my old stuff, I realized Toby's always been quite the little troublemaker! So, yeah, that happened!

#masky #creepypasta #headcannons #kate the chaser #hoody #proxies #proxy #toby erin rogers #tobias erin rogers #tim masky #hoodie #masky and hoody #scenario #headcannon #pranks #prank #ticci toby

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quietwingsinthesky · 1 year ago

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ok listenn idk if you care about john beyond pointing out how biased ppl are against him, but girl!sam universe where she looks exactly like young mary?? would be crazy. we r talking so many complexes at play here. plus yk. blond lucifer primary vessel

blond lucifer primary vessel is so important actually. she's a pretty princess.

anyway! here's an even better reason than in canon for john trying to hide as much supernatural stuff from sam as he can! because he looks at his little girl and she's got mary's blonde hair tumbling around her shoulders and mary's eyes looking up at him like he's got the power to make things better, but she doesn't have mary's smile, no, she smiles like dean does because she never got to see what mary looked like happy, nothing but a single photograph, frozen forever so that sam doesn't know how vibrant mary looked when she was smiling or how she sounded when she laughed. and anyway. he looks at her, and he can't let all that evil in the world touch her. as though, if she knows about it, it'll destroy her the moment she learns.

girl!sam who cuts her hair one day before school and that's the first big fight they ever have, only it's not really a fight at all because sam hasn't hit double digits and she's got awkwardly mismatched bangs and john yells anyway until she clams up trying not to cry. only later can he make himself apologize and trim her hair neater with his own hands, trying not to flinch as he cuts away little echoes of mary.

girl!sam who can't bring a boy home without john (and dean, but john gets scary about it) testing him relentlessly to make sure he isn't a demon. girl!sam who doesn't even make it to prom because dean's sent to sideline her when john catches just a whiff of sulfur on her prom date and spends an evening interrogating and exorcising him. girl!sam who doesn't learn the truth for far longer than in canon because dean picks up the fear from john, that if she learns, they'll lose her, and she's always boiling up inside about how john spent years hiding that there were monsters out there, years she could have spent helping him hunt just like dean was, and he didn't, because he can't see how avenging her mother would be more important than embodying her to sam. that fight? that's a real one. dragging john back to ugly memories of storming out of the house to leave mary furious in the kitchen. dean's even there trying to break up the fight and failing. only this time, it's m- sam. who leaves.

girl!sam who takes off for stanford, and john ends up following her most of the way there, barely restraining himself from knocking her out when she's ducking into a gas station bathroom while hitchhiking and kidnapping her because she won't be safe out there, he can't protect her. (nevermind that sam's as damn good a hunter as dean, but then we already know john letting dean out of his sight was a rarity even when he's a grown man at 26. no way he'd let sam, 17 or 18 and the spitting image of mary now, run off without at least considering that she'd be better off tied up in a safehouse somewhere until she forgets about college.

and when he does let her go... well, he doesn't really remember the rest of that night. his phone shows he left a voicemail. he never listens to see what he sent her. she never brings it up. he can't even be sure she ever heard it.

john who drops by stanford every other month, renews wards around sam's dorm in the middle of the night, places charms in flower pots, researches any professors and other student she gets close to. and a weird mixture of relief and surprise when jessica's who sam starts dating. because who knew, right? (even weirder jealousy, cause though mary's been dead for longer than he knew her alive, she's also right there, and there's a girl who gets to kiss her and love her in a way john's never going to know again.)

....girl!sam who john finds out is still azazel's child in blood. that nothing he did ever kept her from being touched by the supernatural. that he's going to lose her, the same way he lost mary. and he can't pull that trigger. no matter if it'd be for sam's own good. he just can't. he just. can't. (and he tells dean to do it. knowing he won't be able to either. that they'll both die before they let mary go again.)

her in a quiet moment, trying to share grief with john with how she lost jess. and all he can think of is that he couldn't have survived if it was her on the ceiling instead. guilty thinking about an innocent girl who died, but grateful that sam came out of the fire.

(and it always seemed strange to me that john somehow never came across people who knew the campbells as hunters? but say he did. say he did and when he sees sam cutting open a vamps neck or fighting back against meg, he sees a side of mary he never got to know in her.)

(also. going to tentatively edge into uncomfortable territory for me but i think i'm good, but. john who gets off to mary's memory, but years go by, the details fade, and to his horror, his brain starts using things he knows about sam (how she styles her hair, what shampoo she uses, etc) to make the pictures clearer. he doesn't stop, though.)

so, yeah. you know. i have a couple thoughts about girl!sam who looks like mary and how john would react to her.

oh you know what would be so funny. s5 john revival as michael's sword when dean won't say yes, and he gets to that graveyard and it's sam, it's mary, it's the devil, staring back at him. his worst nightmare come true.

#ask #spn #john winchester #sam winchester #tw incest #<- for one bit but also the vibes here are Strange in general so #this was so fun im loving girl!sam thoughts #girl!sam

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panthera-tigris-venenata · 2 years ago

Note

For the headcanons ask thing - Harriet Hook?

Realistic

Yeah, so I spent far too much time thinking over the hierarchy in the port, and this is my qualified analysis ✨, in which all semi-insulting words are used in the most affectionate way possible, because I love them, Your Honour.

Anyway.

Both Harriet and Uma have pirate crews, right? (Also, Rise timeline is a suggestion because you don't get that kind of loyalty in that short time. You just don't.)

So. Two pirate crews, right?

Harriet's probably a bit better established, because Harriet is older and doesn't spend half her time fighting a petty feud with Mal.

On the other hand, Uma is That Bitch (affectionate), and decides that she'd like a little more control, thank you for asking.

(They might or might not fight. It is the most terrifying time the Isle kids can remember.)

Eventually, Harriet's reaction is essentially this: „What are you doing, girl?! Why are you doing this?! Really?! ... Oh, wait. I have, like, actual free time now. Keep doing it.“

(Look, she is tired. She deserves a break.)

...Yeah, no. She still doesn't know how to relax. But she now has the free time to do so! Occasionally!

Only too bad her favourite hobbies include wrestling with crocodiles and yelling at Judge Frollo.

(Fortunately for the Isle, she also has more time to keep CJ from blowing shit up. Which is a full time job in itself.)

Unrealistic but funny

There is a competition among the siblings over who can tag their name on the most ridiculous/impressive place.

Harriet is winning, despite the fact that no one ever sees ger in action. Which would be because out of her siblings, she is the only one with enough common sense to ditch her bright red cloak when doing shit that will likely upset a great number of dangerous people.

(She got her name on one of the the towers of Maleficent's castle; Harry got Castle across the way by flirting with Evie, and Frollo's is basically a free real estate.)

Heartbreaking

I think she has an alcohol problem. It runs in the family.

Her hangovers are the reasons CJ swore to never ever drink. (Also, CJ is a control freak and dreads losing control of her mind. Harriet, on the other hand, would like to forget. Everything.)

(Harry, as usual, is in the middle of the scale.)

Canon is a suggestion ✨

Once in Auradon, she and Uma get *psychotherapy license*, to help their crews, 'cos, you know, „if you wanna something done right, you gotta do it yourselves.“

(Yes, she does this without admiting she needs therapy herself. She has issues.)

She becomes Ben's therapist, because come on, the boy needs it, and because Uma would be biased in this case.

Like, yeah, her advice might consist mostly of „Punch them.“ („Can't do that unless I want to start a war.“ „...Punch them only a little?“) and „Sometimes, it's okay to start biting people,“ and „Cheers, I'll drink to that!“, but Ben adores her. She does give helpful advice occasionally and, what's more important, doesn't care that he is the High King of Auradon in the slightest.

She just gives no fuck.

Unlike all Auradonian therapists who are gonna dance around King's and Queen's feelings, she is not afraid to call him out when he is about to make a stupid decision or when he is being too nice for his own good.

Also, this lovely conversation between Mal and Ben:

Mal: „Ben? Why did you just throw Queen Leah out of the palace indefinitely?“

Ben: „My therapist told me, and I quote, to ‚never take any shit from that awful abusive old hag of a queen ever again.“

Mal: „...She was yelling the whole time she was packing her bags.“

Ben: „Not my problem.“

Mal: „You need a better therapist.“

Ben: „What is wrong wrong with Harriet?“

Mal, at the verge of panic attack: „Who the fuck gave Harriet Hook a therapy license?!“

(Ben invites Audrey to stay over until her grandmother cools off.)

And of course, this sweet exchange once Mal storms Harriet's office (on the off day she actually bothers to come)

Mal: „You are a therapist?! Why- What?!“

Harriet: gestures to the license on the wall

Mal: „Yeah! Who the fuck let you have that?!“

Harriet: „Oh, yeah. Trust me. I have no idea why they even let me take that course. I mean, look at me.“

Uma, from the office next door: „That would be because you cheated on your own psycho-evaluation exam!“

Harriet, shrugging: „Oh, yeah. That would do it. I have almost forgotten about that.“

(Say what you want, the pirate Captains are very effective therapists for the Isle kids.)

#disney descendants #harriet hook #cj hook #harry hook #uma descendants #ben florian #mal bertha

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kochanski · 1 year ago

Text

Study Buddy

Rimmer/Lister, rated E, no content warnings apply. Pre-accident fic. Rimmer is trying to study for his astro-navigation exams. Lister decides to distract him. (This is a repost so you can read while AO3 is down/for further archival purposes.)

"I haven't even said anything yet!" What a way to walk in the door on a Saturday morning. Lister only had a few hours to crash and recover from last night's drunken tomfoolery so he'd be prepared for tonight's drunken tomfoolery, and his roommate had carpeted the bunkroom in a colorful patchwork of neon squares. "What's all this?"

"Forget it, Lister."

"You know what they are," Rimmer hissed from the eye of the storm. "They're my revision timetables, and I was trying to organize them before you bungled into the room and destroyed an entire seven percent of all my hard work!"

Lister looked down. He'd stepped on one of the hundreds of papers Rimmer had strewn about the place.

"I thought you just failed the last exam. Don't you have months before you can retake it?"

"Exactly! I only have five months, twenty-eight days and three hours, so I have to organize my study time effectively or I'll never pass."

"Or," Lister offered, hesitant to even bring it up, "you could come out with me tonight. Me and the guys. Blow off some steam, y'know, maybe even take Kochanski's advice to heart and get laid."

"By who?" Rimmer snorted, gesturing at himself. "You've said it yourself- I have a snowball's chance of finding someone who'll put up with this."

"C'mon, man, you're not bad-looking. Just put on a short-sleeved shirt and keep your mouth shut."

"No thank you," Rimmer said. "Despite your best efforts to undermine me, Lister, I actually happen to have life goals that don't involve notches in my bedpost or setting the record for how many peanuts I can stick up my nose."

"I dunno, I think you could beat me at that second one by a long shot," Lister snickered, but he started towards his bunk, trying to tiptoe between the mess of paper and highlighters with little success. "You could do a lot of things if you just took a break from endless revisions and locking yourself in stasis."

"Forget it, Lister," he repeated. "Nothing you say or do can distract me. Go to bed."

Lister paused mid-tiptoe.

"Nothing?"

"Absolutely nothing."

"So anything I do, you're just going to keep on drawing squares with those stupid markers?"

"Yes!" He crossed his arms, nostrils flaring. "What don't you get about the concept? I am mentally shutting out everything and everyone that isn't a revision timetable, because I have to get this done today."

"Alright," Lister smirked, and he kicked up a cloud of pink and yellow on his way to grab his guitar.

"Very mature," Rimmer retorted, picking up the lime green and trying his best to ignore the situation.

Lister sat on Rimmer's thin mattress and twisted the knobs on the top bit of the guitar until the strings were as discordant from one another as he could make them. Rimmer wouldn't be able to tell the difference- he thought everything Lister played was trash- but might as well go the whole hog, anyway, right?

"Met me a girl, straight from Mars, and she spent all my money and broke my heart," Lister sang, savoring every last little crack in Rimmer's concentration. "Then I got me a date with a bird from Jupiter, yeah, fools rush in but I was stupider-"

It wasn't working nearly as well as he'd expected it would, though. Rimmer barely winced when he sang the verse about the bloke from Venus.

"Are you done?" he asked impassively when the song was over. "I'd like to put on some Tchaikovsky to cleanse my palette now, if you don't mind."

"What the smeg is a chai cough ski? A sport you do when you're sick in the Himalayas? D'you chug a cup of tea and try to keep it down while you're slalom-ing between the trees?" He mimed holding a pair of ski sticks and waggled his feet.

"For-get it, Lister," Rimmer said a third time, standing up and starting to walk to the locker where he kept his record collection. "I'm not dignifying your pathetic attempt at a joke with a response."

"You already have responded, though," Lister said, still unsure what exactly Rimmer had said. "I've won."

Rimmer paled and stopped in his tracks. Then, slowly, without disturbing his pile of highlighters, he silently sat back down and began furiously coloring in another of his squares.

"What? You're gonna just ignore me, then?"

No response.

"C'mon, Rimmer, I was just trying to loosen you up. You don't have to give me the silent treatment."

Nothing.

Well, Lister couldn't have that. He tossed the guitar up top and got down on the floor, peering over Rimmer's shoulder. Yeah, maybe invading his space was low-hanging fruit, but Lister'd always had stubby arms.

"Two hours for reviewing spherical trigonometry? You think that's enough?"

"Brush your teeth if you're going to talk directly into my ear," Rimmer said, but he shivered a little.

Hmm.

No, this was a horrible idea. And Lister was still clearly a bit buzzed if he was even considering it, and it seemed a bit on the cruel side as far as pranks went.

But Rimmer had said nothing would distract him. And that Lister could do absolutely anything.

"I thought you weren't s'posed to pay me any attention?" he murmured in a low voice, moving closer, so that he was sure his breath hit Rimmer's ear and neck.

"I'm not. I'm- I'm simply thinking aloud. To myself." His ears were red. "It just happens that I think you reek of watered-down beer."

"Well, you smell good, at least," Lister continued, leaning in to press his nose into Rimmer's hair. "You always smell kind of like laundry." It was a totally awkward attempt at flirting, horrible, but he was tired beyond belief. Lister's last good brain cells had gone on strike, and he was left with whatever half-witted scabs the boss had dragged up to do the job.

Not that it mattered to good old Arnie. He'd actually stopped coloring for a second, the ever-turning cogs in his head grinding to a violent halt. He leaned forward, brushing Lister away, and started scribbling like a madman.

"This is a losing game you're playing. All you're doing is making yourself look stupid and desperate. Time is of the essence, and I absolutely won't get mixed up in whatever slime-brained ideas you have about my sexuality."

"Hang on, who said anything about sexuality?" Lister grinned. "I just said you smelled nice, and then I smelled you."

"Ah, I'd forgotten, you and your Neanderthal friends think this type of behavior is normal. You all smell each other's crotches and pick fleas off one another in lieu of a hello or a handshake."

"Still just thinkin' aloud? 'Cause it sounds like you're having a conversation with me now."

"Troglodyte," Rimmer spat, and nearly put a hole in the paper with the pink highlighter.

Lister touched his back, lightly, just fingertips, and Rimmer flinched for a second but tried not to react.

"C'mon, Rimmer, relax. It's a Saturday. Saturdays are meant for lazing about and recoverin' from the long work week, not for stressing yourself out over a stupid exam that's six months from now."

Rimmer really looked like he wanted to correct Lister that it was five months and however many days and hours, but his mouth stayed shut. It was almost a shame, because normally Lister couldn't get him to be quiet for five minutes on a good day.

Lister moved his hand across Rimmer's back in soft strokes. His nose and mouth nuzzled into the corner where Rimmer's left shoulder met his neck. He could feel the skin get hotter, feel that Rimmer had forgotten how to think for a moment, the annoying marker-on-paper noise stopping entirely.

"Lister," he gasped, before remembering himself. "I- Lister! Look what you've done! Six o'clock on the fourteenth was supposed to be blue, and you've gone and made me fill it in with orange."

"Come on, Rimmer, just leave it."

"Can't you just go to bed and leave me to my misery like you normally do? Why torment me like this? Why today, of all days, when I'm doing something this important?" He sounded actually exasperated, somewhere between whining and pleading, and Lister might or might not have felt a tiny pang of guilt.

"Someone has to save you from yourself. Besides, if I went to sleep in here you'd either wake me up 'cause I was snorin' too loud, or I'd end up covered in timetable when you ran out of room on the floor." Lister wrapped his arms around Rimmer's waist from behind, leaning forward. "Just admit I've won, put the markers away, an' I'll quit bothering you. We can chalk the whole thing up to me being drunk, never speak of it again."

"No."

"No?"

Rimmer set down the highlighter and pulled Lister's arms apart, turning around to face him with this strangely calm look on his face. It was the same kind of weird serenity that usually happened right before he was about to do something insane, and Lister's stomach wrapped itself in knots.

"Lister, do you know what time it is?"

"What time is it?"

"One-thirty in the afternoon," Rimmer said in a monotone, "and according to schedule, I should have finished the timetables by one. Perhaps a few minutes I could have made up here and there, but half an hour?"

"So…"

"So I'm going to have to re-do all of it. All five months and twenty-eight days and so on. I'll have to write it all out and reschedule everything. Every last bit. And you-" Rimmer reached forward, grabbing Lister by the collar. "Help me," he choked, and it was more of a plea than the command he'd probably intended.

So Lister helped him.

He pressed his mouth squarely against Rimmer's, half-surprised when there was no resistance- but, yeah, no, Rimmer'd probably been relieved for an excuse to quit making himself miserable.

Rimmer had no clue how to kiss back, but his fist tightened around the fabric of Lister's shirt, yanking him closer, and that was good as anything. Lister broke the kiss, moving his hands up to cup Rimmer's face.

"Open your mouth," he said gently, and Rimmer opened it wide like he was at his annual checkup. "Alright, don't unhinge your jaw. Just-" He grabbed Rimmer's chin with his finger and thumb, moving his jaw upward until they were both properly positioned. It felt sort of like a movie kiss, like one of those black-and-whites, and he tried to channel Cary Grant as best he could as he pressed their lips together. He wanted this to be as perfect as possible, he thought, without really thinking about why he was doing any of it.

As Lister pushed his way into Rimmer's mouth, he was met with this little whiny sort of noise. God, he hadn't expected this to be so hot, but it was- Rimmer's whimpering in this context set all his nerve endings on fire. He stroked the side of Rimmer's face, slow, keeping rhythm. The kiss was the same way- Lister would lurch forward a bit, then pull back, scraping his teeth against Rimmer's bottom lip on his way out. If nothing else, he'd never been told he was a bad kisser. He only pulled away completely when he realized Rimmer wasn't breathing.

"You-" Rimmer panted, red-faced, letting go of Lister's shirt. He'd stretched out the neck of it beyond repair. "That isn't at all what I meant by helping."

"Well, I'm not about to spend the next ten hours doing the color-by-number from hell." Lister let his hands fall to Rimmer's shoulders. "I can think of better things to do, eh?"

"If you're asking my permission to- to have your way with me, I'm not going to just say it."

"Why not? What's the worst that can happen?"

"You're drunk."

"More hungover than anything," Lister argued, "and exhausted."

"Well, exactly. You're not in your right mind, as proven by the way you just forced yourself on me, so it's better if this doesn't go any further."

"Now hang on, that's not fair. We were both having a good time-"

"Having a good time. You thought that was good?"

"Wait, are you saying it wasn't good?"

"No, I mean- you thought it was good, you kissing me? That it was something you actually liked?"

"I don't know how to explain this, Rimmer, but you're not a hideous beast. Somebody might actually fancy you someday if you'd just let them."

"So this wasn't just a prank. You… meant to do this."

"It is a prank, but I also liked it. Smeg, it can be that simple." Lister slid his hands down from Rimmer's shoulders to his chest. "Come on. Give me a real reason we shouldn't."

"It's difficult to switch bunkroom assignments. As you well know."

"Why's that a problem?"

"Well, afterward, when you regret it, and you can't get rid of me." Rimmer said it without hesitation, in his same prim tone of disdain, like it was fact. Like it was some holy scripture somebody had carved on a rock ten thousand years ago, or some kind of scientific law everyone had memorized by primary school. E equals em cee squared. Nobody will ever like Arnold Rimmer enough to shag him twice.

It was depressing, was what it was.

"Look," Lister started, uncertain. This had all been completely impulse up to this point, and he hadn't come prepared to give Rimmer a pep talk. "We've been stuck together hating each other's guts for the better part of two years, right? What if we just tried something different for a bit?"

"Oh, like what? You can't expect me to believe you're actually, genuinely proposing-" He paled. "You are, aren't you."

"So?"

"You're just doing this because Kochanski dumped you, and she was the last woman on this ship with the unfortunate lack of self-respect to sleep with you sober."

"I dunno, you're sober, and you seemed pretty happy to have my tongue halfway down your throat a minute ago, didn't you?"

"You- I- well, who can have self-respect when they've gone and ruined their one chance at acing the exam? Anyone would feel depressed after that. You're the one taking advantage."

"Right, fine, then, I give up. I'm going to bed." Lister let go of Rimmer.

"Don't do that," he protested. "I haven't properly rejected you yet."

"Well, hurry up and pull the trigger. The bars open at four, so I only really have about two hours of good sleep before Petersen calls me up again."

"Alright, I will."

"Great," Lister said, shaking his head and pushing himself up into a squat, but in the next instant Rimmer had him flat against the floor, paper rustling beneath them. "Oh," he grinned.

"Don't say a single word."

"S'that an order?"

"I… maybe it is."

"You know I don't follow those."

"What if I make you?"

"Make me?" Lister echoed, delighted. Smeg, Rimmer was going to boss him around. How far could he push this? "You can't make me do anything. You're the second-to-last rung on the ladder."

"I'm the second technician," Rimmer insisted, "which means you're beneath me both literally and figuratively. You're a worm," he continued, moving his hands up Lister's chest, "and you should be grovelling at my feet, begging for your life like the insect you are."

He was good at this. Or maybe he earnestly believed it. Either way, whatever retort Lister had died in his throat and he nodded.

"Glad we finally understand each other." Rimmer took a deep breath, clearly trying to summon something. Courage, maybe. Or he was trying to ward off his disgust. "Er- what do I do next?"

Lister shrugged- not a single word, right- and pointed at his mouth.

"Not that again- not until you've brushed your teeth," Rimmer complained. "Somewhere else."

Lister pointed downwards.

"Oh, shut up," Rimmer said, grabbing his hands. "I'll figure it out."

He leaned forward, pushing Lister's chin back until it pointed towards the ceiling. He peppered soft kisses over Lister's neck, if you could call them that. They were less kisses and more Rimmer clumsily smushing his mouth and nose against Lister's skin, but it wasn't bad. Actually, it felt sort of nice, having Rimmer's full concentration leveled at him in a way that didn't involve yelling or a trip to the captain's office. He let out a sigh of contentment.

"You like that?"

Lister nodded.

"Can I…" Rimmer toyed with the too-loose neck of his poor ruined T-shirt. "I want this off," he said, quieter with each syllable.

Lister grinned, pushing Rimmer into an upright position. He shimmied out of his jacket with some difficulty, pulling his shirt up over his head and flinging it vaguely towards the hamper.

"Better," Rimmer said. "You're so eager to follow orders, now that you think you're getting something out of it. It's frankly disgusting."

"Yeah? You want me to start disobeying?"

"No. I'm just saying, think of all the time and effort we could have saved if you'd have listened to me from the start." His hands started exploring, and Lister's skin prickled everywhere his fingers touched. They were a lot softer than he'd expected, although it made sense. Rimmer never did any of the actual work, when would he have developed callouses? "Imagine. If I'd offered to have sex with you years ago, we could have been so efficient together. Why, we'd have rocketed straight to the top of the ladder."

"You think so? That's what was holdin' you back so long, not havin' proper access to my cock?"

"I-" Rimmer froze. "That's not what I meant, and you know it."

"I mean, I agree. Maybe if I'd been reamin' you every night, you'd be relaxed enough to score higher than a seven on your exams."

"This is why I wanted you to stay quiet," Rimmer said, and he leaned forward and pressed a shaky kiss to Lister's mouth. His hands didn't stop, cupping and squeezing Lister's chest like they were the best pair of knockers he'd ever felt up- probably true- and grazing his thumbs over both nipples. Lister squirmed.

"Feels weird."

"Isn't this what you're supposed to do?"

"Yeah, with girls. Nobody's done this on my tits before."

"Well, is it good weird or bad weird?"

"I can't tell." It felt vaguely uncomfortable, like when you hit the wrong spot digging lint out of your belly button, but on the other hand, that electric tingle seemed to feed right into the warm arousal happening in his groin.

Rimmer scooted down and kissed one of his nipples, the dirty bastard, opened his mouth and licked it, and Lister made up his mind very quickly that this was a thing he liked.

"Keep doing that," he breathed. Rimmer's tongue was hot, and when he moved to the other side Lister could feel cold air on the wet spot he'd left. His hips moved upwards of their own volition into Rimmer's stomach. "God, Rimmer, yes. Just like that."

"Keep still," Rimmer complained, grabbing Lister's hips, and of course that didn't help things. "If you keep fidgeting I'm not going to be able to concentrate on what I'm doing."

"I'm fidgeting because you're doing a good job."

"Well, I'm hardly going to be able to keep up my stellar performance if you squirm like that," he continued, clearly not getting it. "Just lay still."

"Rimmer, I'm not going to be able to lay completely still. I'm not Rachel."

"You- how do you know about Rachel?"

"C'mon, man, you're not subtle. I always have to keep an ear out for squeaking before I come in the door." Lister shook his head. "I'm the real thing, alright, I'm gonna move and react, and it's a good thing. Means you're driving me up the wall."

"I am?"

"Yeah," Lister said, dropping into a softer, huskier tone. "I want it bad, Rimmer. I want you."

"You want me," he repeated, skeptical, but his face was going pink again. "Are you- er- clean?"

"C'mon, you know they screen us constantly for that sort of thing."

"I meant physically clean, Lister, you idiot. I'm not going to take off these trousers if it means chemical warfare."

"I just showered yesterday morning," he protested. "You were there."

"Yesterday morning was before a night of debauchery and drinking."

"If you're going to be annoying about it, I'll make do with over-the-clothes, alright?"

"No," Rimmer said firmly. "I've already completely debased myself, there's no point in doing things halfway now."

"Look, do whatever's comfortable, not what you think you have to." Lister reached up, stroking the spot where Rimmer's jaw met his neck. "We're here to have ourselves a good time, and you don't have anything to prove, right?"

"I'd say there's a lot to prove, actually-"

"Rimmer. Turn your brain off. I want you and I like what you're doing."

Maybe being blunt did the trick, because he seemed to relax a bit.

"Alright. You first, and then me. Sound good?"

"Yeah, stellar."

"Lights off," Rimmer said, then fumbled in the dark with the fly of Lister's trousers. "Smeg."

"I've got it." Lister reached down and unzipped. He took Rimmer's hand, gently, and placed it over his crotch. Maybe there was something to the whole blindness-enhancing-your-senses thing, because he swore he could hear every minor change in Rimmer's breathing. He was either incredibly anxious or really aroused, judging by the way his breath hitched. Could be both.

"Lister," he started, hesitant. "How… I mean, obviously you just- how do I-"

"Move your hand up and down," Lister sighed. "Just pretend it's yours."

"Right, but if I can't feel it, how am I supposed to know if it's too rough? What if I… break it?"

"Break it?" Lister didn't know whether to laugh or zip his pants back up immediately. "How smegging hard's your death grip, man?"

"No, I mean, how do I know if I'm doing it right?"

"Well, if I'm not screamin' at you to stop, you're probably on the right track, yeah? I'm easy to please."

"Emphasis on easy," Rimmer retorted, and Lister was about to say something back, but Rimmer was peeling back his underwear.

He tested the waters, gingerly wrapping his fingers around Lister's shaft and applying light pressure. Then squeezed gently. Then a little tighter.

"That's good," Lister said. "Right there."

"It's wet," Rimmer complained. "You're over-excited already, aren't you?" He moved his hand slowly from base to tip and back, once, twice, three times, achingly slow. "You like this."

"Yeah, I do. I do," Lister repeated, grinding his hips up against Rimmer's fist. Any extra friction, anything to get him to pick up the pace. Lister's temperature was rising, unbearably warm, and his few remaining brain cells had all but melted away by this point. The only thought he could keep in his mind for more than a second was that Rimmer- his Rimmer, his annoying bunkmate, total straight-laced prick, had him lying naked on the floor arching his back.

"Tell me… tell me you like me," Rimmer tried, voice a little softer.

"I like you," Lister babbled. "I like you so much. God, you're so weirdly sexy, I honestly didn't think I'd be this desperate, but you're just so-" Kissing. Rimmer was kissing him all of a sudden, sloppy, just kind of wriggling his tongue around in there- but it was good, even if Rimmer didn't know what he was doing in the slightest. He sucked Rimmer's tongue and was rewarded with another one of those shaky, whiny noises. Too bad the lights were off- he would have thrown away half his salary to see the look on Rimmer's face then they pulled apart.

"I'm- I'm going to try something, and you can't laugh at me if it goes sideways." His voice was a little more determined. Clearly, he'd gained confidence somehow.

"Yeah, I'm game. Anything you want."

A bit of shuffling as Rimmer repositioned himself between Lister's legs.

He hadn't really expected much of anything, certainly nothing shocking- maybe Rimmer was going to use his left hand instead of his right- but oh, oh, all of a sudden his cock was in Rimmer's mouth.

A wave of pleasure rolled through him. Rimmer's whole tongue-waggling technique was a hell of a lot more effective brushing rhythmically against his head. "Ahh- just- just watch your teeth, alright?"

"Mmph."

"Finally found a way to shut you up," Lister laughed, and that stopped Rimmer dead in his tracks.

"If I recall, this started because you wanted me to talk to you." He could picture the furrowed brow, the annoyed frown, maybe softened with a hint of fondness. Wishful thinking.

"I just wanted your attention," Lister admitted. "I like when you pay attention to me, Arn."

"You- I- shut up and let me do this," Rimmer snapped, clearly flustered. Ah- he'd hit some sort of nerve.

"I mean it," he struggled, trying to find coherent words in the tangled state of sensation his brain was in. Rimmer was licking up the length of him, exploring at his leisure, and Lister only half-managed to suppress a groan when he found a ridge on the underside to rub against. "Mmn- you're so good at this- driving me mad-"

Rimmer put him back in his mouth, sucking tight around his cock, and- his hips jerked forward- with a jolt of molten, white-hot energy, he felt himself tumble over the edge. Smeg. He'd meant to say something before shooting a load into Rimmer's mouth, but-

"Lister?!" Rimmer sounded horrified.

"Sorry, man, I wasn't- I didn't expect to-"

"I swallowed it."

"You what?"

"It wasn't on purpose! What do I do, I mean- should I try to make myself throw up, or-"

"It's not poison."

"Well, I don't imagine it's good for you, either!" A pause. "And it won't- well, of course it wouldn't- I don't have the parts…"

"You're not gonna get pregnant, you prat!" He couldn't help laughing. "What sort of sex education do they have on Io?"

"Not the same-sex kind," Rimmer mumbled, hurt. Lister sighed and leaned forward into the dark, a scrap of timetable stuck to his upper back. He found Rimmer's shoulders, then the collar of his shirt, and finally his jaw, pressing an earnest kiss against Rimmer's lips.

"It's alright. Promise I'll pay the child support."

"That's disgusting. You know what's just been in my mouth."

"So? Maybe I like it." Lister pulled his underwear back up and shifted into a more comfortable position, leaning against the bottom bunk. "Anyway, we agreed on taking turns. Come on. You're next."

"That's hardly necessary. Really. I think I've gone through my phase, I've had my experience, and I'm done."

"If you really mean that, then I'll go on and get me clothes back on, but… so far, you've been kind of shit at telling me what you really want. I mean, you accuse me of coming onto you and then jump my bones the next second."

"Well," Rimmer said, cautiously, "what if you just… held me while I did it?"

"Alright." He reached out again, swinging Rimmer's legs over his lap. Like this, Rimmer could lean against his shoulder- did, actually, and his cheek was red-hot. Lister smiled and wrapped his arms around Rimmer's waist, tight. "Feeling cozy enough?"

"Cozy." Rimmer scoffed. "Sure. Chocolate and marshmallows next to a roaring fire."

"Can I kiss you during, or is this a totally hands-off sort of thing?"

"Again, I have your… your sperm in my mouth."

"Can't be worse than what I had for breakfast."

"Fine, then." Rimmer lifted his head. "If you- if you really want to, I suppose you can kiss me."

"Brutal," Lister grinned, finding Rimmer's lips and nipping at the bottom one with his teeth. Rimmer seemed to like being bitten, the way he dug his fingernails into Lister's arm, squirmed. This was probably a first for him, right? Lister pulled away, nuzzling Rimmer's cheek, and worked his way back until he could get Rimmer's earlobe gently between his teeth.

"Lister, are you trying to eat me?" His tone was half-incredulous, but strained, and he'd dug his nails in again.

"Yeah, guess I am." Lister grabbed Rimmer by the jaw, tilting his head so that he could get at the skin of his neck.

"That…" The argument died in Rimmer's throat, replaced by a soft, meek "okay."

Rimmer still smelled good, like pressed laundry, like aftershave, though the room around them was starting to smell of sex. His skin was way softer than it had any right to be- probably the regular bathing, the constant exercise, the annoying bottles of moisturizing such-and-such that crowded his locker. Lister bit down a little harder. Maybe it felt better than it should have, ruining Rimmer's stupid perfect skin. Maybe he'd leave a mark, right above the collar, annoyingly hard to cover up without being obvious about it.

"Lister," Rimmer groaned, one hand digging into Lister's back. The other had started to move back and forth, slowly, and Lister realized with a twinge of arousal that he was feeling himself up through his pants. Smeg.

"Such a hypocrite," he murmured against Rimmer's neck. "You keep callin' me disgusting and easy and everything, but I bet you won't last more than a minute if I keep this up."

"That's beside the point," Rimmer argued.

"Which point? The part where you gave me a handjob, or the one where you sucked me off?"

"Lister-" His tone was angry, but his hand was moving faster.

"I mean it. You're a total whore, I mean, now that you finally have someone to mess around with. You've been dying for a chance to do this, haven't you? You been rubbing one out, thinking about how good my cock would feel in your mouth?"

"Yes," Rimmer choked. "God, I- there's no excuse- I just wanted-"

"It's okay," Lister said, moving the hand that wasn't supporting Rimmer down his chest. If they had time, he would have unbuttoned the ugly beige uniform, slipped his hand under the tight white cotton shirt he knew was underneath. Maybe switched the light back on so he could have a proper look. But Rimmer was probably pretty close, judging by the way he was whimpering. "You deserve this. You needed this. And I liked giving it to you. You're so handsome, Rimmer, and you're such a good lay, really," he continued. "You're so good at this. Even this- if I had a round two in me, Rimmer, be on my knees begging you for it, I swear."

"Please," Rimmer whined, probably only having processed the word begging. "Please, Lister, please?"

"Alright," Lister shrugged, and he caught Rimmer's skin between his teeth again, and Rimmer shuddered, letting out a pained moan.

It really hadn't taken much at all to get him off, and Lister was sorry he hadn't had more time to try things.

"Alright," Rimmer panted. "You've had your fun. You can go back to tormenting me now. Tell all your stupid little friends I'm desperately homosexual, take out an ad in the ship newsletter."

"Actually, this is normally the part where we get a pizza and a bunch of curries and stay in bed for three days straight."

"Ah. Right. The only times I ever got peace and quiet were when you'd bugger off to some bimbo's bunkroom for a week-"

"Well, now you get to be the bimbo." Lister really wished he could make out more than faint outlines- Rimmer's expression was probably priceless. Yeah, enough. "Lights on."

It was a disaster- Rimmer's study schedule was scattered around them, torn and wrinkled; Lister's pants were still pulled halfway down, and his shirt had somehow made it around the top of one of the chairs when he'd tossed it aside.

And Rimmer- red-faced, rumpled, his tie crooked, a definite damp spot on the front of his pants. Beautiful.

"I need a shower," he squeaked, "and before you say a damned word, you aren't invited."

"Aw."

"When I come out, I want all the paper off the floor, and I expect you to be- less naked. Then we'll… we can discuss the idea of me not immediately putting in a reassignment request."

"Works for me," Lister grinned. Rimmer started to clamber out of his arms, but he pulled him back in. "Wait."

"What?"

Lister gave him a quick peck on the lips.

"Right. Need to brush my teeth, too," Rimmer bristled, but he looked flustered-mad instead of angry-mad.

Hmmm. Lister threw his shirt back on, kicking the abandoned timetables into a messy pile by the hamper. All things considered, this had been one of the few times an impulse decision had worked out well. Maybe, when Rimmer got out of the shower, he could convince him to cuddle in the lower bunk and watch a movie or two. At the very least, he was sure Rimmer's mind was as far from the astronavigation exam as it could possibly get.

"Holly, can you send Petersen a quick message?" he asked. "Tell him I'm busy tonight. Last minute plans."

#red dwarf #rimster #writing

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greenninjagal-blog · 2 years ago

Text

Here Comes the Sun (pt5)

Contrary to popular belief, I do occasionally still write apparently. Can you believe it? Anyway! If you want a refresher on what’s been going on [click right here] or if you want to read from the beginning [click right here]!

Summary: After the second worst day of his life, Virgil wakes up and goes to find out where his best friend and the guy he tried to kidnap ended up. For some reason all of this feels like the calm before a storm.

Words: 15469 (ask me why its taken forever to get this one out)

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Read on Ao3 || My General Writing Masterlist

Chapter Five: Flood Warning

The Rules had been a mostly drunk joke between them. It had happened a few weeks into them travelling together: they had come to stupid little town in the middle of nowhere and all the people were hateful to them even after Remus had taken care of their Vulcan infestation and returned both a kidnapped teenage girl and an older guy that had gotten taken host by the creatures Take Over Magic to the village.

Remus had threatened to destroy a few of their buildings and that at least had sent most of them scurrying for cover in their own houses with the thunder warning them to not come back out. The bar owner in particular had been a nasty fellow, so Remus and Virgil unanimously agreed that they would raid his place, get drunk, and then skip town before the Magic council was called on them or an actually sanctioned guild showed.

That was the night that Remus had told him Everyone Leaves.

And Virgil had responded with What if I didn’t? Because he’d been drunk and an idiot and Remus was the safest place he had ever known.

“We need a set of rules,” Virgil had said, washing himself over the counter, nearly placing his face into the interesting patterned wood grooves.

“I like breaking rules,” Remus had said, draining the last of his barrel of wine. Virgil had laughed at his face when he tossed the empty barrel to the side, woozy at the idea of how his liver was still functioning. He had been so glad that he hadn’t taken Remus up on that drinking bet earlier.

“No,” Virgil said. “No, I mean like… our rules. Rules for us. We make them and keep them and stuff.”

“Sounds boring, Virgie.”

“Your face sounds boring.”

Remus grinned with all his teeth on display and Virgil had flicked wine-flavored water at him because his clothes had just started drying out from the fight and that was illegal or something.

“You pick the first one,” Virgil said. “I’ll make the second.”

“Hmmmmm,” Remus leaned back on the bar stool so far Virgil thought he’d fall. He thought about lunging to catch him if he did fall, but the world was pleasantly swimming and Virgil figured if he stood up he’d condense himself into a puddle and forget how to turn back to a human.

“Rule Number One!” Remus said. “No Killing Each Other!”

“You couldn’t kill me even if you tried,” Virgil said. “Fine. Rule Number Two! No Killing Anyone Else!”

Very Sensible. Killing people would get them arrested and stuff. Remus was laughing at him, but it didn’t sound mean. Remus was never really mean to Virgil.

“Rule Three! No Talking About Shit The Other Doesn’t Like!” Remus says. “No askin ‘bout my brother, no forcing you to talk about your parents, nothing about from before we met unless we wanna. And other things too, if we think of ‘em.”

Virgil nodded along with it, nearly sliding off the bar counter.

“Rule Four! Never Go Where the Other Can’t Follow!”

It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

A great one actually. He’d been so fucking proud of it; everyone leaves, but not Virgil. Everyone gets tired of the rain, but not Remus.

He wouldn’t need anyone to actually love him; if they both just followed the rules and pretended like it, one day Virgil might be able to trick himself into believing it and that stormcloud over his head would go away.

***

Virgil wakes up in cold water, his human form diluted off and the bottom of the basin covered in mud and minerals. He’s decently surprised: both him and Remus must have been in bad enough moods that Remus didn’t even attempt to come in here and unplug the drain and send him sloshing out of the pipes for shits and giggles.

It doesn't bode well. There’s a distinct difference between The Lack of Remus (curious, entertaining, possibly amusing) and The Lack of Remus (VERY FUCKING BAD). Virgil likes to think that he’s familiar enough with his best friend and their whole situation to know which one this is, not that it takes more than a few seconds of struggling to form a thought to also remember the previous… everything.

Virgil's head is still throbbing with the tell tale feeling of a headache even before he manages to convince the water that makes up his body to come back together to form his head. Honestly, he's beginning to think that Logan's "Evil Orb" attack hurt him a lot more than previously suggested-- which considering that Virgil’s pain index is on another scale entirely... well it certainly says something about that fight. Pure magic attacks always were finicky when interacting with him: whatever elements made up "evil" probably dissolved into water really well.

Virgil chose not to even consider if Logan knew or didn’t know about that. Targeted attack or not, the fact was that Virgil was feeling the aftereffects of it and wasn’t a fan and it was impeding his ability to go find Remus and….

And do something.

What a pain.

Instead he draws his form back together, careful to keep the minerals and mud off his form as he painstakingly adds drop by drop into himself. A leg, an arm, ten fingers, ten toes, mouth, eyes, nose, heart-- He focuses for a moment on the poison, prodding it to see if he might be able to convince it to drop into the mud as well, but in the end he backs off. Much better to be alive with the curse on him, than have whatever's left of his body discovered by Remus whenever he decides to come looking because the sun appeared in the sky and…. Did whatever the sun does.

It doesn’t take more than a few seconds for his clothes to form again after he has most of the standard human look back in the right order; the black material traces the edges of his preferred form, wrapping around his limbs to secure the shapes of each so he didn’t have to waste 90% of his focus on remembering to keep the heights of his kneecaps the same so he could walk. It had been a pain to get it made and it had cost a fortune, which had made the other kids at the orphanage upset-- something about it not being fair that Virgil got new clothes when they didn’t just because he was a freak-- and the orphanage leader had picked out the color herself without his input, citing that black went with everything.

It had been his one gift throughout the years.

Virgil had thought about picking up a ColorS just to change the color of it, but the devices were never programmed with a shade of purple that he liked (too dark, too red, too pink…). He’d have much better luck reaching out to the developer in Clover City and with a swatch of the color he wanted and just paying for a second suit.

But like. Money.

His head pounds. It’s too early to be thinking about money problems. Or any problems. Or just… thinking in general.

Light streams in from the windows, a hazy gray that's accompanied by a light sprinkle, that feels more like being sprayed with a squirt gun than actual rain. Virgil watches it start to get harder as his body and brain wakes back up more and more. An inverse relationship: the more Virgil is awake, the further away the mythical sun is from sight.

The good news is that it’s day again. The bad news is he’s not sure what day.

His leftover pocket materials are still where he left them on the floor, along with a tipped over bottle of soap he doesn’t remember dropping anymore than he remembers not dropping. It doesn’t seem like Remus had been in here; nothing’s too out of place from what he remembers. But that also doesn’t mean shit: Remus sometimes went whole weeks without proper hygiene because he just didn’t care enough, until Virgil physically forced him to take care of his body before he killed someone from the stench alone.

((Remus, of course, had thought that was an excellent attack ability to add to his repertoire. Virgil had strictly vetoed it by drenching him with water every three hours until he promised to take his own showers.))

Virgil shifts around slightly, testing tentatively his weight on his legs again, as he gathers up what was left of his supplies. The paper money hadn’t been touched-- still the same measly amount that he’d brought on his adventure yesterday that had come right out of his savings-- the multitool he spends a few seconds checking the springs and hinges to see if the rain or mud had gotten to it. He crumples up the map of Magnolia and specifically that nice little townhouse in the hope that maybe ruining the picture would ruin the memory too.

But then he shifts too far and the minimal lighting catches on a bit of silver on the sink counter.

Out of all the things, the spoons look the most sadly pathetic and out of place in their bathroom. Virgil’s hands hesitate before he picks one up, the pad of his thumb tracing over the simple pattern on them. He tries to imagine the faces of those Star Burst members when they realized that Virgil had made off with their spoons.

Daydream-Logan is endlessly baffled by it, theorizing on the hundreds of things that Virgil might have needed spoons for in the middle of a kidnapping, going as far as to wonder if the kidnapping was a cover up for the theft, and daydream- Roman is fuming throwing out insults that daydream- Patton tells him aren’t nice, to which there’s the snapped reply that Virgil isn’t nice. It’s amusing right up until daydream-Envy and daydream-Malice burst in through the windows and destroy the entire daydream-apartment and kill daydream-Roman and daydream- Logan and kidnap a still crying daydream-Patton.

He shoves the spoons into his pockets with a clatter; It’s too early to be thinking about that, too.

He creeps out of the bathroom, but doesn’t mean much. Remus isn't in the room and there’s no sign that he had been there for a while. His bed is untouched from where Virgil remembered him lounging yesterday when he’d come back, the hilt of that sword he’d been snacking on was still tossed carelessly by the door, Remus’s boots and his leather jacket were gone from the sad pile of dirty laundry Remus liked to keep in the corner to scare Virgil at 2am.

Virgil's stomach twists at the memory of his face last night: both his dragon force coming out and the idea that he'd rather not talk about one day escaping than risk hoping for it before finishing with the final blow of the casual, painful way he had implied that Thomas Sanders would never want him.

Normally they would pretend it never happened; Remus would make a clever insulting remark about Virgil's generally terrible deposition and Virgil would snark back something about stupid looking outfits and ride along with the conversation from there because it was as close as either of them could get to apologies without breaking into hives. If it was super bad, there would be food based bribery involved.

It's not like Remus to run away first.

Which means something bad is going on and Virgil slept through Act I of it.

His poncho is hanging over the heater, dried and cleaned from the mud that had been on it yesterday-- he checks the clock by his bed, and yep, it’s been nearly twelve hours. Remus must have really felt bad if he went ahead and washed it himself even though Virgil has other ponchos he can wear, and Remus doesn’t even know what a washing machine is.

Well. Virgil isn’t going to make a man grovel.

He grabs it off the hanger and slips it on relishing in the buzzing feeling he calls warmth, as close to a hug from Remus as he’ll get for now. It smells like Vanilla, aka Virgil’s personally preferred detergent that Remus doesn’t even like, much less keep in stock.

Oh.

Oh, he really felt bad.

Virgil feels bad for how much Remus feels bad about this. Honestly it wasn’t even like Remus was wrong. Virgil had been overreacting and acting like a brat; Remus had just revealed that his entire childhood had been wiped out by murderers who got away with it and his brother was alive and fine and apparently never really considered that Remus might have survived at all and all Virgil could think about is that he was sad that the greatest good mage in the world wouldn’t like him after he kidnapped and nearly drowned three of the man’s guild members.

It’s so stupid. He owes Remus an apology, and he’s not sure spoons are enough for it.

He wrings his hands through his poncho and promises himself that he’ll buy Remus some like rusted tire irons or something next time he’s able to. Remus liked rusted things from what Virgil remembered; it added flavor or texture or something to the metal that he liked to gnaw. Sometimes if Virgil brought him back a big enough metal item, he’d turn it into something else like mini statues that fit in the palm of Virgil’s hand with remarkable details down to the folds in the fabrics that left Virgil particularly confused about where he learned to do that and why are these so well made?

((Remus’s answer always is just a grin and him asking if Virgil wants to find out what else his tongue is good at.))

He laces his shoes, hanks up his hood, and takes a deep breath.

The door was still damaged from last night; in fact it’s in a worse shape now, considering it looked like Remus forwent trying to keep the hinges intact. There’s a solid inch gap between the wall and the door now and two noticeable boot sized prints in the poor metal door. Honestly, Virgil is a little surprised the noise of Remus leaving hadn’t woken the dead back up, much less woken up Virgil from his nice little coma-nap.

Virgil tries not to think too hard about it all. He dodges through the gap and reforms on the other side of the door, stretching out his watery form and testing his control as he walks towards the common areas.

As much as Virgil hates the idea…if Remus is answering a call from Guildmaster Clay, then Virgil should probably position himself somewhere to find out where Remus was. It wasn’t often that Clay went to the trouble of separating them: the fact that Virgil stayed instead of running that first night, the fact that Virgil had gone a one on one with Greed for Remus’s contract, the fact that Virgil and Remus had did everything together had alerted even the Guildmaster to the idea that they worked better together than apart.

((Honestly, it was really the fact that Clay separated them for this that spelled Virgil’s own loss against Roman, Patton, and Logan. If Remus had been there…. Well it wouldn’t have been quiet, but it sure as hell would have been quick and successful.

Together they could get anything done. And if Virgil was ever in the mood for a terrible, agonizing death, he’d even tell that to the Guildmaster himself.))

For most of Remus’s missions and jobs it was understood that Virgil would be right along next to him, lurking like a shadow, covering all his blindspots. It wasn’t like anyone else the Guildmaster sent to supervise Remus would do it. As such, Virgil’s place was generally beside Remus. If he wasn’t there it was because he was given orders to do something else and it was better to stay out of his way until he got it done.

But Virgil highly doubted that the Guildmaster would be even remotely pleased to see Virgil’s face. At best he’d be interrupting a plan, at worst Virgil would be inviting his own murder to happen and Remus would live on thinking forever that Virgil was upset at him. So that’s a no.

It was likely that by now Malice and Envy were back. They were always generally in decent moods if Virgil entertained their need to boast about how they won their battles, and probably wouldn’t be against sending Virgil towards Remus (most likely with a jovial threat to deliver like Virgil is Remus’s errand boy). But Virgil didn’t know if he could stomach listening politely to whatever Malice did to Logan--embellished or not-- and he definitely wouldn’t be able to keep cool with Envy started showing off her crystals of concentrated Dragon Slayer Magic she pulled out of Roman before he could even manifest a candle light. So no to both of them.

Pride wasn’t the type of person that Virgil trusted himself to be around. If Virgil moved too fast he could still feel the buzz of electricity coursing through him, boiling him inside and without someone to tell him that Virgil was necessary for whatever grand big plan, Pride wouldn’t bother stopping an attempt to kill him.

That leaves…. Greed.

Well. The bright side is at least Virgil always knows where Greed likes to lurk.

***

Virgil hears the raspy wet coughing laugh long before he actually sees Greed.

The script mage looks unextraordinary compared to other members of the guild: he has none of the flashy bejeweled outfits that Envy likes to flaunt around to make people look and remember, none of Malice’s warped scars that speak of how little he cares about keeping his enemies in one piece, and none of Pride’s pretentious, precocious aura which maintains a fifteen foot radius of personal space around him at all times. What Greed does have is a gnarled spine that causes him to slump over nearly half his height and walk with a cane, and a long overcoat riddled with age and which trails after him by nearly a whole foot, making him appear like just another old man who is still in denial that his prime had long passed. His skin is graying out, spotted in strange places, and clinging to his bones so loosely that Virgil always gets the impression that the flabs are seconds away from dripping right off him. His hair had been white and wispy since before the founding of the Magic Council and very clearly it hasn’t gotten any more flushed. He squints very hard when he first meets someone new as if he can’t see them all that well, and can hear them even less well.

He looks like a man who is desperately alone, desperately sad without grandchildren to take care of him; a man whom the gracious guildmaster had offered to take into his business to give him a bit of purpose in what remained of his sad, lonely life.

That had been Virgil’s first impression of him (back when he and Remus were eighteen and giddy with disbelief that a guild might actually want them) and he still gets furious with his younger self for having felt pity for the guy who looked like a stiff breeze might have knocked him over directly into a grave.

“Still alive, are you?” The man croaks out, part of a cough wet and raspy and Virgil finds himself wishing that it would develop into an incurable disease already. “The guildmaster is going soft in his old age. In my day, your kind wouldn’t have made it back from your first job, much less survived long enough to screw up as much as you do.”

“Do you practice these lines in the mirror?” Virgil asks, doing his best to keep his hands out of sight in his poncho lest Greed see how much he’s actually shaking. “Or does being an asshole that no one likes just something you know how to do naturally?”

The man wallows out a wet laugh again, leaning on his cane and showing off his yellowed teeth. “Careful, Boy. You better be sure this guild won’t miss you before you start throwing around challenges like that.”

Virgil’s decently sure that no one would miss Greed too terribly much either. Vastly over assuming his value to the Guildmaster is a hobby that Virgil thinks the man would enjoy. Right along with trapping teenagers in unbreakable contracts and haunting a library of tomes detailing forgotten magics he didn’t think anyone else was worthy of even looking at. Virgil managed to sneak into the library only once, searching for Remus’s contract that Greed kept behind layers and layers of traps, but in the end the thing that had fucked him the most was Guildmaster Clay putting a hand on Virgil’s collarbone and saying “You know better than to try that again now, don’t you? You can keep this as a reminder, Virgil.”

Virgil shakes off the memory, pretending like he doesn’t notice the rain rapping against the windows in a very telling way. Based on Greed’s gurgle, it doesn’t get past him either.

“Do you know where Remus is?” Virgil grinds out.

“Yes.”

Virgil waits for more and the man continues with his uneven pace right by Virgil as if he hadn’t said anything at all. For a moment Virgil considers throwing the full force of his Water Cane at his hobbling weak form and seeing if the ancient protection runes magic carved into his limbs under his cloak could protect him from being torn apart at point blank range.

((Of course if it had been that easy, Remus never would have been stuck here in the first place.))

“Where,” Virgil says, between his teeth, “can I find Remus?”

“One day you aren’t going to be able to keep mooching off that boy,” Greed spits. “Although I supposed that’s the only way your kind survives in these ages, isn’t it? Those damned Magic Counsel fools writing those laws declaring you creatures humans, making it a crime to send you back to the elements you came from! If it were up to me--”

“We don’t have to do the whole song and dance every time--”

”--You hover over that boy’s shoulder, taking credit for the good work he does for the guildmaster, siphoning off his potential, and pitifully whining at the guildmaster until he gives you another chance, just to disappoint--”

“Will you just tell me!” Virgil says.

“--mannerless, talentless--”

“Why did I even bother!” Virgil hisses out. Thunder rumbles outside the castle, and Virgil spins on his heel away from that asshole of an old man, mentally hoping that the guy drops dead in an hour or two. He supposes it's also thoughts like that, that would make him a terrible Star Burst mage.

“It’s your fault!” Greed adds. “That Malice and Envy ended up getting as hurt as they did! Those damn brats were supposed to be your problem but then you went and screwed that up and now both of them are in the infirmary--”

Virgil freezes. “What?”

Because it sounds like Greed is saying that Malice and Envy lost. He makes it sound like Roman and Patton and Logan managed to fend off two of Shadow Force with less than no warning and no real powers thanks to Envy’s magic. He makes it sound like the Star Burst’s Mages were still alive and that Virgil failing his task hadn’t signed their death warrants.

“Wipe that look off your face, Boy,” Greed says. “They still completed the mission you should have done, you useless, waste of--”

“Greed.”

The old man stops immediately in what he’s saying, but Virgil knows better than to be relieved at that. From the shadows (like an asshole with too much time on his hands), Pride strolls out, eyes narrowed and unimpressed with the situation. The air seems to tense around them, charged with electricity that triggers all of Virgil’s fight-or-flight instincts and the scent of burning flesh wafts between all three of them for a second.

“The Guildmaster requests your presence, Greed,” Pride says, with a sneer that speaks to volumes about how Pride feels about being used as a messenger, when he’s… well, Pride. Lightning flickers over his shoulder, tastefully suggesting all the terrible things he could do with it and Virgil and a dark hallway that everyone avoids.

Greed humphs, shifting his grip on his walking stick. He turns away from Virgil, cloak trailing after him like a snake and Virgil considers stepping on it and watching the man choke and fall over. Pride, however, is watching him, and Virgil knows better than to move without permission.

The rain batters the windows, distant lightning briefly illuminating the sky to the rhythm of Virgil’s heartbeat. It’s a long moment, where Virgil balances on the precipice of throwing himself through the floorboards and hoping he can make it to the room underneath them without too much trouble before Pride decides to eliminate him entirely for his own entertainment.

It wouldn’t take much. Barely a twitch of Pride’s fingers, and Virgil is fast but even he’s not faster than light. The energy would hum in his body, stiffening his limbs until he turned into a doll and then Pride could simply tilt his head and send all that racing towards that poison in Virgil’s chest. Virgil would feel the excruciating pain, maybe even get a chance to scream before he exploded into thousands of droplets of watered down poison and his consciousness had nothing to cling to at all.

Remus would know he was gone by the way that sun glittered on the dew drops, by the way that he realizes that he hasn’t heard the sound of rain in a while, by the way he turns around and there’s no annoying rain witch standing in his blind spot like a shadow he can’t get rid of--

“Remus is downstairs in the cellars,” Pride says. “Go.”

And then he turns away heading back down the halls as if the interaction had never happened and Virgil wasn’t worth his time and Virgil hadn’t been certain that his own death was about to occur.

Virgil pretends the tremble in his hands is from the rush of knowing where to find Remus.

***

Honestly, Virgil isn’t sure the cellars in Chimera Tongue’s castle-shaped Guildhall had a truly thought out purpose. They were nearly always damp and cold due to the fact that Virgil keeps the entire region decently flooded and miserable with his storm, and the fact that the stones used to build the castle and its foundations were about as good at insulation as Virgil was at turning off his storm.

Thus, guild members don’t tend to like going into them very often. The cellars hadn’t housed alcohol since before Virgil had first arrived, and he highly doubted that it would after Virgil’s mysteriously unimportant disappearance and other than having empty cavernous rooms with little light, there weren’t any upsides to going down there.

Remus and Virgil had been together a few times, looking for a place to spar when they weren’t on a job and didn’t want to deal with other people. But as their ability to read each other had grown, the need for space to utilize more moves or create new ones had also grown, and Remus had gotten a taste for kicking people out of the way when he wanted to use a space in the upstairs gym areas.

Virgil skips using the doors to check which of the cellars Remus is in. It’s far easier to borrow the pipes and slip through the unsealed cracks in the walls without having to worry about anyone else asking what he’s doing wandering around in the dark and possibly doing something about it.

And well…Virgil doesn’t believe in ghosts, but he’s also not going to tempt fate into making him a believer by just… waltzing around in a possibly haunted basement. Of all places to be haunted, Chimera Tongue’s Guildhall would surprise Virgil the least.

The first two cellars are empty, without dust even being remotely disturbed. It’s quiet as a tomb in all of them, and Virgil is about to suspect that Pride sent him on a wild goblin chase when he plops into the third and finds it surprisingly halfway full of people loitering around like it was a funeral wake.

Bewildered, Virgil shifts back into his human form, settling on a support beam over their heads encased in shadows that make the prospects of spiders clinging increase tenfold. All at once dozens of more human senses come back: the murky scent of perpetually wet earth, the faint taste of rain and a distinct lack of any type of tingling that might suggest warmth. If Virgil was a creature that actually breathed in the sense of taking in oxygen from the air and pushing it back out, he would have expected his breath to condense as he searched through the heads of guild members for Remus.

It’s not even remotely hard to find him.

Remus is wearing mostly black today, with green accents and silver chains whose ringing are the only noise this far beneath the castle. The cut of his shirt is jagged and harsh and leaves enough skin showing for his guildmark to be on full display to everyone even with his leather jacket on, which Virgil knows Remus hates people being able to see. He’s sitting on a long forgotten and abandoned table, one foot up on the flat surface, next to a brown paper bag that seems to have been untouched for a while. He’s looking bored out of his mind and angry about it as he swings his free foot back and forth and causes the slight tingtingting of his metal laced laces to make contact with one another.

At each cling the entire room seems to hold its breath, waiting to see if Remus is going to pounce on the nearest person and start giving them free dental work to solve the apparent lack of entertainment.

Nearby Remus, just out of reach, is a smaller form sitting against the side of the table curled into a ball and slightly shaking. It takes Virgil far too long to recognize him.

Patton doesn’t look good, not that Virgil expected him to. He was familiar enough with Malice and Envy’s particularly sadistic form of hospitality to be surprised that Patton has all of his fingers.

From his vantage point above, he’s able to see that Patton is covered in bumps and bruises so dense that Virgil can’t tell where one starts and others ends. There’s a shallow scrape along his cheek, something too deliberate to have been a battle accident: Virgil has a sneaking suspicion that if he got close enough he’d be able to see what freckles Malice was playing dot-to-dot with on Patton’s face.

His arms are bound at the wrists with coarse rope behind his back, tight enough to leave uncomfortable marks digging into his skin every time he twitches. He is sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest, and although his ankles weren’t tied, his head is bent in a way that suggests he realized that running wasn’t going to get him anywhere. Virgil can make out the cracks in his glasses where some not-so-gentle force had been applied in order to get him from his safe and cozy Star Burst home to their damp and dark and miserable castle.

It seems like Malice and Envy didn’t give Patton a chance to activate one of his tracking cards.

Or simply, there was no one to come for him anymore. Like a phone call that will never be answered.

Virgil wonders if Remus had realized that Roman might be dead, or if he cared at all. He isn’t sure how he himself felt other than very super awfully terribly bad.

He didn’t like Roman, and didn’t like him even more after knowing that he chose himself over Remus, chose Patton over Remus, chose and acted like Remus should have still been grateful to call him “brother”, but part of him thought about the pure grief in Remus’s body, about all the words that Remus deserved a chance to say to Roman, about how closure was a lot harder to get when you wanted it from ghosts.

Also he kinda liked Logan-- annoyance about his assumption that Virgil didn’t try to control his power aside. He was intimidating and strange in the same way that Remus was intimidating and strange, even if his intimidation came from being far smarter than Virgil, where as Remus’s was from being far stronger and a lot more insane at times.

There are a few other guys around, none that Virgil recognizes enough by name. He thinks he saw one of them use gun magic once, and another picto magic, but honestly…they're grunts. The guildmaster probably doesn't even know their faces and he probably would toss them into a losing battle as fodder for fun.

((The grunts don't know that of course. They think they're powerful, part of an elite force, something to be feared. They've never been invited to a fancy study and been handed a contract and watched their best friend try to carve off his skin after he signed his name…))

“Jeez,” Virgil says, letting his voice echo in the otherwise silent room and forcing the weakness out of his mind for now. “Remind me never to let you babysit again.”

Most of the grunts startle, which is somewhat amusing to see in the corner of his vision: sparks of light, a few curses, that break the tenuous silence, and the jerky movements of them trying to get back into their intimidating dick measuring stances while still looking around for the source of the disembodied voice. Virgil’s been making people jump at shadows since he was seven but there’s something magical about seeing grown men suddenly fear for their lives.

The only two people who look up are Remus and Patton.

Patton’s clearly been on edge for far longer than his rich heir or his Star Burst mage body knows how to manage, but also he seems to relax a bit when he recognizes that the newcomer is someone he’s met before. Virgil does not think too long about that-- he doesn’t think about it at all actually. Nope. No thinking. He doesn’t even know what he would do with the realization that maybe Patton felt a modicum of safety in Virgil’s presence, like Virgil was likely to be a wall between him and all the bad people down below and it wouldn’t end with both of them dead.

Remus tilts his head just enough to let Virgil know that he also picked up on the way that Patton’s shoulders had shifted down just a bit and his breathing had hitched and then evened out. But beyond that, in atypical-for-Remus fashion he doesn’t make a move to acknowledge it.

Virgil thinks he might be too busy trying to wipe the relief of seeing Virgil wearing the hoodie he painstakingly cleaned before any of the grunts noticed.

“Oh, hello there, Bath Water,” Remus says cheerily, dropping his foot to the ground and shooting to his feet with an excited maniac energy that definitely causes the grunts to look nervous and back up. Most of them have enough common sense to learn from past mistakes of getting caught in Remus's bad moods. The few that don’t…well they don't usually survive for round two. “I thought you were dead!”

“Unfortunately for us both, I still draw breath on this wretched plane of existence.” Virgil says, stretching as he teeters on the beam above them, watching Remus’s hands for any sign of metal expanding over them. “How long was I out for?”

“Twelve hours, give or take,” Remus waves a hand theatrically in the air as if he hasn’t been worried about him, hasn’t been counting the minutes down, hasn’t been missing Virgil at all. “I would have woken you, but I was enjoying the sunshine, shithead.”

There’s a fierceness to Remus’s grin. His tongue piercing rolls over his teeth with a clink clink clink, but Virgil can get the underlying message easily without it. Clay had called him with an order to assign him to this babysitting job, and Remus had complied.

At least there aren’t any bleeding marks on his arms from what Virgil can see. Virgil counts his blessings, if that could even be counted as a blessing. It seemed that more and more, Remus stopped fighting back and that knowledge paired with their unfinished conversation from last night doesn’t bode well for his mental state.

Virgil doesn’t know what he’ll do if Remus gives up. He doesn’t know what he can do. Hope the Magic Council arrests them both and puts them in a cell together, pretty please?

“Yeah, well, hope you enjoyed the sun while it was here,” Virgil says, boredly because he’s heard every variation of the sun is better than your company and Remus doesn’t actually mean it. Probably. “I’m here to ruin everyone’s lives now. Whoop-de-doo.”

“Aw, and you don’t even try.”

Patton makes a sharp wounded noise. Virgil tells himself that it's because Patton breathed too deep and a broken rib caused a pinch of pain, rather than entertain the idea that Patton had almost just defended Virgil against a Metal Dragon Slayer who put rebars through people on a whim sometimes.

“Got something to add, Ace?” Remus snarls at the card mage and Patton shakes his head. “That’s what I thought. Go back to pretending like you have Roman’s dick in your mouth.”

“Now that was crossing a line,” Virgil sighs, as fury so white hot crossed over Patton’s face that even some of the grunts inched backwards. Remus, however, doesn’t look even remotely intimidated: arms behind his head, each of his metal rings clink, clink, clinking together as he flexes his hands like he’s imagining gripping Virgil’s neck and squeezing.

“If he didn’t want me to say it, he wouldn’t act like the sun shines out of Roman’s ass,” Remus snaps.

“If you were jealous of your twin's ass, you could have just asked me for an affirmation,” Virgil says. “I’d let you know that yours is flatter any day.”

"If you wanted me to paint the walls with your insides, you just had to say the word, Virgin! Three more days of sunshine coming right-fucking-up.”

“It doesn’t feel like it would be enough,” Virgil comments with part of a yawn to show just how impressed by the threat he is. Virgil leans against the supporting beam, making sure that Remus can see his bored expression from down there. “I need like three more decades of straight sleep.”

“I can arrange that. I would be fucking peachy to arrange that,” Remus says, cracking his knuckles so loudly that the sound echoes in the room. His black nail polish glints in the low light. “Though I should warn you that no amount of beauty sleep is going to fix your face when I’m done with it.”

“Careful, Remus, or people are going to start assuming you have standards.”

He grins with all his pointed teeth, metal creeping over his neck, shiny and unbreakable even against Virgil’s strongest pressurized water attack. “What exactly are you doing here, other than being extremely punchable, Wastewater? Don’t you have somewhere else to be where you can disappoint your dead parents a bit more?”

“Ouch,” Virgil comments blandly. “Are we at the dead parents' jokes, already?”

He pretends he doesn’t notice how their large audience is quietly watching their back and forth with very little variety of expressions on their faces. Most of them are taking steps back, carving out an arena that Remus looks far too hungry to see, to feel, to use. The tension along Remus’s shoulders reads like a fucking book: the bumbling, brash, bubbling need to destroy something whether it be someone else or himself. Patton looks too soft, too worried, too nervous and Virgil forces himself not to glance at him and ask why do you look worried for me? Why do you care what happens to me? Why do I make you feel safer after everything I did to you?

Virgil swallows and tugs the brim of his hood higher over his head. “Came to see what you were up to, Loser. Heard there was a guest and I’ve never known you to be a good party host.”

Remus barks out a laugh that could have been confused with something gargling glass fragments. Patton jumps slightly at the sound of it, squeezing his eyes shut and letting out a shuddering breath.

“Oh! I know how to throw a great fucking party! Me, Patty, and all our friends here are playing a fun party game called no one says shit and I don’t break anyone's face again. Several people have already lost. You can join in if you want, and shut the fuck up before I put you in the ground where you belong.”

Virgil snorts. “Me? in the ground? Please. You couldn’t beat me if you actually tried.”

“I definitely could, spritz.”

“You seem to be misremembering how our last fight ended.”

“What makes you think it ended?” Remus growls out. “Come on down here, Virgie. Unless you’re too much of a coward.”

“I can take you down in forty-five seconds.”

“I’m counting.”

They stare at each other for a second, two, three… and it’s just that Remus looks so ridiculous looking up at Virgil for the first time. He’s a foot taller than him, and had so many times plopped his arm on Virgil’s head as a rest, or accidentally put a fist through Virgil’s face when telling a story because he forgot Virgil’s short. From this angle, he has to crane his neck, nearly breaking it, to get a good idea of where all of Virgil’s limbs are, and it almost looks like he’s just glaring at the sky about to fight the rain for making Virgil sad.

Virgil just can’t help it. His lips twitch upwards.

Thankfully that's all Remus needs to see for him to throw his head back and laugh his booming laughter that nearly shakes the whole castle at its foundations. Virgil’s chest hums with the warmth of the sound, the familiarness of it, the way that it can curl into a threat when it chooses but Virgil has never heard it threaten him even after Virgil got his bike destroyed.

The grunts lose their formations; a scattered mess of nameless people all laughing it off with a type of lightness that only comes from desperately trying not to show how nervous they were. Remus made sure everyone knew that Virgil and him had leveled towns in their fights when they were serious and the only people who ever knew when they were serious were the two of them.

((Patton lets out a nearly inaudible sigh of relief, his shoulders slumping forward like a puppet with his strings cut, and Virgil pretends he doesn’t see it even when Remus’s eyes flick over to their captive guest and something dark passes over his expression.))

He lets himself drop down from the rafters, tracing the metal beams like a raindrop, just to pool back into his human form at the floor level, where he bounces with his landing with ease. The Chimera Tongue mages around him all give him a healthy bit of personal space, and Virgil ignores them entirely.

Divines, it’s good to have some of his energy back. He feels like a new man-- He’s sure that if it weren’t for the crippling weight of Remus’s contract, possibly being arrested in the near future, the bomb in his chest, the dull thudding of the headache, and the fact that he participated in a kidnapping, he’d actually be enjoying himself right now.

There’s not much in the room, which Virgil can’t decide if it's a blessing or a curse. On the bright side if a fight does break out there’s less things to damage or have thrown at them, which means less things they’re going to have to pay Guildmaster Clay back for, even though the engraving on that table alone is making Virgil’s imaginary wallet weep. On the totally bad side, that means there’s less things for Remus to have been distracting himself with that wasn’t putting his knuckles through people’s teeth.

There’s a bit of blood on the ground not too far away. Virgil pretends he doesn’t see it.

"Hey," Virgil snaps his fingers at the nearest guild member, who definitely flinches back at being addressed. Virgil thinks he might have been the one that called him Window Washer yesterday; crazy how when there’s a Dragon Slayer in the vicinity people get much nicer to Virgil. "Get lost."

"Uh," the guy says nervously, glancing between Virgil and Remus, "the guildmaster said--"

"If the guildmaster has a problem with it you’re welcome to tell him to come talk to me directly. Of course, he would have to, considering that you’d be a stain on the ground for bothering him….” Virgil trails off and then shrugging. “And really, do you think that you have a better shot in a fight with the Metal Dragon Slayer than I do?”

Remus curls his fingers into a fist and all of his bones make a resounding, disturbing, horrible cracking noise that almost makes Virgil glance back at him in terror. The grunt’s eyes widen in fear and he stutters a step back and honestly? Same.

“Don't make me repeat myself,” Virgil suggests trying to recover without losing his intimidation factor. “Your body is made up of about 40 liters of water. I only need 4 milliliters to drown you where you're standing. And it wouldn’t even cause a mess!"

Probably wouldn’t make a mess. Virgil’s not sure and he doesn’t really want to find out. But you know what? There’s something satisfying about watching grown men turn tail and run.

Most of them are out the door in seconds; the rest of them are scrambling up from where they were shoved out of the way and following after. The doorway isn’t big enough for more than one of them to fit through at a time and the frantic clambering of them struggling to get through is probably the loudest that the whole room had been in a while. Part of Virgil trills at the sight of it, that sliver of power that he wouldn’t get anywhere else. If only he’d been this bold with the bullies at this orphanage instead of playing hide-and-seek until the Orphanage Leader tossed him out.

Remus laughs as the door slams closed leaving just the two of them and Patton and a room too big for just the three of them. "Ah shit, they think you would do that, still?"

Virgil lets himself sit on the table, pausing only to nod in the direction of Patton without waiting to see if he would or could nod back. "Having a brain isn't exactly a requirement for recruitment around here."

He doesn’t think about the two of them, just eighteen years old, stumbling into the guild hall, grins of nervous laughter and looking for a fight. He doesn’t think about how the guildmaster smiled at them and offered them free lodging for a week while they decided if they wanted to stay. He doesn't think about how having a brain isn't synonymous with not being an idiot, and that a smarter, better, more powerful water mage wouldn’t have just stood there in horror when the red lines of magic tore into Remus’s skin.

And mercifully, Remus doesn’t think about it either.

“Strange bag of unknown origins that hasn’t been touched….Is this for me?” Virgil says, poking at the paper bag of questionable origin on the table. Something in it is sweating, making the paper outside threaten to rip at his touch. “What is it?”

“A severed human head.” Remus waves a hand towards it, in as much of a dismissive gesture as a permissive one. He turns his back to him, stretching his arms over his head in a way that showed off his very impressive arm muscles. His metal toed boots clack-ed on the ground, with the faint jingle of his extra stash of metal bits that he’d no doubt been snacking on. "Muffins, but warning: I only take payment in the form of super sexual favors. You should get on your knees now."

Patton’s ears turn red at the statement and there's a hitch in his breathing that makes Remus grin wider and Virgil rolls his eyes. He doesn’t even want to know what Remus has convinced Patton their relationship is by now, if Remus had even been talking about him at all to Patton.

"Is that so?" Virgil says, helping himself to the bag where there are, indeed, muffins. Three, to be exact, and all blueberry with crystalized sugar on top, as per Virgil’s preferred muffin specifications. He’d gone on a rant once about it a month after they had first month and he hadn’t thought Remus had been listening or cared, but well… here they were, and Remus was doing that thing that he does where he acts like the far wall is extremely interesting.

There's also a bottle of an energy drink that Virgil likes in there, still covered in condensation from where Remus has stored it to keep it cool. Virgil does his best not to look accusingly at Remus, because those were pricey and they both agree it was frivolous expense Virgil could do without.

"Actually, fuck you,” Virgil says, making sure that Remus can hear the guilt that put a strangle hold on his lungs. “You know what? I'm really considering it this time. Where's my debt at, right now?"

"Depends," Remus says, bulldozing straight through what anyone else would call an almost-apology. “What did you grab me from Magnolia?”

((It's easier like this, Virgil thinks. Remus gets him his favorite foods, Virgil finds a new piece of metal to feed him and see what type of mineral upgrades it could give his scale armor for the next thirty minutes. They remember that they're in this together, however hopeless, however dangerous, however draining and miserable and terrible. It's them against the world: Rule One and Rule Four working in tandem so neither of them have to utter the words I'm sorry for the situation I got us both in; If I was slightly less useless, we’d be traveling the countryside without a care in the world right now instead of participating in illegal activities.))

Virgil picks up a muffin and shoves it in his mouth, uncaring for the paper wrapper before he carefully digs through his pockets until he finds the collection of spoons he swiped from Patton’s house and pulls one out to wave at him.

Remus lights up like lightning in the sky, shining so brightly Virgil almost thought he might have been that mystical sun he’s always heard about. His eyes lock onto the metal with an intensity that comes only from being distinctly more-than-human and Remus’s limbs still in a way that reads as preparing to lunge. Virgil flicks the spoon in the air and Remus dives for it like some type of animal, skidding across the cement floor away from Patton. He catches the spoon in his mouth, letting his teeth shatter the handle and gratefully swallowing it in a way that still unnerves Virgil after all these years--He’s seen snakes that don’t look so horrible eating things whole.

But it doesn’t matter much because Remus spits it out in the next breath with a dramatic whine.

“Wet Dream, how could you!” He gags. “Sterling silver?! Couldn’t you have at least bought the stainless steel kind?!”

“You’re lucky it's not plastic!” Virgil says around his bite of muffin and very deliberately does not look at Patton because oh god he thought those were normal ass spoons, he just fed a mostly silver spoon to a trash compactor, the other spoons in his pocket were probably worth more than he had saved up from all his time of working as a wizard.

Actually no, he is looking at Patton because why does he have sterling silver spoons? No one has sterling silver spoons. Those things are expensive as all fuck.

Remus reads his expression like a billboard in the middle of Hargeon Port, though. The delighted look he’d gotten on his face at the prospect of a new metal is nothing compared to the euphoria that he gets at the sight of Virgil’s distress. He theatrically gasps, grinning all the way as he languidly rolls out his shoulders. “Effluent! Did you steal these spoons? Did you steal these spoons from the guy you were hired to kidnap? How low could you get!”

“Please don’t try to talk to me about morally correct actions,” Virgil says, peeling the wrapper off the muffin while trying to catch all the crumbs before they hit the floor.

“You’ve been officially converted!” Remus continues. “Wittle Wirgil is growing up! Entering his evil phase! Next thing you know he’ll be--”

“I’ll pay you in sexual favors to shut up at this point.”

“--jaywalking! Or blasting his emo music too loud after 10pm! Or littering! Perhaps even waving a vulgar hand sign at a middle class elder woman--”

“Do you want these spoons or not?!” Virgil snaps, ignoring the blush on his cheeks that should not be there because he’s not embarrassed by Remus’s stupid impression of him that’s not even close to being accurate. Virgil hates littering, and you only get splattered across a windshield one time before you decide that jaywalking as a nearly see-through entity in a black outfit while it's raining is a hazard.

“No wait, I’ll be quiet!” Remus’s grin doesn’t completely disappear, but he does stop talking finally-- a monumental task for him-- and they say to reward even the little victories so Virgil tosses the rest over and watches Remus catch most of them with little difficulty.

Virgil stuffs the rest of his muffin in his mouth and glances towards Patton. “Uh, sorry.” He swallows, “About your spoons. I hope they weren’t an heirloom.”

Patton shifts uncomfortably glancing between Virgil and Remus, with his mouth opening and closing.

Virgil waves a dismissive hand towards Remus, who is thoroughly enthralled with his new meal. His eyes hold a faint green glow to them as he digests the metal, clocking the strength of it against his usual steel and deciding if he likes the taste more when it comes as an apology gift from Virgil’s rare side crimes. He checks the scales on his forearm in the minimal light, tapping his nails against as part of his usual new-metal-check routine or whatever.

“He doesn’t really care if you speak or not,” Virgil says by way of explanation to the Star Burst mage. “He didn’t want the others making small talk with him. They try to cozy up to him because he’s one of the strongest in the guild.”

“Oh,” Patton says in a small voice that’s nearly overshadowed by Remus crunching on metal carelessly. “Uhm… no the spoons were, uhm, they weren’t really mine.”

Virgil blinks. “I’m going to regret asking this, but whose were they? No offense but I don’t think Roman or Logan can afford silver spoons.”

Could. Oh fuck why did he open his mouth?

Patton half laughs, more like a sigh, more like he can’t believe that his kidnappers are discussing ownership of spoons which are being actively demolished. And well, in his defense, Virgil also can’t believe he’s trying to have a conversation like that. “Uhm… You know about my dad?”

“Hart enterprises,” Virgil says neutrally. “Uh trains? I think.”

Patton looks down at his scraped knees, with an expression that reads somewhere between I wish I was being run over by a train and I wish you were being run over by a train.

“Yeah, it’s trains,” Patton says. “My great grandfather started the company generations ago before Magic guilds were a thing. My grandfather made a bad investment when my dad was a kid and it nearly cost the entire company…my dad swore to never let that happen again. That silverware was one of the first things he bought my mother after they got married and he promised her she’d live like a princess.”

Virgil stares at him with muted horror. “Did you just let me feed your dead mother’s sterling silver spoons to a garbage can?”

“That’s mean,” Patton protests. “Remus isn’t a garbage can--”

“Patton!” Virgil says, tugging on his poncho wishing it could choke him. “Are those spoons your mother’s?”

The card mage shrugs as if it's that simple. “Yeah, but don’t worry about it! I’m glad they’re getting, uhm, use! I don’t even think Dad noticed they were missing and I haven’t been able to make myself use them since I unpacked them. All they’d been doing is reminding me of how life used to be before my mom died.”

Patton takes a deep breath and lets it out and Virgil considers slamming his own head against the table.

“He used to…uhm. He used to be a good person. People liked working for him and with him. He smiled a lot.” Patton glances back up at Virgil. “But after my mom died he kinda lost himself in the company and doing the most to earn profits regardless of workers rights…People started to complain and my dad didn’t want those complaints to reach “people who mattered” so he, uhm. He paid some dark mages to go visit the people who were complaining.”

Virgil isn’t a stranger to those types of jobs. Actually, Virgil had been on more than one of those for Guildmaster Clay’s business. Remus and Virgil were very effective at intimidation and since they weren’t as valued as the other members of Shadow Force it was usually them sent to do it. It always left Virgil feeling a little slimy afterwards, and put Remus in the type of mood that was only solved with copious amounts of alcohol and a good sparring match.

“It got worse after that,” Patton continues. “Ignoring safety regulations, understaffing, paying off people when lawsuits popped up or finding scapegoats to pin the blame on. All while making a fortune at the estate as if he could buy my mother back from death! He forced me to stop practicing magic around the house and forbid me from leaving without his permission and--”

“He sounds like an ass,” Remus says, causing Patton to flinch and squeak as if he had forgotten the Dragon Slayer was there. Virgil doesn’t necessarily blame him: Remus had this ability to look like he was completely absorbed in something else, and yet still be completely aware of what was going on. Remus juggles the last spoon over his knuckles, flipping it into the air one last time before catching it in his mouth and snapping it clear in half and then he lets his silver scales fade back into his skin without looking at either of them.

Patton laughs in a way that comes out as more hysterical than pleased. “Uh yep! Yeah. He’s uhm, not great. He cashed in a favor with Guildmaster Clay to get me brought back to the estate so he can, uhm, marry me off… as part of a business negotiation...”

Virgil feels his stomach drop a little further. “Marry you off? What, like you’re a piece of property?”

“Yep,” He pops the ‘p’ as he says it and offers a watery, wilting smile that makes the cracks in his glasses seem larger and Virgil’s heart hurt a bit stronger and hate himself a little more. “I, uhm, guess I was pretty stupid to think running away would actually get me away from there.”

“What about Roman,” Remus asks, very unknindly. Virgil stares at him, and Remus ignores him in favor of glowering at Patton with all the sympathy of a feral demon looking for its next meal. “You don’t think that Fire Fucker will come save you? He ditched his dead twin brother for you.”

“Remus,” Virgil says.

“I don’t… I didn’t know he would come for me!” Patton says, apologetically. Virgil almost wants to reach out and shake him for it. “I didn’t think he kept the card after I gave it to him and then when everything happened I panicked and pulled a random card--”

“Do you have any idea what the fuck he did to me?”

“No! But--” Patton cuts back, shedding the cover of the scared little card mage and morphing into the kind guy who could go toe-to-toe with Guildmaster Clay without breaking a sweat and holy shit, that’s kinda terrifying; is this what all little business children learn to do? “But the Roman I know is a good person who makes mistakes sometimes! You don’t have to give him another chance, Remus, you don’t ever have to see him again if you don’t want to! But you don’t get to tell me the man I know isn’t real because you’re hurting!”

“You are talking yourself into a fucking hopsital bed,” Remus warns.

“Guys!” Virgil says, but both of them ignore him.

“And it doesn’t matter! Roman won’t come for me again anyway!” Patton shouts, and Remus freezes. “My dad has too much magic around the house-- Roman wouldn’t be able to come even if he did find a real dragon--”

Virgil isn’t sure if it was the glowing green magic circle appearing under Remus’s feet, or the claws, or the horns twisting out of his hair, but Patton clamps his mouth shut nearly immediately. Virgil stands up, a step away, a little too far, and his insides swirl like a tidal wave trying to convince him to throw himself between Remus and his prey.

“What do you mean find a real dragon?” Remus snarls.

Patton squeaks something that is not a response, although even Virgil can’t think of a response that’s both a decent one and also doesn’t end with more blood on the floor.

"You're telling me," Remus says, eyes narrowing into slits, and teeth sharpening. “That dickwad has the audacity to call himself a dragon slayer, after the stories of the bravest heroes who were chosen for their heroic acts, from our hometown that was destroyed completely leaving us as the only ones who even remember those stories, after he left me to fucking die at the hands of cultists, and he never even met a real fucking dragon?"

Patton makes a squeak that sounds a bit like a dying chew toy, his complexion matching the toneless ashen color of the walls around them and that determined persona evaporating faster than Virgil’s insides when he starts to panic. Remus’s tail swings behind him dangerously, metal scales scraping the concrete.

"Uhm," Patton stutters, shaking, wilting so far back that Remus’s shadow completely covers him. "I don’t--We don't…talk about it!"

Remus reaches out a hand and yanks Patton up by his shirt collar, pulling him completely off the ground with barely any trouble. “You fuckers don’t talk about it--”

“Remus, Rule Three,” Virgil cuts in even though he is not part of this conversation what’s-so-ever.

Remus blinks, caught off guard, and so is Patton Hart; they both jolt out of their…positions, and it's like watching street actors slip out of the roles they’re performing. The room stings with the silence, heavy and biting and Virgil stares at the blank space between Remus and Patton as if it held some answers. It doesn’t fool Remus who for sure is listening to his heartbeat with a beady, suspicious look that borders on being offended that Virgil isn’t encouraging him pummeling Patton into the concrete floor, isn’t outraged on his behalf, isn’t showing just how loyal Virgil is to Remus because loyalty is the only thing that Virgil has that worth keeping him around for--

Remus takes a deep breath, blows it out through his nose, and then lets go of Patton’s shirt. Patton hits the floor with a soft, pathetic oof, and Remus turns his back to him completely as if manifesting the “out of sight out of mind” concept. The green circle under his boots hums for a second and fades, and at the same time his tail disappears and his claws even out back to regular fingers.

“Alright, Virgin,” he says, dragging the metal piercing of his tongue along his teeth to draw out a clinkclinkclink. Then he says, “Ratings of the tea cakes in Magnolia. Start with the worst.”

“I didn’t have any,” Virgil says. “You know I didn’t have any. I wasn’t gone long enough to try any tea cakes.”

“Four out of ten,” Remus decides, hopping up on the table next to where Virgil was eating his muffins, his ragged curls bouncing lightly. “I ate like thirty of them and I’m still hungry! They had no metal razors in them at all!”

“Normal people can’t eat razors, you freak of nature,” Virgil rolls his eyes.

“If they weren’t cowards they could,” Remus counters. “SlapPat back me up: Are Magnolia tea cakes better with razors in them or without?”

For someone who lives (lived?) with Roman and Logan, he looks utterly bewildered by Remus’s change in tone and actions. Virgil isn’t sure why: he can’t imagine that living in a house that has to have a microwave with a sign reading “No Science in this one, LOGAN” is any more quirky than watching Remus forcefully drop a subject and pretend it doesn’t weigh heavily on his mind. Roman probably does something similar, too.

Did. Probably “did” something similar.

Because Malice probably killed both Roman and Logan and then dragged Patton here by his hair. There’s a part of Virgil that doesn’t believe what Greed said about Malice being in the infirmary; there’s a part of Virgil that shakes from his knees thinking about Malice’s barrage of knives striking through Remus’s skin when his back was turned. He can’t imagine any of the Star Burst Mages managing to counter it.

But would Roman and Logan die to Malice like that? Roman broke out of Virgil’s waterlock from pure rage alone. Wouldn’t that translate to him having enough spite to defy death? But if Virgil was able to almost wipe them out by himself, what true chance did Star Burst’s Strongest Team really have against someone who actually wanted to kill them?

Knives in flesh. Screaming. Blood pouring from Logan’s back. Envy’s laugh.

He needs to stop thinking about this. He really needs to stop thinking about it.

“--them so, please don’t hit me,” Patton is saying, tensing slightly.

Remus scoffs, “It’s your opinion, dipshit. I’m not going to be offended that you’ve got awful tastes. Who do you think I am?”

Patton shifts entirely to face Virgil, lightyears beyond being distressed.

Virgil sighs. “Remus, we are currently holding him against his will, and literally seconds ago you almost put him through the wall.”

“Yes, and?”

“Divines, why am I even trying to explain this? How are you the one that got landed with this job? The guildmaster doesn't trust you as far as he can throw you." And probably further than that. There’s a reason why Remus isn’t allowed off the property unless with explicit instructions on who he can talk to and what he can do.

((Virgil is reminded for a second that if he had run after that first night, after he had patched together Remus’s bleeding forearms and stayed awake for thirty six hours straight to make sure Remus didn’t try to peel through legal binding magic in with his own claws again-- if he had run that first time and told everyone what the guildmaster had done maybe something about all this would have changed.

But Virgil hadn’t been able to take the chance that the guild wouldn’t disappear overnight and that he’d never find them again. It had been the right call, in hour thirty seven, Guildmaster Clay had come to the room to teleport Remus to their new secret guildhall, merely raising an eye, “interesting,” at how Virgil was still there, stubborn and resentful and already attempting to plan how he was going to steal that contract and tear it apart himself.))

Remus snorts. "Well he doesn’t exactly have a choice now does he? Didn’t anyone tell you Envy’s in the infirmary and Malice needed stitching on every single limb of his? Both of them are nursing grudges so large they’re liable to kill out of spite. Pride and Greed are Pride and Greed, and Clay likes fucking with us so...."

"Wait, wait, wait, seriously? Malice is actually in the infirmary? Who landed a hit on Malice?" Virgil turns to look at Patton. "Which one of them?"

Patton hesitates before offering up a soft, "uh... me?"

Virgil blinks, suddenly thinking back to their interactions previously: how Patton went limp as a doll when Virgil drowned him, how when he woke up mostly confused and leaned into Virgil's back to avoid the rain, how even when he attacked he had stopped when Virgil was down and talked kindly to him and told Roman to back down and--

Obviously Remus is also stunned for a moment at the new information. He’s quiet for a moment, disbelieving as he stares at Patton, half a scoff on his lips which dies when he zeroes in on what Virgil can only assume Patton’s unsteady heartbeat and decides that No, Patton is not lying about having nearly completely taken out a member of Shadow Force by himself.

“The kitten has claws!” He says towering over their captive hostage, so that his shadow swamps him. “I thought you were a card mage?”

“I am,” Patton says nervously, twisting his hands in their bindings like he was reaching for a card that isn’t there.

Remus is reassessing Patton again: comparing his previous assumptions of him with the new information and coming to conclusions that probably lean more towards the side of things that Virgil doesn’t actually want to know about. It was likely that Remus had been there when Malice and Envy had apparently dragged themselves back to the guildhall and had heard that version of events-- which Virgil seriously doubted involved Malice admitting he’d been bested by a handful of tarot cards and a guy in cat socks.

"No wonder he took offense to your face," Remus says. "I’m almost impressed."

Virgil leans back against the table chewing thoughtfully on his second muffin. "I wish I could have seen it."

"Uhm," Patton stutters. "Aren't you guys friends?"

The bite of muffin lodges in Virgil's throat, rock hard and sharp and Virgil doesn’t need to breathe but he finds himself doubled over hacking it back up at the same time as Remus laughs.

"I have dreams about shoving Malice's cocky ass face into a wood chipper," Remus says grandly. "I want to be there when that asshole dies just so I can kick his corpse around like a soccer ball until his limbs pop off and his brains are splattered across the whole place and his skull caves in!"

Patton jerks back at the tone and the imagery, but honestly that's pretty tame for Remus. Virgil's heard a lot of worse things spewing from Remus's mouth post a fight with Malice specifically. Virgil is kinda surprised that Patton hadn’t realized that the name wasn’t a joke; Malice didn’t exactly get his name from his benevolent acts of goodwill.

"He controls metal," Virgil explains, raspily. "And he's an asshole. So when they fight, Malice's first move is to always rip out all of Remus's piercings in one go."

Virgil had tried convincing Remus to get rid of his piercings after that first time he’d been on the floor bleeding from sixteen locations, but Remus was a glutton for danger and the second time Malice did it Remus gave him sixteen piercings on the spot and then stood over Malice’s writhing body and spat, “There now we’re matchies, Mal!” He probably would have done worse, but the guildmaster had stepped in and called Remus back like he was a misbehaving dog that had bitten a child at the playground.

"Why would anyone do that?!" Patton yelps. "That's so….horrible!"

Virgil and Remus chorus together, "It's Chimera Tongue."

"A guild is supposed to be your family. Your friends! A safe place that you can always come back to without worrying about anything! The people in your guild are supposed to be closer than anyone else--"

“Are you crying?” Remus asks, squinting at him in confusion.

Patton sniffles, looking like he would wipe his eyes if it weren’t for his wrists being held behind his back. Virgil squeezes his muffin in his hand, feeling the absurd need to make him stop because it's not even that bad! Surely Star Burst is at least a little like this, right?

“A guild is supposed to be your family,” Patton says again. “You’re supposed to be able to rely on them!”

“You rely on my brother?”

The sharpness of Remus’s tone is like putting a blade to Patton’s throat, and Remus’s grin is about as reassuring as a cliff drop into an open grave.

“Yes-- No-- Wait!” Patton curls up on himself. “That’s different! He can rely on me! But I’m not-- I am--”

“You’re not what? One of Roman’s bitchboys?”

Virgil makes a sharp noise. “Remus. Knock it off. He’s already been Rule Three-d today.”

“No, I want to know what it is that this bitch thinks makes my brother so great!” Remus swishes back around to Patton. “He can rely on you, but you can’t rely on him? That’s bullshit. That’s not a “family”. That’s not even a fucking friend! That sounds like he takes advantage of you and you let him because your dumb ass thinks that’s better than going home and letting daddy take advantage of you instead!”

“Remus!”

Remus ignores him, staring down Patton. There’s a long tense moment where neither Remus nor Patton says a thing and Virgil thinks that maybe he doesn’t need to worry about the poison in his chest because the tension in the room was going to explode him instead.

The tattoo on Remus’s neck rolls slightly as Remus swallows and Virgil wonders if he’s the only one smelling bleach all of the sudden, if he’s the only one remembering the taste of wine infused promises all of a sudden, if he’s the only one remembering “There’s nothing different about me with a collar and me without one!” all of a sudden.

“And while we’re on the topic,” Remus adds hard and biting. “You’ve gotta have some pretty big balls to go around assuming that either of us are part of this fucking guild of our own fucking free will. Family, my fucking ass-- If I ever got the chance to burn this place to the ground with everyone inside it, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

Patton’s face looks like Remus shoved a whole lemon in his mouth, the cuts on his cheek sluggishly reopening with the puckered expression. His wide blue eyes latch onto Remus’s collar bone as if he would see the same orange handprint on Remus’s chest as Virgil had inside him.

Remus offers him a light sneer when it becomes clear that Patton would not be responding. “I’m sure by the time you’re done thinking about all that, Roman will be here to save your ass anyway.”

“He’s not coming for me.”

Remus rolls his eyes. “Did Malice and Envy leave him alive?”

“...uhm. Yes, I think?”

Remus’s face does a silly little thing where he tries not to break Rule 2 before it's even been lunch time. “Then he’s coming for you. Mazel tov, asshole.”

The silence burns for a moment, making Virgil jittery from nerves and unused adrenaline and stubborn relief he should not be having. The urge to do something, say something is coursing through his limbs, but all he can manage to do is wring the empty plastic bottle of the energy drink between his hands and wish that the muffin he’d eaten had been a little less sweet.

Roman was alive. Probably. Virgil isn’t sure why that makes him… feel things. He’s not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing and Remus’s expression is so complex Virgil doesn’t think he knows how to feel about it either.

How to feel about Roman choosing Patton over him, about Roman leaving him behind twice now, about how likely it is that Roman would do it a third time if Remus doesn’t win their next fight and get the chance to walk away first.

But if Roman was able to break from Virgil’s Waterlock and Patton managed to land several devastating hits on Malice, what was that chance that they didn’t have some other trick up their sleeves that would be enough to tip the scales against Remus?

Virgil can't help but imagine how pissed off both Malice and Envy must be about all this, too. He’s doubly grateful, suddenly, that he’d gone to Greed instead of them to find Remus’s whereabouts; he doesn’t think Malice or Envy had ever been beaten by anyone other than other Shadow Force members but he gets the distinct feeling that they were sore losers and Virgil’s face would have been a great stress reliever.

The untouchables, being nearly decimated by a handful of idiots. It was one thing for Virgil to come back so dense with mud that he was practically a walking pottery attempt; it was something else entirely to make Guildmaster Clay have to trust Remus with not breaking something.

The dozens of grunts made sense now. They must have been the best assurance the Guildmaster had that Patton wouldn’t get too roughed up if Remus decided to attempt to sabotage the whole plan. They certainly wouldn’t have actually done any damage to Remus but they probably could have slowed him down enough to allow time for another member of Shadow Force, regardless of how injured, to get there.

Actually with Pride being busy with whatever the next phase of the scheme Clay's working on is, Malice in the infirmary, and Envy off cooling off, really only Greed and Remus remain of the elite tier of Shadow Force--

Oh.

"Virgil," Remus says, because even out of the corner of his eyes he can recognize certain body languages and Virgil had not been fast enough hiding it. "No."

"What?" Virgil lies. "I wasn't thinking about anything!"

"Dumbass, I can hear your heartbeat," Remus snarls. "Read my fucking lips before put a rebar in you myself: No."

"When are we gonna get another chance like this?!"

"Your death wish stopped being cute twenty seconds ago," Remus says. "Drop. It."

"Your resignation stopped being cute four months ago," Virgil shoots back. "When are you gonna be done throwing your pity party and wake the fuck up and do something about all this?" Virgil motions to Patton, "You said it yourself! We need another type of magic, and wow! Look! A card mage, the most versatile magic type that you can get--"

"Shut up.”

“--and he even took out Malice by himself! He’s plenty capable. Part of the strongest team of wizards at Star Burst!"

"Do you know what the number one killer of card mages is?" Remus asks. "Their flimsy little bodies! Look at him! It would barely take anything at all to break his scrawny little neck!"

And yeah, okay, honestly, Virgil can agree. Especially with him already so beat up from Malice, he's barely more than a cheap counterfeit version of his own pictures and certainly not something that Virgil thinks would stand a decent chance against Greed or Pride. Not to mention the semi obvious lack of magic cards in their vicinity, although if Virgil can go collect the deck of cards from wherever they ended up, Patton probably had something that could heal himself! Probably!

"He's got plot armor!" Virgil says. "Scheme armor! They can't hurt him!"

Remus stares at him. Virgil thinks that's his you're-actually-an-idiot look. "Just because Clay doesn't want him fucking dead doesn't mean that Clay can't make his life miserable. He's fucking creative like that."

Remus’s eyes flick towards Virgil's collarbone, and even though everyone in the room is aware of it, Virgil feels the urge to make sure it's not visible. He scowls and pulls on the collar of his poncho.

“And also Clay gave me the specific order to make sure he stays tied up,” Remus yawns, stretching an arm out and then thumping Virgil on his head, in the way that would probably give most other people a concussion but merely sends ripples through Virgil's body.

"Stop," Remus advises in all the sage wisdom of someone who absolutely needs to get the shit kicked out of him in order to feel something again.

"Fuck you," Virgil says.

"If you're a good boy I'll let you suck me off later."

"You are actually the worst."

"What, you'll do it for Janus Ekans but not for me?"

"Leave him out of this!" Virgil snaps, shoving Remus’s arm off his head. "I'm Rule Three-ing Janus Ekans too!"

Remus squints. "The concept of him or just his name? I can't make fun of your crush if I can't bring up the topic."

"Y-you know Janus?" Patton stutters out and then immediately looks like he wishes he hadn't when Remus and Virgil both turn towards him. He wilts back like he can steal the words right back out of the air if he looks guilty enough.

Unfortunately, Remus is already clinging to them with his iron grip, a smile so wide it's nearly threatening as he stares down at the card mage. For all his posturing about wanting it to be silent, Remus laughs pretty loudly at Patton’s question and Virgil mostly wants to turn into a puddle and seep into the foundation and never be heard from again.

With one hand he drags Patton into a standing position and sinks his arm around his neck, ignoring the way that the smaller boy pales and panics and probably thinks that Remus is about to enact some horrible physical punishment on him. Remus however points Patton in the right direction and with a nightmarish flourish he presents Virgil in all his half boiled glory.

"Virgil heard him talk once and nearly evaporated!"

"Will you let it go!" Virgil hisses tugging on the drawstrings of his hood.

Patton, despite the mortal terror he must be feeling, lets out a shaky smile, and a partial laugh. His freckles seem to shimmer when he does, as if he finds this utterly humiliating revelation to be amusing.

"It was one time!" Virgil says.

"And it wasn't enough!" Remus croons. "He dreams of golden hair glistening with raindrops, hands brushing when they both reach for the same umbrella, then he leans down and whispers--"

"Stop making it weird!"

"That's a weird thing to hope he says in your ear."

"He likes the rain," Virgil says hopelessly without looking at either of them, because they can't possibly understand what it's like to see someone who doesn’t wish for the sun that Virgil will never be able to give them.

Patton bites the inside of his lip thoughtfully. “It makes sense,” he says. “Janus’s magic is stronger in the rain. If you guys teamed up, you could probably do some really cool things.”

“Well it's not happening!” Virgil says quickly. “He doesn’t even know I exist and I’d like to keep it that way because I tend to ruin everyone’s lives when I enter them!”

“Hey!” Patton snaps out before even Remus can say anything, sway on his feet. “You can’t talk bad about my friend! I’ll fight you!”

Remus frowns, “What, Janus?”

“No! Virgil!” Patton says. “Virgil’s my friend! No one talks bad about my friends! Not even themselves!”

There’s something about the way that he says it-- the certainty and the boldness-- that makes Virgil’s insides churn hard with guilt. Remus’s face goes blank for a long moment, clear of any emotion that Virgil can read and that’s nearly more terrifying than the idea of facing off one-on-one with Guildmaster Clay.

“The same type of friend who can rely on you but whom you can’t rely on?” Remus asks. “Virgil ain’t interested in that vulcanshit.”

“I can speak for myself actually,” Virgil cuts in blandly, and then he turns to Patton before he can witness the clear skepticism on Remus’s face. Patton has this light in his eyes, soft and gentle that reminds Virgil of how Patton’s knee jerk reaction to someone breaking into his house was to offer them food. Virgil steels himself regardless and shoves the guilty feeling away.

“But he is right. Aside from the part where we are literally on the opposite sides of the law here, and if we get our way, you’re going to be married off and never see us again and that I have almost drowned you like three times--”

“--only two,” Patton says.

“--It’s still bad,” Virgil finishes lamely. “You can’t trust me, I mean. I don’t trust me. If you aren’t going to value yourself as a person worthy of self preservation enough to not try to make friends with someone who very obviously would follow through with an order to kill you, then what the fuck am I supposed to do? Constantly, be on the lookout for you? I can’t do that. I physically cannot do that. My surface tension would get so strong I would explode; It’s a wonder I haven’t already--”

“Virge,” Remus says.

“--If we are going to be friends, you have to rely on me,” Virgil sums up. “You have to trust me as much as you want me to trust you.”

“Oh isn’t that adorable!” A voice sings from the front of the room, and both Virgil and Remus freeze where they are. Neither of them have to turn to know who it is: Remus because he’s unwillingly cataloged the heartbeat, breathing pattern, and gait of every member of the Shadow Force, and Virgil because Envy when she’s really pissed off has enough power to take away his magic and if that happens he’s pretty sure he’ll lose his actual consciousness forever.

((There was a wind mage not too long ago, made completely of air, who dated Envy and broke it off after the seventh red flag got waved in the other girl’s face. She didn’t get more than three steps away before Envy was sucking the very life force out of her and vengefully watched as the mage dissipated into nothing in the middle of the mess hall for everyone to see. The only thing that had been left of her was a palm sized opal crystal, and even that Envy had smashed to the floor and stomped on the shards until the last of the magic had dissipated.

…Virgil had spent the next seven hours staring at the same spot waiting, wishing, hoping that the breeze would tighten and weave back into being, before Remus had hauled him back to their room.))

Remus, on instinct, shoves Patton into Virgil’s arms and then stands in front of them both blocking Envy’s view of them, and growling very animalistically. Patton must have recognized her voice too, because he goes extremely quiet, fingers twisting in his bonds to get a card that isn’t there and Virgil gets about a dozen internal alarms ringing in his head about this whole thing.

“Take a hike, bitch,” Remus snarls.

“Why are you always so mean to me, Gluttony?” Envy whines, with all the childish charm of a girl who practiced setting her dolls on fire at age four.

“The fuck did you just call me?!” Remus says green light flickering under his feet as a clear warning.

Virgil dares to peek around Remus’s broad form to glance at Envy. She’s always been petite; making up for her height with sheer ruthlessness and disdain for anyone with a flashy power and platform boots. She still had to look up to meet Remus’s gaze but she did it with the smugness of someone who had several tricks up their sleeve and liked to make babies cry. For someone who should have been in the infirmary she was remarkably present down here, bandages wrapped around her arms and her leg and a patch on her cheek that barely hid the discolored bruises and burns.

In her hands is a large sparkling pink crystal, like a jagged cut of rose quartz nearly the size of new lacrima and practically glowing with energy. She grins in a way that does not bode well.

“Glut-ton-y,” Envy repeats, slower. “I mean, that’s the name you’re going to have soon, right? Might as well get used to being called it now. See, it fits the theme! Pride, Envy, Greed, Malice-- Gluttony!”

“Call me it again and I will make what happened to Malice look like a fucking dream,” Remus says.

Envy sticks her tongue out at him. “You’re so lame. Is this because of Virgil? You know you can do better than him. All he does is hold you back and make you feel guilty about having fun.”

Virgil feels himself boil slightly, but it's nothing compared to how Remus’s green circle explodes from under him and metal wraps around his limbs like armor, as sleek and unbreakable as a sword. His tail curls to the side, and Virgil distantly recognizes its hooking his ankle as if to make sure he doesn’t move into danger.

“Oh,” Patton breathes shakily into Virgil’s side suddenly.

“Oh, come on,” Envy says. “You know I’m right! If it weren’t for him hovering around you wouldn’t have a problem with the contract! In a year or two once you stop making everything so difficult for yourself, Greed would even hand it over and let you rip it up yourself!”

“You’re under the mistaken understanding that my contract stops me from killing you right here,” Remus says.

“Look, just because the two of you are fucking on the weekends--”

Remus swings his arm and a rebar of galvanized steel sweeps barely to the left of her face, shaving off three inches of her hair on that side of her face. She stumbles back, hand coming up to tap her cheek and coming away with a long thin line of blood across her cheek bone.

“You’re out of warnings,” Remus growls. “Get lost Or I send you to join Malice in morphine hell.”

She snorts in disbelief, swaying on her feet and then she smiles again and zeroes in on Virgil, despite Remus very obviously stepping in front again. “Hey, Virgie! Patty! It’s been so long! Do you guys know what this is?”

She holds up the crystal, letting it shimmer in the low light, like something valuable, like something irreplaceable, like something fragile and breakable. For a moment Virgil is thinking about it; about his quick water whip slicing under Remus’s arm, clearing him entirely and knocking that gem fifteen feet beyond all of them, shattering it against the concrete floors and letting the sound ring out infinitely in all the cellars.

He could picture it: the magic housed in the crystal exploding apart wafting up into the air like colored smoke before it disappears entirely already heading back to the person it came from. Suddenly, all Virgil can remember is Logan saying “...a trap was set up by what I believe is a null-magic user” and “Thomas is okay. For now.”

Suddenly Virgil has a very bad feeling about Envy being down here.

“This is all the magic power of Thomas Sanders!” Envy says proudly, and Patton’s breath hitches. “I think this is the biggest one I’ve ever collected! Makes sense since that old man couldn’t even when I was done! I probably could have finished him off entirely if the Guildmaster hadn’t stopped me.”

She shifts it between her hands. “Mal and I were talking, and, you know, the guildmaster went to a lot of trouble to make a plan that would get Thomas out of the way like this! If it breaks, he’ll probably kill the person who’s annoyed him the most recently…Isn’t that you, Virge? He was real pissed that you messed up as bad as you did. Not only did you set his schedule off, but you made him send Mal and me, and now Mal is in recovery so he can’t do the next part of the plan and my nails have been ruined…The guildmaster will probably be mad enough to just…. Poof you out of existence without me needing to do anything!”

She smiles with absolutely no friendliness in it. “Hey, hey, Virgil! You know what would be really funny? Catch!”

And then she tosses that crystal over her own fucking shoulder towards the ground.

[Next Chapter]

#Virgil is a water mage #Fairy tail crossover #Remus is not having a good time #But then again #neither is Patton #nor Virgil #Everyone probably could do with some therapy #dragon slayer Remus #Card Mage Virgil #sanders sides #virgil sanders #remus sanders #patton sanders #Remus and Virgil are best friends

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lilly-ririi · 28 days ago

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So snow fucking white bitch saying hi to me as if she managed to damage zombie slut..

This fat old fucking useless.. cunt! zombie slut has got a man whose forgiveness is everlasting for her..

All of em are uselss. If you want things done you gotta do it all yourself..

This is a fucking useless bitch anyway not worthy of being a relic her black tongue curse only worked for 2 weeks?? Bullshit..

My Samsung watch works for a month once I charge it.. 🙄🖕

Bitch is fucking uselss.. cigarette man is still a wealthy man and plastic love is still there..

Fucking pushover she is..

Well anyway so my kid, since we were alone this morning and Coffey was God knows where..?

He decided to make a breakfast. He boiled the milk with some sugar and slices of bread in it? It was really delicious...

Hes a better cook than his parents actually combined 😑😂

"So mommy, the challenge is to get the milk butter soaked bread slices out intact. Once it breaks? its all over.."

Talks like his dad and it was quite challenging though buahahaha! 🤣

P. S. Forgot to tell him a zombie girl who is wannabe his mommy too.. from a long long time... 😑

Ouuuuu... Red fish went ti meet cigarette man..

He's probably fucked or she's really in a good mood.. she fucks in person though, you know the long lectures, the whole class takes an hour or two 🤣

Hope she finds out about some random snow fucking white trying to mess with her family 🤣

Yeah she's like Doll 2.0

Forgot to tell you.. we are cursed. Ppl dont die or actually go away they actually switch places. Different ppl but dsme roles to play UNKNOWINGLY

Imgbifnshe found out about snow fucking white? I be the greatest vicrim ever. Everyone is gona forget the drama queen.

🤣😈

That's not even the pandora box. Theres a pandora box, it holds storms, rage, selfishness and incredible power.

Once it is opened ? Its all over. Shes gona know plastic girl who she thinks is a saintly angelic being? Is actually wannabe me. And Cigarette man can be a selfish powerful being to protect her. Everyone else is irrelevant after that .

Now that I am really pissed at zimbie girl Ima tell you something zegalba..

At times, she took your appearance tobcatch cigarette man off guard, he would quitely listen to her.

Thwts wheb he's mad at her wnsnshe hqd sike explanation to do. I am not even joking. By the he realizes its not you? She's done explaining.

He's pissed off even more 🤣

That's how I knew how you look like. We have never actually met. What a crafty woman 🤣

Down right to every little detail. The hair, the eyes. Thrbinly thing ehjch givrs her away is her smile. That beautiful smile can only be hers. No other woman can do it.

These girls know the art of prettiest smile ever.

But there are 100s of sin forgiven to her . Everlasting forgiveness.. just because everyone loves mommy dearest.

P. S. Btw your too slim on bust department 🤣

Eat some meat.

Not gona say she wasn't kind to me she has been extremely kind to me. But then some how I betrayed her.

"You betrayed us.."

😑

Kind enough to let me stull bad mouth her. Considering shes of the forest 🤣

At least she learned something from cigarette man besides languages. Stayed with my man for 2 weeks broke period, laughed with him.That's respectable to say the least..

Okay red fish found out abkut snow white buahahahahaha! Shes done for. 😈

Okay! Time to play the greatest victim ever... we will tey to find out later if cigarette man is alive ot she was pissed and got rid of him. 🤣

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annieintheaair · 7 months ago

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The sun don't shine when you ain't here and I can't make you smile no more.

youtube

There’s a picture of Dan and I at a Red Sox game. I was 23. Before the photo was taken, we had gotten into a big fight. We went for oysters before the game and then stormed out fighting, making us late for the game. I don’t know what it was but when the camera lady came around and asked if we wanted our picture taken, we said yes. My eyes were red from crying. I was definitely not photo-ready, and later told Dan he could keep all of the copies because I didn’t want to remember it. Somehow, I ended up with one of the copies anyway.

I didn’t know it at the time but that would be the last photo ever taken of us together. Even though I know I was crying before the picture was taken, it still holds so much meaning to me. It’s a picture of two people who, despite their troubles, always came back together. Even when I stormed off from him in Boston that night, he followed me and refused to leave me. No matter how mad I was, he refused to walk away. I can’t say the same about other relationships I’ve had since. Dan was the only one who never walked away from me or shut me out in a fight. I can still hear his voice, filled with sadness, begging me to stay and to forgive him. I guess I can't help but want another love like that-- one that stays and chases me when I try to walk away.

I was watching some videos on Instagram the other day of this medium. She said that you need to be specific when asking for signs. I asked for garlic signs the other day and I’ve been seeing garlic everything everywhere I look. On my way home from work on Saturday morning, I asked to see a silver Civic like the one he had when we were in college. Even with fewer cars on the road on a Saturday morning, as I got closer to home, there it was— a silver Civic just like Dan’s.

I was in the grocery store tonight, grabbing a few things quickly, and ended up in an aisle with a tower of Budweiser. If that's not Dan, I don't know what is. I literally said this morning that I wish I could see a sign of him every day so that I know he's still with me.

When I was getting ready for work on Friday night, a song I had never heard before came on Spotify. It was called Fast Asleep by 49 Winchester. Not only did the lyrics remind me of Dan but the band name-- having "Winchester" in it, which was his hometown. When I went back to check my computer before leaving for work that night, I had a customer email me who lived in Winchester, too. It's ok, Dan, I'll never forget you.

All of the time, I wish I could have just one more day with Dan. The world feels so empty without him. I was trying to show Kia pictures of my first apartment in Providence the other day and now I'm getting tons of emails with apartment suggestions there. For a second, every time the emails come through, I wonder what would have happened if I moved back or if I had never left. It's like my brain gets fooled into thinking that if I moved back there, he would somehow be there, but I know he won't be. There's literally nothing I can ever do to bring him back.

Anyway, we ended up having major delays on Thursday night. We even had to take a reroute, which made the flight even longer. We barely had any time at the hotel that night, too.

Friday was no different-- there were more delays and little sleep. I did make it to yoga in the afternoon though, which was just what I needed. I even squeezed in a Costco run for a few things and picked up ingredients for sangria.

Saturday I was a complete waste. I didn't leave my house all day once I got home from work. I didn't make it to any yoga classes and had a day in and out of sleep. I actually crawled into my bed when I got home from work that morning and slept there for a few hours. Sleeping in my bed after work is super unusual for me.

I tried my best to cut myself some slack and remind myself that it's ok to rest sometimes. It always feels like I'm not allowed to take a break though, which is something I really struggle with.

Today, I knew I needed to get out of my house. I got some laundry done and then went to meet my friend, Quade, at Epic Central, where we had a few margaritas and grabbed dinner. I don't get to see him often since we both fly a lot so it was really nice to catch up.

On my way home, I swung by Albertson's to grab a few last-minute ingredients. I finished preparing the sangria with some star-shaped apples and packed up my wine ice cubes that I made earlier with raspberries and blueberries frozen inside. I think my patriotic sangria will be perfect for the pool tomorrow!

I also managed to make these dill pickle ranch pretzels that I saw on Instagram the other day. They just looked so good so I made a batch and will be bringing them with me tomorrow, too. They really remind me of the pickle pretzels that we got in Arkansas over Thanksgiving.

I can't believe that May is almost over. This month went by so fast and now I'm only a few weeks away from turning 35! I used to get annoyed when people told me that I looked younger than I am but I'm starting to see that as a complement the older that I get. The cashier at Costco the other day looked at my license and said, "Girl! You look good!" because she said she would never have guessed that I was almost 35.

People often tell me that I look like I'm still in my mid-20s. Maybe they wouldn't think that if they saw pictures of me when I was actually in my mid-20s. I definitely do not look like the 23-year-old girl in the Red Sox photo with Dan. Life, time, and experience have all changed me. I think I would much rather be the girl in Fenway, crying on the sidewalk, with her long-term boyfriend begging her to work it out. Nearly 35-year-old me has sure been through a lot since then.

xoxo

Annie

#Youtube

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singer-of-skyward-sonnets · 1 year ago

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gladiolus : describe a moment from your muse’s life that they will never forget .

Oh, heavens! Oh, could you imagine the pain of– of getting stuck in cheese?! EW! Well, Barbatos, unfortunately, doesn't have to imagine.

The wisp had been floating around Gunnhildr’s house carelessly, basking in the mouth-watering smells coming from the grand table, when suddenly it bumped into one of the people. Stunned, it lost orientation and fell straight onto the dish the person was carrying – a cheesy lasagna. In panic, it wiggled chaotically, unable to break free from the cheesy, sticky, gooey mess. When it finally managed to fly off, it did so with half of the cheese still attached to it – the other half tragically ending up on the floor. At that moment, a boy picked up a piece of freshly-baked bread and proceeded to chase the crazed wisp, in the end managing to detain it against the slice’s surface. Obviously tired out from the whole endeavor, and with the part of cheese that still hung off of it weighing it down, the wisp didn’t have enough energy to lift itself; it had then simply laid down on the bread. That made for a perfect moment for picking it out of the offending goo and letting it rest in a more comfortable place.

As for the bread with the cheese—

“What was that for, anyway?”

“I mean, this is actually kinda good!”

“You ate it?!”

“I even added tomatoes!”

… Oh, Heavens… Hopefully, you can only imagine – the pain of losing a dear one.

The wisp – Barbatos – knew: this is fate; this is what hath been foretold. He understands the importance of this sacrifice now. But then, back then—

Wisps cannot cry. Wisps don’t have the bodily functions of humans, he knows; perhaps it was just his body imitating that of one. He couldn’t stop it, couldn’t do anything as tremors wrecked his little silhouette, the feathers he carried persistently through snow and storm all the way there long forgotten on the dusty ground.

It’s not that he knew not of loss: his appearance may be misleading, but the fact is he has lived long before that, seen many things. But to lose a friend, a friend, in such an unfair, so unfair way… Nothing he has lived through could have prepared him for that.

Unable to communicate with words humans are able to comprehend, yet all he wanted was to scream – to shout, to yell, to cry – oh, cry, if only he could…

Thus has marked the beginning of his archonhood.

The world around fell silent, but for what’d sound better if spoken in laugh:

"Fly, fly away, like a bird in the sky.

See the world on my behalf,

To the heavens may you fly..."

#TW: death #//uh #//yeah so #//I couldn't decide so have both #//sorry for any mental damage this may cause you for whatever reason #//for example my partner thought I was talking about a wasp dying #♪ ic.#♪ ask meme | answered #♪ ask meme - botanical headcanons

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skyesdaisys · 1 year ago

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my two reactions ^

oh my fucking god sunny, you have amazed me again with the angst of it all. also the love confession???? love it. it's giving everything. oh my god...... just *chefs kiss* you know how to cater to your audience (it's me. i'm the audience) and I knew it was worth it to vote for this fic

anyways.... time for details

It was something that he hated himself for. Actually, it was one of the most infuriating, devastating facts in the world. -> me when i end up liking fucked up romances when i shouldn't

He would have told anybody that he found you to be the most annoying person on earth -> he's not wrong. i am indeed the most annoying person on earth. and i would annoy him to no end :)

“You used to letting frat boys all over you? You seem like the type of person who would enjoy a good, sloppy frat house train. Twenty guys, one after the other, none of them knowing your name, just because you’re so needy for a good fuck.” -> he would get socked in the face just for that and i would've been justified

But no. As always, you remained cool. -> oof, my biggest flaw: trying to be the bigger person (as someone who has multiple times, doesn't work btw but still, that's an entirely different story)

“Sounds like you spend an awful lot of time picturing me running a train.” You smirked. “Is that why you’re always so late getting up in the morning? You wake up and the first thing you do is get a hand on your dick, imagining me getting fucked by a lineup of guys? Probably just wishing that one of them was you.” -> GET HIS ASS. GET HIMMMMM

“Only when I’m with you.” You replied, blowing him a kiss - to which he stuck his middle finger up at you. -> ah, sarcasm.... my love language (or just my second language in this situation)

That was the moment he realized that he was truly in love with you. You grinning at him from across the table, your smile lighting up your whole face, playing around with him like he actually made you happy. Like he could spend the rest of his life making you happy. -> *is reminded that this doesn't end in a happy ending as the labels said* oh honey, you got a big storm coming

But it shouldn’t have been a choice. It was Gar. Jason should have stood by his friend. He should have gone with you. -> you know... I deserved to see the regret on jason's face in the show when he realized that donna was telling the truth about gar being in trouble. also this is my jaygar shipping biased speaking a tiny bit and wanting more angst but yk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You likely wouldn’t have accepted him back into your life if he did. -> well, all he had to do is look like a pathetic wet cat with tears in his eyes and I would've folded but that's just me, personally

“Well, you see, my boy, that’s where you come in.” Crane grinned at him. -> everytime crane calls him "my boy" I get the urge to break something like STOP PRETENDING YOU CARE ABOUT HIM YOU PIECE OF SHIT. ugh, he gets me so fucking angry

“Hold on, hold on there, Jaybird!” Crane called after him. -> I'm killing him. Like you are not his friend, stop acting like it

“See, I think you forget how this works.” The man went off again - talking in that humming tone he always used that made Jason’s ears numb, made his brain switch off. “Every loyal dog gets a treat. A little motivation to get that Pavlovian mind barking in the right direction.” -> everytime he speaks, I get the urge to wanna beat him to death with hammers

“Why are you ‘rescuing’ me?” You asked, taunting his phrasing of it with a mocking tone and large air quotes. He now regretted freeing your hands. “So you can bargain me off to Dick for ransom money? So you can put a bomb in my chest?” -> god fuck..... that hits ME where it hurts. hank's death still hurts me, i'm never over it. he deserved sm better

It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t dainty or smooth like some Hollywood love confession - it was hungry. Bordering on feral as you both fought to consume more of the other person, bleeding out little moans and fighting for breath past each other’s lips. -> kisses are not always perfect. it's not "fireworks" type shit. sometimes it's like this. and if weren't for what was about to happen next, they would've fucked nasty, just to let it all out of their systems, I know it (and I support it)

“Come on.” Jason wept, steaming up the inside of his helmet as he recycled back his own breath now. He reached up to your cheek, accidentally skimming off a layer of your marred skin with his gloved thumb as he tried to wipe away some of the teary blood that had leaked from your eyes. “Come on, Y/N. Wake up.” -> crane..... you better sleep with one eye open, buddy, i swear to god. tragedy at its finest. i'm in pain in the best way possible

“This is what happens when you don’t play by the rules, Red.” -> KILLING HIM. KILLING HIM!!!!!!!!!

one, Jason did live. He managed to escape somehow, and he had scars all over his body from the acidic fog, and he enacted a very vicious, bloody, torturous revenge on Crane before going into hiding forever (or before using Red Hood to give actual justice to innocent people who needed it, his scars always a reminder of who he lost). -> I support this one here because I love revenge because I'm petty and bitter. And I'm someone whose played gta 4 more than once and chose the revenge ending EVERY TIME. so I support jason seeking revenge. I SUPPORT YOU KING. AVENGE ME.

Or - he sat there in shock and eventually choked to death as well. Or he pulled the whole 'my life is not worth living anymore' thing and just took off his helmet on purpose. So you can imagine that either of those things happened next. -> as crane quoted from romeo and juliet, "these violent delights have violent ends" if one dies, yall die together. which reminds me the fosters musical episode which is based off of romeo and juliet, "This love could be great but they say it would be wrong I don't care I'd be lost without you" and I think that fits into this in a way

anyways sunny, this was amazing as always. a perfect 2023 fic closure and i can't wait to see more in 2024 (yall who see this better fucking read it istg)

Your First Kiss With Jason Todd

Jason Todd x Gender Neutral Reader

Summary:

Jason always thought he hated you. He did hate you.

Until he didn't.

Until his love for you ruined him in ways he couldn't even imagine.

Jason Todd x Gender Neutral Reader. Frenemies to Lovers. Pure Angst (Hurt, No Comfort). Set during Season 3.

Word Count: 8,200

DC Titans Masterlist | AO3 Link

Detailed warnings and author's notes below the cut.

Warnings: This fic is almost entirely angst - hurt, no comfort. This fic does not have a happy ending!!! So be warned of that before you enter here. Jason and the reader are described as ‘hating’ each other, but they are more like frenemies/annoyances - they have a playful banter (at the time, even they don’t know that they like arguing because it’s sexual tension and passion for each other); the reader is completely gender neutral - the only pronouns used for the reader are you/yours; this is mostly written from Jason’s POV (which is where most of the angst comes from); Jason describes himself as a ‘zombie’ or ‘half-alive’ - but he is fully alive and has all of his mental faculties, he is just freaked out about the fact that he was resurrected; the reader does not have any meta powers, but is described as being very good at combat (this does not denote the reader’s body type); mentions of sex and some sexual themes - but there is no outright smut and no detailed descriptions of sex; mentions of negative stereotypes surrounding frat boys/frat houses - including STDs and group sex (mentioned in a negative light); mentions of Jason masturbating (and thinking about the reader while doing it); mentions of Jason’s canon trauma (being kidnapped and tortured by Deathstroke, dropped off the building); mentions of Jason being killed by the Joker (and being ressurected by Crane); mentions of the reader mourning Jason’s death; mentions of drugs and drug addiction (based around the canon storyline of the anti-fear gas); mentions of Jason’s trauma surround his mother’s drug addiction; mentions of Jason killing Hank (as in the canon); the reader is kidnapped (by Crane or someone who works for Crane) and held hostage, and later rescued by Jason; somewhat graphic descriptions of violence (Jason beating up Crane, other background instances), gory descriptions of a death toward the end (mentions of acid burns and choking on non-breathable air); major character death - the reader character does die. Like I said - no happy ending. Sorry not sorry.

A/N: This is set during Season 3 - and this does feature spoilers for Season 3 if you haven't seen Titans before. So if you wanna watch the show spoiler free, definitely avoid this fic. I was imagining this to be set around episode 6 or episode 7, before Crane's plan to use the ice cream factory is taken down by the Titans, but obviously Jason breaking away from Crane's control so early goes against the canon - so there's that. Also, if you wanna pair some music with this for something truly heartbreaking, I would highly recommend the classic Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush, or the highly underrated Colorado Sunrise by 3OH!3 (the lyrics are way more depressing than people realize, and I love it as a whump song. oomf). I also feel like the song Cloud 9 by Beach Bunny would go so well with this fic, but in like - the most devastating way. I haven't written something this cruel since I wrote Ghosting and I had so much fun doing it. You can't leave me alone with whump for too long, I turn into a monster. I need to go back to smut again quickly lmao.

...

Jason Todd was in love with you.

It was something that he hated himself for. Actually, it was one of the most infuriating, devastating facts in the world. But it was true. You were someone who was so entirely amazing. You were beautiful - literally the hottest person Jason had ever met who wasn’t photoshopped or catered to be some unrealistic daydream. You were clever and smart and strong. You could kick anybody’s ass on any day of the week and still have enough energy left to tell them how much of an idiot they were and list all of the reasons why.

And you would definitely never love Jason back. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that he could ever have someone like you.

So he kept all of that stupid, idiotic love to himself. It was a secret that he had sworn to die with - and technically, he already had.

Jason tried not to linger on the very fucked up, seemingly impossible fact that he had come back from the dead. And now he was existing as some weird, fucked up zombie thing - resurrected from having his skull caved in by the Joker to do Jonathan Crane’s bidding. This definitely wasn’t what Jason would have wanted out of a renewed life - but hey: when an Arkham prisoner gives you rotten lemons.

When Jason wasn’t beating down drug dealers, stealing money, or strapping bombs to people - when he was trying his hardest not to focus on the fact that he had died and he was now living some strange half-life, reliant on Crane’s drugs, he was thinking about you. He thought about you a lot.

He hadn’t come into contact with you since his strange foray back into the land of the living. That was probably for the best. He knew that you had freshly come back to Gotham, upon Dick’s request. Nightwing had called for backup from all the ex-Titans to help end Red Hood’s reign of terror. Jason wanted to stay as far away from you as possible.

Genuinely, he didn’t want you getting caught in the crossfire of whatever Crane was planning. He wished you had stayed out of Gotham, but he knew that you were too loyal, too good not to come to the aid of the Titans when they needed you. He couldn’t reveal himself to you just for a taste of nostalgia - one last argument before you sold him down the river for good. But fuck - he thought about you a lot.

When the two of you had first met, you were the last person he ever thought that he would surrender that stupid, soft label of love to. Even months into first knowing you - he would have said that he hated you. He would have told anybody that he found you to be the most annoying person on earth.

Your relationship used to be the worst kind of dance.

Every single time that Jason opened his mouth, you said something to contradict him. To a point, he believed that you didn’t even fully stand behind the things you said - you just enjoyed arguing against him. That you did it for sport. You used every single last bit of your time and energy to get under his skin. From mocking him to calling him a fuckboy to prodding at his grammar, poking holes in his points by smugly correcting him. He always found you to be the most infuriating person in any room. But it seemed that the more frustrated he got with you, the more cool headed you remained.

He tried to mock you back, and you shrugged it off. Every time he became visibly annoyed in your presence - you giggled. He wanted to strangle you.

And it was one fated day that he realized the line between heat fueled by frustration and heat fueled by lust truly weren’t that different.

…

“Jason! I thought I smelled you coming down the hall!”

Jason groaned when he heard you make this comment.

He thought that for once, he could have some peace to train alone - but it appeared that he would have no such luck. You were already in the training room, holding a long bo-staff as you ran some drills. Apparently, you were eager to exercise your mouth too - already whipping off clever insults the minute that Jason entered the room.

When all he could muster was a glare in your direction, you let out a giggle. His blood boiled.

“Between that god awful Axe body wash and that alcohol based aftershave that you like to drown yourself in, you smell like a walking frat house.” You continued, blabbering on even though Jason had made no efforts to engage you. At least not yet. “Just throw in some Busch Light and weed, and I might be able to catch gonorrhea just from the stench.”

That was the nerve that hooked Jason into the conversation. First of all - he smelled fucking delightful. He always made hygiene one of his personal priorities. He was absolutely not one of those guys with crusty, sweaty balls. And second of all - he was not one of those STD spreading manwhores. He was clean in all senses. He always used a condom.

“Sounds like you’ve got experience with that.” Jason quipped back.

He looked to you for some kind of reaction, some inkling that he had gotten under your skin even a fraction of the way that you did his. His movements were rough with annoyance as he began wrapping his knuckles with tape so he could have a few rounds with the heavy bag - mostly out of a need to pound out his frustration on something. He was getting too angered with your presence in the room and not wanting to snap and take it out on you. (He already had enough on his record with Bruce, and despite popular opinion - he was trying to improve.)

When you weren’t quick to respond, Jason continued.

Jason grinned, feeling like he had won this conversation with the essence of shock alone.

But no. As always, you remained cool. You grinned right back at him, stepping toward him, crowding into his personal space as you said your next words in a low, smooth voice.

Jason’s face fell flat.

You were so strikingly confident in your words that it made his stomach twist. Facing him down, speaking such filthy words without flinching - embarrassment and heat collided inside of him. Even more so with what you did next.

You put a hand out in front of your crotch, mimicking the motions of jacking off while you mocked him in a broken voice.

“Oh, oh fuck Y/N! Come on! Take my sloppy, frat house cock!”

You then mocked a whiny series of moans that must have been Jason’s fake orgasm - and while Jason’s insides bubbled with a confusing heat, you quickly dissolved off into laughter.

“Shut up.” Jason snapped, forcing his eyes down to focus on the process of taping himself up - praying that you wouldn’t see the heat that had spread across his cheeks. “You’re the fucking worst.”

“Only when I’m with you.” You replied, blowing him a kiss - to which he stuck his middle finger up at you.

He was eternally thankful when you went back to your own training in silence, only taking occasional glances up in his direction.

…

After that point, Jason had to admit to himself that he was attracted to you, at the very least. He could no longer deny that you were insanely attractive; you were a very, very hot person. And somehow, even past your annoying habits, he was being drawn into the orbit of your gorgeous looks and your wonderfully cocky, filthy mouth.

But he still hated you. He definitely still hated you.

He hated it even more when you became right - and you did become the object of some of his more heated fantasies. He became downright annoyed at the times he had his hand around his cock and imagined himself hate fucking you - imagined forcing every cocky retort out of your mouth, imagining you breathless and needy beneath him, begging for more with every hard push of his hips.

He hated how everything changed after Doctor Light.

Jason wasn’t thinking about your stupid beautiful cocky mouth after that. His mind was full of glass and he was being shredded from the inside out. He came home broken. After everything that happened with Deathstroke and Doctor Light - he was some fragile bird; some chewed up, used, pitiful thing. He didn’t have the energy to fight you anymore, not even for sport.

So after he was rescued, still floating in numbness, he didn’t know what to do when you burst into his room unannounced. You practically shoved the door off its hinges, and stormed across the room toward him - tears hot in your eyes. You pounded curled fists against his chest, screaming at the top of your lungs. Half of your words were static in his ears, but the tone of your voice pierced through his heart like an arrow. You called him stupid, asking where in his empty head he had gotten the idea to go off by himself.

Jason didn’t have it in him to fight you. So he broke down.

He felt like the world’s biggest idiot for crying in front of you. But his throat was tight and he choked on the tears - he was too tired. He just couldn’t hold them back. He screamed back, and asked you to lay off. To get off his fucking back.

You looked shocked. Like you had swallowed a piece of glass.

You surprised him when you uncurled your fists and wrapped the most tender, gentle hands around his back, and for the first time since he had known you - you embraced him in a hug. He was weak and he needed it more than he was willing to admit, so he let you. He sobbed against your neck, his own cries too loud that he missed the timid sound of your apology.

That wasn’t the only time you surprised him that week.

He knew it was because he was some broken little bird, but you started taking care of him. You brought him plates of food without being asked, and when he attempted to shove them away - you refused. You told him to eat before you had to ‘shove it down his fucking throat’.

You didn’t mock him. You didn’t correct him. And you surprised him even more when you turned the sharpness of your tongue on the others when they tried attacking Jason. They accused him of planting booze in Hank’s room or drawing crosses on Rachel’s mirror to fuck with her, among other things. And you popped veins in your neck going on a winding rant about how stupid and baseless their accusations were.

Jason wasn’t sure if you knew it, but you jumping to his defense wrapped him in a blanket of protection that he had never before felt. It was so entirely strange, but welcomed coming from you. Especially because he knew that it was genuine. He knew that you didn’t have any ulterior motives for doing this - for some reason, you just wanted to help him.

When you extended an invitation toward him to come with you as the group dispersed, torn apart by Dick’s nasty, festering secret - Jason felt welcomed by you. He knew that the dynamic between the two of you was changing at a breakneck speed, and he had to embrace it. He found himself eager to follow the weird, newly developing kinship that he had with you rather than wanting to stay in the empty coldness of the Tower with a brooding Dick.

From there, it was really difficult for Jason to pin down the exact moment that his feelings transitioned toward you from casual lust to something more. He couldn’t tell exactly when it turned into that panic-inducing, ‘oh my god, I’m fucked’ feeling of being in love. After leaving San Francisco, during the entirety of the time that the two of you were in Gotham together, your relationship remained completely platonic.

It was a few short weeks spent kicking ass as the best vigilante duo the city had ever seen, but there wasn’t a single moment Jason could point to where the two of you lit up with that romantic spark. It wasn’t some romcom bullshit come to life. It was just the two of you being friendly for once. The two of you helping each other survive.

Back then - Jason wanted you, badly. Even if he didn’t know just how badly, he wasn’t going to fuck up the whole dynamic just to get laid. He felt safe with you. He kicked ass with you. He was good with you. And during that short time - he was happy. So he wasn’t going to do anything to risk that happiness. Happiness was too rare for him. So why the hell would he try putting the moves on you, scare you away, and fuck it all up?

…

A little slice of that happiness came in the form of Hal’s Diner. It was a place in downtown Gotham, open twenty four hours, and you and Jason had gotten into the habit of stopping there after your patrols.

The two of you would kick some ass - break the legs of some drug dealers, make sure that women got home safe if they were walking late at night, keep the streets a little safer. And then you would change out of your patrol outfits and head to the diner, just as the sun was rising over the scummy streets of Gotham. You would get breakfast and Jason would get dinner. He would steal one of your eggs and you would take half his burger, and you would always comment about him putting way too much ketchup on his plate.

It was harmony.

“You know, every time I see you make a grown man cry, it brings me such intense joy.” Jason grinned as he said this, reminiscing about a beautiful moment from earlier in the night.

He spoke about it in the same manner that someone might reminisce about seeing a relative or a cute puppy. But this was natural for the two of you - since you had taken up vigilantism as a duo, violence was a sweet art for the two of you.

“Well, if he would have left that girl alone the first time I asked, I wouldn’t have broken his arm.” You shrugged, speaking very casually about it yourself.

You then picked a piece of bacon up off your plate and took a bite, grinning at Jason fondly. You did appreciate it when he complimented your skills.

Jason chuckled.

“You know, it is nice to see you using your powers for good instead of evil.” He commented.

“My powers?” You parroted back, your mouth half busy with chewing, your words slightly muffled.

You didn’t have any metahuman powers, so this comment did leave you slightly confused.

“Yeah.” He nodded, entirely confident in the statement he had to follow. “Your endless amount of energy to harass people and be endlessly annoying. The powers you used to spend all your time using on me.”

“You used to deserve it.” You were quick with your tongue as usual, not missing a beat with this statement.

Jason’s only rebuttal was to pick up a french fry - one not doused in ketchup - and throw it at your head. You flinched slightly when it bounced off your forehead - but when it landed in your lap, you easily picked it up and put it in your mouth, not thinking twice about doing so as you tossed Jason a wicked grin.

That. That must have been the moment.

That’s why it hurt so much more when your phone buzzed on the table a few minutes later. When you told him that it was the Titans - Gar in trouble. That’s why it hurt so fucking much when you left.

Jason knew, in hindsight, that he should have gone with you. But he flailed like a rabbit caught in a snare, and rather than just agreeing with you, he felt the trap tightening around him, and he opted to chew off his own foot rather than simply letting you help him free.

He stupidly argued that it was some test from Dick. That the Titans could deal with their own problems. Jason knew that deep down, he was still tender from everything that had happened - Dick dropping him, even by accident. The accusations, the secrets. The rejection. He felt like he was laying down a line - he was letting you make a choice.

Him or the Titans.

But it shouldn’t have been a choice. It was Gar. Jason should have stood by his friend. He should have gone with you.

Deep down, Jason feared that if he did go with you - the Titans wouldn’t want him back. He feared another cutting rejection. They would simply bench him again, they wouldn’t even need him to help save Gar. They wouldn’t want him to help. He was useless, after all. He was careless and stupid. That was why he needed you to choose him. To stay.

That was what his mind was screaming out as you looked at him, disappointment flooding your eyes as you questioned him about Gar, about going back to the Titans.

Stay. He silently begged. Pick me.

And watching you snatch up your jacket in a huff and get up from the table, your food barely touched - his eyes boring into your back as you retreated - it was like having his heart carved out of his chest. And because he was so fucked up, he just sat there. He couldn’t bring himself to do anything about it. He didn’t chase you.

He let you go.

Having you suddenly disappear from his life was like missing a limb. Jason was constantly aching around your non-presence, constantly missing you. He felt torn up from the inside out, wondering if his frayed nerve endings would ever heal themselves. When he went to Donna’s funeral, he stared at you from across the tarmac - telling himself that if you even so much as glanced in his direction, he would cross that sickly one hundred foot black sea and talk to you. He would make the leap and apologize.

But you were fettered and stubborn and you kept your head straight. You knew it was the ultimate punishment not to acknowledge him. So the moment that the plane took off, Jason shoved on his helmet and sped off on his bike.

He easily became numb after that.

He went back to Bruce - to lay low and lick his wounds, or because it was the only place he knew, he wasn’t sure. He tried to be a Robin that wasn’t with you. It didn’t work. He felt more broken than ever. It was cheesy, pathetic bullshit - but he talked about you in therapy. Leslie encouraged him to reach out to you, but every time Jason’s fingers hovered over your contact in his phone, his hands shook, and all he remembered was the look of pure scorn you had given him before you snatched up your things and left the diner that day.

He thought of you as he suited up to go after the Joker. He considered how easy it would be for the two of you to take down the stupid clown together - how flawlessly the two of you worked as a team.

Jason thought of you as he drew his last breath, soaked in blood and struggling past the world-ending pain. He wondered, in a haze, if you were warm in your bed in The Tower while he was pressed into the cold ground, taunted by the laughter that rung in his ears.

…

Jason didn’t know how hard you cried for him when you heard the news of his death.

You wouldn’t have dared to say that the hole in the middle of your chest was caused by love - caused by the heartbreak of a lover being stolen. But you certainly felt robbed when you heard that the Joker had killed him. You seethed and you heavily considered marching toward Gotham to seek revenge.

You knew that Dick was angry with Bruce for finally giving in to what the Joker wanted and killing him. For finally ending their sick, twisted game. But when you found out - you were glad that the clown was dead. You wrapped one of Jason’s stolen shirts around your pillow, and you slept a bit easier at night.

…

Jason knew that he should have left town.

Crane claimed that Red Hood was going to be the next Batman - that he was going to be something the Bat never could. That he was going to actually keep the streets safe. But so far, all Jason had done was steal, kill, terrorize, torture. Crane spoke of omelets and breaking eggs - pigs and bacon, and ‘marketing’ himself to the public. But truly, it never made any real sense to Jason.

Jason knew that now, he was the type of man lurking in the night whose arm you would have broken if he was lingering too closely to the vulnerable. And you would have been right for doing so.

Jason was tired. He felt lost - directionless. He was getting tired of Crane’s bullshit. He missed you. But he knew that he couldn’t just go running back to you. You likely wouldn’t have accepted him back into your life if he did.

When Crane called him in that night, wanting to discuss ‘the game plan’ - Jason was worn. His patience for all of it was already wearing thin, and what happened next - it truly caused him to snap.

Jason showed up in full gear, wearing the costume of an alias he no longer believed in; foolishly dressed up as someone he had truly begun to resent. He was holding his helmet in hand, his heavy boots clunking on the floor as he dodged around Crane’s egghead lackeys - a random group of people who were working to convert the anti-fear gas into a larger batch. He knew that they were aiming to get more and more people in the city hooked; if Jason hadn’t abandoned his morals in this new life, he might have cared more about the consequences.

Instead, he made a B-line for Crane, who was typing away at something on the computer.

“Jason, my boy!” Crane grinned at him, giving a false, performative grin over his shoulder. “Lovely evening, isn’t it?”

“What do you want?” Jason asked, his tone flat.

He was far too tired of Crane to engage in more word play or stupid riddles.

“Never one for pleasantries, are you?” Crane chuckled.

Jason didn’t offer him a reply - seemingly confirming his theory with this simple act.

Truthfully, he wasn’t. He wasn’t feeling very pleasant today. He hadn’t felt very pleasant any day since he had been so rudely pulled from the morgue and zombified to do someone else’s bidding against his will. Being an undead puppet didn’t really make a person all that pleasant.

Crane reached into the pocket of his oddly quaint grandpa sweater and pulled something out - a small glass vial, containing some clear liquid. It looked harmless - like water. But Jason knew Crane, and he knew that whatever it was must have been entirely dangerous if Crane was carrying around such a small dose of it.

“Do you know what this is?” He asked, giving the vial a small shake, jostling the liquid inside to emphasize his point.

Jason hesitated before he shook his head in the negative. He hated to appear clueless and stupid around such an intelligent man, but he didn’t want to guess and be wrong. He knew that being misinformed around Crane was dangerous. But being cocky and pretending to know more than Crane was even more dangerous.

“This is a very highly concentrated form of liquid Methadone.” Crane explained. “It’s a highly addictive substance. And I think it’s going to give the mass market version of your formula that little extra kick that it needs, ya know? Keep the people coming back for more!”

He let out a bright chuckle, as though he was talking about a cleaning product that was marketed on an infomercial or some kind of great recipe for soup. That was one of the things that scared Jason the most about Crane - his ability to talk about life changing, deadly things with such jarring enthusiasm. He truly thought of bringing people their worst nightmares and their most painful deaths as ‘beautiful work’.

“What about it?” Jason prodded quietly.

He knew that Crane hadn’t called him here just to brag about a new idea to add something to the formula. He needed Jason for something.

Jason just hoped that he wasn’t looking to use him as a guinea pig again. He would likely rather die again than go down the path of heavy drugs. One thing he had vowed - he wouldn’t end up like his mother.

“Well, you see, my boy, that’s where you come in.” Crane grinned at him. “Due to its highly addictive qualities, Methadone is also a highly regulated substance. But because I am the wonderfully well-connected man that I am, I happen to know that there is a very large stash of it just sitting there, ripe for the taking, in this quaint little building uptown.”

Jason’s gut stirred with suspicion.

“Where uptown?” He asked.

“Well, it’s just-” Crane stuttered, and then sighed, deciding to get it out and over with. “The Wayne Memorial Cancer Research Facility.”

Jason glared at him.

“But see, it’s fine! Because I happen to know someone who knows their way around the Wayne Tech security systems very well. So Red Hood breaks in there, gets me my-”

“No.” Jason said flatly, before he turned and started to walk away. “Find somebody else. We’re done.”

Crane had threatened to replace him before. Crane had no-so-subtly threatened to kill him alongside being replaced. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe Jason would be better off dead. Maybe Crane would find out that Jason was irreplaceable after all. Maybe Jason was a dirty, seedy criminal shaped by life for only one thing: ruining the lives of others. If Jason couldn’t do that, he wasn’t sure what he would do.

But he wasn’t going to fucking do this.

Killing was one thing. Stealing from drug dealers and mobsters was another. What he had done to Hank had crossed too many lines - but it didn’t even begin to approach the lines that this crossed.

Stealing from a facility that Thomas and Martha had set up when Bruce was just a child, shitting all over their legacy, using skills that Bruce had taught him in order to do it? That was too far. Jason couldn’t say that he had morals anymore, but he still had that voice of common decency in the back of his head yelling at him to stop it. Maybe it was your voice, correcting him at every turn the way you used to.

He should listen to that voice.

He should leave town.

“Hold on, hold on there, Jaybird!” Crane called after him.

The pure annoyance that the nickname caused was the only thing that stopped Jason. He considered turning around and shooting Crane just to shut him up.

Jason turned back around then.

“Nothing you say ever makes any fucking sense.” He barked out, ready to leave Crane with these as his last remarks before he left Gotham forever.

But then Crane tapped at a few things on his keyboard and pulled something up on the monitor - a dark, grainy video feed that had Jason squinting his eyes and walking closer to get a better look.

When Jason was able to truly take in the scene - his stomach dropped.

It was you.

You were sitting alone in some anonymous, concrete warehouse - probably in the industrial district of Gotham, if Jason had to guess. Crane didn’t like to keep his insurance policies too far away, he liked to play it close to the vest. You were tied to a chair, duct tape tight over your mouth, very much there against your will. You were looking straight ahead, with the camera angled down from the top corner of the room. Even through the grainy, black and white footage, Jason could see the wetness of tears streaking down your face.

You were terrified.

Jason’s helmet clattered to the floor, slipping from his grip as the shock overtook his system.

For the first time in weeks, fighting through the numbness of the drugs and the hazy shock of his new half-life - he was terrified too. Then he was angry. Rage bubbled up inside of him like a sharp, acidic bile.

“What the fuck have you done?” Jason growled out, the anger setting his jaw so tight that the words could barely escape between his teeth.

“I told you - every loyal dog gets a treat.” Crane said, a barely contained glee filtering through his voice as he peered over Jason’s shoulder at your weeping face on the screen.

He clapped a large hand on Jason’s shoulder, and Jason felt himself nearly choke on his own tongue - so swollen with anger that it barely fit in his mouth.

“So, go fetch, doggie.” Crane continued. “Go get me what I need. Otherwise, that sweet little treat of yours is gonna play dead.”

Crane leaned over and whispered those last words into Jason’s ear - and that was what truly caused him to snap.

In a flash, Jason grabbed the hand that was on his shoulder, whipped Crane around - there was a loud crack as Jason broke Crane’s arm. The egghead types who were working on the formula all paused; some of them gasped or hid behind things, but none of them were brave enough to intervene. Jason shoved Crane’s face into the monitor, cracking it out like a spider’s web but never fully obscuring the image of that dark, cold warehouse - the place where you were alone and terrified.

He twisted Crane’s broken arm, making a sound like glass grinding in on itself, and the man let out a howl.

“I think you forget how this works.” Jason barked at him, his voice so dark with rage that it almost sounded like he was wearing Red Hood’s voice modulator even though his helmet was on the floor at Crane’s feet. “When dogs get pissed off - they bite.”

He twisted the injury again, and Crane let out another bitter howl.

Jason demanded to know where you were, and Crane squeaked out an address. It was in the industrial district, so it checked out in Jason’s mind. It didn’t seem like a trap or a false answer to waste his time.

Jason shoved the pathetic, useless man to the ground, kicked him in the gut for good measure, and then leaned down to grab his helmet before shoving it on. He would need it in case Crane had anybody stationed there, guarding you.

Crane shouted something at him as he walked away, but Jason was barely paying attention - now very singular minded on his mission toward you.

“You have to learn to play by the rules, Red!” Crane choked out. “You won’t like how this ends! I made you! I fucking made you!”

…

Jason was surprised to find the building empty. No guards, seemingly no bombs, no gas canisters. At first, he thought it really was a trick, a misdirect to waste his time. But when he had just about given up hope of finding you, searching one of the back most rooms that used to serve as overflow storage for Ace Chemicals - he found you. Concrete and anonymous, some of the beams having eroded away in places from improper chemical storage.

When you saw him stalking toward you - his gun drawn, heavy boots thudding against the floor, modulator puffing out heavy, mechanical breaths - you let out a terrified whimper past the duct tape and more tears flowed freely down your face.

Jason felt a twinge of guilt. Of course. You had no clue it was him.

Perhaps he could get away with the mercy of never revealing himself to you. He could keep his mask on, release you, drop you back off with the Titans and then leave town. But eventually, Dick would tell you who he was.

At the very least, he could give you the comfort of seeing a familiar face after the hell you had been through. You were wearing a sweatshirt and simple cotton pants, and running shoes - it looked like you had been plucked off the street during a jogging session. He could only imagine how much Crane’s lackeys had scared you.

Once he was confident that the area was secure, he holstered his gun and then reached up, removing the face mask from his helmet and tossing it aside.

“Hey, hey, it’s me.” He told you - attempting to be gentle and soothing in his voice.

He approached you slowly, not wanting you to be scared as he reached to his belt for a knife - only with the intention to cut the ropes around your torso, wrists, and ankles.

He watched your expression as you flashed through a range of emotions - deep confusion, a bit of relief, sadness, and then strangely - burning anger. You glared at him with the most intense rage he had ever seen from you - more intense even than the day you had stormed into his room and called him stupid and suicidal for going after Doctor Light without backup.

Jason was slightly afraid of the lecture that would come next, but nonetheless, he knelt beside you and began cutting you free.

The minute that one of your hands was free, you reached up and ripped the duct tape off your mouth. You took only a fraction of a second to wince in pain from the tender skin of your lips being disturbed before you began verbally tearing into him.

“Jason Todd!” You screamed at the top of your lungs, so loudly that Jason was sure some of the edges of the corroded concrete pebbled off and fell down just from this. “Jason fucking Todd! I should have known you had something to do with this!”

“Wh-?”

Before Jason could question your odd choice of words or even recognize it as an accusation, you raised your other freshly free hand and slapped him squarely across the cheek - it was a hard, skull-shaking clatter. It had Jason dizzy, falling back onto his ass and dropping the knife before he could finish cutting the ropes around your legs.

“Fucking ow!” Jason griped, reaching up to grab his now very red cheek.

“You are such an asshole! Of all the completely idiotic, stupid things you have ever done-”

“I didn’t fucking kidnap you! Okay? I didn’t do shit!” Jason quickly argued back, finally now realizing that you thought he had put you here in the first place. “I’m here to rescue you!” He said each of these words slowly, looking you in the eyes, hoping that his point would get across more firmly this way.

There was a tense moment as you stared back at him with your jaw locked. It was likely that if your feet hadn’t still been tied, you would have run away - or kicked him. Jason was thankful that you couldn’t do either at the moment.

“Why?” You asked, finally breaking the tension.

“What?” Jason gaped.

This was the last thing he had been expecting.

He was saving you - why were you questioning him?

You said the last part with intense disdain, tears dancing in your eyes.

So you did know what a monster he was.

He was surprised that you hadn’t hit him harder.

Jason heaved a sigh. He reached over and picked up the knife, very slowly, very tentatively resuming cutting the ropes on your legs to free you.

“I’m just freeing you so that you can be free. That’s it.” He said quietly, defeat lacing through every inch of his voice. “You don’t deserve this.”

He cut the last rope and folded the knife, sticking it back in his belt. He stood up then and caught a glimpse of your face - you were wearing the most complex expression he had ever seen. Perhaps confusion, perhaps anger. Maybe somewhere deep in your eyes - hurt.

He turned and moved to leave, hoping you would simply follow him out of the confusing maze of the building and he wouldn’t have to drag you out kicking and screaming.

“That’s not an answer.” You told him, your tone sharp and certain - the same tone you always used to correct him.

Jason whipped back around then, heaving a sigh as he looked at you - standing in the middle of the room now, arms folded over your chest, glaring at him on the spot. Cocky and so sure about yourself. Too damn certain and immobile in your points. Infuriating.

��Why the fuck do you have to make everything so damn complicated?” Jason shot back, annoyance and dread tight in every inch of him. “Why do you have to interrogate me about every damn thing that I do?”

“Because you make stupid ass decisions when I don’t.” You easily fired back. “Now tell me: why are you doing this?”

“Because I wanted to.” Jason huffed.

“Why?” You prodded again.

He let out another hot huff, and you didn’t let it go.

“Come on Jason!” You shouted, increasing in volume as you became more frustrated with his lack of an answer. “You didn’t just develop a conscience all of a sudden! Why did you feel the need to suddenly drop everything and come to my rescue? What makes me different than Hank? What makes me different than-?”

It was the annoyance grinding on him. It was a combination of your nagging voice, the lack of drugs in his system for the first time in weeks. The rawness of the world ragging on his last good nerve. The sound of your voice putting him in line - exactly where he was supposed to be. The way you reminded him of the truth now more than ever.

“Because I’m in love with you!” Jason shouted.

It was almost… angry. It was a declaration that hit you like a whip - more like an insult than something warm and kind. It wasn’t made of sweetness, like some moment from a film with a gentle piano riff wrapped around it. It was real - made of the haunting kind of passion that kept Jason awake at night.

Your eyes widened. Jason’s breathing stilled as he waited for you to react - to say something.

“Oh.” Your voice cracked around this syllable, and your eyes danced with more tears.

Jason felt his own heart crack apart inside of his chest, more terror flooding him.

He had died with the secret because he had never wanted to live up to the embarrassing vulnerability of confessing it. In the deepest part of his mind, he had lived this horror a thousand times. Him finally creeping out onto the edge of oblivion - speaking those words. Confessing. And then you stabbing him in the heart, rejecting him.

The reality of it ripped through him so much harder than it ever had in his nightmares.

Any last tiny piece of his soul that had survived being murdered by the Joker had just been shattered by you.

“Yeah. Fucking oh.” Jason echoed back, his own tears clutching at his throat.

Seeing him with that naked vulnerability dancing behind his eyes - it reminded you of the same person who came back from being kidnapped by Doctor Light. It reminded you of the real Jason you had gotten to know.

In that moment, it all came crashing toward you. You gasped harshly as you could barely breathe around it.

That hole in your chest had been shaped like a lover - it had been shaped like him. Filled with the pain of letting him get hurt, leaving him alone in Gotham to be murdered by the Joker. Filled with the doubt and confusion of never knowing what could have been between the two of you if you had chased those flirtations a little bit farther.

And now, he was standing right here in front of you, somehow perfectly alive and well - and there was only one possible thing you could do.

“Jason.” You gasped out his name, unable to fathom more words.

Before he could move, you reached out and grabbed both sides of his face, one of them still singed with a burning ache where you had slapped him so hard - and you pulled him into a kiss, hard.

It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t dainty or smooth like some Hollywood love confession - it was hungry. Bordering on feral as you both fought to consume more of the other person, bleeding out little moans and fighting for breath past each other’s lips. Jason’s hands rushed to embrace you, wrapping around your back and grabbing a needy, possessive handful of your ass while you kept your grip tight on his face, keeping his face forcefully close to your own as you devoured his mouth.

You felt some of his tears escape - such a rush of emotions making him raw and unable to hold them back, and you moaned pitifully into his mouth as he wetness slipped underneath your palms. Whatever it was - his pain, his pleasure; you would take it. He was all yours now.

…

Far off, on the other side of Gotham, Crane chuckled quietly to himself as he watched the scene unfold. He had pulled up the camera feed on a separate tablet, seeing as Jason had used his head to crack the monitor. With his broken arm bound in a temporary sling, he used his one good hand to pull something out of a drawer - a remote with a single button.

“For these violent delights have violent ends,” He recited to himself, still grinning widely as he looked at the two lovers in the grainy, black and white footage. “And in their triumph, die like fire and powder. Which as they kiss, consume. Even the sweetest honey is loathsome in his own deliciousness, if the taste confounds the appetite.” Crane poised his finger on the button. “Therefore, love moderately.”

He pressed down, and dissolved into more epic laughter as he watched what came next.

…

You were only human, and you could only kiss Jason for a few minutes before your brain demanded oxygen. As much as you hated to pull away from the sweet, bruising sting of his lips, you forced yourself back and immediately took in a sharp breath that turned into a rolling pant - Jason let out a needy whine in protest.

With his arms holding you so securely and the dizzying heat now flowing through you - you almost didn’t catch it. But it was there, in the background, something steadily present that wasn’t there before.

Beeping. A small, electronic beeping.

“Do you hear that?” You asked Jason, squinting your eyes with confusion and looking around, trying to find the source of the noise.

He did hear it.

“Fuck.” Jason mumbled.

Panic flooded him. The whole thing had been a trap.

He pulled away from you hesitantly and grabbed his mask up off the ground, snapping it back on.

“We have to go. Now.” He told you, his voice now sharp and robotic through the voice filter as he grabbed your wrist and began dragging you away - you became limp to his direction for once and simply followed, fear tight in your gut once again.

Jason didn’t want to consider the possibilities, but he knew it could be anything from a large bomb, meant to tear you to shreds, to a large dose of fear gas waiting to be deployed. And he didn’t have an antidote at the moment. He needed to get you out of the building and transport you to safety.

When the two of you came to a door - one of the many that Jason had passed through on his way in - it snapped shut in Jason’s face. It was on some kind of mechanical locking system, that much was apparent. Jason rushed forward, trying to pry it open - but it was welded steel, and it wouldn’t budge.

Jason heard more slamming - more metal forcing itself shut on the same locking system.

“Jason?” You croaked, that unsure terror back in your voice again. Something so rare for you. You were looking to him for answers. You were looking to him to rescue you.

Overhead, the last bits of light were shut out - glimpses of the street lights outside - as thick metal shudders collapsed down over the windows. The room was sealing itself shut, becoming air tight.

“Stand back.” Jason told you, not waiting to see if you followed the instruction before he pulled out one of his guns and began shooting at the door’s heavy metal hinges. He knew it was futile and he feared that one of the bullets might ricochet off and hit you, but he didn’t have many options left.

Then he heard it. The gentle hissing of gas being released into the air.

Jason was naive to have hoped that it was Crane’s classic Fear Gas - that would have been a merciful walk in the park compared to what he had planned for you. Betraying Jonathan Crane meant that Jason had to be truly punished.

Jason turned to you, wrapping his arms around you, as if trying to shield you from the air itself - but it was too late. You began coughing and struggling to breathe, and Jason looked on with confusion as his chest twisted with guilt.

With his helmet on, he felt nothing. For the first few moments, he didn’t even understand what was going on as you gasped for air, struggling to form a word as you choked on each breath. Jason had no clue what the substance was or how he could fix it, looking on in horror as thick fog clouded around your ankles - your eyes bulging out of your head as you struggled for oxygen.

“Y/N?” Jason gasped, holding you by both shoulders as you became weaker and leaned on him. “Y/N?”

You couldn’t answer him.

You continued to wheeze, your breath hitching against your throat harshly. As the fog reached up to touch your face, it left angry, blistering marks in your skin. Unlike Jason, you had no armor to protect yourself - and somehow, Crane had turned the air itself acidic. Your eyes became wrecked with bloody red streaks and your face swelled as you continued to choke.

Jason’s insides screamed, but he felt too still.

As more of the fog touched you, some of the marks on your neck and your cheek blistered more and opened up, bleeding out pinkish bubbling puss as Jason continued to hold you - he didn’t know what else to do.

All he could do was hold you.

A harsh foam seeped out of your mouth as you choked on your last half-breath, and Jason felt a stinging pain consuming him - he wasn’t sure if it was the acidic fog finally breaching through his clothing, or the biting pain of having you limp in his arms - dead, as he huddled there on the floor.

Jason simply wept. And he held you.

As he looked at the camera feed, Crane smiled.

“This is what happens when you don’t play by the rules, Red.”

...

A/N: SOOOO obviously this ending leaves us with a lot of questions - did Jason survive? I think this can be interpreted one of two ways: one, Jason did live. He managed to escape somehow, and he had scars all over his body from the acidic fog, and he enacted a very vicious, bloody, torturous revenge on Crane before going into hiding forever (or before using Red Hood to give actual justice to innocent people who needed it, his scars always a reminder of who he lost). Or - he sat there in shock and eventually choked to death as well. Or he pulled the whole 'my life is not worth living anymore' thing and just took off his helmet on purpose. So you can imagine that either of those things happened next.

Also, if you didn't catch it (or, if you're not a Saw person) - this situation was heavily inspired by the final plot twist trap in Saw X. I love the acidic fog, and I feel like Crane could be a trap guy. The Titans version of Crane could be good friends with John, imo.

Also, if you enjoyed this fic, check out my DC Titans Masterlist for more of my other fics!! And please consider reblogging and commenting on this fic to tell me what you liked about it.

#jason todd x reader #ficrecs #sunny tag

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