#be put in the vault beneath

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like real people do.

“There’s something going on,” he says. “A chain of robberies, not random. It’s clean, professional—in and out in under four minutes. I’ve been watching them hit warehouses all across Marmoreal. Whatever they’re after, it’s coordinated. And I can’t keep up on my own.”

ɷ pairing. spider-man!phainon x detective!fem!reader ɷ contains. romance, angst, action, smut (oral sex, fingering), slowburn, spider-man!au, detective!au, mild enemies to lovers!au. profanity, injuries, blood, violence, mentions of drug abuse & human experimentation, etc. ɷ word count. 19.5k

Phainon thinks he’s a pretty good guy.

Okay, maybe not, like, great. He’s not out here winning humanitarian awards or remembering to replace the Brita filter before it turns green. But still. He flosses most nights, and tips well on the rare occasions he orders pizza for dinner. He saves cats from trees, catches robbers in the middle of getaway attempts, and makes a decent grilled cheese when the mood strikes. In the grand cosmic scale of morality, he figures that puts him somewhere between a broke college student and a D-list superhero with a heart of gold. 

Which is why, as he’s currently being pursued across rooftops by New Okhema’s most persistent detective, Phainon feels the situation is a little unfair.

“I don’t deserve to be chased like this!” he yells over his shoulder, breaths short, voice muffled through his mask as he narrowly avoids tripping over a pipe. “I’m a pretty good guy!”

The boots pounding behind him don’t slow. “You’re obstructing justice!”

“You’re harassing a concerned citizen!”

He vaults over a low vent and instantly regrets it, the rooftop pitching sideways beneath him as he skids and catches himself just in time to avoid faceplanting into a rusted-out AC unit. Graceful. So graceful. Just like the comics. His heart’s doing the worst kind of cardio in his chest, the kind that feels like guilt and adrenaline and that specific brand of dread that only ever shows up when you’re behind him.

Because if there’s one thing Phainon’s sure of, it’s this: you hate him.

Maybe not, like, hate-hate. Maybe not enough to tase him out of the sky. But enough to chase him across rooftops with the hopes of finally arresting him for good. 

He can live with that. He’s been hated before. (He just wishes it didn’t make him kind of want your approval.)

“You’re breaking at least three laws just by standing there!” you shout as he swings up and over the next building.

“That’s slander!” Phainon shouts back. “I counted two!”

You’re getting closer. He can hear it in your voice—less winded than his, more focused. He’s not sure if he’s impressed or terrified. Probably both.

“Do you ever take a break?” you snap as you land behind him with a clean, practiced roll.

Phainon whirls around, arms raised. “Do you ever let anyone live?”

Your eyes narrow like you’re imagining the paperwork it would take to make his disappearance look like an accident. 

“Okay, okay! Truce! Five minutes.” He backs up, hands still in the air. “No chasing or tasers. Please.”

You don’t answer, which means you’re at least considering it. He’s getting good at reading your silences, which is probably not a good thing. He should stop doing that. He should stop noticing things about you at all—like how you always pull your sleeves down when you’re thinking, or how you furrow your eyebrows when you’re about to disagree with someone but don’t want to start a fight.

“Look,” he says, tone dropping, just a bit. “This isn’t about me dodging patrol or stealing snacks from that convenience store on 14th Street—”

“You stole—”

“Borrowed,” he corrects quickly. “With intent to pay.”

You stare at him. The wind rustles your coat. Somewhere, a siren wails and dies out.

“There’s something going on,” he says. “A chain of robberies, not random. It’s clean, professional—in and out in under four minutes. I’ve been watching them hit warehouses all across Marmoreal. Whatever they’re after, it’s coordinated. And I can’t keep up on my own.”

He expects you to laugh. Or roll your eyes. Or say something sharp and cutting that’ll make his stomach twist in that way he hates—because you’re usually right.

“I think they’re watching me,” he adds, quieter now. “I think someone knows who I am.”

The wind blows sharp across the rooftop, carrying the tang of rain and smoke and summer dust. It scrapes over the worn brick under Phainon’s boots and rustles your coat, but you don’t move. You just look at him, your face unreadable in the way that always makes his stomach knot a little too tight. It’s the kind of stillness that unnerves him—not because he doesn’t know what you’re thinking, but because he wants to. More than he should. Phainon’s chest rises and falls, just a little too fast.

“That’s a bold claim,” you say slowly.

Yeah. He knows. He also knows you’re not brushing him off, which is scarier than if you had. You’re listening, evaluating. That furrow between your brows is your tell—he’s seen it before, in passing shadows and glimpses from across precinct crime scenes. The way you tilt your head slightly to the left when you’re filing pieces together in real time.

“You have proof?” you ask.

Phainon knows you won’t move without proof—not a whisper, not a theory, not a gut feeling scraped together from caffeine and paranoia. But he doesn’t have clean lines or neat bullet points. What he has is scraps; disconnected threads; a slowly closing hand around the back of his neck every time he turns a corner too sharp. And that feeling—that awful, skin-tight certainty—that something out there has started moving towards him, not away.

“I don’t have anything concrete, but… I’ve been tracking the hits since the first one three weeks ago,” he says, starting to pace now, in small, tight circles, just enough movement to bleed out some of the nervous energy crawling up his spine. “They’re too clean. Like, unrealistically clean. No alarms triggered, no broken doors, no fingerprints. They even bypassed the retinal scanner at one of the biotech labs. Who does that? And for what? They’re not stealing cash or valuables. They’re taking very specific things—equipment, hard drives, chemical canisters.”

“Show me,” you say. Your eyes don’t leave his face. (Well, the mask. But he swears you’re looking through it.)

He blinks. “What?”

You cross your arms. “The footage. The files. Whatever you’ve got. If you’re serious about this, I need to see everything.”

“Oh.” Phainon’s voice pitches up an octave in surprise. “Cool. Okay. Should we, like, grab dinner? I know a good deli down at Kephale Plaza. Best dill pickle sandwiches on this side of Okhema.”

Phainon didn’t lie. Chartonus’ Deli, tucked between a laundromat and a building that’s had a For Sale sign tacked onto the door for fourteen years, does serve the best dill pickle sandwiches in New Okhema City. The fluorescent sign above the deli flickers intermittently—CHART NUS’ on a bad night, HARTONUS DEL when it’s feeling generous—and the inside smells like mustard, old fryer oil, and vinegar.

He’s perched in the booth furthest from the window, under a buzzing ceiling light that flickers every now and then. The vinyl seat squeaks every time he shifts, and the table has a wobble. There’s duct tape across the far corner of the laminate, and someone—possibly Chartonus himself—has carved NO CRYING IN THE DELI into the tabletop.

Phainon has his mask pulled up just past his nose, letting the cool air hit the sweat still clinging to his neck. His hair’s damp, and there’s a tear in the seam of his left glove he only just now noticed. His sandwich is halfway demolished, crumbs gathering on the dark fabric of his suit, pickle juice already soaking into the paper wrapper.

He looks across the table at you. You’re the only person in here not eating, only sipping from a chipped ceramic mug of what Chartonus had claimed was coffee with a shrug. Your coat’s slung over the back of your seat, and your badge is tucked out of sight, but everything about you still screams cop—straight spine, steady eyes, the way your fingers twitch every time the door jingles.

“I told you,” Phainon says around a mouthful of rye and mustard. “Best sandwich in the city.”

“This is where you wanted to debrief?”

He shrugs. “They know my order here.”

You roll your eyes and pull the folder Phainon had handed you on the rooftop from your bag, placing it on the table between you. “You said these started three weeks ago?” you ask, flipping it open.

Phainon nods, brushing crumbs off the table. “Warehouse on Little Thorn. Then a lab two nights later. Then another warehouse. Then the lab again, but a different wing. They’re hitting specific targets, looping back, almost like they’re refining their technique.”

You glance up. “Any pattern to what they’re taking?”

“That’s the thing.” He leans in, placing his half-eaten sandwich on the paper wrapper. “It’s weirdly… modular. Like, they’re not emptying vaults or swiping entire systems. They’re taking parts. Pieces. Very specific ones.”

He slides a finger across one of the printouts. It’s a manifest list from the Little Thorn warehouse, half the lines redacted, but a few still visible.

Carbon-neutral polymer casings

Fiber-optic microarrays

Refrigerated storage containers, Class III

Unknown compound, biohazard sealed

“Doesn’t scream smash-and-grab,” you say, studying the list.

“Exactly. This is purposeful.”

You turn another page. “The cameras—”

“Looped,” Phainon says. “Every time. Not just disabled. The footage looks uninterrupted, except for this weird flicker—like it skips half a second. But the timestamps don’t change.”

You sit back in your seat, fingers drumming on the edge of the table. He watches you think—sees the line between your brows deepen, the way you press your lips together when something doesn’t add up. He likes watching you think. That’s a problem.

“Do you think they’re testing something?” you ask. “Or building it?”

“That’s what I was hoping you’d help me figure out. Detective Brain and Spider Legs. The dream team.”

“Never say that again.”

He gives you a one-shouldered shrug and returns to his sandwich. “Can’t make promises I don’t intend to keep.”

You shake your head and go quiet again, flipping slowly through the rest of the folder. Pages rustle under your hands. The old man behind the counter mutters something unintelligible to the deep fryer. Outsider, a police cruiser drives by without slowing.

When you speak again, your voice is lower. “You said you think someone’s watching you.”

Phainon freezes with a piece of pickle halfway to his mouth. Slowly, he lowers it back to the wrapper. “I don’t think,” he says. “I know.”

You look up.

“Two nights ago, I was tailing one of their runners. Lost him. That should’ve been the end of it, except when I got home…” He hesitates. “My apartment’s locked down. Triple bolted, windows sealed, motion sensors in every hallway. And yet, my closet door was cracked. My spare suit was missing. Nothing else.”

Your expression hardens. “Did you call it in?”

He snorts. “Yeah, sure. Hello, 911, someone stole my crime-fighting spandex, I think I’m being haunted by a bunch of dudes with attitude problems.”

You don’t laugh.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “Deflection. I know.”

“You should’ve told someone sooner,” you say sharply. “If someone has your gear, they might have access to your—”

“They won’t,” he cuts in. “The tech’s locked down. Biometric, failsafes, the works. But it means they were inside. Not watching from across the street. Inside. And that… that’s not normal.”

You nod. “You think it’s connected to the thefts.”

“I think I’ve been getting too close,” he says, quieter now. “And someone wants me out of the way.”

You lean forward, resting your elbows on the table. The cracked TV in the corner flickers, playing a rerun of some late-night court drama with the volume turned down low. A door slams shut somewhere in the back. The deli is empty now except for you two.

“Then we need to get closer,” you say.

Phainon blinks. “Wait—we?”

“This is serious,” you say simply. “And if someone’s watching you, they might come for me next. This is bigger than your usual masked hero antics, Spider-Man. So, yeah. We.”

He’s staring again. He knows he is. He should probably say something witty or obnoxious, but his throat’s dry and his heart’s doing that thing again. “Cool,” he says finally, and it comes out a little too quiet. “Cool cool cool cool cool.”

You push the folder back towards him, then stand and grab your coat off the back of the chair. “Tomorrow night,” you say. “Bring everything else you’ve got. We set up a timeline, match it to police records. I want this mapped out by morning.”

He gives a mock salute. “Aye aye, Captain.”

You pause at the door, just long enough to glance over your shoulder. “Wash your suit,” you say. “You smell like mustard.”

The bell jingles as the door swings shut behind you. Phainon stays in the booth for a while, finishing his sandwich in silence. The TV buzzes in the corner. The ceiling light blinks once, then steadies.

The alley off Cortland Street feels shadier than it is in the almost-darkness. Every step Phainon takes echoes just a little too sharply off the damp brick walls, the soles of his boots scraping against cracked pavement slick from the afternoon rain. The air is thick with the tang of gasoline, rotting leaves, and whatever chemical sludge is leaking from the storm drain at the corner. It’s the kind of place you walk faster through on instinct, even if you’ve got super reflexes and unnatural strength.

But for once, he’s early.

The wall behind him is papered with maps: big ones, small ones, some he stole from news kiosks and the city library, others he scrawled himself in the middle of the night, half-asleep and hunched over his kitchen counter with a sharpie in his mouth. He’s patched them together like a spiderweb, the red and black marker lines bleeding over each other, looping through neighbourhoods and dead ends. It’s messy, barely legible in some places, but it serves its purpose.

He shifts on the overturned milk crate he’s using as a seat and pulls his mask halfway up to breathe properly. The flickering streetlight above him hums like a dying bee. There’s a smear of mustard on his glove from the sandwich last night. He tries not to think about how long it’s been since he’s properly showered.

He hates waiting. But he’d never admit that he’s anxious. Especially not for you.

Your footsteps break the quiet—sharp, sure, even. The same way they always sound when you’re walking up behind him like you’re about to read him his Miranda rights.

He doesn’t turn around immediately. That would be too obvious. Too eager. “I was starting to think you ditched,” he says instead, flipping a page in the notebook balanced on his knee.

“You said nine,” you answer. “It’s eight fifty-nine.”

He smiles, just a little. Can’t help it. “Wow. A punctual cop.”

You walk past him, wordless, and he catches the faint scent of your shampoo—clean, sharp, maybe citrus? (He needs to stop.) 

You step up to the wall of maps, arms crossed. The light glints off the corner of your badge, half-tucked beneath your jacket. You tilt your head to the side, the same way you always do when you’re processing too many things at once. God, he’s noticed that too many times.

“This is a mess,” you say flatly.

“Organised chaos,” he corrects.

You shoot him a look, then kneel to examine the clustered marks around Marmoreal’s industrial sector. Your fingers trace a wide red loop that sounds four separate Xs.

Phainon hops down from his crate and joins you, dropping into a crouch beside you. “Those are the first confirmed break-ins. They form a pretty clear arc if you connect the dots. Started on the western edge. They’re moving clockwise.”

“So whatever they’re after is in the centre,” you muse.

“Bingo,” he says, tapping the innermost circle. “And guess what’s smack-dab in the middle of the whole thing?” 

He holds up a photo of a nondescript warehouse, overgrown with weeds, one wall tagged in massive purple spray paint that says I HATE BEES. It’s ugly. You frown and say, “That place?”

Phainon nods. “Used to be a government R&D site during the old tech boom, but it was supposedly shut down after an acid leak took out the foundation. Now it’s just a lot with a locked fence and shit ton of asbestos.”

“Why hasn’t anyone investigated it?”

“Because it’s boring,” he says. “There’s no power running to it. No reported disturbances. No reason for patrol to bother. But if you dig deeper—like, old permit records and city zoning logs—there’s a basement that’s sealed off. No blueprint access since 2013.”

Your silence stretches. Phainon watches the gears turning in your head and realises—again, and with an unfortunate amount of clarity—that he likes watching you think. He really, really shouldn’t.

“So they’re not just building something,” you say. “They’re hiding it.”

“Or staging it.”

“We’ll split up,” you say. “Tonight. You take the chemical plant on Fifth. I’ll hit the battery storage facility near the docks. If either of them gets hit, we regroup.”

“Copy that,” he says lightly, brushing the dust off his gloved palms as he stands beside you. “Though I think you just want to get rid of me.”

“I want to get results,” you correct, already scanning the nearest cluster of notes on the map again. “And we’ll cover more ground this way.”

Fair, rational, efficient. So typically you. Phainon swallows down the inexplicable disappointment in his throat and tries to focus. “The chemical plant’s been shut down since the fires in March, but I’ve seen movement there—shadows mostly, heat signatures. And one of the power boxes was tampered with last week. Could just be squatters, but…”

“But this group doesn’t leave power boxes half-cut,” you finish, glancing at him. “They don’t miss steps.”

Exactly. He doesn’t say it out loud, but the tension in his shoulders eases a little. You’re starting to see what he sees. 

You turn back to the wall, fingers brushing one of the maps again, slower this time. Your brows are furrowed, the crease between them deeper than usual. “I’ll have to log this in quietly. My team’s not going to love me going off-grid again.”

“Your team doesn’t know you’re chasing me around rooftops?”

“They know. They just don’t know why,” you say. “Which is probably for the best.”

He huffs out a half-laugh, kicking lightly at the cracked asphalt near your foot. “Flattered.”

“You shouldn’t be.”

“Still. Thanks for not turning me in.”

You shrug. “You haven’t made it worth my while yet.”

He wants to tease you for that. Wants to say something dumb and stupid about buying you a terrible coffee from a 24-hour diner or bribing you with Chartonus’ sandwiches, but instead, he asks, “You have a burner?”

You nod. Phainon reaches into one of the hidden pouches sewn inside his suit—past the web cartridges, the crumpled snack wrapper, the broken-off pen cap he meant to throw away yesterday—and pulls out his own cracked phone. The screen’s a mess of spiderwebbed lines, the plastic casing half melted at the edges from some accident involving an exploding rooftop generator last week.

You raise your brows. “That’s a phone?”

“Technically,” he says, unlocking it with a swipe and opening a new contact. “Give me your number. I’ll send coordinates if I catch anything tonight.”

You rattle off a sequence of numbers, and add, “Burner ends in zero-nine. Don’t call me unless it’s urgent.”

“Define urgent.”

“Explosion. Gunfire. Alien invasion.”

“So… brunch?”

Phainon’s lucky day starts with a pigeon dive-bombing his head, continues with a missed web shot that sends him careening into a fire escape, and somehow still manages to improve—because you said yes to brunch with him. 

Or, well, with Spider-Man, which is still him, but in that weird, glass-wall kind of way. You don’t know what he looks like beneath the mask, don’t know his name, his address, his real voice, or the fact that he thought he was going to be late because he tried to hand-sew a rip in his suit and pricked his thumb seventeen times.

He tries not to make a big deal out of it. He really does. But the truth is, it’s been 36 hours since the last robbery attempt, he hasn’t been chased across a rooftop in at least two days, and now you’re sitting across from him at a sunlit table in a tucked-away café where the chairs don’t match and the menus are handwritten in cursive chalk. (And you ordered pancakes. That alone feels like a sign from the universe.)

Phainon takes a sip of his burnt espresso, after pulling his mask up to let it rest on the bridge of his nose. He leans back in his chair, letting the sounds of the café fill the silence—coffee machines hissing, silverware clinking, someone arguing gently in French at the counter. It’s the kind of place that feels too warm for a conversation about conspiracy rings and illegal tech trade, which is probably why he chose it. Something about soft pancakes makes even the worst theories easier to digest.

You flip through a manila folder with highlighter streaks and dog-eared corners, diagrams of circuits, and what look like stolen security camera stills, all stacked and filed with precision. He’s seen you interrogate a guy in less than five words before. Watching you cut a pancake with that same level of intensity is kind of terrifying.

Also: kind of hot. But that’s not relevant.

“So,” he says, because the silence is beginning to grate at him, “have I won you over with my sparkling personality yet, or are you still planning to arrest me after this?”

You hum and reach for the syrup. “I can’t decide if you’re more irritating in daylight or when you’re dangling upside down on a fire escape at 2 a.m.”

Phainon takes a sip of espresso, squinting through the bitter taste. “Why not both?”

You glare at him.

“I’m trying to be helpful,” he says, quieter now. He leans in a little, lowering his voice in case someone’s listening. “I know I’m not the most traditional source, and I’m aware I’m breaking, like, a thousand chain-of-command rules just by talking to you, but I’ve been watching these people for weeks. And I’ve never seen anything like this. They’re too clean. Too prepared.”

You nod. He can tell you’ve already connected the dots. You’ve probably connected ten more he hasn’t even noticed yet. Your eyes are sharp, alert, focused in that laser-sight kind of way that makes his skin itch under the mask.

“I went by the Marmoreal site last night,” you say. “Didn’t go in, though—just circled. But there was movement in the back. A truck with no license plate.”

“Same model from the Fourth Street hit?”

“Couldn’t see,” you admit. “But the sound was the same. The engine was too quiet to be local, so it was clearly modified.”

Phainon exhales slowly. “So they’re still active.”

“Very.” You stab at a piece of pancake and glance up at him. “You sleep at all?”

“...No,” he mutters, sheepish. “But I took a power name at a bus stop for twenty-seven minutes and dreamed I was being eaten by a vending machine, so that counts.”

“Healthy,” you deadpan.

He shrugs. “You’re one to talk. When was the last time you took a break that wasn’t… this?”

“I’m not the one with a possible concussion and jam on my mask.”

“I like jam,” Phainon says.

You shake your head, but he catches the faintest hint of amusement in your face, quickly hidden behind your coffee cup. He doesn’t say anything; just watches as you lean back in your chair, face finally relaxing into something that looks a little less like a detective building a case and a little more like a person enjoying a few minutes of peace.

That’s when it hits him: this is the first time he’s seen you still. Not mid-chase, not interrogating, not tearing through evidence. Just you, and pancakes, and a soft patch of sunlight warming your sleeve.

He’s in so much trouble.

You glance at him, then, like you can feel it. “What?”

“Nothing,” he says quickly, fiddling with a sugar packet. “Just thinking.”

You narrow your eyes. “Dangerous.”

“Extremely.”

“Why’d you bring me here?”

He looks up. “What?”

“This café. It’s nice. Quiet. You could’ve picked anywhere.”

Phainon hesitates. He wants to say it’s because it’s his favourite. Because the coffee’s bad but the people are nice. Because the chairs don’t match and the chalkboard menus always misspell something. Because it feels safe. Because maybe, somewhere in the back of his idiotic brain, he wanted you to like it.

Instead, he shrugs and says, “Thought you’d appreciate the pancakes.”You study him for a second longer. Then, finally, finally, you smile. “Don’t make a habit of being right, Spider-Man,” you say, spearing another bite.

It turns out that Phainon’s theory is, horrifically, right. 

One week. That’s all it takes.

Seven days of split patrols and encrypted texts, of cataloguing movement and double-checking routes, of scribbling half-mad notes in the margins of maps and losing sleep trying to figure out what the connection is. He’d hoped, stupidly, that the quiet meant progress. That maybe, maybe they’d spooked whoever was behind it. That maybe the worst thing waiting for him that week would be another broken web-shooter or a pigeon with a vendetta.

[22:41] Detective Brain: Battery storage facility. Crossfire. I’m okay.

You’re okay. That should be enough. It should settle the spike of cold panic in his chest, should anchor him where he stands, balancing on the lip of a lamppost on 39th Street. But he rereads it again. Then again.

His fingers tighten around the edge of the lamp. The city breathes below him, neon-drenched and unaware. Somewhere in the distance, a police siren howls. Closer, a car door slams and someone yells about a parking ticket.

Phainon jumps.

The wind is sharp against his skin as he swings, the air slapping his cheeks even through his mask. He’s faster than usual—more desperate than smooth. It’s a graceless sprint across rooftops, the kind that leaves him barely clearing ledges, boots skimming waterlogged gutters, lungs burning. He doesn’t know if you’re hurt. You said you’re okay, but “okay” is such a vague, terrible word when it comes from someone who faces dangerous situations for a living.

The warehouse by the docks comes into view fast, hulking and silent beneath the sodium lights. There’s a scorch mark across the landing bay door, the acrid scent of melted insulation still curling up into the air. Two squad cars are parked askew outside the chain link fence, but the cops are gone, or inside, or too distracted to notice the figure scrambling onto the roof with shaking hands.

Phainon crouches low and peers through the skylight.

You’re inside, standing near a bank of empty battery casings and shattered glass, a radio pressed to your shoulder. You’re not limping. No visible blood. His heart slows half a beat. He taps lightly on the glass. You look up fast, instinctive, already half-reaching for your weapon before you register him. Your eyes narrow, but only briefly. Then you jerk your chin towards the fire escape.

He meets you on the second floor, slipping in through a side window. You’re alone in the room, save for the mess of forensic markers, scorch marks, and the bitter ozone of post-explosion cleanup.

“I’m fine,” you say, even before he can speak.

“You’re not fine,” he snaps, more sharply than he means to. “You said crossfire. That’s not, like, a stubbed toe.”

“It wasn’t aimed at me.”

“That doesn’t help!”

He hears his own voice—too loud, too worried, echoing off concrete—and he turns away before you can see the guilt settling between his shoulders. He runs a hand over his head, dragging his glove against his scalp like he could rub the fear out through friction alone.

You step closer. Your boots crunch over a piece of broken casing. “Spider-Man—”

“What happened?” he cuts in. He needs to focus, needs to understand it before he spirals into full-blown panic. “Walk me through it.”

You sigh, but nod. “I was watching the south entrance. Nothing for over two hours. Then, just past ten, the sensors I set up on the west wall tripped. I saw three figures, all masked. One of them had a disruptor—fried the cameras before we could catch a clear face.”

“Lithium?”

“Gone,” you confirm. “They knew exactly where to go. They broke open the storage lock, took one unit, and left the others untouched.”

“Only one?”

“One. And Spider-Man—” your eyes meet his again, steady now, serious—“they weren’t just fast. They know how to fight. They looked trained for this kind of shit.”

He exhales through gritted teeth. “You think they’re building something.”

“I think they already have,” you say grimly. “And they’re just waiting for the right battery to turn it on.”

Phainon shifts his weight and finally asks the question that’s been sticking in his throat like a splinter. “Did they see you?”

“I—I don’t know. Maybe,” you say.

“Maybe?” His voice rises again.

“I lost one in the dark. I think they doubled back. I’m not sure.”

Phainon wants to scream. Or punch something. Or grab you and teleport you somewhere far away where no one has disruptors and no one bleeds on cold warehouse floors. But he can’t do any of that. He can only stand there, vibrating with a kind of fear he doesn’t have the vocabulary for.

“I should have been there,” he mutters.

“You were across the city.”

“That’s not an excuse.”

You step into his space, close enough that he can hear your breath. “Spider-Man. Stop. I’m not dead.”

“Yet,” he says.

“I’ve been trained for this,” you say. “I know how to handle myself.”

He doesn’t doubt that. Not even for a second. But he also knows what it feels like to arrive too late, to find a scene that’s already stained with the blood of his loved ones. He drags a hand down his face. “You need backup.”

“I’ve got it,” you say, your voice firm. “I’ve got you.”

It’s not meant to do what it does, but those words dig into him deeper than any bullet could. He stares at you for a beat too long, every possible response crashing into each other like waves in his skull.

Finally, he says, quietly, “Yeah. You do. Can I take you home?”

Phainon expects you to disagree. Instead, you let your shoulders slump with relief, and say, “Yes, please.”

The wind cuts sharp along the docks when he leads you out, the air heavy with the smell of brine, old smoke, and burnt copper. There’s a metallic haze still lingering over the scene, but you don’t flinch from it. You walk steadily beside him, chin up, even if your hand hovers just a little closer to your holster than usual. He doesn’t miss that.

The streets are quieter now. Most of the cops have cleared out. A few plainclothes agents hang back to assess the scene, but they barely glance up when he web-slings both of you onto the nearest rooftop—low enough to keep out of view, high enough to get some space from the mess below. You don’t complain. You never do. Even now, when your knees must ache from crouching in dark corners, when your head probably pounds from the tension of nearly being caught in open fire, you simply follow him, like it’s normal. Like you trust him.

Phainon keeps his hold light but steady around your waist, one hand braced just beneath your elbow. You’re warmer than he expects, heat leaking through your jacket into his gloves. Every time he moves—shoots a string of webs, pulls you forward, steadies your landing—he feels you adjust to match him. Fluid. Familiar. (He shouldn’t like that as much as he does.)

Your building’s only three blocks away, and you whisper the directions into his ear. Phainon doesn’t want to rush it. He doesn’t want to leave you alone, not yet—not while your jaw is still set a little too tight and the adrenaline hasn’t fully drained from your bones.

When he finally lands on your fire escape, he lets go reluctantly.

You ease away from him, brushing your hair back, your expression unreadable as always. “You don’t have to walk me all the way up.”

“I know,” he says, already crouched on the rail. “I just… wanted to be sure.”

“Thanks.”

He nods and tries to act casual. Tries not to stare too hard at the soft light spilling out of your apartment window, or the way your fingers fidget at your sides like you’re still half in the fight. He wants to ask if you’re okay again, wants to tell you that the word “crossfire” nearly gave him a heart attack. But you’re already halfway to the window, unlocking it and ducking through the frame.

“Spider-Man?” you say, just before you disappear inside.

“Yeah?”

“Do you, uh, want to come inside?”

He blinks. Of all the possibilities that had been ricocheting around in his head—“stay safe,” or “thanks for the ride,” or “you’re worrying too much”—this had not made the cut. Not even close.

It stalls him, mid-perch, one gloved hand gripping the rusted iron railing of the fire escape, the other resting loosely on his knee. The mask hides his face, but he’s pretty sure his surprise is obvious anyway, just in the way his breath catches or how still he suddenly goes.

Your silhouette is soft in the glow of your apartment’s light. You’ve already kicked off your boots inside the window, standing barefoot on the wooden floorboards, one hand holding the window open, the other resting lightly on the frame.

“I mean,” you say after a second, brows furrowed. “Only if you want to. You don’t have to or anything. You probably have rooftops to gallivant across and—”

“I want to,” he says quickly, too quickly. Then he clears his throat and tries again. “I mean—yeah. If you’re okay with it.”

Your mouth curves, not quite into a smile, but something close enough to make something twist behind his ribs. “You literally carried me three blocks through the air. I think we’re past the point of stranger danger.”

He huffs out a short laugh and swings one leg over the windowsill. It takes a bit of maneuvering to avoid smacking his knees against your desk, and he’s painfully aware of every scuff his boots leave behind on your floor. The space smells like laundry detergent and something warm—coffee grounds, maybe. Or cinnamon. The kind of smell that makes his shoulders start to relax before he even realises it.

Your apartment is small but lived-in. A stack of case files teeters on the kitchen table next to a mug. Your precinct jacket hangs over the back of the couch. There are photos pinned to the side of the fridge with mismatched magnets: city skylines, a blurry shot of you at what looks like a precinct holiday party, someone in a ridiculous Halloween costume posing like a superhero. Phainon feels something tug deep and stupid in his chest.

“Make yourself at home,” you say, heading into the kitchen and flipping on the kettle without needing to ask. “I’ve got tea or instant coffee. No milk, though. Sorry.”

He stays standing for a second longer, then slowly pulls off his gloves and tucks them into his belt. His mask stays on. He lifts the bottom edge just past his mouth, enough to breathe easier, but not enough to risk—well, anything else.

“Tea’s good,” he says.

You nod, moving with a kind of efficiency that reminds him again that you’re still running on fumes. There’s a scrape as you grab two mugs, the clink of metal as you stir one without sugar. You hand him the other without ceremony.

He takes it carefully, fingers brushing yours. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” you return, then gesture to the couch. “We can sit. If you’re staying a few minutes.”

He is. He knows he is. He follows you to the couch and lowers himself into the corner, stiff at first, like his body hasn’t caught up to the fact that he’s safe here. With you. There’s a blanket balled up on one side and an old remote wedged between the cushions. You move them without thinking and curl one leg beneath you, facing him.

“So,” you say. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Phainon frowns. “The break-in?”

“No,” you say, looking at him squarely. “You. You were… panicked tonight.”

Phainon goes still. It’s not immediate—not sharp like a flinch, but a quiet kind of freezing, like someone’s gently pulling the emergency brake in his chest. He doesn’t look away from you, but he doesn’t answer either. His tea cools between his fingers.

You shift forward a little, your voice low. “Look, I’m not asking because I’m nosy. Or because I want some dramatic unmasking moment sort of thing. I just…” You pause, exhale. “I got lucky tonight. That’s what it was. Luck. If I hadn’t ducked at the right second, if they’d come around the corner just a little faster—”

“But they didn’t,” he says quietly, cutting you off.

“That’s not the point.”

You’re sharper now, sitting straighter, your knee pressed to the cushion. Your eyes flash—not with anger, but fear, the kind you don’t let people see if you can help it. But he sees it. And worse, he knows it. He recognises it in the widening of your eyes, the way your fingers curl against your palm.

You swallow. “I’m scared, Spider-Man. I know you’re helping. I trust you. But this—this thing we’re chasing… if something happens to you—I won’t even know your name. I won’t know who to look for. Or if I should look at all. That’s not just reckless, that’s—cruel.”

He flinches at that. You notice.

“I just want to know who’s standing next to me,” you say. “That’s not so much to ask.”

“I can’t,” he says, before he’s even fully processed it. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s not good enough.” Your voice isn’t raised, but there’s a new edge to it now, sharper than anger. Hurt, maybe. Disappointment. It slices straight through his armour. “You trust me with your life out there. Every night. You trust me not to shoot you in the back, or get in your way, or blow your cover. But you don’t trust me enough to know who you are?”

“It’s not about trust,” he says quickly, too defensively. “It’s—God, you think I don’t want to tell you? You think I don’t—don’t lie awake wondering what would happen if I did? I think about it all the time.”

“Then what’s stopping you?”

He looks at you, then. You’re not angry. You’re scared. Scared of whatever’s coming next. Scared of losing control, of losing him.

“You don’t understand what that means,” he says. “If you know who I am—really know—it changes everything. You don’t get to walk away from that. You don’t get to un-know it if something happens. If someone finds out—”

“I’m a cop, Spider-Man. I’ve seen worse things than secret identities.”

“It’s not just mine,” he says. “It’s everyone around me. You knowing—you become a target.”

“I’m already a target.”

“Not like this,” he bites out. “If someone traces it back to you—if they think you matter to me—”

“I do matter to you.”

You suck in a breath like you didn’t mean to say it that way. But you don’t take it back. You sit there, across from him, eyes steady and hurting and unshakably honest. And all Phainon can think is: Shit.

“You do,” he says, barely audible. “Of course you do.”

“Then why won’t you tell me?”

He closes his eyes, and rubs a hand over the edge of his mask like he can somehow erase the pressure building behind his skull. “Because the second I do,” he says, “you stop being just a cop with good instincts and better aim. You become mine. And that makes you vulnerable in a way I don’t know how to protect you from.”

You shake your head, frustrated. “You don’t get to make that decision for me. I’m not asking for your social security number, or something. I’m asking to know who’s at my side when the bullets fly. When the lights go out. When it’s 2 a.m. and I can’t sleep because I think I saw someone watching my window. I need more than a voice behind a mask. I deserve more.”

He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t tell you you’re wrong, because you’re not. But still, he stays silent.

You stare at him for a moment longer, and when it’s clear he won’t budge, you get up. The mug of tea still has steam spiralling out of it as you walk to the sink and set it down, the sound softer than your next words: “I think you should go.”

Phainon doesn’t try to stop you, or ask you to reconsider. He simply nods, and stands. There’s a strange heaviness in his limbs as he pulls the mask down over his face, tugs his gloves on with fingers that feel numb. He moves to the window but pauses with one foot already on the sill.

“I do trust you,” he says. “More than anyone.”

It’s not that you’re avoiding each other.

It’s that you’re both avoiding each other—which, in practice, amounts to the same thing.

Patrols become asynchronous: silent intel dumps in the encrypted folder, maps updated with colour-coded marks that speak more than either of you will via text. There are no more late-night debriefs on rooftops, no post-mission walks home, no casual banter about who has the worst taste in energy bars. When you text, it’s clipped, tactical. When he replies, it’s mechanical.

(‘West dock checkpoint cleared. No sign of activity.’

‘Copy. South alley tripwire still intact.’)

Phainon doesn’t know what hurts more: the silence, or the fact that it’s entirely his fault. Maybe he was right. Maybe the secret is safer kept. Maybe you are less of a target this way.

But God, it’s lonely.

There’s a rhythm to the city that used to make sense—pulse and swing, fire escapes and antenna towers, the rough percussion of tires against potholes. But now it all feels flat. The rooftops are colder. His landing sticks a little less clean. Even the pigeons don’t heckle him like they used to.

It’s been two weeks. Two long, aching weeks, until, at 3:37 a.m., Phainon receives a text from you, and it takes him less than a minute to reply. 

He doesn’t stop to think, or worry if this is a trap, or a joke, or worse—if you’re still mad at him. When he lands outside your apartment, the window’s already cracked open. Inside, the lights are on low, and there’s a corkboard spread across your living room wall now, half-covered in photos, schematics, lines of red string and sticky notes scrawled in tight, impatient handwriting he recognises from your field memos.

You don’t greet him. You just hand him a folder, your eyes dark with something between fear and exhaustion.

“Biotech division out of Theoros Labs,” you say. “It used to be focused on adaptive immunotherapy, but they lost funding three years ago and went dark. The shell company they reopened under is tied to a private security contractor out of Styxia. And guess what their latest research files are tagged under?”

Phainon’s already flipping through the pages. His gloved fingers still. His stomach drops.

ARACHNID-BASED ENHANCEMENT TRIALS – SUBJECT 33550336. MODEL NAME: FLAME REAVER.

He looks up. “They’re trying to replicate me.”

“Not just replicate,” you say, shaking your head. “Weaponise.”

Your voice is thin, dry, like it costs you something to even say it aloud.

“They’ve been pulling data from old surveillance—fight footage, patrol patterns, even the way you move. You know how we assumed they were looking for high-density batteries to power a device?” You tap one of the diagrams on the corkboard, the spine of it shaped like a human thorax with branching nodes along the shoulders. “Turns out it’s a synthetic neuromuscular system. And this—this lithium core—it’s the ignition switch.”

Phainon stares at the blueprint. It’s rough, unfinished, but horrifyingly clear: a bipedal unit, modelled after him. Spinal cord wiring where his web shooters would be. Photoreactive visor instead of eyes. Muscle clusters designed for explosive vertical leap. Neural sync modules buried in the wrists and calves.

A Spider-Man, stripped of the man.

“Why?” he says, voice hoarse. “Why build this?”

“I don’t know yet,” you admit. “But someone out there sees you as more than just a vigilante nuisance. They see you as a prototype. A formula. Something to replicate, mass-produce, and control.”

He sinks onto the edge of your couch, folder open in his lap. The diagram stares back at him, accusatory and unforgiving. It’s him. The curve of the stance, the wide-set shoulders, the way the unit’s balance favours its left side, just like he does when his knee’s aching. They didn’t just study him; they dissected him.

“How long have you known?” he asks quietly.

“A few days,” you say. “I wanted to be sure. Didn’t want to come to you with a hunch and nothing to back it up.”

“And you texted me anyway.”

You meet his gaze across the room. “Because it’s you, Spider-Man. Look, I know you think hiding your identity keeps people safe. But this? This proves it doesn’t. They’re coming for you whether or not I know your face. They already have your gait, your voice, your power levels. They’re not trying to figure out who you are anymore. They don’t care. They just want to turn you into something they can sell.”

He sets the folder down. His hands won’t stop shaking. “How… did you find out about all this?”

“Don’t get mad.”

When Phainon doesn’t say anything, you sigh and look away. 

“I visited the old R&D site. Alone.”

“Are you serious?” Phainon gestures so wildly that his web cartridge knocks against the back of your chair. He stands abruptly. The folder falls from his lap, papers scattering across your rug. “You went alone. To Theoros. To Styxia-backed labs that specialise in high-risk bioweapons. Without calling me.”

“I called you when I had proof—”

“You shouldn’t have gone in the first place!” he explodes. “What the hell were you thinking? Do you want to get dissected? Shot? Replaced with one of those—those things—”

“You weren’t talking to me!” you shout back. “What was I supposed to do? Wait until they raided another warehouse?”

“I was trying to protect you,” Phainon grits out. “And instead you threw yourself into a place that could’ve had armed personnel, pressure sensors, live prototypes—anything.”

You throw your arms out. “And what was the alternative? Sit on my hands while they build a weaponised version of you? Wait until there’s a second Spider-Man crawling up government buildings with a built-in kill switch? I don’t know how to sit still, Spider-Man. Not when I’m this scared.”

“You think I’m not scared? You think I haven’t been replaying every second of that night at the docks? That I haven’t imagined a dozen versions of how it could’ve gone wrong? You think I’m not scared every time I don’t hear from you for a few hours?”

“Then why didn’t you say any of that? Why did you shut me out?”

“Because if I said it out loud,” Phainon spits, pacing again, hands flying to his head, “then it would be real. It would be—you would be real. Not just someone chasing me on my patrol route. Not just someone who’s helping me out. You’d be a person I’d have to lose.”

You blink, thrown. “You think you’re going to lose me?”

“I know I could,” he says, almost like it hurts. “Because it’s already happened. Every time I get close—every single time—it ends the same way. Either they die, or I leave first. Because that’s the only choice I ever get.”

He doesn’t even hear how loud his voice has gotten, doesn’t notice how he’s gesturing wildly, storming back and forth across your living room.

“I can’t protect you from this. I can’t protect you from them. I can’t even protect myself. You want me to give you a name, but that’s the one thing I can’t do. Because once you have that, it’s over. You’ll look at me differently. Or worse—you’ll stop looking at me. And I can’t—God, I can’t stand that.

“Do you know what it’s like to see yourself turned into a blueprint? To see a file full of numbers and heat signatures and recorded footage and realise someone out there has broken you down into a fucking algorithm? That they don’t see a person—they see a weapon?

“I didn’t sign up for this shit! I didn’t even sign up to be Spider-Man. I just… was. And now they’ve taken that and turned it into something else. Something that walks like me and fights like me and could kill you without thinking. And the worst part is that if you’d died at that lab, I—no one would’ve even known. You’d just be another casualty they scrub from the records—and that would’ve been my fault.”

His voice has dropped to a whisper. His hands are trembling.

He doesn’t realise until you do—until your eyes go wide, and your breath catches like you’ve been sucker-punched.

His mask is gone, not pushed halfway up, or nudged for a sip of tea. Gone. Somewhere in the middle of that breakdown—while he was talking too fast and breathing too hard and tearing at his suit like it was suffocating him—he took it off.

His hair’s a mess, flattened by the fabric, and his face is flushed, mouth parted slightly as he sucks in breath after breath. There’s a bruise blooming along his cheekbone, and a cut healing just beneath his chin. He looks young, with silvery-white hair and bright blue eyes that are rimmed with the redness that comes with exhaustion and caffeine.

“...Oh,” Phainon says, stunned. “Shit.”

You blink, slowly, as though grounding yourself in reality again. “You took your mask off.”

He starts to lift a hand to cover his face, instinct kicking in too late. Gently, more carefully than anything else that’s passed between you tonight, you reach up and take the mask from his hand. Your fingers brush his knuckles, and he flinches, but he doesn’t pull away.

Phainon drops his hand and lets out a shallow breath. “I… didn’t mean to.”

“You didn’t mean to,” you echo. “Jesus.”

Phainon can’t say anything, so he simply stands there, feeling as naked as the day he first stepped onto a rooftop and dared to believe he could protect anyone. His heart pounds loud in his ears. He can feel it in his throat, his fingertips, his teeth.

“Can I— Will you tell me your name?” you whisper.

He wets his lips, and says, quietly, “Phainon.”

You nod, once, and say it back. “Phainon,” you repeat, like it’s a truth you’ll guard with your life. “Okay. I’m not afraid of you. And I’m not leaving. So either you let me help, because you asked me to, or I break into another lab and do it anyway. Your call.”

Phainon stares at you: you, with your voice barely holding steady; you, standing in your living room full of maps and stolen schematics and caffeine-fueled desperation; you, tired and stubborn and loyal enough to make him fall to his knees.

“Okay,” he says quietly.

You reach out, then, and Phainon thinks you’re handing his mask back to him, but instead, you wrap your arms tightly around his torso and pull him into you. 

He doesn’t move at first. You’re pressed to him, arms wrapped tight around his torso like you mean to hold the pieces of him together before they scatter to the wind. Your cheek rests just above his heart, right where it beats too loud and too fast, thudding like it’s trying to break free from his ribs. His hands hover uselessly in the air for a second, fingers twitching, stunned by the contact, by the way you came to him so easily, so willingly, after all of it.

He exhales. The air leaves his lungs like it’s been caged there for years. His shoulders drop an inch. His spine slackens just enough for him to bend down.

He lifts his arms slowly, like he’s learning how to move again. His fingers brush your back, light and unsure, but you don’t flinch. You don’t pull away. So he lets his palms flatten, one at the curve of your spine, the other curling loosely over your shoulder.

He breathes in.

God, it’s you. Soap and smoke and citrus shampoo. A hundred times he’s seen you crouched beside him on rooftops or hunched over a laptop, bathed in the blue glow of surveillance feeds. But this is different. This is you, pressed to him like you belong there, like the world outside can wait. 

His grip tightens, no longer tentative—arms looping fully around you now, hands grasping like he needs to keep you tethered, like if he lets go, you’ll disappear back into a nightmare or a lab or a headline with your name misspelled. His chin tips forward until his face rests in the hollow of your neck, and it’s instinct, not thought that guides him there. His breath stirs the hair at your temple. He swallows hard.

(It’s you. It’s you, and you’re warm and safe and alive in his arms.)

Phainon closes his eyes and pretends like everything else in the living room doesn’t exist—the weaponised duplicate in the file folder, the surveillance footage broken down to frames per second, the machine built in his image but stripped of everything human. He forgets about the mask you dropped, crumpled on the floor, and the voice in his head screaming that he’s made a mistake, that you’ll leave once the shock fades, that nothing good can come of this.

Instead, he listens to your heartbeat. He memorises the slope of your shoulders beneath his palms, the soft way your hand has fisted in the fabric of his suit like you’re afraid he might vanish, too.

It comes to him—terrible and quiet and so obvious it aches.

He could be in love with you.

Not the kind of love he can shove into the seams of his second life. Not the safe, arm’s-length affection that lives behind jokes and shared intel and the occasional brush of fingers across a coffee cup. No, this is the dangerous kind. The kind that makes you stupid. The kind that makes you soft. (The kind that makes you want.)

He wants a future he doesn’t dare picture. He wants to walk down the street with you in broad daylight. He wants to take off the suit and be Phainon, just Phainon, and know you’ll still look at him the same way.

(His hands tremble. You hold him tighter.)

It’s that simple. You don’t push. You don’t speak. You just breathe against his chest, steady and unwavering and constant, like you always are. Phainon presses his mouth to your hair. His eyes sting, but he doesn’t cry.

It’s five in the morning, and Phainon is walking down a cracked sidewalk beside you with his suit half-zipped, his mask stuffed into your hoodie pocket, and a buzzing under his skin that he’s trying really hard to ignore. You’re beside him, arms crossed against the early chill, leading the way like this—walking, together—is something you do all the time.

It’s not a date, he tells himself. It’s really not. 

But you mentioned waffles. And your voice had been tired but warm when you said it. And he hadn’t wanted to leave yet.

So here he is. Not skipping, because he’s got some dignity, but definitely walking with a little too much bounce for someone who found out he’s being reverse-engineered into a murder bot a little over an hour ago.

The city’s quieter than it ever gets during daylight, the kind of hush that only exists in the space between the last bar closing and the first train running. A low mist clings to the ground, curling around traffic lights and benches and empty newsstands. It’s eerie, maybe, but not unfriendly. Like the city’s holding its breath right along with him.

Phainon doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be feeling. Dread, maybe. Paranoia. Existential terror. But instead, all he feels is this weightless hum in his chest, the kind that makes you walk a little taller, swing your arms a little looser. The kind that makes you forget you’re still half in your gear and probably look completely insane.

You glance over at him as you cross the street, the corner of your mouth twitching like you’re trying not to smile. “You’re doing that thing again.”

“What thing?”

“Staring at me.”

Phainon stumbles on a crack in the sidewalk. “I’m not,” he says, too quickly.

“You are,” you say, not unkindly. “Like I’m going to vanish or something.”

Phainon rubs the back of his neck, grateful for the relative darkness. “Well. I mean. You did break into a lab by yourself, so I wouldn’t put it past you.”

“Okay, fair,” you concede, nudging him lightly with your elbow. “Still. You’ve got that face on. The one that makes me feel like I’ve got, like, a mysterious smear of radioactive ink on my forehead.”

“I don’t have a face.”

“You do have a face,” you say. “That’s the problem now, remember?”

Phainon huffs out a laugh and looks away, suddenly all too aware of the morning air on his skin, of the fact that he’s not wearing his mask, of how easy it is to joke with you. He’s not sure what scares him more: being turned into a weapon, or feeling like this.

You walk in comfortable silence for a block or two, hands tucked into your sleeves, your breath fogging slightly in the chill. The sky is bruising lavender and gold now, the edges of dawn beginning to soften everything.

Phainon chances a glance at you. You’re watching the sky change colour like it’s a magic trick only you know the secret to, your expression soft and unreadable. There’s a crease between your brows, faint, but it smooths a little when a breeze picks up and rustles your hair. You look tired, not just from the lack of sleep, but from the kind of exhaustion that sinks into a person when they’ve seen too much, done too much, but still can’t stop moving.

The diner sign glows into view at the end of the street—warm yellow and flickering red, letters half-burnt out so it reads INE R & GILL if you squint. There’s a figure leaning against the counter inside, wiping down the same spot with a rag that’s probably older than both of you, and the place smells faintly of grease and syrup.

You pause in front of the glass door, one hand on the handle. “This place okay?”

“It’s perfect,” Phainon says before he can stop himself.

You smile and push open the door. The bell on top jingles, and the waitress glances up from the far end of the counter. She gives you both a once-over, raises a tired brow at Phainon’s boots and long sleeves, and gestures to a booth without asking questions. That’s the nice thing about New Okhema City; nobody cares too much.

You slide into a booth with a contented sigh. Phainon sits across from you, knees knocking against the underside of the table. The vinyl squeaks under his weight, and the Formica is sticky, but he doesn’t care. His hands feel strangely clean without gloves. The menu sticks to his fingers when he flips it open.

You don’t even bother looking at yours. “Waffles, scrambled eggs, hash browns. Extraw syrup.”

“That specific, huh?” Phainon says.

You shrug. “Gotta know your diner defaults.”

The waitress arrives with two glasses of water and a notepad. “You kids look like you’ve been up all night,” she says, though she can’t be more than a few years older than you and Phainon.

“We have,” you say sleepily, “but we cracked a supervillain conspiracy, so it was worth it.”

The waitress doesn’t blink. “Coffee?”

“Yes, please,” you say, and Phainon nods too, grateful. She leaves without another word.

Silence stretches between you again, but it’s easy now, filled with warmth. The sky outside shifts more boldly into gold and peach, casting long shadows against the window. Phainon leans back into the booth and lets himself exhale slowly, deeply.

Your foot brushes against his under the table. He freezes. You don’t move it.

He looks up, and your eyes meet his over the rim of your water glass. There’s something quiet there, soft around the edges—exhaustion, sure, but something else too. A kind of trust he’s not sure he deserves. (Still, it’s there.)

Phainon thinks about how this shouldn’t be possible. How the night started with fear and screaming and blueprints of his body, and somehow ended with this booth, this silence, this person across from him.

[18:04] Detective Brain: Spidey-lookalike broke into storage depot by Kephale Plaza. I’m already on scene. It’s not you, right?

[18:05] Detective Brain: Phainon. Please respond.

Phainon is already out the window by the time your second text comes through, barely bothering to latch it behind him. His fingers fumble for the web shooter at his wrist, and his heart is a fist hammering against his ribs. He almost misses the first jump—lands hard on the ledge and has to steady himself with a rough palm against brick.

He doesn’t even suit up properly. His gloves are half-fastened, the zipper of his suit stuck one-fourths of the way up his spine, but there’s no time to care. Phainon swings hard across the city’s mid-rises, momentum jerking through his shoulders, his aim slightly off with each launch. It doesn’t matter. He’ll take a bruised wrist if it gets him to Kephale Plaza thirty seconds faster.

Kephale Plaza is a glass-and-steel monstrosity, flanked by wide loading docks and a security perimeter that no longer seems to matter. Phainon can hear the distant thrum of police radios as he swings into the industrial district, following the echo of sirens. Squad cars line the street outside the storage depot, lights flashing in fractured red and blue across the cracked pavement. Officers are forming a perimeter, but there’s no crowd. They’re keeping it quiet.

He lands on the roof of an adjacent building, crouched low as his eyes sweep the scene. 

He finds you posted just outside the warehouse’s side entrance, pacing like you’re trying not to burst out of your own skin. Your bulletproof vest is cinched tight, and your standard issue sidearm is still holstered—but your fingers are twitching near it, like you’re weighing every possible outcome of the past ten minutes. Your hair’s tied back, but loose strands stick to your face from the sweat already clinging to your skin. He’s never seen you look so still and restless all at once.

He leaps down from the rooftop, landing in a crouch just behind a darkened patrol vehicle. No one sees him yet. He keeps to the shadows as he makes his war towards you.

The second you hear the shuffle of his boots, you whip around—and relax just as fast.

“Jesus,” you exhale, taking a step forward. “Okay. Okay, thank God. I wasn’t sure you’d even seen the message.”

“I left the second I did,” Phainon assures. “What’s the situation?”

Your lips tighten, and you turn, nodding for him to follow you a few paces away from the rest of the officers. Behind you, the front entrance to the warehouse stands yawning and dark, a single loading dock shutter half-raised.

“It showed up fifteen minutes ago,” you say, pulling out your phone and flicking to the security cam footage. You angle the screen towards him. “Took out the motion sensors, and walked in through a window on the north side. No sign of forced entry—it knew exactly where to go.”

The footage is grainy, flickering, but the figure is unmistakable.

It moves like him. Too much like him. In the footage, the figure slinks down the hallway with the same kind of gait Phainon sees in himself. Every footfall, every pause, every angle of entry—it’s like watching him pace through a mirror.

Only this version is sleeker, meaner. Its limbs are thicker with muscle plating, and its suit—if you could even call it that—is matte-black with streaks of purple circuitry flashing along the ribs and spine. There’s no emblem, no mask markings, just a blank, silver faceplate that reflects the ceiling lights like a shuttered camera lens. One blink and it’s gone, vanishing into the blind spots of the camera feed like it knows exactly where every pixel falls.

Phainon swears under his breath. “They built it,” he mutters. “That’s Flame Reaver.”

You glance up. “You sure?”

He nods. He’s gone through your stolen documents so many times that it feels like they’ve been branded into his skull. “Positive. Same proportions, same gait. But it’s not scanning the building. It’s buying time.”

“For what?”

Phainon doesn’t answer at first. He’s too focused on the still-looping footage. The moment the prototype slips out of view, he sees it—a flicker of something. It wasn’t raiding. It wasn’t looking for intel. It walked into that depot like it had a schedule to keep.

The realisation hits him like a slap to the sternum.

“Wait,” he says sharply. “Where’s your radio?”

You blink. “What?”

“Your radio,” he repeats, scanning your hip and vest and frowning when he sees the wire coiled but your earpiece missing. “You always keep it on.”

“I took it out for a second. There was interference on the line.”

“No.” Phainon turns, scanning the scene again with a new sharpness in his eyes. “No, that’s wrong. This—this whole thing—it’s not a distraction. This is the distraction.”

“What are you—”

His head whips around, eyes scanning the perimeter. You were just here, right beside him, one step behind. Your breath was fogging the air. You were talking.

Now you’re gone.

Phainon’s heart lurches.

“Where is she?” he hisses aloud, and suddenly he’s on the move—scrambling up onto the nearest shipping crate, trying to get height, trying to see. The precinct line’s holding firm around the building. There’s no breach. No one has come or gone.

Except you. Except whoever—or whatever—came for you.

He swings to the rooftop in seconds, breath tight in his lungs, wind clawing past his ears. His eyes sweep the blocks below in sharp, jerking passes—alley to alley, rooftop to ground, looking for anything that feels off.

On the north side, nestled between two disused factories and a rusted chain-link fence, an unmarked van idles in a narrow alley, almost hidden in the dip of a service road. Its brake lights pulse once, too soft to draw attention, but deliberate. A second later, the engine stutters and dies. The door clicks shut. Phainon stills.

From this height, the sounds of the city thin into a muffled hush: sirens echoing somewhere far behind him, police radios buzzing with disjointed chatter. But that alley, that van—it’s too smooth, too clean. There’s no urgency to it, no panic. Just the slow, mechanical precision of something following protocol.

A figure steps away from the van, heading down a side street without looking back. Their stride is steady. Familiar.

Phainon freezes.

It looks like you: the same jacket, same utility belt, even the soft sway of your hair against your collarbone. Your badge glints faintly under the streetlight—your badge. Not a replica.

Except it’s wrong. You’re not there.

You wouldn’t leave the perimeter without backup, wouldn’t ditch your squad without a word, or abandon the very scene that had triggered every instinct in your body just ten minutes ago. At least, not without telling him.

And whoever—or whatever—this is, it’s walking away like it knows the exact timing window it’s working with. Like it wants him to follow.

“They’re splitting us up,” Phainon breathes, the words ripping themselves from his throat. Suddenly, the air feels thinner, sharper. His lungs burn.

He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t even think before launching himself off the rooftop with a grunt, webline snapping out, slicing through the fog-damp air. He swings low, barely clearing a lamppost, and lands in a crouch beside the van. He can smell petrol, faintly.

Phainon yanks the door open. It’s empty—no driver, or equipment. Just the sharp, sterile scent of plastic and ozone. It’s a burner vehicle, then. One they didn’t plan on keeping.

“Damn it,” Phainon curses under his breath. He spins on his heel, already moving—until he hears a faint crackle. The buzz of a police radio. Your police radio.

He follows the sound, weaving between crates and dumpsters until he skids to a stop at the mouth of the alley, and finds your comm unit on the ground. One of the earbuds still dangles loosely from the coil, blinking a faint blue every few seconds. The rest of the radio is scuffed; not broken, just discarded deliberately, placed just far enough from the van to suggest you followed something willingly—until it was too late.

A boot scuff mars the concrete nearby. There is another drag mark next to—a toe, maybe. Someone shifted. Or struggled. Phainon crouches low, brushing his fingers across the ground. His mind races through probabilities, scenarios. None of them are good.

It wasn’t just a prototype in the warehouse. That was the shell, a puppet to get the cops talking, to trigger an investigation. Something visible, something obvious. 

But this was the play: lure him in with the decoy, use it to lock the precinct’s attention, then send the real threat to steal what they really needed—you.

Phainon grits his teeth as he stares down at your radio. His mind flashes to the schematics you’d shown him on your wall. Neural mimicry, behavioural mirroring, photo-accurate masking. It wasn’t a bluff. They had footage, voice samples, enough to build a close-range approximation of him. They’d studied him down to the limp in his left knee.

Of course they had enough on you. You were the officer who was most often assigned with the task of tracking him down, after all.

He thinks of your laugh; the way you tilt your head when you’re about to argue; the furrow in your brows when you’re thinking too deeply. If they’ve copied that—you—down to the way your voice hitches when you say his name—

His stomach flips.

“They took her,” he says aloud, more to steady himself than anything else. “They took her.”

Phainon’s fingers twitch, curling tight into fists. His web shooters press firm against his wrists. His gloves are still half-fastened. He fixes them now, fastens every strap, zips his suit the rest of the way up roughly. The breath in his chest is shallow and burning, but his hands are steady. 

He swings back up to the rooftop, lands in a three-point crouch, and bolts across the ledge without a second thought. Every muscle in his body knows where he’s going: the old R&D site, the remnants of what used to be the government-sanctioned Theoros Labs.

It’s a twenty-minute drive through the industrial corridor to get there. He’ll make it in seven.

Every swing feels sharper now, each launch of webbing tighter, more exact. The buildings blur past him, and his breath comes in hard, rhythmic exhales. He can’t afford to be wrong. Can’t afford a detour. The further they pull you away, the less chance he has of reaching you before whatever they built decides it doesn’t need you alive.

Phainon lands on a rooftop, skids into a roll, fires another web and propels him back into the air. Hold on, he thinks. Please, just hold on.

The air near Theoros Labs smells like ozone and old metal.

Phainon lands hard on the broken rooftop of a utility shed just outside the main building. It’s darker here than it should be. The outer perimeter lights have all been shut off, either manually or by remote override. Only a few flickering emergency bulbs remain, casting a jaundiced glow over the facility’s skeletal frame. Ivy creeps up the cracked walls, half-swallowing faded corporate logos and biohazard signs. The chain-link fencing has been torn down in places and rusted through in others. 

It’s too quiet.

He moves carefully, sticking close to the shadows as he approaches the main entrance—what’s left of it. The glass doors have been forced open, one of them dangling from its hinges. Inside, the lobby lies still and cold, floor tiles coated in dust. But someone’s been through recently. Fresh boot prints disturb the grime, overlapping in frantic patterns. You were here. He follows your footprints past collapsed hallways and rusted biohazard doors. Most of the rooms are stripped—just empty labs and decaying workstations—but the deeper he gets, the cleaner it becomes. Dust thins. Wires appear. Lights flicker to life as he passes.

They’ve reactivated the lower level. Phainon descends a wide staircase lined with old safety tape. The sub-basement has power. Soft white fluorescents hum overhead. The floor is concrete, sealed and buffed, with clean drag marks across it. The walls are lined with black server towers, cords feeding into sealed doors.

Phainon stops mid-step; there’s a tingle in the back of his neck. Someone else is here, too. His muscles go taut, fingers curling half-ready near his web shooters.

“Ah, Mr. Spider-Man,” a voice drawls, drawing out the vowels. “Or should I say… Phainon?”

There’s a hiss behind one of the sealed doors to the left. A vent releases a thin ribbon of steam.

“Don’t be shy. You’ve already made it farther than most,” the voice says, and this time, it’s accompanied by footsteps echoing against the polished concrete, slow and confident. “I imagine you have questions. That’s good. I admire curiosity. It’s a very human trait.”

The man who steps into view is tall, lean, draped in a sleep lab coat far too pristine for a place like this. His shoulder-length hair is slicked back, and most of his face is covered by a visor. His ID badge is clipped to his chest, name and clearance codes etched in a crisp black print.

LYCURGUS – Division Lead, Neuroadaptive Intellitron Systems.

Lycurgus smiles like he’s greeting an old colleague. “This facility was never truly abandoned, you know. That was just a convenient myth. Theoros was… restructured. Privatised. Reoriented towards more ambitious pursuits.” He gestures to the space around him. “Welcome to our prototype cradle. Or, as we researchers like to call it, Stage Zero of Irontomb.”

Phainon’s voice is low, sharp. “Where is she?”

“Your detective, yes?” Lycurgus says. “She is safe. Unharmed, though mildly sedated. She’s being prepped for mapping. It’s better if she doesn’t wake up mid-scan—the sensory feedback can be unpleasant.”

Phainon steps forward. “You’re going to let her go. Now.”

“Oh, I’m afraid that’s not going to happen.” Lycurgus tilts his head. “She’s far too important. As are you.”

He moves towards a glass-paneled observation window. Behind it, a dark chamber pulses with slow, blue strobe lighting. Machines hiss softly within. Something looms in the shadows—taller than a man, hunched forward, hooked into a loading rig like a sleeping animal.

“I know what you think we’re doing here,” Lycurgus continues. “Mass production. Automation. Violence. And, to be fair, yes—we are building weapons. But not just weapons. We’re building evolution.”

“You’re building copies,” Phainon corrects.

Lycurgus lets out a chuckle, quiet and indulgent. “Flame Reaver was a crude iteration. Incomplete, too reliant on mimicry. It served its purpose—chased its prey, gathered its data, misled your little precinct. But Irontomb… Irontomb will do more than chase. It will predict, integrate, override, think.”

He turns back to Phainon. The placid smile fades, replaced with something hungrier.

“We’ve spent years reverse-engineering your every decision. Every rooftop sprint. Every moment of hesitation. Every kill you didn’t make. We mapped your instincts, modeled your reflex latency, simulated the split-second calculations behind your webbing patterns. All of it.”

He taps the side of his own head. “But it wasn’t enough. Something was missing. Something the data couldn’t replicate.”

“You mean her.”

“Yes.” Lycurgus’ smile returns, tight and reverent. “Your control variable. Your compass. We needed to understand how a creature like you formed attachments, what altered your judgement. What humanised you.”

Phainon’s voice is a growl. “She’s not a variable.”

“She’s your pivot, Spider-Man. The reason your risk matrix fluctuates. The reason you pause before you strike. She made you less efficient, and, therefore, more valuable. Which is why we modeled her too. Her responses, her patterns, her tone modulation, her biometric data when she’s afraid. It’s poetic, really. We used her to finish the algorithm that began with you. The perfect balance of speed and restraint.”

The lights behind the glass pulse brighter. The figure in the chamber stirs. It’s not the Flame Reaver. It’s something else.

Its silhouette is bulkier than his, but it looks wrong. It has slender limbs with plated joints; a split mask—half red, half mirrored black; a narrow torso fitted with impact dispersal panels. Something that looks like a spine runs down its back, glowing faintly green. Phainon doesn’t recognise the material, but he can feel the heat rolling off it through the glass.

“It’s a neural sync model,” Lycurgus says, not even trying to hide his pride, “coded from your reflexes and her empathy thresholds. It’s capable of piloting independently or under network command. It doesn’t hesitate. It doesn’t panic. And, most importantly, it doesn’t forget.”

Phainon’s heart hammers. His blood feels like it’s gone cold. “You’re trying to make a Spider-Man that doesn’t need a person inside.”

Lycurgus meets his eyes. “Exactly.”

The machine twitches, then steps forward. Its footfalls are silent. Too smooth.

“You two were only ever reference material,” Lycurgus intones. “And now that the template’s complete—well. All we need are the final scans.”

“Where is she? Where is she?” 

It’s all Phainon can do to stop himself from ripping Lycurgus’ throat out. The scientist merely adjusts the sleeve of his lab coat, as if the demand were a mild inconvenience.

“She’s nearby,” he says coolly. “Lower containment. Cell B-4, off the neural calibration wing. You won’t get far without triggering lockdown, of course. And even if you do—by the time you reach her, Irontomb will already be online.”

Behind the glass, the machine lifts its head. The sound it makes isn’t mechanical. It’s worse—soft, distorted, like the playback of a familiar voice through cracked speakers. It twitches once, then again, shoulders rolling into a combat stance eerily like his own.

Phainon doesn’t wait. He fires a webline directly at Lycurgus and yanks. The man stumbles, but Phainon slams him against the server wall hard enough to knock the breath out of him. Wires clatter. A tower crashes sideways.

Lycurgus laughs, even as Phainon pins him in place. “You think you’re here to save her,” he says, breathless, “but you’re too late. She’s already part of it.”

“I swear to God—” Phainon hisses, pressing the heel of his palm to Lycurgus’ throat. “I swear to God, if you touched her—”

“I didn’t have to,” the man croaks. “She volunteered. Not knowingly, of course. But those scans she took from our systems? They included a compressed tracer file. As soon as she opened them, our systems opened her. The sync began the moment she pieced it together. Everything she knows—tactical behaviour, voice modulation, interrogation strategy—it’s all feeding the AI as we speak.”

“You fed off of us.” Phainon’s grip tightens. Lycurgus grunts.

“Yes,” the scientist says. “And you should be proud. Irontomb won’t just replicate your choices—it will refine them, strip away all the guilt, the softness. It will be cleaner. Smarter. Perfect.”

Something shudders behind the glass. The observation lights dim.

A low thrum starts up from behind the glass, like a heartbeat filtered through static. The strobe pulses once, then again, casting the chamber in a deep, electric violet. Inside, Irontomb lifts its hand with unsettling grace and slowly curls its fingers into a fist. The joints click into place with too much precision. A webline ejects—thin, metallic, laced with a crackle of electric current—and shoots into the rafters. It latches onto the ceiling brace, and just like that, the chamber is empty.

The reinforced door behind Phainon slams open with a hydraulic hiss. He whirls around. Lycurgus barely has time to flinch before Phainon’s hand closes around his collar and hurls him to the ground. The scientist crashes into the wall beside a rack of servers, skull cracking against plastic. A second later, the emergency klaxons explode to life, screaming overhead in jagged bursts.

CONTAINMENT BREACH. HALL A-7. PRIORITY UNIT ACTIVATED.

Red warning lights flare to life, pulsing in harsh rhythm. The sterile corridor floods with shadow and noise. Phainon bolts.

There’s no time to think—he fires a webline into the open mouth of the elevator shaft and dives. Wind roars past his ears. He drops three floors in seconds, catches himself on a rusted support beam, and slams down onto the concrete sublevel with a bone-jarring thud. His boots hit the ground hard enough to rattle the pipes overhead.

The lower corridors are not like the rest of the facility. There’s no dust, no decay. These halls are clean, too clean—like the world above was only a façade. Bright, artificial light hums from the ceiling. Every footstep echoes.

He sprints forward, ducking under support beams and sliding past corners. NEURAL CALIBRATION →, the wall tells him. He follows the signs, pulse thundering. Every flicker of motion at the edge of his vision makes him tense. Every blinking light feels like a red eye watching.

Phainon skids to a halt in front of a door labelled Cell B-4.

The door is solid, made of reinforced steel with a flat-panel biometric reader. There’s no handle, or keypad. Phainon swears. “Come on, come on—”

From the other side, something shifts. He hears a voice, muffled and strained. “...Phainon?”

He chokes on relief. “I’m here.”

You’re alive.

He scrambles to his web shooter, fingers flying over the dial. He adjusts the pressure valve, toggles it to maximum discharge, and fires at the scanner from point-blank range. The panel erupts in sparks. Circuits shriek. The door eases open, exhaling sterile, recycled air into the hallway.

You’re inside, strapped to a containment recliner, limbs limp but intact. Wires trail from your temples, your clavicle, your pulse points. A monitor nearby is still running diagnostics—waveforms still climbing and falling in time with your heart. Your eyes crack open, bleary, and your head lolls to the side.

“Hi,” you whisper, voice thin as gauze.

“Hi, yourself,” Phainon says, crossing the room with long strides. His voice breaks.

His hands go straight to the leads, fingers trembling as he tears them free. Adhesive snaps off skin. Electrodes clatter to the floor. He moves gently, cradling your jaw to keep your head upright as he removes the final lead from behind your ear.

He lifts you from the chair. Your body sags against his chest, legs folding beneath you. You groan softly as your feet try to hold your weight, but he doesn’t let them. He tightens his grip until you’re fully anchored against him. You smell like static and sedation. Like cold metal and something scorched.

“Irontomb,” you breath, half-slurred. “It’s awake. It… used me. Ran simulations. My voice. My—”

“I know,” he murmurs. “I know. We’re getting out of here.”

You lean heavier into him with every step he takes away from the chair. Your breathing is uneven, shallow. But Phainon can tell you’re coming back—your pulse steadying, your fingers twitching where they rest near his collar. He wants nothing more than to get you out, to break every wall between here and the surface, to make you forget this place ever existed.

But the walls hum. The lights tremble. He’s not fast enough. The reinforced door behind  him explodes inward.

Irontomb barrels through in a burst of silver and red. The strobe overhead flickers with the force of its entry, casting the scene in freeze-frame shadows. It doesn’t look like a machine as it charges. Phainon spins, turning his back to the blast to shield you. Debris pelts his shoulder as the room shakes. Irontomb stops, silent and still, in the doorway. Its mirrored mask splits slightly, revealing a narrow gleam of green light that pulses in rhythm with the lithium core humming somewhere deep inside it.

The voice it speaks with is your own.

“Phainon.”

The blood drains from his face.

You stir weakly in his arms. “That’s not—that’s not me—”

“I know,” he whispers.

It tilts its head, mimicking the motion exactly. “You hesitate at a 3.2% deviation rate when she’s within ten feet. Your aim skews left. Your heart rate spikes.”

Phainon doesn’t respond. He adjusts his grip around your waist, gently easing you towards the floor behind him.

“You always protect the variable, even when the variable is hunting you down,” Irontomb says. “That makes you predictable.”

Phainon doesn’t wait for it to move. He fires. A blast of webbing snaps towards the machine’s legs—but it dodges, not quickly or instinctively, but perfectly. It anticipates his angle, catches the web in midair with one mechanical hand, and yanks hard.

Phainon is ripped forward off his feet and slammed into the wall hard enough to fracture plaster. He recovers fast, flipping up and sticking to the ceiling. His shoulder throbs. The moment Irontomb lunges again, he launches, meeting it midair. They clash in a whirl of webbing, steel, and bone. Irontomb fights like it’s studied him for years—and it has. It parries his kicks, reads the tension in his arms before he swings. It knows where he’ll move before he does.

Every strike Phainon throws is met with a calculated block, every dodge answered with a counter-blow. The machine is faster. Stronger. But not desperate—and Phainon is desperate.

“The server room!” you shout, and Phainon sees you staggering up to your feet, still valiantly trying to fight whatever they injected into your bloodstream. “Take it to the server room! Follow me!”

Phainon doesn’t hesitate. He hears your voice—unsteady, but clear—and that’s all he needs. He spins midair, flips back onto the ceiling, and fires a pair of quick weblines towards Irontomb’s shoulders. They stick, just barely. The machine lunges to rip them off, but Phainon yanks hard, using the momentum to slam Irontomb face-first into the far wall with a screech of metal on metal. The moment the machine hits, Phainon’s already moving.

“Go!” you shout again, breath ragged. “Don’t fight it here—they control the lithium core from the server room!”

Phainon tears towards you, lands beside you, and sweeps an arm around your waist to stabilise you just as you start to buckle. Your skin’s cold with effort, sweat sheening your forehead, but your grip on his suit is firm. 

“Can you run?” he pants.

“Can you carry me?”

He grins through bloodied teeth. “Always.”

He hooks one arm under your legs and lifts you effortlessly, pivoting towards the corridor just as Irontomb peels itself from the wall. The lights in the hallway ahead flash red with the alarm, casting everything in pulses of warning. Phainon doesn’t look back. He runs.

You clutch at his shoulder as he barrels down the corridor, webbing the corners ahead of him to pivot faster. Irontomb’s footsteps are thunder behind you—precise, mechanical, relentless. It doesn’t rush. It doesn’t pant. It just follows, its gait perfectly even as it absorbs every new piece of data from your movement, your trajectory, your speed.

“It’s learning again,” you murmur.

Phainon grits his teeth. “Tell me where to go.”

“Left!” you gasp, pointing weakly down the branching corridor as you cling to his shoulder. “The blueprints said the server room was by the freight lift, and I—I stole Lycurgus’ key card before he sedated me—”

Phainon veers sharply, feet sliding for purchase on the slick floor as he swings you into the left hallway. Behind him, Irontomb adjusts its trajectory instantly, recalibrating mid-chase, its movements eerily silent save for the low whir of its servos and the electric buzz of its core. Every footstep lands with surgical precision, not wasting an ounce of energy.

He finds the lift shaft up ahead, the gate already torn off its hinges—someone had passed through here in a hurry. Phainon doesn’t stop running. He fires a webline to the upper scaffolding and swings both of you through the open shaft.

The moment you’re both airborne, Irontomb enters the shaft behind you. You hear it climbing. It doesn’t need webbing. It’s fast, powerful, climbing straight up the walls like a spider. A cold burst of static prickles the back of your neck as you look over Phainon’s shoulder and see its split-face mask glowing faintly with that same green hum pulsing in time with your own heartbeat.

“Don’t look down,” Phainon mutters through clenched teeth.

“You mean don’t look up,” you reply, voice tight.

He doesn’t argue. Two more floors. That’s all you need.

Phainon angles towards the next level’s opening, yanks hard on the web, and swings both of you clean through it. You hit the ground hard, momentum rolling you both across the floor in a rough tumble. He absorbs most of the impact—shoulder first, then hip—but keeps you tucked in his arms the whole way.

The server room’s door looms ahead, sealed with thick glass and reinforced by a biometric panel.

“Can you override it?” he asks, already placing you down on your feet.

You stagger once, then nod. “I—I can try.”

Phainon presses a palm to your lower back, steadying you as you stumble towards the wall-mounted keypad. You swipe your stolen access card—Lycurgus’ clearance still hot in the system—and slam your hand against the override scanner. It flashes yellow, then green.

The second the server room door hisses open, Phainon knows it’s wrong. The air is too clean, too still, not like a hospital, but lifeless, like the room itself doesn’t care if he walks in or burns alive. Server towers stretch in columns across the floor, blinking. The lights aren’t just white, they’re clinical, buzzing just above his pain threshold. Everything smells like copper and static and scorched plastic.

At the far end, housed behind reinforced glass, is the core. It pulses, like a heartbeat, except it’s not alive. It’s lithium, it’s electricity, it’s something that was never supposed to breathe—but it is, somehow.

He doesn’t like it.

He crosses the threshold, half-dragging you with him. You’re a weight he doesn’t mind carrying—you’re grounding, real, a reminder that not everything in this godforsaken place is synthetic or made in a lab.

“I’ll buy us a minute,” he mutters.

You don’t respond. You’re already gone—mentally, physically—moving with purpose even though you can barely stay on your feet. He wants to help you, wants to make you sit down, but he doesn’t. You’ve always been like this: stubborn, focused, razor-sharp under pressure. He admires it even when it scares him.

He stations himself at the door, arms braced and knees bent. His ribs hurt. His head’s still ringing from the last slam against the wall. But adrenaline is louder than pain.

The wall explodes. He hears it before he sees it—the thrum of Irontomb’s feet, the deep thunk-thunk-thunk of heavy footsteps.

“Phainon,” it says again, in your voice. “You hesitate at a 3.2% deviation rate when she’s—”

“You said that already, dipshit,” Phainon snarls, hurling himself forward.

He slams into Irontomb. The impact jars through every vertebra in his spine, but he doesn’t stop, doesn’t give it time to recalibrate. His shoulder clips its chest hard enough to knock them both off balance, and they go crashing through a row of server towers in a spray of sparks and shattering plex.

Irontomb hits the floor, skidding, its limbs flailing for a fraction of a second. Phainon’s already on it, knee to the chestplate, webbing its arm to the ceiling in a single fluid movement.

“You don’t get to use her voice,” he spits, voice hoarse, hands shaking as he fires again. Webs stick to its mask, its joints, anything he can reach. “You don’t get to be her.”

Irontomb doesn’t flinch. Its head tilts again, that creepy mimicry sparking rage like gasoline in his chest.

“She is a variable,” it says, still in your voice. “All decisions lead back to her. All risk converges.”

He grits his teeth. “Shut the fuck up.”

It wrenches its arm free from the ceiling and drives a knee into his ribs. Something cracks—he doesn’t have time to find out what. The air is knocked out of him, but he rolls, using the momentum to web-sling up to the overhead rigging.

He fires a line down, yanking hard. Metal groans, and a rack of exposed conduit tears free, crashing down onto Irontomb’s legs. The machine stumbles, crushed under the weight for a beat too long. Enough for Phainon to dive.

He hits it again, fists slamming into metal, fury blinding him. He doesn’t have a plan anymore, doesn’t need one. He just needs to keep it away from you. Even as he fights, he hears the beep of the console across the room, feels the glow of the core intensify.

You’re doing it. You’re actually doing it. Irontomb knows.

It shoves him back with unnatural strength. Phainon hits the wall hard enough to dent the steel. Before he can stand, it’s already halfway across the room, limbs unfurling, shoulder joints clicking, webline primed to fire—

“No,” Phainon croaks. He pushes himself up, panting, every inch of him burning, and fires. Web meets Irontomb’s leg. The pull is immediate. But instead of resisting, he yanks himself towards it—into it—slamming shoulder-first into the side of its neck just as it raises an arm to fire at you.

They crash to the floor, grappling, fists slamming into one another like machines. Except Phainon isn’t one. His body gives, bruises, bleeds. Irontomb’s doesn’t.

“Your biology is compromised,” it says. “You are inefficient, slower, in pain. The variable will not survive long without augmentation.”

“You’re not her,” he spits. “You don’t even sound like her.”

Out of the corner of his eye—through the haze of pain—he sees you rise to your feet, the console spitting warnings in every direction. Your hands hover over the control screen. One more step, one more command—

The core behind the glass begins to scream, not audibly, not to the ears, but inside his skull. Irontomb shudders beneath him. Its limbs jerk erratically, the green glow from its spine flickering. Sparks burst from the plates along its back.

You did it.

Phainon throws himself back just as Irontomb seizes violently, crashing to the floor, limbs twitching. Its mask fractures. Smoke pours from the base of its spine as the lithium core begins to destabilise.

He doesn’t exhale until the lights stop flickering. He’s already moving before the sound fades completely, his muscles sluggish, overworked, body bruised—but moving. His chest is burning. His lungs taste like copper and ozone. His ribs feel cracked. But none of it matters.

You’re still on your knees, hunched over the console, and for one horrifying second, you’re not moving.

“Hey.” He drops down beside you fast. “Hey—hey. You good? Talk to me.”

Your head lolls towards him, eyes glassy with exhaustion but alert. You nod and he catches your weight as you say sideways into his shoulder.

“I’m here,” you say, voice like sandpaper. 

“Yeah,” he breathes. “Yeah, you are.”

He pulls off his mask and folds one arm around your back and steadies you against him, his gloved hand cradling the back of your neck, just to prove you’re really here. Still warm. Still breathing. Your heart thuds weakly through your shirt when he presses his other hand to your chest, just fast enough to reassure him that the nightmare hasn’t reset.

You lean into him more fully, your head tucked under his jaw, like you’re afraid to look at the room behind you. Good. You shouldn’t have to. He’ll look for both of you.

The servers are smoking. Irontomb is a heap of metal now, sparking quietly beside the remains of a shattered cabinet. One of its hands is still twitching—reflex, probably. Not real. Not alive.

Still, Phainon keeps you close.

You shift, barely enough to get your mouth near his collarbone. “You okay?”

Phainon lets out something halfway between a laugh and a groan. “Gonna need twelve years of physical therapy. Minimum.”

Your breath catches on a tired laugh. It sounds like a miracle.

“You look like hell,” you murmur, slurring a little now, like the adrenaline’s finally wearing off.

“Yeah, well,” he mutters, pressing his forehead to yours. “You should’ve seen the other guy.”

It’s three in the morning, and the sky is the colour of soot.

The city below doesn’t sleep so much as it holds its breath. The clamour of traffic has thinned to a distant hush, streetlamps stutter, and a single train rumbles across a bridge miles away. Sirens have long gone quiet. No engines scream. No horns beg for way. The night is still, but not gentle.

It’s a stillness born of aftermath—sharp-edged and hollow, as if the concrete itself remembers what happened.

Phainon hangs upside down from a rusting fire escape three storeys above your apartment window, legs hooked neatly over a bar that groans faintly under his weight. He’s perfectly still, suspended in gravity’s indifferent hold, his fingers hanging loose above the cracked sidewalk below.

This is how he thinks best lately: inverted, half a world away from the one that keeps asking him to play hero. The metal is cold through his suit. The air smells like dust.

He’s grown used to these late hours. He’s begun to need them.

After Lycurgus vanished off the grid, escaping into whatever black-market pipelines recycles men like him—scientists with messiah complexes and fingerprints scrubbed clean—Phainon finds his pulse only slows in those long hours between dawn and dusk.

He watches your window. It’s open again, just slightly. It always is now. He’s never asked you why.

The official line is a “biochemical systems breach.” It’s what the public got. But the real reports—classified, sealed, redacted in wide black strokes—told a different story. Theoros Labs didn’t just go rogue; they were funded, sponsored, protected. There was infrastructure behind Irontomb, names buried in layers of clearance, strings running all the way up into the gut of the government. Someone had authorised the prototypes. Someone had approved neural mapping. Someone had known what they were doing.

You’ve testified three times already. You come home each time stiff-backed and silent, eyes rimmed in exhaustion, your voice quieter than usual like you’re still somewhere inside the sterile halls of the oversight committee. You never tell him the details, but you don’t have to. He’s seen the files. He’s seen it in person. He knows what Irontomb made of your voice, how it pitched your laugh, how it whispered his name. He knows what it did to you.

You both have nightmares now.

Sometimes it’s Irontomb itself, eyes burning green behind a mirrored face, moving too perfectly to be real. Sometimes, it’s worse: it’s you, only not. It’s him, only cold. Versions of yourselves that weren’t forged in kindness or fear, but in numbers and algorithms, in prediction models and nerve signal scans. He wakes choking, palms clenched, sweat cold on his back.

That’s when he comes to you, climbing through the window, silent and unmasked. You never greet him. You just shift in bed, roll slightly toward the wall, and make room beneath the blanket without opening your eyes. Some nights he lies on his back and stares at the ceiling. Others, he faces you. Sometimes your fingers find each other under the sheets and tangle in that uncertain, half-asleep way that makes the silence easier to bear.

Phainon stares at your open window, at the way the curtain ghosts inward on the faintest breeze. The world looks soft from up here, but his world is down there, just beyond the windowsill.

He drops from the fire escape without a sound.

The thud of his landing on the balcony is soft. His boots press against the worn stone for half a second before he steps toward your window, one gloved hand brushing the glass as he ducks inside.

Your apartment is dim, lit only by the sleepy spill of orange streetlight filtering through the curtains. The air is warmer here, touched with the faint smell of cinnamon and coffee roast, and the remnants of detergent in your sheets.

You’re curled up under the blanket, spine facing him, shoulders rising and falling in that slow rhythm he’s memorised. He doesn’t know if you’re asleep or pretending. It doesn’t matter. You always know when he’s here. You always leave the window cracked just enough.

He toes off his boots quietly, then strips off the top half of his suit, the fabric sticking to sweat-damp skin. His body aches with something deeper than bruises, like fatigue. But it fades the moment he lowers himself into the mattress behind you.

(He’s in love with you, he’s pretty sure.)

“Do you want to date me?”

The question startles Phainon so much he almost drops the wire he’s threading back into place, and nearly slides off the metal railing altogether. He catches himself with a clatter, boots locking tighter to the beam, arms splayed for balance.

“...Sorry, what?” he calls down.

You’re standing several feet below him, arms crossed, watching him with an unreadable expression—equal parts brave and vulnerable. You don’t repeat the question. You just lift your chin a little, eyes steady.

Phainon blinks at you from his upside-down perch, hair hanging towards the concrete, the city stretching behind him. He’s in his suit, sleeves rolled up, mask bunched around his neck, grease on one knuckle, a thin wire looped loosely around his fingers. The early evening air is warm, golden light pooling along the skyline.

“You—you mean date-date?” he asks dumbly, like there’s another kind.

You nod once, not smiling. “Yeah. Date-date.”

Phainon stares at you, the wire still slack in his fingers. The sunlight’s catching on the edge of your cheekbone, painting it gold. You look so certain, so calm, like you haven’t just thrown his entire nervous system into a tailspin. 

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Then he scrubs a hand over his face, smearing a bit of grease across his jawline. “Okay. That’s—just to be clear, you’re asking me if I want to date you. Like, go on dates, hold hands, maybe make out a little? Eat food together that isn’t waffles at five in the morning?”

“You make it sound so romantic,” you say dryly.

“I’m hanging upside down in my Spider-Man suit with wire cutters in my hand,” he says, voice rising an octave. “You kind of caught me off-guard.”

You raise an eyebrow. “You want me to come back when you’re right-side up?”

Phainon laughs, but it’s strained, caught somewhere between breathless and disbelieving. He shifts slightly on the bar. “No,” he says. “No, don’t—don’t go. I just…” His fingers curl loosely around the railing. “You really mean it? Like, seriously?”

You shrug, but your voice softens. “Why would I joke about that?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I mean, have you met me?”

You walk a step closer, now standing directly beneath him. “Yes. That’s kind of the point.”

Phainon stares at you, still upside down, still blinking like he hasn’t quite caught up with reality. His breath stutters, shallow through parted lips. The last of the sun has dipped below the horizon, and now the city is painted in deepening blue, rooftops etched in sharp lines against a sky the colour of cobalt ash.

You, however, are still golden; still lit from the inside out, like the question didn’t cost you anything, like you didn’t just tip the entire balance of his world in six words flat.

He swallows hard.

“I want to,” he says. “I want to date you.”

You nod, just once. But the tremble in your exhale betrays you. “Okay.”

You shift a little closer to where he’s hanging. The wind tousles your hair. You squint at him.

“Can I kiss you now?” you ask.

Phainon opens his mouth. No sound comes out.

His brain is screaming, Yes, God, yes, obviously, what do you think I’ve been dreaming about every night for the last year? But what actually escapes his mouth is an undignified, “I mean—yeah. If you want.”

You smile, small but warm, and step forward until you’re close enough that he can see the flecks of light in your irises. His pulse pounds at the base of his throat.

“Hold still,” you say.

And Phainon—Spider-Man, night-patroller, rooftop-skulker, awkward wreck of a man in love—holds so, so still.

You reach up, slowly. Your hand is warm as it cups the curve of his cheek. He flinches a little, not because of the touch, but because of how gentle it is. He’s not used to being touched like that. Your thumb brushes the edge of his jaw, dragging across the grease-stained skin. He forgets how to breathe.

Then, you lean in and kiss him.

It’s awkward, at first. The angle’s all wrong. You have to stand on your toes, and he has to tilt just right, his body swaying slightly with the breeze, but none of it matters—not when your lips touch his, not when the world goes so achingly, impossibly quiet. It’s soft, firmer than he expects, and yet not rushed. You kiss him like you’ve wanted to for a long time, like you’ve thought about it, like the moment had already existed somewhere in your mind long before you asked the question.

Phainon melts. He doesn’t move for the first few seconds; just hangs there, lips barely parted, letting you take the lead because he’s terrified that if he so much as breathes, you’ll disappear. But then something in him sparks—an ancient, quiet want—and he kisses you back.

He moves slowly, deliberately, meeting you where you are. His lips are dry and chapped from hours in the wind, but he’s warm beneath them, and his breath hitches in that small, helpless way that always happens around you. He tightens his grip on the bar, as though holding himself in place is the only way to keep from falling for real.

Eventually, you pull away.

His eyes open slowly, lashes low over dark, dazed pupils. His lips are parted, red and kiss-bruised.

“That was…” He clears his throat. “Wow.”

You smile, head tilting. “Still want to date me?”

“I want to marry you,” he blurts, then immediately flushes crimson. “I mean—hypothetically. Not now. Obviously not now. I’m hanging upside down. I’ve got wire cutters in my pocket. But you get the idea.”

You laugh, and he grins. 

“Come down, you idiot,” you say, still smiling. “Before your brain floods and I have to explain to emergency services that Spider-Man died because he let his blood rush to his head.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he mutters, already adjusting his grip. With a practiced motion, he swings backward once, then forward, and flips cleanly down onto the concrete beside you in a crouch, landing with a thud and a soft grunt. He straightens slowly, rubbing at the back of his head.

When he looks up again, you’re already walking towards him. You grab the front of his suit, tug gently—and then kiss him again, properly this time. He melts into it, hands hovering at your hips. You take the initiative again, stepping closer, your fingers sliding up his chest to cup his face as your mouth slants against his. The second kiss is deeper, more certain, less careful.

When you pull away, you don’t go far. You rest your forehead against his, both of you breathing hard. His hands settle around your waist now, not hesitant anymore, not unsure.

“You’re sure about this?” he whispers.

“I’m sure.”

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

He kisses you again, because he can, because he wants to. Because there’s no machine looming over his shoulder, no countdown, no artificial voice running simulations on how to hurt you best.

There’s only this: you, and him, and the golden hour dimming into twilight. Phainon lets you pull him back into the world right-side up.

Phainon thinks he’s a pretty good boyfriend.

Okay, maybe not, like, great. He has a running tab of things he’s fumbled: texts left on read for six hours because he was halfway across the city chasing someone with rocket boots, half-finished promises to pick up groceries, laundry that’s been folded but never quite put away. Date nights sometimes fall through. Movie plans get postponed. He loses track of time a lot.

But he always comes home. He always makes you laugh, even when you pretend to be annoyed with him. He never forgets the dates that matter, and never lets you go to sleep without hearing that he loves you, mumbled or whispered or scrawled on a Post-It if he’s back late. He’s trying. God, he’s trying.

And right now, looking at you—messy-haired, breathless, flushed and sprawled across the mattress like you belong there, like you belong with him—he thinks maybe he’s doing alright.

Phainon kisses down your ribs, trailing his mouth across your stomach. You shift beneath him, a little restless, a little expectant. He likes that—you trusting him enough to be open like this. It still hits him sometimes, like an aftershock, that you let him touch you like this. That you want him to.

He exhales slowly as he nudges lower, one arm curled under your thigh. His lips brush the inside of your hip, the softness of your skin, and he feels you shiver. Gently, he moves lower, and flicks his tongue over your clit.

You gasp, hand threading into his hair, and he smiles against you, slow and lazy and a little smug. He likes knowing he can do this to you. Likes knowing exactly how your breath hitches when he moves just right. He doesn’t rush. He never does with you. Every motion is measured, learned, almost reverent. He listens—to the catch in your throat, the flex of your fingers, the little half-sigh you try to swallow and can’t.

His grip on your hips tightens as you shift, as your thighs close around his shoulders, and he groans low in his chest, the sound vibrating softly between you.

“Phainon,” you whisper, voice thready. He loves the way you say his name. He hums again in response, and the way you respond to that—your spine arching, your mouth letting loose a litany of moans—makes him want to give you more.

When he finally slides two fingers into you, careful and deep, you let out a sound that makes him smile. Phainon exhales against your thigh, the sound shaky with restraint. Your muscles flutter around him, every inch of you wound tight. He watches you fall apart in increments—your fingers twisting in the sheets, your jaw slack with pleasure, your chest heaving.

“Right there?” he murmurs, half-teasing but wholly focused.

You nod, or maybe you don’t—you’re too far gone to speak, but your body answers for you: the way your hips shift, the way your leg curls around his shoulder, the soft whimper that escapes your lips. He presses in again, just a little firmer, curling his fingers the way he knows you like.

His mouth trails slow kisses along the inside of your thigh, tongue flicking over sensitive skin. He never rushes. He never wants to. Not with you.

“Phainon,” you breathe again. “Oh, fuck—”

He presses his mouth back to your folds, his fingers still working inside you with the same care. He’s mapping you like he’s been doing since the beginning—like every sigh is a star to chart by, every moan a signal flare. He’s learned to read you in a language no one else gets to learn.

You’re shaking now, your whole body strung tight as wire beneath his mouth. Your nails bite into his shoulder and you don’t even seem to notice—don’t seem to care—because you’re so close, teetering at the edge of your orgasm, sharp and sweet and inevitable.

A few more strokes and sucks and licks have you coming for him—arching, gasping, crying out his name. When the aftershocks start to fade, he eases off, kisses the softest parts of your skin as you tremble under him. His fingers slip from you gently. He brushes a hand over your thigh, up your hip, until he’s sliding over you again, kissing a slow trail back up your ribs and chest until he’s beside you.

Your eyes are closed, lips parted, still catching your breath. He watches you—eyes half-lidded, lashes damp, chest rising and falling—and then you blink up at him, a smile tugging at your lips like you’re not quite sure how to speak yet. Your skin is still warm, flushed in a way that makes Phainon want to memorise every inch of you all over again.

He brushes his knuckles over your cheek in that way he does when he doesn’t know what to say. “Still in there?”

You blink once, then smile with that crooked little grin he loves. “Ask me again in five minutes.”

He huffs a soft laugh and shifts to lie beside you, propping himself up on one elbow. His hand trails lazily over your stomach, fingers smoothing across the soft skin just above your hipbone, drawing idle shapes.

“Not bad for a guy who forgot to buy milk this morning, right?” he says.

You laugh and shove his shoulder. “Phainon!”

“I mean, I might’ve failed you on the breakfast front, but I like to think I made up for it in… other areas.”

You scoff, but it’s half a laugh, and the sound curls like a ribbon in Phainon’s chest. He watches the way your face softens when you’re amused—how your eyes crinkle at the corners, how your mouth fights not to smile wider.

“That’s debatable,” you say, rolling to face him fully.

“Oh, come on,” he says. “You sounded pretty convinced a few minutes ago.”

“Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Too late.” Phainon grins, and leans forward to bump his forehead against yours.

He feels like his heart’s trying to claw its way out of his chest, not in the life-threatening, nine-storeys-up, villain-hurling-him-off-a-building kind of way, but the kind where it’s just him and you, tangled in sheets, skin flushed. The kind of moment that makes his brain go a little fuzzy and his chest go tight, because he’s pretty sure this isn’t just a good day—it’s the day. The one people write songs and poems and stupid rom-coms about.

(You’re right there, inches from him, breathing the same air, and all he can think is: I hope I never forget this.)

He tries to play it cool, like he’s not falling apart from something as small as the curve of your smile, the way your fingers brush along his jaw like you’re trying to memorise him right back. But it’s a losing battle. He’s smiling too hard, the stupid kind that tugs at his cheeks. 

“You’re staring,” you say.

“Yeah,” he says, without even pretending otherwise. “I know.”

His hand is still on your waist, the tips of his fingers tracing small, slow patterns into your skin. He wants to tell you a thousand things—about how he’s never felt safer than he does when he’s beside you, about how it doesn’t matter if the world ends tomorrow so long as he got to know what your laugh sounded like when it was just for him. But the words get stuck somewhere behind his teeth.

You roll your eyes at him like you always do when you’re trying not to smile. “What are you thinking?” you ask.

Phainon opens his mouth to say something clever. He doesn’t. Instead, he says, “That I like you.”

“Yeah?” you say teasingly. “I had no clue.”

He smiles. “Sometimes I think this isn’t real. Like I’m gonna wake up in some busted rooftop vent or in the middle of a car chase, and all this’ll just be some nice dream I had when my brain was low on oxygen.”

“It’s real,” you whisper. “Do you want me to kiss you like real people do? Because I will. Don’t test me.”

(Phainon kisses you first, just to prove he’s real enough to do it.)

[sh4nksslvt]

hellooo I really like your work and would like to request some angst

maybe like reader dies or gets close to it. some more uncommon charcters too like nami, usopp, or franky please!!

thank you for really cool work and I hope you can do this!!

hii! thank u sm~ oohh~ thats a great idea, ive decided to put them all together, hope u like it!

What Remains

The Straw Hats survive a Marine superweapon test — but only because you don’t. You made a choice to save them all, and they didn’t see it coming.

strawhats x platonic gn! reader tags: angst, sfw, ooc, major character death, platonic bonds, grief a/n: this js me trying to write ffs, this is experimental and for fun only, so expect this ffs a bit cringe word count: 1k

masterlist | ko-fi

: 𓏲🐋 ๋࣭  ࣪ ˖✩࿐࿔ 🌊

Smoke curled upward from the scorched ruins of the Marine testing island. The sky was dim, bleeding orange as the sun tried and failed to burn away the choking clouds.

They found your body beneath the collapsed structure—arms still raised like you were shielding the others even in death.

It wasn’t the injuries that broke them. It was the look on your face.

Peaceful.

Like you knew.

ONE WEEK EARLIER.

"These weapons..." Franky said, examining the diagrams. "They’re worse than anything Vegapunk ever dreamed up. They’re built to erase islands."

“And they’re testing them here?” Nami’s voice trembled with disbelief.

Usopp peered over the map. “That’s not all. Some of this... it’s Poneglyph script. These freaks are mixing history with firepower.”

You didn’t say anything.

You just stared at the map. Quiet. Calm. Like a storm on the horizon no one else had seen yet.

“We have to stop this,” you said.

Of course, everyone agreed.

But none of them saw what you saw. None of them realized the cost yet.

Not even you.

THE BATTLE.

The Straw Hats split into teams. Luffy and Zoro drew the front lines away. Robin sabotaged the comms. Brook and Jinbei distracted the guards. Chopper tended to wounded civilians trying to escape.

You were supposed to go in with Franky and Usopp.

You didn’t.

You slipped away the moment they weren’t looking, whispering your last words to Nami before disappearing into the smoke.

“I trust you. Don’t look back.”

You found the core buried deep underground.

A thrumming vault of seastone and ancient script, glowing with stolen knowledge and raw destruction.

You knew what it meant.

You could read the Poneglyph fragments embedded in the weapons.

You knew what would happen if they were activated.

So you made a choice.

A selfish, irreversible choice.

You overloaded the core.

THE AFTERMATH.

When the blast hit, it carved a crater into the earth.

Luffy felt it first—his scream carried across the island like a cannon blast. “(Y/N)!!”

Franky’s stomach dropped. He bolted toward the smoke, ignoring everything—orders, pain, fire.

Usopp followed. Nami, too. She didn’t even speak. Her Clima-Tact sparked wildly, emotions bleeding into weather.

They dug with bare hands and bleeding fingers.

And finally, they found you.

Still. Burned. Crushed.

But unmistakably you.

And unmistakably gone.

THE SUNNY.

Franky hadn’t spoken in two days.

He sat in the engine room, back turned to everyone, arms blackened with soot and oil. He worked until his hands bled, building gods knew what.

Chopper had tried to check on him. Franky didn’t even look up.

Usopp wandered the deck in silence, eyes red, mouth dry. He hadn’t told a single story since they left the island.

He’d tried. He opened his mouth once to make a joke, and nothing came out.

So he just sat with your grave marker, talking to it like you were there.

And Nami—Nami was broken in a way no one had ever seen.

She didn’t cry loudly. She didn’t scream. She just shut down.

She went days without food. Sat curled in the crow’s nest, staring out to sea, clutching the note you left her in your final moments.

"Don’t look back."

She hated you for it.

She loved you for it.

She never stopped shaking.

NIGHT.

Luffy stood by the railing, his hat pulled low, wind in his face.

Sanji stood beside him in silence.

“You knew they were gonna die,” Luffy said suddenly. His voice wasn’t angry. It was hollow.

Sanji lit a cigarette, fingers shaking. “I knew they weren’t coming back.”

Luffy didn’t answer.

“They saved all of us,” Sanji added after a long pause.

“I didn’t want saving,” Luffy whispered.

Then he turned and walked away.

FRANKY.

The machine he was building exploded.

He didn’t flinch.

Robin found him hours later, crouched beside the wreckage, staring into space.

“They’d have slapped me for this,” he said quietly.

Robin knelt beside him. “For what?”

“For not stopping them.”

“They knew what they were doing.”

“That doesn’t make it easier.”

Robin placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “It never does.”

USOPP.

He buried the dials you used in a small, unmarked box.

Every trap you helped him design, every gadget you tweaked. Gone. Hidden away like a secret.

“I’m never going to be that brave,” he whispered.

Then he broke.

Ugly, shaking sobs that echoed across the deck.

NAMI.

She didn’t speak for three days.

Then, she found Franky. Slammed him into a wall.

“You let them go alone!” she screamed.

Franky didn’t fight back. “I know.”

“YOU PROMISED—YOU PROMISED ME THEY’D COME BACK—!”

He wrapped his arms around her mid-swing, held her as she sobbed, her fists pounding against his chest until they were too weak to lift.

ONE WEEK LATER.

Luffy called everyone to the deck.

No one knew why.

When they arrived, they found him standing in front of a small, newly-built monument.

A single beam of the destroyed fortress. Carved with your name.

And beneath it—your jacket. Cleaned. Pressed. Folded neatly.

Luffy didn’t speak.

He didn’t need to.

They stood together. Silent.

One by one, they left offerings.

Sanji placed a bottle of sake.

Robin left a single violet flower.

Chopper tied a string of charms around the wood.

Zoro leaned his sword against it for a moment. A quiet nod of respect.

Brook played a low, mournful tune on his violin.

Jinbei lit a lantern and pushed it into the sea.

Usopp placed a small slingshot on the beam.

Franky left a blueprint.

And Nami… Nami placed your note. The last one you ever wrote.

“Don’t look back.”

She whispered, “I’m going to.”

Then she walked away.

.

.

.

They kept your room the way it was.

No one said it aloud—but they all visited.

Nami would sit on your bed when the nightmares came.

Usopp would fix the shelves you always overloaded with junk.

Franky recharged your tools every week, even though you weren’t there to use them.

And Luffy…

Luffy would sit on the figurehead, facing forward, holding your jacket in his lap.

He never cried where anyone could see.

But the jacket was always warm.

As if it still remembered you.

[takaraphoenix]

I saw someone refer to Steter as a comedy relief duo earlier and it just completely sent me, because that's just... so far from what Steter is, in canon?

As I'm currently rewatching the show, it has shot up into being my favorite ship on the show because of the gravitas it has.

It's a ship that highlights Stiles' fearlessness in such intriguing ways, in canon. From the boy who yelled at a feral Alpha in the school, to their first face to face meeting at the hospital, when Peter recognizes him, knows him, acknowledges him ("You must be Stiles", as though Stiles' reputation as the one who figures things out proceeds him, as he is the first one to put together that Peter is the Alpha).

There's nothing comedic about the scene on the lacrosse field, when Stiles is kneelng beside Lydia's unconscious form and Peter... for reasons beyond comprehension... decides to curl his claws beneath Stiles' chin and guide him up. Not grab him by the arm and haul him up, not command him, not demand.

This is... sensual, filled with tension, and I don't even necessarily mean the sexual tension (even though the imagery of Stiles kneeling before Peter and Peter grasping his chin is something that I find hard to not see a sexual read on).

Peter kidnaps Stiles into the parking garage to force the boy to track down Derek and, sure, the "His username is Allison? His password is also Allison?" - "Still want him in your pack?" is absolutely iconic and is comedic... how do you boil that entire exchange down to "comedy relief"?

The way Peter offers Stiles the bite - Peter, who so far, only took whatever he wanted, never asked or offered - and doesn't force when Stiles says "No". Even the way Peter catches Stiles on the lie is a moment of tension and revelation on Stiles' part. The way Peter acknowledges Stiles as the clever one.

The season 1 finale? When Stiles sets the survivor of a horrific house fire on fire? Absolute riot, huh. It's vicious, it's cruel - it's everything.

And when Peter is resurrected? Sure, Stiles sarcastically asks if someone can kill him again and sure, Peter snarks about living in a cave system. But even in that episode, these brief comedic moments are absolutely overshadowed by the way Peter and Stiles work together, figure out what the vault is made of, then call Scott to warn him and Derek, by finishing each other's sentences. Two brilliant minds working together, on the same wavelength.

The next time they interact is when Peter tells Stiles about Paige, explains what the blue eyes mean. It's one of the more heavy and serious moments in the season, aside from all the death scenes. It's a big lore drop and character background on both Peter and Derek. And it's Stiles this information is shared with. It's a serious moment and even as Peter tells it all, Stiles doesn't trust, sees past the silver tongue and that too is part of the appeal.

When Peter and Stiles work together to save Cora's life in the hospital, while the Alpha Pack is hunting them down? Blind trust. Stiles asks Peter to help him and Peter doesn't even ask, much less quip, he just follows Stiles' lead and they work together.

Now, I'll admit, I haven't seen seasons 3B through 6 in six years and hey, maybe they'll be a real Abbott and Costello in season 4 and I'm just not remembering it, but damn it all to hell if the first half of the show doesn't present them as two clever minds challenging each other, with a growth from terror and pain to respect and teamwork.

I understand and respect not liking a ship, but I am genuinely baffled when people deliberately misinterpret a canon to suit their needs. Always makes me wonder what alternate reality's version of the show they were watching, surely not the same as me.

[d-z20]

A Risk of Ruin (NSFW)

Pairing: Agatha Harkness x Reader

Summary: At a lavish black-tie gala, Agatha teases you relentlessly before leading you to a secluded room overlooking the party. With the ever-present risk of being discovered heightening the tension, what begins as playful flirting quickly turns into a heated, intimate encounter.

-OR-

Agatha's too horny to wait until you get home so finds a semi-hidden place to fuck you at the party

Warnings: 18+ MDNI, established relationship, Top Agatha, feminine reader, small bit of degradation and praise, semi-public sex, smut obvi, kind of possessive Agatha she wants to get caught

Words: 2.8k

A/N: Let's pretend that Agatha's outfit would actually be allowed at a black-tie event okay? Read the request

AO3 | Masterlist

The grand ballroom is a masterpiece of extravagance; every inch of it designed to impress. Glittering crystal chandeliers hang from vaulted ceilings, their light refracting over marble floors and gilded accents. Servers weave expertly through clusters of finely dressed guests, trays balanced with champagne flutes and hors d'oeuvres. It’s the annual gala for one of the most prestigious foundations in the city—a celebration of opulence and power.

Agatha had insisted you come as her date, brushing aside your hesitation about not fitting into her world. Now, standing next to her, you realise you needn’t have worried. Dressed in a striking black suit that hugs her frame perfectly, paired with an understated black bralette visible beneath the lapels, she looks every bit the powerhouse.

You, on the other hand, had spent far too much time agonising over your own look. But the moment Agatha saw you in your sparkling black gown, its high slit teasing the curve of your exposed thigh, she had whispered something sinful in your ear that left no doubt about her approval. The heat of her breath on your skin and the dark promise in her words still linger, making your heart flutter every time you replay the moment in your mind.

The evening begins smoothly enough. Agatha is a natural in these circles, effortlessly charming the other guests while keeping you close at her side. Her hand frequently finds the small of your back, guiding you through the crowd as she introduces you to various city officials. Every glance she casts your way, full of quiet possession and smouldering admiration, leaves you feeling flushed.

By the time the two of you make it to the bar, you’re desperate for a moment to collect yourself. She has been teasing you all night—an intentional brush of her fingertips along your arm here, a low murmur against your ear there. You’re so flustered, you barely taste the champagne she hands you.

"Excuse me for a moment," you manage, your voice shaky. Agatha’s eyes flick over you, her lips curving in a knowing smirk. She makes no move to stop you, but you can feel her gaze follow you as you make your way to the restroom.

The powder room is as opulent as the rest of the venue, complete with gleaming countertops, a marble basin, and a uniformed attendant stationed by the door. You offer a polite nod to the woman and make your way to the sink, grateful for the momentary reprieve from Agatha’s intoxicating presence.

Taking one of the pristine white towels on the counter, you run it under cold water before wringing it out carefully. The cool fabric feels heavenly as you press it to your wrists, then dab it lightly against your neck and chest. You’re mindful of your makeup, ensuring none of the effort you’ve put into tonight’s look is ruined. But even with the cooling touch of the water, your thoughts are still clouded by Agatha—her scent, her touch, the commanding way she has been looking at you all night.

"Need any assistance, miss?" the attendant asks softly, her voice smooth and professional.

"No, thank you," you reply, offering a polite smile. You exhale deeply, bracing your hands on the counter for a moment. Get it together.

When you finally feel composed enough to return, Agatha is waiting for you just outside the powder room. She leans against the wall, one hand in her pocket, the other holding a champagne flute. The sight of her nearly undoes all your efforts to cool off. Her dark hair frames her face in soft waves, and her suit—tailored to perfection—emphasises her every movement as she turns to look at you.

"You disappeared on me," she teases, stepping closer. Her free hand comes up to rest on your waist, her thumb brushing against the fabric of your gown just below your ribs. Her voice is low and sultry. "Couldn’t handle being around me, hmm?"

"Not everything is about you," you reply, though the breathlessness in your tone betrays you.

"Oh, but this is," she says, her lips curving into a wicked smile. Her gaze drops, lingering on the slit in your gown, and you feel her fingers skim the bare skin of your thigh. A shiver runs through you, every nerve in your body sparking to life at her touch. "Let’s find somewhere a little less... crowded."

You barely have time to process what’s happening before Agatha’s hand is in yours, her grip firm yet unhurried. With practiced ease, she guides you through a side corridor and up a discreet staircase, her confident stride giving you little choice but to follow. Moments later, she leads you into a small, lavishly decorated antechamber.

The space is secluded but far from silent. It overlooks the grand ballroom below, the gilded railing framing the glittering crowd like a painting. From this height, the noise of the party seems amplified—the cheerful hum of conversation, the clinking of glasses, and the swell of orchestral music blending together in an intoxicating symphony. It’s a stark reminder that the two of you are just one careless sound away from discovery.The risk sends a thrill rushing through you, your skin buzzing with anticipation as Agatha closes the door softly behind her.

When she turns to face you, the look in her eyes steals your breath. There’s a smouldering hunger there, barely restrained, and it sends a shiver down your spine. Your pulse pounds in your ears, your breath quickening as her gaze pins you in place.

“Now,” she purrs, stepping closer, her hands settling on your waist as she backs you gently against the wall. Her lips curl into a wicked smile. “Where were we?”

Agatha doesn’t wait for an answer. The thrill of the noise from the ballroom below, the ever-present risk of being overheard, seems to only excite her more. Her hands slide around your waist, pulling you flush against her body as she claims your lips in a searing kiss. Her dominance is undeniable, the sharp nip at your bottom lip drawing a soft gasp from you that she swallows with a low, pleased hum. The taste of her is dizzying, the kiss consuming, as if she’s determined to leave her mark on you in every possible way.

"Careful, darling," she murmurs against your lips, her tone dripping with amusement. "We wouldn’t want to give the partygoers below a show, would we?"

Her hands begin to roam, one trailing up your back to tangle in your hair while the other slides down to the slit in your gown. Her fingers brush against your exposed thigh, sending sparks through your entire body. Your breath stutters, heat pooling low in your belly as her fingertips blaze a path across your skin.

“You’re breathtaking tonight,” she says, her voice low and husky. “Do you have any idea what you’ve been doing to me all evening? This dress…” She punctuates her words by pushing the fabric aside slightly, her fingers tracing the sensitive skin just above your knee. The deliberate slowness of her movements leaves you squirming, your body aching for more. “...is a masterpiece, but it’s been driving me insane.”

Your breath hitches as her fingers travel higher, her touch deliberate and maddeningly slow. The cool night air from the balcony kisses your skin where her hands expose it, heightening every sensation. She leans in, her lips brushing against your ear.

“Be quiet for me,” she whispers, her voice dark and commanding. “Think you can manage that?”

You nod; your words caught somewhere in your throat. The command sends a jolt of desire through you, your body tightening at the intensity in her voice.

Agatha rewards your compliance with a wicked smile, her lips claiming yours again as her hand moves higher. She slides her thigh between your legs, her movements calculated and precise, as if she knows exactly how to drive you wild without uttering a word.

Her fingers brush over your bare skin, and she pauses, a low chuckle escaping her lips. "No underwear?" she purrs, her voice thick with amusement. "How typical of you... so eager, so ready to be touched." The comment makes you arch into her subconsciously—a soft whimper escaping your lips as heat pools between your thighs, your body responding involuntarily to her words.

Before you can gather yourself, Agatha presses her lips to your ear, her breath hot and teasing as she whispers, "You’re desperate, aren’t you?" The tip of her finger traces slow, teasing circles, making your breath catch. You feel your pulse quicken, the anticipation of her touch building, and the friction of her finger grazing your clit leaves you weak at the knees.

The first stroke of her fingers through your folds has you clutching at her suit jacket for support, your legs threatening to give way. She chuckles softly, her lips moving to your neck as she sets a torturously slow rhythm. Every motion is designed to unravel you, and she watches your every reaction with a predatory gaze, savouring the way your body responds to her touch.

As you moan softly, Agatha pulls away from your neck, her gaze sharp and commanding. "Shh, doll," she whispers, her voice a dangerous mix of affection and control. "You need to be quieter for me, understand?" She strokes your cheek lightly, the touch almost tender, before her hands move lower once more, continuing their slow, deliberate rhythm.

The heat pooling in your core intensifies as her fingers tease you, sliding through your slickness with agonising precision. You squirm under her touch, your hips shifting instinctively to chase the pressure you so desperately need, but Agatha is unrelenting—keeping her rhythm excruciatingly slow. 

A wicked smirk plays on her lips as she tilts her head, her voice a low murmur. “Are you that desperate already?” 

Her words are a dark caress, and when her thumb finally brushes over your clit, it sends a jolt of electricity through you, your knees nearly buckling as a strangled gasp slips from your lips.

"Look at you," she murmurs against your skin, her voice thick with desire. "So perfect, so sensitive... I could keep you like this all night."

You whimper softly, your grip tightening on her as her pace increases. The muffled sounds of the party below only add to the thrill of the moment, the constant threat of being overheard making it impossible to think clearly. All you can focus on is Agatha—her hands, her lips, her voice.

Agatha's fingers never falter, each stroke purposeful, her rhythm teasingly slow. “You like this, don’t you, doll?” she purrs, her voice dripping with smug satisfaction as her teeth graze the sensitive spot on your neck. “You’re such a mess for me already, and we’ve only just begun.”

You let out a shaky breath, your body trembling against hers, but Agatha isn’t done with you yet. With a devilish hum, she shifts, pressing her thigh more firmly between your legs, pinning you harder against the wall. “There, that’s better,” she murmurs, her free hand snaking up to cup your jaw, tilting your face so she can drink in every reaction. “Eyes on me, darling. I want to see everything.”

Her command sends a shiver down your spine, and when your gaze meets hers—those dark, hungry eyes fixed on you—it feels impossible to look away. Agatha smirks at the heat flooding your expression, her thumb brushing your bottom lip as her fingers continue their torturous work. “So beautiful when you’re falling apart for me,” she croons, the praise laced with just enough teasing to make your cheeks burn.

Your hips buck instinctively, chasing her touch, desperate for more, but Agatha only slows her pace, her movements maddeningly deliberate. “Oh no, doll,” she murmurs, clicking her tongue in mock admonishment. “Don’t get greedy. You’ll take what I give you, won’t you?”

“Yes,” you gasp, the word tumbling from your lips before you can stop it.

“Good girl,” she praises, her smile downright wicked as she rewards your obedience with a firmer, faster rhythm. Your head tips back against the wall, a strangled moan escaping you before you can stop it.

Agatha stills immediately, her hand leaving you aching and empty as she grips your chin, forcing your head upright to meet her gaze again. “What did I say about being quiet?” she chides softly, though the dark edge in her voice betrays just how much the sound excites her. “Do you want everyone down there to know how filthy you are being for me?”

You shake your head quickly, swallowing hard as you bite down on your lip to stifle another sound. Agatha grins, clearly satisfied by your submission, and leans in to press a lingering kiss to the corner of your mouth. “That’s better. I knew you could behave for me.”

you with a practiced confidence that leaves you trembling. Each touch is deliberate, calculated—her fingertips sliding through your slickness with maddening precision before circling back to tease your clit. Her movements are agonisingly slow, designed to keep you teetering on the edge, and it works. Your breathing grows uneven, with shallow gasps escaping as the tension coiling in your core tightens with every passing second.

"Look at you," she murmurs, her voice a dark, velvety caress. "Falling apart so easily."

Her words send a fresh wave of heat coursing through your body, and when her thumb presses more firmly against your clit, a loud whimper slips past your lips. Agatha chuckles softly, the sound low and predatory, her breath ghosting over your ear. "Careful, darling," she warns, though there’s a note of amusement in her tone. "I told you to be quiet."

Her free hand snakes up to your jaw, her grip firm yet tender as she tilts your head to face her. "Focus," she commands, her dark eyes pinning you in place as she continues her slow, torturous rhythm. "I want to see every little reaction."

The weight of her gaze makes you feel exposed, vulnerable, yet utterly consumed. Your body betrays you, hips shifting instinctively to meet her hand, but Agatha only smirks, pulling back slightly—just enough to make you whine in frustration.

"So greedy," she hums, her tone dripping with smug satisfaction. "You want more, don’t you?" Her fingers trace an achingly slow path, teasing the sensitive bundle of nerves before pulling away again. You nod, your body arching against the wall as you chase the relief she’s withholding.

"Say it," she demands, her voice a low growl as her fingers hover just out of reach. "Tell me what you need."

Your cheeks burn at the command, but the ache between your thighs drowns out any sense of embarrassment. "More," you whisper, your voice shaky. "Please… I need more."

Agatha’s lips curve into a wicked smile as she leans in, brushing her mouth against your ear. "Good girl," she praises, her words sending another shiver through you. Without warning, she thrusts two fingers inside you, resuming her rhythm with a renewed intensity that leaves you breathless.

The tension building in your core feels unbearable now, each stroke of her fingers driving you closer to the edge. Your legs threaten to give way, your body trembling uncontrollably as pleasure coils tighter and tighter within you. Agatha watches you intently, her eyes dark with desire and triumph.

“Come for me, darling,” she whispers against your ear, her voice low and commanding. “Let go. Be good and fall apart on my fingers.”

It doesn’t take long—her words, her touch, and her sheer presence are too much to bear. Your body tenses, pleasure crashing over you in waves, your nails digging into her suit jacket as you try desperately to stay quiet. Agatha holds you through it, her lips peppering soft kisses along your jaw as she slows her movements, letting you ride out the aftershocks.

“There you go, doll,” she murmurs, her voice softening, her tone dripping with satisfaction. “So perfect for me. Just like I knew you would be.”

You exhale shakily, your cheeks flushed as your gaze flickers toward the railing, a wave of awareness crashing over you. The crowd below continues to laugh and dance, blissfully unaware of what has just transpired above them.

“Relax, darling,” Agatha murmurs, catching your chin between her fingers and tilting your face back to hers. Her smirk is confident, unshaken. “No one saw. And if they had... " She leans in closer, her voice dropping to a velvety whisper. “I’d want them to know exactly who you belong to.”

Your breath hitches at her words, your heart pounding all over again. Before you can respond, Agatha slips an arm around your waist, pulling you effortlessly into her side. With a satisfied hum, she guides you toward the door, back to the centre of the party waiting below. The warmth of her touch lingers on your skin, and her promise of what awaits you later dances in the air, sending another delicious shiver through you.

-----

reblog if you want Agatha to fuck you at a fancy party <3

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I felt like the side room was more elegant than them fucking in the restroom as that would've been a little cramped speaking from experience I mean that's what I imagine it would be

[sowerpatch]

unfold [chapter six - unspoken]

Summary: Paige Bueckers didn’t expect to lose the WNBA championship. She also didn’t expect to find comfort in a bartender who spoke more with her in guarded silences than most people did with words.

Author's note: this is an AU where Azzi doesn't play basketball but works as a bartender.

*CHAPTER LIST HERE*

Chapter Summary: Paige doesn’t know what to call what’s growing between her and Azzi, but when Azzi invites her home for Thanksgiving, she says yes. Surrounded by a family that welcomes her without hesitation, Paige finds the kind of support she never thought she needed—a love without labels and a mother’s unwavering care. Slowly, she begins to feel the shape of something she thought she’d lost.

Word count: 5,289

Paige leaned against the side of her car with the ease of someone who felt more like herself in the night. The sharp November air curled around her in soft gusts, but she didn’t flinch. One ankle crossed over the other, she stood beneath the halo of the parking lot lights just outside Vault 35, hands tucked into the pocket of her hoodie as if she had all the time in the world. 

Tom, the bouncer who Paige befriended, stood a few feet from her. Arms folded, laughter in his voice as he said something that made Paige’s grin tilt wider. She nudged his arm with a mock scowl, and the two exchanged the kind of rhythm that usually took months to build. Familiar. Easy. Like they were already good friends.  

Azzi caught the moment just as she stepped out of the front entrance. Her eyes took in the scene. Paige glowing faintly in the amber light, hoodie sleeves pushed up to her elbows, talking to Tom like she belonged here. Like she’d always belonged wherever she decided to wait. 

The moment Tom saw Azzi, his gaze shifted with a kind of deference. He dipped his chin and gave Paige a parting clap on the shoulder. “Alright, superstar,” he said, eyes flicking to Azzi with a knowing edge. “Looks like your night just got better. See you around.” 

Paige’s smile softened. “Have a good night, Tom.” 

And just like that, her entire body turned toward Azzi. 

Azzi didn’t rush. She never did. But the moment Paige opened her arms, everything else faded into the background. Without hesitation, Azzi walked right into her, arms circling her waist as if drawn there by gravity. Paige pulled her in with a warmth that felt nothing short of inevitable. They held each other in silence, heads tilted just slightly inward, their breath visible in the cold between them. The kind of embrace that said more than words ever could. 

“You cold?” Paige murmured, her voice quiet, but full of that gentle teasing she reserved for moments like this. 

Azzi opened her mouth to protest, then caught herself, lips curving into something sheepish. 

Paige was already reaching into the car, popping the door open and grabbing something from the backseat. When she turned around, she was holding out a worn UConn hoodie—the one Azzi had always teased her for babying like it was a collector’s item. Soft at the seams, sleeves a little too long, still faintly scented with whatever Paige used in her laundry. 

“You left yours at my place the other night, so I put it in the laundry,” Paige said, slipping it into Azzi’s hands. “Figured this would do for tonight.” 

Azzi stared at it. Her fingers brushed over the familiar logo stitched across the front, the fabric still warm from the heater Paige had turned on during the drive over. She didn’t speak at first, just looked at her with eyes that blinked a little too slowly. Then, without warning, she stepped back into Paige’s arms for a second hug, tighter this time, as if the gesture had cracked something open in her chest. 

“Thank you,” Azzi whispered against her neck, voice muffled but thick with something raw. 

Paige pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. The kind that wasn’t rushed. The kind that stayed.    Paige reached ahead and opened the passenger door, stepping aside with a quiet gesture that made Azzi glance at her before slipping inside. She tugged the hoodie closer as she settled into the seat, the sleeves swallowing her hands like it had always been hers. Paige watched her for a moment, a soft curve at the corner of her lips, before rounding the front of the car to take the driver’s side. 

The hum of the engine filled the quiet between them as Paige guided the car onto the freeway, one hand curled around the steering wheel and the other resting easily in Azzi’s lap. Their fingers were interlaced without thought, her thumb grazing the side of Azzi’s hand in slow, absent strokes. It was the kind of stillness that didn’t ask for conversation. 

The city lights blinked past them in soft rhythm. Paige’s grip on the wheel stayed steady, but her focus flicked often to Azzi, whose head leaned lightly against the window, eyes half-closed in the way someone looked when they felt safe. 

Without needing to announce it, Paige lifted their joined hands and brought the back of Azzi’s knuckles to her lips. A gentle press. Then another. She let her mouth linger there, the warmth of the kiss held just long enough to mean something. 

It had become a quiet habit. Lately, when she felt affection bloom behind her ribs with nowhere to go, it always found its way to Azzi’s hands. A kiss placed there during long walks or quiet mornings or car rides just like this.  

Azzi turned her head and gave her a look so soft it could unravel steel. “You keep doing that,” she said. 

Paige smiled, not looking away from the road. “Doing what?” 

“That thing. With my hand.” 

Paige kissed her again in response, this time on her fingertips. “You don’t like it?” 

Azzi didn’t answer right away. She let out a breath, light and tired and full of something warmer than words. “The exact opposite of it.”    Paige smiled at that. Returning their joined hands on Azzi’s lap. 

“You hungry?” Paige asked, her voice low but not sleepy. “We could stop somewhere.” 

Azzi let her head fall back against the seat and turned toward her, lids fluttering open. “I am hungry,” she said, stretching the words like they took effort. “But I’m also tired. Can we just drive-thru? Maybe eat at your place?” 

Paige nodded, already easing into the exit lane. “Say less.” 

Azzi’s hand tightened in hers in gratitude as she closed her eyes.  

- 

The room had quieted in that full, content way that only came after a shared meal and a long day. They were curled on Paige’s couch, shoes abandoned by the door, the low flicker of a muted television casting faint shadows along the walls. The scent of fast food still lingered in the air, though neither of them had touched the last few fries in the bag on the coffee table. Azzi leaned against the armrest, knees drawn up loosely beneath her, watching Paige from across the cushion. 

Something in her had been stirring for days, slow and certain, like a decision taking shape before she could name it. Every moment with Paige seemed to reinforce it. The easy warmth in her smile. The casual affection in the way she reached for Azzi’s hand without thinking. The tenderness that surfaced now when Paige thought no one else was looking. It made something swell in Azzi’s chest, soft and full and terrifying in its clarity. She was falling for her. There was no other way to describe it. 

Paige didn’t ask for anything. She never did. But Azzi had started to notice the things Paige did not say, the conversations she steered around, the distant look that came when basketball came up in passing. Azzi had seen that flicker before—the way it dimmed something in her. And she didn’t have a perfect solution. There was no outlined plan, no mapped path forward. Still, the need to help had settled deep inside her. 

She was willing to try anything if it meant Paige found her way back to something that once brought her joy. Even if the outcome remained uncertain, the effort would be hers. Azzi was sure of that. 

She sat up slightly and turned toward her. “I’ve been thinking about next week,” she began, her tone quiet and careful, though not unsure. 

Paige looked up from where she had been lazily scrolling through her phone. “What about it?” 

“Thanksgiving,” Azzi said. “I was planning to go home for a few days. Virginia. My mom’s doing dinner like always, probably inviting the entire block.” Her smile was soft, a little shy. “I thought… maybe you could come with me?” 

The question hung there for a moment, suspended between them. Paige’s expression didn’t shift right away. Her fingers stilled over the phone, and her gaze flickered, not toward Azzi but somewhere just past her. A beat passed before she spoke. 

“I didn’t even realize it was coming up that fast,” she said. Her voice was even, but Azzi could sense the hesitation underneath. 

She understood it. Paige hadn’t said it aloud, but Azzi had felt the way she had been holding herself lately—closer, more present, a little more willing to be vulnerable. It had surprised her at first, this shift. But now, looking at her, Azzi wondered if the quiet closeness was Paige’s way of anchoring herself to something before it could slip away. As if she feared the possibility of distance even while staying near. 

Paige finally looked over. Her eyes softened, and her thumb reached across the couch, brushing lightly against Azzi’s knee. “You want me to meet your family?” 

Azzi shrugged, trying to sound casual, but the way her fingers tightened around the blanket on her lap gave her away. “I want you with me.” 

Paige let the silence breathe before she answered. She thought about the people she would meet, the small talk she didn’t like, the unfamiliar home she’d have to navigate. None of it called to her. But then she looked at Azzi again, really looked, and saw the quiet hope in her eyes. That unspoken fear that maybe Paige would still choose to stay away, stay distant. 

She remembered the night Azzi first climbed into her bed just to lie beside her and breathe. Remembered the promise she made to herself in the quiet after—that she would find ways to make Azzi feel safe, seen, and loved. Even if it meant doing the hard things. 

“Sure, I'll go with you,” Paige said at last. 

The relief on Azzi’s face came gently, blooming like a slow exhale. She didn’t jump or grin or flood the space with excitement. She just leaned forward, placed her hand over Paige’s, and whispered, “Thank you.” 

- 

The cab turned off the main road and rolled to a stop at the edge of the wide driveway. A stretch of brick and white siding stood in front of them, framed by tall trees whose leaves had shifted to deep reds and browns, the remnants of a season beginning to pass. Paige leaned forward slightly, eyes taking in the shape of the home where Azzi had grown up. It felt lived-in in the best way. Porch lights already on even before the sun dipped low, a wind chime stirring faintly near the front steps. 

Azzi paid the driver and grabbed one of the duffel bags before Paige could insist. Her other hand found Paige’s naturally, with a touch that felt like second nature now, not something to reach for but something always within reach. They walked up the path together, shoes brushing gravel, each step threading them deeper into something that had been waiting here long before they arrived. 

The front door opened before either of them could knock. Katie stood there, hand resting on the frame, her expression breaking into immediate joy. She stepped out and enveloped her daughter in a full-bodied hug, one that held real weight. Like a pause in the world to make room for the one who had been missed most. 

“There’s my girl,” she said, kissing the top of Azzi’s head before pulling back just enough to hold her at arm’s length. “You look tired. And strong. And late, but I’ll let it slide.” 

Azzi laughed under her breath and leaned into the affection. “We made it.” 

Katie’s eyes turned to Paige then, curious and warm without a hint of judgment. Her gaze softened further as she took in the sight of them standing close together, hands still loosely joined. 

“You must be Paige,” she said. 

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you for letting me stay.” 

Katie waved the formal tone off with the back of her hand. “None of that. It’s just Katie here. Come inside before the grill eats itself.” 

They stepped into the house, warm air settling around them immediately. Somewhere in the kitchen, the sound of utensils clinked against ceramic. Music played softly in the background. Paige could smell the char of meat from outside, seasoned and smoky. Her hand brushed Azzi’s again as they walked to the sliding door that led to the backyard. 

Outside, Tim stood by the grill, turning skewers over glowing coals with the kind of focus that only came from years of knowing when something was just about done. When the door opened, he looked up and caught sight of Azzi. His eyes lit instantly. He wiped his hands on the side of his apron and stepped toward her with his arms already open. 

“There you are,” he said, pulling her into a solid hug. “I was starting to think I’d have to call the airline.” 

Azzi laughed softly, leaning into his chest. “I told you I was coming.” 

“Still like to hear it twice.” 

When they parted, she reached for Paige and brought her forward. “Dad, this is Paige. She’s joining us for Thanksgiving.” 

Tim looked at Paige with interest and offered his hand. “Tim.” 

“Paige,” she replied as they shook, meeting his gaze with a respectful steadiness. “It smells amazing out here.” 

“Good sign,” Tim said, his voice warming. “We’ll see if it holds up on the plate.” 

He glanced between the two of them, something tugging faintly at the corners of his mouth. “So this the girlfriend I’ve been hearing about?” 

The words landed with more weight than they should have. Azzi felt her breath catch somewhere behind her ribs. She hadn’t expected him to say it like that, with so little hesitation. Her eyes flicked toward Paige, only to find Paige already looking back, startled and still. The question hung there, filling the space between them before either of them could grab hold of it. 

Paige wasn’t sure how if she should answer that. The word felt too big, too certain, like it belonged to a version of them that hadn’t been fully discussed. They hadn’t defined anything. There hadn’t been a conversation. They moved through each other’s lives like they belonged, their days folding around shared breakfasts and long car rides and nights that always ended with one of them finding the other’s hand in the dark. But the language for it—labels, declarations, rules—remained untouched. 

Azzi’s cheeks grew warm under her father’s gaze. Her hand found Paige’s without thinking, their fingers weaving together like instinct. She wondered if Paige felt the same twist in her stomach, that flicker of fear that naming something might break it. Or maybe it would turn it into something else, something heavier than either of them had prepared for. 

Tim’s grin softened, his tone easy and without pressure. “Just wanted to be sure I got the introductions right.”    Paige let out a breath that might have been a laugh. She glanced at Azzi again, catching the flush that colored her neck. “It’s really nice to meet you,” she said, her voice steady, even if her thoughts were anything but. 

“Glad you’re here,” Tim said, already turning back to the grill. “Come on. You both made good time. Grab a drink and settle in.” 

They followed the path toward the door, their hands still linked. The tension didn’t break completely, but it settled into something quieter—an unspoken agreement between them to leave the question where it was, at least for now. 

Paige didn’t ask. Azzi didn’t explain. The label could wait. Whatever this was, it already meant something, even if neither of them had said it out loud. 

- 

Dinner stretched into the soft warmth of early evening, the kind of meal that felt more like a gathering than a routine. The picnic table outside the backyard was crowded with mismatched serving dishes and glasses that were refilled without anyone having to ask. There was a comfortable rhythm to the way Katie and Tim passed plates back and forth, a practiced ease that made the meal feel less like an introduction and more like a return. 

Azzi sat beside Paige, close enough that their elbows brushed. She had expected to be on edge, to spend the evening watching for signs of tension in her parents or discomfort in Paige, but it never came. Instead, laughter spilled easily between bites of grilled chicken and roasted vegetables. Her mom was in rare form, bringing out the kind of stories Azzi hoped had long been buried in old photo albums and forgotten drawers. 

“There was this one time she tried to run away,” Katie said, pausing just long enough to let Paige glance at Azzi with wide-eyed interest. “She packed a lunchbox, filled it with Cheerios and two juice boxes, put on her rollerblades, and made it halfway down the block before she fell.” 

“Twisted her ankle,” Tim added, shaking his head fondly. “Came limping back crying, asking if she could run away next week instead.” 

Paige turned to Azzi, lips twitching as she tried to hold back a laugh. “That sounds kind of brave,” she offered, her tone playful. “You made it farther than I probably would have.” 

Azzi groaned, her face burning. “I was five.” 

“You were dramatic,” her mom corrected with a grin. “And deeply committed to the cause.” 

They laughed again. Azzi didn’t try to stop the stories after that. Every time she opened her mouth to redirect the conversation, someone brought up another moment, another memory—her childhood obsession with jelly sandwiches, the way she used to sleep with her basketball like a teddy bear, the time she cut her own bangs and blamed it on a cousin who wasn’t even in town. 

And through it all, Paige listened. She laughed easily, asked questions, leaned into the details like she wanted to collect each one. Her hand found its way to Azzi’s thigh beneath the table, not demanding attention, just resting there, warm and steady. Azzi could feel her pulse under her skin, the way her body settled at Paige’s touch, like everything in her that had curled up in embarrassment slowly unfolded again. 

Her parents had accepted Paige without hesitation. That meant more than she could say. Watching her dad offer seconds, her mom asking Paige about Minnesota winters like she wasn’t trying to overstep but genuinely wanted to know—it unraveled something tightly wound in Azzi’s chest. She had prepared for defensiveness, for protectiveness. Instead, they gave her this. Open doors. Full plates. A room where Paige belonged. 

As the dishes were cleared and the last of the wine was poured, Azzi leaned back in her seat and took in the sight of Paige, sitting with her parents like she had been there before, like this wasn’t new at all. She reached for Paige’s hand again under the table, this time lacing their fingers together without a second thought. 

“Thank you,” she whispered, too low for anyone but Paige to hear. 

Paige didn’t ask what for. She just squeezed her hand and smiled, soft and sure, like she already knew.     -    Morning arrived in slow layers of light filtering through the pale curtains, stretching across the wooden floor and catching faintly on the edge of the guest bed. Paige stirred first, her senses pulling her toward the weight of the body resting against her. She felt the soft press of Azzi's back against her chest, their legs intertwined beneath the sheets, the familiar drape of Azzi’s arm loosely wrapped around her own. Her cheek rested near the back of Azzi's shoulder, close enough that she could feel the subtle rise and fall of each breath, slow and deep, the rhythm of someone tucked deep in sleep. 

The warmth between them was grounding, an intimacy born from unspoken routine. Paige had become used to Azzi seeking her like this in sleep, fitting herself neatly into Paige’s hold as if her body remembered the shape of safety. Paige remained still for a moment, listening to the hush of the house, the creak of settling wood, the soft sweep of the wind against the window. She gently began to untangle herself, careful not to wake the girl nestled against her. But as soon as she started to slip away, Azzi murmured softly, her hand tightening at Paige's wrist like a tether. 

“No,” she whispered, voice low and rough with sleep. 

A smile tugged at Paige’s lips. She leaned forward, pressing a tender kiss to the curve of Azzi’s temple. Her voice, though hushed, carried a thread of amusement. “I really have to pee, baby.” she said, brushing her fingers over Azzi’s arm before easing herself free. 

Paige moved through the hallway with bare feet and sleepy steps, the house still heavy with early morning calm. She closed the bathroom door with care, washed her hands beneath cool water, and looked at her reflection in the mirror—eyes still soft from sleep, hair slightly tousled from the pillow. There was a strange sweetness in the routine, in waking up in someone else's family home and finding herself woven gently into the fabric of it. 

As she stepped out, the scent of fresh coffee drifted toward her from the kitchen. Katie stood near the stove, one hand wrapped around a steaming mug, the other adjusting the dial on a nearby burner. The morning light fell over her shoulders, painting her in soft golds and pale shadows. 

“Morning,” she greeted, glancing up with a warm smile. 

Paige offered one in return, pulling her hoodie a little tighter around herself. “Good morning.” 

“Sleep okay?” Katie asked, her voice kind and clear. 

Paige nodded, stepping toward the kitchen archway. “I did. Thank you again for letting me stay. I mean it.” 

Katie’s smile deepened as she took a slow sip from her mug. “You’re welcome. It’s good having you here.” She tilted her head slightly. “Azzi still asleep?” 

“Very,” Paige replied, laughing under her breath. “She tried to keep me from getting out of bed.” 

“She’s always been like that,” Katie said with fond amusement. “Used to latch on to her cousins when they came to visit, refuse to let go until someone bribed her with breakfast.” 

Paige chuckled, the image somehow easy to picture. “That tracks.” 

Katie glanced at the clock on the stove, then back at Paige. “Let her rest. She’s home. She’s allowed. You, on the other hand—why don’t you change into something comfortable? If you’ve got basketball shorts and sneakers, all the better. Meet me back here in ten.”    Paige raised a brow, curious but compliant. “Is this a surprise or an ambush?” 

Katie only offered a knowing smile as she turned back to the stovetop. “You’ll see.” 

Paige stood there a moment longer, caught in the simplicity of the exchange. It was easy, natural, like she belonged in this kitchen without needing to earn her place. 

She walked back to the Azzi’s room with a lighter step. Azzi was curled on her side with one hand resting on the empty space Paige had left behind. The sheets had gathered loosely at her waist, her hair spilling across the pillow in soft waves. Paige changed quietly, slipping into a pair of basketball shorts and a fresh black shirt, then laced up her sneakers with practiced ease. 

Before leaving, she crossed to the side of the bed, lowering herself gently onto one knee. Her hand hovered for a moment before brushing lightly along Azzi’s arm. “Be back soon,” she whispered, her voice barely above breath.     Azzi stirred faintly, a small, contented hum rising from her throat as she leaned slightly into the sound of Paige’s voice. She didn’t open her eyes, just sighed and shifted her hand closer to where Paige knelt. 

Paige leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead. She lingered there for a heartbeat longer, then rose to her feet, taking care not to disturb the quiet weight of rest that still clung to the room. 

She stole one last look at Azzi, whose face had softened again in sleep, and something gentle stirred in her chest. It wasn’t just affection—it was the certainty of having been invited into something that mattered. 

- 

The car ride started with the hum of the engine and the soft thrum of music playing from the radio, low enough that it felt more like background texture than sound. Katie glanced at Paige every so often from the driver’s seat. The early morning sun painted the edges of the windshield in amber, catching the dust motes in golden flecks as they drifted lazily through the air. 

“Azzi said you’re a night owl,” Katie said with a teasing tilt to her voice. “But you were out like a light by ten. I was impressed.” 

Paige smiled faintly, her fingers playing with the hem of her hoodie. “Your house is warm. Makes it easy to sleep.” 

Katie nodded, the corner of her mouth curling up in agreement. “She’s always liked it that way. Even as a baby, she’d fuss until every blanket was tucked just right.” 

The drive settled into a comfortable stillness after that, filled with the occasional comment about the weather or the way the trees in their neighborhood were already losing their color ahead of winter. Paige sat back, watching the scenery roll by in blurred strokes of soft green and brick red, until the car slowed and turned into a narrow lane shaded by tall trees. At the end of the path stood a covered gym, its roof rusting slightly at the edges, the kind of place built on memory and local pride. 

Katie shifted the car into park but didn’t move to unbuckle her seatbelt. Her hand stayed resting against the steering wheel as she turned slightly to face Paige, her expression thoughtful, her eyes calm but focused. 

“I know this isn’t exactly how you expected to spend your morning,” she began, her voice gentle. “And I want you to know this isn’t an ambush, or some kind of intervention.” 

“I had a good talk with Azzi yesterday while you were out back helping Tim with the grill,” Katie continued, her voice carrying that quiet strength of someone who knew exactly what they were saying but chose to offer it with softness. “We don’t get many long talks anymore, life being what it is. But she opened up a little. About you.” 

Paige’s brows drew together, unsure whether to brace or lean in. 

“She cares about you,” Katie said plainly. “She really does. She’s never brought anyone home, Paige. Not even as a friend. You’re the first person she’s let into this part of her life. And that speaks volumes.” 

The words settled heavily in Paige’s chest, not as a burden, but like the echo of something she hadn’t quite let herself hope. Her fingers curled against her thigh, grounding her. 

“I see the way she looks at you,” Katie added after a pause. “It’s the same way I used to look at Tim when we were her age. That mix of hope and fear and wonder. Like she’s afraid to breathe too deeply in case the whole thing disappears.” 

“She does that,” Paige said softly, her voice rough at the edges. “Looks at me like she’s trying to memorize it all before it’s gone.” 

Katie didn’t interrupt. She sat still, her presence grounded, giving Paige space to unravel whatever she needed. 

“I didn’t think anyone noticed.” Paige looked down at her lap, thumbs brushing together, fingers clasped tighter than they needed to be. “Sometimes I wonder if I imagined it. If maybe I want it to mean more than it does.” 

Katie’s reply came gently, like a stone placed carefully into her hands. “It means what you feel it means.” 

The air between them shifted, heavier now, but not in a way that suffocated. Paige let herself breathe it in, slowly, as if trusting it wouldn’t vanish too quickly. Her jaw tensed, then relaxed again. 

“So, I hope you’ll forgive her when she told me about your struggle with basketball.” 

Paige stilled. The air inside the car seemed to narrow, stretching around her chest, but Katie’s tone stayed kind, never pressing. 

“She didn’t go into detail,” Katie continued. “She just said you’ve been going through something. That it’s been hard. I only know what she gave me. But Paige, I know who you are. I knew the moment I saw you on my front lawn, walking hand in hand with my daughter.”  

Paige looked over then, meeting her eyes. There was no judgment there, only a steady kind of care. Katie had the sort of presence that did not push but still managed to open every door. 

“I watched that finals game,” Katie said quietly. “And while I don’t pretend to know everything you’re carrying, I can imagine the kind of weight it leaves behind. Maybe it’s not my place to say, but I’m telling you this because Azzi cares deeply. She wants to help you, Paige. She just doesn’t know how.” 

Katie paused, her gaze steady. 

“She’s scared. Scared that, in the long run, she might be the reason you give up the game entirely. That fear sits heavy on her, whether she talks about it or not.” 

Paige’s throat tightened. She knew Azzi could see it even when Paige hid it behind smiles and touches and playful jokes. The worst part was the thought that Azzi was starting to doubt herself. 

“She’s not the reason,” Paige said softly. “If anything, she’s the only part of this that still feels good.” 

“I believe you,” Katie replied. “But I also know my daughter. She feels deeply. She carries what isn’t hers when she cares about someone. She holds it inside until it wears her down.” 

The silence in the car stretched again, deeper this time. Paige leaned back against the headrest, staring out toward the gym doors. Her pulse beat slow and heavy in her ears. 

“I may not know the specifics of what you’re going through,” Katie said, “and I may not understand everything about what’s happening between you and Azzi, but I will tell you this. I would die before I let my daughter lose herself in the things that once brought her joy. And if that means speaking plainly to the person she loves, then that’s what I’ll do.” 

The word love hung in the air like a held breath. Paige swallowed hard, fingers clenching once before releasing. She didn’t correct her. The ache in her chest wouldn’t let her. 

Katie followed Paige’s gaze toward the building. Her voice remained steady. “We’re outside the gym where I coach basketball on Wednesday mornings. Some kids come by. We run drills, laugh, play a little. It’s not serious. But it’s a court. A ball. The sound of sneakers against wood.” 

Paige’s lips parted, then closed again. Her chest tightened with a storm of resistance and longing, tangled so tightly she didn’t know which was stronger. 

“You may not want to be this close to basketball right now. But I want you to try. For the sake of my daughter. Because whether you see it or not, this matters to her. You matter to her,” Katie said, her eyes softening. “And if you want to say No today, I’ll turn around and we go home, and I’ll make you the best pie of your life." 

The words landed gently, but they filled every corner of the car. Paige blinked, once, then again, trying to keep the rush in her chest from spilling out.  

Her voice came out quiet, but steady. 

“I think I'll try today and do a rain check on the pies.” 

[https-bobreynolds]

under mesopotamian stars

pairing: the void x the enchantress, slight robert ‘bob’ reynolds x reader

summary: a backstory on how two entities met for the first and second time.

warning: mentions of y/n, blood, war, curse word, and tension.

author’s note: I AM SO SORRY FOR NOT POSTING IN A WHILE🥹🥹 university has me in a chokehold and not in a good way, oh ALSO i want to clarify that reader, unlike june from DCU, can actually use enchantress’s powers herself but only a fraction of it🤏

1600 B.C

the world was young, still drenched in nothing but myth.

in the highlands of mesopotamia, the sky tore open, and from its wound, poured a shadow not cast by any sun- the void, primordial and unshaped, spilled into the world in the aftermath of an ancient war.

and beneath moonlit ruins, she danced- the enchantress, cloaked in energy, appearing as green flame. her temple was soaked in sacrifice, her magic was worshiped and feared.

he was drawn to her like decay to flesh.

“you are not of this world.” she said, her voice echoing in the chamber as she looked upon the dark figure.

“so are you,” he replied, swirling into a human-like figure, “but you wear this world like silk.”

she smiled slowly and tilted her head. “do you seek power?”

“i seek silence.”

she then stepped toward him, unafraid. “then why do you follow the sound of my heart?”

that night, they didn’t speak again. the stars blinked away as their shadows entwined.

they weren’t lovers. they were omens.

but the gods, fearful of what their union might birth, tore them apart.

she was sealed in a tomb by her so-called subjects, her soul bound to a doll.

he was cast back into the space-between, locked behind walls of thought and will.

THE PRESENT DAY

millennia passed, civilizations fell, empires turned to dust.

and then came y/n, the new host of the enchantress, and robert ‘bob’ reynolds, the sentry, barely holding back the flood of the void within.

they both ended up where fate always puts its cursed pieces: in a vault, minutes away from being incinerated.

yelena raised her weapons. “great. a witch.”

your voice was low, trying to sound as intimidating as possible, “you don’t belong here, widow.”

walker took a step forward. “neither do you. so unless you want to get reacquainted with blackout protocols, stand down-“

you suddenly threw a wave of magic that sent walker flying into the walls. ava blinked into the floor, phased halfway through it to avoid the lash of energy. yelena rolled, firing bullets that you caught midair and twisted into birds of flame.

then you they saw each other.

bob froze, darkness pulsing beneath his skin.

you turned, green energy crackling in your eyes.

“you…” she whispered, taking complete control of your body.

bob clutched his head as the void whispered her name, his body replaced by nothing but a dark silhouette, by force.

“you were the only silence i ever loved.” he said softly, coming closer to her.

and she smiled again, the same way she did under mesopotamian stars.

they weren’t enemies. nor allies.

just two cursed gods wearing mortal skin, fated to meet where death lingers.

and this time?

this time, they wouldn’t let the gods stop them.

bonus:

“what the fuck just happened??”

taglist:

@lovetoalll

[saintsanddevils]

Void & Omen - pt 4

Bob Reynolds/Void & Fem!Reader

Summary: When you meet Bob, that deadly power inside of you stirs, recognizing something just as equally dark and powerful in him. After all, like calls to like.

Warnings/Tags: Thunderbolts movie spoilers, swearing, angst, soft Void/protective Bob, guns, mentions of blood

Author’s Note: How many times can I make reader pass out/faint? Not enough times, I say. (But really though, I just love the dream sequences with Void, ok?)

Word Count: 5K

Masterlist

Part Three • Part Five

————

The In-Between…

Fog slithers across the moss covered ground. The dark, leaf-less trees stretch high into the grey sky. Their limbs cracked and torn, like shredded pieces of bone.

I walk slowly through the forest, cautious with every step I take. Everything about this place feels oddly… familiar. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I’ve been here before. But every time I try to reach for the memory, it slips through my fingers like water.

A low, guttural growl sounds from behind me. I still, panic coursing through my veins, beating in my blood.

RUN.

The instinct has me sprinting through the trees, diving under branches, jumping over protruding roots. Something behind me beats the earth with its paws, shaking the ground beneath my feet. I can feel it close behind me, it’s breath on my neck—

I slam face-first into a wall of shadow. Like a blanket, it wraps me in its embrace. It’s cooling to the touch, caressing my skin as I’m enveloped in the dark.

“It’s alright,” something purrs against my ear with a deep, familiar voice. “You’re safe now.”

When I turn my head, there’s nothing there. No strange beast, no person. Only darkness.

But this darkness, it’s sentient. I can feel it as if it were a living, breathing thing.

“You saved us,” the voice whispers. “My brave, beautiful, cruel thing.”

I shiver as if the words were whispered upon my skin.

The dark shifts, thickening under my limbs to hold me, cradle me.

“I’ve waited for you, for centuries,” A hand cradles my hip, fingers whisper-soft on my skin. “You’ve been alone for too long. We both have.”

I close my eyes at the words. My skin prickles from the shadowy fingers caressing my hip, my arm, my collarbone.

“Never again,” the voice vows. “Never again will we be apart. I will keep you safe. I will protect you. I will be whatever you want me to be, just let me be yours.”

Those phantom fingers grip my jaw, turning my head. I open my eyes to look into a pair of twin golden flames. Eyes as familiar to me as my own.

“You are mine and I am yours.”

The words ring hauntingly true as they echo into the void. I can barely make out the silhouette of a face as they lean forward, flaming eyes holding me trapped in their gaze.

“I have seen your true face and I am not afraid. How could anyone be afraid of such terrible beauty?” That phantom hand still cradles my face, soft and gentle. “Your pain and ruin is a gift and I will cherish it for eternity.”

I melt into the touch, tears burning my eyes as the darkness holds me closer. “But I’m broken. I’m no one. I’m nothing.”

If the dark could smile, I feel it. “Not to me. You’re everything. I love how broken you are.”

I pause, staring into those haunting eyes. “Are you going to fix me?”

I sense the dark shaking its head, dipping to press cold lips to my forehead. The touch is burning and claiming. “What is there to fix? I prefer you ruined, just like me.”

————

Outside The Vault…

Strong arms shift beneath my limbs, cradling me to something warm and firm. I stir, eyelids fluttering. Whoever is holding me tenses, squeezing tighter before I hear the faint call of my name.

“We’re almost there, hold on.” A familiar voice whispers to me.

Bob.

I groan as my body is shifted to lay on something hard and cold. It’s not as comfortable as being carried in Bob’s arms.

“Stay here.” A familiar feminine voice says. Yelena?

“But—“ A door slams closed.

When my eyes open, I’m staring up at the ceiling of some sort of vehicle. Its engine is loud and roaring as it moves, jostling my sore body. I blink a few times, trying to rise out of the fog I’m still trapped in.

“You’re awake.”

I turn to find Bob sitting across from me on a bench. He’s wearing tactical gear, similar to the soldiers who cornered us in the hallway earlier. I furrow my brows. Why is he wearing that?

When I try to move, I notice the same strange clothes are also on me.

“How—“

Bob is suddenly kneeling down on the floor in front of me. His face is lined with concern as he stares up at me. “Are you alright?”

I stare at him, taking note of any injuries or anything strange with my current state. My head is pounding with a headache and I feel incredibly exhausted. But I don’t feel any pain. Should I? I don’t remember getting hurt or why I even passed out…

The last thing I remember…

Bob hovering over me, his eyes wild and terrified as I collapse in his arms. We were in a dark hallway. Weren’t we waiting for Yelena?

It’s all so fuzzy in my memory now. I can’t quite grasp it.

Once I know I’m okay, I nod.

Bob sighs in relief, reaching out to lay a hand on my knee. Even through the material of my clothes, I can feel the spark of warmth his body sends into mine. It’s electric.

“Yelena said it would be more believable if you blended in with us,” he gestures to the clothes. “We made it seem like we were taking you to a medic.”

I raise a brow. “Who dressed me?”

His cheeks and neck redden. “Oh, yeah it was Yelena and Ava. Don’t worry. I wouldn’t ever undress you while you’re unconscious.” His eyes widen. “I mean, not that I would want to. Only if you were conscious, though. No wait, I mean—“ his face resembles the shade of a tomato and I can’t stop the laughter bubbling up out of me.

“Bob, it’s okay,” I smile across the space between us, reaching out to lay a hand on his. His hand immediately turns over as if on instinct, holding mine.

He stares down at the contact, breathing deep, before meeting my gaze. In the low lighting of the vehicle, his eyes are dark and wide, hopeful and nervous.

“You’ve been alone for too long. We both have.”

The voice from my dream, Bob’s voice, burrows deep in my chest. Burning like a brand. It fills my veins at his touch, pulsing with the need to lean forward. To give in.

As if the car were supporting this, we go over a bump big enough to jostle me forward, sliding my knees around Bob’s waist while he still kneels in front of me. His free hand comes up to my hip, steadying me on instinct.

This close, I can smell the leather and plastic of the tac gear he’s stolen, the undertones of something warm and earthy beneath it. Familiar and calming.

With startling clarity, I realize it smells like home.

We’re close, sharing the same breath as the jostling moves me closer, his hand gripping my waist tighter.

Warmth spreads through my limbs as we both lean forward, two magnets drawn to the other. I bite my lip. His eyes track the movement.

Right. This is right.

The voice in my bones echoes through me as I relax in his grip.

He breathes my name and it almost sounds forbidden and cautious, full of want and curiosity. Our noses touch, slotting perfectly together as we—

Someone slams on the breaks. We’re both thrown sideways, colliding with the floor. I moan, head pounding with a new pain, limbs tangled with Bob’s.

He groans, head falling back. “What now?”

Through the wall separating us from the front seats of the car, we can hear guards speaking with Walker, Yelena, and Ava.

Bob untangles us before helping me back into my seat. Through the wall, I overhear the aggression in one of the guard’s voices. Bob tenses, hearing it as well.

“I have to help them,” he mutters, eyes wild and searching as he looks around the back of the vehicle.

“What?” I whisper-gasp. “The second you go out there, they’ll know something is up. You’ll be killed.”

His eyes lock on the door handles. The moment he reaches for them, my hand shoots out, stopping him.

“Bob—“

His eyes flash gold for a split second. “You don’t think I can do it.”

I startle. “What are you talking about? You’re about to rush out there to god-knows-what is waiting for us. There could be hundreds of guards wanting to kill you.” I squeeze my hand over his with tenderness and concern, even as panic grips my throat. “We need to make a plan if this goes sideways—“

He shakes his head. “This is the plan. I want to help. I don’t want to sit around, waiting for them to figure it out when I don’t have much to offer this team anyway!”

My heart aches at the words. “You offer so much. You’re more than enough.”

He scoffs, looking away. “I didn’t even help you when those guards came for us. You saved us. Not me, you. You’re more than capable, just like them.”

I furrow my brows. I saved him? “I-I don’t remember any of that.“

Bob closes his eyes. “I can protect you, too.”

Goosebumps spread up my limbs. Something inside of me purrs at the words, as if they’ve heard them before. Maybe even expected them.

“We can protect each other,” I insist. ”We just need a back-up plan.”

There’s shouts behind us, outside of the car.

Bob sighs, meeting my eyes again. Without hesitation, he reaches up and cups the back of my head, bringing my forehead to connect with his. He breathes deeply for a moment, and the contact of his skin settles my rattling nerves.

“I will keep you safe,” he whispers. “I will protect you. I will be whatever you want me to be.”

My breath hitches.

A vow. A promise. Something whispered and forgotten by time, but remembered in the bones. Something spoken in dreams.

But there’s one line he doesn’t say. One that my mind conjures for him, from memory and dreams.

Just let me be yours.

Warmth spreads from every bit of skin that touches his. My hand grasped in his. Our foreheads touching. It’s soothing. Reassuring.

Bob shifts and his lips are near my ear as he whispers. “Please, forgive me.”

And Bob is gone.

Along with the car and the guards and the distant shouting and rumbling of engines. Instead, I now sit in a cold, dimly lit room smelling of harsh chemicals, iron, and decaying flesh.

Two men in long lab coats with gangly limbs stare with open concern at the man and woman, sobbing uncontrollably over something on a table. A small lump beneath a white sheet. The more I look at the lump, the more it looks like it resembles…

I jolt back a step, heart pulsing rapidly in my ears like a pounding drum. I know this place. I know these people, these doctors. I’ve been here before.

“Mom,” I whisper as tears fill my eyes, cracking my voice. “Dad.”

I haven’t seen them in years. Not since…

Mom turns to me, her eyes bloodshot. Her mouth curls into a snarl. “Get that thing out of here!”

I stumble back, but its the quiet sob behind me that has me pausing. I whirl around and find a little girl with swollen eyes and tears streaming down her face. It’s me. Nine year old me.

Pain pulses through my chest at the sight as she flinches at her mother’s words. That little girl is in desperate need of a hug, some comfort, even kind words. But none were given to her, not this day, or in the many afterwards.

The little girl stares and stares at the white sheet, at the body beneath, as sobs escape her lips. “I’m sorry, Mommy. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

“Get it out of here! MONSTER!” Mom screams.

Something that was once broken and lost inside of me, now burns with a cold fire that shatters through my nervous system. It aches and cracks and festers as it chills my blood at the sight of such cruelty.

This was the day I lost my parents.

The same day I killed my sister.

“Mommy,” younger me cries out.

Mom turns her head away, wailing as she crumples over the covered body on the table. The sheet lifts slightly to reveal black veins running through the pale skin of the corpse. My sister’s corpse.

Dad shakes his head. “You’ve done enough. Get out.”

Get out.

Monster.

Get out.

Monster.

GET OUT!

The words scream in my head before the room begins to tilt and the fluorescent lights above start to flicker. The light blurs before it sparks out, darkness covering the room. I blink a few times to clear it away.

In the stillness, a strange echo resounds through the dark. I can’t make sense of it. But it feels familiar.

I turn this way and that, trying to find it. When two hands touch my shoulders, I blink and find myself staring up at Yelena.

She yells my name, shaking me by my shoulders.

Tears burn the edge of my eyes as I whip my head around, finding I’m still sitting in the back of the car, but now, the doors are wide open. We’re facing towards a building that must be the Vault we escaped in the distance. Guards march around with guns strapped to their fronts, ready and alert. The sight clears my head.

“Where’s Bob?!” I ask, frantic.

Walker stares at me as if I’ve grown three heads. “We thought you knew where he was.”

Bullets pierce the air, startling everyone as we all turn towards the sound.

“Oh no,” Yelena’s eyes widen at the sight. “Bob helped.”

In front of the Vault, Bob stands in his hospital clothes, barefoot and armed with a machine gun pointed at the sky. He continues firing into the night while every head turns towards him. Including every loaded gun.

“NO!” I scream, bolting out of the car.

Walker stops me with an arm around my middle, holding me firmly as I kick and struggle in his grip.

“BOB STOP!” I scream, but the noise is lost in the chaos.

Men shout in a rush, forming a wall before Bob as he stops shooting. He has a small lopsided smile on his face as he looks out over the sea of armed men.

A new cacophony of bullets ring through the night as every man in that wall aims their guns at Bob. And Bob…

“NO!!” A sob catches in my throat at the sight.

The bullets shred his clothing, ringing off the metal wall behind him. He falls to the ground from the impact.

He’s still. Too still.

And the firing finally stops, leaving heavy silence in its wake.

“We’ve gotta go,” Walker says, dropping his arm from around me. I stagger forward in a daze.

“We can’t just leave him,” Yelena protests.

John scoffs. “He gave us a distraction. We need to use that. Before it’s too late.”

But I’m not listening to them. I barely register their presence as my entire being focuses on Bob. The stillness of his chest. His crumpled limbs. His shredded clothes. The bullets lining the concrete around him.

Something rears its ugly, vengeful head inside of me. It snarls and wakes, shaking my limbs as I stride forward on instinct.

I hear my name being called from behind me, but I’m lost. I’m lost to the rising rage, like a tide in a hurricane. I’m boundless and free-falling to the feeling.

There’s a strange stillness that’s settled over the camp. Everyone holds their breath, watching, waiting. But all they see is a dead man.

That thing inside of me claws its way to the surface, raising my hand out to the men still facing Bob with their guns.

You took what is mine. Now, I will take what is yours.

With a guttural scream, that primal part of me, raging and roaring, unleashes itself.

That power of death and decay shoots from my blackening fingertips, gripping every man in sight by the throat. They stagger, dropping their guns, holding their necks, before falling to the ground. They cough and choke. I feel the congealing of their blood. The veins flowing beneath their skin filling with poison and hate. Blood seeping from their noses and eyes as they fight for oxygen in their lungs.

“Holy shit.” John mutters behind me, but I don’t relent.

My focus is only on Bob. On what they did to him. On what they took from me.

Mine, that voice echoes in my head, only this time, it sounds more like mine than it did before.

The knowledge should scare me, but it only spurs me on. The men not choking on their blood on their knees turn to face me, their guns aimed at my head as they all shout orders at one another in a panic.

“Don’t shoot!” A feminine voice in the crowd yells. “Do not fire!”

But the men are scared and armed, their fear is palpable. They see the monster I’ve become. And they take aim.

Bullets shoot through the night at their new target as that feminine voice screams and shouts to try and stop them.

A rush of wind soars past me and I’m suddenly cradled by a massive body, arms wrapped around my torso. Their grip and smell is startlingly familiar as I’m held to a firm chest. Bullets ring through the air as the person holds me close, shielding me from their onslaught.

When I peer up into their face inches from mine, Bob is staring down at me wide eyed and terrified. His eyes are glowing with that golden fire. And the bullets…they ricochet off of him. Never once piercing his skin. They only shred his clothing, revealing more of his skin and torso.

“CEASE FIRING!” That female voice shouts through a megaphone. “THATS AN ORDER!”

The firing stops immediately.

But Bob doesn’t let go. He tenses around me, arms still encircling me in his warmth. My fingers are still black and my veins pulse with power, but the contact he has with my skin only soothes that frost-bitten cold that has taken over my limbs. Normally I’m trapped in the never-ending cold of my power, in the death and rot. But with his touch, his presence, it recedes. It calms.

And that power seeps back into the marrow of my bones as he holds me close.

My fingers trail over his now naked torso, smoothing over the bumps and ridges of his abdomen. He shivers at my touch.

“You’re alive,” I whisper.

He breathes heavily, staring down at me as if we’re the only two people in the world and not surrounded by guns and soldiers.

“I-“ he swallows, staring at his torn clothing before smiling. “I guess I am.”

I smile back tentatively.

But the moment is shattered when Bob’s eyes glimmer with sudden cold fury, his smile dropping. “They tried to kill you.”

His voice is not his own and it sends a chill through my body.

Without a second thought, he turns around, shielding me behind him. I feel his body trembling, but it’s no longer from fear and panic. It’s pure rage.

There’s a collective gasp at the sight of Bob unharmed. It’s obvious there isn’t a single wound or scratch on him.

The guns are aimed once more. They, too, must see the reflective gold shimmering in his eyes. They must see the tightening of his jaw, the clenching of his fists. The straightening of his shoulders as he glares at them.

Something inside of me purrs at the sight of him holding me, protecting me. Another part of me fights to prove that I can protect myself. But the feeling of Bob’s warmth, his body inches from mine, has me basking in the knowledge that he’s alive.

If only we can find a way out of here, he can stay that way.

“Stand down!” That feminine voice is back.

I scan the crowd for her and find a woman near the back, next to a van. The second our eyes connect, that thing inside of me stirs violently. The hair on the back of my neck rises.

Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.

Her name is whispered in my mind and that thing inside of me growls like a wild animal.

Remembering her name being spoken earlier in the Vault, I know this woman is the reason for all of our problems. Why Yelena, Walker, and Ava were down there. Why Bob and I were down there.

Whoever she is, that woman wanted us all dead. And it sets my teeth on edge. With her watching, I step closer to Bob on instinct, just in case.

Bob must sense my unease as he reaches back to grip my hand in his. His touch steadies my breathing.

“We don’t want to hurt you!” Valentina shouts into the megaphone.

I almost roll my eyes. If they didn’t want to hurt us, they wouldn’t have shot first. And she wouldn’t have left us to be incinerated in the first place.

Bob’s head cocks to the side, as if he’s assessing the situation. As if he, too, doubts Valentina’s reassurance. The guns move with his subtle movement, following him. It makes me anxious seeing that many guns pointed at us.

“Put down your weapons!” Valentina calls to her soldiers, but they hesitate.

That hesitation rings through the silence like a heavy toll of a bell. It’s deafening and damning. It raises the hair on the back of my neck, just as Bob rolls back his shoulders. He stands tall, staring them down, anger and protectiveness rolling off of him in waves.

Something shifts in those seconds of brief hesitation. Something with heavy, gravitational pull as the air pulses with energy. Power seeps from Bob like a living flame, feeding heat into my limbs with him so close. His grip is unyielding and pulls on my hand as he stands tall, rising above me.

A gasp echoes through the stillness. Guns are raised anew as every eye is trained on Bob. And when I look, my eyes widen.

Holy shit, can he fly?

Bob is hovering above the ground, enough for everyone in sight to see.

When Bob looks down, his face is a mirror of my own with complete shock written across it. He looks behind, towards me, golden-blue eyes full of wonder and fear. Of what he can do. Of what he’s become.

What did they do to him?

The thought is fleeting just as the guns are raised and orders are shouted and fear is thick in the air enough to bring Bob startling back to the present. In the blink of an eye, Bob turns, bending to pick me up in his arms just as a ring of gunshots echoes behind us.

“Don’t move,” his lips move against the side of my cheek near my ear as his body blocks the bullets from hitting me, ricocheting off his back. The gold is blazing in his eyes now, taking over the blue in a way that sparks a flicker of dread in my gut, as well as a simmering of excitement through my blood.

“Hold on,” his voice echoes through my mind just as he shoots into the sky.

The breath in my lungs leaves me as I cling to Bob in sheer terror. Wind whips against my hair and skin as he soars through the air. I squirm in his hold, shaking as I try to take deep breaths. Bob holds me tighter in response.

“I won’t let you fall,” he assures me through whatever mind connection we share. “I swear.”

I almost laugh. “Says the guy who didn’t even know he could fly seconds ago.”

Bob’s chest rumbles with laughter as we soar through the clouds. A fine mist of water covers my face, coating my eyelashes as I blink through the moisture. When the roaring wind and the rapid beat of Bob’s heart is all I can hear, I close my eyes.

Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down.

The chant is all I can focus on as the wind suddenly dies down and the air is almost… still. As though we’ve stopped.

“Wow,” Bob whispers. “You need to see this.”

I shift, peeking through my eyes to see a sky of unending stars above us. They’re so close I can practically reach out and touch them.

When I lift my head more, my jaw drops. The moon hangs heavy and pure before us, high above the clouds. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

All at once, everything in me, that thing— that living breathing power of death and rot— stills. Everything inside of me is quiet. Peaceful. Empty.

It’s the most normal I’ve felt in… a very long time.

For once, I can breathe.

When I turn to look at Bob, to share in this relief, or even to say thank you for saving my life (again), I stop. My breath catches in my throat.

“Bob?”

His eyes keep closing and opening as if he’s fighting to stay awake, his grip loosening around my body.

“BOB!” I scream as he falls backwards, plunging us in a deep dive through the clouds.

I cling to him, desperate and scared as we hurtle through the sky like a comet to earth. I scream and scream, holding him, not knowing what else to do. Fear pumps through my blood like an omen as the clouds part and I can see the distant, dim lights of the Vault thousands of feet below.

I’m going to die. The thought is loud and final as panic courses through me. If Bob doesn’t wake up…

I close my eyes, reaching deep inside of myself to find whatever it is inside of me that calls to him. That makes me dream of him and feel as if I know him better than I know myself. I reach and reach before finding that thin silver thread, the one that pulses in my minds eye from my ribcage to his. The thing that scares me most of all for what it could possibly mean.

When I reach for it, it’s blinding like starlight. I pull at it, roughly. It jolts and heats beneath my skin, right above my heart, but I continue through the burn.

When it pulls taught in my minds grip, I gasp. Something has answered my desperate call and when I open my eyes, I see who it is. It’s Bob, but I can see it’s also…not. I can feel it in the way his his eyes are open and depthless. Black and all-encompassing. A void.

And suddenly it hits me. As he pulls me close, his arms strong and steady as he turns us, crushing me to his chest, a deep, unending truth sinks inside of me.

Him and I, we are the same. The eyes, the uncontrollable power, the overwhelming need to protect, the endless dread of what we’re capable of. Even the silver tether tying us together, telling me we were always meant to be here. Together.

Like calls to like.

We are the same.

That truth echoes in my head, in my bones, as he wraps his arms protectively over my head, curling my body into him. Protecting me.

“I’m here,” he says, grounding and possessive. “I told you I will never let you go.”

If we weren’t still hurtling towards the ground, I would’ve shivered in his arms.

“Do you trust me?” He asks, his voice deep and gruff in my ear.

I nod without hesitation.

His grip is painful as he nods against me, swift and calculating. “My power is greatly weakened. I can— I can only soften the blow of our impact. But you will live. Know this, you will always be safe. No matter what.”

I cling to him harder, letting his words wash over me with their reassurance. I don’t have time to say anything back. Instead, I press my face into his shirt, kissing the center of his chest before bracing for impact.

His hand cups the back of my head and suddenly, a strange sense of peace washes over me at his touch. It’s warm and familiar, like coming home. I fall into it, my breath catching as my consciousness begins to fade in and out.

“Trust me,” I hear him whisper.

And that touch, it warms and warms until his fingers are the only thing I can feel and I’m falling back into a familiar, waiting darkness that consumes me just as we plunge back to earth.

————

The explosion of dirt and rocks echoes through the ground, up through Valentina’s legs. The crew and soldiers all stare in wide-eyed, slack jawed amazement as debris flies through the air.

Seconds ago, both Bob and Y/N were hurtling through the sky like a star before falling and crashing into the desert.

They have to be dead, Valentina’s logic says.

But her skewed optimism gives her a sliver of hope, remembering what those Project Sentry files contained. How the tests and trials proved that the skin of the surviving subjects was impenetrable. They could withstand anything.

That thought alone, from research and science, has her striding towards Mel with a smile on her face. Even as chaos erupts around her.

Mel stares at her boss as if she’s finally lost it. “Aren’t you the least bit concerned? They could be dead!”

Valentina only rolls her eyes. “Most likely they’re only unconscious with a few bruises. I doubt they’re that easy to kill. Remember what he did? What she did?” She shakes her head, a sense of giddiness rising inside of her. “I love it when everything works out for me.”

Mel doesn’t watch her boss head off to order people to retrieve the two subjects. No, she stares at the crater in the distance, the one created from their impact. What she can’t see, as the dust clears and the rocks fall away, is the body of a man, curled and protective around the body of a woman. Both completely and totally unharmed.

Later, when crews and teams climb inside the hole to gather the two subjects, they’ll find their limbs tangled and their hands intertwined.

When the crew try to pull them apart, the man’s fingers twitch and his eyelids shift. But he remains unconscious. Lost in the safe oblivion he’s created to keep her safe. To keep her within reach. To keep her entirely and only his.

Part Five (coming soon)

————

🪻quick note: I realized I never wrote this, but let’s just act like Yelena, Walker, and Ava left as soon as reader went all “vengeful woman” on everyone when Bob got shot. ok? ok.

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Taglist: @piston-cup @babybabygrogu @theadharablack @jsprien213 @mysticdelusionengineer @accidentpronedork @qardasngan @groovycass @magnificentmoonpersona @looneylooomis

[moscatosin]

🖤 yule. tom riddle 🖤 just some drabble fluff because my heart needed it and the world deserves soft tom. champagne with a strawberry float. (0.7k)

Tonight is nothing short of perfect. The Yule Ball. You’ve been dreaming about this day for weeks on end; that cloud nine feeling never passing. Outside, snow falls around the castle almost shyly, as if reluctant to interrupt the evening you’re smitten within, and you watch it with a close eye as it moves as gracefully as you wish tonight, you also would.

Standing beneath the high vaulted ceilings of the Great Hall, the gentle light from the candles flickering above spill soft, golden waves across the stone floors that give the impression you’re no longer in Hogwarts, but the equivalent of heaven. The orchestra’s notes playing wrap around you like something out of a Disney like fantasy.

This fantasy though – it doesn’t start with the music. It doesn’t even start with the ball. It starts with a boy. With him. With Tom. Impeccably dressed, impossibly composed and tonight, with eyes as vivid as espresso that’s managed to trap a storm. The Slytherin boy carved undeniably from secrets and silence is somehow tonight, standing beside you with his hand at the small of your back, feeling… warm. Treacherously warm.

The way he looks at you is still a challenge that you’re getting use to. His gaze isn’t cold nor calculating the way he wears it for everyone else. For you, it’s soft. It lingers. Tonight, his gaze flickers over you in such a way that it feels he’s trying his hardest to memorize the exact way you look beneath the candle lights. Ethereal. His personal guardian angel. Better yet – just his.

“Tom, you’re staring”, you tease out quietly; voice a whisper as you adjust the hem of your gown almost nervously. His lips tilt and curl into something that isn’t quite a smile, but close enough to one that it causes your heart to skip a beat.

“Am I not allowed to admire what’s mine?”

His selection of words is murmured low enough that only you can hear them. The question is possessive – yes, undeniably, but there’s a sincere reverence buried within the words also. As if he still can’t quite believe you agreed to accompany him. That you in fact, are actually standing beside him. That you chose him. Him of all people. By god, would you do so again and again and again.

“I’ve been thinking..”, he adds on smoothly. You tilt your head up to glance at him and chuckle.

“That’s dangerous”, you joke, nudging him slightly with your shoulder as to your surprise, you hear him let out the faint breath of a laugh. It’s rare – the sound and its softness. Instantly, it begins to stir something in your chest you can’t quite put a word or description to.

“We should dance.”

Oh lord, no this must be a dream. Tom offers you his hand, low and steady and you don’t hesitate. Walking you to the dancefloor, he pulls you in close; closer than etiquette on a night like this suggests, as your fingers intertwine with his and his other hand finds its way to your waist; holding on as if you’re something fragile and precious. His touch is ever so steady. Protective. Caring.

When your eyes meet his beneath the slow swirl of the candlelight above, your world immediately blurs at the edges. Transforming for a moment into something straight out of a fairytale. Tonight, there’s no talk of power, no talk of school, no talk of legacy he wants to create, no talk of the future. No whispers or suggestions or rumours of the man he’ll one day become. Right now, it’s just the two of you. You and him; spinning in your own little hushed world of unexpected romance, too young to care.

Leaning in closer as the dance slows; your lips barely brush the edge of his jaw earning you a weak, submissive kind of moan that he’d not dream to let another girl ever hear. “You’re being awfully sweet tonight. Should I be worried?”

As he looks down at you; eyes painted with a curiosity that suggests you’ve just said something profoundly foolish, Tom finally smiles, his lips tentatively meeting yours for a first kiss.

“For you – I always will be”, he murmurs; the dance between you two continuing long after the music has faded – and in this moment, god; how you believe him.

[artytaeh]

THEODORE NOTT HAS A LOT OF MONEY. and even though that's a relief that indulges his own impulsive spendings to pamper himself, it still doesn't feel like he properly makes use of it.

the large bookshelf on his bedroom, at the nott mansion, might suggest otherwise.

( what? theodore enjoys special editions; no, it's not silly to want a first edition of one of his older favorites, or a hard cover version with a better illustration, really. much less having paid more for a book on his native language, given that he's in london, a bit too far away from the city he was born, millan. )

but then, ah— there it is! the reason why his family's ridiculous wealth makes sense, now!

because what theodore nott lacks in a few matters, such as communication or spending a lot of time with you, when he needs his time alone, he'll compensate like this.

one might perceive this as a heartless, uncaring way to press bandaids over emotional wounds; believe me, it couldn't be farther than this.

theodore just likes to see you smile, and given that his black card is a means to such an end, well, why not?

things are just things; but things do bring happiness, so yes, you can buy happy feelings!

theodore would love to know if you collect something— mugs? he's bringing a new one for you, now paying extra special attention to crockery themed stores. snowglobes? there's this one he found, with a charm to it! if there's a comic series you like, theodore would discreetly surprise you every week with a new volume.

only for you to go and break his heart, standing in front of his door with his gifts in arms, extending them for theodore to take it back.

cluelessly, and looking a bit like a kicked puppy, theodore frowns. are you angry at him? isn't this the type of thing you like? should you reassure him that your only issue is the excessive money spent on you, theodore feels like a weight left his shoulders.

huff; so, he does know how to please his girlfriend and what she likes!

... but why are you rejecting him? 'hey, bella, don't offend me— this isn't going to empty nott's vault any time soon.'

should his puppy eyes work, well then, you're doomed.

because theodore will use this same excuse over and over again, when he brings another thing that reminds him of you. what? you mentioned that you like coats like these! it's a color you like to wear, and you'll need warm clothes like that in a matter of weeks!

do you not like his gifts? theodore will give you a look that, if you didn't know better about his cynical shenanigans, you'd believe that his heart was being shattered to pieces.

that's the reason why dates at hogsmeade are so dangerous. i'm being serious— you might as well keep your eyes on the road, stare at the snow beneath your feet, because if you spend more than four seconds staring at something inside a shop...

there isn't time to process anything else; theodore's mind works fast. you saw it, you seem to like it, he's buying it. in a blink of an eye, theodore already has his card between his index and middle finger, nonchalantly making his way inside.

'can't a man spoil his girl? goddamn it, dolcezza.'

clothes are almost worse. if he sees something that you're staring at, and likes it, theodore is putting so much (discreet. not so discreet,) effort into convincing you to let him buy it for you.

'you'd look good in it. see, it's a color you like, it would look really good, given your skin tone.' and then, he takes a different approach: 'trying it on doesn't hurt, right?'

a cruel plan, you see, because then you fall in love with this dress, as much as theodore fell in love with the idea of you wearing such pretty clothes.

his arms embrace your waist, like a snake slowly trapping its victim; the fabric feels right under his skin, the dress looking as if it was sketched for you, fitting better than a glove.

theodore rests his chin on your shoulder, holding back a smirk as he sees you mourning the idea of leaving the dress here— it's just so pretty! and theodore's compliments don't help!

🗯️ : but teddy, it's really cold these days. i wouldn't be able to wear it, anyways.

t : and that's why we learned simple warming charms during third year.

🗯️ : sure, but— i don't have where to use it, so it's not worth it if it's just going to look pretty in my dresser.

t : no worries, bambina. i'll think about a perfect date for you to wear this, looking so pretty for me. bellissima, la mia bella ragazza.

NO USE IN ARGUING WITH HIM; theodore nott always wins these rounds. the battle is won, and the war is benefitting his side.

even if you do not let him spoil you with such impulsive thoughts and freedom, theodore would never, for the life of him, let you pay for a single coffee or meal while you're with him.

lunches at hogsmeade are a favorite of his. obviously, he's paying. this slytherin doesn't joke about the topic; will give you the biggest side eye if you take out your wallet.

who do you think he is? his mother raised a man that knows how to treat a girl right, and a good boyfriend! no way in hell is any soul at hogsmeade, scotland, europe— hell, galaxy!— considering that he's not taking care of his amata ragazza properly.

ALL IN ALL, THEODORE FINDS IT SWEET how much you worry over it, and insist that he could spend this same money on things that he likes.

but that's what you fail to understand— what theodore likes, more than a new book with a promising synopsis, or an exquisite astrolobe— is seeing you smile for something that he got you.

﹙★﹚ won't give you gifts to earn his forgiveness earlier, though. he wants his presents to feel like he genuinely thought you'd like it, not as a bargain or bribery.

anyways, i love this man. 🌷

[yanderedbdimagines]

Could you write a few killers who already have their sights on someone, but become obsessed with the reader because they forfeit their own safety to protect others?

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I really like this request, and I picked four killers that I really wanted to write about the moment I started to play around with it. Someone else requested something similar, so it's two in one.

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Warning!: NSFW Elements present! Violence, blood, etc.

The Deathslinger

The wooden stock of Caleb’s custom-built rifle was warm in his grip, slick with a thin sheen of blood. One of theirs, but whose, exactly? He neither knew nor cared. The scent of gunpowder clung to the thick, stagnant air. Mingling with the acrid aroma of rust, dust and decay. The once-thriving outpost of Dead Dawg Saloon stood in eerie silence around him, its skeletal remains a graveyard of splintered wood, abandoned buildings, and the ghostly echoes of men long since put in the ground.

The trial was nearly at its end.

Three of them still clung to life, but their fate was sealed. Prey, reduced to desperation, staggering like wounded animals, their time borrowed and running thin. But there was one among them who refused to fall without a fight.

Yui Kimura.

She was fast, sharp-witted and stubborn as hell. Caleb had chased her across these damned streets, through shattered buildings and over the warped gallows. She had vaulted, juked, and twisted her way out of his reach more times than he cared to count. His patience had worn thin, his hands aching to cut this chase short.

Now, she was cornered.

His keen eye spotted her huddled low behind an old wagon, her body taut, fingers pressing against a wound he had delivered earlier. The crimson stain against her torn sleeve told him what he needed to know. She was weakening.

Caleb exhaled. Settling the weight of his rifle against his shoulder. One well-placed shot, one squeeze of the trigger and it would be over. He aligned his sights. His finger tensed.

And then you appeared.

You had been running toward safety, clear of his reach, your escape route wide open towards an opened exit gate. But instead of vanishing into the fog like any sensible survivor would, you turned. And ran back.

Straight toward the saloon.

Straight toward them.

Caleb hesitated.

His finger hovered over the trigger, his grin faltering for the briefest second. He had seen panic before. He had seen desperation, raw and wretched, as men clawed at the dirt to get away from him. But this? This was something else.

This wasn’t fear.

This was sacrifice.

Your reckless, stupid, godforsaken heroism sent a slow, amused snarl curling over his lips. He admired grit, respected those with enough iron in their spine to fight back, but what you had just done? That was pure foolishness.

He realigned his sights and steadied his aim. The rifle cracked, the harpoon slicing through the air in a deadly whistle.

Yui had no time to react.

But you did.

The iron spear punched through your shoulder, the impact ripping the air from your lungs before you even realized what had happened. Your world tilted as the force sent you sprawling backward, boots scraping against the dust-coated ground. The chain snapped tight and yanked you toward him with ruthless precision.

You hit the dirt hard.

A strangled cry tore from your throat as you skidded toward him, pebbles biting into your skin, the searing pain of the harpoon digging deep into flesh. Caleb didn’t move, didn’t flinch, just reeled you in, watching with an eerie calm as you clawed at the dirt, your body trembling from shock.

Then, at last, you were beneath him.

Looming, towering and waiting.

His shadow stretched over you, the barrel of his rifle lowering slightly, though the chain still remained taut in his grip. His ghostly, sunken eyes, shadowed beneath the brim of his hat, raked over you with something unreadable.

“You really are a damned fool, ain’t ya?” His voice was slow, deep, like rusted iron grinding over old bone.

Your chest heaved. You could feel the warm trickle of blood soaking your sleeve, the pain unbearable. But you had done it. Yui was gone. Running. Safe.

The realization flickered in Caleb’s gaze.

A chuckle rumbled low in his throat, though there was no real humor behind it. His amusement had curdled into something darker, something more intrigued. He pressed the sole of his boot lightly against your ribs. Not hard enough to crush, just enough. A reminder that you were at his mercy now.

“You got a death wish, darlin’?” His voice dipped lower, hushed, almost soft, like a secret between sinners. “Throwin’ yourself in front of my gun like that?” His fingers tightened around the rifle, muscles in his forearm tensing. “Ain’t had someone do that in a long time.”

You braced yourself for the hook. For the end.

But it didn’t come.

Instead, Caleb hesitated.

He had every reason to end this right now, to drag you screaming to a hook, to leave you gasping for air as the Entity claimed you.

And yet…

Something about the way you had offered yourself… Not to save yourself, but for another, struck something primal in him. A desire.

A possessive craving.

Something that made him want to keep you, not just kill you. Because that kind of loyalty? That recklessness?

It had potential.

That flicker of interest was your only chance.

With a sharp cry, you wrenched yourself free.

Pain shot through your body like wildfire, the wound in your shoulder ripping wider as you tore against the chain’s hold. The harpoon slid loose with a sickening squelch. And suddenly, the world was spinning as you stumbled to your feet and ran.

Caleb cursed, lunging forward, his chain snapping as he tried to grab you, but you were already sprinting, fueled by agony and desperation.

You didn’t look back.

Didn’t dare.

The saloon blurred around you, the ruined gallows looming like an omen. Caleb was already chasing, his boots pounding against the dirt, his rifle swinging downward to fasten his approach.

But then you saw it.

The hatch.

Your only way out.

With a final, ragged gasp, you threw yourself forward. The ground vanished beneath you as you plummeted, the fog swallowing you whole.

The hunt was over.

Caleb skidded to a halt, boots grinding against the dirt. The hatch let out a final thunk as it sealed itself, leaving nothing but silence in its wake.

For a long moment, he simply stared.

His chest heaved, not from exertion, but from something else entirely. Something unexpected. A slow, twisted grin curled over his lips, his jaw cracking in the process, his fingers tightening around the rifle’s grip.

That was new. That was interesting.

His fluorescent white gaze flickered over the empty spot where you had vanished.

Oh, he’d see you again. Because now? Now you were more than just another survivor. Now, you were his obsession.

And Caleb Quinn never let go of what he deems to be interesting.

The Executioner

The walls of Midwich Elementary School groaned under the weight of something ancient, something wrong. The air hung thick with decay, saturated with the acrid stench of rust and stagnant rot. It was as if the building itself had absorbed suffering, the very bones of its foundation tainted with the echoes of long-forgotten agony. Shadows pulsed unnaturally in the dim light, twisting along the broken tiles, whispering through cracked walls. The voices were not human.And through the heart of this nightmare, he pursued.

A towering monolith of flesh and metal. His form is an instrument of judgment. Silent, relentless and a monstrous man deemed inevitable. He did not stalk like a man, nor did he hunt like a beast. He moved with the certainty of something that had no need to rush, something that would always find you in the end. The Great Knife dragged behind him. Its rusted, monstrous edge carving deep gashes into the bloodstained floor. The sound of metal grinding against tile was unbearable. A screech that set nerves alight, yet it is no more deafening than the suffocating weight of his presence.

Adam Francis ran. He had spent his life educating others, priding himself on patience and on reason. But here? In this twisted parody of a school? Reason meant nothing.

He could feel it closing in behind him. The sheer weight of its presence bore down on him, thick and suffocating, like a shroud wrapping around his throat. He dared not look back, his breaths ragged as he pushed forward and forcing his burning legs to carry him further.

The knife swung.

A sharp whistle cut through the air. A death sentence descending upon him…

But then, you moved. The metal door of a locker slammed open, the dull light reflecting in your panicked gaze as you threw yourself forward, barreling into Adam’s side.

Your body crashed into his with the force of a desperate savior, knocking him off his path, sending him sprawling onto the cold tiles just as the Great Knife carved through the air.

A sharp and searing pain ignited across your back.

You barely had time to scream before the sheer force of the blow ripped you from your feet, sending you hurtling onto the blood-slicked floor. The cold, unforgiving tiles met you with a crack, the breath torn from your lungs as your limbs collapsed beneath you.

Your vision blurred. The pain was immediate, a blistering agony radiating across your spine where the blade had nearly cleaved you in two. Your fingers curled weakly against the ground, shaking, struggling to push yourself upright.

And then… Silence.

Adam’s footsteps faded into the distance, a fleeting comfort.

A shadow loomed over you. Impossibly vast and suffocating in its abyssal presence that swallowed everything in its path. The air itself quivered beneath his weight. The world recoiling as if it knew what lingered above you.

Slowly and deliberately, he stepped forward.

The Great Knife plunged into the ground beside you with a sickening crash, the sheer force rattling the earth beneath your trembling frame. The bloodstained steel quivered, buried deep in the floor beside your face. A statement.

Your breath came shallow and trembling, your body frozen as something huge, unseen, and utterly consuming filled the space between you.

The Executioner was watching you. From beneath that terrible, rusted helm, his unseen gaze bore into you. Studied you.

Your pain. Your sacrifice. Your willingness to suffer for another.

It was not fear that bound you in place.

It was the sheer, overwhelming intensity of his presence.

A gloved hand, which was massive and inhumanly strong, reached out. The white leather of his fingers, slick with blood, traced the line of your trembling jaw. The touch was shockingly delicate.

A shiver crawled down your spine. An instinctive reaction to the sheer power coiled within him.

He lingered. His fingers curled slightly, almost testing. Measuring the fragile warmth of your skin, the rapid thunder of your pulse against his fingertips.

For the first time, something shifted in the Executioner.

And in that moment, where pyramid head stood rigid, you did the only thing you could.

You ran.

Your body screamed in protest, every nerve aflame, but you did not stop. You pushed past the pain, past the overwhelming pull of the Executioner’s unseen gaze, and ran through the endless halls of this cursed place.

The shadows clawed at your heels, the darkness twisting with each turn. You could feel him following, his footfalls heavy. He did not chase in haste.  Because he did not need to. He was inevitable. You were no different, in that regard.

But then, the hatch.

Like a beacon in the endless dark, it hummed just ahead.

With the last of your strength, you threw yourself forward.

And the fog swallowed you whole.

The trial was over.

The Executioner stood at the edge of the empty space where you had vanished, the silence pressing against him like a vice.

His great knife, still drenched in fresh blood, lowered.

Slowly, his free hand curled into a fist, the phantom warmth of your skin still clinging to his fingers.

The moment played again in his mind. Your breathless defiance, your willingness to bleed for another. The way your body had trembled beneath his touch, not from fear… Not entirely at least. But from something else, too.

You had changed something.

And now, you were his to seek, and to find.

The rusted helm tilted slightly, as if listening to something far beyond human comprehension.

It was not over. Not even close.

Because no matter where you ran, no matter how many times you escaped… The Executioner would come for you this time.

And next time?

You would not escape him.

The Knight

The air was thick with the stench of burning wood and rotting flesh, smoke curling in dark plumes through the ruined remnants of Shattered Square. What had once been a thriving settlement of merchants and craftsmen had been reduced to a battlefield of blood and embers, its people long gone, their suffering permanently etched into the scorched ruins and broken cobblestone. The streets were littered with the remnants of a life now lost in time. Shattered pottery, splintered carts, iron tools abandoned in the dirt. All remnants of a struggle that had ended long before this trial began.  But the trial was not yet over.

Thalita Lyra ran.

Her breath came in ragged bursts and her limbs trembled with exertion as she tore through the crumbling marketplace, past the skeletal remains of merchant stalls and overturned wagons. Her heartbeat pounded against her ribs, a frantic drum of fear and survival.

And behind her, he followed.

The Knight.

A towering presence of steel and death, his body encased in armor blackened by soot and battle. His crimson surcoat, though singed and tattered from the flames, still billowed with every step, the deep red standing stark against the plated steel beneath. A war banner of a man, a conqueror draped in the colors of blood.

He did not rush. He did not need to. His Guards had done their part.  The Jailer’s chains had nearly dragged her down, the Assassin’s blade had come within a whisper of splitting flesh. But he did not rely on them. There was no evading him.

A shadow loomed.

A flash of steel.

The Knight’s zweihänder sliced through the air, a lethal arc of gleaming death.

Thalita’s body twisted at the last moment, barely dodging the strike, but she had nowhere left to run.

Her foot caught on debris, and she hit the ground hard, her body barely able to brace for the impact.

The Knight took one step forward, the weight of his presence pressing down like an executioner looming over the condemned. His zweihänder rose, the tip gleaming with flickering embers of the fires still burning in the ruins.

A sudden blur. The impact was sudden, your shoulder colliding with the steel plating of his side, the force of your weight crashing into his armored frame with everything you had. It was a fool’s act.

His steel-clad arm barely budged against the force of your impact, but it was enough. The zweihänder stopped mid-swing, the momentum of his blade shifting ever so slightly, his body barely shifting from your impact. You may as well have thrown yourself against a fortress.

But that single moment, that single hesitation, was all Thalita needed.

Enough for Thalita to push herself up, stumbling onto her feet, her body swaying as she regained balance. Without looking back, she turned and disappeared into the thickening smoke, her form swallowed by the ruins.

The air around you felt heavier, thick with something indescribable as the battlefield fell into silence.

The Knight's visor tilted downward, the slitted gaze beneath it locking onto you for the first time.

Your chest heaved, your heart a frenzied drumbeat beneath your ribs. Pain shot through your limbs from the force of the collision, but you did not dare to move.

You stood firm.

For someone else, you had placed yourself in his path.

For someone else, you had intervened.

Something shifted in the Knight’s imposing stance.

He had seen many things in these wretched trials. Cowards, warriors, fools who thought they could outlast him.

But this?

This was different.

His gauntleted fingers flexed against the hilt of his zweihänder.

The feeling drummed against his ribs, an unfamiliar rhythm that had no place in a battlefield. It was something new, something he had not felt in so long he had forgotten it existed at all.

His own heartbeat.

Steady. Strong. And faster than ever before.

He exhaled slowly, the sound of it low and controlled beneath his helmet.

For the first time, he did not feel like a warrior in pursuit of his duty. He did not feel like a mere extension of the Entity’s will, nor just another commander of its cruel games. You stepped back, already turning to run away.

With terrifying precision, his free hand lashed out. A hand that could crush bone, that had twisted the life from so many before.

The metal of his gauntlets was slick with blood as his fingers closed around your throat.

A sharp gasp left your lips. Your hands flew up, fingers soon clawing against the unyielding steel, desperately seeking a weakness, a gap, anything that would loosen his grip. But there was no weakness to find. You struggled, your body twisting, your feet digging into the dirt, trying to pull away- to break free. But his hold remained unyielding. He did not tighten his grip. He did not choke you, did not crush your windpipe as he so easily could have. He simply held you there. Like a hunter inspecting his catch.

As if he did not understand why he was doing it at all.

The battlefield around you still burned, the air thick with the scent of blood and smoke, yet he paid it no mind. His focus was solely on you.

Alive. Mortal. Temporary. The words tumbled through his head like an echo. Foreign and unfamiliar, pressing into his thoughts in ways he could not explain.

You were not supposed to matter.

And yet, as you struggled, as you fought against his grip, he remained still, his gaze hidden beneath his visor, locked onto you in silent contemplation.

You were so fragile.

His armor was cold and unyielding. The heavy plating pressing lightly against your skin. He could not feel the warmth of your body beneath his grip. His gauntlets prevented that.

But he could see the rapid rise and fall of your chest. Could see the way your pulse fluttered at your throat. Could see your face, up close for the first time. Not a fleeting glimpse across the battlefield.

Not another nameless soul in the Fog.

But you.

For a single moment, you stopped struggling.

You stilled beneath his grip, your breath ragged but steadying, your body no longer thrashing against his hold.

You were watching him now.

Just as he was watching you.

A war machine and a mortal. A killer and a survivor.

Then…

The distant roar of the final generator hissed through the burning air.

A sharp stinging pain tore across his grip as you wrenched free. Your nails digging into the cracks of his armor, breaking his hold with a sudden twist of your body.

The Knight’s fingers curled into a tight fist. The memory of your form still fresh against his palm.

Your figure blurred through the smoke and ruin, your form becoming smaller, vanishing into the distance as you sprinted toward one of the exit gates. One that is now open.

He followed.

His heartbeat still thundered in his ears, still demanded answers he did not yet understand.

He would not let you go so easily.

The exit gates gleamed ahead.

With the last of your strength, you threw yourself past them, the fog consuming you whole.

The trial was over.

Tarhos came to a halt.

His armored boots pressed against the dirt. The black spikes of the Entity’s barriers protruding from the ground and keeping him from taking another step.

His blade lowered, his breath slow and controlled beneath his helmet.

His body remained still, but inside, something was not.

That unfamiliar rhythm remained, refusing to fade, a presence in his body that he could not explain.

It lingered.

He lifted his free hand, fingers uncurling, staring at the space where you had once been.

His visor tilted slightly, as if contemplating, as if searching for something invisible.

His head turned back upward, his gaze lingering on the empty horizon where you had disappeared into the Fog.

He had cut down countless warriors, cowards, fighters and survivors alike.

He had hunted many who dared to defy him.

But you?

You had stirred something inside him.

A slow, deliberate step backward. Then another. He sheathed his zweihänder with practiced ease.

The battlefield still burned around him, but his mind was elsewhere. Because you had become something more than just another survivor. Something worth seeking. Something worth keeping.

The Knight turned, stepping back into the blackened ruin of Shattered Square.

He would see you again.

The Oni

The ancient halls of the Yamaoka Estate groaned beneath the weight of time. Wind screamed through broken shoji doors, carrying whispers of the dead across splintered wood and blood-slicked floors. Once serene, the garden had become a shrine to carnage. Maple leaves soaked in crimson and stone lanterns streaked with violence.

David Tapp was running.

He had been running since the moment he saw it. A monstrous figure emerging from the fog and roaring with the fury of a thousand condemned souls.

The Oni.

Not a man. Not even a killer. A legend of wrath made manifest.

David's lungs burned as he tore through the ruined courtyard, the world spinning around him. His legs were lead, his body bruised and battered and every step scraped against the edge of collapse. The splintered and rotting torii gate loomed ahead. A gateway to nowhere.

The Oni was upon him, crashing through the mists like a force of nature. His kanabo scraped deep trenches into the ground. A grotesque extension of his rage. His veins pulsed with glowing fury and his eyes locked on the prey just within reach.

He had him. He would end it.

That was until you suddenly stepped between them.

A blur. Fragile. Human. But in that instant, you were unshakable. You weren’t a survivor. You weren’t prey. You were defiance itself. Flinging yourself between death and the man it hunted.

The Oni struck without being able to stop himself. The kanabo came down with the force of a landslide, cleaving the air with a sound that seemed to tear the very sky apart. There was no time to scream, no moment to flinch. It was too fast.

It did not hit David.

It struck you.

Your body absorbed the brunt of the blow with a sickening crunch. Bones groaning under the unimaginable weight. You were lifted off your feet and hurled across the courtyard like a broken doll. The world spun as you hit the stones, then fell still. Blood filled your mouth. Your vision blurred, mud and blood mixing into an distinguishable haze. Pain wasn't even pain anymore. It was a roaring silence that swallowed your senses whole.

But David was safe.

That was all that mattered.

And yet, the killing blow never followed.

A shadow loomed. The Oni stood over you, massive and seething, his aura flickering with scarlet fury. His breath came in ragged gusts. Fogging the space between you. The kanabo trembled in his grip.

He stared.

And in that heartbeat, he knew.

He had waited a lifetime to feel something like this again. Not rage. Not vengeance. Something else.

But you moved.

Your fingers clawed into the cold, wet earth, slipping once, then finding purchase. The taste of blood coated your tongue, metallic and thick. Your chest heaved as your breath rasped like a dying fire, but still you pulled one knee under you, then the other. You forced yourself upright, trembling, swaying… And standing.

It wasn't just pain that kept you grounded. It was purpose. A desperate, flickering will to survive.

He saw it.

The thought alone of you escaping him sent a surge of fury tearing through his soul. His veins flaring like molten rivers of crimson.

The Oni's eyes burned brighter, a mixture of surprise and rage twisting within the holes of his mask. For a moment, he hesitated, his kanabo lowering ever so slightly.

Then he surged forward, a growl tearing from his throat, muscles flexing as he lunged like a living avalanche. But mid-stride, his fury refocused. He did not want you dead.

With a swift motion, he discarded the kanabo, letting it crash into the earth behind him. From thin air, he drew his katana. Sleek, precise, restrained. It gleamed faintly. A blade not meant to kill this time, but to cut a path to capture.

He wanted you alive.

He would take you with one hand if he had to.

But he was too late.

Your body lurched forward, driven by instinct and terror, your feet dragging through leaves and broken stone as you fled through the mist.

You kept moving, despite the heavy strides that followed you from up close. Lungs on fire, every step pulled from a reserve of strength you didn’t know you had. Stones slipped beneath you. The world narrowed to the gate ahead.

And you ran through it.

Behind you, The Oni roared. But not in triumph.

He reached the edge of the open field, only to be met by the Entity’s cruel barrier. Ebony spikes erupted from the ground, halting him mid-charge. His katana struck one of them with a deafening clang, sending sparks into the eternal night.

He growled low, the sound echoing like thunder trapped in his chest. His aura pulsed around him, wild and furious, but restrained.

He would not forget this.

He had waited a lifetime to feel something other than rage. And now, it was already slipping through his fingers.

He glared into the darkness where you'd vanished, the fog already swallowing your trail. But the trial was not over. Not for him.

He would find you again. Inside the Fog. Inside one of his trials.

And next time, there would be no escape.

[nouearth]

sweet surrender.

bruce wayne x male reader headcanon.

summary: there's nothing better than taking your anger out on someone you hate (and fucked).

wc: 2.3k. genre: smut. warnings: bale!bruce, top!bruce, bottom!reader, bigdick!bruce, bratty!reader breeding, mouth-fucking, rough!sex, hate!sex, choking, drooling, spitting, mentions of pain slash pleasure, bruce has a dick that won't quit.

hate sex with bruce included kissing you with a sense of urgency. he overwhelmed you with the intrusion of his tongue. you resisted, but the wet muscle parted your lips so easily despite your efforts, and all you could do was fight back with a stronger force.

he held you against the wall, pinned you, but you utilized a surprising strength to push against his hold and bit down on his tongue in midst. an accidental move on your part, but you hated him. it made your chest swell hearing him cuss you out, and so you did it again, across his bottom lip where he'd groan again, before licking the insides of his mouth as if you were the potion to soothe his wounds.

fuck you. he'd grumble, breathing hot into your mouth after he slammed back into the wall. he speared a glare at you, into the fervent display of your eyes, and forced his lips back onto you. he hated kissing you. he hated the way your lips perfectly fit into his. he hated how your breath mixed sweetly with the scent of roasted coffee beans of his. he hated the sound of your moans when he pressed his body into yours. he hated the fact that he was pressing so close to you, practically attached to your hip.

and he hated the fact that there was not a single moment where he wanted to pull away.

fuck you. you spat at him, leered at the way his hair sweatily yet perfectly hung over his eyes as if it was a protective barrier that prevented you from dissecting his current feelings and emotion.

bruce vied for control—a dominance—that was proclaimed triumphant when he put his hands on you.

one strong hand of his laced over your hair, thick bundles at his grip, and he pulled your head back in one swift yank. your eyes opened in shock followed by a rattled groan, and a somewhat unnerving fear that you didn't want to admit led you to avoid his eyes.

bruce took his time eyeing your throat, the slow bob of your adam's apple as you thickly swallowed the ghost of coffee beans down, awaiting his next move. was he going to kiss you again? mark hickies all over you? bite hickies into you until you bled? looking beneath your eyelashes, his eyes sharpened, and for some reason, you suddenly felt smaller.

the silence around you fell to a quiet, menacing drone when he raised his free hand and one-by-one, slowly wrapped his fingers around your throat. everything was precise with him. he made sure the protrusion in your throat was centered at the space between his thumb and index. he made sure to let go of your hair so he could press you flat against the wall again, restricting your movements. and he made sure to squeeze, triggering a defiance in you, beating and pushing at his chest that only made him squeeze harder, harder, and harder.

your breath was vaulted in the back of your throat with staggers of profanity managing to slip out. you pretended it didn't affect you. despite your losing grasp in reality as bruce gradually stripped you of air, you powered through and wore a glare that crowned you a champion. he groaned. a warrior. he clenched his jaw. a king. he squeezed. and your crown shattered in a million pieces when your vision blurs, when your eyes gloss like varnish on wood, and when you shut them and a tear rolled down the flush of your cheeks.

and bruce knew he'd won when he let go, and you were gasping desperately for air. heaving as you rubbed at your neck, wincing because the muscle fibers were signaling in thrums that you were going to be bruising the morning after. though, it wouldn't be long until you found your breath completely stripped away from you again.

hate sex with bruce included forcing you down on your knees before finding a perfect grasp on the back of your head and pushing your mouth down his cock. you hated how thick he was, making you look even more meek because it was a struggle to even take in the first few inches. you coughed when he pushed lower, then gagged when the girth of his cock weighed down on your tongue and pushed air back down your throat, blocking your air passage.

open your mouth. he wasn't satisfied, mocking in his tone as he yanked your head back, and you'd use the few seconds to catch your breath as you drew your tongue out, hanging your mouth open. it was intimidating to see him in this position, towering over you as if you were a peasant to his kingdom, or like an animal as your pants were akin to one, but you'd never admit that as you glared upwards. he extended your head further back, yanked again, before thickly spitting into your mouth. or in bruce's own words, lubing your mouth.

as much control he had over you, you weren't going to take it—not like this. you scrunched your face before spitting up back at him, a few speckles landing at his cheek. it was a daring move, one that silenced the room until you could hear your heartbeat resonating through the stereos in his house.

do that again, i dare you. bruce warned—demanded—as his grasp only tightened, his cock hardening before you as it pulsed with anger. and instead of spitting, you let your saliva completely spill out, pushing it out in bubbly sputters as your tongue hung out, a move to mock him and his demands.

or what? going to fuck my mouth or something? despite his grip on you, it was loose enough for you to allow you to extend your neck and lick a stride at the underside of his meaty cock. he watched you in silence, his bare chest gradually heaving more with irritation. he was breathing through his nose, an obvious attempt to control the flame you ignited him, while you continued lazily tonguing at his cock at the plump head. you added to the glorious sheen his pre-cum had bestowed upon the pink flesh over time, lapping the thick musk up in several licks.

you'd get your answer when bruce threw you over the bed and onto your stomach. your cock found pleasurable refuge in the tousled duvet beneath you and you rocked your hips into the pocket of fabric as you waited for him, hearing him uncapping a bottle of some sort and the sounds of sticky lathers after.

jesus, what's taking so— without warning, bruce intruded into your tight hole with a slow, yet unbearable push. you pushed away, or attempted to escape from the sheer amount of pain beneath you, but he reeled you back by taking your shoulders and pinning them down to the mattress. it knocked the breath out of you. his cock, spreading you open so vividly painful, you could feel every stretch of muscle being pried open despite your natural will to enclose around him.

you opened your mouth, thinking your whimpers would come out, but your throat constricted instead, locking them back in until bruce delivered one hard snap of his strong hips, dispelling the gate to which your groans poured out in staggered and bitter pants. your toes curled at the stinging sensation, and your hands fisted into whatever fabric was in your had, but why did you love it? why did you love feeling like a doll with absolute no use in the world... except for fucking? for bruce's fucking?

think you can still run your mouth? bruce asked with no expectations of a coherent answer from you. he squeezed hard at every flesh and bone he'd come across. the back of your neck, your shoulders, your arms, your waist, bruising while the driving of his hips seemed to have been at competition with his own physical touch to see which could make you break first.

his hand ran over your back muscles, the dip of your spine, before traveling back upwards to shove your face into the mattress, once again restricting your way to life, to living, to breathing. his thick cock fucked into you while a glorious amount of lube creamed out of your violated hole, squelching and squishing with every thrust bruce would deliver in strong and heavy rhythms. he hated you. his bruising touch was evidence of that, already blooming beautiful against your skin, and he hated that he made the mistake of marking you because now you're marked as his.

you'd whine for him to keep fucking you, only because his movements rocked you into the duvet, making you fuck into the pocket of fabric. soft yet fuzzy against your skin, it was uncomfortable but you knew bruce wouldn't make you cum through his own touch. it was up to you, and you were selfish, needed to be selfish to achieve your own desires and pleasures.

you'd gotten used to the pain, soon turning into bittersweet, eye-rolling pleasure, finding yourself fucking your ass back into his thrusts, back into his meaty and throbbing cock. your ass rippled every time your skin met his, slapped loudly in the lust-driven air, and the sweat on your kindled bodies only made it more inviting as it stuck and glued you two together in a sticky mess, intertwined and passionate.

bruce held you by the hips, his fingers digging to the bone, bringing your ass back into him while he thrusted forward, ramming into you as hard as he could muster the power to in quick bursts before pacing back down into long and steady thrusts. he loved doing that. he loved hearing your moans ratter with the quickness of his thrusts. your long and drawn out hiss when he pulled out almost completely. you'd desperately wish for him to put it back in, and bruce wouldn't absolutely comply until you began whining, begging for him like a whore in heat.

please, please, please. i need it. you desperately cried out, the rim of your hole clinging onto for sanity—the very tip of his cock that you could feel bruce teasingly swirl around your hole.

you need what? bruce asked for clarification, a strong emphasis on what, and he'd pull his cock out to sheathe it in between your ass cheeks. his palms spanked you once, then again when you wouldn't answer, before groping your two soft globes and firmly kneading them until he could visibly see his handprints imprinted on your flesh. he'd fuck himself in between your cheeks, groaning at the lack of tightness compared to your pretty asshole. he felt himself coming close, and if he wanted to, he could come just like this, selfishly watching himself pour his spunk all over your back.

your cock, please. i need your big cock in me, fuck. i need you to fuck me until i'm thinking about that cock for weeks, fuck me like you hate me— fuck! your words croaked into the bed sheets, and you were apprehensive if it was enough for bruce. it was embarrassing because of how quickly submissive you became all because of his cock. you hated bruce, but not his cock. you could never. you needed him more than ever because you were close and you needed to come so bad, so fucking bad. you humped into the blanket, your hole quivering at the loss of girth, desperately enticing back bruce with multiple puckers.

like i hate you..? i despise you. bruce breathed out his final words near the shell of your ear before sheathing himself completely inside of you with one push, then proceeded to fucking you without caring that his full weight was toppled on you. without caring that the neighbors could hear your grunts and his mixing like a choir. the sloppy sounds of skin-to-skin contact turning it into a symphony of delectable sounds that he could simply get off to if he wanted to.

you kicked your feet, the immense pleasure quickly building up as if bruce hadn't taken a pause with you prior, and you were back to fucking into the blanket again. over and over, your cock slid into the soft fabric deeper until you were practically fucking a pile of fabric rather than a pocket.

and you came. your cock released your desires in thick, full shots that would stain the material for a lifetime, and you'd cream into them because bruce continued fucking you. continued fucking your ass, churning his cock in and out of you wildly until he felt his own release coming in heavy marches, like soldiers preparing for battle.

you could hear him pant, breathe a little harder and quicker than before, and his grasp tightens around your hips when he pulled his weight off of you. he loved using like this. not fucking you, but using your body to fuck him. he used his remaining strength to maneuver your hips—your body—almost lifting you as he fucked his thick cock, utilizing your hole like a fleshlight until he felt his balls startle, then twitch, then pumped in several course as his cock swelled with a desire to fill.

with a guttural moan, he slammed you back into his cock once more before his balls dumped his cum into you. thick and heavy, you can feel it coating every inch of your walls, then creamy as bruce pursued an ambition to milk himself. his fucking sounded sloppier than before as he churned himself inside of you, over-filling you with passionate hate, and you could feel it dripping out of you, down your thighs and legs and an unfortunate waste as it most likely stained the bed, the longer he used you like an abused toy.

once his cock went limp, bruce pulled out and watched with undeniable admiration as your loose hole squeezed his cum out in thick dribbles, unable to hold his warm loads for any longer because you were deservingly well-fucked and bred.

god, i hate you.

hate you more.

nouearth. please do not repost, plagiarize, or translate my works. andif you like this story, please reblog and leave a like!

[ddarker-dreams]

play wrestling — blade.

Embarrassment doesn’t find you easily.

To experience embarrassment implies a degree of self-awareness. While you possess some, it’s decreased significantly compared to your earlier years. Such is the natural progression of life. This is why you felt free to act on a little impulse, initially uncaring of how it’d reflect on you.

However, faced with two eyes as crimson as freshly spilled blood, you can’t help but do some reassessing.

“… What are you doing?” Blade asks, dryly. You feel the low rumble of his baritone voice against your palms, which you’ve splayed against his chest. His neutral countenance doesn’t give much away. According to your peer-reviewed scientific analysis, he alternates between three expressions — apathy, irritation, and wrath. There is an additional secret one for when it’s just the two of you and he doesn’t think you’re looking.

From what you can tell, you’ve landed yourself on the apathetic side of the spectrum. You can work with that. You’ll commit to the bit.

“Besting an intergalactic criminal in combat, obviously,” you scoff, faking a bravado you don’t have.

“Hm.”

“…”

“…”

Is he not going to do anything to free himself from this position?!

Blade had silently slid himself next to where you sat on the floor, playing with your phone. This unique opportunity activated a primal part of your brain that probably should’ve stayed in the vault. You wrangled him down. Now, he’s lying flat on his back, with you sitting victorious atop his lower abdomen. Long strands of his black hair fall along his side, painting a pretty picture. You suppress the urge to run your hands through his silky locks. That can come later, you have an objective to achieve.

“Are you finished?”

“Wh— well, no,” you frown. And here you thought he might indulge you. “You have to, y’know, fight back…?”

He raises an eyebrow and you want to groan.

“But I’d win.”

The declaration is made like it’s a foregone conclusion. Which, if you’re being honest, isn’t wrong. Still, he should give you some credit. You can hold your own in a fight! Maybe you’re not waving-around-a-three-thousand-pound-ancient-sword good, but you’re decent enough. He’s no fun. Kafka would’ve played around with you.

“How can you be so sure— eek!”

He grabs you by the shoulders and flips you around, reversing your position. Despite the immense speed he used, your head doesn’t hit the ground hard like it should’ve. He cushioned the impact by essentially cradling the back of your head with his hand. This is why you never believe him when he denies being a ‘secret softie.’ You know the truth.

“This is how,” he says.

You pout. “Did I at least put up a good fight?”

His silence speaks volumes.

After getting his fill of how nice you look beneath him, he climbs off you. The second you’re no longer restrained, you begin your counterattack. You lunge at him, intending to pin him down, only to feel the cool leather of his gloves against your wrists. You struggle valiantly to regain your freedom. All this does is amuse him further.

“We’re pretty evenly matched, right?” You ask, beginning to grow breathless from the energy you’re exerting.

The corners of his lips twitch upward.

“Mhm. Right.”

[aangelinakii]

I have a vision, and you are the messenger.

Tim Drake x reader, "I can see you" by Taylor swift. It's either red robin or CEO!Tim

Good luck🫡

IF YOU ONLY KNEW.

— i could see you up against the wall with me.

summary : you work for wayne enterprises where tim drake is the ceo. if only everybody else knew what you two got up to.

note : i'm gonna be candid rn.... i was lowk putting this off because i'm not a big taylor fan and i was kind of expecting rhe song to be cringe BUT THEN I LISTENED TO IT AND I HAD THE IDEA SO CLEAR IN MY HEAD !!!!! so i hope i did justice for your vision !!!!!

breath, warm against skin, lips raking lower and lower, past cotton collars and loosened neckties. short, struggling moans purred against flesh, only making the small office space hotter.

tim's office was much larger, probably more ideal for a meeting like this — where it would be okay to brush the papers and pens off the desk and trap him within your arms against the wood — but you both knew people were less likely to come knocking on your door.

and so, here you were, pressing your boss against the wall, your nimble fingers inching down his bare chest, toned, smooth like porcelain, towards the waistline of his black tailored trousers, where the only thing in your way was the buckle of a belt.

knock, knock, knock.

both your movements halted, the temperature of the room immediately plummeting. your breath, once warm and heavy, sucked its way back down your throat, fingers freezing above the leather of tim's belt.

his hands, one on the small of your back, where it originally had been swooping lower, and the other on the nape of your neck, holding you closer, egging you on, went rigid, as if touched with frost bite. the curve of his dark eyebrows was still prominent, but now showed an expression of alarm as opposed to arousal.

the doorknob jiggled from the other side, rattling throughout the small space.

"sorry, i just didn't want to be disturbed!" you called out to your interrupter, grimacing as soon as you'd said it — lame excuse, much?

"no worries," a neat voice replied from behind the wood. "just reminding you we have a meeting in five minutes, and most are in the room already; mr drake has been... well, you've seen how he's been lately, just don't be late."

at this, tim's eyebrows furrowed, and his lower hand moved to your hip. taking in his offense, you had to bite down on the gum of your lip to not let out a laugh.

"yeah, of course, thanks," you responded, allowing a soft chuckle to pass your lips.

a few beats passed in silence, hearts throbbing against each other in anticipation, hoping your colleague had trudged away by now back to the meeting room.

finally, when you turned your head back to face tim, your smile couldn't help but curl.

messed hair, swollen lips, your boss peered up at you from beneath a creased brow. "how have i been lately? have my employees been bad-mouthing me?"

involuntarily, another laugh edged its way out, and you leaned in again to press a sweet kiss to those plumpened lips of his. "not bad-mouthing," you hummed back. "just discussing."

the mere skim of your lips against his seemed to soothe the wrinkle between his brows, the skin smooth between them when you looked back up at him.

"you can't deny, you've been a bit uptight this week," you continued as you stepped away to get to the buttons on your pale blue dress shirt.

"only because i've been so busy," tim sighed, still slumped against the wall, not making any efforts to move and tidy himself up. "haven't been able to see you."

your lips pulled up again greatfully, as your fingers fastened the final button, a couple below the base of your neck, for you weren't wearing a tie. although you didn't make a verbal reply, you could tell tim was watching you fondly as you grabbed the blazer that matched your bottoms from where it had been tossed onto your desk.

"we're going to be late," you breathed, almost sheepishly now as you pulled the jacket on, running your fingers over the lapels.

"hey, i'm the boss," tim grinned, the lopsided smile paired with the mess of his hair causing something warm to swell in your stomach. "they can't start without me."

something about the way he looked at you, even after you'd been pinning him against the wall, largely at your mercy in his own enterprise building, made you feel shy; something tickling at the back of your neck.

maybe it was the power dynamic; he was your boss, you some lowly file sorter, but when things got hot and heavy he was eager to quiver under your touch.

but now you didn't feel like that, and, with the way he looked you, neither did he.

this was something much softer, more domestic.

an equal giddiness.

pushing back anything shivery in your limbs, you stepped up towards him, fingers deftly threading button into slit up along his white shirt. "doesn't mean you shouldn't show up at all," you smiled, voice soft, quiet. "but you have to come after me."

"naturally."

when your eyes flickered up from the top button, you spied a cheeky smile on those pink lips of his, curling at the side, etching a handsome line into his skin.

"shut it," you commented lightly, unable to bite back your smile now.

a perfect, comfortable albeit a little shy, silence fell upon your shoulders, in which you popped up the collar of his shirt you'd previously peeled back and roughed up, and looped the maroon tie back under.

the meeting in the back of your mind, your fingers worked quickly, although expertly looping the knot into place, and then folding the white collar back over it.

next, your hands found the gelled mess of raven strands swinging in tim's pale blue eyes. "i'm gonna run. you fix yourself up, okay? wait a couple minutes after i leave."

you turned on your heel to leave, but a soft grip took your wrist, and pulled you back.

careful lips caressed the gap of skin between your eyebrows.

"i'll see you in a minute, wonderful," tim breathed, a calm, soothing voice in your ear.

with another smile, tim's already-loose grip loosened again and you slipped past him, unlocking the door to your office and disappearing down the hall.

indeed, when you reached the meeting room, the entire oval-shaped table was filled with wayne enterprise employees, save for two seats; one in the middle of two interns, and one at the head for mr drake himself.

you excused yourself upon entrance and sunk down into your seat, earning a couple smiles from your more friendly colleagues.

and then, a few minutes later, just as you'd said, the door creaked open again, causing eyes to follow.

at the head of the table, tim drake, hair smoothed back and expression stony, sat down in his chair, a stack of papers in his hands you hadn't known him to have had before he swung by your office. "apologies for my late arrival," he cleared his throat, pulling attention to him immediately. "i had business to attend to that couldn't wait."

perhaps you imagined it, but you swore his blue gaze met yours for the split of a second, and you had to bite down on your molars to hold back a smile.

[brittle-doughie]

Hi Brittle-doughie, sorry for bothering you. I'm pretty sure I sent this once, but If this has been asked before you can delete this.

Every relationship isn't perfect. There's bound to be some challenges.

How would Golden Cheese Cookie, Nutmeg Tiger Cookie, and Smoked Cheese Cookie apologize to their lover after an argument?

Apologies, Apologies (Nutmeg Tiger, Golden Cheese, and Smoked Cheese Cookie)

It was hard for Nutmeg Tiger Cookie, getting used to a different kind of life here in the Cookie Kingdom, where it was complete peace and quiet compared to the tough terrain of the spice desert she was used to.

She hadn’t completely lost all of her previous habits, insulting and shouting at cookies whom she considered beneath her in strength. Which leads to the fight you two have, she didn’t understand why you were defending these bumbling fools that wouldn’t even survive for long if they can’t fight!

She does come around eventually and apologizes after much hesitation. She’s just not used to this change in scenery when she’s been a warrior that valued strength above all else for so long, she’d hate to spit on your trust and care for her with her behavior. She’ll do what she can to adjust herself, but she can’t do it without you.

Golden Cheese Cookie was not budging on any suggestions to move the souls of her treasures somewhere else, they were perfectly fine where they were and she refused to put them at any risk. What if there was an accident and she loses one of her people in the process!? What were you even suggesting!?

You tried to reassure her that the vault concept you had was something planned for a while, you just wanted to give Golden Cheese that extra security that her subjects would be safe from any threats that would come to the kingdom. Golden Cheese didn’t want to hear it and demanded that you leave her alone…

She does deeply regret it once she’s calmed down, you were only trying to help in keeping her citizens’ souls safe. The Secret Vault is built and Golden Cheese spends every waking moment apologizing profusely, she didn’t mean to raise her voice towards her dearest treasure…

You had trusted Golden Cheese Cookie with the kingdom, much to Smoked Cheese Cookie’s irritation. Didn’t you see that another war was upon you all, and Golden Cheese doesn’t want to do a thing about it!

It was a source of arguments where you try to convince Smoked that Golden Cheese Cookie wouldn’t let anyone down, but he didn’t see it that way. If you didn’t want to see it his way, then so be it. He can do this on his own…

It only takes his defeat for him to fully realize what he had done. He expected you to leave him, but that wasn’t in your nature to just abandon him over a petty argument. He’ll call you a fool for being so forgiving…his wonderful fool…

He quietly shares his apologies to you as you two hold each other close together. He didn’t want to be crumbled again, and he didn’t want to be crumbled…alone.

[i-drop-level-one-loot]

🎃 A Warm Body

Oviposition CW: egg laying Monster!Reader based on an Anon❤️ from a while ago, yandere!human, reader with male and female reproductive organs

Growling in frustration, (Reader's) long claws carved into the concrete flooring of the room they were kept prisoner.

Their swollen body ached with how full they were, going mad with how desperate they were for release. As soon as they emerged from the Earth to reproduce, a human shot them with enough tranquilizers to put down a herd of elephants, which is why (Reader) now found themselves in what was essentially a concrete box, locked in by a large steel vault. (Reader) cried out in need, craving release.

The metal door spun obnoxiously, multiple mechanisms whirring as it unlocked and squealed open. The man who shot (Reader) quickly entered, shutting the door closed again behind him. There were so many things he wanted to say, an entire romantic monologue planned for the creature he had spent his entire life obsessing over, researching and hunting despite no one else believing in (Reader's) existence. But before he could open his mouth, (Reader) had him by the leg, dragging him down beneath them.

(Reader) ignored the man's happy squeaks, ripping his clothes off to find a suitable hole. His face glowed with heat, blushing as he pitifully attempted to cover up his body. But his small, human body was no match for (Reader's), effortlessly holding the man up by his hips, unfazed by his weak flailing. With his ass presented to (Reader) they couldn't help groaning, nearly bursting just from the thought of being able to mate.

They pushed the man onto their large depositor, screaming in pleasure at how snuggly he fit on them. (Reader) slid him against them, animalistic grunts bouncing off the concrete walls as they mercilessly fucked him.

His smile and incoherent babbling was cute, but (Reader) didn't really care. It didn't matter that it felt good for their abductor, that he was in complete and utter bliss. Nor did they appreciate his erect penis twitching with his building climax, about ready to cum without touching it. The only thing that mattered was coating the insides of his ass with their protective slime, forming a type of pocket to protect their eggs from his bodily functions.

Squelching sounds filled the air as he slapped into (Reader's) pelvis wetly, creating strings of fluids stretching between their bodies. (Reader) could feel that they had pumped enough nesting liquid into him, with how round he was already becoming.

The man erratically spasmed as the first egg entered his asshole, hitting his prostate on the way in. Cum hit the concrete with the next egg, off-white droplets landing pathetically by (Reader's) feet and dripping onto his own face from the doubled over position.

But (Reader) wasn't done. Eggs continued pumping into his body, brushing past the overstimulated man's sensitive spot, bringing him to tears as his post ejaculated body was overwhelmed, fucking deep into his aching hole.

He couldn't stand or run away, his legs weak from his orgasm and his body tired from the sudden bloating from his unnatural impregnation. (Reader) carefully pulled out after finishing, satisfied from laying their first brood. The man wasn't a bad host for their offspring, still smiling through his drool and tears. His full body was cradled against (Reader's) protectively, feeling content with the new life laid inside of him.

(Reader) may have only needed a warm body, but they didn't mind using this one for the rest of their mating needs ❤️

[floralscented]

𓂃 warnings .ᐟ masturbation , somnophilia , explicit language , sam being completely, utterly, and biblically obsessed with reader . . . wc .ᐟ … 2.5k

sam’s obsession with you hasn’t gotten any better, and well, it is expected. god, he is so desperate and in need for you it is insane, it’s making him feel like he’s back having withdrawals for demon blood, that is how desperate he is. he would do anything for you. anything to have you for a night. or even for five fucking minutes. anything. he’s pathetic, he knows that, and he knows that if anyone found out about his insatiable obsession for you, they would call him pathetic, too. he doesn’t care, though, all he cares about is having your skin beneath his fingertips—or even the chance for you to let him touch you. 

he doesn’t know how he’s survived without you. he’s pretty sure just having you around him is keeping his heart beating and him breathing. and without you near him, he feels as though his oxygen supply is draining and growing scarce. and then you re-appear, saving him, bringing him back to life. but he needs more—craves for more. it’s completely and utterly selfish, for him to want you in the way he does, but all of his ration has been thrown out the window and locked away behind a vault, when it comes to you. and he doesn’t want that feeling to ever go away, he’d drag it back to him if it ever were to. 

it hadn’t even been a few days since he’d seen you and he’s already losing his mind. his control. his normalcy. dean and him had been out on a hunt, you seemingly have been as well, but yours lasted longer than theirs, so he was you-free for a day longer than he wished for. he already didn’t get to see you due to their own hunt, but adding an extra day because of your hunt? he felt like a child losing their favourite toy—not that you were a toy to him, no, not at all. he’d never treat you like one. but that’s definitely how he felt, like he was being punished, not being able to see you. so when you finally returned back to the house, exhausted, worn out, and in need of a good meal and sleep, he had to stop himself from throwing himself at you and letting you boss him around like he was your servant. not that he’d ever complain if you were needing him to, he’d happily do it.

you yawned, rubbing at your eyes, unaware of sam’s watching eyes as you padded throughout the house, walking up the stairs and to your room after sending a brief ‘hi’ to everyone. you didn’t even look at him for more than second, but that was enough to send his mind whirling with thoughts. sure, you also just did a brief ‘hi, sam’, and you did to dean and bobby as well, but he had felt his heart stop when you said his name, felt his breath hitch—thankfully nobody else noticed—and felt his knees weaken ever so slightly. he had half a mind to follow you, make sure you got to bed alright, make sure you were taken after properly, grab a meal and some water for you. but he didn’t. he’d knew it would raise suspicion. so he stayed put. watching your figure ascend and disappear up the stairs, and keeping his eyes on the area of the stairs which you had just been. 

“you alright?” it was brief and simple from dean, just a quick glance to see why sam had just been standing there, unmoving and silent, but it was enough for sam to snap out of his own head and look at him. sharply nodding, sam replied in a rushed, albeit convincing, manner, “yeah—yeah. i’m fine.” dean nodded slowly in response, looking at him in suspicion, but he didn’t push it—thankfully. then, it was back to consulting about a new case, as per usual. but sam’s mind never once drifted away from you. from how you said his name. how you said hi to him. how you yawned and rubbed your eyes. how you walked up the stairs. how you looked so exhausted. how you’d react if he were to walk into your room and lie down beside you, pulling you against his chest, holding you close, keeping you safe. safe in his arms.

you walked down the stairs, soft footsteps against the creaking wood, rubbing at your eyes. you, out of habit, walked to the kitchen, walking past a (fake) sleeping sam on the couch. you opened the fridge, seemingly grabbing out ingredients to be able to make breakfast. you began cooking, all while sam was watching. sure, all he saw was your back, but that was enough for him. to see your hair, put up into a loose bun, ever so slightly messy from sleep, the way your ass looked from behind. he was more than happy with what he was able to see, he wasn’t one to complain, not at all. he liked seeing the way you moved, how you put all of your weight onto one foot as you waited for what you were making to be done. it was enough for the throbbing sensation to form beneath sam’s jeans, straining against the fabric. god, no, no, no. not now. not while she could turn around and see. not when dean or bobby could walk in and also see. he was fucked. so, so fucked. he, subtly, placed a pillow in front of the bulge in his jeans, hiding it from any eyes that were to be on him. especially from yours. what would you think if you looked at him and saw that he was rock hard? would it change how you saw him? oh, god. what if it made you not want to be near him? no. he can’t let that happen. he’d be lost without you. 

his eyes remained on the back of your figure, continuing to watch you as you worked in the kitchen, watching as you put everything away, as you reached up to grab a plate, grabbed some cutlery. every.single.movement. he didn’t let his eyes drift away from you for a second. nothing could. well, other than dean, or bobby—god, what if bobby saw him watching you?—coming in and catching his attention. he watched as you sat down at the dining table, placing the plate down in front of you, along with a mug of, presumably, coffee. he didn’t know if you could see him looking at you out of the corner of your eye, and he hopes you don’t, but he also hopes you do. he wants your eyes on him. to lock onto his. so he can feel that rush of energy, and blood, through his body. for the adrenaline to fill his veins. but you don’t. well, you don’t lock eyes with him, nor do you look at him, so you’re either ignoring the fact that you can see him looking at you, or really don’t know that he is. 

eventually, he acted like he had just woken up. but what to do about the fact he was hard? that his cock was throbbing with need and desire against his jeans, making each breath of his shallow and harder than the last. he hopes that you don’t notice it if he were to get up. hoping that you don’t look his direction as he’s walking. he can only hope. but he needs a plan. a plan for you to not see the fact he’s hard. how the fuck is he supposed to do that? he thinks and thinks, and thinks. he could go to the bathroom? perhaps have a shower and fix him up? he’s so fucked. like, really. so fucked. 

the night was always the loneliest part of sam’s day. you’re always plaguing his mind, but when night comes? it’s as if you get worse. as if you can sense the fact he’s so needy, so desperate, so lonely. it’s torturous, really. but, fuck, he loves it. he loves you. the way you feel beneath his fingertips when he’s thinking of you. how real it seems. how real it feels. how real you feel. how good it feels. as much as it reminds him how he doesn’t have you, he still loves it. the issue this night? he’s on a couch, in bobby’s house. in the same house you’re in. and dean is here, too. so he’s totally fucked. he can’t help himself. he knows he should keep control, but he can’t. he’s royally lost his fucking mind, completely. 

his footsteps are quiet against the wooden stairs. slowly ascending up them before he’s met with the upstairs floor. and then the hallway. and then your room. the room you’re in. alone. vulnerable. where you’re sleeping. the thought make his heart quicken, his breathing heavy and shallow. he, quietly, opens your door, slowing revealing your sleeping form on your bed. he’s hit with the soft smell of vanilla and jasmine. fucking hell. as if you couldn’t get more tempting. vanilla and jasmine. he lets his eyes drift around the room, taking in the decorations and furniture, taking in the items you, personally, picked out to keep in your room. you. you. you. you. that’s all he can think. you. all and only you. how you look, cuddled under your sheets, all peaceful, vulnerable, comfortable, perfect. you’re completely perfect. like an angel. you look like an angel. a precious, beautiful, angelic being. fucking tempting. 

he stands in your doorway for three minutes, keeping his eyes on your sleeping expression. how your lips are parted ever so slightly, eyes closed, hair in a bun, completely unaware to his presence. and it just adds to his desire. to his need. his temptation. his craving. he slowly moves closer, keeping his footsteps quiet and unnoticeable—the last thing he wants is for you to wake up and see him watching you as you slept. which could cause you to drift away from him, want him to stay far away from you. and he could not let that happen. no. he couldn’t. he wouldn’t live with you avoiding him. your breaths are so soft, chest rising and falling at a slow, even pace. it drags him in closer. pulling him in like iron to a magnet. he’s so close—so close he could touch you. feel you. feel your skin beneath his fingers, like he’s only ever been praying for since he met you. his fingers twitch by his side, itching to touch you, needing to touch you. he fights it. trying to keep the small amount of control he has. he, out of perverted curiosity, made his way over to your wardrobe, opening the drawers inside it, looking over all of the clothes you keep inside. oh.my.god. he struck fucking gold. he opened one drawer, finding it to be your underwear drawer. his eyes widen ever so slightly, a small, pleasured and smug smirk finds its way onto his lips. his hand searches through it, fingertips running over the fabric of each pair of underwear that you own. lace or not. he just—god, the image that finds his head when he picks up a pair of white, laced panties. he just feels the fabric and the lace beneath his skin. control, sam. control. 

it doesn’t last long. the control, that is. it snapped quicker than he ever had thought about. he finds himself sitting beside your bed on your desk chair that he moved over to that position, giving him a straight view of you. allowing him to give into his needs. his hand works up and down his straining cock. eyes remaining fixated on your sleeping expression, tracing the outline of your lips. imagining them wrapped around him, or moaning out his name. oh god. oh god. he groans quietly, keeping the sound muffled by digging his teeth into his bottom lip. his mind is going crazy. his hand quickens, tightening its grip, only accelerating his already quickened breath, and the need for him to come. fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. he’s so close. so close. one hand gripping the edge of the seat as his breathing shakes, head tilting back, eyes squeezing shut. his thighs shake and tremble, hips jerking up to meet his hand. he’s not going to last any longer. he knows that. especially not with how your sleeping expression is engraved into the back of his eyelids as his eyes remain closed, only pushing him further and further over the edge. 

so close. so close. sososososo close. whimpering quietly, he comes undone. strings of white liquid spilling from his cock, and an unwanted groan slips past his lips. worried, he opens his eyes in a hurried panic, locking them onto your, still, sleeping and closed eyes expression. relief, both from the fact that you didn’t wake up and the fact he had just came, washed over him. filling his system. a shuddering breath falls past his teeth marked lips, eyes hooded, as he rides his high. his heartbeat slowly growing slower, coming back to its normal rhythm, his breathing slowly goes back to normal, and his hand slowly loosens its grip on the edge of the chair. 

he sighs softly, remaining sat in the chair as he keeps watch of you for a few minutes longer. unable to move away. he doesn’t want to, not yet. not when you look so pretty. so vulnerable. so sweet. he does eventually move, sliding his jeans back up after cleaning himself off with the fabric of his boxers—he didn’t want to use anything of yours. because he didn’t want you to find out about this. and as much as he wanted to keep the pair of white, lacy panties he had found not even ten minutes ago, he knew it’d probably raise your suspicion if you woke up one day and saw that they weren’t there. that you somehow ‘lost’ them. he, also, placed your desk chair back where it was, not wanting to leave it just sitting beside your bed. that’s just utterly stupid if he did. and he isn’t stupid—on the contrary to some of the things he’s done to just get near you.  he snuck out of your room after making sure everything was where it was before, your drawers shut, wardrobe doors shut, chair back at your desk. everything. he did not want to leave a single thing out of place, afraid you’d piece things together somehow and know he jerked himself off to the sight of you sleeping. he snuck back downstairs after shutting your door behind him, making sure to keep his footsteps light and inaudible. keeping himself going unnoticed, because the last thing he wants is for to someone wake up and see him walking out of your room, or walking away from your room. but, he successfully makes it downstairs and back to the ‘living area’, to the couch, and lying back down. away from you. acting as if he didn’t do anything.

♱ JADE YAPS: it's part two!!! this was actually so fun to write. and i believe it is the longest fic i have written so far (but it won't be the last long one, keep your eyes and legs open)! i fucking love weak, obsessed, and somno sam.

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