#apparently used to stop bleeding and for joint pain

[dekulakization]

Not to be a nerd on main but I've got some shit to say about Curly mouthwashing.

Initial injuries:

How did Curly end up a tetralateral amputee. Why were the amputations PERFORMED for that matter. His injuries apparently reached all four limbs in equal spots. The right eye being covered implies either that the blast was stronger on the right side (AKA that he was turned so that the blast faced the right side of his body) or that he received additional injuries (perhaps shrapnel or an injury as he was thrown backwards by the force of the blast). IF he was turned to the blast with his right side of the body, wouldn't the injuries be more severe there? More damaged tissue, more unsalvageable tissue. If this was the case I feel like his amputations would be up to the hip/shoulder. I've heard the idea that he was perhaps stuck in foam but that doesn't clear anything up for me. Were his arms and legs both equally inside of the foam so that when the blast struck his joints (elbows/knees) were all injured beyond repair?

Even if that's the case, they didn't have the supplies for an amputation (let alone 4) by ANY means. There was no trained medical personnel on board (Anya only finished the company course) and amputation is a dangerous procedure just as any other surgery is. I feel like attempting to perform a botched amputation would be far more dangerous than leaving the tissue be. Though that poses the risk of necrosis. More on necrosis later.

Infection, cardiovascular concerns, blood loss and thermoregulation:

How did the crew stop the initial bleeding? How did they remove whatever they used to stop the initial bleeding? Blood loss had to be severe, and I feel like the crew would get to him far too late to stop him bleeding out completely. And for my second statement, things stick. Tissue paper sticks, cloth sticks, it sticks to tissue. Anything would cause further damage of the tissue.

Is ALL of his skin gone? All of it burned off? Is there still patches of it in tact? Either way, he lost ANY methods of thermoregulation since most of it (that being, the skin) is gone and the crew don't even bother to try and maybe, I don't know, stop him from going hypothermic. Give him a blanket. None of that. He's in a gown and some bandages. How did he not die of hypothermia?

Directly tied to the lack of thermoregulation, the bleeding and the pain, how did his heart not give out from the initial shock and later on psychophysical strain? I genuinely find it so hard to believe that after all of that his heart would still be holding out. It's a muscle that can overstrain itself just like any other.

Why and how in the world did he NOT get anything infected??? Jesus Christ? As far as we're aware he hasn't changed that gown nor those bandages in months. There is no disinfectant on the ship and even if there was using it on him would damage tissue further. Your skin protects the tissue underneath from infection and that's why it's easy for wounds to get infected, because they're breaks in the skin. It should be necrotic. What the hell. Also how's he not blind how didn't his eye dry out he can't blink

The purpose of keeping him alive: torturers tending to injuries

It's clear that the crew can recognise when a mercy killing is necessary (such as shown on the example of Daisuke). So why in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD is Curly left alive? Is it punishment because they think he crashed the ship? Why give him painkillers then? Why are you easing his pain? To stop his heart from giving out, to keep him alive longer?

IIRC Anya DID want to kill Curly but Jimmy was against it. This would not only completely out Jimmy as a sadist but it makes me wonder why is his word valued above the word of someone who has more medical experience than him, even if it was just a company course. Was she scared of what he'd do if she didn't listen to him?? Also why is this not a matter the entire crew is supposed to discuss??? And this leads into my NEXT point:

Why is nobody attempting to establish some sort of communication method with Curly? Hello?? He's clearly conscious and present within the moment, able to see and process the things around him. He literally cannot do anything. The least you could do, if you truly want to ease pain, is to try to stimulate him intellectually. To talk to him like a man to a man. His humanity was stripped from him by his surroundings rather than the crash itself. Letting him stare at a white ceiling with his only stimulation being pills forced down his throat is genuinely inhumane. Nobody is asking him whether HE wants to live or to die. Nobody is taking into consideration that he still has thoughts.

Perhaps I'm taking the entirety of his character too literally. Don't get me wrong, I love this game. I haven't played it myself, I could only bring myself to watch analysis videos, so some of the things I say might be straight up wrong, and I'm willing to take any criticism and discussion that starts. This was just me nerding out about medicine

[yourlocaltreesimp]

You know that tired reader and yan chain thing where reader asks to use the yan links as pillows well can you make that a fic please

Ofc, ofc!

Cw: None. I describe joint pain, idc if that counts

Heroes? No. Pillows.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

You never once in your life wanted to know what it was like to be on fire, but now you could safely say you did. Your feet and back aches from so long of walking, hard soled boots making each bone in your feet feel like it was snapping with every step. The pain trailed up to your knees and shins until every footfall was pins and needles. Your back was tense from being upright and the heavy pack you opted to cary, spine unable to loosen, even as you sat down. The fire snapped and popped, the only light left within the area. Unfortunately for the chain -but you in particular- Time insisted on walking the extra ten kilometres so the group would make it to the village the next morning. You let yourself fall back into the packed earth to look at the darkening sky, stars peaking through. But laying brought you no comfort, only a swell of pained muscles and sore joints.

“Are you alright, My dear?” You’re pulled from your lovely pity party by time, catching onto the apparent pain wracking your body.

“Just tired, I’m ok” You tried to sound upbeat, but it came out strained and exhausted.

“Ah, perhaps I should’ve thought twice before pushing you to hard. Is there anything we can do to help?” His voice was always so soft when he spoke to you, sitting up, you saw his expression was the perfect image of his bleeding heart. You sighed as your bones felt hallow, the ground quite literally a rock. Casting your eyes around the camp, you saw the eyes of the heroes boring into you with interest. Whatever conversations they’d previously been having thrown out in exchange for you. No magic could help you, for you were not of Hylia. No flowery words could ease your pain. No food would remedy your exhaustion. All you wanted was sleep, a good one at the least.

“Do you mind If i use you as a pillow?” The phrase slipped before you could really stop it, your cheeks nearly as warm as the fire you stared into.

“I- Uh- W-“

“As long as we’re of use to you I don’t think any of us mind.” Everyone murmured their agreements, getting ready to sleep. Sky -who was already ready for sleep at that point- was the first to allow you some comfort, laying down and letting you rest your head and shoulders on his chest, Wolfie laying across his stomach. Wind Curled inbetween Sky’s side and your chest. Legend layer on the other side of Sky, head next to yours. Wild shifted you so he could lay right under you. Hyrule Wrapped an arm around your waist from next to you. Four managed to sprawl himself the whole way across your chest diagonally, over everyone else’s arms. Time and Warriors kept first watch but traded spots with the others as the night progressed. You’d never felt so safe in your life, surrounded by people that made your heart feel full and mind less tired.

[callsignbaphomet]

Still got Loke on the brain so here's a random list of faqs of my good boy. Oracle version.

He's left-handed.

Jelani was the first one to call him Lo and Loki. It was when he was first starting to talk and Loke was a bit difficult to pronounce. At first it was kind of a "low-ee" sound that progressed to Loki and then to Loke but the nicknames stuck ever since.

He's genderqueer and uses he/him and they/them. Either is fine with him.

He's queer. He used to use gay but felt it a bit restrictive and not right for him plus his mom uses queer so he went with queer. Men and male presenting are what he's attracted to.

The woman that birthed him tried to drown him when he was a week old. She took him to a river near the village and submerged him but luckily someone had stopped her. She ran away as they desperately tried to get him to start breathing again. He was fine.

Speaking of that woman, as of 2023 she is still alive and has on numerous occasions tried to approach him. She spoke to Sanaa once and asked if she could talk to him but Sanaa said that was Loke's decision. He wants absolutely NOTHING to do with her. Unfortunately he was told she tried to drown him and that caused a ton of drama and a bit of a trauma.

He bled to death once. He was run through with a bastard sword (I'd explain more but it's spoiler for something I'm currently writing).

His favorite animals are birds, foxes, and dogs.

He's afraid of cats. When he was little he used to feed some birds that hung around the village and one day he saw a cat kill and eat one of the birds.

He had a fiancé when he was 39 years old. He was killed during a raid. What no one except for Sanaa knew was that the fiancé was pregnant (trans) when he died. Obviously it was Loke's. That's a secret his mom's gonna take to her grave.

He has hemophilia, asthma, is far sighted, has seasonal allergies and is V E R Y allergic to tree nuts. Like one bite will either land him in the ER or the morgue.

Because of said hemophilia he will get random bruises anywhere in the body, his mouth will sometimes bleed, may cough blood, might bleed into his joints (apparently that's super painful), and yes, has had blood in his urine. All of these are really rare though.

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaates using glasses so mostly sticks to using contacts.

I associate him with foxes (sable) and shiba inus.

The element I associate him with is lightning/thunder.

He's a Nordic berserker.

Speaking of, normally berserkers cannot use magic especially while in berserker mode. The only exception to that rule are the Nyota berserkers which are called arcanist berserkers. Sanaa is one of those specific berserkers. Ever since he was like 5 he wanted to learn to use magic like Sanaa does because he wanted to be just like his mom. Sanaa wasn't sure he would be able to learn what she was trying to teach him but she indulged him nonetheless.

It took years but Loke actually managed to learn how to pull off one of the Nyota's signature moves. Enchanting an arrow and firing it directly into the sky and exploding into hundreds or thousands of shards falling into the battlefield. He was also taught how to summon an element which in his case was lightning. He can have lightning wrapped around himself or a weapon. So far he's the only non-arcanist berserker to ever achieve this.

The man is stubborn as fuck all.

His chosen weapons as a berserker are a two headed axe and a bow and arrows (he chose a bow because his mom uses a bow).

During the early 2000s he and his mom enrolled in the same university to study medicine. They both graduated top of their class and did their residency at the same hospital. However, Sanaa got her license and is currently a doctor back home in Norway. Loke finished everything but went back to Oracle. He has that to fall back on whenever he chooses to retire from Oracle. He puts his medical knowledge to good use in the area of operations (the ao) and out of it tho.

Has adult separation anxiety. Technically speaking so does Jelani (only Angelus knows this but the rest suspect Jelani has it too). Neither can be separated for long periods of time. They start panicking when separated from each other for long periods of time.

His body count (like actual body count, not how many men he's had sex with) is disturbingly high. Disturbingly. High. He's very overprotective of the people he loves and will not hesitate to put two bullets into someone's skull and keep going as if nothing happened.

His favorite fruit is the mango. He really loves mangoes.

Favorite food is pizza.

Knows 13 languages: old Norse, Kiswahili, Xhosa, English, Lule Sámi, Norwegian, German, Icelandic, Faroese, Spanish, Setswana, Somali and Manyika. Basically the same languages Jelani knows.

Has a nicotine addiction and smokes. Not as much as he used to but he does.

Normally when berserkers are in berserker mode their irises tend to have a glow. However, Loke's sclera and irises turn red and no, it ain't normal. [No explanation due to spoilers].

He can sing and I do mean sing really good. He and Abigail often sing together by themselves. Abby loves to sing in front of others but Loke's shy about it. Everyone tells him he has a lovely voice though and he shouldn't feel shy about it.

If you wanna get technical about it Sanaa is his stepmother and Jelani is his half brother but he only ever refers to Sanaa as his mom and Jelani as his brother. He leaves out the step and the half. One of the worst ways you could possibly insult him is by calling Sanaa his stepmom and Jelani his half brother. Do that and you're instantly on his shit list forever, unless it wasn't intentional, just make sure you never do it again. Do it again and the ass kicking that follows will make your ancestors bleed.

He's a highly trained counter-sniper. He's also pretty good with a sniper. Trevor trained him. As it stands he's the second best sniper in all of Oracle.

He's extremely effective with any weapon he gets his hands on, he's also very accurate. If he missed it's because he wanted to.

He's ridiculously fast at drawing and firing weapons.

He's basically a human (no, he's not human, you know what I mean) lie detector. He can accurately tell when someone is lying.

He also makes an excellent double agent.

He's the only one who can tell when Jelani is lying.

According to tradition he was the next in line to be jarl. The position usually falls on the oldest child of the jarl's. However, he isn't one for such matters so he gave his position to Jelani who was, in his honest opinion, better suited for the role as he's proven to be a natural leader.

He is a very, very, very heavy sleeper. You literally have to shake him awake. Also it takes him like mere seconds to fall asleep.

He has 10 alarms on his phone cuz he sure as fuck ain't gonna hear the first 5.

He's super lazy.

He is the first and only non-Nyota to be a Warden.

He's 22 years older than Jelani.

He's the same age as his aunt Fae (Sanaa's sister).

When Jelani was born Loke basically turned into a third parent. It wasn't forced, he loved taking care of and looking after his baby brother. It was practically love at first sight.

He loves both of his parents but he's very attached to his mom.

Has three false right bottom molars. Hammer to the face.

Has two pet pigeons (Anga & Mvua) and a German Shepherd (Lyn).

Hates reading. Please don't make him read, it makes his brain cry.

Hates exercising. Has to be dragged to do it.

His ID number is 00-2144.

His favorite season is fall.

Likes the beach but the beach does not like him. He doesn't tan, he burns.

He kinda stopped physically aging. Sanaa noticed this long ago but isn't sure of what's going on so she's kept it to herself just in case.

After a certain event [can't say due to spoilers] Loke can't actually really die. He might die for a few minutes to an hour depending on the severity of the injury but he'll always come back. The only way he'll permanently die is if Jelani dies. [Again, not explaining bc of spoilers]. He'll scar like normal berserkers do though or lose limbs if not careful. No one is aware of this, not even him or Jelani.

During the "God Virus" story when Jelani loses total control because of the virus Loke sort of lost control. Sort of. [Spoilers. Can't explain yet]

He belongs to Uthorim.

Wants to have kids someday.

Is a hugger. He loves to hug. Unless the person isn't comfortable with it. Is also a cuddler when sleeping.

As a sort of "easter egg" all of Loke's au versions have all au versions of Iain try to kill him or manage to injure him in some way.

Is actually really good with kids. He often babysits for others as well as driving down to New York to babysit for his aunt Fae. Yes, it's a 10 hour drive. No, he doesn't give a fuck.

Sleeps with a shirt on. Just a shirt.

Like his brother he's into metal.

[drjohndisco]

Evermore (Chapter 05)

Ao3 Link || Masterlist

Notes: 1) SORRY THIS IS MOSTLY CANON DIALOGUE!!! (Albeit with the people changed around.) 2) Yeah, I switched Hook and Greg's injuries around. Made it easier for the plot to move forward (for me, anyway.) 3) I am not physically disabled. Please tell me if I've messed up with anything. I just think this makes the most sense -- since August is fully cured of his curse by this point -- but since he's still recovering from his (temporary/cursed) paralysis there's no way he'd be able to walk again without mobility aids. The physical therapy had probably been going on for a few weeks. I also headcanon he'd have at least some kind of joint pain. His cane type is an offset cane, and his wheelchair is manual (I think Rain and August alternate who steers his chair. Depends on his energy levels.)

(Plus, I don't think Storybrooke would have time to update their tech as they're from the '80s/have been stuck in time -- so its not a wheelchair with electricity/power.)

(Early Morning - Hospital Waiting Room)

‘Oh, hello!’ Beetle said, waving at August and Rain. ‘That’s everybody then! Although, I must ask, why is August here?’

Rain then paused and looked at him, as if they’d suddenly realised he was in the room. 

‘Wait, why are you here? It’d be a lot warmer at home. Also, your appointment is not for another 30 minutes, we don’t live that far away.’

‘What? I can’t sit and listen to any potential catastrophe?’ He replied, raising his hands out in a nonchalant manner. ‘I find it kind of fun, keeps me entertained while I wait.’

‘So,’ Rain said, clapping their hands together. ‘Can someone summarise this for us? What’s going on?

++

‘--Well, apparently, Rumple only gave him a couple of broken ribs.’ Belle said. ‘He won’t take long to heal.’

‘But, Hook is working with Cora.’ Ruby stated. ‘Who knows what he’d tell her once he leaves this hospital?’

‘I suppose lethal injection isn’t an option in this scenario?’ Beetle quipped.

‘Certainly not.’ Belle admonished.

‘But, seriously?’ Ruby asked, confused. ‘Doctor Whale for a pair of broken ribs?’

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ Whale interjected sarcastically (apparently he’d been able to walk up to the small group without anybody noticing.) ‘And, actually, he’s begun bleeding into his chest cavity. Clearly Gold hit him with a lot more force than we realised yesterday.’

‘So make it stop.’ Beetle asked. ‘Aren’t you a doctor?’

‘It’s not that easy.’ Whale sighed. ‘Letting him die is easy. If that’s what you decide, I can do that.’

He then walked off; presumably to prepare for the surgery.

‘Anyone else notice he’s drunk off his ass?’ August said, breaking the silence.

(Later, again)

‘Oh, my nerves can't take this. Is the surgery almost over?’

‘I think it takes…’ Rain began, only to be stopped when they saw a nurse.

‘Any news?’ Ruby asked.

‘No. I was just looking for the doctor.’ The nurse replied.

‘He's not in the Operating Room?’

‘He never came in.’

‘Then page him. He was not looking so good earlier.’ Rain said.

After a moment the pager beeped, from a nearby washing basket.

‘He's here’. The nurse mumbled.

‘No, but his pager is.’ Rain said, fishing it from the basket of scrubs. ‘He's gone.’

Ruby then took the garment from Rain and sniffed it twice.

‘Got the scent?’

‘Boozy.’ Ruby groaned.

‘Please, just find him and bring him back. We'll watch Hook and figure out our options if Whale doesn't come back.’

‘Maybe Doc can do it.’ Belle suggested.

‘Surgery?’ Beetle laughed. ‘No!’

‘Maybe he didn't even run. Maybe Cora grabbed him for some reason?’ Belle thought.

‘I don't think so.’ Rain said. ‘He's been in a rough place since he brought Regina's fiance back to life.’

‘Back to life?’ Belle questioned.

‘And had his arm ripped off and put back on.’ Rain added, unhelpfully. ‘He even went to August and I to see if we could fix that particular problem.’

‘Cool.’ Beetle murmured.

‘Wait, Daniel came back? Like some kind of Frankenstein?’

‘Yup! That's Whale. The Doctor, that is, Daniel must have been his monster.’

‘I see.’ Belle said, nodding.

‘Okay, Ruby, you’d better get going.’ Beetle stated. ‘Bring back Dr. Frankenstein. Send this guy back home with bolts in his neck.’

‘She'll find him.’ 

‘Yeah, but what kind of state is he gonna be in?’

(Elsewhere in the hospital  - while the others have been in the waiting room)

Hearing the nearby door open, Rain looked up from their phone to see August wheeling himself out of the room with a cane over his knee.

‘How’d it go?’ Rain asked, standing up. ‘What’d they say?’

‘I’ve improved a lot, apparently.’ August replied. ‘She said I would probably still need to use the wheelchair, but the cane will enable me to walk short distances.’

‘Then, that’s great!’ Rain replied. ‘Now, shall we go and see how everything’s turned out? Apparently there’s news.’

(The Waiting Room)

‘How can you lose an entire person?’ Beetle yelled.

‘Like I said, I was gone for maybe thirty seconds. Then, when I re-entered the room he was gone.’

‘Beetle….’ Rain groaned. ‘I thought you had good news?’

‘I did.’ Beetle replied, sardonically. ‘But, apparently the universe had other plans.’

‘It always does’ August muttered.

‘So, Hook’s gone?’ Belle asked, walking back into the room from the coffee machine.

‘He is.’ Whale said.

‘What about Gold, is he still in prison?’ Belle questioned.

‘Yeah, Emma said he’s now on probation -- or, at least that’s what Ruby told me.’ Beetle clarified. ‘Said they were going to look for his son or something as part of payment for an old deal.’

‘Well, shit.’

[wardowrites]

Louis reared back like Wardo had struck him. That had been a common occurrence in the early stages of their relationships, both of them angry, confused boys who were both far too proud of their expansive vocabularies, delighting in the ways they could create a particular assortment of words that they knew would cruelly hurt the other. It hadn’t been kind nor healthy, and further down the line they’d realised that and found a way to love each other better, but he supposed old habits did die hard.

The words had been meant to hurt Louis after all, to force the man to feel even a fraction of the pain that Wardo had endured after leaving Lowell. His satisfaction was short-lived though, swiftly replaced by an ugly mix of guilt and frustration. He didn’t want to be the person who cut someone else because he was already bleeding. But he also didn’t think that Louis deserved to look as hurt as he did at that moment. He’d been the one to end things between them, he’d been the one to leave Wardo out in the cold. So why did he think he deserved the opportunity to stand there and look like a kicked puppy? Maybe he was just trying to mess with Wardo’s emotions.

“Yeah, guess you did,” he said, flatly, refusing to let his voice waver in case it betrayed how much his heart was hammering in his chest.

He wondered what it meant, to have Louis look at him like that. He didn’t want to encourage the man’s martyrdom and press on the issue. It didn’t mean anything. Nobody liked being reminded of their fuck-ups. Louis Denver hadn’t had to deal with anyone telling him off for making Wardo pout for ten years now; it was unlikely to be a past time he wanted to revisit.

It was good seeing you, kid.

Wardo’s lungs pulled desperately at the cold November air. Breath catching in his throat, he felt his joints lock into place as he stiffened, a knee-jerk reaction to the nickname that shouldn’t be as familiar as it was. Louis had always called him ‘kid’, having loved that the other man was a year younger than him for reasons that were completely lost on Wardo. There had been no real need for him to overuse the name when they were back in college, and there was definitely no reason for him to be using it now, yet Louis had went ahead and called Wardo ‘kid’ anyway and all Wardo could do was stand there and try to figure out how to not die.

He blinked rapidly, the rest of Louis’ words catching up to him.

The East Village. So, what, he was living there permanently? Wardo’s favourite taco place was in the East Village so now, he realised, he could never enjoy Mexican food again. God, he really hoped the hipsters of Alphabet City were still vehemently protesting that one Burger King the city had planned to build on their turf, or else he and Ivy would never be able to eat again.

Eyes widening when he realised that this was it, Louis was about to turn around and walk away from him a second time, that the reunion he had built up in his head for a decade now was about to pass him by as nothing more than an anti-climactic, passively cold interaction, he allowed panic to claw at his throat. Enough for him to speak up without thinking it through, words tearing out of him without him being able to stop and think about it.

“So, do you want him back?” He blinked, shocked at himself. Looking down at his feet, he tried again. “Ulysses, I mean. You want him back?”

His cheeks began to heat up when he realised what his words might have sounded like: a pathetic excuse to see Louis again under the guise of handing his cat over. He could honestly say that wasn’t what was happening at all, but he also couldn’t provide an explanation for his apparent stroke either. Maybe he just wanted to have the last word, or perhaps he was just devastated at the idea of this being how they parted ways once again. This couldn’t be it, could it?

Louis physically recoiled from Wardo's words. He couldn't help it, his entire body seemed to veer back as though Wardo had dealt him a physical blow. In that moment, he wasn't thinking about not giving Wardo the satisfaction of knowing the other man had hurt him. It was like being in a car crash, you braced for impact, even if you knew it was going to result in bruises and broken bones.

Dark brown eyes widened, his mouth falling open slightly in a state of shock. The hurt on his face was so raw, and blatant. Louis and Wardo had said a lot of awful shit to each other, but he'd forgotten how much it fucking hurt to come to blows with the one person you cared about more than anything else in the world.

"Right," Louis nodded his head, a hand coming up to awkwardly rub the back of his neck, "Guess I uh, guess I fuckin' deserved that one, huh?"

He wished he could tell him the whole sad story. How Wardo was the only person in the world he'd wanted to be with in those long, shitty months in Lowell. He wanted to tell him that he'd sat in the park he played in as a kid, watching his niece and nephew run around while he sat at the bottom of the slide, thumb hovering over Wardo's name in his phone. He wanted to tell him he didn't know how to face him after what had happened to him. He even wanted to cruelly spit out just how badly Gerard had hurt him, watch the shock register on Wardo's face, even though the words would burn like acid coming up. He wanted to be self-pitying and self-loathing for a second just so Wardo could feel how shitty he felt, but that wasn't the kind of man he was, at least not anymore. He tried really fucking hard not to let the fact he was hurting become an excuse to hurt other people. He'd done enough of that in his twenties.

He bit back his sadness, his words coming out flat and bitter when he said, "Right, well fuck me, I guess."

He scoffed out a laugh, shoving his hands deep in his pockets. His boot kicked at a stray piece of gravel, unsure how to rescue the conversation from there. He didn't have the energy to go toe to toe with Wardo in his game of venemous witticisms. The conversatin had been a non-starter from the beginning, a humiliating exercise in learning just how much of a hold Wardo still had on him. He shook his head, pressing his lips together to suffocate a pitiful laugh.

"It was good seeing you, kid. I mean that." he shrugged, "Don't worry, if I see you around the East Village, I'll just keep on walking."

[ghostlyfoliage]

I decided to snag another plant.

This one was from my yard.

I just thought it looked cool.

I have identified it as probably Erodium Cicutarium, aka Redstem Stork's Bill. It's an annual/biannual that's edible and has been used medicinally for a variety of things. (Note: http://tropical.theferns.info/viewtropical.php?id=Erodium+cicutarium )

Guess it won't be around long. I guess they send seeds all over the place.

Guess I'll put it outside as soon as it flowers and let it seed the front yard.

[feltpool]

What they do

We’re told right from the start that the batch are ‘enhanced clones’ and that they each have an ability that makes them special.

But this is an oversimplification. They don’t have different abilities, they all have the same abilities, only in differing proportions. And I’m including Omega in this too. Five enhanced clones.

Hear me out...

Tech tells us: "They manipulated preexisting aberrations in our DNA, resulting in your brute strength, Crosshair's sharpshooting skills, Hunter's enhanced senses and my exceptional mind"

Now Wrecker is big. He’s tall and he’s broad, and looks like he should be able to lift a truck without pause, let alone a troop ship. We see him pumping iron using Gonky on more than one occasion. But bodybuilders also look like they’d be really really strong, however, it’s all about the look of the muscle and they’re actually a lot weaker than their bulk suggests.

But we saw him lift that ship off of Cody so where are you going with this?

I don’t think strength is really where his talents lie. His enhancement has increased his physical density, which gives the appearance of far more strength than he actually has. The structure of his body has become vastly dense which allows him to take the strain of lifting that weighty ship without breaking his own bones, or tearing his muscles to shreds in the process.

Any human can physically lift way more weight than we generally actually do, because our brains cut in with all the warning signals to tell us to stop before we break something important.

So sure, if hysterical strength kicks in and overrides those responses people can do incredible things like lift cars off of trapped people, but they pay a heavy price for that afterwards. Torn muscles, crushed joints, cracked bones and teeth, internal bleeding, etc.

So strength alone just isn’t enough to counter the damage caused by such an action. But density just might be.

Look at the scene in TCW where he’s holding Jesse up by the neck. Rex is pushing at him, trying to make him put him down. Now Rex isn’t a small man, but he doesn’t so much as make Wrecker sway slightly, and he should already be off balance by holding a wiggly Jesse.

And it’s easy to ignore how much the clones are struggling to pull him up and away from the dianoga on Bracca because we’re led to assume all of their struggle is them having to pull against the creature in the water, not that they’re struggling to lift his hugely dense and weighty body up to their level.

They get around this same issue in TCW by having Anakin force lift him out of the Echo Chamber instead of the others having to work out how they’re going to get him out of there.

Look how much he was struggling by the end of his fight with Muchi. Sure, it was made into a joke (“He’s losing his touch”), everything with him always is. Right up until it isn’t funny anymore. Like with bouncing his head off of every hard object until his chip activated and he went into full on murder mode. But what if his apparent lack of stamina is simply the byproduct of him struggling to heft his own body weight around for a prolonged period?

There’s a gap between the fight and him walking through the streets of Ord Mantell with Muchi by his side and we don’t get to see if he spent all of that time sitting down and resting (”chargin' up before I charge in”) any more than we get to see him returning to the ship post fight.

But what does this have to do with anyone else?

With Hunter we saw the Zygerrian slaver wrap his electro whip around his arm and he barely reacted to it. And while much of the whip was wrapped around the armour on his arm he was also holding it in his hand. Given just how much those things have hurt people when we’ve seen them used previously it seems unlikely that the thin fabric of his glove would be enough to protect him from feeling it.

Unless the increased density of his body maybe helps to decrease the sensation of pain? That remains unclear as yet, but it’s a possibility.

But we also saw him fall halfway down a mountain and get up again at the bottom. Gregor, a man also wearing the same class of armour that he has, had already said they couldn’t survive that jump, and that was before Hunter solidly bounced off a lot of rocks and trees as he descended.

Oh, he shook his head a little before he got up, but he should have been dead.

.

We don’t get to see Tech flex his muscles much but he peels that durasteel? panel off the brig wall like it’s nothing.

And what of Crosshair?

In the mess hall we see him trying to be a good boy and not get into a brawl up until the fight comes and lands right in his dinner, at which point he uses his increased density to put enough force behind that flung lunch tray that it not only slams into two other clones, but does it with sufficient force to knock them both right off their feet.

And that’s just not normal.

But neither is the way Omega manages to slide down a cable strong enough to moor the Marauder and prevent it from breaking free and escaping from the crab creatures (in the S2 trailer) without slicing both of her hands open and causing friction burns on top. She certainly should be in no condition to spring up, grab her bow, and start firing shots.

There’s a really good reason abseilers wear sturdy gloves.

.

It's 'Crosshair's sharpshooting skills', not Crosshair's phenomenal eyesight.

We’re led to assume that it’s his eyesight because we tend to think of shooting as being a linear thing, because straight lines are how projectile weapons work.

But blasters aren’t like slug throwers and we see that every time Crosshair gets his reflector discs out, such as when he mows down a corridor filled with droids, bouncing a single shot off disc after disc and cutting down everything standing in between them, or setting up his Elite Squad to die long before they walk into the training room.

His enhancement is an increased mental processing speed, just like we see in Tech and Omega. It’s his ability to calculate the angles super quickly in order to set up that corridor full of droids on the fly, or to target something 10 klicks/6 miles away and to pre-place a series of reflectors accordingly so they never see it coming that makes him special.

His ability to see where a child jumped into dark night waters after a sinking droid, to calculate the distance and angle, and to shoot a grapple at just the right velocity to hit his target even against all the water resistance. And to calculate all of that in seconds before anyone is stupid enough to jump in after her.

Chances are his eyesight is no better than any other clone.

But he also shows signs that he may feel less pain than is usual, just the same as Hunter does.

A high velocity rifle with a super long barrel filled with as many collimating components as will fit inside must give one hell of a kick. Even with the shoulder padding on his original armour the recoil from the firepuncher throws his shoulder back hard every time but he never shows any sign of pain. Does an increased density of tissue simply mean he doesn’t feel it as much?

.

And Tech? With his self proclaimed ‘exceptional mind’?

It’s all about the fast speed at which he can process the data he acquires. Which goes well with the excellent flight skills he’s displayed, such as over Ryloth and Daro, which suggest his reaction times are exceptional, allowing him to correct for changes in environment and in combat situations really quickly.

Very similar to Crosshair’s skill, but with a different application.

.

Omega displayed excellent strategy skills when beating everyone else at dejarik, she identified Cid when none of the others managed to work out who she was, she manipulated Todo 360 into allowing her to repair his leg so she could make her escape from Bane’s ship, while scared and handcuffed she then managed to find the comms station and operate outmoded equipment in order to contact the Batch, then she made her escape from Bora Vio all by herself.

So her processing speed doesn’t appear to be lagging any either.

.

When the Batch are on Onderon Tech says “I would not discount Omega's insight.  A state of heightened awareness is not unusual for an enhanced clone such as herself.”

But they’re all ‘enhanced’, I mean, that’s exactly what’s supposed to make them all so special in the first place.

A ‘state of heightened awareness’ is usually taken to mean a state in which you’re highly aware of your surroundings, hyper vigilant or focused. And those of them whose mental processes have been speeded up should be far more skilled at picking up on subtle cues and background information that other people don’t notice.

It’s like they want to make them force sensitive but without actually letting them access the force because something somewhere once said that clones aren’t force sensitive, so they’ve gone for the next best option.

So they can have hyper senses but no lightsabers.

Hunter sensed the probe droid when it was lurking in the trees and we put that down to his EM detection. But a little earlier, when it was watching them through the trees, Crosshair looked around too, even though there was no indication that there was anything there. So it seems like he felt it in some way too.

.

We all noted how Hunter appears to ‘feel’ Crosshair’s presence when they’re leaving Ryloth, but one person on a busy planet with a lot of people, communications, construction, etc wouldn’t give off enough of an EM disturbance to pick up at any sort of range unless they were deliberately sending out a signal, and hyper awareness shouldn’t apply since he wasn’t within sight, sound, etc range.

.

Crosshair seems to know where Caleb is hiding up a tree on Kaller, and he doesn’t buy that he fell over the waterfall for a moment even though there’s no evidence to show otherwise apart from knowing Hunter well enough to know when he’s lying.

.

In the mess hall fight Tech picks up the threat to Echo from the clone who slams him with the lunch tray even though he isn’t facing him, only turning towards him in time to warn him of the incoming threat.

.

We don’t notice Wrecker reacting to his surroundings in the same way the others sometimes do, but it’s possible that he might have a better sense of the space around him and the room he takes up and uses this to move around in a small area like the Marauder without bumping into things or stepping on anyone’s toes.

.

But no one of them noticed the scrappers on Bracca approaching noticeably before any other one does.

And it was no help to them when the Zygerrians snatched them either.

.

Hang on, Hunter’s skill is EM detection. Tech says so.

Yes, it is. But it’s everyone else’s skill too, they’re maybe not as good at it as he is, but they’re all picking up the signals to some degree.

However, if you’re trying to sell your team of enhanced clones as being unique individuals with a skill that makes each one special, you’re not going to want to point out that they’re all technically doing the same thing.

So they focus on Hunter’s EM detection, Tech’s fast processing, Wrecker’s apparent strength, and Crosshair’s sharp shooting.

Because it sounds fancier that way.

And fancier sells for a higher price.

.

When they’re talking about getting their experimental clones back Lama Su says “We only need one” and if they all have the same abilities coded into their DNA then that’d be right.

Any of them would suffice to allow them to proceed to the next phase.

[eureka-its-zico]

Half Bitten: Pt. 6

Summary: You find yourself a prisoner inside Namjoon’s home. Unable to flee, you end up caught between him and Jungkook fighting for you as their prize. With each passing day it becomes more apparent that Jimin may not be able to rescue you, leaving it to you to save yourself. But how are you supposed to fight off a whole nest of vampires and keep away the one desperately trying to steal your soul? When you want nothing more than to submit.

A/N: Man! To those who joined me on this ride and are still here and still loving this series: I dedicate this to you. While I enjoyed writing this behemoth, it also wrecked my nerves because I want to keep this interesting and fresh. Reviews are always welcome! I hope you all enjoy! Much love, Jenn

Pairing: Jimin x Reader, Jungkook x Reader (it’s sorta poly who am I kidding but we all know where she gonna end up cause I’m a 🤡)

Genre: Vampire au, witch au, supernatural, enemies to lovers, angsty smutty goodness

Warnings: sexual content and supernatural violence and mentions of death

Word:14,156

Namjoon led you through a maze of hallways. Each one seemed to bleed into another until you couldn’t recognize one door from the other. He didn’t hint at where you were going, or if he ever intended to stop. You couldn’t really care much either way, because if it wasn’t for his hand securely wrapped around your arm you would’ve stayed planted back in the other room.

Your bones and the joints surrounding them throbbed with an unstoppable need to thrash in Namjoon’s grip. To run back and fall to the floor in front of Jungkook’s grotesque new form Alice had created and give yourself to him. He needed you. Needed.

Need you…..

need

The thought whispered along your spine like a soft caress of lips. It left a deep pit of yearning to grow and fester inside you until you were sure you would burst.

Come

back

The shell of your body may have been held by Namjoon, but your spirit remained at Jungkook’s feet. All the rage and hatred he felt infected you with every step you took. You thought since Namjoon was taking you further and further away from him that this hold Jungkook had on you would dissipate. Your head would fill back up with your own thoughts. Instead, all you could hear was Jungkook’s and it was maddening.

Your eyes caught sight of Alice’s long flowing hair and a growl sounded in the hall. You weren’t surprised it came from you. What did surprise you, however, was the way your body reacted.

For a majority of your walk, you’d remain docile at Namjoon’s side. Just at the sight of Alice the fire that Jungkook and stocked inside you now flared to life. It consumed you: commanded you to tear her apart and bring back Alice’s head to him as penitence.

You launched yourself in her direction. A fresh snarl curling your lips and booming from your throat. Alice appeared completely startled and, under different circumstances, you would have laughed. Except no one was laughing.

You reached for her with your fingers bent like claws and scraped at her face. You missed the first time, but your second swing caught her by her hair and with all your strength you used it to pull her towards you. Alice let out a shriek of pain. Her own hands flying up to try and unsuccessfully release your grip. You were so close to closing your fist down to her face when Namjoon whipped you around and slammed your body into the adjacent wall.

The second your body collided with the wall it felt like whatever hold Jungkook held on you was expelled from you. Along with all the air from your body. The hand Namjoon had used to hold you by your arm was now gripping your throat. Squeezing even tighter, he used it to hoist you up leaving your feet to dangle helplessly off the floor.

You reached your hands up to try and claw his hand off. You couldn’t breathe! You could feel the panic begin to set in as your eyes landed on his vampiric face. It was no longer handsome and smooth. It’d been carved out with blackened eyes and fangs that seemed to grow from every tooth. The veins in his face matched the obsidian of his eyes and showed the shallow pallor of his skin.

The more you looked at him, the more Namjoon seemed to change. As if his simple differences you’d noticed since you’d seen him had all been a facade; a small gesture to hide what he truly could become.

“If you’re going to act like a damn child I’ll treat you like one,” he snapped. His words became more pronounced as he spoke through razor sharp teeth. “Do you think you can hold it together? Or do I need to place you in solitary confinement until Jungkook’s blood is completely drained from you.”

You did your best to shake your head. The idea of whatever he had planned and being locked inside a room was as terrifying as following him wherever he was taking you.

Oh, what wonderful choices you had. God, you missed Jimin.

An excruciating pain flared inside your chest. Your mouth opened wide to scream, but because Namjoon’s hand was holding your throat it came out gargled. Underneath the pain that radiated out into your limbs there was a flare of anger. It wasn’t your anger. It was Jungkook’s. Your best guess was he didn’t like you thinking of Jimin, and was making sure you pay for even thinking of him.

Namjoon’s features had smoothed back into their handsome mask and his eyes rolled as he moved to set your feet back on the floor.

“Jungkook really must have shared more blood with you than I thought.” He let out a sigh as he reached over and grabbed hold of your arm. “He’s still young and doesn’t understand the power of blood sharing yet.”

You were back to walking down the hallway. Alice still straightening out her hair as she looked over at you to give you a glare.

“And what’s young to you?”

You crocked out the question. Your voice raspy as your windpipe struggled to open back up.

“Jungkook is one-hundred and twenty-five years old. He’s the youngest in the family.”

You choked on air. Your eyes wide like saucers as you look up at Namjoon. He wasn’t phased by his statement in the slightest.

“A hundred and twenty-five is young to you?”

“I’m sure by human standards it seems impossibly old, but for a vampire he has a lot to learn.”

He continued to guide you to the left down another hallway and you felt a heavy sigh growing in your chest. How many damn hallways was it going to take for you to reach your destination? And when you got there was it even a destination you wanted to get too?

What you really wanted was your room. To put on your favorite shirt that you slept in, and curl up in your bed while watching your favorite show. Maybe get some popcorn and mindlessly shovel it into your mouth. You craved the normalcy you used to hate thinking your life wasn’t adventurous enough. Whelp, now you had enough adventure to last a millennium.

You realized finally he was taking you to a set of double doors at the end of the hall. They were ornate, like everything else in the house, and carved with a scene of wailing women set inside a raging fire. You hated that door.

“If Jungkook is that old surely he must have done blood sharing before.”

Namjoon eyed you briefly. You could see the wheels in his mind turning; debating if he should answer you or not. Before he did, you both came to a stop in front of the doors and he reached out with a key and unlocked them. His large hand opened it seconds later and ushered you inside with a small push.

“Blood sharing is only done with those you wish to share a connection with. Usually, we do it with blood bags we wish to keep. Not share.”

“Did you just call me a blood bag?”

Now you remembered how much of an asshole he was. It was bad enough you dealt with elitist rich assholes in normal life, but now you had immortal elitists who would never die or age. Every single one of them only viewing you to be nothing more than a midnight snack.

Namjoon waved off your growing fury with a nonchalant hand flick. His legs carried him over to a large mahogany desk that was just as intricately designed as his door. He sat his large frame down into a leather backed chair and swept a hand towards each available chair.

“Have a seat.”

“Not until you answer me first.”

It was stupid to challenge him. You knew this, especially when you weren’t tapped into your magic. Would magic even be able to save you in time before he was on you? Luckily for you, Namjoon seemed more annoyed with your small demand than angry.

You’d somehow forgotten all about Alice. She closed the door behind you and moved around to stand off to the left of the room. Her back against a floor to ceiling bookshelf that showcased the spines of books that were weathered with time. Some large tomes that were placed on pedestals were opened to the room. Their pages aged in yellows and off-whites.

A part of you wondered what stories those words written in pretty old text could tell you. If they were old things of history or something more. Something made of magic.

“You are obviously not a blood bag. You’re more than the rest. You stand with the Coven and, as such, you aren’t to be used like an old rag.”

“Gee, thanks,” you mumbled.

Namjoon’s brow furrowed as his eyes narrowed on your position. It was quick to note he did not enjoy being interrupted.

“Those of the Coven are allowed to pick someone to - how should I put this - bond with. Someone they allow to consume blood and them in turn do the same to keep up the strength of their abilities.”

“Are witches not able to be powerful enough without blood?”

“Blood is the original form of creation. It flows through all mammals. Cut open any living creature that resides here and it will bleed. It’s what sustains us all and, because of this gift of life, it creates something stronger inside all witches. Inside of you.”

You couldn’t understand why but your head was filling up with whispers. All the ones you’d heard before you’d conjured flames from the air were back with a vengeance. So many voices were speaking at once. Their whispers were so low that every individual voice was overpowered by another until it sounded like insistent chattering, but they weren’t here to chat. They were warnings.

What he offered was something old and meant to be untouched. He spoke of: “Blood magic.”

The words tumbled out of your mouth in a sigh. The dozens of dead women in your head began to subside knowing you’d understood what they were trying to say. You seriously hoped that wasn’t a forever kind of thing, because it was creepy as shit.

Blood magic was the most forbidden form there was, along with necromancy. An inkling started at the base of your skull that what Namjoon asked for was dangerous. Magic was meant to bring life not take it. To heal and protect instead of damage and cause destruction, but those were exactly the things he wanted.

He’d found a way to forego animal and human sacrifice for the blood required to possess such magics, by doing the bloodletting between witches and vampires. Life and death. Alice snorted from her position at the bookshelf. Her fingers playing across the pages inside one of the giant volumes on the pedestal.

“Who told you that? Those old mare’s in your head?”

You felt your eyes widen in shock. How did she know they were there? Spinning bitter tales and spewing anger when you let your guard down. By the eye roll Alice gave you in return, you were sure she was about to tell you how not special you were.

“All those born of the Coven can hear them. Think of them as your ancestors or uninvited prattling bitches, as I like to call them.”

“We aren’t here to discuss ghosts,” Namjoon interjected. He clasped his hands together and sat them on top of his desk. His body leaning forward as he regarded you. “We are here to create your training schedule. Starting tomorrow Alice will begin teaching you everything from apothecary - herbs and such - to spells.”

“I’m not in any danger of being someone’s broodmare, am I?”

You seriously didn’t want to have a twisted relationship the way Namjoon spoke of. No blood sharing would be good for you. Thanks, but no thanks. Deep in your belly, however, you felt that small spark of rage and knew it wasn’t all your own. Maybe you didn’t want to be connected to anyone but maybe you weren’t going to be able to have a say.

Namjoon gave you a smile and it did little to comfort you. No, instead it left your skin burning under his gaze and the hunger that was behind it.

“No one is to touch you, y/n. No one. You are meant for me.”

From the corner of your eyes you watched Alice stiffen. Your own body went rigid at his words. You wanted to turn on your heel and make a run for it. It was easy to believe you wouldn’t get far. Not even an inch before Namjoon had you back, but you didn’t care. You wanted to try and escape.

“All the offense here, but I’m gonna have to disrespectfully decline that.”

Sometimes, you wish you kept your mouth shut. The small smile that had rested on Namjoon’s lips had disappeared. In its place were obsidian eyes that stared at you in utter rage at your defiance.

“It isn’t up to you,” he snarled.

“It is up to me! It’s my body! My…blood! And have you forgotten that I hate you? You literally tore my life apart just to get me here. What makes you think I want any part of you touching me? Ever!”

You weren’t aware that your legs had carried you forward until your thighs bumped into his desk. Your chest heaving from screaming every word at him with your hands balled up into fists at your sides. You wanted to call yourself stupid for putting yourself so dangerously close to him, but you didn’t care.

You wanted him to know every molecule on your body loathed him. He’d sent Alice to infiltrate your life and become your friend. He’d help create a life of security and friendship waiting for the right moment to strike and when he had, he hadn’t done it subtlety or soft, like Jimin. No, Namjoon chose to come in like a hurricane and completely turn over your entire life just to have you here.

He wanted to break you down and turn you weak. But you weren’t weak before and you sure as shit weren’t going to start being weak now just because he was on some spooky shit.

You kept thinking of the last couple days and felt your anger boiling under the surface. You were so consumed by it that you hadn’t paid attention. Your brain wasn’t registering that Namjoon was now standing with his hand wrapped around your wrist. With a small shove forward, he knocked you off balance and sent you stumbling around the desk. Closer to him.

When you’d reached the end of the desk Namjoon was quick to lace his arm behind your back and pull you close. You tried to remain defiant as you looked up into the darkness that greeted you.

“Sit on the desk.” You showed no signs of moving and a growl, deep from his chest came with his next word: “Now.”

You kept your head high as you backed up slowly against his desk. Your hips moving up to place each cheek down on the desk. Your eyes were still glaring at him as he took a step forward. His hands moving the fabric of your dress with each step; tugging the fabric up to bundle around your hips. You were still glaring, trying not to show any hesitation or fear, but you lost it all with a gasp of surprise when those same hands pried your legs apart.

Namjoon had your legs spread open for him. His body moving between them to keep them wide and leaving your core exposed to him. You were still wearing your underwear, but what was a tiny piece of lace going to do? You swallowed down a whimper as the hand that wasn’t at your waist moved up to trace along your jaw. The hunger in his eyes somehow turned them darker; a bottomless pit of nothing. You’d never felt more terrified than you did now.

“Fight me all you want, y/n but underneath all that indecision of fear, regret, and hatred is something you won’t admit.”

As he spoke, the hand that sat passively at your waist began to trail down towards your core. You could feel your body tense up, waiting, with something you refused to admit. You couldn’t bring yourself to say the tremors in your body were from anything else but fear of the unknown. But your body was swift to call you a liar when his hand cupped your pussy. The lace fabric his finger stroked against was already soaked with your juices.

At that exact moment your body let out a gasp. The hand Namjoon used to caress your face was now lightly squeezing at your neck. Eyes desperately watching how you reacted to a digit moving past the fabric of your underwear and pushing between your slick folds.

Your hips bucked against his fingers and Namjoon wasted no time inserting a second digit. A moan burst free from your lips as your breathing came in shallow gasps of air. You wanted to feel revolted. To grab at his wrist and pull him away, but as his fingers curved and worked your g-spot, you couldn’t deny how badly your body wanted this. Wanted his fingers buried deep inside your pussy working you to the point you were soaking his desk.

Namjoon’s wrist was working at a steady pace. One minute he would stroke your g-spot with fast, harsh strokes of his fingers, and the next he would slow down. His thumb caressing over your clit causing your breath to hitch inside your throat. With each one, he squeezed your throat just a little more. A control he loved to show just how much you bent to his will.

Using you by the neck Namjoon eased your back against the desk. His fingers still fucking you as he got you in the position he wanted. When he was satisfied with how you looked on the desk, he dropped down to one knee in front of your pussy. His eyes shooting up to watch as you made keening noises for him.

“I don’t need blood tricks to take you. All I need is your submission.”

“Ne-nev-eve-“

With every attempt to tell him it would never happen he only thrusted his fingers deeper inside you. Each one sending your back arching against the dark wood of the desk.

“We’ll certainly see, won’t we?”

His words were spoken against your folds. Another wanton noise came forth as you thought he was about to run his tongue against your clit, but instead a scream tore from you. Just beside your entrance, Namjoon sunk his teeth in your flesh. Your body fought to close your legs, your hands moving to push him away, but Namjoon easily knocked them away.

The fingers that had been inside you were now playing with your clit. Stroking and circling your swollen nub until the pain from his bite almost disappeared. All you could feel now was the arousal between your legs and how it blossomed into your core.

With another flick of his fingers your back arched almost off the desk. His mouth working at your leg, drinking you down, just inches from your pussy somehow only made it more erotic; more filthy and you were so close…

You opened your eyes and saw an upside down Alice. Her arms were crossed and you thought for a moment that the deep lines in her forehead were from anger. It took you a moment to see the frown on her face. The sadness in her eyes.

You’d somehow forgotten she was here. A flare of embarrassment settled in your chest, but with a flick of Namjoon’s fingers you were back to squirming and moaning obscenities into the room.

How terrible it must be, you thought, to be in love with a monster. And before you could think any further, Namjoon gave one last flick of his fingers and you came screaming into the room.

That night you scrubbed your skin raw for hours inside the shower. No matter how many times you rinsed and repeated the process it never felt like it was enough to rid your body of the desire between your thighs to be touched. It bummed with an ache to feel someone’s hands. The feeling grew and grew in intensity until the only way to satiate it was your own hand trespassing between your folds and massaging your clit. Your legs shaky with each new orgasm as your mind imagined looking down and finding Jungkook’s mouth hungrily lapping up your juices. The spray from the shower head above cascading down your body.

Every time you moved whether it be from walking or changing positions in bed, you could feel the scabs that had formed from Namjoon’s teeth. A sick reminder that you’d allowed him to taste you - to touch you.

You felt incredibly confused. You hated him. You couldn’t forgive him for any of the number of things you knew he’d done and of the ones you didn’t. He was trying to control your life and turn you into something you wanted no part of. Namjoon didn’t care if you were struggling to find your sanity inside this madhouse he called home. All he wanted was for you to complete something that had fallen apart years ago. And your submission.

Tossing over to your side you stared out the window and did your best to imagine you were back at home. Studying for an upcoming exam or struggling to not beat your creepy supervisor, Steve’s ass for pressing just a little too close in the break room. You imagined having a carton of your favorite ice cream next to your laptop when you need a spoonful of reassurance trying to find credible sources for your thesis.

Your mind didn’t let you stay there for long. It was quick to point out this mattress was much softer than the one you had at home. That you were in a king-size four poster bed compared to the full that sat on a basic metal frame against your wall.

The room was luxurious as the rest of the house. The tones of the bedroom were monotones compared to the hallways and grand rooms you’d seen previously. Even compared to Namjoon’s office, your room was tame. It carried the theme of the thick velvet drapes that covered the sides of the windows. The deep burgundy almost blood-like in tone cascaded down on the dark wood floors. The walls were lighter, but the fancy gold leaf crown molding could be seen the minute you glanced up. A chair in the corner of the room sat opposite of a large armoire.

Besides the obvious room difference your nerves remained on edge. You were inside a house full of vampires with no noticeable way to escape and, apparently, the few you’d come across either wanted to fuck you or eat you. Or both. Your mind kept wandering back to the dream of Jungkook and you in bed. You thought of the way he claimed you with tongue, teeth, and hips. If you fell asleep, would he be there waiting?

“Quiet down there you, hoe,” you huffed down between your legs.

You squeezed your legs together hoping to rid yourself of the ache that was returning with a vengeance. This situation should not be a turn on. It shouldn’t. Not one bit. It wasn’t entirely your fault. Every single one you’d met so far was stupidly gorgeous. How did the universe expect you to be celibate when it threw ridiculously hot men at your feet?

Grabbing your pillow, you slammed your first down a couple times into the fabric. A small scream of frustration rose in the room as you turned onto your back. Your eyes took in the ceiling and wished you could sleep.

All you wanted was some rest. Your mind kept wandering back to Jungkook and where he was. If he’d been able to feel what happened back in that office and if he was seething with jealousy. You remembered the way he’d reacted to Jimin inside your shared dream. How he responded to Namjoon when he’d tried to make his advance.

Did Jungkook see you as a piece of property like the rest of them?

You snorted at the thought feeling ridiculous. Of course he only saw you as food. They all treated you like an object. Something to fuck and own for power or blood. The only one who had treated you with any semblance of protection or love had been Jimin, but even that you couldn’t trust. When he looked at you all he saw was a dead lover and not the body of a ghost.

There was too much on your mind and you knew there wouldn’t be any sleep for you tonight. It would’ve helped the time go by faster if you’d had books or anything to pass the time. You were left with nothing but your thoughts to keep you company and at the first sign of light in the sky you swung your legs over the side of the bed and headed towards the armoire. You weren’t sure what you would find inside, but there was only one way to find out.

Swinging the double doors open you weren’t surprised to find a few floor length dresses inside. What you were surprised to find was a few t-shirts, jeans, with a pair of combat boots inside. You quickly grabbed them and moved over to the corner of the room with a smaller dresser finding undergarments inside. You reached in to grab a matching blood red pair and laid everything out on the bed and began to strip out of your night clothes and into the outfit.

You found it odd that the bra was the right size and even odder that every single pair of available underwear in the drawer, in your size, were nothing but satin and lace. Has someone secretly measured you when you weren’t looking? The thought caused you to snort at how ridiculous it sounded but, to be fair, this entire week felt ridiculous.

You were willing to bet Alice was the one who’d told them sizes and Namjoon would have instructed whoever what to buy. It almost felt fairytale like, if that fairytale didn’t currently reside inside a nightmare.

You’d finished working your pants over your hips, giving a little hop and pull for added flourish. Once you were sure they were comfortably situated you turned back towards the bed to grab your shirt and found V standing in the center of your room. A shriek erupted from you as your hands clamored to cover your body with the small material of the shirt.

“Jesus,” you muttered, your tongue flicked out nervously across your lips.

V didn’t seem the least bit surprised by your reaction. Well, he wasn’t giving you much of a reaction at all. He continued to stand statue still at the center of your room. His hands clasped behind his back and his eyes scanning over you, and whatever he concluded wasn’t in your favor.

“Don’t you know how to knock?”

His head cocked to the side, like a felon questioning it’s latest toy. V took a step towards you and you struggled not to take one back.

“Why would I knock inside my own home?”

“It’s common courtesy to knock before you enter someone’s room.”

He looked at you, brow furrowing further like he couldn't comprehend what you were trying to get across. Or maybe he just didn’t care. You knew it was the latter as he moved closer to you and only stopped when he was within arms reach. You were painfully aware you were only in your bra, but V never looked down. His focus seemed solely on your face.

V stood in front of you in an outfit of dark silks and cotton. His shirt flowed like water across his frame; the buttons at his wrists and neck undone in twos. It allowed the fabric to billow around his hands, hiding all but his fingers from view. He left it tucked inside black trousers and a belt that was so dark it shined like oil.

He looked like an Angel of death.

You expected him to lunge for you. It was only yesterday that he’d crawled to you on a bed. His hands moving up your thighs with a purpose to lay between them. However, looking at him now, V gave no evidence he’d been a part of what had taken place with Jungkook and you in that room.

At the thought of Jungkook, you felt a compulsion to ask where he was. You couldn’t explain it. This urge to find him. To help make him better. Somewhere he was hurting and-

“He’s in the dark because of you.”

V’s words jerked you free from your thoughts. The venom in his tone reminded you he was dangerously close to you and if he wanted you’d be vampire chow. Your eyes narrowed in on his tall figure and noticed behind the veil of wavy hair, his eyes had bleed crimson.

“What are you talking about? We’re discussing your lack of common courtesy.”

“No. You were wondering where Jungkook was and he is locked in darkness. You are the reason he suffers.”

He spoke to you like he truly hated you. The closed fists at his side only added to the hostile air of the room and the aggression in his eyes. You almost wanted to apologize when you remembered that you didn’t want any of them. How absurd it was to think you would.

“I don’t care where he put himself,” you snapped back. V took a threatening step towards you. His teeth elongated and chest rumbling with a growing snarl. You refused to be scared as his body closed the distance between you. The silk of his shirt pressing into your forearms. “He put himself there and if you touch me, you’ll join him.”

A snarl rose to the corner of his lips and exposed a single canine. You were positive if he’d been allowed to, V would tear you to pieces.

“You’re just like that little bitch, Alice aren’t you. Hiding behind our king to protect you.”

You answered his challenge by stepping the last inch to him. You dropped your arms down to be chest-to-chest with him and refused to look away. V could look down at you with as much disdain as he wanted. You weren’t backing down from being told you were only as strong as the man that protected you.

You may have been a damsel in distress, but you were going to save yourself. Without a man holding your hand.

“You better hope your attitude changes by the time I get to my full witchy self, V. Or you’ll be spending your entire life wishing you had.”

You weren’t going to try and hide the fact your heart was beating wildly. It was beyond an animal locked inside a cage. The biology of basic survival howled at how idiotic you were. Usually, those lower on the food chain didn’t do things to make themselves die faster. But deep in your gut you knew that you could become someone to be feared.

Your eyes were focused on him - waiting for him to lash out. Anything to make your bones full of regret. V suddenly broke into a large grin and your body reacted by jumping back from him. The movement only caused him to brighten while he reached out with a hand to pat the top of your head.

“You’ve got some guts, blood bag. I like you. Just try not to get them spilled all over the floor.”

Turning on his heel he moved quickly back over to your door. You expected him to leave, but found him turning to face you. His shoulder pressed to the door frame with arms crossed.

“Why are you still here?” You inquired.

“I’m here to lead you to Alice. She’s waiting inside one of the many study rooms to begin your training.”

You were painfully aware that your shirt wasn’t on. It was still being used as a flimsy shield in your hands. A deep sigh rose your shoulders as you considered your options. You could either stand there, still exposed, or just spend the two seconds to put the damn thing on.

“And you’re going to be my escort there, I take it?” You spoke as your arms quickly pulled your shirt over your head.

“I’ll be your escort there and back. I’ll also be staying to watch you both.”

“Wow. Namjoon’s a bit paranoid, huh.”

“Just cautious. He wouldn’t want Alice to ‘accidentally’ flay your skin from your body.”

“Yes,” you agreed sarcastically. “It’d be a terrible thing if I was skinless.”

You finished putting on the boots and grabbing a hair tie from the bathroom cabinet. You weren’t sure what exactly training meant, but it never hurt to be prepared. You walked to meet him at the door. His body already straightened back to his full height. The smile may have disappeared from his lips, but it didn’t hide the mischief that tugged at the corners of his eyes.

“He also wants to make sure you don’t try and make a run for it.”

A bark of laughter surprised you both. You just couldn’t believe he thought you’d be stupid enough to just make a run for it. You didn’t even have a plan made out yet.

“I doubt I would get far even if I tried.”

You walked out of your bedroom door and back into the endless hallways. You waited for V to join you as he closed the door behind him.

“If you did, it would only be so we could have some fun before we brought you back,” he replied.

“Lovely,” you muttered.

You didn’t have to guess if V heard you or not. It was a given no hushed whispers spoken around here remained secrets for long. They all seemed to have supersonic hearing and it only added to the growing list of things you had to contend with to make your escape. V moved around you to start walking down the hallway and you quickly followed. You didn’t want to be late for your first day.

The room you’d arrived in didn’t seem like a room at all. You also weren’t sure what to classify it. Was it a study? With its wall to wall ten-foot bookshelves and Victorian loveseats. Or was it an apothecary? Rows of tiny shelves held vials filled with liquids and herbs and flowers that hung around the wooden area in the corner. Was it part of a mini football field? The room you’d entered was massive. You found yourself lost in the vastness of it and when your eyes found Alice’s frame, she herself looked far away still.

Alice was centered in the middle of the room. Her blonde hair pulled tight into a ponytail, but aside from the casual hairstyle she seemed dressed for a board meeting. Floral dress shirt, slacks, and what looked like six-inch heels. You felt terribly underdressed.

“Taehyung, you both finally made it. Here I thought you’d gotten lost.”

Your eyes landed on V, or Taehyung’s, back and noticed how rigid his body became. You didn’t need to actually see his face to know he was staring holes into the woman before you.

“I told you not to call me by my given name,” he snapped.

Alice waved a dismissive hand at his obvious anger.

“And I told you I don’t care what you want.”

She turned her attention back to you and boy did you feel lucky. She took in a quick stock of your outfit and whatever she scored it only seemed to make her hate you more.

“Out of everything we bought for your closet this was what you decided to wear.”

It was a statement. Not a question. Alice appeared to be genuinely upset you hadn’t arrived in a floor length gown or in one of the Balmain suits you’d seen hanging in the closet.

“Sorry to disappoint, but I thought training meant a lot of movement. I wanted to be comfortable.”

Her reply to your statement was a brow shoved into her hairline. Her arms crossed tightly across her chest. She watched as you came to a centered stop a few feet away from her. The both of you take the other in, but no one says a word. Somewhere behind you, V went and made himself comfortable on one of the many loveseats scattered throughout the large room.

You couldn’t stop yourself from glancing back at him to see him lounged against the corner of the loveseat. An arm lazily strung across the back with his body facing the two of you. He looked like a beautiful porcelain doll.

“We are sorceresses, y/n not warriors. Our fight comes from the use of the world around us; bending its many elements and creatures to our will.”

“It’d be cool to learn how to throw a decent punch, though.”

V gave out a snort of laughter from behind you at the look that crossed Alice’s features. Her irritation radiated off of her to the point if you reached out, you imagined you could touch it. You weren’t trying to be funny, but by the glare Alice shot you even from that distance she thought you were. It must have been the wrong thing to do. Her entire stance changed almost immediately.

Her arms swung free from each other with one hand making quick movements with her fingers before landing in a symbol that left her index and middle exposed. A hushed word clamored from her, and she launched it, along with her signaled hand, in your direction.

You weren’t exactly sure what to expect, but the force that struck against your body far surpassed what you’d imagined. It felt like a boulder of air had crushed against your skin. It sent your body scrambling back. You lost your footing and ended up rolling in a heap until you crashed into a table. The contents of whatever it held falling down around you.

“That’s enough, Alice.”

V’s voice carried through the room with a promise of violence dripping in its undertone. You didn’t need to look at him to know his eyes were crimson and directed at an uncaring Alice. You took your time to maneuver your hands carefully around the broken objects before rising to your feet.

“I was only proving my point,” she shrugged nonchalantly.

“You’ve made it. Now move on.”

Somewhere in her body, you were ninety-percent sure Alice had an eye roll built up. She looked back at you and waved you towards her.

“I promise I won’t do anything else. Before I can teach you anything, we must first study old languages.”

“How old are we talking? Like Latin old?”

Cautiously, you began to move towards Alice. She didn’t wait for you to reach her before she turned and walked towards the large back wall. It was nothing but floor to ceiling windows and the sight of the blue sky and shining sun made you want to make a run for it.

“There are older languages than Latin. Languages that hold just as much power, or more, in their words. Gaelic, Spanish, Greek, and Elven. Not to mention the language for demons.”

“I’m sorry - wait- what? Can we roll that back really quick? Did you throw demon and Elven in there?”

“They’re the oldest languages known to man.”

You couldn’t form any words. Your eyes were just blinking at a rapid pace as your mind struggled to formulate a coherent sentence. What the hell was she talking about?

“Are we talking J. R. R. Tolkien Elves?”

This time the eye roll that existed at all times in Alice came to life. If she had rolled them any harder, you were willing to bet the planet would have shifted.

“That is a fantasy novel. These are real.”

Her hand ran down a large tome before collecting it in her hands and plopping it into your chest. Your body gave out a loud, “Ooof,” as you struggled to hold on to the tome. It was bound in a leather you never felt before, and prayed that whatever you were touching was not some kind of skin. Because you swore when you looked down it had the stitching of something that was very, very, Hannibal Lecter esque.

“You’ll start with the Compendium of Demonic Hymns and before you ask, I promise you, they will help you understand.”

“The thousand-year-dead ladies in my head?”

“No, you idiot. The demons.”

“Right. Awesome. You know, I was hoping for more ‘The Hobbit’ than ‘Hocus Pocus’.”

Alice looked ready to throw you across the room with what she'd done earlier. Being this close to her, if she did, you were sure it would hurt like hell. If it didn’t kill you. When her hand flung up you couldn’t help but flinch. Your body instantly reacted to deflect her hand just as you realized she was pointing somewhere off at one of the chairs.

“Do us both a favor: shut up and go read.”

You wanted to smack her with the book clearly made by Leather face so bad your muscles tensed up. Ready to launch the damn thirty pound tome directly at her smug stupid face. You especially wanted to do it when her finger snapped in the direction of a chair.

Your tongue rolled around your mouth. Every sentence imaginable forming inside your head and itching for you to say it. It all sounded so pleasant, but you curbed your tongue remembering something she probably wished you would forget.

You’d noticed it that first night when who she truly was had been revealed under that streetlight. A pretender. An imposter who only wished to cause you harm. The women whispered her treachery inside your skull and pounded it behind your eyes. They’d offered up their own anger of betrayal to add to yours and when they melded together, it was then you’d felt that spark. The chaos inside you finding and igniting itself inside you. You liked to imagine it wasn’t you - that power belonged to women long dead, but you knew all that raw power was you. Alice knew it too, and something about it scared her.

You found yourself on a loveseat opposite of V. His head lolling to watch as you tucked your legs underneath you. Your thighs balance the tome as your fingers skimmed its spine before opening to the first page.

The words were nothing you were sure a human ever wrote. They were written in what almost looked like glyphs; symbols that distorted into a shape of a word, but never fully committed. You where positive Alice was mental if she thought you could ever understand a word from this book. You were about to close it, inform her she was wrong, when the words appeared to shake.

You shook your head and did a long blink towards the pages. The words moved lewdly across its pages like they were crawling towards you. The book wanted you to read it. Drape its words on your tongue and swallow them down your throat. It would do anything to help you understand it; learn from it. It felt like something even reached out from the pages and was coaxing your hands to turn them. To continue scanning through every page so it could sear the glyphs into the base of your skull.

You wanted to toss the book down; act like it had no effect on you and pick something else. But the promise of power it offered was beating out all common sense and you found yourself leaning forward and listening as the words slithered inside your ear. Eager for you to let them in.

You weren’t sure why you cared to learn this. This darkness you knew would fester inside your soul and morph you into something unspeakable. The thing all those dead women warned you about. Underneath that scream from your subconscious was something else. Something quieter and whispering

Need you

Come

find me

Need you

And you helplessly wanted to obey.

You couldn’t recall the walk back to your room or what time Alice pulled you from reading that book. Even after she’d taken it from your hands, the words from the pages whispered sickeningly sweet inside your skull. You never wanted to touch that book again, but something darker - something housed in your subconscious - knew it would do anything to crack open its spine.

The book was pleading in tangled voices for you to come continue. You were ready to follow after Alice, when V’s hand suddenly wrapped itself around your arm and pulled you free from the couch. You could’ve sworn you were already standing. That your body had taken steps after Alice’s retreating form, but you’d been sitting. Now your body was tucked to the side of V’s with a secure hand that kept you in place.

You were vaguely aware he was giving you instructions to start walking. It felt like you were in quicksand. Unable to take a step forward before the floor swallowed you whole and underneath that was something you couldn’t name. An invisible force that threatened to swallow you whole the minute you took a step. An endless number of demonic tones and spells spitting like gravel inside your head.

At some point, V had no choice but to use your arm and lead you back to your room. He didn’t linger at your door when you arrived either. Actually, he’d practically opened your door and shoved you back inside. The sound of it locking behind him reminding you (even though you really didn’t need one) that you were being held prisoner inside a very, very old vampire's house.

Alone inside the solitude of your room, you felt the weight of your anxiety press down on you. Not to mention, everywhere you looked you saw symbols from the book. Your skin crawled and burned like a house smoldering from the inside. The flames licked higher and higher in their demand to be set free.

Whatever power was inside that book wished for you to speak its words into existence. The more you fought against it, the hotter your skin became as if you were being burned from the inside out. Your nails scratched against your skin to try and quiet the sensation and came up empty. The invisible flames continued to lick against your skin making you feel like you were being boiled alive.

You wanted to scream and rage. To break every single item inside the room until you got the relief you were desperately seeking. Your eyes were heavy with sleep and, since you hadn’t slept in almost twenty-four hours, you thought maybe you could find solace by getting some rest.

You crawled onto the four-poster bed and laid with your back against the pillows. Your body buried inside them while your eyes roamed the ceiling. You weren’t sure if it was the book, sleep deprivation, or if you were going mad but you were starting to believe shapes were forming along the wood.

You squeezed your eyes shut right. Tighter and tighter. It felt like a useless thing to do when the darkness behind your eyes continued to take shape. A whine crept up in your chest. You didn’t know what to do to elevate this or if anything could take care of it.

Taking a deep breath in, you did your best to clear your mind. Focusing instead on taking deep even breaths and allowing yourself to fade into the abyss that sleep promised. You felt like you were finally about to nod off when a sound in your bedroom had you lurching up. Your eyes scan the room, wildly searching, to see what it could be.

That’s where you found him. His body iridescent in the light, like a star, leaning against the large window of your room. The moonlight cascaded over his features and for a split second you felt your breath catch. Whether it was from how beautiful he looked in the glow of the moon or just from sheer happiness to see him you weren’t too sure.

“Jimin?”

You spoke his name into the empty room half expecting him to fade. A cruel apparition of hope to keep you from completely crumbling but when he turned to you at the sound of his name your heart practically leapt from your chest.

A smile tugged at his lips, but it didn’t reach his eyes, which looked on at you with nothing but sadness. You scooted towards the edge of the bed to get off. Your feet were eager to reach the ground and make a run for him. A growl radiated through the room. The rage behind it practically shook the walls and you froze at the bed’s edge. Your feet hanging off, ready to jump, but unsure if you should finish the step.

You glanced around the room quickly to see if anyone else was with the two of you. You couldn’t see anyone and with one final exhale you dropped down off the bed. The sound of your feet hitting the floor felt loud inside the quiet room and the growl from earlier was back. It didn’t shake the walls or make itself known as a loud bark. It hummed along the walls threatening to only grow louder if you made one wrong move.

But what was the wrong move?

You didn’t waste any more time walking towards Jimin. His body fully faced you - waiting - for you to come to him. Up close you remembered how breathtaking Jimin was. A renaissance painting that’s come to life; walking inside your dreams with pouty lips that ached for a kiss. It was then that you realized he couldn’t be here.

“I’m here, y/n. It’s not a trick.”

“I’m dreaming again, aren’t I.”

The heartache that washed over you almost crippled you - your knees buckling just before he reached out to grab you. His steady hands kept you from crumbling and you finally understood the anguish in his eyes. He was mourning you like you were already gone.

“You are. I would’ve come sooner to see you, but I couldn’t reach you.”

“I couldn’t sleep last night. After…everything.”

“Everything? What has happened since you’ve been taken?”

You tried to go through everything with as much detail as you could recall. The time with Namjoon inside the great hall. What happened between him and Jungkook. The training Namjoon had in place for you to do and the hours you lost when Alice handed you that damn book.

At the mention of it, Jimin became visibly upset. His eyes flashed black for a brief moment as a hiss whistled between elongated teeth.

“She’s purposely picking tomes meant for those more advanced in the arts. If you aren’t careful, the creatures inside it will do whatever they can to take your soul.”

You paled at his words and wondered if while you slept you were already dead. Jimin must have known where your thoughts had traveled. He soothed them with a gentle smile. His hand reached out to stroke across your cheeks when the same growl from before boomed back into the room.

Jimin’s hand froze inches from your face. His eyes glancing out of his peripherals to a corner of the room covered in darkness. Your eyes traveled over, examining each corner until you noticed a figure hiding inside a deep shadow. The outline of the body was somehow darker and a pair of crimson eyes stared back at you.

Goosebumps erupted along your skin. Your throat suddenly dried as you tried to find the courage to speak. Jimin brought your attention back to him by dropping his hand to your cheek. Ignoring whatever was hiding in the shadows to softly caress his thumb across your skin.

“You must promise me you will be wary of Alice, y/n. Namjoon will forbid her from killing you, but she will find ways. You’re a youngling; there’s so much you don’t know, and she will use it against you.”

“I promise. I’ll be careful, but how will I know when she’s trying to hurt me and when she’s not?”

“She’ll cover it up with a smile.”

You rested your cheek against his hand and allowed yourself a moment to close your eyes. To find comfort in this moment before you knew it would be gone with the morning.

“I am so sorry, y/n. We’ve tried over and over to find ways to come for you.” You opened your eyes and Jimin continued, “I sent Hobi the first day and he came back reporting no chance. I came, against the better judgement of Jin, but I couldn’t just sit back and do nothing. Our connection is fading. He’s pushing me out and soon it will be gone completely.”

Your brow furrowed as the last words of his sentence struck you as odd. He went to take a step towards you, his thumb descending across your lips, when you felt him stop. An invisible wall placed between you both kept him from moving forward. It was met with a snarl that had your head spinning back to the corner of the room.

Those crimson eyes glowing brighter - deadlier - but were beginning to make out the shape of the person within. They were no longer attempting to hide inside the shadow any longer and with half of his body exposed you heart was suddenly in your throat; pulse thudding wildly against the skin.

“How?”

The question came out in a hushed breath. You weren’t even sure if you’d thought it or spoke it, but Jimin answered anyway.

“It’s been too long since we shared blood. He shared more - took more. After tonight I’m not sure I’ll be able to return. I’ve left you among the wolves.”

Your vision snapped back to look at Jimin, but he was already fading. An astral projection slowly replaced the wholeness you’d felt seconds before.

“Jimin- “

His mouth opened to answer when an unforeseen force pushed against him. It lurched him back, his hand falling from your face, just moments before he completely disappeared. You stood there for what felt like moments. Your eyes blinked at the empty space that he’d just occupied.

You weren’t given a chance to try and make sense of what was going on before Jungkook stepped out from beneath the shadow. It’s dark tendrils gliding across his bare chest like a caress; begging for him to return. He dismissed it by stalking towards you.

Somewhere deep in your brain you knew you should’ve been afraid. Alarm bells were going off like a choir inside your head, but no matter how loud they became, you stayed. Waiting. Your eyes greedily took in the way the moon flowed across his bare chest. The exposed muscles taut underneath with each one flexing with each step. The only clothes he wore was a pair of black jeans strung low on his hips with fresh holes at his knees. He looked like every Roman statue ever carved: smoothly sculpted marble and their romantic angles.

His hair formed a wet curtain over his eyes-only allowing sparks of crimson to be seen. You were very aware as his bare feet padded towards you, that you should’ve been running. Even in a dream you should be able to escape too somewhere else. You shouldn’t be waiting to be devoured.

You decided to start moving backwards when it was too little too late. Jungkook had crossed more than half the bedroom, but you still attempted to move backwards towards the bed. He’d appeared calm when he’d begun walking towards you, but as soon as he noticed your late retreat a snarl snipped from behind large canines. You answered him with a scream as his body launched itself towards you. Your slow backpedal became more frantic as you raced for some kind of safety.

But Jungkook had inhuman speed on his side. You’d barely finished screaming, lungs bracing to take a breath, when Jungkook was on you.

He slammed his body into yours without reserve. Not caring that he collided into you like a train going full speed ahead stifling the air in your chest. His arms lifted you up mere seconds before you landed on the bed. Your back pressed into the mattress and Jungkook nestled between your thighs.

He wasted no time grabbing your wrists and extending them above your head. One hand effortlessly holding both wrists leaving him with one hand free. It was pointless to try and struggle against him, but you still tried to resist. To pretend that having him on top of you wasn’t affecting you in the slightest.

Jungkook grabbed your face painfully tight and brought your full attention back to him. The anger behind them sheared into you making it almost impossible to breathe.

“Why haven’t you come to find me?! I need you!”

Needed you

Need

You

You

I

Need

His words swam inside your skull like all the other times before. You didn’t know it was him. How could you? All those times you’d heard that voice it held no tone or face. No indication of it was a person or something worse and begging to get your attention. You would’ve never guessed the pull you felt, the urge to search the house, was coming from Jungkook.

You tried to swallow past his fingers around your throat. His eyes watching a nervous tongue between your lips before you spoke.

“I didn’t know it was you. I don’t even know where you are.”

“I can show you.” The malice in his eyes began to fade. In its place, something possessive arrived: wild and unbridled. “You are trying to leave me- “

“Jungkook, no I- “

“There’s nowhere you could go that I wouldn’t follow. You were made for me to find you, kitten.”

His hand trailed at the edge of your shirt teasing at the hem until you arched against him. Your body betrayed you by begging him to slip his hand underneath your shirt. Having him close to you again, your common sense bled away until the only thing that remained was an insatiable hunger for him to touch you.

A frustrated mewl rose inside the room and it took you a moment to realize it was you. You were whining against the grip on your wrists that you tried so fruitlessly to free yourself from. Your body writhing against him as you struggled.

“Jungkook, please.”

“Shhh.”

Jungkook pressed his index finger to your lips and without thinking you drew it inside your mouth. Your cheeks hollow out as you gently draw it deeper inside your mouth. His eyes flared impossibly brighter in response turning into dark pools of desire.

You’d never done anything like this before with anyone - they’d also never been Jungkook and would never be him. Even just feeling him begin to stroke his finger in and out from between your lips made your pussy ache; desperate to feel him breaching your walls and forcing them to stretch to accommodate his size.

A moan reverberated against his finger, and he answered back with his hips grinding against you. The friction against your aching clit sent your mouth wide in a gasp. Jungkook took advantage of the moment and added his middle finger to your mouth, gently coaxing you to suck as he pushed the digits in and out.

He pulled his fingers out of your mouth leaving a trail of saliva to follow. You thought you should’ve been embarrassed, but you were far from it. You were drunk off lust. Your body craved to feel him in every way; needed him in a way that was feral and beyond comprehension.

Jungkook replaced his fingers with his lips. His tongue danced across your lower lip, and you opened up for him instantly. It coaxed against your own tongue; urging it to move with him. The kiss was messy and frantic. The sound of you coming together making a wet noise that your ears picked up that sounded of pure filth.

His canines pressed against your lips, and, in a moment of sheer stupidity or bravery, you let your tongue caress over a fang. Jungkook’s body responded in a shiver of pleasure. A growl of desire resonated against your lips and traveled all the way down to your drenched pussy.

The fingers he had you get nice and wet for him were now between your folds. His hand having breached your jeans when you weren’t paying attention. He gave no teasing warning before his two fingers pushed inside you. Your walls tightened against the intrusion, but you were so incredibly wet he was able to push knuckle deep. His fingers working you over into a mewling mess.

Jungkook ate your trapped moans as they sprang up from you. A blooming heat that spread through your body as your hips began to meet each thrust of his hand. You were so close, but it wasn’t enough. You would only be satiated with his cock buried inside you, slamming against your crevice until pain and pleasure melded, with your pussy milking him of every drop of cum.

You never got to tell him what you needed from him before he pulled his lips away from yours. His canines seemed longer and the surrounding teeth sharper. You weren’t afraid when his top lip retracted, mouth open and ready to strike. No. Your back arched closer to him while his hand free from between your legs ripped open your shirt.

His eyes hungrily took in the sight of your see-through bra but didn’t waste time taking in your choice of lingerie. He pulled down on the bra, snapping it off and tossing it aside. In the same breath, his teeth sank into the soft flesh of your breast and that sweet euphoria began to blossom inside your bones. With every strong suck of his mouth, it drew your nipple into his mouth and touched against his fangs.

The hand Jungkook took from between your thighs was now back. The pad of his thumb worked tight circles across your clit. Your mouth opened to scream or moan, but you couldn’t make a sound. Your hips were blindly thrusting back into his hand. You wanted more; always more.

As he sucked hungrily from the wound, his tongue flicked a teasing circle around your nipple and your world erupted in a sea of stars.

Through the slits of squinting eyes, you tried to see past the brightness that’d erupted behind your eyes. Your vision blurred in a carousel of spots, and you did your best to block the brightness with an upraised hand. You weren’t sure what direction it was coming from or if it was more internal than external. It felt like you’d been dipped inside the sun.

Slowly, the light began to ebb away until finally you were left in the soft halo of darkness.

“Is everything alright, my dear?”

Who the hell is that?

The only way you would be able to find out was to open your eyes. There was a fifty-fifty chance you’d open your eyes and be blind forever or, more importantly, find out who the hell was talking to you.

Gingerly, you opened up one eye after the other. Your vision a little hazy from squeezing them closed tight it only added to the trouble your eyes had adjusting to the room. But it wasn’t the room you were drawn to.

The woman in front of you was older. Her face painted in soft wrinkles that were made apparent from the excess use of white powdered foundation on her skin. She was wearing way too much rouge and her hair-

You blinked rapidly like it would be enough to make what you were seeing make sense. The gray mass of hair on her head was done in an intricate updo with a small bracelet of minimalist jewels laced inside, like a permanent crown. A matching pair of earrings and necklace adorned her neck and ears, but what shocked you the most was her outfit. Her dress was made of silk brocades and velvets. The sleeves caped off of her shoulders with the bodice embroidered in a pattern of flowers half in mid-bloom. It was a gorgeous dress but-

“Are we at a Halloween party?”

“I beg your pardon?”

If this was a joke, it was an exaggerated one and well played to a T. The woman appeared genuinely upset with your reply. With a violent flick of her wrist the fan she’d been holding released, which she proceeded to use. Her features blatantly showing both her repulsion and worry at your lack of decorum.

You wanted to ask if this was some sort of elaborate prank until your vision caught sight of your hands. You weren’t sure how you didn’t notice before. Your wrists and fingers were decorated in diamonds and ringlets of curls spiraled past the bodice of your dress. You rose from your place on the loveseat and looked around for a mirror; anything with a reflection.

What you found instead was a room full of people dressed in varying degrees as the woman who now scoffed at your rudeness. Her fan worked harder out of your peripherals before she stormed off to likely bother someone else. You weren’t worried about her. What had you worried was that the room wasn’t like the one inside Namjoon’s mansion. No, this was an extravagant showcase of wealth with velvet drapes that cascaded like rubies against walls that were covered in a forest green wallpaper with flowers imprinted on the fabric. Crystal chandeliers decorated the ceilings and reflected off of travertine tiles like stars.

Everyone in the room wore ball gowns, tailored jackets, and trousers. Even some men wore wigs of powdered white.

Your vision was beginning to tunnel as panic was beginning to set into your veins. You couldn’t make sense of this. The only hope you had was to find a mirror. The first step you took made you look down at your feet. Your legs hitting a stiff cage of crinoline that helped shape your own gown to spread out around you. You moved forward and staggered a few steps as your feet adjusted to the heel's underneath. You were passing body after body. A soft, “Excuse me,” humming out as you push between small crowds of people to enter the next room.

You’d been walking at such a furious pace; you hadn’t realized your reflection was zipping past you with each window you went by. You’d thought it was someone else; another gorgeous woman following closely behind. When the realization came you found yourself in awe of the woman staring back at you.

The blush dress you wore was gorgeous. It scooped low, exposing a good amount of cleavage to the room. It was softened with delicate tulle cap sleeves that carried the same sunburst pattern of flowing flowers across your chest. That same tulle overlay blended into the blush fabric of your skirts. When you moved you looked like Helios rousing the morning sky.

Your hair was longer and placed in a half up and down style. Pearls were embedded in a star-strung pattern inside the curls. You felt like a Princess. You still didn’t quite understand what the hell was going on, but at least whatever dream you’d ended up in didn’t have you dressed as, well, a witch. Warts and all.

You left your reflection in favor of trying to figure out where you were. It was clear to see you were in some sort of party. Someone important throwing his or her wealth around just because they could was your guess. The party didn’t seem to have the feel of anything else besides a need to showcase the grandeur of their life.

The sound of violins and cellos sent you on a journey to find where the sound originated from. In a few more steps you entered into a grand ballroom with a few people dancing inside the middle, while on either side bodies watched and waited. You pushed your way through to watch the intricate dances. Couples and friends moved along the dance floor exchanging hands and smiling faces. Their different shades of silks and tulles turned the dance floor into a rainbow of dancing colors and glee.

You were so enraptured with the current dance you started clapping along, but also secretly hoped no one asked you to try. Would you even know how if someone did? That’s when Jungkook cut across the floor and you stopped caring about dancing altogether.

His hair was long - longer than it was now - and tied back with a loose satin string. It may have been a bow, but Jungkook gave off a drunken air of boldness that spoke plainly he didn’t care about the party or anyone in it. His petticoat was of the deepest cerulean and etched in silver detailing. It flapped loosely around him and exposed a cotton undershirt that opened to show the deep v of his muscular chest. The trousers came to his ankles and tucked inside them were the calf high white socks.

Just like in the present, Jungkook was gorgeous but something felt different. It wasn’t until he was almost to your side of the floor that it hit you like a punch to the gut.

He was human.

There was no mistaking the sun-kissed glow of his skin. Or the warmth in his cheeks and pink shade of his lips.

“How-“

Your words caught in your throat as he was three steps away from being in front of you. You were steeling yourself for whatever he would say but was met with disappointment. Jungkook hadn’t looked at you at all and was currently moving past you. You turned to follow and found a portly man with rings that were too tight on his fingers had stopped him. A woman, beautiful and years younger than the man, stood at his side but there was no mistaking the look she gave Jungkook.

A spark of jealousy propelled you to join the group. You kept a body between Jungkook and you; watching as Jungkook greeted the man in a half ass bow.

“Duke Cunningham. Lady Cunningham. It’s such a pleasure to have you back at my father's estate.”

The only true warm greeting out of that whole sentence had been directed at Lady Cunningham. Jungkook brought his glass filled with brandy, - was your guess - to his lips. His eyes skimmed over the rim to look hungrily in her direction.

The Duke gave a belly laugh, his hands cradling it, completely unaware of what was going on between them.

“My dear lad, you know we could never miss coming to one of your esteemed parties! Half of high society comes here.”

“I’m sure you positively froth at the idea of talking men out of their money.”

Jungkook’s statement only caused the Duke to laugh once more. Whether the large man was a complete idiot, or he chose to ignore the insult hurled at the older man. The look on Jungkook’s face as he watched him was of blatant disgust. When his eyes looked over at Lady Cunningham, however, the heat behind them was enough to make you blush.

Suddenly, you were transported inside an office. Somewhere inside the house the party already began, but Lady Cunningham was bent over what you assumed was Jungkook’s fathers' desk. Her skirts at her waist, practically smothering her, but she didn’t care.

Jungkook was pounding into her religiously with his hand wrapped around her throat to control her from moving too far off. She was chanting his name and singing his praises. The jealousy from earlier flared back to life, but this time the fire was coaxed into a blaze. You wanted to snarl and nash your teeth as you pulled them apart and force her to watch as you staked claim to him.

You took a step forward and you were thrust back in front of the Duke. Jungkook and the Duke’s misses eye fucking each other, and you realized the memory you’d seen was from earlier.

“You are such a good lad, Jungkook.”

“Of that you have no idea,” Jungkook purred in response.

His gaze still eye- fucking Lady Cunningham. You wanted to hurl.

“Jealous are we, Kitten?”

His lips traced the words along your collarbone, and you fought not to shiver. You glanced over at him and were surprised to find him beside you. The rich Brown of his eyes watching you coyly to soak in your reaction.

“Hardly,” you replied, facing forward. “There is nothing to be jealous of.”

“Oh, there is plenty to be jealous of.”

He spoke with his cheek pressed against your hair. His breath hot against your skin and the smell of warm alcohol wafted between you. You knew he was waiting for you to turn to him. His lips eagerly hovering close to place them over yours, but you refused to give him the satisfaction. No matter how much you wanted too.

You shrugged your shoulders and took a step back with every intention to leave. You weren’t sure what version of ‘Gone With The Wind,’ you were in, but you were no longer enjoying it. Jungkook’s hand reached out and took hold of your wrist and spun you back around to him. Your chest collided against him and sent a huff of surprise from you.

Jungkook was holding your wrist captive and placed an arm securely around your waist. His smugness clung to him; his lips in a barely there smirk as his gaze roamed your face - longingly - as if he might never get the chance too again.

“Jungkook- “

“Dance with me.”

“You’re insane. It’s just a dream.”

A sadness clouded over him and killed the arrogance he’s previously worn. He tried to hide it; to hold onto the small pieces he’d worn like armor. A small nod came as a silent answer before he was willing to speak.

“This is a memory. Not a dream.”

You looked around the room and took in the sideways glances. The hands that covered mouths as they leaned in to whisper with all eyes on the two of you. If it wasn’t a dream, then why-

“Whose memory?”

“Mine. This was my last night as a human. Tonight, is the night Namjoon found me - turned me.”

“I don’t understand.”

It had to be a trick of the mind. You hadn’t noticed him before, but like a bad dream Namjoon weaved himself between clusters of people. Your eyes catching glimpses of him through the shoulders of unsuspecting humans. A predator attempting to blend in with the crowd as he hunted, and the main thing he was after was the one thing he couldn’t tear his eyes away from.

Looking up at Jungkook, you saw him staring at the last place Namjoon had stood. It took him a moment to tear himself away with his eyes finding solace inside yours. He let go of your wrist and gently traced his fingers along your cheek.

“Dance with me and I’ll explain.”

All the indecision you’d felt earlier vanished as you stood wrapped in his embrace. You were aware the room was staring at the both of you. The hushed whispers rose in crescendo until they threatened to explode from the roof. Your skin burned with a mixture of anxiety and unbridled need. How could you ever imagine telling him anything else but-

“Okay.”

A breath he’d been holding pushed out from his lips. The tension in his shoulders disappeared as he took your hand gently and led you to the floor. He motioned for the orchestra to begin playing something and the room swelled with the first long chord from a violin.

Jungkook spun you in what felt like a scene from ‘Beauty and The Beast’,’ and your childhood self was living. He brought you back and you found your hands automatically knew where to go; how high your elbow should extend and the curve in your back as he spun you around the floor.

With every sweep of your skirt across the floor you watched as everyone began to disappear. All you saw was a room full of emptiness; gray fuzz that branched at the edge of the dance floor but never touched either of you.

You turned to look at him and wasn’t surprised to find him staring intently down at you. You weren’t used to human Jungkook. Everything about him felt softer; gentler. His eyes roamed down to your lips, and you wished he would’ve kissed you.

“I’m not sure where to begin.” he began softly, “I was born into a life of privilege. I had everything I ever wanted at my fingertips and if I didn’t it was easily bought. Eventually, even that left a sour taste in my mouth. I craved adventure.”

Jungkook dipped you at an angle towards the floor, and your body automatically answered. Curving enough to flash him with an obscene look at your décolletage. He brought you back up to begin the dance once more.

“You sound like every rich kid.”

“Perhaps, but in my search for what I wanted I choose to learn a trade of secrets. I gained people’s trust easily with charm and a smile. A flash of innocence behind eyes that only meant them harm, and everyone practically brimmed at the chance to tell me. I was everyone’s friend, and also their enemy.”

He twirled you faster and faster across the floor and your legs were struggling to keep up with his brutal pace. You dipped your head to look away from the growing intensity that sharpened his eyes and found Namjoon stalking in circles in the shadows. His eyes solely on Jungkook.

“I learned to sell their secrets in exchange for their pain. I watched families tear themselves apart on the things I knew. I stole from their homes and slept with their daughters and, sometimes, their wives. I got so good at it I gained a reputation that no one could prove. I was the worst kind of rich: untouchable.”

“And then Namjoon came?”

You could see Namjoon with every dizzying twirl around the floor. He changed positions and closeness - sometimes with a hand reaching out and touching the back of Jungkook’s neck. Another a brush of fingers across the shoulders of his jacket and, every time, Jungkook reacted. His nostrils flaring and the savagery of the monster he had become shaping his face into a snarl.

“He’d heard my reputation. He stalked me for months and attended every event he heard I’d be at. Namjoon wanted to see my capabilities for himself.”

“I don’t understand, Jungkook, why would you choose to be this way? Be so destructive.”

You waited for him to blow your question off. To scoff and call you out for being ridiculous but Jungkook thoughtfully considered your question. His gaze held yours, refusing to let you turn away.

“It was a lonely existence pretending to be someone I wasn’t. Maybe…maybe if I’d met you, perhaps, everything would’ve been different.”

Jungkook brought you to a stop in the center of the floor. The ballroom and the people inside it slowly came back into the frame. The whole world could’ve been coming back, crowding inside that one room, and you still would’ve only been aware of Jungkook.

His hand came up to cradle your face allowing his thumb to run softly over your cheek.

“Jungkook- “

There was so much you didn’t understand but also so much you wanted to say. Your thundering pulse kept intruding on your thoughts - turning sentences into nothing but hymns of sound every time you tried to speak. From behind him, Namjoon came out from the crowd of people like a Lion from tallgrass. He was taking large strides and Jungkook was still holding you; still looking at you like you created the cosmos. Panic flourished inside you, and you struggled to make him move.

“Jungkook! He’s coming! Jungkook, please.”

It was all pointless. Namjoon’s arm snaked between you and pulled Jungkook flush against his chest. His free hand pulled Jungkook’s neck painfully to the side, exposing the thick cord to the room and his hungry mouth. You watched in abject horror as Namjoon’s canine’s extended and sunk into his flesh.

“I offer you eternal life by my side. To live the life, you’ve been so wrongfully denied with freedom to tear the world apart as you see fit. Do you accept my offer?”

“I am yours forever…my king.”

A scream rose up around you as the room shifted and molded into a bedroom. It was somewhere in the same house. Jungkook’s petticoat was gone, and his linen undershirt was pulled free of his trousers bunched at his hips. Namjoon cradled a weak Jungkook in his arms. Blood soaked into the side of his neck that Namjoon had bit earlier.

You watched helplessly knowing this was the last moments of Jungkook’s human life here, in this bedroom, cradled in his arms.

“Maybe if I’d met you before, perhaps, everything would’ve been different.”

Your eyes flashed back to that moment on the ballroom floor. To the boy who’d yet to learn to be a man and was filled with so much rage and sadness. Jungkook never cared for the opulence of his status or the money. He’d only ever wanted his freedom and was denied by his birthright. He thought his one way to escape was Namjoon’s offer - to die and become something else.

The screaming continued and only grew louder when Namjoon latched back on to Jungkook’s neck. His body grew limp in Namjoon’s arms and turned alabaster white when his heart stopped beating. The beautiful glow of his skin, the life it possessed, was now forever snuffed out and the one that would arise to take his place would be something else entirely.

You felt hands grabbing at you, shaking you, and you realized it was you who’d been screaming. Your hands frantically fighting off invisible hands that grabbed at you. You were hurdling back to your body like a comet and once you landed you bolted upright from your place in bed.

It was V you saw as your eyes opened. His hands gripped your shoulders and shook you a few rough times. He was saying something you couldn’t quite catch. For a brief moment, you would’ve thought he looked worried.

“Y/n! Wake up!”

You smacked at his hand to remove itself from your shoulders, but he stayed. His legs straddled your body, with a portion of his leaning over yours. V felt incredibly solid - real - and you found yourself clinging to that fact for comfort.

“I’m up,” you croaked.

“What’s wrong? You’ve been screaming for half an hour.”

Your body went rigged at his statement. Your hands holding onto his wrists as if, at any moment, you’d be propelled back inside Jungkook’s memory. You couldn’t tell V what really happened though. He would report it back to Namjoon, and you were willing to bet Namjoon’s response would not be a pleasant one.

You liked your lips nervously before you replied, “I think that book Alice had me read yesterday messed up my head.”

“The book written by Lucifer?”

“Yeah…sure that’s the one.”

V eyed you suspiciously like he didn’t buy it but didn’t press you any further. Slowly he removed himself from you and got off to stand beside the bed. His eyes warily taking you in with indecision clouding his eyes. Whatever he decided, V shook the other thought aside and started heading back for your door.

“You have an hour to get ready and I’ll be back to take you to your next lesson. I’ll let Namjoon know about the book. “

“Thank yo- “

The door slammed before you’d gotten a chance to finish. Normally, you would’ve been upset but you were beginning to get used to V’s version of conversation. A soft sigh left you as you fell back against the pillows and stared up at the ceiling. The image of Jungkook’s last moments vowing to haunt you the rest of the day.

Prologue

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

[mygodyouredivine]

The Hell In Your Eyes - 2

Summary: Loki doesn't meet her until two weeks after his initial imprisonment, but he knows he hates her. He has to hate her. Because the way she talks to him and helps him and saves him meals can't mean anything. She is too soft to deal with Loki, who is hardened with pain, pain, and more pain. And Loki hates soft things. 

Have you ever seen the hell in someone’s eyes and loved it anyway?

Characters: Loki Laufeyson/(f)Reader

Warnings: mild blood

Word Count: 3498

Previous Chapter 

It’s 5 in the morning. 

The sun isn’t even out yet and you’re standing in the kitchen, dressed in your pajamas, preparing smoothies. You thought you’d be used to waking up early, considering how you always used to make smoothies before everyone else woke up, but apparently your recent ‘break’ has thrown off your internal schedule. In fact, if not for FRIDAY’s not-so-gentle reminder of your morning plans, you wouldn’t have gotten up in time.  

You shake your head, tightening your grip on the mason jar you’re holding.  

It won’t happen again.  

It can’t.  

Not when you’re already in everyone’s way, always leeching off of Tony’s money, always causing trouble for Steve and making Bucky worry. Not when Natasha always feels a need to look after you and Wanda constantly checks in. Not when Sam and Clint feel obligated to train with you and Thor treats you like you’re going to break — going to shatter into a thousand tiny pieces and then cut and bleed all over the tower’s expensive, clean floors.  

No. If you can’t even do something as simple as making smoothies for the people you’re always inconveniencing, what use are you? 

Your fingers tighten and you can feel your nails digging into the hard glass of the mason jar. For a second, you wonder if it’s possible for you to scratch the class. You clench your fingers — hard — in an effort to break the glass. Just once, you want to break something else. But as you loosen your grip, you’re forced to come to terms with the fact that the jar is just as pristine as it always was.  

Not a single crack. Not even a scratch.  

The jar is fine — the jar is always fine. But your fingers are dented and your joints are sore and you’re so tired of this. Of always being the one who is damaged. The only one who is ever damaged. Everyone else is always unscathed and no one else ever breaks.  

You drop the mason jar. 

Shit. 

It falls to the ground and you watch as it shatters all over the floor.  

Maybe Thor is right. Maybe you are going to shatter one day, just like that mason jar. 

But it’s not going to be today. Breath quickening, you furiously remind yourself that it’s okay.  

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.  

It’s not you on the floor. Maybe one day it is going to be you, lying there broken and useless and fractured and gone, but right now, it's not. You’re still full and whole and not broken and the glittering glass fragments on the floor aren’t you. Looking back down, your eyes catch on droplets of red. Your breath stops and the air in your lungs still. Sure, the glass on the floor isn’t your ground-up soul, shattered and crushed, but the blood is yours. 

There are specks of blood splattered amidst the glass, staining the kitchen’s pristine floor. And you know it’s your blood because you can feel it dripping from your fingers where the glass cut into your skin and you can’t help but stare as a drop of it rolls off your middle finger and falls to the ground and you flinch as it lands in a little crimson circle.  

It’s pretty, though.  

And you can’t look away as another drop falls, landing directly on top of the previous one, doubling the size of the puddle. For a second, you wonder how much blood it would take to cover the entire floor — and if your body has enough.  

But then you hear footsteps approaching and you hastily kneel onto the ground, furiously attempting to clean up the mess you made, to fix it. More blood trickles from your fingertips as you desperately grab at the broken pieces. You’re making it worse.  

The glass blurs and you frantically blink, trying to rid yourself of the tears beginning to form in your eyes. The last thing you need is to cry — for your tears to mingle with your blood — for you to appear even weaker than you already do.  

But you are weak. You can’t even win this battle — against yourself, and you feel the tears overflow and you watch as they fall, turning the dark red into a lighter pink. 

It's a pretty pink. 

It’s a pink that reminds you of the first lipstick you ever bought. You and your best friend had gone down to the convenience store after school, sneakily carrying the lunch money you’d both saved. You remember counting the coins together and excitedly running towards the makeup aisle, where the both of you promptly agonized over the perfect lipstick for the better part of an hour.  

Eventually, you settled on a sparkly little tube of lipstick — more of a chapstick really, and you can distinctly recall how it smelled like heaven and tasted like strawberries, and how it always tinted your lips just the slightest bit pink.  

But right now, the pink you’re staring at isn’t lipstick, and you can very clearly make out two feet standing before you. Looking up, you meet a pair of eyes. Blue, like the sky on a sunny day. It’s a blue filled with promises of picnics and lemonade and daisies, of innocence and childhood, of strawberry lipstick. And in this moment, you want nothing more than to drown in that blue. 

Maybe if you bleed enough blood and cry enough tears you can drown in it. Maybe you can drown in the perfect shade of pink while staring into the perfect shade of blue.  

______________________________

For such a muscly man, Thor’s fingers are surprisingly soft.  

The god is currently standing before you, carefully bandaging your cut hands.  

“My lady, I thought you specifically told me that blood smoothies were not appetizing.” His attempt at humor brings a smile to your face, but you can’t do more. Shrugging, you answer. 

“Well, I guess I’m just a hypocrite.” His eyes squint, his eyebrows furrow, and you can tell he’s about to reassure you. You hurriedly continue. “Even the best of us make mistakes, Lord of Thunder.”  

Thor’s eyebrows relax again, and the corners of his eyes crinkle as he smiles. Relief courses through your veins. You wonder if Thor can feel it in the blood that is still leaking from your fingers. Gently, you tug your hands out of his grasp, just in case. Sending out a silent prayer of thanks to whatever prompted you to wear your black sweatpants today, you try not to grimace as the fabric brushes against your injured legs. At the very least, they conceal the blood. 

Thor doesn’t need to know about those. It’s bad enough that he’s already seen you dissolving into an emotional puddle earlier, not to mention how the literal King of Asgard had cleaned up the mess you made and is now attempting to inspect your hands again.  

“Were you planning on making the smoothies this morning, my lady?” Thor’s voice interrupts your thoughts and you look up, meeting his poorly-disguised-concerned gaze. 

“Yup.” You nod, popping the p . “I’m glad to be back, and I wanted to start making you guys smoothies before your morning workouts again. I know for a fact that whatever concoction you made yesterday was an absolute disaster.”  

Thor looks sheepish as he smiles, his hands running through his short blonde hair. “My brother would agree with you.”  

At this, you suddenly remember. You need to get Loki’s smoothie preference, as well as the time he wakes up. You know everyone’s preferred flavors, as well as their morning routines, to ensure your smoothies are always as fresh as possible.  

“Speaking of Loki, when does he wake up?” 

Thor shrugs, a confused look flitting across his face. “Truth be told, I don’t really know. Loki and I haven’t inhabited the same space in quite some time, and I am not familiar with his routines.”  

“Oh.” That would be slightly hard to work with. “Uh, well do you know what type of smoothie he might prefer?” 

Thor’s lips turn down into a pout. “I don’t think Loki would like any type of smoothie, my lady. Yesterday he made his distaste for smoothies quite clear."  

Before you can interrupt and remind him that his smoothie most definitely tasted nothing like your smoothies, he continues with a wink. "But I suppose if anyone could make a smoothie Loki does approve of, it would be you, my lady."  

You know Thor is somewhat disappointed by Loki’s lack of enthusiasm towards his smoothie. It’s easy to detect, even under his charming antics. Thor’s lips turn downward when he is upset, and he always picks at his nails. Sometimes he will suck in his cheek, and that’s when you know he is truly in a mood. But Thor never stays sad for long.  

His expression has brightened up again, and Thor is back, his ever-chipper energy once again emanating from within his warm eyes. There’s not a single trace of conflict in his eyes, and you wonder, for the hundredth time, how he does it. Thor has seen so much death — caused it, even — and been through so much pain, yet he is always able to hold it together, always able to smile and laugh and come back stronger. 

Thor is the embodiment of the word 'golden'. No matter how much dirt and grime Life layers on top of him, nothing could ever dim his luster.  

You think you're closer to being the dirt and grime than you ever were to being gold. 

“Thanks Thor.” 

______________________________

In the end, you settle on making Loki Thor’s favorite smoothie. After all, Thor is the only other god here who has dined on the finest Asgardian delicacies, and if he likes your chocolate-strawberry smoothies, you just hope Loki does too.  

The only difference is, Thor prefers his smoothies absurdly sweet. Whether it’s his insane metabolism or the ten thousand calories he burns a day, he never seems to be affected by the hundreds of grams of sugar you’re sure he consumes.  

You’re carefully pouring the smoothie into two mason jars when Nat comes into the kitchen. You smile and motion towards her drink sitting on the counter. Natasha prefers a green smoothie, packed with kale and spinach and cucumbers and ginger — not the best tasting thing you’ve ever made, but it must do something , ‘cause Nat looks like she doesn’t understand what the word ‘bloating’ means.  

The redhead raises an eyebrow, motioning to the second mason jar you’re carefully pouring. “Does Thor drink two of those every morning now?” 

“Well, no. This one's for Loki. I don’t know what he prefers, so I thought I’d make him Thor’s favorite for now. Except without the whipped cream and excessive number of chocolate chips.” 

Nat’s other eyebrow raises. “You’re kidding right? Angel, stay away from Loki. He’s a dangerous man. He’s deranged and unstable and selfish. He’s not going to appreciate your smoothie.” 

And with that, all the self doubt rushes back in. The self hatred that Thor’s fingers had smoothed away, the shame that bled from your fingertips, it all rushes back in, pumping through your veins and into your heart.  

“Do you appreciate my smoothie?” You hadn’t meant for it to come out, and you certainly hadn’t meant for it to sound so insecure. 

Nat’s eyes widen, and she hastily retreats. “Nono Angie, that's not what I meant. Come on, you know all of us love your smoothies. What I’m trying to say is —” her fingers meet her forehead in a gesture of frustration “ — we appreciate and love you for all that you do, but Loki won’t. He’s too arrogant and he definitely thinks we’re all beneath him.”  

With that, she moves closer to you and envelopes you in a hug. Natasha means well, you know that, but she doesn’t realize how her words come off — how she just backed up the little voice inside your head, repeatedly telling you that you’re worthless. You wonder if she even wants your smoothie, or if she just humors you. And then her arms retreat from around you, and she steps back. 

“Sorry Angie, but I’ve got to go now. I love you — we all do. You know that right?”  

You nod, and smile. “Thanks Nat. I love you too.” 

______________________________

Natasha’s smoothie has separated. The blended ingredients have floated to the top, and the green liquid has settled below. The abandoned smoothie sits on the edge of the counter, where she left it, only reaffirming your suspicions that she didn’t really want it in the first place. Dimly, you consider dumping Loki’s smoothie out. Maybe Natasha is right. But you don’t really want to waste any food, so you move to put his smoothie in the fridge. Maybe Thor will drink it later.  

(If he even likes them.) 

But as you open the fridge door, you notice the plate of leftovers you snagged yesterday is gone. The saran wrapped plate is missing, and you don’t think anyone would have taken it, except…? You look around for the plate. It’s not in the sink or left on the counter, nor lying in the dishwasher. You find it in the cabinets, placed directly on top of its companions.  

You’re confident that no one in this tower would clean their plate after eating, except maybe Steve. But Steve isn’t here — he made his famous lasagna last night because he was leaving for a mission early today. So really, that just leaves Loki.  

Is it possible that Nat was wrong? 

Did Loki take the food you left for him? And ate all of it? And cleaned up? 

You suddenly remember yesterday, walking in on Loki scrubbing blood off the floor. You can’t say you were surprised Thor had left a mess, but you were somewhat surprised Loki was cleaning it up. Maybe it is possible then.  

So you decide to bring the smoothie to Loki. 

First, you make a quick stop at your room. Your legs are really starting to sting, and you don’t want the sweatpants to dry onto your skin. Damn. You’re going to have to wash these again, and you just did laundry. But it’s okay, and soon you’re walking out of your room, clad in another pair of sweatpants and an oversized hoodie, holding Loki’s smoothie. 

You take the elevator and press the familiar button of Thor’s floor. Mentally, you’re once again debating whether or not this is a good idea. You’ve almost decided to just turn back when the elevator doors slide open and you make eye contact with Loki, who is standing awkwardly in the doorway of his room, one foot inside the door and one foot in the plush carpet of the Odinsons’ shared living room.  

His eyebrows are raised comically in an expression of surprise, and for a second you don’t see the intimidating god. 

But then the moment passes, and he straightens, eyes narrowing, eyebrows drawing together in a frown. “Can I help you?” 

A part of you — a large part of you — wants to leave immediately. To apologize for disturbing him and go back to your room. But another part of you, the one who caught a glimpse of Loki before he threw up his defenses, roots you to the ground.  

“Actually, yeah. I made you a smoothie.” You stick out your hand, ignoring the way it trembles slightly. “I know Thor’s smoothie probably tasted like shit, so I thought I’d make you one to show you how it's done.” 

When he doesn’t move, you step further into the living room and set the smoothie down. One of Thor’s hoodies is lying haphazardly across the coffee table, so you pick it up. Loki is staring at you. 

There’s an awkward silence, and you wish he would say something. Anything. But the raven haired prince is as stoic as ever. His eyes are still boring into your own and you can’t help but notice how strikingly different they are from Thor’s.  

Somehow, you’re engaged in a staring contest with the god — and you don’t really want to lose. In an effort, perhaps, to prove to yourself that you’re not weak (especially after the morning’s incident) you resist the increasing temptation to blink. You don’t want Loki to think you’re scared of him, even though you may be a bit wary , and you continue to stare into his eyes. 

They say eyes are the windows to the soul. If that’s true, Loki has a very — empty soul. It’s neither warm nor cold, just vacant . It’s almost as if you’re staring into the eyes of someone long dead.  

With that, you shiver, and surprisingly, Loki breaks the intense eye contact. He looks away then, and his head tilts downward.  

“Right then. I’ll just be on my way.” You hold up Thor’s hoodie. “I’m going to do some laundry. Do you have anything that needs to be washed?” 

You hope he doesn’t ignore you. You really don’t need that today. You just need to be productive. To do something — to help someone. And maybe he senses that, because Loki actually nods and walks back into his bedroom, leaving you to stand awkwardly in the middle of the lavish living space.  

A few moments later, Loki reemerges, effortlessly holding a laundry hamper.  

“Would you like me to take this down?”  

You’re a bit stunned by his unexpected and considerate offer, but your desire to prove yourself shines through.  

“Nah, I got it. Thanks.” 

With that, you lug Loki’s hamper and Thor’s hoodie out of their room, leaving Loki’s smoothie — and an intense hope he drinks it — behind. 

______________________________

Loki is an unbelievably neat person.  

His dirty clothes are folded — inside his hamper. And organized by article, as well as color. You don’t think he realizes how — awkward — it makes the entire process. After carefully shoving his button downs, slacks, sweaters, and jeans into the washer, you’re left with an interesting assortment of clothing.  

His undershirts are ridiculously soft, and you resist the urge to snag one. This isn’t Thor, you remind yourself. After piling them in, you stare at his hamper. Loki has folded his socks, which are paired together. You sincerely hope the washer doesn’t decide to eat one of them, as you doubt he understands the Midgardian concept of missing socks.  

Below his socks are… Loki’s boxers. You wipe away the mental image your mind involuntarily conjures and quickly dump the rest of the clothing into the washer, without touching anything.  

With that, you throw in Thor’s hoodie and your sweatpants, start the cycle, and leave, shaking your head.  

On the way back to your room, you realize that Loki has a very limited closet. All of his laundry had barely filled up his hamper, and you notice how most of his clothing consisted of somewhat uncomfortable items. You haven’t seen him around due to your break, but from his clothing you can assume that Loki has a very different fashion taste than Thor. Mentally, you make a note to slip him some of your oversized hoodies when returning his clothes.  

______________________________

You’re immensely thankful for Thor. He always seems to have the best — or worst — timing, and this time he has saved you from a rather embarrassing situation. 

You’re pulling Loki’s clothes out of the dryer (having already stolen Thor’s hoodie), and you’ve just started to fold his clothes. So far, you’ve shoved a forest green hoodie at the very bottom of the hamper, and you’re in the process of carefully layering Loki’s sweaters over it. Thankfully, the dryer is still mostly full, and you haven’t been confronted with the dilemma of handling Loki’s underwear again.  

Luckily, Thor walks in before you have to.  

“Are you doing Loki’s laundry, my lady?” His voice startles you and you jump, but manage to not drop Loki’s earthy brown sweater.  

“No,” you deadpan, “These are all mine.” 

Thor smiles that smile you’re so familiar with, and you can’t help but grin back. “Well, let me take it from here.” His grin falters for a moment, and he looks more serious when he continues. “Thank you Angel, for giving Loki a chance. I know he can be — difficult. And I wouldn’t blame you if you only saw the villain.” 

You meet Thor’s eyes, always filled with emotion — whether that be happiness or warmth, sadness or anger, and you think back to another pair of eyes. Soulless. You think of Loki, and you think of how you’ve seen those soulless eyes before; every single time you look into a mirror. And for a second, you let yourself believe that maybe Loki’s soul wasn’t voluntarily taken from him either. Maybe his cruelty is his defense, just like yours is the fake-happiness that you wear as a shield. 

“It’s no problem Thor.” You smile, your shield intact. “I couldn’t let him suffer with your smoothies forever, no matter how villainous he might be.” 

______________________________ 

Cruelty is just loneliness disguised as bitterness.  

- Tom Hiddleston 

______________________________

Previous Chapter  Next Chapter

~

~

Taglist: @spacedaddydinn @doct0rstrange

[dracusfyre]

Wing and a Prayer

Had a pretty bad bout of writer’s block towards some of my WIPS so I took a break and wrote a quick wingfic, I’ve never written wingfic before and was intrigued to give it a shot. Shout out to @massivespacewren for the prompt :)

also on AO3

~~~

"Oh, shit-"

It was just a brief curse before Tony's comms cut out, and in the scheme of things, "oh shit" was rather mild given the situation. But there was a note in Tony's voice that made Bucky look up from his rifle scope to find him, trying to see the flash of his repulsers and the dark brown of his wings amidst the cloud of drones that were swarming the city.

"Oh, fuck," Bucky breathed when he found him. He dropped his rifle and started running, keeping his eyes on where Tony was dropping rapidly, his desperately flapping wings and the intermittent bursts from apparently busted repulsors doing little to slow his fall.

Steve was on the other side of the fight, covering some escaping civilians as the dive-bombing drones tried to knock them from the sky, and Natasha and Clint were too far away. "Tony, I'm coming!" He shouted, ripping at the velcro on his body armor and shrugging it off as he ran. This was Tony's nightmare, his repulsors failing him while he was in the sky now that his flight muscles were compromised by the arc reactor.  He left his ammunition and hand grenades with his tac belt on the edge of the roof as he jumped, his wings stretching to their limit as he strove for height. As he flapped he realized he was still carrying too much weight to catch Tony, so he glided for a second, catching thermals coming off of the sun-lit city streets to lift him up as he reached down and unzipped his combat boots, kicking them off to land somewhere below. Another roof was coming up, so he sprinted along the roof, ignoring the broken glass and rocks that dug into his feet, then jumped off the edge again with more powerful beats of his wings. He was gaining on Tony, who had somehow figured out how to use the failing repulsors to at least steer him towards a place to land that might be more forgiving than the city streets, wings spread for a few moments at a time before the muscles gave out and they crumpled.

“Come on, come on,” Bucky said breathlessly, chest and lungs burning as he struggled to catch up. Whoever was controlling the drones had seen that Tony was vulnerable, and he was having to waste precious repulsor power shooting them down as they attacked him. A small swarm spotted Bucky trying to rescue him and moved to intercept, but as they closed in on him Bucky twisted into a tornado flip, flicking out his wings so the the razor sharp vibranium primaries on his wings sliced through the drones, leaving most of them damaged or disabled.  It cost him some height, though, and he cursed as he tried to make up for it, ignoring the last remaining drone as it dived at him like a mobbing bird, until it got too close and he grabbed it, metal arm crushing the central processer and tossing it to the side.

“Tony, I need you to fold your wings,” Bucky said urgently, searching their surroundings for a good landing point. He was finally a little higher than Tony and tilted his wings on a course for intercept, steeper than a glide but not quite so sharp as a dive.

“What?” Tony said with surprise, and Bucky saw him craning his neck to see where Bucky was. “What do you-“

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes, but-“

“Wings in, now!” It was gratifying to see the speed that Tony obeyed, folding his wings tight up against his back even though it violated every instinct a person had, to close their wings while falling. He also stopped trying to use his repulsors and brought his arms to his chest and his legs together, turning into exactly the kind of target that Bucky needed.

Bucky hit him at a high enough speed that it almost knocked the breath out of him and he heard Tony grunt, but Tony didn’t move as Bucky wrapped his arms around Tony’s chest, even though he probably crushed a few feathers in the process. Bucky’s wings strained with the extra weight, and the glide turned into more of a dive than Bucky was comfortable with. He knew he couldn’t land like this; they were picking up speed too fast to even land safely – or even unsafely - on a grassy field, the force of the impact would be fatal. They had to get out of the sky now.

Bucky eyed one of the skyscrapers that was looming in the sky in front of them and groaned inwardly. This was going to suck.  As he steered towards one of the huge glass windows, he brought his metal hand up to tuck Tony’s head into his shoulder and protect his spine, then at the last second he curled his wings around them and prayed that the vibranium-reinforced bones of his wing wrists would be enough to break through the glass.

It did, but it hurt; the impact shuddered through his bones, and his muscles screamed at the effort of keepings his wings tight around them as they rolled through desks and cubicle dividers before finally coming to a stop.

“Ow,” Bucky said, letting his exhausted wings flop open to splay out on the cheap commercial carpeting as he opened his eyes to check the damage. He looked down at Tony, who was laying on his chest. “Are you okay?” he asked, as he let go.

“Am I okay?” Tony sat up sharply and scrambled off of Bucky’s chest to start checking him for injuries. “You flew through an industrial-strength window! Are you insane? Those things are specifically designed to not be broken by people throwing themselves at them!”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time.” He wanted to say, I’m okay, but he wasn’t entirely sure if that was true or not – pain was starting to make itself known even through the adrenaline rush, the hot ache of overworked muscles, sharp pains that meant he was probably bleeding, and the throb of something that was probably torn or dislocated. But Tony seemed fine, judging from the way he was still scolding Bucky while his hands, gentle despite their briskness, ran over his arms and legs and combed through the feathers on his wings, searching for injuries. “Better than hitting the ground, right?”

Tony paused for a moment, sat back on his heels and looked Bucky in the eyes. Bucky wondered if he knew how his wings were hunched protectively over Bucky. “Thank you,” he said, and Bucky got a glimpse of the fear he must have felt as he fell. “Whoever is guiding the drones realized that the repulsors were helping me fly and also helping me shoot down the drones, so they had the drones suicide bomb me until they took them out.”

“Figured something like that had happened,” Bucky said, managing a wan smile. The pain was really starting to set in now, so he tried to sit up or roll over before he got stuck on the floor like a wet rag. The effort tore a groan out of him as he realized that yep, his maneuver had definitely dislocated his wings.

“Oh, God, Bucky,” Tony said, giving him a hand to help him sit up, looking with dismay at how Bucky’s wings sagged on his back, dragging limply on the carpet. He ran his hands along the wing bones, searching for breaks; Bucky could have told him that with the amount of vibranium that Hydra had used to reinforce his bones, they would probably be ripped off before anything broke, but instead Bucky watched and wished he could feel Tony’s touch around the unignorable shriek of pain coming from his shoulders. “I don’t feel any breaks, I think they’re just dislocated,” Tony said after a moment.

“Do you know how to reset them?”

“In theory.” Tony grimaced. Now he was smoothing down Bucky’s ruffled coverts, unconsciously grooming Bucky as his gaze searched the room that they’d tumbled into. Their impact had left a trail of broken or shoved aside office furniture, tangled computer cables, and dented filing cabinets, but it wasn’t like they’d landed in a doctor’s office so there wasn’t a convenient examination table with wing supports for them to use. “Guess we’ll just have to do it laying down.”

Bucky mourned when Tony stopped grooming to help Bucky move so he could lay down on his stomach, though the movement was less “laying down” and more “controlled topple” as Tony let him down slowly. Tony had to spread out Bucky’s wings by hand, fussing more than he needed to as he made sure that none of the feathers were torqued or twisted, staying carefully away from Bucky’s deadly primaries.  Tony also made tiny noises as he saw the places on Bucky’s back where the glass and debris had cut him on the way in, but reported that none of the injuries were major.  As Bucky rested his head on his arms, he directed Tony on how to reset his shoulder joints. “I need you to do it fast and hard,” Bucky warned him. “You can’t be afraid of hurting me, because doing it more than once would be even worse.”

“I will,” Tony said, patting Bucky between his shoulder blades reassuringly. “One, two, thr-“ and halfway into three he shoved hard, before Bucky could tense up, and even as Bucky choked on a scream of pain he heard the pop of the joint resetting. Bucky panted harshly as the pain on that side settled into an angry pulse that felt much better than it had before, even though it was going to be a while before Bucky would want to move his wings on purpose. “Do you want me to wait before I do the next one?” Tony asked, sounding concerned.

Bucky swallowed back a whimper at the thought of going through that again. “Yes,” he forced himself to say. “Just give me a minute.”

“Okay.” Tony sat against Bucky’s side, a warm weight at his hip, and started grooming Bucky’s wing comfortingly, straightening out the feathers, smoothing them down, and picking out the detritus that had gathered in them. Despite everything, Bucky felt himself relaxing; it had been a long time since anyone had cared for his wings with anything other than brisk professionalism.

He could have laid there all day letting Tony do that, but Bucky reminded himself that there was a battle going on outside their impromptu refuge and so he said, “Okay, I’m rea- FUCK!”

“I’m sorry, Bucky,” Tony said, this time stroking down Bucky’s back as he shuddered from the second relocation. “It’s better when you’re not expecting it.”

“Yep,” Bucky agreed through gritted teeth, trying to focus on the feeling of Tony’s hand on his back rather than the pain radiating from his shoulders. “So what’s the plan now?” he asked, trying to find something else to think about. He had no idea what was going on in the sky outside, his communicator had been lost in the impact, and wasn’t sure that there was anything they could do now that they were both grounded, but he figured Tony probably had an idea, he always did.

“As soon as you’re okay for me to leave you, I am going to finish trying to disrupt the signal to the drones,” Tony said. While Bucky slowly tried to relax the muscles that had instinctively tightened up from the pain, Tony went back to grooming his wings to help. “That’s what I was doing when they swarmed me.”

“You should go do that,” Bucky said, shoving down the selfish urge to let Tony keep grooming him. “I’m just going to lay here for a little while, then I’ll cut strips to bind my wings until my shoulders heal.”

“Are you sure?”

Bucky forced himself to nod, and then with a last pat on his secondary coverts Tony stood. “I just need to find this place’s IT closet and I think I’ll have everything I need,” Tony said, and Bucky lifted his head from his arms to watch as Tony disappeared through the maze of cubicles. After a few minutes, Bucky pushed himself to sitting, then to his feet, hissing as the movement jostled his wings. He unfastened the Velcro that held his shirt together along his ribs then pulled it over his head, trying to move his arms as little as possible, then started ripping it into long strips to help support his wings.

“Found it!” Tony crowed just as Bucky had gotten as far along as he could without help. Bucky looked up just in time to see Tony’s steps slow as he came around the corner and saw Bucky shirtless, and the way Tony’s eyes skimmed down his chest before coming back up to his face went a long way towards making Bucky’s day better. “I, uh, I just need five minutes with this router and we’ll be set,” Tony continued, dragging his eyes away to look at the electronics in his arms. He cleared the stuff off a nearby table and took a seat, leaning against the chest support as he started to disassemble everything and start plugging it into his headset, using his wings to brush the bits that he didn’t need out of his way. As Bucky took a seat too and watched, Tony started explaining what he was doing, which Bucky only listened to with half an ear, most of his attention on the sky outside the window to make sure they weren’t ambushed by any drones. He could tell when Tony was successful because suddenly clouds of drones started dropping all across the sky before Tony could even say “That should do it.” Bucky’s mouth quirked as Tony let out a smug ha as he turned to watch the black specks fall all across the city; it would never fail to impress Bucky how Tony could literally go from falling out of the sky to defeating the enemy in the space of twenty minutes. The newspapers had taken to calling him the Invincible Iron Hawk and even though Tony complained about the name Bucky thought the invincible part was spot on. Indomitable would work too, and as far as Bucky was concerned, he’d add irresistible to the list.

“Nice work,” Bucky said, and his face must have been showing more of his thoughts than he meant it to because when Tony met his gaze his face went red and his wings half opened before resettling against his back.

“Thanks,” he said, then cleared his throat. “I’ll bind up your wings, then we’ll hit the elevators and head home?”

“Sure.” Tony was an old hand at binding wings to carry the weight and ease the pressure from the chest and shoulders, making sure the strips went across Bucky’s chest and that it rested under the feathers to keep it from slipping and breaking any. “There,” he said when he was done, patting Bucky’s bare shoulder.

Bucky reached up and put his hand on top of Tony’s before he could pull it away. “Would you like to go flying with me sometime?” he asked before he could talk himself out of it, feeling his face flame. “Flying flying?”

Tony’s grin was rueful. “Flying flying? I don’t know, I think you did some pretty impressive flying to save my life back there,” he teased, but his wings were up and already unfurling, like he was ready to go right now. Bucky’s wings instinctively tried to match him, and the spike of pain made Bucky wince. Tony gave him a sympathetic look and refolded his wings, reaching over to squeeze his hand instead. “Yes, that would be lovely. I will fix my gauntlets, you heal, and then we’ll go flying.”

[rjalker]

First:

One of Abene’s flailing legs hit Brais and knocked her to the floor. Miki was the only one fast enough to act. It grabbed Don Abene’s torso, and its whole feed was one scream of an urgent assistance code. I got an arm around Abene’s waist, pinning one of her arms. The other was desperately scrabbling to hold onto Miki. If she hadn’t been wearing the suit, she would have been torn in half. If the hatch hadn’t had a safety sensor that was giving us time to clear the obstruction, she would have been crushed. I wasted three seconds trying to pry at the spidery thing gripping her helmet. It was red and had eight multi-jointed fingers, that was all I could tell at the moment. Then I thought of the obvious solution. The air was breathable, and she could be treated for possible contamination as long as she still had her head. I felt around her neck, slowed down by the unfamiliar suit design, then my fingers hit the little tab. (I would never have found it in time in my armor; the human skin overlay on my hands is much more sensitive.) I pressed the tab and twisted, and the emergency release unlocked her helmet. It was stuck in the door for almost a full second, enough time for me to push off and twist away. Then the thing on the other side snatched it out of the gap and the hatch snapped closed. I landed on my feet holding Don Abene, head still attached. She slumped against me, gasping, her hands knotted in my jacket. Miki was at my shoulder, worriedly poking at her feed, its long fingers gently lifting her hair to check her neck. It said, “Don Abene, do you need medical assistance? Don Abene, please answer.”

-

Miki cocked its head at me, then at Abene. Still dazed, and possibly concussed, she hadn’t let go of me yet. She stared up at me, her brow wrinkled in confusion. Following my wounded human protocol, I had upped my body temperature to try to prevent her from going into shock. She said, “Miki...? Who is this?”

-

Abene started to nod, then winced. She patted my arm and pushed away a little, and I let her stand on her own.

Later:

Abene nodded understanding and put the med tabs for concussion and shock into Miki’s good hand. “Miki, please take care of Hirune while I work on the control station.” Then she frowned at me and said, “You’re bleeding.” I looked down. I was dripping onto the floor, a mix of blood and fluid. I hate it when I leak. My veins seal automatically and some of the shrapnel had popped out, but the projectile in my side had moved around, reopening that wound. I cautiously dialed up my pain sensors to check; oh yeah, that’s what had happened. Ouch. Abene said, “Were you hit?” She stepped toward me, reaching to push my jacket aside. I jerked back a step. She stopped, startled. Miki turned, its visual sensors focusing in on me. I checked its camera and got a view of my face. I thought I had gotten good at controlling my expression, but apparently only when I wasn’t feeling actual emotions. In our feed connection, Miki said, ::Abene won’t hurt you, SecUnit.:: Abene held up her empty hand, palm out in a gesture that usually meant “don’t shoot me,” except she wasn’t afraid. She was matter-of-fact. She said, “I’m sorry, but you need treatment. Will it be better if Miki helps you?” I said, “I don’t—” and stopped there because I didn’t have any way to finish that sentence. I needed help, I didn’t want anyone to touch me. These were two mutually exclusive states.

Consenting to touch someone to save their life is not consenting to touch them in any other situation.

Consent at one time does not equal consent forever and always.

This is basic fucking shit, people.

Just because Murderbot is willing to touch people to save their lives does not mean it secretly likes touching people and is just pretending otherwise because it's shy, or has self esteem issues, or is playing hard to get, or wants to look cool.

Stop erasing the fact that Murderbot's touch-averse just because it's not fucking palatable or shippable enough for you. Stop pretending that touch-averse people's boundaries don't matter and aren't real.

Athiktophomisia is not any more fucking okay than any other form of ableism.

[skekheck]

Theory: UrVa’s Arrows Were Originally Meant To Incapacitate, Not Kill, skekMal

Maybe this is common consensus, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while. On the surface, it seemed like urVa had wanted to put an end to skekMal at the Circle of the Suns and the Hunter escaped before he could finish the job. But then there was this line in episode 10 that always felt odd to me:

urVa: I had a dream that I was one that became two that became one again. I looked through my dark half’s eyes and knew Aughra was right. [...] ...The Hunt must end. 

It’s just “but urVa, weren’t you doing just that a day or so prior?”. But then after rewatching their standoff again it hit me: maybe urVa’s intentions were not to kill skekMal but to incapacitate him.

Let’s look at the scene again

SkekMal was shot a total of three times: the first one through his upper arm, the second around the bottom right of his torso, and the last through his upper leg (possibly thigh?). 

(Sorry couldn’t find a better pic of his leg shot)

Weird places to aim for if urVa had wanted to kill him, right? Wouldn’t he have gone for targets that would more likely result in death, like the throat or through the eye sockets? It’s not like he would miss: urVa’s a master marksman. Instead, all three shots prevented (or at least was an attempt to stop) skekMal without taking his life.

The first shot prevented skekMal from harming Rian. The second was retaliation for ignoring the Archer’s warning. UrVa flat out told him to not approach the Gelfling but you see the Hunter take a step forward anyway, prompting him to release the second arrow. The final one was an attempt to stop skekMal from escaping with Brea. Seeing as how urVa immediately collapsed after firing that arrow, it would have worked. However, he underestimated how committed skekMal was to the Hunt, considering he pushed through the pain to get what he needed done.

Those arm and leg wounds aren’t inherently life-threatening. The arrow in his torso, though, is more concerning. It’s possible it could have had or at least be at risk of damaging his organs. Now, the Skeksis have weird-as-fuck anatomy (that goes without saying) so we have no real way of knowing if it was endangering him or not. But considering the nature of his other two wounds, I don’t think it was a kill shot. A more serious wound, but not deadly if tended to. And that’s probably what urVa intended: he aimed for that spot in the hopes skekMal would stop to take care of his wounds. 

But Weren’t Both skekMal and urVa In Critical Condition?

Oh yeah, they still were and skekMal’s partially to blame for it. It’s not a great idea to move around too much with arrows lodged in you. The arrow heads and shaft could move around and cause more internal damage. SkekMal moving made what would have been minor to moderate wounds way more serious. Not to mention, he never stopped to pull them out and heal himself: he kept those things in. 

And let’s not forget how far of a distance between the Circle of the Suns and the Castle is. There are multiple versions of maps of Thra that have some siginifcant differences, but the main point is those two locations are pretty far from each other. Even if he used Bennu to fly all the way over to the Castle, skekMal would still have to deal with Brea thrashing around on his back. And it looks like he took a detour to grab a cage for her, which he then dragged through the Castle’s corridors. Baiting Rian and his friends just so he can fulfill his Hunt was apparently more important to him than his well-being (which is ironic if you believe skekMal’s philosophy surrounding the Hunt is his own way of self-preservation).

EDIT: Wanted to add that skekMal was in a difficult position in terms of what he wanted. He would know that if he’d pull those arrows out he would have to treat them right away otherwise he’d bleed to death. At the same time, he would also had to keep Brea from escaping. I think he weighed his options and found that he’d had more success just pushing through it and keeping them in then treat them later. SkekMal might had also thought the other Skeksis would be able to treat him if it was serious enough? 

And SkekTek Made It Worse

SkekTek is no doctor. He can cut up and research on animals all he wants, but that doesn’t count as medical knowledge. It’s painfully obvious he has no idea what he’s doing: his diagnosis and treatment of skekMal’s condition is enough proof of that. And speaking of which, skekTek’s diagnosis is full of nonsense:

Skektek: Subject suffers severe exsanguination. Extreme distress to the humus. [...] Imbalance of intrinsic fluids. Manifold ruptures in corporeal morphology. [Checks for a heart beat] Ah. Ah... . Expiration... is... [dramatic pause] inevitable.

Literally he’s saying skekMal has multiple holes in his body and he’s bleeding out. You know, pointing out the obvious. Also, I tried finding out if “humus” related to anything biologically, but all I could find was it’s a term for... soil made of organic matter. I’m not sure what he was trying to refer to, I think he was just misusing it to make himself sound smart.

EDIT: I have been told by a few people that skekTek might be referring the humerus, which is a bone found in the upperarm that’s forms joints at the elbow and shoulder. This would make more sense and would mean skekTek made a proper diagnosis. However, at least to me, it still sounds like he’s saying humus. Another skeksis repeats him and they also say humus, not humerus. Turning on the captions also has it as humus. This could either be a typo or skekTek did mean humerus, but said humus instead. 

And how he actually treats skekMal is atrocious. 

He pulls the arrows out without making any attempts to stop the bleeding, clean the wounds, or apply stitches. He’s letting him bleed out and he should at least know they need blood to live. Do you know what happens when someone loses too much blood? Among other side effects, organ failure and falling into a coma. SkekTek did eventually made an effort to heal skekMal by giving him essence, but it was too little too late. SkekMal’s condition was so far gone at that point he really needed Aughra’s essence to survive.

UrVa’s Intentions

And now we’re going right back to urVa. While thinking over on urVa’s actions, I started wondering if he anticipated skekMal wouldn’t stay put and that the Hunter would do his own self in by moving around with the arrows lodged in him. I mean, urVa is a mystic, an indirect kill would make sense. But giving it more thought, I don’t think that’s the case. A lot of his actions during the series suggests otherwise. 

UrVa was very contemplative, even saddened, about having to end the Hunt for skekMal. He is not like his other half: he respected and appreciated all life on Thra. He also sees the cycle of life as well as the wilderness as something untamable. This is implied while he was talking with Aughra in episode 4:

urVa: We do not get to decide when our part in the song is finished.

While urVa is one of the more proactive Mystics, he still is... a Mystic. He doesn’t believe he should manipulate or control what goes on around him and let things be. The Bestiary book points to the fact that while urVa did keep tabs on skekMal, he never interfered with his hunts. So it was a big deal when Aughra quested him with the task of stopping skekMal. 

Also I’d like to point out urVa and Aughra’s final conversation because it’s also important for this discussion:

urVa; And where does my path lead? Aughra: Into the sands to face the Hunter. urVa: [sighing and looks away from Aughra for a moment] I cannot defeat my dark half. Aughra: You will find a way. But not without sacrifice.  urVa: And if I fail? Aughra: The heroes of Thra will be lost. urVa: Mm... [pauses and takes a deep breath] I will end the hunt. Aughra: Good. Get a move on. You Mystics are not known for your swift speed. We have much to do. [...] urVa: [pauses and looks at Aughra] Will we meet again, Aughra? Aughra: [stops walking, saddened] Hm... [faces him] Some things... even Aughra cannot see, old friend.  [urVa pauses and then groans, walks away from Aughra as they both parted ways for the final time]

He shows a lot of hesitance in completing this task. I’m sure he knew what Aughra was implying: that he may have to take skekMal’s life away but he still went and asked if they would meet each other again anyway. I think he was hoping for a positive answer, that it wouldn’t have to come to that, and seemed disheartened by her answer. But he still tried. He tried to stop skekMal in a way that, while not exactly peaceful, was not meant to be life-threatening. UrVa even pleads for him to stop... twice! The first time as skekMal was making his get-away and the second time while urVa helplessly watched him go after Rian again through the Hunter’s eyes. 

These two only had one scene together so we don’t really know the extent of their relationship. But if there’s one thing that’s clear was the conflict between them. I mean, during their whole duel, the characters were purposely placed on opposite sides of the room while making sure to show that skekGra and urGoh, a pair who were able to find harmony, were always side by side. It’s also in the way they address each other: while urVa does refer to him as his dark half, he also called him by his name. SkekMal, meanwhile, only ever referred to urVa as his title and nothing more. 

But I don’t think urVa had any ill-will towards his Skeksis. He seemed understanding of him and valued his life as much as he valued all living beings on Thra. I think if they both didn’t end up in a near-death situation, he’d try incapacitating skekMal again. However he understood and accepted his situation towards the end: with skekMal on an essence high, incapacitation method was no longer possible. If he allowed it to go on, all of Thra would be at risk. It was a desperate situation, but he knew Aughra was right. She gave up her life for the preservation of the world and urVa knew he had to do the same: for her and for Thra. The Hunt had to end and in order to protect the world he cherished he had to make the ultimate sacrifice. 

[xiaomomowrites]

so mean, xiansheng

Genshin Impact | ZhongChi

Summary: “You still refuse to yield?” Zhongli taunts, digging the ball of his foot into his chest. “After all that, you still persist? You’ve reached for your delusion, you’ve summoned all the weapons in your armory, and now you’ve resorted to crawling away? Frankly, when Tsaritsa had explained to me that she’d send her strongest diplomat my way, I hadn’t expected this level of...incompetence.”

The blunt end of his spear makes contact with his navel, and Childe’s face burns red. Fuck, why does he want it so much lower—

"Pathetic."

Or, Childe figures out Zhongli is Rex Lapis. He challenges him to a fight, anyway.

Find it on Ao3!

This story has nothing to do with the series! I just got the urge to write Zhongli being the badass he is. 

A/N: Okay I wrote this immediately after I finished my draft for act VI, so that should definitely be coming very soon! But my evil beta, Peaches, implanted this horrible idea of Zhongli being a little more mean and a little more malicious in my head, and I had no choice by to write it. One of these lines is actually hers, and I just adjusted it a bit, but it really inspired me to write a whole damn fic. Oh, the power she holds.

Let it be known that I did NOT expect this to turn out the way it did. I wanted angst, not sexual tension! But hey, sometimes fics really do write themselves. Thank you, Peaches, for helping me scratch an itch I didn't even know I had. Anyway I hope you enjoy!

Find me on Twitter where I'm very chatty and talk about Genshin too much! -u.n

--

What the fuck.

What the fuck.

In all fairness, Childe didn’t expect to win this fight. He really didn’t. Tartaglia had just pieced together that Zhongli was the Rex Lapis, and he had gotten ahead of himself anyway. Really, challenging a six thousand year old God? Childe has done many, many reckless things, but this has to be his stupidest trick yet. And still, still, he found himself in the Golden House, surrounded by the walls of ebony, and feeling like he was getting swallowed whole by the golden hue of the mora beneath his very feet.

Well, he was on his knees, now.

Childe pants from where he is hunched over. Somewhere in his fight against his precious Xiansheng, Zhongli had managed a good hit to his abdomen with the butt end of his weapon, and he was only mildly aware of the fact that he was bleeding internally. But on the bright side, the dull throbbing kept him from passing out right then and there; every jolt of pain that spread through his core has kept him awake and mildly aware up until this point. Childe grunted and cradled the wound with his left hand, his right one occupied with his bow. It came back stained red. Well, shit. It wasn’t so internal anymore.

Footsteps sounded behind him. Even though he knows he isn’t in immediate danger, and that Zhongli would never actually harm him, Childe’s heart still sinks terrifyingly low into his stomach. Childe whips around and ignores the burst of pain and the pressure building behind his eyelids at the sudden movement. He draws his bow, summons a hydro arrow and gets a clear shot of Zhongli’s ridiculously sexy face and—

The Archon closes the distance by twirling and tossing his polearm forward, disappearing into thin air, and warping right in front of him again in a flash of blinding gold. With a flick of Zhongli’s wrist and the slightest nudge of his spear against Childe’s weapon, the bow goes flying. It clatters somewhere far away from him, skidding until it hits one of Zhongli’s geo pillars. Childe panics slightly, using his feet to try to scoot away while frantically summoning his water blades.

Zhongli is quick, though. He never misses a beat, never leaves an opening, never lets Childe get a single hit in. And, well, maybe Childe could have worded his challenge better. The Harbinger should have known better than to hit him with the classic “hit me with everything you’ve got” because apparently, he didn’t know his own damn limits. And looking at the way the Archon hasn’t even broken a sweat, it would be safe to assume that Zhongli is only exerting maybe half of his energy. Possibly even less.

Childe, on the other hand, was already haggard from the effects of his delusion. He had summoned his stronger form sometime during the fight, reaching for the electricity that crackled within his bones for a boost in strength. Tartaglia had felt confident, then, upon seeing Zhongli looking so tiny from where the Harbinger stood. He had held himself tall and proud in that moment, all strength and lethal lightning surrounding his body. But of course, the Archon did not budge. If anything, Tartaglia remembers him smirking, looking smug from where he had stood. His eyes had flashed a brilliant gold, and the tips of his hair burned a brighter amber. Childe remembers lunging and Zhongli parrying effortlessly, countering his every attack like it was nothing but a mere dance to him. Tartaglia had even kept contact with him! Each swing he sent had touched Zhongli fair and square, but each bludgeoning hit was redirected with ease, and it slid right off the Archon like water off a duck’s back.

It had infuriated the Harbinger to no end.

But then he let his guard down, blinded by his own anger, and Zhongli had met a fist swinging wildly with his own open palm sliding against Tartaglia’s arm. The Archon had formed an invisible wedge that steered Tartaglia off course and away from his vital points. Zhongli had tilted his head slightly to the right then, lunged forward, and took his opponent down in one fell swoop.

Tartaglia didn’t remember much after that. All he remembered was that he was in pain, his joints were croaking pathetically, and he was back in his normal human form. The lingering effects of his delusion danced along his fingertips in the form of purple electricity.

But it doesn’t matter what form he takes, because Zhongli derails his train of thought as the bottom of a boot is suddenly pressed against his chest, forcing him down, and not stopping until he hits the floor. Childe wheezes, the obvious fracture in his ribs making itself known. Those geo pillars getting summoned from hell really did not do the ginger any favors, especially the one that rose up beneath his feet and slammed against his chest, sending him tumbling away and coughing.

“You still refuse to yield?” Zhongli taunts, digging the ball of his foot into his chest. “After all that, you still persist? You’ve reached for your delusion, you’ve summoned all the weapons in your armory, and now you’ve resorted to crawling away? Frankly, when Tsaritsa had explained to me that she’d send her strongest diplomat my way, I hadn’t expected this level of...incompetence.”

The blunt end of his spear makes contact with his navel, and Childe’s face burns red. Fuck, why does he want it so much lower—

Childe whimpers like a wounded animal. Because the worst part is, he’s not even wrong. And Zhongli isn’t even trying to sound mean. He simply is .

“Pathetic.”

Childe’s toes curl at the degradation.

Oh, fuck.

What is going on?!

“Stop,” he pleads. Gods above, please, please keep going, his mind betrays him.

“Oh?” Zhongli taunts, dragging his foot down until it reaches his abdomen. He uses his polearm to nudge Childe’s legs apart a little further and oh he might pass out. He digs his heel into Tartaglia’s stomach, purposely avoiding his injury. Not because he’s being nice, no. He’ll just get to that later. Childe grunts at the contact. “I don’t think you want me to, though.”

Zhongli’s eyes flicker down to Childe’s crotch, and watches with sick satisfaction at the way his hips squirm in anticipation. Zhongli waves his hand and in one motion, the weapon disappears.

“Oh Celestia,” he laughs. He laughs, and Childe’s cock twitches at the sound. It’s empty and hollow, and not at all filled with the usual joy he’s used to hearing. Childe suddenly gets the inexplicable need to swallow it. “You like this?”

Childe opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. Barely a squeak, if anything. Oh Tsaritsa, what is wrong with me?

Zhongli moves his foot a little to the left, applies the slightest bit of pressure, and—

“A-Ah-!”

The god smirks. “That’s what I thought.”

Childe croaks, “W-what are you—“

Zhongli stares at him with eyes that somehow became a shade darker, a shade meaner. They were filled with a hunger that was almost inhuman; an aura emitted from him that was otherworldly and frighteningly possessive. It was only in that fraction of a second that Childe was hit with the realization of just who he was looking at. This...this was no simple soldier. This was no flimsy Millelith, that he could dismantle within seconds. This was a whole deity. The oldest Archon, the dragon himself, Morax-

“You know who I am, do you not? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have challenged an innocent consultant to such a grand battle, and in the Golden House, of all places,” Zhongli summons a lone piece of mora and twirls it between his fingers, observing the way the weight felt in his hand. It glimmers faintly in the light. He doesn’t even bother to look at Tartaglia anymore.

“Kings and Gods of all realms have bowed before me,” he states with such nonchalance it makes Childe’s head spin, “whatever made you think you could be an exception?”

Childe chuckles weakly, and finally lets his head hit the floor. His eyes flutter shut in surrender. He supposes that Zhongli is right. Besides, he knows when he’s lost a battle. It was time to end this.

“Alright,” he voices, “I yield.”

“No,” Zhongli states firmly, and much to Childe’s surprise and (reluctant) delight, the Archon drops all of his weight onto him and straddles his torso, pinning his body to the ground. His hands, quick as lighting, pin Childe’s own above his head. Zhongli leans down slowly, condescendingly, until there’s barely a hair’s width between their lips. The Harbinger’s breath hitches.

“You yield when I tell you to.”

[heyitsyn]

Enough

a/n: your sensei has come bearing gifts!!! hope you like my gift and happy 100 follower milestone everyone!!!! thank you for the ultimate support and love you’ve given me despite being only in this writer community for only about a week!! i hope to share more milestones w yall and hopefully more stories!!! byeeee

oikawa tooru x reader

(this is the full and last part of the oikawa angst)

Strangers.

That’s all you were.

Years of memories that were created before you could even walk, gone and forgotten for a relationship that didn’t even last a year.

Your parents have stopped asking for you both to interact during dinner, eventually getting used to you both not showing up to joint family meals, and there were no longer interactions shared for the next 3 years.

Until that fateful phone call.

It was about 2 in the morning and you were woken up by the loud and strong vibration from your phone that laid on top of your pillow beside you. You groaned at being woken up at such an ungodly hour on a school day so you didn’t budge and went back to sleep. But it continued for how many times and you made an irritated noise before finally opening your eyes and snatching it up to shout at who was calling you so early and why they needed you so badly.

“Hajime, I swear-”

“y/n, thank God,” he breathed out. “I know, I know, Tooru, she answered and I’m talking to her right now. You’ll be okay, alright? Here, just squeeze my hand.”

There was a bad feeling in your gut and when you heard him talking to, apparently, Tooru, you were already putting on some sweatpants and a sweatshirt over your sleeping shirt before running downstairs to get your shoes and almost ripping the fridge door to get ice packs on both hands.

“Hajime, it’s his knee, right?” You asked urgently, rummaging through the closet to get your emergency bag.

You had a sigh of relief when you found the old thing and bolted out of the house.

“H-How-”

“Practice match with Karasuno. I saw it. So, what’s wrong?”

“The shitty bastard called me because he was hurt and he couldn’t move since he messed up his knee and ankle.”

“Seijoh gym, right?” 

Then there was a cry in the background.

“Yes. Now, please hurry, y/n. I know, Bakakawa! I’m telling her to hurry-!”

But you ended the call, focusing on biking faster, as fast as you could, because the longer he was hurt without medical attention, the riskier and bigger consequences were going to happen. His injuries were no surprise to you but hearing that pained shout from the other line got you to jump into action, regardless your feelings or your past.

Your bike was carelessly dumped to the side as you ran all the way to where you could hope was the gym building and you sighed in relief when you saw the bright light and the buff body of Iwaizumi Hajime pacing at the front.

“Haji!” You shouted and his eyebrows reduced from its intense furrowing before pointing behind him.

“I was already on my way to check on him when he called about being hurt but I had no ice or meds. You were my only option.”

There laid, Oikawa Tooru, clutching his ankle and knee with tears streaming down his face and his eyes tightly shut to block out anything from his sight.

Your knees slid across the floor as you quickly went to his side before you gently pried his hands from clutching his right knee and his ankle.

“Tooru,” you softly called out. His eyes flew open at your voice and his face crumpled up as a sob ripped through his throat and echoed through the gym. “It’s okay. I’m here now, it’s okay.”

You kept mumbling those words as you took off your sweatshirt and bundled it up so he could rest his knee on it. Iwa offered his jacket to elevate his ankle and you were hurriedly placing ice packs on his injured parts to prevent the bleeding in his tissues while taking out elastic tape so you could compress his ankle and knee.

“Tooru, listen to me, I know it hurts right now and I know you’re in so much pain but I need you to be strong okay? I know you hate taking pills but you need to be brave and take these so that the pain will be gone. They’re tiny little things so it won’t be hard but I’ll hold you as you take them, alright?”

Oikawa could barely register what you were saying as he was just focusing on your voice and the way your lips move.

God, has it been so long since you’ve last spoken a word to him that he completely forgot how your lips looked like as you pronounced each sound?

Only when you sat behind him and pulled him to your chest did he figure out what was happening. Iwaizumi forcefully shoved a bottle of water and gave him two white pain medicine pills.

He looked back at you to protest but once he saw your gentle smile did he breathe harshly before taking both pills at the same time and chugging down the water. You were about to scold him with the harm of taking more than one pill but quieted down when he made a hissing sound after he finished drinking.

“Breathe in and out,” you soothed.

He coughed and grimaced when it throbbed again. “But it hurts!”

Your brain began to race a thousand miles an hour to try and figure out a way for him to calm down but you were so worried that you couldn’t come up with anything. Then it struck you.

You haven’t done this in years due to the lack of interaction but this has worked every time he had a panic attack. By the looks of this, he was on his way to another one.

“Tooru, give me your hand, okay?” You laid out yours, only for him to shakily put his hand on top of it. 

You turned it over so his palm was up and your other arm wrapped around him so you could reach his hand. Then you began tracing.

“Star!”

“Cloud!”

“Moon!”

He shouted every answer as you drew shapes into his tan skin and you proceeded into using simple addition problems to get his mind off of the pain and into something more practical like numbers.

“4!”

“18!”

“26!”

Iwaizumi watched in amazement as you were able to keep Tooru from jumping over the edge by simply writing characters on his palm and his olive eyes only widened as his best friend reduced the volume of his voice into whispers.

“Monkey.”

“Turtle.”

“Bread.”

“Milk.”

“Tree.”

Then he fell asleep.

The poor thing must’ve exhausted himself from training and the pain and crying.

His slump form remained against you and you tightened your hold around him, your own tears finally falling.

“I was so afraid this would happen,” you whispered out, noticing Iwa’s worried stare at you. “When he started this bullshit in middle school, all this obsessive behavior for defeating that dastardly Ushijima, I was so scared he would break himself. And he did.”

You choked out a sob.

“Haji, he hit me, did you know that?” You whimpered, not wanting to see his reaction with the thought of his best friend hitting the girl he has been crying and whining about for years. “Actually, he was about to hit Tobio but I pushed him away and took it instead because I was responsible for him as his manager.”

The words continued to spill out and you didn’t give a damn that you were spilling this out on your ex-boyfriend/best friend’s best friend.

“He felt so inferior to everyone, against Tobio for his genius ability, against Ushijima for being able to beat him for years, everyone. And there was nothing I could to prevent him from feeling so.” Iwa has now sat on the floor, noticing the melting ice pack which was making water roll down the bag. 

“Instead, I was selfish and complained about not spending time with him because he was so obsessed with volleyball. For winning. But I really think I let go because I didn’t want to see him in any more pain. I didn’t want to see him torture himself anymore.”

Your fingers swept through Tooru’s damp forehead to push back the hair that stuck on the skin from his sweat.

“Then when he told me that I was actually a distraction and that he didn’t need me anymore, I saw it as the perfect opportunity. So I took it. And dammit, I feel so horrible. I will forever regret that I couldn’t help him and cut off all contact just because I was scared of what would happen next. Don’t you see, Iwa? I did this to him. This is my fault. All because I wasn’t there to stop him.”

Your tired, sad eyes finally met Hajime’s surprised olive ones.

“I wanted to talk, to rekindle at least friendship. But I knew that once I do, I’ll fall in love all over again and I’d be forced to watch him break and kill himself just for a damn trip to Tokyo. To hell with that. So I stayed away. I called him selfish but you see, I was the selfish one. It just sucks that I was able to realize it once it was too late.”

“Patellar Tendonitis.”

A normal person would’ve been confused with those words if it was directed at them but you knew what they meant, knowing they were directed towards the boy in your arms.

“Messed it up during training camp over the summer. Then his ankle got sprained. Shit went down from there.”

Your entire body trembled at the pain and suffering this boy went through and your tears flowed faster as he was so desperate for everyone’s approval that he covered it up with a smile and continued practicing.

Oh what a peculiar boy Tooru is.

“I shouldn’t have come-”

“No, you needed to.” Iwa cut you off. “For three years, he’s done nothing but mope around and cry for a girl he broke up with in middle school. During an age where you don’t even know what the hell love is, he sure got a pretty solid definition of that. And that definition, is you.”

“Iwa, you’re making me cry more!” You whined and brokenly laughed.

“It’s true,” he reasoned while leaning on his hands behind him. “This might sound creepy but he checks whenever your bedroom light is off at a certain time so he was sure you’d be able to sleep enough. If not, he secretly complains to your mother and she tells you to stop studying, right?”

You mutedly nodded, shocked at what you were hearing.

Was all that really true?

Has he been doing this since first year and throughout now?

“And this makes me feel more like shit.” Your voice cracked. “I want to just graduate and forget about this idiot and live my life. But I just can’t! Not when he’s doing this to himself.”

Iwa sighed, annoyed at his best friends’ stupid dilemma. “You know what, this thing Shittykawa is doing to himself, it’s always going to be like this. I’m sorry, y/n, but this is going to be our reality for the next few years. He’s already got his sights on playing professionally and that means more training for him to feel like he’s on the same level as those foreign players. But you need to accept him for that.” He chuckled and ran his hands through his spiky hair. “It took me a long time to accept it but he’s always going to be this shitty person who will continue to break himself just to earn a single point in a match. But to him, it’s worth it, right? As much as he pisses me the hell off, he’s still my friend and I’d just have to continuously check in on him and make sure he’s still able to walk.”

Wow, that was the last thing you would happen. Iwaizumi Hajime talking about Oikawa Tooru, the boy he always punched and threw around, with such pride in his voice.

“Just remember that, kay?”

It was a silent walk back home as you carried the boys’ and your bags while Iwa had the unconscious Oikawa on his back. Upon reaching his front door, you realized it was locked and you knew if his mother found you at the dead of morning, she’d give him an earful and that was the last thing you needed. So you offered your place, instead, taking his sleeping body straight to your room.

“Go home, Haji. He’s not going to school tomorrow so you can come over and keep him company so you don’t miss him too much,” you teased.

He grunted quietly before ruffling your head. “Like hell I would. But remember what I said, y/n. Don’t expect a change. Just accept what you have right now.”

When he finally left, you sat on the floor beside your bed, holding the hand of the currently wincing Tooru. He was having a nightmare and if you could guess, it was probably him being beaten by Shiratorizawa in a game.

“Look at me, years later from ignoring you, letting you sleep on my bed and trying to accept you. I’m truly pathetic, right, Tooru?” You whispered, leaning against his hand which was encased on your own. “During the practice match, you said you were being unfair, right? Well, I’m the one not being fair. After causing you years of confusion and pain, a mere few hours has caused me to accept you all over again.”

“Why?” His groggy voice startled you and made your grip loosen but he snatched it back up, squeezing it. “Why now?”

Your face twisted as new tears would emerge and you gave him a sad smile, “Because I just realized something. I realized that you, Oikawa Tooru, deserve to be loved. Just as you are.”

A sleepy smile appeared on his beautifully child-like face, “I’m glad.”

When you fell for him, you expected him to catch you or at least help you up. But no hand reached out for you. Then you realized that Tooru fell and landed the exact same time as you did so there was no way he would’ve been able to catch you or help you.

“Breathing the same air, in the same space, is enough to fall in love. I realized that it’s enough, actually more than enough.”

Despite just waking up, he was now able to fully process what you said and with the pain of his injuries and the lack of sleep, he was overly emotional and cursed as he started sobbing and crying.

You were finally going to take him back. You were finally going to be his again.

Your eyes softened at this and you delicately held his face in your hands, cupping it so he could look at you and boy, did his heart do a weird jump kick.

Your eyes were so warm, so full of love, that he felt naked under your gaze.

No cover, no mask, just love.

And it is enough.

“I will always regret those three years, Oikawa Tooru. But if you’d let me, I’ll willingly and diligently spend the rest of my lifetime making it up to you and helping you stand whenever you fall.”

He playfully glared at you then opened his arms for a hug, which you immediately accepted.

“You already gave your entire life to me once you promised to fall in love with me forever, baka.” You cringed at the nudge of his finger on your forehead but you smiled at him.

“I was, like, 10, Tooru.”

“But right at this exact spot, I started to fall for you and I knew there would be no one else that I’d love.”

“I’m still angry that you wanted to hit Tobio but I will have to punish you once you do something like that again, right?” 

“Hah?! Stop talking about Tobio, y/n-chan!”

“He was a literal baby, Tooru. Actually, if you try and hit any of your underclassmen, I’ll hit you. And there would be no milk bread for a month.”

“HAH?! MILK BREAD?! NO FAIR, Y/N-CHAN!”

“hm? But it’s totally fair, though?”

…

In the end the author completely lied regarding a sentence from earlier.

Actually a few sentences, but that’s besides the point.

There was no ending, no final farewells, just happy beginnings and hopes for the future with a few bags of milk bread.

Because years later, those same exact words were written on a different photograph. However, there wasn’t that much of a difference because it still held a smiling and happy family. But this time, it was you and Tooru, just with an additional baby boy and baby girl.

a/n: i teased you guys too much and im so sorry!!!! but i couldnt resist not giving them a happy ending and i was getting a lot of asks for at least a part 2 so i do what the people wants!!!! now i think i might take a day or two for a break but idk i might end up posting something tomorrow probably

[iliveiloveiwrite]

Running

A/N: Here is my entry for @obsessedwithrandomthings​ 500 followers celebrations! Congratulations Dee! You more than deserve this! The prompt I used is in the summary, but I have also bolded it in the text. Thank you so much for letting me take part! The gif doesn't really match the theme of the fic but I searched ‘running’ and it was the best of them lol. I’m also less than 10 followers away from 800 so this is exciting!! As always, I hope you all enjoy!!

Summary: “Run away with me,” You plead, hands framing his face, “It’ll be worth it.”

Pairing: Remus Lupin x Fem!Reader

Warnings: descriptions of injuries, mentions of death and anxiety, vomit - there is a lot of worry and anxiety in this, so please don't read if you don’t like, but I have tried to wrap it up in a fluffy fashion!!

Word count: 1.5k

Your stomach had been a ball of anxiety all night. Nothing anyone said could dampen the fear that was crawling its way up your throat. Something was going to happen tonight, and it wasn’t going to be good.

Your fears are proven correct when Sirius lands in the hallway, holding up a drastically bleeding Remus. His blood stains his white button-up shirt and drips steadily onto the floor.

The scream is caught in your throat. You look wildly at Sirius, demanding an explanation. Sirius explains quickly; they had been tailed as they were following their own targets. Remus threw himself in front of Sirius to protect him from the Sectumsempra curse.

“I couldn’t take him to St. Mungo’s. I don’t know who works there, but I’ve already called for a Healer I can trust,” Sirius shudders, murmuring the levitation charm straight after, following Remus up the stairs in a hurry.

His blood stains the carpet in the hall and would stain the stairs too, but it was the last thing on your mind as you hurry behind Sirius. Remus is laid on the bed; his face contorted in pain, barely conscious but still aware of the pain lancing through his body.

Wordlessly, you conjure clean towels from the airing cupboard, holding them to the cuts across Remus’ chest and arms. Sirius takes a towel from you, holding it to the wound across his stomach.

The Healer arrives in what seems like hours, but it could have been minutes. Your eyes do not leave Remus as you press towel after towel to his cuts, trying to stem the bleeding despite knowing that nothing but magic would help.

Sirius’ hand on your shoulder has you stepping away from the love of your life, letting the Healer complete his work. Your hands are covered in Remus’ blood; your clothes too, are ruined. You barely make it to the toilet to empty your stomach. Sirius is there, holding your hair back, muttering comforting words to you. You press your forehead to the cold porcelain, trying to take everything in now that the adrenaline was leaving your body, but your brain couldn’t comprehend what you had just been witness to.

You force yourself to stand; pushing down the fresh wave of nausea as you make your way back into the bedroom, to Remus. He lies on the bed; his body entirely healed, but deeply asleep.

“I’ve had to give him a strong sleeping draught. He lost a lot of blood and whilst I was able to heal the injuries, there’s going to be some damage internally. He needs to be asleep for it to heal which, with his lycanthropy, will heal in a few days.”

“How long will he be asleep then?” Sirius asks, learning the information to relay to you later. He knows that at the moment, you would not be listening to word being said. That all of your attention would be focused on the man on your bed, asleep and no longer in any pain.

You refuse to leave his side. They all try to coax you from your room. Sirius promises he’ll stay with him so you can shower, but you refuse. Harry tries his hardest to get you to come downstairs to eat, but it doesn’t work. Instead, he leaves for a moment before coming back with a plate of food. You nibble at it, but the nausea soon returns.

The first day blends seamlessly into the second and there’s no change in Remus. He lies on his side of the bed in clean clothes and clean sheets, sleeping peacefully. You admire him from your spot in the armchair across the room; this would the first time in a long time that Remus had managed to get a solid block of sleep without being interrupted by the order or the lunar cycle. You think it every time but in sleep, you see the Marauder in him. You see the teenager you had fallen in love with one afternoon by the Black Lake. The teenager who had stuttered through asking you out but soon found his confidence once you had accepted.

For years it had been you and Remus. The only survivors of the first wizarding war, Remus claimed though it pained him to say it.

On the third day of your vigil beside the bed, Remus groans before blinking against the bright light of the morning. You’re out of your seat in an instant, lurching to the end of the bed with tears in your eyes. “Remus, you’re awake! How do you feel? Do you need anything?”

“I’m sore, but I’m okay. I don’t need anything right now.”

You sag in relief, “I am so happy you’re awake, dear. That was the most terrifying time of my life.”

“Even more than the time you saw me as a wolf?” Remus tries to joke, but he winces instead.

“This isn’t a joking situation, Remus!” You cry, “Do you remember what happened?”

“I remember being followed and then jumping in front of Sirius and then blinding pain. I passed out then, I think.”

Your hands grip the bedpost at the end of the bed, “Sirius brought you back here and we called in a Healer. You were hit with the Sectumsempra curse and your blood was everywhere, and I couldn’t stop it-” You break off suddenly; your words getting caught in your throat.

The sudden urge to run overwhelms you. Your eyes dart around the room – to the suitcases, to the wardrobes. A plan begins to form in your head; a few more days healing was all that Remus would require before he’s stable enough to apparate. You know of a place where you couldn’t be traced where he could spend a few weeks or so recuperating before you run for real.

The desire to leave it all behind takes over. In that moment, the only thing you could ever want is a longer life with the man lying on the bed in front of you. If this war continued, how long would you have? Optimism in this situation is vitally important but as your eyes return to Remus, running over the war-weary, pale face of the love of your life, all you want is to go.

To go and never look back.

“Run away with me,” You start, rushing to his side, hands framing his face, “It’ll be worth it.”

“Where would we go?” He asks, his eyes bright with possibilities.

“Anywhere – the country, the coast, abroad. Run away with me Remus, before the war swallows us whole.”

“What about the Order? Darling, we can’t leave them.”

“Fuck that, Remus. Look at yourself! You can barely move.” You stand, gesturing to the four walls in which you stand, “These last few days have been my own personal hell; I didn’t know if you were going to wake up. For the first time in my life, I have had to face a possibility of a life without you and I won’t do it. Not again. Run away with me, Remus.” Your eyes are wild as you plead to him, beg to him to consider doing this.

Remus’ eyes search yours, looking for what, you don’t know. You know the minute you’ve lost the battle, and you would be remaining where you are. “We can’t.”

“Why not?” You ask brokenly.

“You won’t leave Harry, love. You’re his godmother – you won’t let him face this war without you, you simply won’t.”

The tears that were previously lining your eyes now overflow onto your cheeks. You look at Remus through watery eyes, not bothering to stem the flow. “You can’t do this to me again, Remus. I will not live in a world that does not have you in it, do you understand?”

“I understand, darling.” Remus holds his hand out for you. You stumble over to him, desperate to touch some part of him. With a light tug, he has you sat next to him on the bed you share. “I’m here now,” he whispers, “I don’t plan on leaving for a long, long time.”

You sniffle, “Good. I didn’t like the look of my life without you.”

“What have I missed then; in the three days I’ve been asleep?”

You look at him, somewhat sheepishly, “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t left this room.”

Remus frowns at you. “Darling, please tell me you’ve eaten and taken care of yourself.”

“I’ve eaten a little, but I didn’t want to leave you and I didn’t want to let anyone look after you.”

“I really did scare you, didn’t I?”

You nod, “Beyond scare, Remus. I couldn’t think straight, I don’t think I’ve thought a coherent thought since Sirius appeared with you in the hall.”

He brings your entwined hands to his lips, pressing kiss after kiss to the back of your hand. “I am so sorry, my love.”

“You don’t need to apologise, Remus. You did nothing wrong.”

“Nevertheless. I am sorry, I didn’t think before throwing myself in front of Sirius, and I should have.”

“You were protecting your best friend.”

Remus shrugs, but winces at the stiffness in his joints, “I will not leave you like that again. The minute I’m out of this bed I’m speaking to Dumbledore, demanding lighter missions. I’m too fond of this life to leave it prematurely.”

Tears start anew as you lie next to the man you so dearly love. Gripping his hand in both of yours, you press it your chest, “I’m too fond of you to let you leave it prematurely.”

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

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[fredweesleyismyslut]

No More Secrets - Tim Drake x reader

A/N:  One of my many interests is reading comic books sometimes and in middle school I got really into the robins and batman, so this is me living out my fantasy of dating my favorite by writing Tim Drake fanfic haha.  Anyways, twas also written at 12am like most of my writings nowadays because apparently I like writing when I’m running on 3 hours of sleep and 2 cups of coffee at night.  So, before I ramble more I’m gonna stop here, so I hope you enjoy this and have a good whatever it is where you live/whenever you’re reading this and if it’s not good it’ll get better!  Byeeeee!

Staring at the clock, it felt as if it was mocking you, ticking the seconds away as you waited for your boyfriend to show.  Muttering under your breath you said to yourself, “Of course he’s a no show.”  You had prepared dinner for him at home, it was your two year anniversary and you had a surprise for him.  Sighing you ran your hand through your hair, looking at your phone the last time that Tim had texted you back, you texted one last time, Hey, babe.  I’m gonna head to bed it’s getting late.  Before he could text back or call you turned your phone off, done for the night, not wanting to be bothered.  Tim Drake, your boyfriend, was somehow always busy and missed all your dates, and now he’s missed your anniversary.  It wouldn’t have been a big deal if it wasn’t for the fact that, yet again, he’s missed more than half the dates you’ve ever been on.  I mean you probably hang out with his brothers more than he hangs out with you.  You can count more than once that Dick, his older brother, had come out and eaten dinner with you instead because you had made reservations and Tim couldn’t make it.  Groaning you stretched, allowing the air to be released from your joints as you stood up and ignored the dishing, promising yourself you would wash them the next morning.  

The next morning, you heard the doorbell ringing, someone was nonstop ringing the bell as you finally jolted from the bed, “I’m coming, I’m coming!”  Opening the door, you questioned, “Why are you ringing the doorbell like a madman at 6am?!”  Wiping the grogginess from your eyes, you focused, “Oh, Tim.  Hey, what’s up?”  You stood at the door, as you continued, “I thought it was the kids next door, they usually come over for breakfast since their mom leaves early.”  He nodded as he shuffled his hands together, as he smiled softly, “Can I come in?”  You nodded, moving aside, as he walked past you, “I’m sorry.” was the first thing that came out of his mouth as soon as he made it in, “I didn’t mean to ditch you last night, I was-”  You cut him off quickly, eyes shooting holes into him, you swear if looks could kill...he’d already be dead.  “Oh, let me guess, you were busy, just like every other time.”  You scoffed softly, as you went over to get water, “Let me guess again, you bailed because last-minute your neighbor’s house burned down and you had to go save everyone?”  Tim frowned softly,  “Y/n, baby, I promise it’ll never happen again.”  You rolled your eyes softly, “Don’t make promises you can’t keep Timmy.”  His hand reached for yours as you quickly pulled away, as if his hand was made from fire, “Be honest with me Tim, are you just not interested anymore?”  you moved to the far corner and crossed your arms over your chest as if protecting your heart from hurt, “In the two years we’ve been together I can count maybe three times that we’ve had a date where you didn’t bail last minute.  I mean what is going on, did you just have fun playing with me?”  Tim’s face turned into one of appalling, “I would never y/n, you know that.”  “Do I?  Honestly, at this point I don’t know whether I’m dating you or your brothers.  I’ve been on more dates with them where they haven’t bailed than dates with you.”  Tim opened his mouth to reply but quickly closed it, instead walking closer, “Darling, please, just listen.”  You flinched at his touch, as you pulled away, trying to keep your voice in control you took a deep breath.  “Did you ever even love me, Tim?”  He flinched at those words as his voice took on a pleading tone, “Babe, you mean the world to me you know that.  Please don’t do this.”  You shook your head, “I can’t do this anymore.  This whole wondering if you love me, wondering if you’re not showing up because I’m not enough.”  You choked back a sob as you pointed to the door, “Get out.”  Tim tried to step closer before you shouted, “Get the hell out, Drake!”  His face clouded with hurt at your words and the use of his last name, as he slowly walked out, but before he did he left a small box on the counter.  You walked up to it slowly, opening it to find a necklace with a ring attached to it.  You felt tears sting your eyes as you quickly went to calm your thoughts before work.

After work, you were walking back home when you heard a child crying in one of the alleys.  You thought to yourself, Maybe someone else will help…, but as you thought that guilt crept into your head and you quickly turned around heading in the direction of the sound.  Was it an incredibly stupid idea to go into an alley in Gotham, especially by yourself, yes but if there really was a child in need you had to help.  Quickly rounding the corner, you looked around not seeing a child anywhere, “What the hell….” you muttered to yourself as you walked in deeper.  Breath quickening as you stepped further in, you felt a sharp sting in the back of your head as your knees buckled.  Your head stung and you felt something trickling down the back of your head, ears ringing and vision going fuzzy.  You looked up, seeing a large man standing over you with a bat in his hand, “Told ya it’d lure her in…” he said, looking at someone in the corner, as a voice responded, “Couldn’t help yourself huh?  You just had to be a hero.”  Wincing at the pain in your head, you tried to say something but all that left your mouth was a pained groan, as the man atop you was about to grab your shoulder something whizzed past your vision as the man whirled around shouting in pain.  Whatever it was, it had grazed his arm and he was bleeding slightly, as he glanced around, holding his bat tightly.  From somewhere behind you there was a loud thud as the man in front of you yelled, “Hey, who are you?!”  A figure dressed in red ran past you as the two started fighting.  The one in the red suit was gliding around as if he was a butterfly, gracefully avoiding the man’s blows, and throwing his own blows that hit the man each time. 

 Soon, the fight was over as the one in the red suit hit the man with a final blow, kicking his bat out of his hand and knocking him out.  “You okay?” he asked, voice quite familiar to your ears, as he walked up, “You really shouldn’t be walking around in alleys by yourself, especially not in Gotham.”  You groaned, trying to sit up, “I- There- I know.  It was stupid.”  He held his hand out as you accepted, pulling you up with ease, he looked at you.  Finally, uncomfortable from the gaze you broke first, “Ummmm...thank you for that.  I’m sure you get that a lot since, y’know, I’m assuming you do this every day, but seriously...thanks”  He nodded mouth sliding into a tight line as he seemed to be considering something, “Do you want me to take you home, miss?”  You were about to decline but felt your knees wobble slightly, “I’ll take that as a yes?  I don’t think you’ll make it home without falling on your pretty face.”  You smiled softly, “Are you flirting with me?”  “I’m trying.  Is it working?”  Chuckling softly you smiled, as a slight frown replaced it quickly, “I have a boyfriend...sorry.”  The man nodded, “I figured….pretty girl like you.”  Laughing you smiled, “We’re actually having kind of a fight right now…”  you glanced up at him, frown deepening, “I said some harsh stuff to him that I didn’t mean...I’m only saying this to you because we’ll probably never see each other again or at least hopefully not I would prefer to not have my life needing saving every day.”  He smiled, “That would definitely be preferable.  If I had to save you more than three times I would call it fate at that point.”  He was holding you tightly as he swept from rooftops using his grappling hooks or whatever it was called, “Do you believe in fate?” you asked, keeping your eyes on his face, too afraid to glace down.  “I’m not sure...Do you?”  “Avoiding the question huh?  Well...I thought I did.  I think I thought fate brought me and boyfriend together...y’know that whole true love and soulmate mumbo jumbo the whole deal.”  Laughing at yourself you continued, “I just...I really loved him and I don’t think he felt the same.  I was always second most important to whatever it was he did in his free time.  All the secrets just became too much...does that make me selfish?”  The vigilante shook his head, “I think it makes you honest.  You deserve someone who puts you first...someone who doesn’t keep his life a secret from you.”  

A couple more minutes and you had arrived at your balcony, “Thanks, for everything tonight and the free therapy session.” you smiled, as he set you down.  “No problem, y/n.”  You turned around quickly at the mention of your name, “How do you know my name?” you questioned, maybe I let it slip? You thought but you were pretty sure you hadn’t even said your name once, then the idea that his voice sounded familiar set in.  “I-uh…” he muttered as you slowly walked up, placing your hand on his cheek, “Tim?  Is it you?” you asked gently, as your hand crept up to the edge of his mask, “Can I?”  He nodded softly, as you pulled it away, “It is you.  I would recognize your voice anywhere.”  Tim shuffled awkwardly as he glanced at his feet, charisma from two minutes ago gone now that the mask was off.  Then another thought set in, “Were you following me?” you questioned eyes slanting slightly. Tim’s eyes widened as he replied, “You’re missing the big picture here...I kinda saved you...”  You laughed slightly as you punched his chest, “I’m messing with you...although I am kind of embarrassed that I complained about you to y’know...you.”  Tim smiled softly, “Nothing you said was wrong though... This-” he said as he gestured to himself, “Is a big part of who I am, and I kept it from you it was unfair, especially after two years of you being patient every time I bailed.”  He stepped closer, closing the gap as he held your chin, “You deserve to know about this part of me.  You mean everything to me y/n y/l/n, I love you.”  You leaned into his touch as you smiled softly, as he continued, “I promise I’ll never keep a big secret like this from you again...I just didn’t want to put you in danger and didn’t realize I was hurting you more by keeping you away.  If you will, I’d like to make it up to you, maybe dinner tomorrow?”  You nodded softly, as you placed a kiss to his cheek, “I’m glad you came to your senses and just so we’re clear you keep things this big from me again then Gotham’s safety will be the least of your worries, Timothy.”  He gulped slightly, as he muttered, “Okay, I promise, no secrets especially not big ones.”  Then you grabbed his shoulders pulling him down to your height, “How bout you start making it up to tonight?  I think Gotham can wait for one night…”  Tim grinned cheekily as he pressed his lips to yours, “I’m sure Bruce won’t mind.”  You pulled away quickly, “Wait, Bruce, as in Wayne, as in your father?  He’s Batman?!”  You realized then that your world was about to get a lot more interesting and your homework was going to be the least of your worries when your boyfriend and his family were vigilantes by night.