#besides the damn gloves didn’t break the bank

[mikeyisbrooklyn]

My fingering fingerless gloves arrive today! And just as we drop to the 40s (Fahrenheit) down here, too. What perfect timing!

This impulse buy is brought to you by @on-a-lucky-tide , thank you again for being such a bad good influence.

[bosspigeon]

a permanent solution to a temporary insanity

Pairing: Mason/m!Detective, with a side of Adam/Nate (implied)

Words:  5257

Summary: Unit Bravo discover the detective has... a lot more tattoos than they would have guessed. Felix is delighted. Mason is intrigued. Nate and Adam are just worried this is going to cause issues with Rebecca, somehow. Tina and Verda become chaotic disasters when they’ve had some alcohol in them.

Takes place at the beginning of Book 2. Title taken from a quote my granddad likes to use whenever he wants me to know he disapproves of my tattoos.

AO3 Link | Ko-Fi <3

"Get your foot off the table, you fucking barbarian!"

Mason can hear the voice of the detective's coworkers from across the bar, but even if he couldn't, Chase's scent is easy enough to track. The muted bite of coffee, the sharpness of pine tempered with clary sage. The cooled sweat of a long day, and, just barely perceptible, the intoxicating undercurrent of his blood.

Mason's awareness narrows down to that stimulus, and he weaves his way through the meager crowd. He is only vaguely cognizant of his unit following behind him, so focused on finding--

He hears a laugh, low and husky, a bit of a scuffle, and he finds the detective sitting at a table with the pathologist, Verda, and the Bobblehe-- Officer Poname.

Chase's back is to him, and he’s sitting in a chair at the end of a table squished into a corner. Verda and Poname are opposite him in a booth against the wall, laughing, while Poname tries in vain to wrestle Chase's scuffed combat boot off the edge of the table. The smell of alcohol is strong between the three of them, but that is not what makes Mason stop dead.

Chase's leather jacket is draped over the back of his chair, and underneath, what Mason always thought was a full turtleneck sweater is actually completely sleeveless. The detective's arms are bare, save for intricate swirls and clusters of ink, mostly black, but with some pops of color here and there. Some of it is flowers, some words, a few bones and animal skulls. Abstract shapes and lines, a few sharp little designs, from shoulder to knuckles on both arms-- and Mason suddenly realizes Chase always seemed to be wearing supple leather palm gloves that matched his jacket, or, when it was colder, cozy wool fingerless gloves so he could still use his phone without trouble. Not tonight, though. Tonight his hands are bare, his arms are bare, and the ribbed shirt he’s wearing is clinging to him and really showing off the stout strength of his torso.

Mason grunts as Felix runs into his back, and time seems to pick back up to normal speed while his companion loudly complains.

Chase's head turns upon hearing the familiar voice, and Mason gathers his wits and offers a smirk and a carefully relaxed wave, sauntering up alongside the man, who raises a glass full of some dark mixed drink to him.

"There’s nothing we can do until we’ve got more information about our case, so I'm off tomorrow-- ask Rebecca," he informs Adam, who is looking disapprovingly between the detective's lax, sprawled posture and the half-empty glass held loosely in one hand, "so I don't want to hear you bitching about what I'm doing."

Adam's mouth pinches, Nate chuckles and tries to stifle it, and Mason coughs out a ragged laugh. But all that is lost to Felix shoving his way bodily around Mason to grab Chase's wrist (thankfully the one without the drink) and shout, "You've got so many tattoos!"

Chase gives Felix a lazy once-over, his brow quirked. "Yeah? And?" He looks a little bemused, as if he can’t quite figure out how this came as such as a surprise to any of them, much less a busybody like Felix. He obviously can’t say it in front of his coworkers, but Mason remembers Chase’s time with Murphy. The hospital gown and the needles and bandages. But even though they could all see in the dark just fine, there was a bit too much going on to really notice more than some smudges of dark ink on his neck and arms.

He thinks their minds might be going to the same place, for a moment, because Chase’s mouth twists from a lazy smile to a grim frown, dark, serious brows scrunching. It’s a slight gesture, barely noticeable, but he jerks his head once, as if to shake off the memories.

They’re both, thankfully, distracted by Felix whirling around to point accusingly at Mason. "Did you know he had this many?"

"If I did, would I tell you?" he sneers. Felix pouts mightily, but then pauses, and smiles. A slow, creeping smile, his eyes narrowed smugly.

"If you did know, you'd have been telling everyone you saw what the detective's got under his clothes any chance you got," he taunts. "So you must not have!"

Nate can't quite stifle his laugh this time, and Mason shoots him a dirty look.

Chase chuckles, low and smoky, and brings the glass to his lips again. “Yeah, I’ve got a lot of tattoos. Almost more than bare skin by this point, I think?” He looks to Verda and Poname as if to confirm, though with an odd little smirk that makes Poname giggle helplessly and Verda roll his eyes.

“Verda would know best,” Poname teases. “How much of Chase have you seen?”

“Enough to know that, yes, the un-inked real estate is scant at best.” He takes a demure sip of his drink while Poname cackles.

“My boss fucking hates it,” Chase snorts into his glass, gesturing vaguely with the free hand he’s rescued from Felix for Unit Bravo to sit. He finally removes his boot from the edge of the table (which makes Poname throw her hands in the air) and uses it to push the chair next to him out, dark eyes flickering up to meet Mason’s for a fraction of a second, stoking a low sort of heat in his belly. He takes the offered seat before Felix can (to some very vocal complaining) and lounges back, angling the chair so he’s able to watch the detective without making it too obvious.

Nate slides into the booth next to Poname, who immediately turns her gaze almost reverently to him, and Adam sits stiffly alongside him, giving the both of them an unreadable look. Felix posts up alongside Verda, smiling with annoying cheerfulness across the table at Chase and Mason.

“If your boss hates them so much, how’d you get the job?” he chirps, still marvelling at all the inked skin on shameless display. It makes Mason feel a bit twitchy, and he swallows down the urge to bare his teeth at his teammate with two very ignorant human witnesses in front of him. He distracts himself by subtly eyeing a splash of color on Chase’s solid shoulder in the form of a wrought-iron lantern with a single guttering candle inside, wreathed in wilted and dying flowers that trails shed petals and leaves down his bicep to mingle with other patterns.

“Mum’s got connections,” Chase drawls, swirling his glass and impressively feigning nonchalance. The ice cubes inside clink softly. “As you all know.”

The quiet that follows is damning, and Chase breaks it by tossing back another gulp of his drink. This close, with his senses full of the detective’s overwhelming… everything, Mason can tell it’s rum and Coke-- rather heavy on the rum.

Nate is the first to speak, offering a politely neutral, “You told us you were given a choice between the police academy or prison.” His tone lacks any judgement, but his brows are furrowed just a bit. Beside him, Adam’s expression is carefully blank. Good for both of them, because even clearly, comfortably tipsy and oddly candid, Chase’s gaze is sharp and analytical, his shoulders just this side of too tight.

“Yeah, well,” he goes on, staring past Nate more than at him, “Rebecca’s influence goes a long way, I learned. So after I graduated from uni-- top of my fuckin’ class, thank you--  I went off on a bit of a wild tear, you know, acquiring cars under mysterious circumstances,” Poname sputters into her drink and laughs, and Chase just gives her a dry look before she regains herself enough for him to continue, “and selling them for scrap, I miraculously didn’t wind up going to straight to prison, thanks to Rebecca pulling some strings and dragging me back here by my ear.” His lip curls faintly, and there’s a flash of something in his expression that seems to drop the temperature in the bar by a few degrees. Felix meets Mason’s eye and visibly shudders.

“That doesn’t really explain the tattoos,” Mason says, offering an easy segue to something… else.

“Sort of does,” Chase says with a shrug, eyes heavy-lidded. “I had a pretty wild childhood up to that point. Got my first stick-and-poke when I was, what? Thirteen? I think the kid who gave it to me is working at the bank now.” He snorts. “My point is, it was the one thing about my life I ever got to control. I had to be perfect, but so long as I did well in my academic pursuits and set myself on exactly the path my mother wanted for me, in my free time I could do whatever the fuck I wanted.” He rolls his shoulders again and knocks back the last of his drink, setting the glass down just a little too hard on the sticky tabletop.

“I drank, I partied, I fucked around. What else do you do when you’re a kid with no parental influence in your life save for a picture on the mantel of an empty house? You go off the fucking wall is what you fuckin’ do. Anything for even a shred of attention. And I still managed to graduate with honors, right? First in my class in secondary school, and in uni. Didn’t matter, did it?” His face goes hard, brows furrowing. “She didn’t bother to congratulate me in person. I got a card on her office stationery that I doubt she even wrote herself. My graduation from uni she didn’t even respond to the invite I sent, but I still stupidly hoped she’d show. She didn’t care until I snapped and she actually had to step in. Take a break from her job and come collect her errant brat.” He scoffs, and it sounds like a gunshot in the sudden silence that follows.

Nate looks like he wants to say something, mouth opening, but Adam touches his wrist and it snaps closed. Even Felix is stunned silent. Verda and Poname just exchange twin looks of familiar distress, but before anyone can say anything, Chase stands up so suddenly his chair shrieks across the floor. Mason, Nate, Adam, and Felix all wince at the sound.

“I’m going to get another drink,” the detective mutters, stalking off into the crowd. Mason looks over his companions, eyebrows raised, decides he doesn’t owe anyone an explanation, and gets up to follow.

Chase is leaning against the bar, asking the bartender for “something stronger than a rum and Coke, holy fuck,” and doesn’t even look up when Mason moves to stand beside him.

“I get moody when I get drunk,” he says by way of greeting.

“So you’re always drunk, then?" Mason drawls. "Not very professional of you, Detective." 

Chase snorts and turns to look at him, but he doesn’t say anything-- just closes his eyes and rubs his hand over the rough fuzz of his shaved head. Mason’s gaze is drawn to his hand, and he spots a ouija planchette inked into one knuckle, a pentacle on the next, then an eye, and a crescent moon. They look old, faded and a bit blown out. When Chase opens his eyes again, the bartender has given him another drink, and from the smell, it’s a highball with a hefty pour of whiskey. He takes his first sip almost gratefully.

“Those the stick-and-pokes you mentioned?” Mason asks.

Chase holds up  his hand. “Hm? Oh, yeah, a couple of ‘em. Not the first ones.” He turns his hand palm-up, and gestures with the glass. “There on the wrist.” Along the inside of his forearm is an intricate dagger with thorns twisted along the blade, but a few centimeters below the point, there is a tiny, blurry skull with a black forked tongue. “Toby Doherty, year 8. We put together a tattoo gun in his dad’s garage by pulling apart his little brother’s RC car. Think we got into more trouble for that than the tattoo.” He huffs out a rough little laugh. “I just think his mum was too nervous to actually shout at me, but I was never allowed back to their house afterwards because I was a bad influence.”

Mason reaches out and takes his hand, pulling it a bit closer so he can study the skull more closely. That’s what he tells himself, anyway, though he doesn’t think he’s fooled, and he doesn’t think the detective would be either. Especially when he rubs his thumb over the raised lines. He can feel Chase’s pulse through his thin skin, blood pumping hot and steady. This close, his pine-and-sage scent is stronger, and it fills Mason’s chest. "It's cute," he says, little more than a breath between them. He leans in, pulls the detective's wrist close to his mouth. He can feel the heat of his skin, almost taste the warmth just beneath, and Chase's breath is soft and quick and deafening in his ears.

“Chase!”

He drops the hand as if burned, and looks away from the detective before he can see how he reacts. Poname is toddling up to them, swaying a bit, and she wiggles her way between them to toss her arms around Chase's middle. He raises his highball in the air to keep her from spilling it, and she giggles.

"Chase, come back, you've got to show them!"

He groans. "Show them what?"

She only giggles louder and starts pulling him back towards the group, using the much steadier detective as a bit of a crutch to keep from stumbling through the milling crowd. When they arrive back at the table, things aren't really more comfortable than when they'd left, but they're not less so either, which Mason supposes is more than they could ask for. He takes up his seat again, but when Chase moves to do the same, Poname keeps hold of his arm.

"Wait, wait, you should be standing up for this," she giggles. Verda doesn't say anything, but he does snicker quietly into his tall glass of something that smells cloyingly of fruit syrup and sweetened vodka.

"Tina, what are you on about?" he sighs indulgently.

"You have to show them King Kitty!"

Mason’s interest is immediately piqued. Felix’s is too, clearly. He sits bolt upright and leans forward with that bright-eyed little imp grin he likes to give his teammates whenever he’s teasing them about… well, anything, really. “King Kitty?” he asks with eyes sparkling.

Chase groans, sets his drink on the table, and pushes Poname away, sending her stumbling into the table while she laughs brightly. “Don’t call it that, Tina. Christ.”

“You have to show them! He’s so good!” she insists, swaying towards him again. He dodges, and damn near skitters around the table to press into Verda’s space, which would have given Poname the means to corner him if she could figure out how to move around Chase’s abandoned chair as well as Mason (side-eyeing her cautiously) without getting tangled or falling over entirely. Verda continues to laugh at their antics, pushing Chase’s hip as it crowds into his space and threatens to make him spill his drink.

“Come on, now, what could it hurt?” he chides playfully, slipping his finger into the belt loop of the detective’s cargo pants and tugging playfully.

“Hey!” Chase barks, shifting away. All that manages to accomplish is tugging down his waistband the slightest bit, exposing the edge of his black underwear and a thin sliver of skin-- inked with designs Mason can’t properly parse, though he can’t help but lean forward a bit for a closer look. “I’ll have both of your asses for harassment, don’t test me!”

“Chase, our precinct is tiny,” Verda hiccups, finally making the decision (though it clearly pains him) to set his drink aside, since it seems Chase is perfectly willing to clamber over him to escape Poname’s grabbing hands, “I’m the HR department. You haven’t got a case here.”

“Show theeeeem,” Poname whines, putting one hand on Mason’s shoulder to steady herself. A low growl rumbles in his chest, but one sharp look from Nate (who is trying very hard not to smile at the scene, while Felix is outright giggling, and Adam simply looks confused and uncomfortable) quiets him. She smells strongly like some sort of bubblegum perfume that tickles the back of his tongue and leaves it feeling itchy and thick.

“I still have to work with them,” Chase protests, but his resolve is visibly wavering, especially with the lack of options to escape.

“We won’t tell anyone!” Felix blurts, leaning across the table. “Promise!”

Mason doesn’t chime in, but it’s a near thing. The last few weeks he’s tested the limits of both Adam and Nate’s patience with his innuendos about the detective, and he even thinks Agent Kingston might be one lewd joke from stabbing him with a fountain pen.

But Chase is weakening, he can tell. Mostly because he can’t seem to figure out how to climb over Verda, and Poname’s hands have found his belt. “Fine! Fuck, fine, you menace!” he exclaims, pushing her off with a surprising amount of gentleness, considering his tone. “Just get off me!”

Poname backs off obediently, but she’s still giggling up a storm, flushed with the effort, her hair a bit mussed. Verda looks entirely unbothered, and he takes up his drink again with a smug smile. Chase returns to his chair but doesn’t sit, and Poname returns to cozying up to Nate and being entirely oblivious to Adam trying very hard not to look annoyed.

Chase takes a deep, bolstering breath, snatches up his drink, and downs about half in one swig. “You’ve all got to swear you won’t breathe a word to Rebecca about this,” he says with grave, if faintly slurred, severity.

“Oh, absolutely,” Mason agrees, quickly enough that Felix shoots him another infuriating smirk.

“Scout’s honor!” Felix blurts, nearly bouncing in his seat.

Nate smiles and nods, looking for all the world like he’s simply indulging the shenanigans, but he’s clearly curious himself. Chase isn’t terribly secretive about most things-- he’s actually pretty fucking blunt-- so this has to be… interesting, for him to put up such a fight. Adam looks like he’s bolstering himself to look away as quickly as possible so he can have some plausible deniability should Agent Kingston find out regardless.

Chase’s hands go to his belt, and Mason’s stomach clenches, heat rushing under his skin. The detective unbuckles with practiced ease, flicks the snap open, and tugs the edge of his cargo trousers and briefs (are they briefs? Mason would certainly like to find out) down just a bit. His other hand goes to his fitted shirt, tugging it up.

The hair beneath his navel is thick and dark, and the trail leading down into his trousers is very, very inviting, but Mason’s attention is drawn inexorably to the design inked into the soft, brown skin. He supposes he should have expected the name “King Kitty” to give it away, but he couldn’t have predicted what he was in for.

It’s a snarling black cat, cartoonishly stylized, wearing a jauntily cocked royal crown. Underneath, spanning from hipbone to hipbone, are the words “BOW DOWN” written in bold, jagged script.

“Everyone, meet King Kitty,” Poname proclaims with a sloppy, grand gesture to Chase’s pelvis.

“Yeah, yeah, are you happy now?” Chase groans, hiking his waistband back up and buckling his belt. He tugs his shirt down and flops into the chair, taking another slog of his drink. It’s almost gone already, and he’s sure to be feeling it soon.

“Absolutely tickled,” Verda says primly.

“Oh, completely,” Poname chimes in.

“Wouldn’t mind seeing him again,” Mason rumbles, and Chase’s eyes flick to him for a split second, dark and sparking, brows quirked. Nate sighs audibly.

“Well, are you going to tell the story too?” Verda presses. “Share with the class?”

Chase drops into his chair and kicks his feet up again, and Poname makes a vague sound of protest. This time, at least, a sharp glare shuts her up. “Might as fuckin’ well, right?” he snorts. “So, I had this ex in college--”

Both Verda and Poname make strange noises, and when Mason spares them a glance (still a bit caught up in eyeballing the detective’s lounging about like a lazy cat-- which is oddly appropriate, all things considered) they are both looking somewhere between annoyed and downright angry. Chase actually looks… guilty, for a split second, before he waves it away and continues.

“Anyway. He wasn’t, uh… Very good in bed. But I loved him or some nonsense,” he scoffs and gestures vaguely with his glass, “so I put up with it. Because I couldn’t tell him he hadn’t gotten me off to his face, right? He was a sex god, according to him, always hit the marks,” he takes a sip and snorts a bit into his drink. Verda barks out a sharp, sudden laugh that seems to startle even him.

“He did not say that! Chase, please tell me he didn’t say that to you!” he squeaks out between ragged, uncontrollable laughter.

Poname is collapsing against Nate’s side, consumed by a fit of wheezing giggles.

Chase rubs a hand down his face and huffs out a laugh of his own. “He fucking did and I have to live with the fact that I continued to sleep with him after that, every day for the rest of my life. Point is, after a lot of general university stress, I got tired of faking orgasms to save his ego, and I finally told him he hadn’t gotten me off once since we’d started dating. Crushed him, of course, and we did break up for a bit because of it. And in the interim, I thought it’d be a good idea, to, ah, ensure that the next one wouldn’t be so… lost. I had a bit of liquid courage, lied admirably to my favorite tattoo artist when she asked if I was sober, and King Kitty was born. Then when I inevitably made the bad decision to get back with my ex, the next time we tumbled into bed, I just pointed at the instructions and told him to get to work.”

He finishes off his drink, puts his foot back on the ground with a heavy clunk, and leans his elbows on the table. “Turns out, he worked best when I was a bit mean to him. Apparently it’s a thing he wasn’t aware of. Go figure.”

“Christ, no wonder he only bothers you more when you’re a prick to him,” Verda scoffs with a hearty roll of his eyes. “You’ve trained it into him!”

"That is… quite the tale," Nate offers magnanimously, eyebrows threatening to make a break for his hairline. He looks to Adam, who is looking away and trying very hard to pretend he wasn't listening at all. Mason gets the idea he knows well enough that if he opens his mouth, what comes out is likely to piss off their dear detective.

Felix about falls over cackling, which is a fine distraction for Mason to lean in close, snagging Chase's attention and murmuring, "Wouldn't mind you bossing me around a bit," with a sly little smirk.

The look Chase gives him is dry as a fucking desert, but his eyes are crinkled at the corners. "You have proved on multiple occasions that you absolutely do mind," he fires back.

And that's what delights him about the detective, he thinks. He's sharp-tongued, and he doesn't try to dull it. Prickly, but clever, unafraid to say what's on his mind. And he's never once rebuffed Mason's advances outright, just… Spiked them back with sly smirks and raised eyebrows. Challenging, a sort of unspoken, "Oh, so you think you can handle me?"

Mason would very, very much like to handle him.

"Well, I think I'd be a lot more willing to follow orders if less clothes were involved," he slyly remarks, and Chase's dark eyes brighten just a bit.

“You have to earn that privilege, pretty boy," he murmurs, lips curling on one side.

Mason is a breath away from leaning closer, when Verda's phone goes off and he stands up, startled, and bumps the table. Mason has to snap one hand out to grab Chase's empty glass before it goes careening to the floor. Poname looks a bit astounded by his (far too fast) reflexes, but she's also more than a bit foggy with liquor and likely to forget quickly.

"Shit, sorry," Verda offers sluggishly, blinking a bit behind his smart browline spectacles. "That's Eric," he explains, grabbing his coat. He's steadier than Poname, but not by much, and he leans heavily on Chase's chair when he bends to press a kiss to his bristly scalp. "Come on, you reprobate. Time to get you home." Chase grumbles and halfheartedly swats at him, a bit of red creeping up to his ears from beneath his high collar. “You too, Tina!” Verda calls, “Leave the poor man alone, would you?"

Poname, who was beginning to list against a somewhat bemused Nate's shoulder, sits bolt upright and blinks, then pouts a bit. "Hm? Oh… okay." She pushes unsteadily to her feet, helped in no small part by a few gentle nudges from Nate, and she turns to give him a giggle and a wiggly-fingered wave before Verda’s put-upon sigh spurs her to totter towards him. Adam watches her go, making a face he likely thinks is impassive, but Mason knows well enough the tense pucker between his eyebrows and the grim tightness around his mouth.

“Remember what I said,” Chase offers, heaving to his feet with a low groan that immediately drags Mason’s attention from Adam’s silent simmering, grabbing his jacket from the chair and slinging it over his shoulders. “Not a word to Rebecca about any of this.” He gives Adam a long look in particular. “My options are limited in terms of retaliation, but I can be pretty damned creative. Don’t test me.” His eyes flicker almost instinctively to Mason, and his lips twitch, but he says nothing more before he swaggers with surprising steadiness after his coworkers.

“Bye, Detective!” Felix hollers, waving enthusiastically. Mason winces, but comforts himself with staring unabashedly at the detective’s retreating backside. The second he’s out the door, Felix rounds on Adam with a bright laugh. “Look at you! You managed to be in the same room as the Detective and you didn’t get into a fight!”

“Because he kept his mouth shut the entire time,” Mason snickers. “Looked like it was killing you not to talk shit.”

“I don’t talk shit,” Adam snaps, and Nate helpfully slides out of the booth so he can escape as well. “I just point out when the Detective is being…”

Mason raises his eyebrows, waiting for him to come up with a word that’s not an insult.

“Difficult,” is what Adam settles on, giving Nate a sidelong look.

“Oh, yeah, you wouldn’t know anything about being difficult,” Felix chimes in helpfully. Adam scowls at him and adjusts his jacket. Nate is clearly trying not to laugh and make Adam even more annoyed.

“You’re the one who felt the need to hassle the detective on his off time,” Mason hums not-so-helpfully. “Can’t blame him for being annoyed.”

“And you can’t say anything either,” Felix chirps, “Since you just went right along with it.” He’s grinning, wide and wicked, and he sways into Mason's space and gets shoved for his trouble. He totters dramatically for a second, then pops back up and snickers. "You're not as smooth as you think," he taunts. "I saw your eyes almost pop out of your skull when you saw those tattoos!"

Mason shoves him again, and Nate chuckles. "There were a lot more than I would have guessed."

"And I bet there's a lot more where we couldn't see," Felix adds, sticking his tongue between his teeth and waggling his eyebrows. Mason glances around the bar, the crowd having thinned in the last half hour or so, and decides he can get away with putting the little brat in a headlock.

Nate sighs at them. Adam rolls his eyes skyward, but they let Felix flail and squawk for a bit before Adam barks out, “Enough!” and Mason obediently releases him so he can tug his fancy scarf forcefully back into place and adjust his beanie. “Let’s just go.”

“This was nice, wasn’t it?” Nate offers with a bit of genuine cheer as they file out the door and leave the bar behind. “Getting out? Talking to people?” He nudges Adam when he doesn’t respond, and gets a faint grunt for his trouble. “Seeing the sights?”

Mason lights up the second they’re outside, inhales, and exhales a long plume of smoke, and smirks a bit around the filter. “I enjoyed the sights, at least.”

“I had fun!” Felix chirps, having already moved on from Mason’s rough treatment. “We should spend more time with the detective outside work stuff. He’s cool when he’s not all--” He makes a face, stiff and frowning with a crinkled brow, that looks pretty damned similar to the face he makes when he’s mocking their illustrious leader. Mason almost bites down on the filter of his cigarette to stifle a laugh.

“It was nice to see him unwind a bit,” Nate chuckles. “His friends seem… fun,” his mouth quirks a bit, somewhat uncomfortably, “Friendly.”

Adam makes a disgruntled noise. “Too friendly,” he mutters. Mason is about to lose the fight with himself and start snickering.

Ah, hell, he can’t resist. “I dunno, I think Natey might have a chance with the Bobblehead.” The look Adam gives him could kill a lesser man, but he just gives a lopsided grin in return. Felix, however, loses it to the point he almost falls over in the street.

Nate, ever the diplomat, just chuckles a bit and says, “Officer Poname is lovely, but she’s a bit… young for me, I think.”

 Yeah, about eight-hundred-something years too young, Mason thinks, rolling his eyes. But, unlike Felix, he’s made it a point not to get involved in the love lives of people he’s got to work with. He’s already got his hands full trying to figure out the detective. Though, he supposes, he’s got to work with the detective, too. On a more permanent basis, now, it seems. But Chase is a lot of things-- stubborn, headstrong, blunt and honest-- but he’s not the type to let a bit of fun get in the way of his job, and neither is Mason. The second they stop dancing around each other, Mason will lay it out plain for him, and if he’s not on board with a bit of fun between co-workers, then that’s it. No problems.

He takes another puff of his smoke and lets the others get ahead of him, Felix still chattering happily and Nate fielding it with his usual calm enthusiasm while Adam manages to both sulk and stalk admirably alongside them both. Their voices fade into the background, and he allows himself a private little smirk, thinking about those fierce dark eyes, that stout, compactly muscled body with its bold ink, and privately wonders how much more is hidden under the detective’s clothes, and the best way to see them all.

[tessiete]

"I wish you would write a —" continuation or AU of that scene from away the vapour flew (because I've seen you mention that even your AU's have AU's lol and I'm selfishly hoping you'd consider revisiting that fic and coz I can't let this opportunity pass when this fic literally lives in my mind rent free lol)

Alright! At long last I have figured out what happens next. This is for you, dear thing ❤️❤️❤️ ( @lightasthesun on - or very near thereabouts - your birthday)

LED BY THE WANDERING LIGHT

It starts with a very little thing: a seed.

 It is slipped from the glove of a Republic aid trooper who smiles as he passes it over.

 “From the General of the 212th,” he says. “Don’t know what it is, but I damn near lost the thing on the way over.” 

 “For me?” he asks, and the man nods, his grin growing wider.

 Then he leans in as though commiserating with a friend. “Jetiise sha’bise, lek?”

 “Elek,” agrees Korkie, dubiously, turning the little living pebble between his fingers.

 The trooper grins, and gives him a friendly shove before trotting off back to his ship. Korkie has come down on his aunt’s behalf to oversee the relief efforts, but he is distracted by the seed in his hand. It is flat, and furry, and pleasingly plump. If he squeezes it, he can feel the skin relent and rebound, and if he digs in his nail ever so gently, he can feel the taste of water upon his thumb, and see the pale blush of springtime in the depths of the cut. It is a seed of something, he knows, but of what?

 He places it in the breast pocket of his Academy jacket, and turns his attention back to the work. It is an impressive, and important sight, but his thoughts linger on the seed, and he feels it sit bright and eager against his heart.

 Later, when the supplies have been unloaded, and the aid troopers seen off, when the ceremony of thanks and assurances of neutrality have all been displayed, when he is back in his room at Sundari only hours away from the magtrain ride back to school, he plants the seed in a little pot of black earth, and dampens the soil. It will not grow tonight, but he cannot help but stare at it anyway, waiting in the dark, beneath the stars, so patient.

A week passes, and he is back at the Academy when the mail officer - an upperclassman he’s never met - stops at his place during first meal.

 “Su-su, Kryze!” he calls. “A package for you from the Core.”

 A small bundle wrapped in layer upon layer of bonding tape, and stamped with the ink of a hundred spaceports too numerous and cramped to decipher lands upon his lap. He uses the thin knife from his plate to slice through the plastifibe envelope. 

 When his fingers graze the object within he gasps, and pulls back the wrap to reveal a real, proper book. It’s not even printed on flimsi, he notes, cracking the aged spine and letting the pages fall open, but on actual paper. They don’t make these in the Core, and hardly ever in the Mid Rim, it’s just not economical, and most planets don’t have the resources to spare. But this one is old, it’s pages creased, and worn smooth at the corners with the turning of many fingers. It is about horticulture, though the illustrations of green and growing things have faded to browns and burnished golds. It is beautiful. 

 A piece of dried grass has been tucked between two pages, and when Korkie folds them back to look he sees an image of the seed he’d sown in the pot by his bed. Beside it, a riotous bouquet of blossoms burst in an array of different colours. It is a daesyn flower.

He tucks the book in his kebisebag, and carries it around for the rest of the day. At nightfall, he takes it out with careful reverence, turning the pages back to the daesyn slowly lest they tear or turn to dust. Then, by the light of a little glowrod, he props the book against his window and reads along as he tends to the small green sprout only just peeking through the soil.

 He buys a sun lamp, and a watermeter, and adjusts the temperature of his quarters much to Amis’ chagrin, determined to provide the most optimal growing conditions he can for the little plant.

  After a month, the seedling has become a sturdy sprout, with prickly leaves of a green so deep it might be blue. He is attempting to commit those variegated lines to flimsi when Amis returns to their quarters, a small pouch swinging from his hand.

 “I’m supposed to give this to you,” he says, tossing the pouch. Korkie reacts without thinking, snatching the bag out of the air before it can hit the ground.

 “Who’s it from?”

 “Front desk. Said some high up Republic alor sent it.”

 “Which one?”

 “Don’t know. Didn’t ask, did I? Too busy polishing the silver.”

 Korkie grimaces in sympathy, having spent many an afternoon of his first year cleaning the trophy case in the main hall. He thinks that Amis’ plight could be easily avoided if only he behaved himself, but refrains from saying so to his friend.

 Instead, he pulls the drawstring at the top of the purse, and turns it over his hand. A dozen discs of coloured glass tumble into his palm. They are thick, and smooth, though not polished by anything but time. Each is a different colour, though some are struck through with shimmers of gold and silver. 

 “What’s that?” asks Amis over his shoulder.

 “Don’t know,” he echoes. The glass feels comfortable in his grip. Made to be held, and carried, and passed from hand to hand.

 “Should ask Lagos,” says Amis. “That seems like her kind of thing.”

 He makes no reply to Amis, but of course, he does as he suggests. Lagos is, after all, a walking encyclopaedia, and of all their friends the most likely to at least have an idea of where to start looking.

 The excitement on her face when Korkie shows her his hoard tells him she has more than an idea - she knows.

 “Oh, oh, oh!” she gasps. “Where’d you find Abafar trading beads?”

 “They were a gift,” he replies. “What are they for?”

 She picks them up one at a time and holds them to the light. By some trick of their design, they cast no shadow, but seem to capture the rays inside like banked embers, or twisting prisms. The ones marked with ribbons of ore grow warm in her hand, and she presses them to his cheek so he can feel their heat.

 “They’re the traditional currency of Abafar,” she explains. “It’s a desert planet in the Outer Rim, and craftsmen in the Void used to make these beads as a means of facilitating trade over great distances. Metal was scarce, and the beads could also be used to retain heat for longer - that one in your hand could keep the warmth of the sun all night, if you wanted it to.”

 He considers the disc of deep indigo, and holds it up to the sun until it turns red. The glass seems to have become molten, but its warmth is not painful in the hand. He leaves the bead out for the rest of the afternoon to test Lagos’ theory, and brings it into bed with him at night. Tucked beneath his pillow, it radiates a soothing heat, and he feels his muscles relax and his worries melt as he drifts away into an easy slumber.

   The next gift he receives is shattered into bits.

 “Sorry, kid,” says the attendant at the delivery depot when he arrives to claim his parcel. “Happens sometimes with these packages from the front. The war is not a safe place for fragile things. Bic cuyir meg bic cuyir.”

 He takes the present anyway, carrying it delicately back to the Academy, fearful of breaking it further. When he finally tears through the tape and plastifibe, clay and ceramplast pieces give up any pretense at form and clatter over the surface of his desk.

 It was beautiful once, he can tell. Perhaps a bowl or a cup turned by hand - he can see the telltale print of a foreign finger pressed into a section of naked clay - but now it is only fragments and dust.

 Still, he hovers over the pile, turning the pieces this way and that, trying to see how they fit together. He doesn’t notice when sixth bell rings, or when Soniee pings his comm, or when Amis sneaks in past curfew and turns out his light. He stays up late into the night, until the form takes shape, and through the cracks and crevasses of painted clay dawn creeps in.

 It is an amphoriskos. A small vessel for storing precious oils, like the kind used in the rituals of so many traditional peoples. There is none in it now, and Korkie retrieves the sachet to see if perhaps it was spilled into the weave of the plastifibe wrap. But it is dry. And the clay, when he looks at it more closely, is dry and unstained by use. The gift was always empty.

 The shards sit upon his desk in their loose arrangement until, one afternoon, Amis moves to sweep them off into the dustbin.

 “No, no!” protests Korkie, before Amis can complete the task. “I want to keep it.”

 “What for?” his friend asks. “It’s broken.”

 “I don’t know yet.”

 He collects the bits of amphoriskos into his hands, and arranges them about the base of his daesyn pot. The paint glints in the light, and so too do the Abafar beads nestled amidst the debris. The plant grows green and bushy, its leaves reaching out to skim the rim of its bed as though a swimmer poised on the edge of emersion.

He receives Theelin singing strings wound tight around a holodrive meant for the Duchess, paired basalt spindles from Hapes, seashells from the deep oceans of Mon Cala, and a set of Lateron hoops carried on the wrist of the visiting senator from Naboo.

 “From Master Kenobi,” she says, and she smiles at him with a warmth that feels like family. He wonders if they’ve met before, if he should know her, but she moves along with the entourage of press and government officials before he can ask.

 He is home for Holyrod month, and has brought his prizes with him carried along specially in his kebisebag, his daesyn in his hands. He sets them out along the windowsill in his rooms at Sundari. The watchet blues and greens of crystalline filtered light play over his collection, illuminating one after the other in joyous turn. He does not know what they mean, or why his father has sent these particular things to him, but they are all precious, and he longs for a way to display his gratitude for the thought he has been spared.

 The daesyn itself revels in its new surroundings, and leans close to the glass to get as close a view of the sun as it can, budding with imminent delight.

The Senator from Naboo is called Padme, he discovers when he is introduced to her again at mealtime. And she has not come alone. She is part of a delegation of foreign ambassadors, all from the Republic, but not all, Korkie suspects, as enthusiastic about the Chancellor as they had once been. There are murmurings and whispers amongst them, hurried out between thin lips and caught only in the corner of his eye, or the turn of his head, but whether satisfied or not, they are accompanied by the ceremonial force of the Senate, and the might of Palpatine himself - Two Jedi travel with them.

 Anakin Skywalker, and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

 He sees him through the crush of bodies, and later down the line at suppertime. In the midst of deep blues, and mauves, and furs, and silks, his earthen tunics stand out, but he is always distant, always just out of reach. All he needs is a moment, he thinks, to make sure he’s seen, so he can acknowledge his father - even in the polite, and suitably respectful language of perfect strangers if he must, but it never comes. 

The plates are cleared, the halls are emptied, and Korkie finds himself bidding his aunt (she is always his aunt here) goodnight, and wandering back to his rooms alone.

 It is dark when he arrives, though by the window the Abafar beads glow like the distant lights of the city. He slips off his stiff shoes, and his raiments of clan, but is interrupted by a knock at the door. He waits, uncertain, until the knock comes again.

 Perhaps his mother come to assure herself of his health and presence, as she has done so often in the past, but he opens the door to find Obi-Wan Kenobi waiting, with his hand out. In the euphoric rush of astonishment, he hastens to place his own hand upon his father’s as is customary on Stewjon, though he holds fast in a manner peculiar between children and their parents.

 “Master Kenobi,” he stammers. “I did not expect you. I thought you’d left. Forgive me.”

 “There is nothing to forgive,” Obi-Wan replies. “I’d rather hoped to catch you alone, but I’m afraid our schedule was somewhat packed.”

“Of course.”

He is staring, he knows it, but he can’t seem to think of anything else to say, caught up in looking at his father and searching for all the commonalities between them. Does he tilt his head like that? Does he stroke his chin? Does he frown and smile by equal measure?

But the weight of his scrutiny is too much to bear, and Obi-Wan cracks.

“I thought to ask: did you get my gifts?”

“Yes,” says Korkie. “Thank you. They were very thoughtful.”

“Ah...And did you - did you like them?”

At this, Korkie cannot help but smile, and he shakes his father’s hand, tugging him forward with zeal.

“Yes, of course,” he says. “Would you like to see?”

If he is confused by his son’s desire to reintroduce him to items he has already laboured over and seen, then he does not show it. Nor does he resist when the hand in his pulls him further into the room, and doesn’t let go even as a curtain is flung open, and a light flicked on low.

He is pulled over to the broad casements and left to bask in starlight as Korkie steps aside to reveal a colorful mobile hanging from the frame of his window.

“The amphoriskos broke,” he explains, and sees a shadow flicker in his father's eyes. “No, no,” he insists. “It wasn’t your fault. It just happened. But I couldn’t bear to throw it away. It was so beautiful.”

He gestures at a silver thread from which hang a variety of irregularly shaped clay shards. The shiny amber and black paint catches the light thrown by the glowing Abafar beads strung further up, and on another and another thread. When he blows on them the threads hum, and sway together, the seashells and pottery and glass clattering together like wind chimes.

“The singing strings,” notes Obi-Wan, and Korkie grins.

“And the Lateron hoops,” he says, pointing to the frame from which the strings are suspended. “And the spindles, for balance. It’s meant to hang with my window open, like it is at school. And then, at night, when the dreamwinds come, the whole thing sings, and shines, and glows like the stars.”

“It’s beautiful,” says Obi-Wan with awe. He reaches out with one hesitant finger, the beads flickering beneath his touch, and the strings murmuring the low notes of an opening phrase.

“You gave it to me,” says Korkie with a shrug, and Obi-Wan turns his awe upon his boy.

“No,” he says. “I gave you fragments, but you have made them into art. You gave them meaning. You gave them a soul.”

Korkie shifts on his feet, fretting at the cuff of his sleeve, and diving in.

“Would it be okay, do you think -” he starts, then stops. Then he starts again. “Do you think it’d be alright if I wrote you? Every once in a while.”

“Wrote me?”

“Or com’d,” he says, quickly. “Only I know you’re busy, and I can’t expect to lay claim to any of your time, not really, but I -”

“Com me,” says Obi-Wan. “Write me. Send me anything you like, but only say you will and I will have all the time for you I can spare.”

“I promise that I only want a very little.”

“If it’s mine to give it’s yours to have, Kiorkicek,” his father swears. His grip upon his hand is firm, willing him to believe him, and Korkie nods his head because he does.

They stand there, hand in hand, reading themselves in each other, and learning the other in turn, and in the glow of the stars, and the city, and the Abafar beads, the daesyn flower bursts from its roots into a riot of colour and life.

[ashtheshortstack]

seeking the truth - part 1

Rating: T Fandom: Danny Phantom

Part 1: The Truth of Vlad Masters

Tags: Valerie POV, Post D-Stabilized, Pre-PP, Sorta Reveal Fic

Read on ao3

Part 2

Humiliation… Guilt… Shame… Fury… Each emotion swirled through Valerie like the five stages of grief on a marathon. The anger was most prominent. Vlad Masters played her like a fool. How dare he!? She was a teenager whose life was in shambles, and he’d taken advantage of her pain! Conned her into believing that Phantom was the enemy. 

Not that Phantom hadn’t actually screwed up her life. Because he did. She’d later learned after fighting her fair share of ghosts that the ghost dog did break out of the Ghost Zone on occasion. Maybe, it had just been easier to blame Phantom for ruining her father’s career than to accept that a lot of it was an accident. When she was handcuffed to the ghost boy, she’d realized he was basically just a stupid kid himself. 

What idiots they both were, huh? 

Valerie flopped down on her bed, tears stinging her eyes. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t give him that. The one adult on this planet she thought understood her. Thought really had her back and was on her side… It was all a lie. Just another ghost using her for personal gain. Damn, she hated ghosts. Why did she live in Amity Park of all places? Clearly, the most haunted town in America. (Thanks to the Fentons, she was almost sure.) 

But what did she really know? Nothing made any sense. Humans can be ghosts? Ghosts can be humans? What the hell was that all about? How was that even possible? 

Groaning, Valerie buried her face in her pillow. “I have to talk to Phantom,” she muttered to herself. 

He said he’d be “ready to play” the next day. Maybe, there needed to be less gun and ghost ray blasts and more sharing time. She had to understand how Danielle was “related” to him if she was human. Unless… Phantom wasn’t all ghost himself? 

...There was no way she was getting a restful night's sleep. 

  Valerie wasn’t sure when she fell asleep, but she was definitely jarred awake by the sound of her ghost detection device blaring loudly. Yelping, she sat straight up in her bed and quickly opened the tracker to see the blinking dot on the screen. The ghost wasn’t too far from her home. Maybe it was Phantom? Even if it wasn’t, he’d probably show up anyway. The ghost boy never seemed to be able to resist a fight. Playing hero all of the time… 

It was that stupid Box Ghost again. Despite how annoying she found Phantom’s smartass quips to be, the prior was the worst of them all. Phantom was already sucking the ghost into the Fenton Thermos (which she still idly wondered where he had acquired one) by the time she finally approached the scene. 

Phantom capped off the thermos while staring at her. His mouth was agape, those neon green eyes wide in surprise. “U-Um. Hi? Not that I’m complaining, but you’re not shooting me? I thought we called the truce off.” 

Valerie pursed her lips, eyes hard as she squinted at him. How on earth would she convince him to discuss anything with her? They were enemies. The last twenty-four hours--despite changing her life a lot-- didn’t change that. “We need to talk.” 

“ Talk? ” he asked with a stunned scoff. “This is new. You’ve never been much of a Chatty Kathy. Except when you’re zapping me for answers--you’re not going to zap me for answers again, are you?” 

Why was he like this!? It took every bit of her to keep her temper in check. 

Crossing her arms, Valerie took a breath. “Look, I know Vlad Masters is Vlad Plasmius.” 

Well, that got his attention. All humor was suddenly drained from his face. He was--well--pale as a ghost for a lack of a better term. Those green eyes hardened. “How’d you find out?” 

“After you and Danielle left, I went back to check on Mr. Mas-- Vlad and saw him transform. Heard him talking about his whole jacked up plan about melting down Danielle too. I need answers, Phantom, and I expect you to corporate.” 

Sighing, his shoulders slumped slightly. “I’m guessing if I don’t come willingly, you’re just going to bring out the literal big guns, huh?”

Valerie just smirked in response. 

“Fine,” Phantom groaned, ruffling a gloved hand through his hair. “But there will be some things I can’t answer--for my own safety, okay?” 

“Deal.” 

  They found a building to sit on. It was out of sight from the peeping public, so no one in Amity could just ask why the ghost boy was hanging out with the Red Huntress for the evening. Plus, if her dad found out… he’d have her ass. 

Phantom leaned against the brick. “What do you want to know?” 

“How long has Vlad Masters been a ghost?” she asked. 

“Since college.” 

“That long?” 

Phantom snorted. “How do you think he got loaded? He overshadowed tycoons and robbed banks.” 

Valerie almost couldn’t believe it. But she’d seen him transform with her own eyes. How someone she had admired could be so low. Not just a filthy ghost, but a legitimate criminal. 

There was a tightness in her chest. She felt so guilty . Phantom had tried to warn her, hell Danielle even warned her. But she was so dead set in her hatred for Phantom and her trust in Vlad that she refused to listen. 

“So, you and Vlad have this--rivalry?” 

Snorting, Phantom shook his head. “You don’t know the half of it. He… He’s weirdly obsessed with me. He wants me to be his son and take over the world with him.” 

“That’s--crazy.” 

“Yeah, he’s a crazed up fruit loop.” 

Valerie snickered at that. Could it have always been this way? Could she and Phantom have gotten along like this if she’d just… listened? 

“Well, I’d say we have a common enemy now.” 

His brows shot up. “Really?” 

“Yeah, definitely. Can’t have anyone as powerful as Vlad as both a ghost and a human running around. Especially as our mayor,” she paused, “which does lead me to my next question. Do all of the ghosts know that he’s human?” 

Phantom nodded slowly. “Yeah, the Ghost Zone knows about halfas.” 

Valerie blinked. “‘Halfas?’” 

“Uh… nothing.” 

“There’s more half ghosts? Besides Vlad and Danielle?” 

Phantom suddenly wasn’t answering. He pursed his lips, staying silent. Valerie wasn’t stupid. They both knew that. She was able to put two and two together. 

“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” 

He wouldn’t meet her gaze. 

Valerie felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. A rug swept out from beneath her. Literally everything she thought she knew about ghosts wasn’t true. Some ghost hunter she was. Did the Fentons know of half ghosts? Maybe, she could ask Danny? 

“You’re… human?” 

“I can’t…” he swallowed, “I can’t answer that.” 

  But he was answering. She knew it. Phantom was human too. 

[rose7420]

I did this one shot for a Loki x reader. I’ve had this idea in my head for awhile and wanted to see how it played out. Enjoy! Your part of the avengers now and have a secret to hide. You have the same powers as the Wasp, but you don’t require a suit. When you shrink your wings grow automatically.

It’s 12:00 in the morning and you have things to do. Every other night you’ve been going to New York’s Finest Fighters. A brawling club. No one here of the Avengers knows of what you’re up to, you’ve made damn sure of that. Every single time you tell your sad, messed up story everyone gives you pity. Pity will get you nowhere. But money will. So you fight to win. You pull on your jacket after you’ve made sure everyone’s asleep. Before exiting your room you shrink and slip under the crack of the door. Right across your room is Loki’s. He is always very quiet, yet very perceptive. You never talk much, only in walking by or the occasional trip to the library where he takes residence in a plush red chair frequently. Your wings buzz softly as you pass his room, flying into the kitchen area so you can exit off the balcony of Stark Tower. You can see the bright lights of other buildings as you look out the expansive window. You can imagine the nightlife of the city that never sleeps. Despite the lights outside the tower it is dark and eerily silent as you meander your way to the door. The only noise that can be heard is the faint buzz of your wings. You feel the pinprick of eyes on your back. You land on the counter in the kitchen and hide behind a salt shaker. Slowly peeking from behind the shaker, you scan the room and detect no one. You criticize yourself for letting your nerves get to you. When you brace yourself for flight again you catch sight of a dark figure standing in the hallway you just came from. Loki. How did I not hear him? Knowing that he may be on to you sends a terrifying jolt through your entire being. He may tell the others that you’ve been sneaking around at night. Tony and Steve will be pissed that you are putting yourself in danger and Natasha will wonder why she isn’t in on your little secret. Loki starts walking towards the counter, his gaze not quite set on you yet. His footsteps slightly rattle your shrunken form. Oh hell. Need to hide, need to hide. You frantically shout to yourself.You realize with dread that your only hope of not being seen is somewhere not on the counter. You take a risk and jump off the side of the counter hoping that it doesn’t draw his attention. Your wings come to life at the last minute to save yourself from injury. Dropping the rest of the short distance to the floor you sprint under the couch. You stay under there for what feels like hours until you hear his footsteps become more distant. You take a peek from under the couch and see that he is gone. Finally, you can do what needs to be done.

Tonight you're up against a woman with the power of invincibility. You are confident of your ability to take her down. Your training as an agent has taught you many valuable skills, hand to hand combat is one of them. You don’t need to kill her, just bring her down unconscious or until she gives up, and then you’ll get your cash. The countdown begins at 1...2...3...go! You and her punch, kick, and bite. She is a formidable opponent and manages to get a few good punches in. You’ll have to cover the bruises with makeup tomorrow. You manage to take her down with a classic move of yours where you shrink and then grow punching her with enough force to send her to the ground. You win and gather your cash exiting the building. You make sure to be aware of anyone following you. Thankfully no one is tonight. You shrink, the money shrinking beside you, and aim for the top of Stark Tower. You enter the building and head straight to your room slipping under the door. Growing back, you put your money in a bag in your closet where the rest is stored. You’ll put it in the bank account later. For now, you want to take a shower. Your body is sweaty and grimy and the hot water is pleasant as it runs over you. After dressing for bed, you climb under the covers and drift into a deep sleep.

The next morning you awake from your loud alarm. You head to the bathroom and catch a peek of yourself in the mirror. You look horrendous. Your cheek shows a purple bruise and dark circles hang under your eyes. You grab your concealer and frantically dab at your new bruise and your undereyes. Now you look slightly better, just appearing like you had a bad night’s sleep. Which isn’t entirely a lie. You usually get back around two in the morning and wake around eight. And on the nights that you don’t fight, you visit the hospital. Do not think about that now. Be strong, put on a smile, and act like your fine. You don’t sleep well. So what? Nobody does. You put back on your warm demeanor and get ready for the day. Dressed and prepared for the day, you enter the kitchen to get a cup of coffee and something to eat. The smell of coffee wakes up your senses and you bring the hot drink to your lips. Your eyes trace over the counters and land on one particular thing. The salt shaker. It reminds you of your close encounter with Loki last night. Hearing footsteps you turn around and see the person you would least like to at the moment. Loki makes eye contact with you briefly before heading to the couch and taking a seat. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, you ask him if he wants coffee. He shakes his head no. He is definitely on to you. Your paranoia is getting the best of you. You take a seat in the furthest chair, his gaze set upon you.

“Where did that bruise on your face come from?”

You reach up to brush at the bruise you thought was unnoticeable a wince a bit when your fingers rub it. And look at him fully now. His posture is relaxed, one leg crossed on the other. As if he really doesn’t care where the bruise came from. Your shoulders relax from their tense position that you didn’t even know you held.

“Natasha and I sparred, she got me good.”

“I’d say. Yet, you are the best woman here when it comes to hand-to-hand combat. It surprises me that she could get a punch in. Not to mention your...abilities.”

You blush at his compliment. You knew you were good at fighting, but you never thought you were the best. Natasha is the trained assassin here.

“Looks like she got the best of me this time.” You say. Oh, he definitely is on to me. On the inside, you're terrified your secret is out, but you only take another sip of coffee.

Later on…

You’re in the training room using the punching bag. Your knuckles are wrapped but you wear no gloves. You want to feel your knuckles crack today. It releases the fury and sadness you feel inside you.

“You’ll break your hand if you keep going like that.” says a smooth voice behind you.

It startles you yet you don’t jump, turning around you spot Loki leaning on the wall.

“What’s got you so worked up?” He asks, taking steps closer to you.

“Oh, you know the usual. Couldn’t find the right shoes to go with the outfit.”

His lips lift up slightly, and a quiet chuckle escapes his mouth. I actually got him to laugh! You say to yourself, a bit proud.

“Perhaps you would like to… fight? One-on-one?”

“Me? Would you not rather have someone else?” You are surprised by his sudden offer. Why with you of all people?

“I only wish to see how you fight. No foul play.”

You take a step back ready to refuse. You are tired of fighting, he can find someone else to torture. Yet he stops you with a firm hand on your wrist. You twist to get out of his grip but he is too strong.

So that’s how it’s going to be.

You shrink, escaping his grip. Sprinting between his feet you grow back and take him in a chokehold. He flips your body over, causing you to land painfully on your back. He lunges, but before he can pin you down you shrink and roll to the side. You watch as he searches for your miniaturized form below him. You fly up and land a punch to his jaw. His head flies back a little. Before he can regain his senses and perceive where you are you grow and land atop him. Both wrists in your grip, sitting on his hips to prevent him from bucking you off.

“Do you yield?” You ask him.

“Not usually, but perhaps this once.”He replies in a silky voice. You become all too aware of your current position and quickly stand and offer a hand. He takes it and pulls himself up. You become aware of how much taller he is than you are. Your head barely clears the middle of his shoulder.

“Now, if you could best me, how in the nine realms did your partner best you?” Oh shit. You realize where you screwed up.

“I was having a bad day.”

“It seems like you were having a bad day today as well.”

“Maybe you aren’t as good as you think you are, Loki.”

“I doubt that entirely Agent (Y/N).” And he stalks off.

Few days later...

Once again it's midnight. Stark Tower is dark and silent once again. You sneak under the door and glance over to Loki’s room. You remember him almost catching you the other night so you take precautions tonight. You creep under the crack of his door after checking that the lights are off. Upon entering you realize you have never been in Loki’s room. It's too dark to see properly but you find that his room looks normal. You don't know what you were expecting, maybe a bit more pizazz from the God of Mischief. Your wings buzz as you fly over to the bed to make sure he’s asleep. You find his sleeping form under blankets. His chest rises and falls with each breath. He looks peaceful and carefree much unlike the other times you have seen him. Even when he reads he usually has a scowl on his face. Not like you watch him read. Satisfied with your findings you make your way to the door again, ready to leave. Landing on the ground you walk to the crack under the door. A black boot slams in front of you. You fall back onto your ass from the sheer force and weight of the boot. You attempt to grow to your original size when to your horror you stay the same size. No, no no...You repeat over and over. Craning your neck back you can see a gigantic form towering over your miniaturized self. From this viewpoint he looks like an unforgivable god. You scramble back on all fours avoiding his foot.

“What are you doing in my quarters, agent?” Loki's voice thunders through your form. You halt your movement and you can't seem to speak. Your mind is blank. How in the world can I explain this?

His knee drops in front of you, causing the world to tremble once again.

You already have a feeling of what's coming next.Your senses regain themselves and start to haul ass out of there. You get to your feet swiftly and run to the door. But not fast enough. A hand is in front of you forming an impenetrable wall. You turn around to seek escape but it is soon gone by another tremendous palm. They start to close together moving fast and in slow motion all at once if that is even possible. He brings his cupped palms right under his nose glaring down at you. Those immense green eyes stare down into you, filling you with dread sweeping you off your feet.

“Let me go!” You shout up at him and kick at his hand.

“Why have you been sneaking out?” He asks.

“Why can I not grow back?” You retort.

“You give me an explanation, I let you grow back.”

“Why is it so important to you?”

He nudges you to a single palm, before you can question his action you find yourself pinned helplessly between his forefinger and thumb of the opposite hand. You expect there to be more pressure on your ribs and chest, yet he holds you gently but firmly preventing you from falling to a great height. He slowly raises you to both his glaring eyes.

“I found you in my chambers, the question is why is it so important to you?” He snarkily retorts.

You stare up at his billboard sized face. His enormous eyes search you as if he will find the explanation painted on your body.

“I can’t tell you.” You say weakly.

“Then I guess you will stay like this.”

He moves to set you somewhere but you speak up. His movements come to a halt.

“I fight. I fight at this place to earn money. “ You look up and see his eyebrow quirked up.

“That is what you are hiding. There is more, tell me.”

“What is it to you!” You shout angrily at him. You give him no time to speak and continue but in a softer, weaker tone.

“My sister lies in a hospital bed dying. I have no money so I have to earn it somehow.”

You don't have the energy to care what Loki thinks right now. A hot tear runs down your cheek. You're so tired. In every sense of the word. You feel you power thrum through you, and watch with dead, unseeing eyes as Loki lowers you to the bed. You numbly walk on the bedspread.You don't want to face him at your full size just yet, he seems to grasp onto this concept as he kneels to your level and waits for you to speak. After some time you dry your eyes and your body expands and you are now looking down at him instead of up.

He takes your hands in his with a tender grip.

“Look at me (Y/N.)” His tone is gentle, and you raise your head to see his face.

You see pity in those green eyes.

An outraged spark flares in you and you rip your hands out of his grip.

“I don't need your pity.” you say weakly. Realizing what you just said an apology starts to come out of your mouth but Loki beats you to the next word.

“Why would I waste it on you anyway? You're nothing but a pathetic creature who waits by her sister’s deathbed keeping her here out of her your own selfishness..” He spits out cruelly.

The breath you had is expelled out of your lungs, you can't breathe. Your eyes are blank, yet filled with unshed tears. You can’t have a panic attack in front of Loki. You shoot straight to your feet and you open the door, and walk out not looking back to see his expression. For now you have work to do.

You might as well be a statue. Your mind is still and you keep reminding yourself to breathe. The encounter with Loki is fresh in your head.It reminds you how powerless you felt. Someone tugs on your arm, dragging you out of your thoughts.

“You're up next.”

Your throat is dry and you feel lightheaded. You desperately want to give up, say no to a duel tonight. But you can’t as you picture your sister in her prison of a bed.

Her sickly hand reaches out weakly to grasp a hold of yours. “You don't have to do this.” She tells you. “I want to do this. For you, for us.” You watch as she studies the bruise above your eye. “I want you to have a life. Taking care of me, that isnt your life.”

You shake your head as if the memory would fall out of your head. You can't focus on anything, yet you step into the ring. The countdown starts.

1, get yourself together (Y/N)

2, Remember why your doing this

3, You can do this

Before you even can get a punch in your opponent kicks your legs from underneath you. He is on top of you keeping you down under his weight. You shrink and escape his heavy hold. Out of the corner of your eye you see his hand coming towards you, ready to whack you out of the air. You try to dodge, but it's too late. You are smacked down to the ground, a terrible pain ongoing through your leg as well as your wings. You attempt to grow again but your energy is too low. Seconds later your vision blurs and you see darkness.

Maybe it'll be better if you do just lay here, you're selfish and pathetic anyway.

You're out.

Next Morning…

Loki's POV

I don't need your pity.

The words replay in his head. (Y/N) had been in so much pain he wanted to help. Then she turned him down. All he wants to do is make up with (Y/N). He did not mean those words at all. To think he called her pathetic and selfish all while she sacrifices her freedom and life for her sister. He wonders if Thor would do something like that for him. Or if he would even do that for Thor. She deserves someone to be there for her, care for her as greatly as she cares for her sister. He stands suddenly from his spot on his bed. Without thinking about it, he is headed towards his door. Soon he finds himself in front of (Y/N)’s room. He takes a deep breath before knocking. Three raps on the door he waits patiently. No answer.

Three more, and once again no answer.

“(Y/N)?” He calls out. It would be odd for her to be up early. It's not like her. Not like he watches her or anything.

He opens the door slowly and seeks out her bed. Only to find it empty. He throws the door open and searches the entire room, closet and bathroom. This isn't good.

She never came back last night.

He is out the door of Stark Tower in less than five minutes. He wishes he would have asked her where the place she goes every night is located. Pulling out his phone that he is granted to have but never uses he looks up possible locations she could be at.

As he walks in the dump they call a building he searches frantically for (Y/N). It is empty of people since it is daytime. He walks closer to a padded mat laying in the middle of the floor. As he looks closer he spots an object on the mat. He recognizes the object as (Y/N)’s body. Oh dear.

He kneels on the mat and delicately scoops her body in a palm. “No, no (Y/N). I'm so sorry. I didn't mean any of it.” Laying a finger over her chest he feels a weak heartbeat and notices her chest rises shallowly. He lets out a sigh of relief. He attempts to get her to wake up by shaking her shoulder. He notices the blood smears on his palm gently prods her side to see where it's coming from. Her leg sits at an odd angle and he sees white protruding from it. Her bone is sticking out from her leg and is bleeding profusely now. He looks over her for other injuries and sees her wing. It is bent. Oh the pain she must be in. He gently cradles her tiny body to his chest, avoiding jostling her at all. He has to get back to the tower now.

He brings her to Bruce. “What in the world happened?” Bruce asks. “Long story, can you fix her?” Loki asks desperately. “Put her over here.” Bruce gestures at a small table that has a magnifying glass attached to it. “Her injuries will be too small to see, and she can't grow back if she is unconscious. And if she does grow back she will be in much more pain” Loki lays (Y/N) down on the table and stares at her mutilated body. Loki watches Bruce get his supplies ready on the other side of the room but hears a small shuffling sound. He looks down and sees (Y/N) slowly coming back to consciousness. He swiftly kneels to be at her eye level and reaches out a hand to halt her movement. “(Y/N), stay still.” She looks at his looming hand with a measure of fear that sends a pang through his heart.

“My leg..I-it hurts.” She says weakly

“I know, I know. But stay still,okay? You're going to be fine.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell at you last night. I know I'm pathetic and selfish like you said. I just can't let go of her. She's all I have left.” She states.

Loki’s heart rips out of his chest. He clamps his thumb and forefinger delicately over her minuscule hand. “No, no (Y/N) .You're not pathetic nor selfish. You're brave, smart, and immensely kind and generous. Please forgive me for what I said I didn't mean.”

He waits for her response and starts to get worried that she will not forgive his harsh words but when he looks up he sees that she is still and not breathing. He panics and calls out to Bruce. Bruce hurries back with the materials and starts to work.

Hours later

Loki waits patiently by your bedside, you have been unconscious for hours after Bruce finished up with your injuries. Your tiny bed sits on a table in his room. He props his head up with one hand, keeping his other near you. You're still in your shrunken form. Loki was able to keep Bruce's curiosity of your whereabouts on the down low. He thinks about what you said and how you can think so poorly of yourself. And how you think the only people who you have left in this world are your sister. How terrible it is that you think yourself to be so unlovable that you don't think anyone here at the tower cares about you. You start to stir from your sleep and blink your eyes open looking around confused where you are. “Loki?” You stare up at him and ask.

“Im here (Y/N). How are you feeling?” He asks, worried you're in pain, despite the morphine running through your system. “Umm, better. I can't really feel anything.” You sit up slowly and reach back to touch your wings.

“You won't be able to fly for a while. Or grow back.” He says calmly waiting for your reaction. “How will I get around? I can’t exactly get around at this size you know, without these.” You gesture at your wings. He lowers his head down on crossed arms. “I'll help you.“ He says as if it's common knowledge in a breathy whisper. He is afraid to speak too loud this close to you. Suddenly you swing your legs off the side of your bed as if to stand. He raises his head off his arms and positions his thumb in your lap like a seatbelt, and rests the rest of his fingers behind you. His hand is bigger than your bed and his fingers hang off the side. “Where are you going?” He asks confused. “I need to put that money in the bank account for… well you know. Come on let me go.” “Absolutely not, your leg is still healing and you need to rest.” You dig your arms under his thumb and attempt to lift it off of you. It's bigger than your small form and he knows you're weak so your attempts to get his thumb off of you are futile. “Loki, move. Now.” You demand him. “You can worry about that later. You need to rest.” He pleads. His hand is cramping from trying to keep it positioned around your little frame. You finally relax and lean back. Yet you seem tense and sad. “Why is it so important to get the money in today?” Loki asks. You slowly raise your gaze to his and take a deep breath. “Every month I have to pay the hospice home so that they can keep taking care of her. If I don't then they will send her to another place. They aren't the best of places. Let's just say that.”

Loki considers this information for a moment. “What if I help you out and you show me how to do it?” You blink in surprise.

“You would do that for me?” You ask with astonishment. He nods and then says, “Consider it forgiveness for what I have said in the past.”

[inclementweather]

Give that man a hand!

Engie looked at the piece of barbed wire he’d kicked loose from the dirt.  It was coated in red dust, dull and rusty, the barbs eaten by rust until they were delicate crumbles of metal, looking as though they would fall apart at a touch.  Until his boot caught on the raised twist of wire, it had been a great day for a battle.  Now, not so much.  He closed his eyes, trying to shake the memories he’d dug up with the length of wire but unable to.  Engie groaned and picked the piece of wire up, flinging it as far away from him and his nest as possible.  Walking back to his sentry, he sat in the meager shade provided by a rock and leaned his head back, deliberately slowing his breathing, concentrating on the cool stone against the back of his head.

Closing his eyes, he drifted off, lulled by the warm sun, the familiar scents of dust and gunpowder.   He let his mind wander and quickly found himself back in the rundown old barn on his dad’s ranch in Texas.  He was young, not even tall enough to see over the stall doors yet, but he could hear the occasional rustle of mice in the stalls as he walked.  He climbed up the ladder into the hayloft, hiding from his chores for a moment of uninterrupted play, something that didn’t come often on the busy ranch.  

Settling down into the soft layer of hay that covered the loft, he reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out the toy soldiers he’d brought along, lining them up on a spot he’d cleared on the floor.  He sneezed, ignoring the dust motes dancing in the golden rays of sunlight that came through cracks in the walls.  He turned his head, listening for a moment as his Pa called him in the distance.  He could pretend he didn’t hear, he decided.  He might get a whipping later for shirking his chores, but it would be worth it.  Mind made up, he turned back to his toys.  

He’d been playing for about a half hour when he heard the meow. Moving into a crouch, he listened carefully.  He could hear them, kittens nearby.  Trying to be silent, he began moving toward the sound.  He loved the barn cats that lurked on the farm, half feral and skittish as hell, but they would occasionally let him run fingers through their soft fur, purring loudly until their pride overtook them and they darted off, watching him from a distance.  

He moved down the ladder, following the soft meows, hoping that he could find the kitten and maybe catch it, tame it down, and make it a friend.  He grinned as he caught a glimpse of grey fur moving through the shadows.  He darted after the movement, rewarded when the kitten wandered into the open area behind the barn.  He crouched beside the door as it batted at a leaf, making him smile with it’s antics.  The kitten looked up then and froze, back arching as it saw him.  

“Here, kitty, kitty.” He kept his voice soft and low, not wanting to startle it any more than he already had.  The kitten moved away from him, fur glowing blue grey under the warm Texas sun.  He moved toward it in a crouch, fingers wiggling on the ground by his feet.  He continued to make soft noises deep in his throat, imagining how the fur would feel on his fingers.  

The kitten looked tempted for a moment, then backed away, edging toward the manure pit behind the barn.  He followed, nose wrinkling at the thick odor of decaying manure, but not wanting to give up on the kitten just yet.  He edged closer, the kitten slowly retreating.  He was almost within reach, nearly able to feel that soft fur on his fingers.  The pit loomed behind the kitten, dark and malevolent, edges going nearly straight down. His pa had warned him about the pit, that it was deep and not a place for boys to play, though he couldn’t imagine why anyone would willingly get too close to that big pile of nasty.  He understood the need for it, he was a farm kid and knew that manure was the best fertilizer around, not to mention cheap and easy to come by on a ranch, but still, when the wind shifted in the evenings and blew the smell toward the house, even his mama, the most proper woman he’d ever met, would utter a curse word or two.  

He watched the kitten edge closer to the pit, then jump up on one of the fence posts that supported the barbed wire that kept unwitting cattle from wandering into the pit.  With a grin, he straightened and walked over to it, reaching out for the kitten.  His fingers just brushed the soft fur when the ground he was standing on began to crumble. He yelled and staggered back but his shirt sleeve snagged on the barbed wire and he couldn’t get it free as the ground collapsed beneath him.  

He screamed as he fell, the scream abruptly cut off as his head was submerged beneath the horrid, partly liquid surface of the pit.  He could feel the burning sting of cuts as the barbed wire raked up his arm, a coil of it slipping around his wrist and catching him, preventing him from sinking all the way beneath the dark surface.  His head broke the top of the pit, he dragged in great gasps of foul air as he tried to make his way to the bank.  He couldn’t move, his arm snagged under the surface of the pit, the cruel stricture of barbed wire sinking deeper into his wrist, pulling him further down and then, something grabbed his leg, holding him tightly.  

The boy panicked then, kicking and flailing against whatever was holding him, feeling it tighten around his leg, hard barbs sinking deeper into his flesh, pulling at him.  He tired quickly, one hand wrapped in the coils that stretched down from above, one leg held under the surface, his foot balanced precariously on the wood of the fence post as he panted and heaved in his terror, eyes fixed on the edge of the pit.  

He whimpered as he tilted his head back, chin just above the viscous surface of the muck filling the pit and coughed, a gout of black fluid coming out of his throat and spewing back to land on his filth covered cheeks.  Out of the corner of his eye he caught movement, turning his head a bit he looked at the tarry black surface of the pit.  White worms were crawling in the muck, their slight weight not allowing them to sink.  He clamped his mouth shut as his brain identified them, maggots, swarming in the mire, growing and eating, flies buzzing above the surface as the maggots transformed, ate more, then laid eggs in the effluvia, an endless circle of death and grotesqueness.  He gagged through his clenched lips, swallowing down the bile that rose in his throat.  

Above him, the strand of barbed wire ensnaring his wrist twanged at the tension on it and he briefly wondered what would happen if it broke.  He’d seen a guitar string break once, leaving a bleeding welt across his uncle’s cheek.  He tried to focus on his hand, the fingers turning purple as the wire tightened even more, cutting off the flow of blood to his fingers, leaving them thick  purple sausages sticking straight up.  He grimaced as flies landed on them, covering them in a moving black glove, hiding the color, if not the distended shape of them.  

Moving slightly, he shifted his weight, wincing at the sting in his leg as whatever had hold of him tightened below the surface.  To his left, a bubble rose to the surface and popped, the flatulent sound drawing his eyes.  He rolled them and watched as more bubbles rose, then something big, moving toward the surface, breaching like a whale and rolling over.  He bit back a scream as he stared into empty eye sockets, the cow’s skull seeming to stare at him for a moment, streaks of glistening foulness creating rivulets like black tears as they poured from the empty sockets.  The skull settled, watching him as it slowly sank back below the surface.  He screamed, knowing what was wrapped around his leg now, it had to be a tentacle.  

He’d watched enough Twilight Zone to know about vengeful ghosts and their hatred of the living, read his cousin’s Tales From The Crypt comics, knew what had happened.  The cow had died in here, drowning slowly and with no one to help and now the soul was trapped and sucking down anyone wary enough to fall in.  He could feel his mind teetering on the edge of sheer panic at the thought, the ghostly barbs of the Death Cow digging deeper into his leg, wanting to watch him go under, wanting to suck his soul out the way he sucked on a juicy slice of watermelon, devouring it hungrily.  It was too much.  He gave in to the screams.  

He wasn’t aware of the barbed wire wrapping ever tighter around his wrist, the trapped blood causing the ends of his fingers to explode, bright red fountaining out and spraying the pit’s dark surface, wasn’t aware of the fence post slipping under his foot as he slid off his precarious perch.  He was only aware that he was sinking, the Death Cow tightening it’s grip around his leg, dragging him down into the murky depths where he would lay unfound forever.  His screams turned to choking sobs, fetid liquid oozing into his mouth, down his throat.  He couldn’t breathe, lungs filling as his head went under.  

He didn’t know when the big hand wrapped around his, grasping the blood and muck covered slickness, dragging him back to the surface, and then heaving him to the shore, was unaware that his leg was shredded as the weight of the fencepost tightened the barbed wire wrapping his thigh and dragged it down, slicing as it went.  He wasn’t aware of the panic as his Pa and his Uncles carried him up to the house, unconscious, barely breathing, dripping blood and black water with every step.  He was aware of nothing until he woke up, two weeks later, in a pristine white bed in a sterile white hospital room, his hand missing, amputated after gangrene set into the damaged and shredded appendage.  

After he was out, they told him how the bank had been eaten under where he stood, causing it to collapse, how the barbed wire from the fence post had entangled him, simultaneously damning and saving him.  Even after they told him, he couldn’t look at barbed wire without a nameless dread filling his chest, the ghost of the foulness he drowned in filling his lungs, making it impossible to breathe. 

Engie’s eyes jerked open and he sprang up with a start, his beer bottle tipping over and pale golden fluid wetting the dry earth.  He sighed, righted the bottle with his mechanical hand, gaze lingering on it for a moment.  

“Hey man, you alright?”  a voice asked from behind him and he turned to look at the Scout standing there, bat over his shoulder, eying the mess askance. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”  He hoped the boy didn’t hear the slight tremble in his voice.  “Just thinking about when I was a kid.  Why don’t you get out there and do something ‘stead of hanging around here and scaring old men while they nap?”  He let the aggressive tone cover the tremble, narrowing his eyes behind the goggles.  “Go on, boy, war ain’t gonna win itself.”  

“Jeez, man, whatever.” The boy turned and stalked off, and Engie watched him go.  When he was out of sight, he glanced down at his metal hand one more time. 

 “Fuck barbed wire.” he muttered, then turned back to his work. 

[zebrabaker]

Demon’s Daughter: 02

Hey guys! I made a twitter for my stories (@ LilnomeStories) where all polls will be held from now on! Don’t forget I also have a Patreon and a ko-fi now, the links to which are in my bio. Here we go!

Part 1

The same day at lunch, Marinette had just exited the classroom after everyone else had left when she was accosted by a figure dressed in all black. She stumbled back a step, barely catching her balance. She managed to look up at the figure, only to squeal when she saw who it was, and eagerly return the hug.

“Uncle John!” She cried when he picked her up and swung her about. John was not the man’s real name, but a nom de plume he used to blend with the humans. The full name was John Therapon, and he was listed as one of her legal guardians (she had a lot).

“Little Mari!” He shouted, setting her down. He was an odd looking man, with waist length platinum hair in a warrior braid and green eyes like poison, he would always draw attention. He only drew more with his fashion sense. Her Uncle wore a long black trench coat over black skinny jeans and a black button up, with a clunky looking wallet chain. He also wore a thick chain-link necklace and heavy motorcycle boots. Over all, he looked like someone’s goth/emo/punk cousin more than an ancient immortal being who reaped souls.

“Are you the one Dad said was coming to check on me?” She asked, stepping back and adjusting her buns, which had come loose when he had glomped her.

“Indeed, I am, little chaos bringer!” He twirled her around and bowed low, pressing a kiss to her hand. “And for your birthday, I have a very special surprise!” He reached into his coat and pulled out a small business card, presenting it to her with a flourish, and she giggled as she took it.

Turn around!

It read. Marinette spun on the spot and looked up, only to scream in delight.

“DAD!” She flung herself at the tall, slim figure. Sebastian caught his daughter, wrapping her in a tight hug.

“Hello, dearest.” He smiled, flashing his eyes magenta. She flashed hers as well, making them shine a darker shade of gray.

“I thought you were in India, visiting Uncle Agni?” She asked, stepping back.

“A simple deception, dearest. Now, let’s go pick up your mother and Papa, I made reservations at Raven’s Writing Desk.” Marinette cheered. Raven’s Writing Desk was a Michelin-starred restaurant. The owner’s father had made a questionable deal with Sebastian (ten years of life and a successful business, then Sebastian got to eat his soul), so the family got reservations for the best tables and half off whatever they wanted. “We’ll even have some others joining us.” Sebastian teased, patting her head. Right as they reached the sidewalk, a crash echoed from a few miles away, and a plume of smoke filled the air. “Oh dear. It looks like we’ll all have to call and reschedule our reservation. You go handle this, dearest. I’ll go catch up with your mother and Papa.” She sighed, kissed her father on the cheek, and ducked into an alleyway, opening her purse. Plagg zoomed out with a sigh.

“Ooh! Raven’s Writing Desk! I love their cheese curds! Let’s finish this.”

“Agreed.” She grumbled. “Plagg, Claws Out!”

X0X0X

Hell-Cat raced over the rooftops, soaring through the air. The pads in the shape of a cat’s paw on the bottom of her boots silenced her steps, meaning she was a silent black and silver streak, soaring through the air. She landed in a crouch next to her partner and confidant, Coccinelle. Coccinelle nodded at her, twirling her yoyo in front of her as a shield.

Coccinelle’s costume was very different from Hell Cat’s. While Hell Cat wore a black body suit with silver highlights and a pair of pauldrons, Coccinelle wore a short red dress coated in ladybug spots and black leggings. Hell Cat’s boots reached her knees, while her partners went maybe an inch above her ankle. Whereas Coccinelle’s gloves were plain black and only went to her wrists, Hell Cat’s had wickedly sharp silver talons and reached her elbows, where they came to a point.

Even their masks were different. Coccinelle’s was round, and made her blue eyes look huge, while Hell Cat’s was slim and came to wicked looking points on each side of her eyes, making her look more feline. Another feature of Hell Cat’s mask was the magic that made her entire eye gray, the iris a few shades darker than the sclera. While Coccinelle had long, flowy ash blonde hair, Hell Cat’s, when transformed, barely reached her shoulders, and had a blue sheen. While Coccinelle was bright and colorful, Hell Cat was sharp monochrome. The only splash of color was the blue bow around her neck that tied in the front. Lots of small children tended to ask Coccinelle if she was a fairy, since she had wings (They were the tail ends of the scarf she wore) while teens and young adults tended to gravitate towards Hell Cat.

The Akuma was flinging a series of items at them, which all bounced off Coccinelle’s yoyo. The common theme seemed to be car repair. Hell Cat glanced at her partner.

“What’s the plan?” She asked.

“The Akuma is in his utility belt. I distract, you slash, I swing. From there, clear skies! Ready?” Coccinelle asked. Hell Cat nodded and crouched down, her ribbon tail flicking behind her. She waited until the Akuma reached for yet another projectile and Coccinelle began to monologue before diving at him, claws extended to their fullest. She slashed the belt as soared past the Akuma, who quickly dropped to his knees. As the dark magic bubbled from his skin, Coccinelle landed in front of him and captured the butterfly.

“No more rainy days for you, little akuma! Au revior!” She released the now-purified butterfly, and waved to the cheering people. “Kitty, can you handle the victim?” Coccinelle asked, reholstering her yoyo on her belt.

“Sure, I didn’t use my powers, so I’ve got a few minutes.” Coccinelle waved to the watching civilians and ran off, leaping to the roof of the nearest building with the help of her wings. Hell Cat sheathed her claws and knelt beside the victim; a young man dressed in a repair shop jumpsuit that was covered in grease stains.

“Hell Cat? Was I…?” The young man asked, staring at her.

“I’m afraid so, monsieur. May I ask why?” She set a hand on the man’s shoulder and guided him over to a nearby ambulance. The paramedic handed her a shock blanket and she wrapped it around his shoulders, as the other paramedic handed the victim a glass of water.

“My family repair shop isn’t doing so good.” He sighed. “My mom was diagnosed with cancer three years ago, and Dad remortgaged the shop so that he could still support the family and pay for Mom’s nurse. Now, we’re pretty successful, so we almost have it payed off.” He growled, clearly frustrated. “Except some big shot at the bank is demanding the remaining twenty-five-thousand euros in a month, or they foreclose the damn shop.” Hell Cat hissed. The bakery was the most successful in all Paris, maybe even France, and they catered a great deal of important events. Even during the busiest time of year, they would struggle to make that much, let alone have that much that didn’t need to go to other bills and buying ingredients. She had an idea.

“What bank is it, and who’s the one demanding the payment?” She asked, plotting. She did need to make another deal soon; her reserves were getting a little low.

“Um…Monsieur Gerard Lilac, at Goliath Banking. Curse his name!” No one asked why she needed the information. Everyone in Paris knew, if you had a problem, Hell Cat could solve it. No one knew how, just that she made problems (and occasionally people) disappear.

“Hell Cat!” Someone cried, and she looked up to see Alya charging towards her. This was yet another problem with Alya. She never considered the victims, just the next scoop. Hell Cat stood and blocked her view of the victim, and nodded to the paramedics. The two nodded back and hustled the man into the ambulance, quickly flipping on the lights and driving towards the nearest hospital. All Akuma victims got three one-hour therapy sessions, one right after being cleansed and then one each week for two weeks.

“Yes, mademoiselle?” She asked, crossing her arms.

“Why was the victim Akumatized? What will you be doing to help them? Do you intend to use this to track Hawkmoth? Do you have a statement for the press?” Her phone was inches from Hell Cat’s face. Hell Cat’s ears were pinned back, and she was really trying not to hiss. How she was ever friends with the girl she’d never know.

“Mademoiselle, the reason for Akumatization is never leaked to the press. We use every attack to track Hawkmoth. And the only statement I have for you is to get your phone out of my face before I break it, along with your hand. Goodbye.” She drew her staff and extended it, vaulting away. 

[let-it-raines]

all for a 56-pack of crayons

Prompt which has obviously been a little modified because of who I am as a person: “I was bartending at an Italian restaurant and it’s pretty much full of valentine dates. A guy walks in and sits at the bar by himself. He had come to the city to surprise his girlfriend for valentine’s day (about a five-hour bus trip between cities) and he sure surprised her. she was in her dorm room fucking one of his friends from high school”

so @shireness-says​ sent me the above prompt a dreadfully long time ago, and I was going to write it for her birthday. I missed that date by a few weeks, but who doesn’t love a late birthday gift? Keeping the party going! 🎉 

found on ao3 | here |

-/-

“Oh my God.”

“What?”

“Oh my God.”

“What?”

“This,” Emma says, motioning out to all of the people in front of her. “People can go on dates every day of the year, but everyone in all of Portland is here tonight.”

“It’s Valentine’s Day,” Mary Margaret sighs, a goofy little smile on her face that’s always there when she’s talking or thinking about love. It’d be obnoxious if she wasn’t so damn charming. Or nice. Charming is really more of David’s thing. “People like to go on dates on Valentine’s Day.”

“Because it’s a – ”

“Societal construct. Yes, I know. You’ve said that once or twice.”

Emma rolls her eyes and grabs the bottle of wine she was looking for. “Look, all I’m saying is that if you think proposing to your girlfriend on Valentine’s Day is romantic, you’ve got issues. There are a lot of days of the year, make another one of them special.”

“Emma.”

“I’ve got to go serve table ten. He’s got a ring being put in a dessert. Be right back.”

Mary Margaret isn’t behind the bar when Emma gets back. She’s probably off trying to help some teenagers flirt or listening to some couple’s love story. She’s very into romance and candy hearts and the whole big thing. It’s like this every year, but Emma can’t blame her, not really. Mary Margaret has been with David since they were fifteen years old, and her entire life is some kind of candy heart and giant teddy bear holding red roses world. There are obviously a few pieces of melted chocolate and fallen rose petals in there, but overall, she’s never had a reason to be sick of love and this holiday that just makes single people feel shitty about themselves.

“Whatever your strongest rum is, I want that.”

Emma turns to see a man sliding down at the barstool in front of her. No one is sitting up here tonight. Everyone is in the booths and at the tables, so what the hell is this guy doing up here?

Alone.

She quickly glances over him. He’s got on a white button-down, the top few buttons undone, and a leather jacket on top of it. His hair is messy, like he’s been running his hands through it, and Emma can’t tell whether he just doesn’t know how to do his hair or if he’s one of those guys who tries to artfully mess his hair up. From everything else about his looks, he’s definitely a guy who tries to do that.

You don’t look like him and wear a leather jacket if you don’t know you’re attractive.

The blue eyes alone could probably get half the girls in here into bed with him.

Woah, Emma.

That’s definitely taking her judgment of people a little too far.

“You don’t want something specific?” Emma asks him.

“Whatever can get me drunk.”

Emma’s brows raise, but she quickly tries to neutralize her face. She judges people all the time, but they can’t know that she judges them. She would lose her tips, and she needs those to live and to pay bills and to be able to buy Henry new shoes and the 56-pack of crayons he wants that has all of the specialized colors.

“I am technically not supposed to encourage a customer to get drunk, but I will get that rum for you.”

“Thank you, lass.”

Emma bends down and searches through their shelf of rum, pulling out a bottle that won’t break the guy’s bank but that tastes good enough, and pours him a glass. “You need anything else?”

“Do you serve food up here?”

“We do, but sir, if you’re here for a date, I’m afraid – ”

The man downs his drink before slamming the glass against the bar top. He winces and then adjusts the tumbler.

“I’m not here for a date. I’m simply here for some food and a few more glasses of rum.”

“I’m not supposed to let you have enough to get drunk. I wasn’t kidding about that.”

“Lucky for you, I have a high tolerance.”

Emma’s eyes roll, and she turns away to hide that before grabbing a menu off the shelf and then handing it to him. “You can look through this, and then when you’re ready, I’ll send your order back to the kitchen.”

“Thanks, love.”

“Not your love.”

Oh shit. She shouldn’t get snippy with him. She was just thinking about how she needs the tips.  

56 pack of crayons and all.

“Sorry,” Emma mumbles. “Force of habit.”

“You have a lot of people call you love? I didn’t know there was such a British population in Portland.”

“I have a lot of people call me by pet names,” Emma corrects, forcing her smile back onto her face. “Baby, sweetheart, honey, whatever else men can come up with when they’re trying to hit on me.”

The man nods and places his hand on the counter. She glances down at the movement, notices the fact that he has a glove on just that one hand, and as much as she is curious, she’s sure as hell not about to ask. Her five-year-old might ask, but she’s decidedly not five and has better manners than that.

“I apologize, love. Fuck. Didn’t mean to say that.”

Emma chuckles and turns around to get him a glass of water. She should have already done that, but she got distracted. “It’s Emma. Emma Swan. I’m sorry for not telling you my name earlier. I should have as soon as you sat down. I seem to be off my game tonight.”

“Killian Jones.”

She turns around with his water and puts it down. “It’s nice to meet you. If you need anything, let me know.”

“Thank you.”

Emma stays busy for the next hour, serving drinks and doing the take-out orders, and while people come up to the bar, none of them stay. They’re here for a fleeting moment, getting what they need, and then going. She doesn’t mind. It’s busy enough in here that she never stays idle, and if she keeps working, this damn day will be over and she can go home, never thinking of engagement rings and candy hearts again.

A round of applause sounds around the restaurant, and Emma looks up to see a man on his knees and his girlfriend with her hands clasped over her mouth.

“Does that happen often?”

“Huh?”

“The proposal,” Killian explains. “Does that happen often?”

“I’d say we get a proposal in here every two weeks, but on Valentine’s Day? At least ten per shift.”

He lets out a low whistle. “Damn.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I take it you’re not a fan of Valentine’s Day.”

“I think it’s cliched, and I’m not really a fan of cliched.”

“Eh, I think it has its pros and cons. A few clichés are good.”

Emma crosses her arms over her chest. “Like what?”

“Surprises, maybe. If you’re in a long-distance relationship and you ride on a train for five-hours to surprise your girlfriend, I imagine that can be a nice, cliched thing.”

“Is that what you did?”

He drinks half of his glass before stabbing a piece of his steak. “Funnily enough, I did.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Well, when I showed up to her apartment, she was fucking my oldest mate.”

Holy shit.

No wonder he wanted the strongest rum they have.

“You’re kidding? You have to be kidding.”

He scoffs and leans back on the stool, a smile curving on his lips while his eyelashes flutter. “I wish I was.”

Emma shakes her head and grabs his bottle, pouring a little more in his glass. “I’m cutting you off after this glass, but this one’s on me.”

“You don’t have to do that, Swan.”

“Look, I may hate Valentine’s Day, but no one deserves that when they were trying to do something romantic. Hell, no one ever deserves that. Unless maybe they’re an asshole.”

“I guess I’m an asshole.”

“I don’t know you well enough to say for sure, but I doubt it.”

“How would you know?”

Emma shrugs. “I call it my superpower. I’ve got an intuition about these types of things.”

“It’s true. She does.” Mary Margaret steps up beside her and leans forward on the counter. “So, I couldn’t help but overhear your story.”

“Marg – ”

Mary Margaret waves her away. “First of all, I’m so sorry. Secondly, I bet you don’t have a place to stay tonight, so why don’t you stay with us?”

Oh hell no.

“Marg,” Emma hisses, pulling Mary Margaret away from the counter and back against the shelves, “what the hell are you doing?”

“He was going to stay with his girlfriend tonight, but now they’ve broken up.”

“He can stay in a hotel.”

“That’ll be so expensive. Come on. We have a couch.”

“I don’t want to have to spend the night with a stranger. That’s not safe.”

“David is a cop.”

“He doesn’t know that. He could still plan on murdering us.”

“Well, I suppose I do now,” Killian says. She and Mary Margaret both turn on their heels to look at him. “Sorry. You’re not exactly in a discreet spot. I’m afraid I’ll have to decline your offer, lass. I don’t – you’re too kind, but I can’t accept it.”

“Emma,” Mary Margaret begs.

“No.”

“Emma.”

“No.”

“I’m Mary Margaret,” she suddenly says, turning to Killian and shaking his hand. “You’ve had a rough night, obviously, and I think you need some homemade brownies. Let me call my boyfriend, and I’ll clear it with him.”

“What about Emma?”

“Ignore her. She’s paranoid that everyone is a serial killer.”

“She has a point.”

“You’re not a serial killer. We can both tell.”

“Love, I really – I cannot impose on you.”

Emma blinks at him, wondering why the hell British people use so many pet names. She’s not sure what the hell is happening. Why is Mary Margaret inviting him to their apartment? Why is she so insistent on it? This isn’t the first time someone has stumbled into the restaurant wanting to get drunk because something shitty has happened, and it certainly won’t be the last.

But Mary Margaret is Mary Margaret, and Emma guesses she’s going to sleep in Henry’s room with the door locked and his dresser pushed up against the door.

Not that she thinks this is a bad guy.

But precautions and all that. She’s not naïve enough to think that everyone she meets is going to be a good person, and she’s not taking a single chance when it comes to Henry.

“You wouldn’t be imposing in the slightest. Our shift finishes at midnight.”

Emma turns around to Mary Margaret and hisses, “if he murders us, I’m coming back to life to kill you again.”

“I would expect nothing less.”

-/-

“So, what do you do?”

“David,” Mary Margaret sighs. “Don’t make him uncomfortable.”

“He’s sleeping on our couch. I can ask him what he does.”

“Be nice.”

“I’m getting my Masters in Civil Engineering at NYU.”

Emma lets out a low whistle before catching herself. Damn. That’s impressive, especially considering she’s currently in a bunch of lit classes with eighteen-year-olds who couldn’t care less about the classes they’re in. They also complain about having class at eight in the morning and then finishing all of their classes by noon, but, really, she can’t be bothered by them too much. If her life had gone the way theirs had, she imagines she would complain about being up at eight in the morning, too.

Hell, she does now. Just for entirely different reasons.

“Something to say about that, love?” Killian asks, both brows raised.

She bites her tongue at the name. He’s been letting them fly for both she and Mary Margaret all night, so it really must be a force of habit and not him trying to get into her pants.

“Not a thing.”

“So what do you plan on doing with that?” David asks Killian.

“Well, I am planning on – ”

“Mom.”

Oh shit.

Emma turns around and sees Henry standing in the hallway. He’s in his pajamas, his hair pushed up from where he’s been sleeping, and he only has one sock on. How the hell does that always happen?

“Kid, what are you doing awake?”

“You guys are loud. Who’s that?”

Emma looks between Henry and Killian, trying to figure out how the hell to explain this to a child.

“A friend,” she quickly answers. “He’s going to sleep on the couch tonight before he leaves in the morning to go back home.”

“Where is he from?”

“New York.”

“How do you know him?”

“Alright,” Emma sighs, going toward Henry and gently placing her hands on his shoulders before guiding him back to his room, closing the door behind them. “It’s late, and you need to go back to bed. We’re going to the playground in the morning, remember?��

“The TV man said it was going to snow.”

“Well, when has a little snow ever stopped us?”

She gets Henry back in bed and cuddles up beside him, tucking him in and fixing his hair before kissing his forehead and sighing. She’s exhausted, desperately needs to be in her own bed, but that probably won’t happen tonight.

“Did you have a good day at school?” Emma whispers while she still strokes Henry’s hair.

“Mhm.”

“Did you give your cards to your class?”

“Yep! Can I eat my candy?”

“Right now?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to say no to that one. You’ll get far too much energy, and then you’d have to brush your teeth again.”

“Nooo,” Henry giggles, squirming as Emma runs her fingers over his belly. “I don’t want to brush my teeth again.”

“Then I guess candy will have to wait for the morning.”

Henry sighs and shifts in his bed, burying his face into his pillow. He’s quiet, so Emma doesn’t say anything, hoping that maybe he’s going to fall asleep easily. Henry’s going to be in a mood in the morning. She can already tell. Hopefully, and it is a big hope, he’ll sleep in.

There’s almost a 100% certainty that he won’t.

“Is that man your boyfriend?”

Emma nearly chokes on her own tongue.

“What?”

Henry twists around until she can see his face again. “Avery said since I don’t have a dad, that my mom must have a boyfriend. Do you kiss him?”

His face is so twisted over the thought of Emma kissing someone that she can barely hold in her laughter. Her stomach is probably about as twisted as Henry’s face is.

“No, kid, that man is not my boyfriend. I don’t have one, but I promise if I get one, you’ll be the first one to know.”

He won’t be. If she ever does decide to date again, Henry won’t be meeting anyone until she’s somehow sure that everything will go right.

She has no idea how people do this.

It takes a few more minutes for Henry to fall back asleep, soft puffs of air hitting against her neck, and when she’s sure that he’s sound asleep, she carefully untangles herself and moves out of his bed, quietly exiting his room and going back out into the hallway. Mary Margaret, David, and Killian are all sitting in the living room, quietly talking, and Emma tries to slip past them and into her own bedroom only for David to call her over to hear some story about how Killian managed to get here from London. She listens to half of it, but she’s not nearly as intrigued by the stranger in her apartment. When he was nothing but a handsome customer, he was fine. This is much too much.

And that’s exactly why she excuses herself to her room, slipping out of her uniform and taking a shower to wash away the smell of food and alcohol and everything she hates about her job.

She’s going to smell like garlic bread for the rest of her life.

By the time she’s finished, has braid her hair back, brushed her teeth, washed her face, and changed into a pair of pajamas, it’s far past three in the morning. She needs to go to sleep, but she’s not leaving Henry unattended. As quietly as possible, she grabs an extra blanket and steps out into the main room of the apartment, hoping that Killian is asleep and stays that way.

Because this is her life, he is obviously wide awake and sitting at the kitchen table with a still steaming mug of what smells like tea in front of him.

He looks up the moment her bedroom door clicks behind her.

Shit.

“Swan,” he nods.

She nods. How rude would she be to ignore him and walk to Henry’s room?

“Oh. You’re still up.”

“It would seem so.”

“Do you need something? Another blanket? A pillow? Is Netflix not working?”

Killian shakes his head and takes a sip of his tea. She didn’t even know they had tea. Mary Margaret must have had some.

“I’m fine. I assure you that the three of you have been nothing but hospitable when I was fine to find a motel.” He reaches up and scratches behind his ear. She tries her best to ignore the fact that the fingers underneath his glove don’t move. “If I had known you had a son, I – ”

The hair on the back of her neck stands. “You would have what?”

“I would have never accepted Mary Margaret’s proposal. I’m sure you don’t want someone you don’t know being that close to your kid.”

“No, I don’t. You could be the nicest guy in the world, but don’t think I’m taking my eyes off you for a second.”

“I would despair if you did.”

Emma scoffs and turns her head away. Stupidly, she looks back. “If you want to spike your tea, I think we have some whiskey.”

“Are you trying to get me drunk?”

“I’m off the clock now. I feel like you might deserve it.”

His head tilts back in quiet, broken laughter. “Aye, I suppose I do. It’s been a banner night.”

“I don’t know her or anything, but your girlfriend is obviously an idiot to cheat on you.”

“You don’t know anything about me either.”

“I know that very few people deserve to have their heart broken like that.”

“Is that what happened to you? You had your heart broken?”

She tugs the blanket around her shoulders. “That’s not your business.”

“Forgive me, love. You’re something of an open book to me. I didn’t mean to overstep.”

Now she’s the one who needs a drink.

This has not been her day.

Far too much love.

Far too many thoughts of Neal.

Far too many British men thinking they know her when they don’t.

“You don’t know anything about me either.”

Killian sighs and takes another long sip of his tea. “I know you hate Valentine’s Day and have a son while also living with another couple who are slightly older than you. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out a few things about you just as I’m sure you’ve done the same to me.”

Emma almost protests. But only almost. He’s right. She’s been watching people for a long time, and it’s easy to know that he uses his looks more than his intelligence to initially make people be fond of him. He’s charming, but he’s also smart. He’s studying a crazy difficult subject at a school that isn’t exactly for slackers, and while he may secretly be an asshole for his girlfriend to cheat on him, she doesn’t get that feeling.

She gets the feeling that he might be as down on her luck as she is sometimes.

“I’m getting the whiskey,” she blurts out. She’s not tired anymore, and if she goes to Henry’s room, she’s going to end up not being able to sleep. “Do you like hot chocolate?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had any.”

“Well, we’re changing that.”

Emma has obviously lost her mind in some kind of sleep-deprived, stressed-out kind of way, but she finds it easy to talk to Killian.

Which is dumb.

She wanted to hate him.

She really did.

But he’s easy to talk to despite the fact that she’s mad about that and that it’s probably one of the worst days of his life. She would assume. She doesn’t know.

What she does know, however, is that he was in the Navy for one year, was involved in an accident, and the compensation he got for that funded his move to the US and his education, which is a lot more information than what he shared with David earlier. It’s kind of fascinating, if not a little tragic, and maybe today wasn’t the worst day of his life.

She may have a little bit of whiskey in her, but she’s not about to spill all of her secrets.

Then again, she’s never going to see this man again. He’ll be a fleeting memory, just a ship passing in the night.

But no. She won’t share. Wounds never close if you keep picking at them, and she’s not going to do that.

Instead she tells him she just started at a local community college and that she hopes to get into the nursing program. She’s never been great at science, but it’s a good career with good pay, and by the time she’s finished with the program Henry will hopefully be at least a little self-sufficient. Besides, she’s got David and Mary Margaret to help her, and she can handle it.

She always has.

His mom was apparently a nurse, and she doesn’t ask about the way he refers to her in the past tense. It’s easier not to. Instead she listens to him share stories of she’d once told him when he was younger. It’s all crazy and stressful, and if Emma didn’t want a better life for she and Henry so badly, she’d probably drop all of her classes out of fear right now.

But the better life is calling.

Killian keeps the conversation flowing from topic to topic more easily than anyone has a right to, and he only occasionally stops, a dark flash settling in his eyes and in the curve of his lips. But just as quickly as it appears, it disappears and he talks of his favorite shows or the runs he likes to go on early in the morning when, miraculously, most of Manhattan is asleep.

“Thanks for this, love.”

“For what?” Emma asks.

“For keeping my mind occupied. I don’t – well, I bloody don’t know what I’d do if I’d stumbled into another restaurant tonight.”

Emma leans forward and tears apart a piece of her pop tart. “You’d be sleeping on some other bartender’s couch.”

“There’s not currently a lot of sleeping going on.”

She laughs and takes another bite before looking down at her phone. “Holy shit. It’s almost six thirty. How are either of us awake?”

“I’m fueled by anger, sadness, and the conversation of an incredibly charming woman.”

His brows wiggle with his words, his smile more of a smirk, and in any other situation, she’d have the urge to slap him.

“I’m going to be dead inside today.”

“I should probably let you go to bed, Swan. I’m sure you’ve got plans today that require sleep.”

“Yeah, I do. I – ”

Almost as if on cue, Henry’s door creaks open, and he walks out into the living room. His hair is disheveled like it always is when he wakes up, and now he is officially missing both socks.

Why can kids not sleep in?

“I’m hungry,” he mumbles, wiping his eyes. “Can we have pancakes? With the faces on them?”

“Kid, I – ”

“I can make them,” Killian interrupts. “If that’s okay with you, of course.”

“Um, yeah,” Emma nods. “Yeah, that’s fine. I’m going to make some coffee, and then I’ll help. Henry, go brush your teeth.”

“Okay.”

“And I’m going to check to make sure you actually did.”

Henry groans, and Emma hears Killian chuckle. “I was exactly the same as a lad. So, pancakes with faces on them? Where do I find the ingredients?”

-/-

The pancakes are really good.

Much better than the ones she makes, which seems impossible when the recipe is on the box.

And Killian is fantastic at entertaining Henry’s questions, even when Henry asks about Killian’s gloved hand. He makes up some story about being attacked by Peter Pan and being like Captain Hook, and it helps Emma be a little less mortified that her child has no manners.

So on no sleep and a slight hangover, Emma has breakfast with her kid and a half-stranger, and it’s not the worst thing in the world.

It’s actually kind of nice.

And when Killian leaves to catch a train home, he slips her a note with his phone number. He leaves the ball in her court, which she likes, and even though it takes a few weeks, she does end up calling.

Well, texting. It’s easier that way.

Really, the whole thing is easy, and Emma is as surprised by that as anyone. For once in her life, she has hope that something is going to work out.

-/-

Next year Valentine’s Day is spent eating pizza with Killian and Henry with the only acknowledgement of the day being Henry giving the two of them the leftover cards from his class.

It’s perfect.

The year after that Killian doesn’t have to travel five hours to see them.

That’s somehow more than perfect.

“Can we say that our anniversary is Valentine’s Day, love?” Killian asks her as his lips press into her temple.

“Never,” she sighs, “but maybe the day isn’t as bad as it used to be.”

[thewinedarksea]

thief/assassin au pt 4

ft. (the mention of) handcuffs and a river. also liel’s flip-floppy emotions. mildly suggestive.

(part 1, part 2, part 3, part 3.5)

Sirens drifted through the air, faint from distance. There were at least five blocks between them and Liel but she walked faster nonetheless, gait casual as she strolled down the chill city streets. 

A cold wind skittered after her, slicing through her thin shirt; she’d been counting on a getaway car to provide warmth, so she was clad only in a pair of leggings and a top made for attraction and not practicality, her toes frozen inside the thin leather of her boots. Another gust of wind and she curved her shoulders inwards, tightening her grip around the hot chocolate cup in her hands. Warmth bled through the cheap cardboard and into her fingers, a mild protection against the temperature. It was the only thing keeping her going. 

Well. That, and the promise of getting revenge on Johann’s worthless hide ten times over. Liel was thinking a lifetime subscription to some truly awful porn mailing lists, maybe a stint in a minimum security prison depending on how long it took for her to get back to her hotel. Half a million in diamonds, ripe for the taking, and she’d had to abandon them all. Idiot kid. She didn’t know what street corner Emory had picked him off of, but he could damn well put him back. 

She stepped off the street and onto a bridge, blending with the horde of pedestrians making their way across. And there, propped up against the railing, her long black coat whipping in the wind, stood Celine. 

Despite the cold and the bustle of people flowing past her she looked unbothered, eyes on the river’s banks, just one of the many citizens taking a break from her everyday life to admire the view.

The sight of her sent a confusing tangle of emotions rushing through Liel: fear, always and ever-present, because she hadn’t survived ten odd years as a criminal without a healthy dose of being able to recognize a predator when she saw one, and wanting, too, sharp and immediate as a knife to the gut. More than both of those though was the annoyance, a matchstick flare that promised to ignite.  

Liel should walk away. She should go back to her hotel, drink a staggering amount of wine, and sink into the suite’s luxurious tub until the water washed away all the frustrations and disappointments of the afternoon. She should. But Liel had just had two weeks of planning go up in smoke thanks to a jumpy kid and an early guard patrol, and all that irritation was just begging for an outlet. Celine would do nicely.

She tossed her cup into a nearby trash can and wandered over, propping herself up on the railing, so close her arm brushed Celine’s sleeve. The river below was a chaotic swirl of dark water, shiny bits of aluminum and old coffee cups caught tumbling in its hold. On its banks the sidewalks teemed with life, awash with shoppers catching up on last minute holiday gifts. 

“I was going to complain about the cold, but I find I’m plenty warm just by being around you.” 

Celine didn’t so much as glance at her, her eyes fixed on one of the cafes lining the waterway. Liel squinted, trying to make out what she was looking at, but saw nothing besides some red striped umbrellas and a few customers enjoying a meal in the freezing cold. Masochists. 

“Because you’re from hell,” Liel elaborated. “Like a demon. Hellfire. It’s very amusing.” 

A faint smirk touched Celine’s lips, but that was the extent of her reaction. No teasing, no clever remarks. Not even an acknowledgement that the last time they’d seen each other Celine had had her hands around Liel’s neck, before they’d shifted to other, less mentionable places. 

The annoyance flared brighter the longer she ignored her. Liel wanted to draw a reaction, to claw some control from her perfect grip. Crack it, like she had the night of the party, Celine’s mouth on hers, gasping and half-breathless, teeth and tongue and sweet words that had spilled like a river from her lips.

Liel smiled up at her, batting her eyelashes in the way that normally made people fall all over themselves to give her what she wanted. 

“What’s a girl have to do to get some attention around here?”

“Try coming back when I’m not working.”

Okay, see, that was just rude. Liel had been working every time they’d crossed paths, but that hadn’t stopped Celine from fucking her over or just fucking her, period. It was called a double standard, and Liel had no intention of letting it get in her way. 

“Ooh, are you on a job?” She slid closer, pressing their sides flush together, and made a production of following Celine’s gaze back to the cafe. It didn’t take long for her to hone in on the trio sitting off to one side, their clothes worth far more than the cafe’s old facade warranted. The woman on the left was definitely packing a gun. 

“A hundred dollars says it’s the one in pink.” A shot in the dark, but it landed, Celine’s expression going even more carefully still. Liel pressed the advantage. “I could make some phone calls. I’m sure the police would be very interested in knowing someone hired an assassin to go after Miss Dior and Co. over there.” 

“And I could snap your neck right now and throw your body over the edge.” Celine’s voice was as cool and dangerous as ice. “But you wouldn’t make me do that, would you pet?”

The fear came back with a vengeance, her annoyance snuffed out beneath the douse of ice water sliding down her spine. It might have been a mistake antagonizing the girl who killed people for a living. A small, small mistake. 

“That does sound unpleasant,” Liel said as lightly as she could manage. “My neck is much prettier when it’s in one piece. Tell you what, I’ll just come back when you’re not working.” 

Celine’s hand lashed out, gloved fingers wrapping around Liel’s wrist as she moved to step away. 

“Oh no,” she said softly. “You said you wanted attention.” 

She was watching Liel now, cafe abandoned for more interesting prey. Her eyes slid over Liel’s body, noting the lack of a coat, the goosebumps littering the bare skin of her arms. Despite the chill Liel felt herself heat up, all too aware that the last time Celine had seen her it had been without a stitch of clothing. From the smug slant of her mouth she remembered it, too. 

“Poor thing. You’re shivering.” She tugged Liel in front of her, her head against her shoulder. Celine was unfairly warm despite the weather, warmth bleeding from her in far more pleasant ways than the hot chocolate had managed. Damage control, Liel reassured herself as she snuggled closer, allowing herself to melt into the heat. She had to protect her pretty neck, after all.

“And here I thought we were getting along so much better,” Celine murmured. Her breath ghosted against Liel’s ear, lips brushing skin with every word. “Threats don’t suit you.”

“Everything suits me,” Liel informed the sky because, honestly, she didn’t have much more to lose. It stared back, a pale, dispassionate gray that put her in mind of a blade. “Also, I’m angry at you.”

“Well, we can’t have that, can we?” Celine’s voice echoed in her ear as she wrapped an arm around Liel’s middle, drawing her ever closer. “Why so upset, sweetling? I thought our evening together went very well.”

“You tied me to a bed.” Liel’s legs struggled to hold up beneath the assault of Celine’s pet names, the scent of her rose perfume curling around her, light as a kiss.

“I did,” Celine agreed. “But I seem to recall that you begged me to do it. Quite prettily, too.”

Liel flushed all the way down, cheeks burning red. Memories stirred, flickers of Celine’s mouth on her neck, between her legs, biting at the skin of her thighs. She’d worn the bruises she left for a week, and the memory of them a hell of a lot longer.

“You didn’t untie me,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. One of the hotel staff had found her and boy had that been a particularly humiliating conversation to have. She’d been lucky the maid had proven sympathetic to her tale of a prank gone wrong. Luckier still that Celine hadn’t been cruel enough to call the police.

She could sense Celine’s smirk where it rested against the side of her head. “Consider it your punishment.” 

“For what?”

“You stole a drive from me when we first met.”

“That was three months ago!”  

A few heads turned in their direction at Liel’s cry, glancing away when they saw the two of them entwined. Liel made an effort to squirm out of Celine’s grip, swearing at the lack of give. Pettiness was her deal. It looked way cuter on her.

With an exasperated noise Celine crowded her forward against the rail, bending Liel over until Celine’s chin rested on the top of her head, her body pinned between metal and flesh with no easy method of escape.

“Stay still,” Celine chided. Her grip tightened until Liel subsided, slumping back against her. “That job cost me a lot of money, to say nothing of what it did to my reputation. You’re lucky all I did was tie you up.”

And threaten to kill her, and actually try to kill her. The list went on.

 “Can’t imagine how great your reputation is going to be if you get yourself caught throwing me off a bridge,” Liel muttered.

“Believe me, there are far more interesting things I would rather to do to you.” 

That sounded promising. Interesting typically required alive, which was a step up from a watery grave. Liel wriggled even further back, pressing herself into Celine until any distance between them was eaten up. 

“Elaborate on that?” she asked, sweet as she could manage. 

Across the river Celine’s target stood. Her pink dress, terribly impractical for the weather, swirled around her legs as the wind blew again, a bright streak against the dull pavement. At the motion Celine straightened, stepping away from Liel as quickly as she’d grabbed her. 

The frigid rush of air that crept into the space she left set Liel trembling all over again, colder now that she’d found protection and lost it. 

“Business calls,” Celine said, composed once more. God Liel hated her. “You have my room key?” 

And her bracelet, and half her credit cards. Liel hadn’t taken her gun, though, so honestly she should be heralded as a paragon of self-restraint. She didn’t bring that point up though. 

“I’m still cold.” Scared and pissed off, too, but she doubted she would care about that. 

Celine’s mouth twisted in amused exasperation, and then she stripped out of her coat, wrapping the garment around Liel’s shoulders like a shawl. The fabric was warm, the scent of her perfume clinging to the silky lining. 

“Be a good girl and wait for me in my room.” She leaned forward, pressing a kiss to Liel’s cheek. Her lipstick left behind a mark. “I’ll bring my handcuffs.”

“What if I say no?”

Celine paused in the middle of turning away, an eyebrow raising in mock surprise. “I thought you wanted me to elaborate. Although if you prefer the river, I will have to ask for my key back.” 

When Liel made no move to hand it over she smiled, teeth gleaming sharp in the sunlight. “It’s the Royal Suite. Don’t bother with clothes.”

[darksaiyangoku]

Bloodlines AU: Apex Cosplays

Joethefriendlyponybro: I've got another skit for y'all. And this time, it's a skit based off of DarkSaiyan's cosplay stories but set in my next gen RWBY AU. Let's see what I can share what strange stuff me and DarkSaiyan came up with, shall we?

[Vale City Comic-Con, the Belladonna-Wukong family's planned vacation spot for quite some time was just down the street. At a nearby bus stop stood Sun and his and Blake's daughter, Alexandria. Alex for short.

Sun wore a mustard-yellow jumpsuit along with brown gloves and tinted orange goggles. His hair was scruffier than usual to reflect his cosplay getup as Mirage from Apex Legends.

To his side sat Alex wearing a mostly black but also purple getup, her long and scruffy black hair wrapped up in a ponytail as Wraith from the same game.]

Sun: Whoo!!!! Haven’t been in cosplay gear in such a long time. I feel like I’m back at school again, hehe.

Alex: *removes eye contacts, revealing green eyes* Dad, when was the last time you dressed up?

Sun: Let’s see.......I think it was back when Team CFVY were visiting Vacuo. We all decided to cosplay as the MCU heroes. *chuckling* I called dibs on Star Lord. Neptune was piiiiiissed!

Alex: *jumps on top of bus stop* I think Elsa wanted to go as Sif this year. But, with tending to her folks' restaurant, I guess she had to work on filling out orders for con-goers.

Sun: Well, at least Ren and Nora are making some great cash with their kids this year. *muttering* Blake isn’t taking this as well as I thought she would...

Alex: Is mom taking it that bad? Sorry, cat ears. Couldn't help but pick it up.

Sun: Not really. She just hasn’t been in cosplay in long time. It’s kinda strange for her to be back in the den of the nerds. That.... and she’s getting looks from some thirsty boys.

Alex: You're both running Menagerie's own combat school. Not to mention ensuing Faunus relations across Remnant- -Wait. Who's ogling my mom? Who do I have to cast a hex on to remind them she's a married woman?

Sun: *points* That guy on the right at the bench on the end of the street.

[She turned to see a man thirsting over a photo of Blake on her Scroll. Alex immediately went into pack mode, shouting at the creep.]

Alex: *glares at creep, eyes glowing turquoise* HEY SHITHEAD! My mom is taken, so why don't you back off before I twist you into a pretzel, fondue you and feed you to an Ursa?! *bares teeth, resembling fangs*

Perv: *looks up* Oh my- -! *runs away*

Sun: *nods head* That’s my girl!

Alex: *grins at Sun, eyes no longer glowing* I aim to please! *looks around* Where is mom, anyway?

Sun: *smiling* Getting a smoothie. I might join her later. You're still meeting up with Rhiannon, right?

Alex: Yeah. Rhiannon and I are supposed to meet up at that smoothie joint. I wonder what's taking both of them so long?

Sun: Probably got sidetracked. You know what Remnant’s like.

[Before they continue, Alex gets ambushed from behind in a surprise embrace by a red-haired, ponytailed girl with green eyes and a blue tunic.]

Rhiannon: Sneak hug!

Alex: MREOW!

Sun: WOAH!!!! Rhiannon, hi!

Rhiannon: *sets Alex down, cackling* What's good, Mr. Wukong?

[Blake shortly followed. Dressed in black military-style gear as she noticed her daughter's friend being as sneaky as ever. She was panting as if she were out of breath and holding a drink.]

Alex: *stands down, blinking* Rhi? I thought you picked a costume.

Blake: *panting* Finally...got...that...smoothie.

Alex: *looks up* Uh, what was the hold up?

Blake: The thirsty boys, honey. They can be a handful.

Rhiannon: Mrs. B tried jogging in her Bangalore costume as well. Guess that thick padding got to her, first.

Blake: In my defense, I didn’t think it would be that heavy. I've definitely jogged in padding before.

Alex: Never said you didn't. So me and Rhi are headed to the park. Dad told me a bit about your cosplay funk. *lowers ears* Something wrong?

Blake: I haven’t done this in a while. I feel kinda rusty. But... *blushing* I needed a break from all the stress so we could be with you and Rhiannon. *looks down sadly*

Alex: *puts hand on Blake's shoulder* Mom, you look fine. That's why we dressed up for this con, right?

Rhiannon: *folds arms* She's got you there, Mrs. B. Not like I went for it. I just wanted to hang with you guys.

Blake: *smiles* True. You’re all right, I gotta loosen up.

Alex: *points up* I request as your daughter and aspiring Huntress to enjoy yourself since there's a lot on our plate once the school year starts back up again. Besides, *phases out torso, arms and lower legs* I can look the part as Wraith with my Semblance.

Blake: *laughs* Okay, I surrender!

Alex: *phases back in* Also, I'll be sure to smoke any thirsty boy who gives you bedroom eyes.

Rhiannon: I can tie 'em up with one of my rope bolts if it'll help.

Blake: I'll handle them myself, girls. But thank you.

Alex: Whatever you say, mom. *hugs Blake* And thanks for paying for this trip.

[Blake smiled, embracing her daughter back.]

Blake: Oh, honey. You deserve a treat for your hard work.

Sun: Did it have to come from my bank account though?

Alex: *releases Blake* Oh. Uh...Rhi?

Rhiannon: I 'unno. Some major bounty or escort mission he undertook? *checks Scroll* Come on, Alex. Let's get our photoshoot done.

Sun: Have fun, pumpkin. Try not to cloak in public.

Alex: Sure, dad. *walks off to the park with Rhiannon*

Sun: So, what mission was it last? The- -The one where I would split my paycheck with you to pay for this con trip?

Blake: I think it was the mission where I teamed up with the Red Flowers to stop a horde of Creeps.

Sun: *puts finger up to chin* Or, was it the trawler escort at Sockeye Junction? You know how pirates get around fishing villages.

Blake: Or maybe it was the one where Yang almost set a town on fire to kill some Arachnoids?

Sun: That's still a dumb name for spider Grimm. I don't know how Professort Port outvoted Oobleck on that but- -Nevermind. *half hugs Blake, wrapping tail around her waste and holding her like a dancer, barely spilling the smoothie* That's a good look for you, bee tee dubs. *grins*

Blake: *giggles* Sun, stop it! We’re in public.

Sun: 20 years of marriage. I think I've earned the chance to do stuff like this with you.

Blake: Gods. You’re so mischievous. *wraps her arms behind Sun’s neck* And that’s why I love you.

Sun: *picks up smoothie with tail* Love you too, babe. Shall I give you some sugar?

Blake: *pulls him in* Do it, honey.

[Sun pulled Blake in for a kiss. They practically glowed like bioluminescent mushrooms as their auras glowed with their embrace. They let go upon hearing a sloshy splat hit the pavement.]

Sun: *notices spilled smoothie* Uh, whoops.

Blake: Oh no! *teary-eyed* Damn you gravity!

Sun: Uh...I think there are milkshakes at the local Beetroot's we can get instead. Plus, their new salmon burger looks pretty good. *pulls out debit card* And I got membership there! Huah! *tosses debit card into smoothie pile* ...Man, how did the shopkeep do it back then?!

Blake: ...I like salmon.

Sun: See? Win-win! And I'll pay for the milkshakes.

Blake: *small smile* I’d like that.

Sun: Good husband powers no jutsu! *roundhouse kicks, tripping and landing ass-first into the smoothie pile, crushing cup* Ah, crap. These jeans were a rental.

Blake: *laughing* I guess now we’re even!

Sun: Yay. Anyway, onto the burgers! *wraps arm and tail around Blake* I'll let you wear my cosplay goggles for sex tonight~! *winks*

Blake: *purring* Mmm, I like sound of that.

BLATANT TRANSITION THING

Joethefriendlyponybro: Well, that was certainly something. Hopefully your viewers enjoy it as much as I enjoyed doing this skit with you. This was fun, thanks.

DarkSaiyanGoku: Don’t mention it bro, always happy to help out. I might do more of these RPs more often with anyone else, if they ask.

[sapphiresterreart]

Misery Loves Company: KaiShin Idea

KaiShin would’ve happen eventually in this idea, but I lost steam towards the end, so. Conan might seem a bit...OOC? But well, I was aiming for angst so, anyway. This is all I got.

Summary: An almost-kidnapping. A heartbreak. And a little bit of magic.

Misery Loves Company

There was something…odd about KID tonight. Maybe it was his posture: stiff and rigid unlike the usual fluid movements. Maybe it was his smile: a little too wide and a little too strained. Or maybe it was the fact he wouldn’t meet his gaze. Whatever it was, Conan hoped it wasn’t too serious. The lack of their usual friendly banter was unnerving. Still, he gave chase.

Conan burst onto the rooftop. “Kaitou–” he blinked. “…KID?”

There was no one there. Nothing but the wide open space of an empty rooftop under a full moons light. He strode to the edge. Nothing. No sign of KID ever being up there. Had he fallen for one of the thief’s tricks? He gazed at the cityscape below a beat longer before he turned.

A leather texture slapped over his mouth. Instinct ripped a scream from his throat and he flailed for his watch. KID didn’t wear leather gloves. There was no one else on the rooftop. So who the–

“Shut it, brat.” A deep but smooth voice snapped.

Relief flared. Not Gin. The other arm manhandled him until it was snaked around his stomach with his arms pinned to his sides. He wriggled, kicking anything within reach. He managed to score a few hits in what felt like someone’s chest before the man (it had to be a man, women didn’t have such large hands) shook him. He screamed harder. The hand on his mouth tightened to a painful degree.

“Behave.” The stranger growled. Amidst the loud rustling of fabric in his ears, his captor stood and twisted him till his face was smashed against the stranger’s chest. Now he was held in place by just one arm. Damnit. And his left wrist was still pinned.

The man walked. The movements were jarring. Weight shifting heavily on one side. So was the man injured? Limping? Or was it an old injury? The weight shifted. Definitely the left side. If he could get down, then he could smash a soccer-ball into the jerk’s leg. But what did the man even want? Was he after him? Or KID? Part of a larger group or just an average thug? Couldn’t be the organization, They wouldn’t attack so openly or let him live. So then…?

The wind whipped his hair. An engine revved. The sound of whirring blades neared. He swallowed. Helicopter? If this person had an accomplice driving the helicopter then the police wouldn’t have a chance to–Damn. Guess he think fast.

He lifted his leg, intending to grab the knob on his shoe and clock the guy in the stomach, when something whizzed by his ear. The man cursed, hold loosening, but didn’t drop him. Conan took the chance.  He cranked the knob, reared his foot, and snapped it forwards. The hold dropped and he tumbled backwards to the floor.

“Shit!” A dark patch colored the attacker’s shoulder.

The stranger reached for him but a card indented the concrete between the two. Conan scuttled backwards, straight into a waiting thief’s arms. Or at least I hope it’s– He craned his neck to see a familiar monocle and exhaled.

He leveled a glare at his savior. “Mind telling me why–”

“Later!” KID leapt to the side as a gunshot rang.

Oh. “Okay.”

KID sprinted for the edge. “Hang on.”

Quickly, he latched onto the arm around his waist. Small fingers curled into the white fabric. KID used his free limb to shoot at their attackers. A thrill shot up his spine as they free fell. From what little he could see, apparently whatever he shot involved pink gas or smoke. Maybe paint? No, probably sleeping gas. Hopefully Nakamori-keibu had noticed the sounds.

White erupted above them as the hang-glider opened. KID banked around the building. Catching an updraft, he soared back above the building and regained the helicopter’s attention if the roaring sound of blades whipping nearby was any indication. The phantom thief swerved left and right, purposely evading any aimed shots. Conan studied the skyscrapers below him.

He spotted an approaching building. “Hey!” He called over the rushing wind and jerked a finger. “Drop me off there!”

“And let them grab you again?” KID shouted back.

He scowled. “Just–!”

“Nah,” The thief tightened the hold and jerked as a wayward breeze sent them higher. “There’s no lakes nearby. Where will the helicopter crash?”

“Then at least the police station!”

“And let them grab me? No thanks.”

Conan groaned. Shoulda brought my parachute-backpack. The thief twisted, the hang-glider rolled upside-down, and he shot another card. A boom echoed behind them and he wiggled just enough to see white smoke before they toppled right side-up. With the haze behind them, KID jerked and they curved down and into a street. The choppers grew fainter and he sighed. Somehow, KID was able to lose them.

They continued to fly, weaving between streets, until a familiar building came into view. Mouri Agency. They alighted atop the roof and KID let him loose. Conan pivoted but the thief was already walking away.

“Hey!” He ran after. “Don’t ignore me! Why–”

“Sorry ‘bout that, Tantei-kun.” The airy dismissal only riled him up. “Do take care, hmm?”

“Whoa, you can’t just–”

“Do me a favor and return this to Nakamori-keibu, won’t you?” A glittering blue light soared towards him and he hastily stopped to catch it. “Bye!”

Little legs were too short to reach the jumping thief. Just as Conan reached the edge, KID was gone. He exhaled. “Damn thief…”

He ventured to the rooftop exit, huffing. Just who were those guys? Why did they grab him? Did they know who he was? No…they would’ve killed him right away, right? Or…He was at a KID heist, after all. Known as the KID Killer to boot. So then…then they had to be after that damn thief. Did they think they could use him against the phantom? The criminal did have that ‘no-one-gets-hurt’ rule. But then…?

His phone buzzed as he walked down the steps. He checked the device. Shinichi’s phone? From Ran? He fished his bow-tie out of his pockets and adjusted the dials.

He pivoted to head up the stairs. Best not be caught by accidental eavesdroppers. “Ah, Ran?”

“Shinichi?”

Wow her voice didn’t sound good. What happened?

“Yeah?”

Static crackled on the other end of the line. His childhood friend sucked in air and spoke in a rush, too quick to hear. He opened the door and stepped into the moonlight.

“What? Sorry, you spoke too fast.”

Ran repeated herself, slowly and shakily. His heart dropped into his chest. The door clicked shut behind him. Time seemed to stand still. It couldn’t be true.

“…what?”

It couldn’t be true.

“I’ve waited long enough.” His best-friend, his potential girlfriend, sobbed. “It’s time I moved on.”

“What? Ran, where is this–”

“Three years.” Her voice trembled. “It’s been three years since you vanished. Three years since I’ve spent more than one day with you. Three years since you’ve gone to school. Three years since… Three years since you were here.” She slowed, quieting. “I’ve put my life on hold for three years. Please…don’t ask me to wait anymore, Sh-Kudo-kun.”

And just like that his world fell apart. He dropped his eyes. Dropped to the ground. He curled into a ball against the door, studied his too small palm curling into a fist, and sighed.

“…I understand, Ra-Mouri-chan.” His own voice cracked. “You’ve waited long enough.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

He hung up. This…wasn’t how he wanted the night to end. He flipped the phone closed and dragged a palm down his face, fighting the urge to cry. Three years. He held on for three years in hopes his old life was waiting for him. But now…?

What was waiting now?

Nothing but broken hearts.

He sighed and forced himself to stand. He needed time. But he didn’t have time. He ran out of that three years ago. He needed space. He needed to think. He needed…

He needed a friend.

“Damnit.” He kicked at the ground and spat. “You’re on your own, Kudo-kun. Always have been…”

He exhaled. Damnit. He didn’t have time for thoughts like this! He didn’t have– he halted. What didn’t he have? He didn’t… He didn’t have his life back.

Anger rushed through him. It wasn’t fair! And damn if he didn’t feel like a petulant child but– Three years! Three years! Three years of being in the wrong body. Of holding hands and fake smiles. Of leading adults to answers because he couldn’t say the truth without being believed. Of being picked up and hauled anywhere someone bigger than him pleased. Of–of–of…

Lies. Sorrow cooled the anger. ‘Conan’ was nothing more than a massive lie.

“One truth prevails, huh?” Conan laughed bitterly. “Only one truth…” It took him a moment to realize it, but his pants were damp. “Ah…”

His cheeks were thoroughly soaked. He needed to change. But to do so would mean facing Ran and–well, that wasn’t an option. Forcing himself to breathe, he stood. Alright. Fine. Maybe he didn’t have his life back. Maybe he’d never get his life back. But he could still be a detective. He could still… What else was there besides being a detective? Soccer?

His phone buzzed. He glanced at it, finding Ran calling Conan. Probably asking where he was. She wouldn’t find him tonight, though. Conan needed a break. For just a little while he needed to be…whoever the hell he was without a mask.

He opened the rooftop door and crept down the stairs. Quick glances confirmed no one was in the stair well and he hurried down the steps as quickly and as quietly as he could. He knew it was cruel not to tell anyone he was fine. He knew they cared. He knew they thought he was only a 10 year old child. He knew a lot of things. But what did he ever know, really? He was living a lie, after all.

He was at the bottom of the steps, almost home free, when a door opened. He turned just enough to see a tear-stained Ran spotting him and he was out. He flung himself along the sidewalk, running fast. She would no doubt follow. So he checked the street and crossed. He ran. A feminine yell followed his retreat but he ran until he couldn’t hear her footsteps. He ran until he found himself standing in front of familiar gates. Right now, Suburu was somewhere in there. Right now, he needed somewhere to hide. Somewhere no one could find him.

So he ran.

It wasn’t until his lungs burned and his legs ached and the streets had changed did he stop. He scanned the street-lit area. His phone buzzed. A rundown shopping center, empty of people. Perfect. Judging by the condition of the shops and the “remodeling” signs, no one had been around for awhile. So. His phone buzzed. He was alone. The buzzing continued.

Absently, he pulled out both phones and turned them off. Tucking them away, he set to clambering up the chicken-wire gates on one closed building. When he reached the top, he curled on the concrete and sighed.

It was late. He was tired. He’d probably get a cold from the night air. For just once, he didn’t want to think.

He closed his eyes.

It was a long night. He didn’t sleep until the sun rose and warmed the air. It was uncomfortable and his body ached but at least it was warm. Nightmares plagued him and he woke several times. Still, he tried to return to sleep. He’d rather face nightmares of his own mind than the one he was living. He kept his phones off. He just…needed a break.

It wasn’t until he realized that his glasses, Detective Badge, and phones had trackers in them did he remember he couldn’t get a break.

“Conan-kun!” The Shounen Tantei called, followed by Ran’s voice. “Conan-kun?”

He couldn’t stop a groan and rolled over. Let him be miserable in peace. Petulantly, he muttered to himself. “Go ‘way…”

They continued to call until Mitsuhiko raised his voice. “It says he’s here. Is he in one of these buildings?”

The group quieted and Haibara idly commented. “Or on?”

Damn you. He growled because nope. Not today. Not playing child today. Ran wouldn’t let him out her sight and then he’d have to pretend and fake and lie, lie, lie. He pushed himself upright and headed for the back of the building. He scaled down the walls as Ayumi exclaimed “he’s moving!” before he took off.

The group hurried into the same street. “Conan-kun!?!”

“Leave me alone!” He called back, putting on speed. “Go away!”

They gave chase. He checked the area and hurried to the nearest crowded area. He wove between legs, Ran hot on his heels, and dove for for the underground subway. He sprinted down the steps, skipping several, and hopped into the first train about to leave. His heart hammered.

“C’mon…” he chanted.

Ran appeared amongst the crowd.

“C’mon…”

The doors shut on her anguished face.

He averted his gaze and sighed. He climbed into an empty seat and let the train take him to wherever. Vaguely, he heard something about ‘Ekoda final stop’ but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Vibrations hummed in the air as the train glided along the tracks. Idly, he watched as the train emerged above ground and the scenery blurred past him.

He must have dozed because when he woke it was to bustle of a large crowd standing at once. He blinked, dazedly realizing the LED sign in the train interior stated ‘Ekoda’ and he followed the crowd out of the underground and back into open air.

He wandered the unfamiliar streets. Eventually he found himself following the sound of faint excited cheering. It brought him to the center of a local park. His curiosity piqued, he wandered along the path, letting it take him to a clearing where a crowd of children and adults alike sat on the grass before a stage. There, on the raised platform, was none other than–

Huh?

A Kudo Shinichi lookalike performed magic tricks on the stage. But the stranger couldn’t have been impersonating him. The hair was too wild, the grin too wide. So then, who…?

Regardless, the mystery pulled him forwards and he blended into the edge of the audience. He settled on the grass.

The stranger showered the audience with flower petals. The man plucked some from the air and chewed. Conan grinned as he grasped one of the petals, surprised to find it real. He looked back to find the man staggering as his stomach seemed to grow. How–?

“Uh oh…” the man groaned. “It seems I ate too many petals..”

Conan lurched forwards, worried, when the man sneezed and  doves erupted out of the man’s button down shirt. Conan laughed despite himself. Feathers swirled around them and the man yelled as if surprised.

“Where did–Hey! Come back here!” The doves cooed and spiraled through the air. They dipped and dived and flew together. It was beautiful. It was entrancing. It was mysterious. Just who was this guy?

The performer whipped off his silk tie and spun it around until it became a makeshift loop. “I’ll catch you!”

He flipped off his empty top hat. Then, one by one he looped the doves by their beck and feigned a massive struggle, as if the doves were strongly resisting the leash. When he brought them close, he scooped them up in the top hat, twisted it in his hold, and revealed an empty top hat. Conan’s eyes widened. Where did the dove–?

There was only one dove left but it was one the magician couldn’t catch. The dove cooed, as if laughing, as it dodged every attempt. The man wiped his brow, as if exhausted, when the bird flared its wings and drifted into the audience…right onto one small head.

Conan snorted on a laugh, watching the bird preen, and stayed still. The dove settled as if his hair were a nest. He looked to the magician only to find the stranger staring at him with an unreadable gaze. He shifted, uncomfortable under the scrutiny, before a wounded expression shadowed the man’s face.

“Tama-chan!” The man feigned offense. “Don’t you love me?”

The bird ducked her head into feathers.

“Ta-ma-chan!” The stranger whined and let his whole body droop. The audience laughed. He faked a sniffle. “Traitor, I say!” A wild smile lit the face as the man tossed out his arms. “But just you wait! My next trick will absolutely dazzle you.”

And fireworks zipped out from the man’s sleeves. The man continued the antics with an upbeat grin and silly jokes. Conan found himself lost in the magic, just letting himself enjoy the show without analyzing every move. (Not to say he didn’t analyze anything. But his brain needed a break. Just for a bit. Just for now. Let the magic be magical. Just for now)

The untamed energy was infectious. When it came time for the magician’s final bow, he actually found himself disappointed the show was over. Still, a welcome break was a welcome break. And the bird was still on his head.

After the most of the crowd cleared, he made his way towards the stage where a line of children waited. Many begged for an autograph and so he settled in line. Some of the children tried to touch the bird atop his head but he dodged the efforts with a reminder than “Tama-chan isn’t mine. You have to ask Magician-san if you can pet her.”

And so they clambered to the front but the magician herded them back into line. Once it was his turn, the man held out his hand but the bird didn’t move. Huh. Conan reached up and gently plucked the bird into his arms.

Just as he reached to return the bird, the magician commented. “Did you enjoy the show?”

“Oh!” He blinked as the dove pecked his grassy palm. Absently, he stroked the delicate head. “Yes! Thank you, Magician-san. It was…” incredible. “…I needed it.”

The look-alike to his older self studied his face for a beat before he patted his head. “Glad to hear it. Now, looks like your friends are here!”

He tilted his head and turned to look and– “Conan-kun!” Ran and the kiddos approached. “You had us worried sick!”

“Oh, sorry!” He lied through his teeth. “I just wanted to watch…” he turned to introduce the magician only to find him gone. “…the show.”

Ah, well. He had his break. He offered a smile, a genuine one this time. “Let’s head home, okay?”

[facethroughthemirror]

A Little Less Dramatic

[ hey @fanvsfic I’m late to lunch with my mom and grandma so I can post this today enjoy it ]

Crossposted on ao3

Relationships: Donald Doyle/Emily Grey, Vanessa Kimball/Agent Carolina Additional tags: Suicide, Doyle Lives au

Over an hour after landing at what the rebels have termed “Crash Site Bravo” finds General Doyle still in the back of the pelican, perched on a bank of seats with his unarmored head in his gloved hands. The ache from where he’d hit it in the fall caused by the transport being jolted by the explosion has subsided, but the throbbing in his ankle. He can’t bring himself to look down at the discarded helmet at his feet, or at any of the plate armor he’s wearing. Not yet.

It’s war , he tells himself quietly. These things happen. Not everyone makes it back. He’s seen it happen countless times, hundreds of soldiers whose names he had never known slain on the battlefield, scientists and medical staff massacred by Charon’s mercenaries, each and every leader of the Federal Army before him either evacuated or dead, including the man he’d worked for most of his adult life before the... abrupt promotion. Good god, he stopped keeping track of names years ago. There were too many of them after a while to even keep track of. He doesn’t even know how many of them had died for nothing but the benefit of a businessman somewhere beyond Chorus’ skies, sacrificed for someone else’s gain.

And as much as it pains him, he can’t help but resign himself to the thought that maybe Armonia had been just another one of those sacrifices. That everything -- every one -- that Chorus had lost was for nothing. That it wouldn’t matter in the end.

No one’s been by to check on him. He assumes it simply to be due to no one noticing that he’s gone, though he finds it just a bit more comforting to think that it’s perhaps out of a kind of respect, or even more likely out of a somewhat mutual depression. Though he suspects that it’s entirely to do with the loss of Armonia, and not at all with the loss of...

“Oh dear…”

“What is it?”

“Are you ready?”

“... I’m afraid I won’t be joining you after all!”

“... What?”

“... there’s no longer a way to overload the reactor from the control panel with enough time to leave. But, I can still trigger an explosion! I’ll just have to do it manually!”

“... manually?! No, you don’t, just--just stay low, we can come to you.”

“I’m afraid that just won’t be possible! I appear to be surrounded, and there’s just no time for anyone else to get down here without tipping off Charon that something’s not right!”

Emily was a doctor . A non-combatant. He knows she can likely count the number of times she’s fired a gun on one hand, maybe both of her hands, and her standard-issue sidearm (that came with being an officer and as strongly as Emily objected to carrying one, there just wasn’t anything either of them could do about that) was in such a pitiful state of disrepair that it was hardly safe to use -- she’d had plans to convert it into a tranquilizer gun, he’d discovered. She should have never been down there in the first place. She should have left Armonia with her staff and patients, long before she could have ever even had the chance to suggest this. He should have told her to leave the city, she would have listened -- need to keep up appearances, after all, she wouldn’t have blatantly protested or outright disregarded an order where the others could have seen her do so.

The whole thing had been her idea, once they’d realized that Charon would leave the city if they knew that he had. She’d been trying to buy them time, she’d been meant to lead the mercenaries around, lose them, and then overload the reactor controls and slip out of the city before the reactor blew. They’d switched plate armor, so that she’d be able to not only catch the pirates’ eyes, but pass as him from a distance, while moving quickly through the city. She was several inches shorter than him, and was noticeably slighter, so it wouldn’t be enough to fool someone up close, or to trick Locus if she crossed paths with him, but it would buy them the time they needed. She would keep the mercenaries distracted, lead them in circles. They’d switched her hardlight shield into his armor, it ran better and covered a larger area, standard issue for Federal medical personnel in order to shield patients in the field, and he’d given her his better-maintained sidearm, so that she’d have a fighting chance should she be cornered.

It feels… almost unreal. He… still can’t believe it. It had all been going according to plan, but then…

“Emily -- Y-You can’t--!”

“I’m sorry, General Doyle! I know it isn’t perfect. Oh... there we are. The timer on this detonator barely lasts a minute. You need to get out of the city while you still can!”

Kimball throws her weapon to the floor of the Pelican as she speaks, shouting now, even though the other general knows it won’t do any good. “Damn it, Grey! Don’t--”

“Chorus needs you both. When this war ends, they’ll need skilled leaders more than they’ll need another doctor. You’re no good to Chorus dead!”

He just stands in quiet shock, gripping hard on a grab bar close to the bay doors as he hears that cheerful voice on the other end of the line, so matter-of-factly explaining, rationalizing, her situation as if it was a simple lab experiment. He can hear Kimball shouting over the radio, but a private message over his own comm. line drowns her out.

“... I’m so sorry. If there were any other way…” He hears her breath hitch, hears her voice shake. And it breaks his heart to know that there’s nothing he can do. “... look in my left-side storage pocket. I left you something just in case. I love you.”

He doesn’t have time to answer her, doesn’t have time to tell her that he loves her, doesn’t have time to say goodbye or anything else: there’s a deafening roar of an explosion, one that shakes the transport. But he isn’t sure if it’s the impact or the grief that snatches his knees out from under him and sends him crashing to the floor .

Emily’s “just in case” had turned out to be the very same things Locus had brought him after the massacre at her outpost, just about. Except, she’s left him both of her identification tags, with her ring neatly dropped onto the ball chain and hanging beside them.

“… Doyle?” a voice asks from somewhere outside his vision. He tucks the tags back into the pocket from whence they’d come: he doesn’t want anyone to see them. “… oh, you’re still in here.”

Tired blue eyes crack open finally at the sound of someone calling him, catching sight of the helmet at his feet. He closes them against the tears as they start again, and he swallows. He knows that voice. He knows precisely who’s speaking to him, and he also knows full well that he can’t exactly ignore the speaker. But he just can’t bring himself to look up. It takes a great deal of effort simply to speak aloud.

“... unfortunately.” His unconscious choice of words spikes emotion in his chest, but he swallows it, shuts his eyes against it. He can… he can deal with that later. “... do… do you... er… do you need me for something?”

Vanessa is quiet, the silence heavy in the air between them. For that long moment, he’s sure she’s about to begin shouting, telling him that of course she needs him for something. But she never does. Instead, her response is quiet. Almost… concerned. “... It can… wait.”

“... ah… are… erm… are-are you certain?”

“... yes.” Her footsteps approach his position slowly. Carefully. Once she stops walking, he hears the sound of a helmet seal breaking, and feels her sit down next to him. When she doesn’t say anything further, he finally forces himself to open his eyes again, to turn his head and look at her. Vanessa’s face, so young still but aged prematurely around the eyes by the stresses and horrors of war, is normally tired and sort of angry-looking, or at least, it has been the few times he’s seen it. And she still looks tired now, but… the anger is gone. Her curly hair is coming out of the hurried little bundle she appears to have put it into to keep it out of her face. He can see the very badly-faded lock of what was once ice-blue hair that hangs somewhere in the middle of the right side of her head, it’s come out of the bundle completely and is hanging down away from the other fugitive tendrils.

“... Sarge told me you two seemed close,” she finally says.

“... closer than he knows, I believe. I… spent quite a lot of time in her medical bay, after all, quite, er… quite prone to fainting spells. We… got to be… yes, quite… quite close.” He swallows. “... I shouldn’t have let her go. She never should have been out there, she… she should have left with her patients.”

“... you heard her on the radio. I… really don’t think you could have said anything to stop her.”

“You’re… entirely right. Emily is… w-was … a very willful individual. One of the many things in my life I had absolutely no control over. But that… always seemed to work in my favor. If I’d managed to find my spine for two minutes maybe I could’ve… talked some sense in her…”

Kimball’s hand settles on his wrist, and he pulls his hand away. As a reflex, he stands, shaking his head wordlessly, intending to physically move away from her -- from the conversation. He doesn’t get far on trembling knees and his sprained ankle, though, and winds up crumpled on the floor of the pelican about three feet closer to the bay door than he’d started. And it’s there that he stays.

Good god, he’s pathetic.

Kimball’s beside him in a moment, but doesn’t move to touch him yet, just stands beside him and waits for his next move. When he doesn’t make one, she takes a knee beside him. He finally manages to look up, face lined with years of worry and etched deeper with fresh sadness, eyes tired and empty and heartbroken, brimming with restrained tears. He can’t manage to say anything yet -- just stares. Stares, then turns his eyes almost sheepishly to the floor.

Kimball sighs. “… Look. I… I don’t… I didn’t know Doctor Grey as well as you did. So… I’m not going to sit here and pretend to know what she’d really want. But… if you two were that close, then I can promise you that she wouldn’t want you to think that way. She wouldn’t want you to blame yourself. I understand how hard this is for you--”

“ Do you.” The statement -- absolutely not a question -- is uncharacteristically harsh. The bark of a much larger dog than he’s previously shown himself to be. And it absolutely does not come with an immediate retreat and profuse apology, though neither does it come with an aggressive posture. It’s more addressed to the floor than to the other general. “ Do you understand.”

“Yes, I do!” Kimball snaps back. “You’re not the only one who’s lost friends because of this war.”

… friends. Right. Of course she couldn’t have known: he and Emily had been very careful to keep that information private. If anyone has figured it out, he’d’ve assumed it was Agent Washington: most of the soldiers at the outpost avoided Emily like the plague and probably assumed that he, while possibly afraid of her, felt bad for her that she was so isolated.

He doesn’t correct her. It doesn’t matter now.

                                                  -------------------

“Ducking out early?”

He stops in his tracks as he makes it to the door, and turns over his shoulder to see Vanessa leaning against a wall not very far from him, a cup of coffee still gently steaming in one hand. He just gives a bit of a nervous chuckle, reaches up to rub at the back of his neck. “… and here I thought I was being quiet.”

“You were. But I know you by now.” She stands straight, taking a long sip of her coffee, and makes her way closer to him, which isn’t hard, considering that he doesn’t move. “I’d offer to make you some eggs, but I get the feeling you’d say no.”

“H-Huh?”

“Nothing. You got somewhere to be?”

“Ah, er… well, I… yes, I do. But… but I--” He’s caught. He knows he’s caught. He’s got no excuse. So he just slumps. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to just… disappear like this…”

Vanessa laughs , and of course it’s not malicious. It never is, with her. At least not to him, not anymore. They’ve… come quite a ways in the several months since the war ended. “You at least gonna tell me who it is? I feel like you owe me that much.”

“I-I…”

“I’m joking . What you do once you leave here is your business.”

He stammers further, as if looking for an excuse even though one isn’t required, but eventually shuts his mouth and looks down, clears his throat to reset his stammer. It’s been dreadful these past few months, after so many years of speech therapy and an entire adult life with little discernible trace of the horrible thing. But… well, he’d been warned that the stress and trauma could bring his speech impediment back.

He is, however, thankfully spared from answering as Vanessa continues to speak. “… I’m happy for you. You know that, right?”

“Ex… e-excuse me?”

“You’ve been… down. Really down. I’ve noticed. And I get it. You… we’ve all been through… well, a lot. You, me, Chorus… and… you know, some people haven’t been able to come back from that and be happy and connect with people again. It’s good to see that you’re finally getting back out there.” There’s that teasing smirk again. “Even if it means I get to see less of you.”

“ Please don’t say it like that. I…”

“Like what?”

“Like this is your apartment and… a-and I’m sneaking out after something illicit !” It’s quite a bit louder, and quite a bit harsher, than he’d like, but the jokes -- and he knows she’s joking -- have made him uncomfortable for quite some time, and… well, today of all days he just… he really, really can’t take it. In his frustration, he twitches, his fingers flex, and he drops his helmet to the floor with a loud clatter that snaps him out of his moment of unprompted rage . “… I-I… I’m so sorry, I…”

Vanessa is, of course, unfazed. “Doyle, I’m gay . You very much aren’t my type. Well, you’ve kinda got the right hair color, but otherwise--”

“I know that! I…” He just shakes his head. He knows that. He’s known that for nearly a year now, since he first caught her eyeing Agent Carolina while the former freelancer was making use of the weight room at the training facility. “I-I know that. I’m sorry. This… this is just a very… strange day. For me, I… I’m very sorry. I… I need to go. I, er… finished the last of the major projects I’d been working on, those are on my desk.”

“Cool. I’ll get to them in the morning, I’m about done with mine.”

“There’s no rush.”

“… mind if I ask what you’re headed out to do?”

“… not at all. I…” He pauses, stoops to pick his helmet up, and straightens again, tucking it securely under his arm. “… it’s… ah… anniversary.”

“Anniversary?”

“Yes.” He doesn’t elaborate beyond that. It’s another brief moment before he turns away from her, and puts his helmet on, with shaking hands. “… good night, Vanessa.”

She doesn’t say anything further, simply watches him leave. Once the door closes behind him, he’s off down the back staircase -- he’d normally take the lift, but that’s not… he’s better going down stairs than up them. It also allows him to avoid people. Not that there’s anyone left in the building at this hour, he and Vanessa are almost always the last to leave.

He sees a familiar, teal-armored someone lurking in the lobby once he emerges from the stairwell, and he gives her a polite nod. “Hello, Agent Carolina. Er… waiting for Vanessa?”

She gives a noncommittal sound of acknowledgement.

“She should be down soon, but I can key you into the lift if you like.”

“… I’d appreciate that. Thank you.”

He nods a bit, tosses his head toward the lift and turns to lead her to it, keying in the code and letting her in in order to send her up to the offices. Once he bids her a good evening and the doors close, he sighs, and turns to head out of the building.

The walk home is short. Of course it is, his apartment -- they’re all in apartments, even him and Vanessa, it was… it was the most efficient solution to the housing issue -- isn’t far from the offices. Not a long walk at all. Not quite enough time to let his thoughts run away from him. His apartment is in the basement of the building, so there’s no zoning out in the lift and staring into space while his mind runs unchecked. Just a short flight of stairs down into the basement hallway, then a few more feet to the only occupied apartment on this level -- there’s an empty one across from him, no one’s cared to move into it, it reminds a lot of them of the barracks, and he understands that. It’s not at all why he found this one comforting, in fact, it makes his skin crawl just thinking about it that way, but it had been the sense of solitude that had come with it.

And there it is. Once the door closes, all the sounds that come with existing beyond these walls cease entirely. No traffic noise, no humming of industrial ventilation keeping air moving through the hallways. He finally lets out a heavy, exhausted sigh, letting the tension drop out of his shoulders as he leans back against the door. It takes him an inordinate amount of strength to reach up and remove his helmet, and even more to reach and set it down on the table beside the door.

It’s slow going to change out of his armor, but he manages it. Manages to start dinner too. He’s not sure how much of it he’ll eat, but he’ll try. He’s just sitting down on the sofa when the chirping alert tone of an incoming call comes in from the radio console on the end table. He considers not picking it up, letting it ring out. But he doesn’t let it go, he reaches over and taps the button to answer. “Yes?”

“ It’s me .”

“Hello, Vanessa. Did I leave something at the office?”

“ No, uh. Look, I feel bad about… you seemed upset with you left. I just… wanted to make sure you were okay .”

“Oh. Yes, I’m. I’m alright. Just a strange day, I told you.”

“ … Carolina and I are going to get some dinner, if you want to join us .”

“Ah. Already in for the night, actually. Thank you, though.”

“… what um. You mentioned an anniversary. Anniversary of what, exactly? ”

“… I… well, er…” He swallows. He’s… very carefully avoided discussing this with Vanessa. He’d had no reason to do so. When he speaks, his voice is… different. Far more tired than he’d sounded before, an incredible feat, really. “… did you know I was married, before?”

“… uh… no, you, um. You never mentioned that .”

“Mm. I asked her to marry me while I was having a panic attack. I-I thought one of us would die before we got the chance.” Doyle’s laugh is humorless, more like a scoff as he realizes how stupid it must have sounded at the time, though his fear would prove itself to be real several years later. “She probably shouldn’t have agreed to it.”

Kimball remains quiet for a moment, which he expects. He doesn’t hear Carolina in the background, but he knows she has to be there. “… do you want to… um… tell me about her? ”

“I don’t want to intrude on your evening, Vanessa. If you’ve plans with Agent Carolina, then you should keep to them.”

“ It’s… um, it’s okay. No, we… we can wait a minute. You um. You sound like you need to talk. ”

“I’m alright.”

“ Not even a name, huh? ” Her joking tone is back, and normally, it’d be… sort of welcome. But it isn’t. “ Come on. Some good memories to balance out the sadness, huh? ”

“… well, you did meet her.” He reaches up and closes one hand around the identification tags he’s kept wearing even after the war. One of them is his, the other Emily’s. Her ring settled right alongside them. “I’d be surprised if you remembered her quite as fondly as I do, though, no one really seems to.”

“… who was she ?”

He pauses. He’s not sure why the question stings so much. “… right, I didn’t think y… y-y… didn’t think y-you did. I’m… not surprised. Emily could be… a bit off-putting. I admit that.”

“Emily? … wait, Doctor Grey?”

“Mm.” He leaves that answer as it is for a moment. He hears Vanessa make a small sound of acknowledgement, but she doesn’t speak. His grip tightens around Emily’s tags, so much so that it shakes. “... she deserved so much better. ... she wasn’t always l… wasn’t always li… l-like that. I… I di… didn’t… didn’t realize there was something wrong until it was… far too late to stop it. She deserved someone who could have helped her… before she got so bad. Perhaps if she’d been in her right mind--”

“... I don’t think she’d be very happy to hear you say that ,” Vanessa says, thankfully cutting him off before he can really finish his thought. “ I think she’d be insulted to know you think she must have been out of her mind to do what she did .”

“You… y-you’re very right.” Doyle shuts his eyes again. Good lord, he’s absolutely awful. How can he think so poorly of Emily. And what’s worse… what’s worse is the part that he’s forgotten in his grief. That his voice cracks and shakes on admitting, even after the usual throat clearing in order to stop himself from stammering. “... her greatest fear was that she would lose her mind entirely, you know.”

“… I think that’s a perfectly rational fear .”

“… as did I,” he simply says. “… I’m… dreadfully sorry to have ruined your evening, you had… you had plans, didn’t you?”

“ … no, it’s… i-it’s okay. I don’t mind. You’re upset, and you, um… it’s not a problem .”

“No, I… you should enjoy your evening. Well, er… a-as much as you can after dealing with me, anyhow.”

“ Wait, no, it’s--it’s fine, really .”

“… thank you for listening, Vanessa. I didn’t realize how much I needed to… ‘get that off of my chest,’ as it were.”

“ Hey, listen, it’s still early, Carolina and I can come get you, you can come have dinner with us. I don’t feel right leaving you alone like this. ”

“No, thank you. I’m not much for company right now. I… think I’m just going to go to bed.”

“ Doyle, wait-- ”

“Good night, Vanessa.”

                                                 -------------------

Doyle doesn’t come in on time the next morning.

Doyle is never late to work. In fact, he’s always early, settled into work for the day by the time Vanessa makes it in. So to see no trace of the man in the building after the rest of the staff is mostly in in the morning is jarring and almost frightening to begin with.

Vanessa has her suspicions.

Something about the dark office, the empty desk, the memory of just how tired Doyle had sounded on their call last night makes her feel sick and worried. She remembers how he’d very uncharacteristically snapped at her before leaving work the day before -- he’d apologized, true, but still… and last night had been… a hard date for him. Something’s wrong. She knows it.

But she waits. She waits five, ten minutes before she can’t stand it anymore. She doesn’t bother with a call. She just rushes from her office and down the back stairs, because taking the elevator will take too much time. She barely stops to apologize to Matthews after knocking into him on her way out the front door, and it’s hell to push upstream through the foot traffic for the two blocks between the offices and Doyle’s building, but she manages it.

His building had chosen to go for non-powered doors, far easier to build than the heavy steel sliders, though with far less security. Which is useful for Vanessa, considering it only takes her two minutes to break the damn thing off its hinges.

She’s only been to his apartment a handful of times, and every time, she’d noted how bare it was. Hardly looked lived-in. She’d thought that it was because all he did was go to work and then come home to sleep, he didn’t take days off. He didn’t have a lot of time for decorating. But now… she’s not so certain that’s the real reason. Now… it sort of feels like he didn’t plan to stay long.

“… Doyle?” She shakes her head, reaches up and pulls her helmet off when she sees his still sitting on the table by the door. “Doyle, it’s me.”

Nothing.

“Doyle? You home?”

Of course he’s home .

There’s only two doors in the apartment: she knows one to be the bathroom, which also has a door into the bedroom. So it’s this second door she tries when she finds the one to the bedroom locked. And it’s not only unlocked, but slightly ajar.

She had been afraid of what she might see once she reached his apartment. Her mind had given her a hundred possibilities: that lanky figure hanging from a ceiling figure by the neck, the coffin-sized bathtub overflowing with bloody water, a body slumped against a wall with gore smeared behind it and a gaping gunshot wound. Or worse, no trace of the man at all.

So when she sees the shadowed shape of a body in the bed, it’s… both something of a relief, and sucker punch to the gut that knocks all the breath from her body. She’s hesitant to cross the small room and turn on the overhead light, but she does, and it cuts off the third attempt to call the man’s name entirely.

Vanessa knows he isn’t going to answer her.

He left the empty medication bottles on his bedside table. Two of them, both prescribed to him by Doctor Grey, but… obviously a little out of date.

She’s seen her share of dead bodies. But all of them have gone out violently, or in mental anguish that still showed on the corpse. But Doyle… looks peaceful. Really like he’d gone to sleep. No fear, no pain, nothing. Just… peace.

She looks for a note. She doesn’t find one.

She calls whoever she needs to. Reports it. Suzy, the medic-turned-doctor, who Emily had trusted with her patients. Jensen and Smith, they’re… cops now, they have to be called. She stays while they look around, tells them what she knows. What he said. How he didn’t leave a note that she can find. They find he’s holding a set of military ID tags, with a gold ring dropped onto the chain. One of them is his. One of them is Doctor Grey’s.

When they finish up, she goes back to the office. She’ll… have to think of something to tell the people now. It occurs to her to check his office on the way by, check his desk for the projects he’d said he’d finished. She’ll have to clean it out anyway. She finds the files right where he said they’d be, but on top of them is something else: a piece of paper, marked with his flowing, elegant handwriting. Not messy, not hurried. Absolutely clear to read.

I’m very sorry I lied to you, Vanessa. I didn’t want to waste your time with a long goodbye. You had an appointment to keep, I had dinner plans. But if you’ve found this, then I suppose that you already know what those plans truly were.

Do you remember what I said, at the skirmish in Armonia? The outpost that was destroyed? It was our primary command facility, and the location of our field hospital. Where Emily was stationed. After the massacre there, Locus reported it to me in Armonia. He put her ring into my hand, and told me that he’d found her lying in the snow. That she’d already bled to death by the time he’d gotten to her. There was nothing he could have done. I still wear her tag. And her ring, on the chain.

Every time I closed my eyes, all I could see was what I thought she must have looked like by then. And when it came to light that Locus had been lying to us… I was hoping that he’d lied about her too. And he had, which in all honesty came as nothing short of the most intense relief I think I’ve ever felt. I thought back then that I didn’t know how I’d ever get along without her. When you met me in Armonia, I was greatly considering letting you take your shot and end everything. I didn’t want to live without her. I’d considered doing it myself, but I couldn’t have done that to the soldiers.

Please don’t be upset with yourself. Or anyone else. Of course no one saw the signs. I made certain there weren’t any signs to show. I didn’t go a romantically poetic route and go all the way to the old Armonia site and let the radiation get me if the medication didn’t because I didn’t want to be stopped by some soul on the street and distracted. I didn’t want it to be loud and messy, or dramatic. I wanted this to be over. Rather appropriately, I am just so tired. I’ve been an insomniac since I could spell the word. I just want to sleep. This has been months in the making, Vanessa, there was never anything you or anyone else could have done to stop it.

Tell people whatever you like. Tell them the truth, tell them I was too weak to go on, too selfish to live without the woman I loved. Lie to them and tell them the trauma of war took its toll in other ways and I wasn’t strong enough to take it -- well, that part’s sort of true, I suppose. Or don’t tell them anything. It doesn’t matter in the slightest.

Do me a favor, would you, and make sure that whatever happens to me, they leave me with Emily’s things. There was nothing of her to bury but her plate armor, and I’ve had that since it happened. If we can’t be buried together properly, I’d like to do whatever we can .

She doesn’t know how long she spends standing there, reading and rereading the paper in her hands. She doesn’t know how long her radio chirps for before she notices it, and answers, her voice shaky and broken.

“Yes?”

“ General Kimball? It’s uh. It’s Smith, ma’am. There’s kind of a crowd out here, some reporters. Uh. What do you want us to tell them? ”

She pauses. “Don’t tell them anything. Not yet. I want to handle this properly.”

“ Yes ma’am. ”

                                                   -------------------

Suzy comes to visit around dinner. To check in on her, mostly, see how she’s holding up, but also to deliver some news.

Preliminary results of the autopsy say that it was the medication overdose that killed him, she’s confident to call it a clonazepam overdose right now. But there’s something else. Sort of an ultimate cliche, really.

His medical records all indicated a rather weak heart. But the heart she’d seen when she’d checked him over had been… different. There had been some swelling, she says, a specific swelling of the left ventricle that indicated something called takotsubo cardiomyopathy . It’s stress-related, and rare, and it mostly affects women between sixty and eighty. Dying from it is nearly unheard of, but if it goes untreated in someone with such high stress, well, it can cause other problems. If he’d ignored it, or had never noticed, it could have contributed to heart failure.

It’s the common name that almost, darkly, makes Vanessa laugh. Some people, Suzy tells her, call it broken heart syndrome .

“The physical broken heart didn’t kill him,” Suzy clarifies. “But by all accounts, it was probably going to.”

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #265

“all is fair in love and war, i’m still rotten to the core.”

What's the latest youtube channel you've discovered and binge-watched? Ha, a WoW channel that basically gives advice and tutorials on stuff. She doesn't have many videos, but she's pretty successful already and chill as hell. Kraken Latte. Does it snow where you live? Occasionally. Very rarely does the snow stick, though, because the ground will be too warm. Do you think your hair looks better long or short? Short. Do you look best with or without bangs? Bitch I loved my emo bangs fuck off. Well, they weren't technically bangs, my hair was just parted far to the left. Do you enjoy editing photos on your phone? Well, my phone doesn't have GREAT camera quality, but I usually do some subtle edits if I take a pic on it. What's your favorite thing to do on your phone? Play Pokemon GO REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Which season do you wish would last longer? Shit man, fall. At least here, the phase of colorful leaves is VERY short. Goes from green to totally bare in what feels like just a couple weeks. How many outdoor birthday parties have you had? Hell if I know. How much taller or shorter are you than your mom? We're the same height. Who is your favorite sibling? Lol wow that's mean. Do you have neat handwriting? Yeah. Do you like sushi? I've actually never tried it, but I'm quite certain I wouldn't like it. Have you ever tried seaweed? Actually yes, I believe in the 4th grade? We had I think authentic Japanese (or Chinese, idr) food, and I recall there being seaweed. I didn't like it. The only thing I liked was the white rice, I think. Do you have an actual pig-shaped piggy bank? No, but I think I may have as a kiddo. Did you dream of becoming famous as a kid? No. Have you ever been to a gynecologist? I actually haven't because I've always said I wasn't sexually active (back then it wasn't a conscious lie, I just genuinely didn't realize what we were doing was just shallow sex). I'm absolutely terrified to go anyway because I'm just very very very private about this sort of thing and honestly think I'll have a panic attack when I do have to for the first time anyway. Name three games that you are good at. Shadow of the Colossus, Silent Hill, World of Warcraft. What was your favorite board game as a kid? Ha ha, somehow, it was this shopping game called "Mall Madness." Veeeery unfitting of who I was and what I enjoyed as a kid. Do you get on Facebook every day? Pretty much. Did you watch the Kids Choice Awards when you were a kid? No. What was your favorite girl group when you were growing up? Spice Girls, I think. Do you have memories that still make you cry? Yes. Have you made your own mask to help prevent the spread of the virus? No, considering I don't leave the damn house like ever. Do you know anyone who has the virus? Yes. Not personally, but distantly. Are you proud to be an American? (if applicable) Sometimes. What countries have you visited? I haven't left America. Have you ever had a controlling boyfriend/girlfriend? No. How many true heartbreaks have you had in your lifetime? Romantically, I only consider one to be a *real* heartbreak. Have you ever cut yourself? Yeah. Do you feel like everything is falling apart around you? BOY DO I!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Was your first kiss romantic? Yes. Do you miss any of your exes right now? My PTSD has been awful awful AWFUL the past few days, so yes. A lot. Have you ever overdosed on anything? Yes. What would you say if you found out your last ex was in a relationship? I'd be happy for her of course, but I'd also be very confused. She's made it clear she doesn't believe a relationship is the best idea for her right now. Who was your date to prom? Jason took me to his senior prom, and I took him to mine. Do you still talk to your first love? No, I haven't spoken to him in over three years now. Wow. Whose wedding did you go to first? I don't remember. I'm sure it wasn't the first, but ONE of the earliest that I do remember was when my friend Summer's mom got remarried. He sadly passed away a long while ago though. Are you ashamed of anyone you've dated in the past? Tyler, yes. It was so pointless and a "let's see how this goes" versus a "I really like this guy and really want this relationship" thing. I honestly think I only said yes to dating because I didn't want to hurt his feelings and I was lonely. What about anyone you've been friends with? There were certainly times it felt very weird calling Colleen my best friend with how bitchy she could be. Especially when you consider how non-confrontational I am, while she charged like a goddamn bull into arguments. Have you ever made out with someone in a pool? Uhhh I think that one night when I lived at the apartment and it was just us out there late at night. He and I went back inside before Jacob and Amanda TO hardcore make out because we both way too obviously wanted it so I wouldn't be remotely surprised if we snuck in some action at the pool oof. Who’s the last person that slept over your house? Sara. Do you still talk to the last person you kissed? Yes. Have you ever kissed someone with a tongue ring? No, I was the person with the tongue ring. I actually took it out a little while back because I was tired of accidentally chomping down on it when eating and chipping teeth. I'd already told myself if I did it one more time I would, and especially right now, we can't afford to keep filling cavities that have come from it. I don't at all regret getting it and it'll always be one of the cutest piercings I think I've ever had, but it was just time for it to come out. Is it hard for you to get over a lover? I THINK I'VE MADE THAT!!!!!!!!!!! O BVIO US S!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Have you ever tried making someone jealous? Not to my recollection. Did your last relationship end because of you or the other person? Both of us really, but she initiated the breakup, you could say. Who is the last person you flirted with? Sara. Who's the most racist person you know? Jesus Christ, I live in the South. I know dozens of racists. I guess the worst is uhhh OH the aforementioned Colleen, holy fucking shit. I highly highly highly doubt that has changed at all since we last associated with each other. If you could be a film character, who would you be? Let me be Alice Liddell. Crunchy peanut butter or smooth? Smooth is the only way to go with pb. Would you rather always be in a crowd, or be the only person on earth? "Always be in a crowd. It wouldn’t be fun, but I think it’d be better than being that alone." <<<< This. I legitimately think I'd wind up killing myself in the other case. Would you rather be rich, or famous? Why? "Rich, because...what’s the point of being famous if you’re not rich? Just everyone knowing all of your business?" <<<< Also this. Do you squeeze the toothpaste from the top or the bottom? "I start off from the top until it gets used enough that I have to squeeze up from the bottom." <<<< Lemme just steal all this person's answers lmao. How many children do you want? Girls or boys? None, but if I was to have kids, I'd definitely want a girl. Is there a story behind your name? What is it? No. What was one of the most fun things you and your college roommate did together? I didn't have a college roommate. Well wait no, during my first college attempt is when I lived w/ Jason, Jacob, and Amanda. I'd honestly prefer to not think too hard back on it to answer this. Does anyone know your bank pin number other than you? Who? I don't even have a bank account. Have you ever had a boyfriend/girlfriend who was depressed? Yeah, multiple. Would you be embarrassed to buy pads/tampons/condoms? Which one more? Pads or tampons, nah. I'd feel awkward buying condoms though. Are your parents gullible? Dad probably is; he has very little common sense. I got it from him lmao. Mom, heeeeell no. Do you still own a VCR? No. What color is the computer/laptop you’re on? Did you buy it yourself? It's black. No. Does the smell of cigarettes, weed and beer repulse you? All three do. Was the last person you kissed younger or older than you? Younger. Have you ever purchased Girl Scout cookies? Yeah. How often do you drink Monster? Never, because I don't like it. Have you ever made totally pointless videos with your friends? HAHA I was a cringy teen once, my friends. Do you like sitting on the inside or outside of a restaurant booth? Inside. I feel safer. Do you own a nightgown? No, I haven't worn those since I was a kid. Have you ever worn fishnets? Fishnet gloves. I WISH I could pull off fishnet pants. Would you rather go out to eat or be eaten out? In times like THESE???????? Bitch I wanna go eat out at a yummy restaurant. Do you always wear your seat belt? ABSOLUTELY. I get so stressed out when I see people not wearing one. Have you ever liked someone much older than you? Not much older. Have you ever been in a play? Just school ones as a kid. Is there ice cream in your freezer? No, but there's popsicles from when I couldn't get my tongue ring out and it was massively swollen and in terrible pain. Thank God I finally got it out. Have you ever liked the lyrics of a band but hated the music? Probably. Does your bathroom have a window? Yeah, but it's very small and up kinda high. Do you go somewhere to get your eyebrows done? I used to, but I don't anymore. I just leave them be. Do you believe prayer really works? Nope. Have you been on a date in the park? No. Are there any diseases/health problems that run in your family? A whole. Fucking. Lot. To just name a few, depression, high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, diabetes... Do you have asthma? No. Last person to take off your pants, besides you? Jason. Least favorite alcoholic drink? Mother of God, this white wine I tried at Colleen's forever ago. It was fucking repulsive. How did you meet the last male you texted? I mean I literally came from his balls so like Have you ever had an embarrassing email address? Ha ha yeah, the one I've always had. It's not very adult-ish or "serious"-sounding, but I don't want to change it now. Do you put shampoo in your left or right hand? Left. I squeeze with my right. Do you have a bull ring through your nose? No, I don't feel that would look good on me. Do you and your dad get along? Yes. When was the last time you did clay work/pottery? My last year of art in high school. I made an anatomical heart for Jason. I wonder a lot if he still has it after how much work I put into it. Do you like art, hate it or just not mind it? I adore art. The world would be so much more boring without it. If you had to choose would you prefer dull pain for 12hours or sharp for 2? Ew, dull. Two hours with sharp pain sounds awful. Do you know the words to the national anthem of your country? Yeah. Would you rather be a Model, Famous Scientist, Singer or Chef? Scientist, probably. I'd love to be a biologist anyway, and that's a type of scientist. Would you rather be a pilot, crime scene investigator or estate agent? Ohhh, crime scene investigator. Does making others happy really make you feel happy? Yes! Did you ever swear at a teacher in school? Why? No. Have you ever pricked your finger on Holly or another ‘sharp’ plant? Yeah. Have you ever written your own short story? Yes. What about a novel? Or perhaps you started and couldn’t finish? "I started writing several novels, but abandoned them all." <<<< Same yo. Either of the above, if this was the case, place short synopsis here: The first one was about a very close meerkat family, divided into elemental "breeds," and the prince falling in love with another of his kind. His father had a stray brother who constantly aimed to destroy the family, but he was converted towards the end. That's all I can really remember about that one. There were others like two species of animals I made also falling in love, despite being predators and prey of each other, and fulfilling some sorta prophecy with their offspring. The other two I recall- yo fuck it I keep remember more and more okay I wrote a LOT. Do you prefer SciFi/Fantasy/Action/Horror or Rom/Com/RealLife? I'm guessing you mean in books, given the last three questions? I have a strong preference for fantasy. What do you have a lot of faith in [note: can be anything]? Hell if I know. Would you rather have a big house, a lot of kids or a high flying job? High flying job, easily. I don't want kids, nor do I need a large house, especially considering I hate cleaning even this tiny one. Have you ever been to a creepy/haunted/abandoned place? Yeah. What did it look like and what were the circumstances? It was this really old, mostly dilapidated shack full of cool stuff. It was by the field near our old house. Me, my sister, and our friend hung out there and explored all the time until this freaky woman showed out and told us we shouldn't be there. Do you know a Jack? What’s he like? Yeah. I don't him that well though, so idk. How about a Lisa? What’s she like? Yeah, she's one of my WoW friends that I've become really close with. She is an absolute sweetheart, but talks about herself way, way too excessively to the point it's hard to have a conversation sometimes. I know she doesn't realize it, though. When you have children, would you like twins? I say enough that I don't even want kids, SO FUCK NO. Do you know any twins? If so, what are they called? Yes. Tyler and Taylor. I know others, but idr their names. What personality trait does nearly everyone in your family seem to have? We're stubborn as all fuck hell. Do you have any nicknames that aren’t derived from your actual name? Yeah, some online ones and then my mom has called me "Twinkie" since I was a baby. Do you have any allergies? Yeah, of pollen and silver. What is the longest your hair has ever been? To or maybe even past the small of my back. Have you ever been on a blind date? No, not my jam. What is the oldest piece of clothing you still wear and how old is it? I really don't kn- oh yes I do. I have these oooold old thin and sewn-back-up-fifty-times Batman pj pants from when Jason and I were together, so maybe like... seven years? Thanks PTSD, I'm attached to them because Batman was his thing. How often do you eat out at a fancy restaurant? Just about never. Nutella or peanut butter? UGGGGGHHHHH I've been on a nutella thing lately. Have you ever hosted a wild party? Definitely not. Name/author of the last book you read cover to cover. Do you recommend it? Wings of Fire: The Lost Heir by Tui Sutherland. Yes, it was very good. How many of your Facebook friends do you actually hang with? Besides my immediate family, like... none anymore. Have you ever donated blood? Yes. From 1-10, how much do you like decorating for holidays? This is hard to gauge. I've never seriously done it myself, and I don't really have the motivation to do it just to take it all down a month or so later. I love it in concept, but yeah. Favorite animated Disney character? Probably Kiara from TLK2. Have you ever cooked a big family meal by yourself? Ha, no. Favorite winter activity? TAKING PICTURES IN THE SNOOOOOOOOW. Do you consider rapping singing? I mean I guess? Does your home have a fireplace? No. Do you listen to any religious music? No. Do you drink soda? If so, which one is your favorite? Ugh... soda is my weakness. I'd probably lose weight easier if I just stopped drinking it. Mountain Dew Voltage is my favorite, and I've also been on a serious strawberry Sunkist thing lately. How easily do you cry? I cry very, very easily. Can you handle spicy foods? What is your spice limit? Oh yeah. The only way I know how to gauge this one is that I enjoy the "hot" sauce at BWW lol. I've actually kinda cut back on HOW much I enjoy it, though; like I'm more into enjoying my food thoroughly lately than the adrenaline of spicy food. What day of the week is laundry day for you? I personally don't do the laundry because Mom prefers to just do ours together, so. It varies, I think. Have you ever played spin the bottle? No. Do you have any stickers on your laptop computer? If so, what are they of? Not on mine, but the one I currently have to use has tooons. I don't feel like looking at the lid trying to list what they are tho. How often do you say "y'all?" It's pretty much in my normal vernacular due to where I live. Do you believe in evolution? Yes. I have questions and curiosities about it, but when you consider how truly short it has been since considerable natural selection has been observed, why couldn't it exist on a bigger scale? Do you live in an apartment or a house? I live in a house. How long have you been at your current job? I'm unemployed. Have you ever ended a romantic relationship? Yes. Phrase you say the most? Probably "oof" lmao. Have you ever kissed anyone of the same gender? If so, did you like it? Yes and yes. Have you ever given anyone CPR? No. Have you ever learned to do anything from a how-to video on YouTube? Yes, mainly just editing stuff. Have you ever auditioned for a reality competition show? No. Have you ever been in the audience for the taping of a TV show? No. I've been at hockey games with Dad, but I don't consider those "TV shows." Have you ever given money to a street performer? I've never even seen one. Do you own any homemade clothing? Not that I know of. Have you ever bought anything from a flea market? Yeah, decorations 'n trinkets and stuff. I love flea markets. Have you ever quit a job? Yes. Are your birth parents together? No. Do you or have you ever worn glasses? I've worn glasses for years now. Have you ever been broken up with? AKA died in spirit? :^) Have you ever been the victim of a nasty prank? Not to my recolleciton. Favorite fandom? Y'all been known, the Markiplier fandom is a goddamn family. Can you surf? No. What motivates you to do well in life? The knowledge that I've most likely only got one life to make something of. How lucky do you consider yourself? I mean, ALL things considered, I'd say I'm at just below the baseline, maybe? I mean I could be homeless or dying of malaria or something. Have you ever been summoned for jury duty? No. Favorite summer activity? Swimming! Have you ever lived on a farm? No. I wanted to for years as a little kid, though. How often do you get mad at yourself? I've lately been in an almost constant state of anger regarding myself, honestly. Have you ever gotten any stitches? Yes. Favorite YouTube channel? The Marker Plier guy. Do you have a pool at your house? No. Last thing that made you laugh? Something on Game Grumps. Earbud or earmuff headphones? Earbuds. Earmuffs hurt my head and ears. Have you ever been a bridesmaid or a groomsman? Yes. Have you ever gotten a New Year’s kiss exactly at midnight? I don't think so. Have you ever voted for a reality competition show? The only time I did that I remember is when Landau Eugene Murphy Jr. won America's Got Talent. I adored him and voted like mad. Does anyone in your family currently serve in your country’s military? Ummm maybe distantly? I don't know anyone off the top of my head. Are you comfortable with watching rated R movies? Well yeah.

[vanderlindeandco]

The Prodigal Son

“Where do you think you’re going?”

You turned abruptly. You hadn’t heard Arthur approaching. You tightened the strap on your horse’s saddle and straightened up. “They got my brother,” you said.

“Again?” he asked.

“He hangs in the morning.”

“What’d he do this time?”

“Shot a sheriff,” you said. You slipped your foot into the stirrup and were about to pull yourself into the saddle when Arthur’s hand caught your upper arm, gently but firmly staying you. 

“You can’t die over this,” he said. “You’ve done enough for him.”

“He’s family.” Your shoulders slumped.

“I know,” Arthur said. “And it’s admirable that you want to break him out. But you can’t lose your life for him if he shows no desire to protect it himself.”

“That’s exactly why I have to!” Your voice flared, the injustice of it all hot as flame in your gut. “Jasper never learned how to take care of himself because no one was there to teach him. I left, my dad left, my mother died-”

“Never, ever blame yourself for that,” Arthur said. “You told me what your father did to you. Nothing should have kept you there.”

“So what do you want me to do, stand by and let him go?”

“No,” Arthur said. “Go there. Talk with him. I’ll come with you. I doubt he even wants you to break him out at this point. He knows how much he owes you.”

“Maybe,” you said. “But at least if I got to go there and fight for him... it’d mean something.” These were thoughts you hadn’t fully formulated. They had hovered vague but forceful, but now pushed themselves across your tongue as words. “Staying here, robbing banks, scavenging for food, just barely scraping by on the backs of others - I don’t want to do this forever. I can’t. I need to do something that means something!”

“The actions don’t,” Arthur said. “Or at least they don’t always. The people do. You do. I do. You can’t tell me it didn’t mean something to you when I kissed you that night a few weeks ago.”

Your eyes widened. “You were drunk; I- I thought it was an accident.”

“It wasn’t,” Arthur said. “Besides that, do you realize how important a part of this gang you are? You may not see it, but you should know how much Sean looks up to you. How much Dutch counts on you. How Hosea loves you like a daughter. And that’s just to name a few.”

You didn’t answer; no words seemed to be able to form themselves. “That... that means a lot,” you finally managed.

“Damn well should,” Arthur said. “Look. Let me saddle up. We’ll go talk to him, you can say your goodbyes, you can be there when he goes. But I’ll be damned if you’re not coming back here with me.”

“All right,” you said finally. “All right.”

His hand squeezed your gloved one. “Good.”

[helplessly-nonstop]

A Thief of Hearts(And Jewels) (S.Rollins smut)

Well, my discord chat and I was up to some of our usual antics and somehow we ended up on the idea of the Shield as criminals. So I took the idea and ran with it. So here we are! This is a jewel thief/FBI AU!

Warnings: use of handcuffs, smut, lil bit of angst, sprinkle of fluff, sort of humorous sex..., taking a shower together, mentions of not pulling out, I think that’s it

WC: 3889 words

I’m a robbery agent for the Cincinnati field office for the FBI and one team of criminals that I haven't been able to catch is the Ruby Robbers. It was the team of Dean Ambrose and Roman Reigns and no matter how close I got to catching those handsome bastards, they managed to slip from my grasp every fucking time.

I huffed and slammed my hands on my desk, growling in annoyance. Seth Rollins, my partner, glanced up and raised an eyebrow, questioning, “You okay there, beautiful?” I let out a soft cry then whined,”I don’t get it. How the hell are they so far ahead of me? As soon as I get to the robbery, it’s like someone already tipped them off.”

“They’re criminals, Y/L/N. What do you expect?” I huffed, annoyed at his rationality, then I muttered, “I dunno. Maybe I was hoping for an easier criminal team to catch? Couldn’t they be a little less.. I don’t know, smart? I mean, who’s actually heard of a smart jewel thief? Most of them just gets caught on their first heist. These guys have hit almost every museum from Boston, all the way over to San Diego, down to New Orleans, but they always seem to come back here. Why? They’ve robbed one bank for a ruby. I just don’t get it.”

“Maybe you should think more like a criminal, get inside their heads.” I stared at Rollins for a moment then he raised an eyebrow at me, asking, “What? You don’t like my idea?” I blinked slowly at him then answered slowly, “Actually… I think you’re onto something, Seth. But the question is how do I think like a criminal?”

“Study the crimes scenes. Analyze how they made off with the rubies and how they got away. Break down the banks and museums then put yourself in their places, get inside their heads.”he suggested, passing me an entire stack of maps. I stared at all of the papers then replied,”Well, it was your idea, so you’re helping me think like a criminal.”

“What? Me? Why me? Why couldn’t you pick Becky? She’s more likely to be a criminal!” Seth protested then the Irish woman appeared, slapping her friend on the back of the head.

“Dat’s whatcha get fer dat!”she informed him before disappearing from sight once again. Seth and I exchanged confused glances then shrugged, settling down on the floor as we analyzed the crime scene photos, all of the museum and bank floor plans.

Hours had passed then I squinted down at the first heist that they completed. It was just a small bank here in Cinci and I couldn’t help but wonder why they chose this particular bank to rob. The ruby that they had stolen wasn’t very expensive so I couldn’t help but wonder what their motive was.

“Alright kid, spill it. You’ve been staring at that one bank for the last thirty minutes. What’s got you so focused on it?” I bit my lip then flickered in between two of the crime scene photos that I had been stuck on and replied,”I’m… I’m not sure, really. These two pictures, they’ve got me stumped. It’s like something is inside screaming at me to find it, but I can’t manage to think of what it was.’’

He took them from my hands and held them up to the light, the two of us studying the scenario in the different view then I snapped my fingers, snatching the left one from my partner’s hand. He glanced over my shoulder as I explained,”The ruby never left the bank! That’s why the surveillance cameras were cut! Reigns and Ambrose doesn’t give a damn if people know what they look like! They thrive on taunting people knowing that they’ve gotten away with their crimes! That’s Ambrose right there, putting the ruby in that vent.”

Rollins squinted down at the picture and he rubbed his thumb against where I pointed at then he murmured,”Well I’ll be a son of a bitch. How’d we not noticed that sooner?” I quickly stood then exclaimed,”I don’t know, but at this moment, I really don’t give two shits! I’ve gotta go check out this bank, right now!”

“What, like right now?! You do realize what time it is, right? It’s like one in the morning, you lunatic!” Seth protested, standing up as well. I snatched the picture from his hand then slid my jacket as I answered,”Yeah, I know! But I have a copy key to the door and I need to go see if the ruby is still there.” He sighed, shaking his head as he put on his own coat then he muttered,”Alright, if you say so.”

We exited the office and realized that it was pouring down rain but at this point, I couldn’t care less. I had finally gotten a break in this stupid case. We rushed to the car, Seth thankfully popping the umbrella that he always carries with him, then off to the bank we went, determined to get our big break. I slammed the car into park and we entered the bank as I unlocked the front door, the alarms thankfully disarming when I did so.

I hurried over to where Ambrose was caught on camera sliding the ruby into the vent then I turned on my phone light, scanning the somewhat large vent. Not but three feet into the vents, I spotted the shiny, blood colored jewel and I slipped on a pair of latex gloves to prevent tainting evidence.

“Seth, I found it!” I shouted, turning to face my partner, only for a frying pan to smack me in the face.

The pain was the first thing to greet me when I came to. My head throbbed with the after effects of being (essentially) kissed really fucking hard with a pan. I groaned then realized that I had a second problem to compliment my first one: I was tied up and duct tape had been slapped across my mouth. I let out a whine then realized that people were talking outside of where I was being held.

“Did you really have to hit her that hard though? She would’ve went with us much easier if you would’ve just pointed a gun in her face and ordered her to drop the ruby and walk.” I recognized that voice. It was impossible not to know that voice, considered I had been partners with that person for the last four years. My head snapped up and I glowered at the door across from me, knowing that the three men was about to enter the room.

“Oh look, she’s awake!” Dean Ambrose chirped, sliding into the room like the smooth criminal he was. Roman Reigns gave a sly smile and replied, “Well, that tosses our wake up plan.” And finally, Seth fucking Rollins ended their little train of jewel thieves. The three sat down beside me then I began screeching through my gag, kicking my feet the best that I could in this position.

“Damn, she’s a feisty one. How’d you manage to deal with her all these years, Seth?” Reigns asked, allowing his chin to rest lazily on his fist, propped up by his knee. Rollins grinned at his criminal buddies and replied,”We were well paired. Weren’t we, sweetheart?” My eyes narrowed and in my mind, I imagined hurting him very badly, but then remembered that even though I was pissed, I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to hurt him.

“Now. If you promise to act somewhat civilized, I’ll take off the duct tape. But if you misbehave even once, I’m putting in a ball gag and you won’t get a safe word. Do you understand me?” Ambrose threatened, leaning forward. I gave a small nod, annoyed with the duct tape, and he yanked it off, a small help escaping me as I got a free wax from the glue on the tape.

“W-Why? Why are you working with them? You worked so hard to help me catch them.” I murmured, eyes lowering to avoid his gaze.

He sighed and cupped my cheek as he answered,”I’ve known Dean and Ro since I was a kid. When I found out that they had became jewel thieves, I realized that my true allegiance with them had never died out. So I contacted them and told them that I would help them escape capture.”

“Granted when you were gifted the case, it made it a little more difficult because I wanted to stay loyal to you, but I couldn’t turn my back on Roman and Dean again. I left them when I went to college and the academy. So I decided to play both sides of the fence.” I stared at him for a solid three minutes (or mores I’m not sure) then shrieked,”I can’t fucking believe you! You backstabbing little hoe bag! I trusted you!”

Rollins leaned backwards and looked over at Roman as he stated,”I told you she was gonna be pissed.”

“Man, I knew she was going to be pissed. And with good reason too.”the longer haired man replied, giving a shrug. My entire body trembled with the force of my anger, frustration, and defeat then I hung my head, letting out a soft sob.

“I never meant to hurt you, I promise.” Seth murmured, cupping my cheek to brush away my tears away.

“I-I trusted you. You played me.” I whimpered. He sighed and pressed his lips to my forehead, saying softly, “I didn’t want to. I just needed to earn their trust back. You have to know that, sweetheart.” Dean glanced up towards the door and stated, ”Hate to break up this little love fest but uh, we need to get going.” Seth glanced up at his friend’s words then pulled me into his arms bridal style and we exited the bank, hopping into a car with Roman in the driver’s seat and Dean in the passenger.

Seth buckled me in then asked,”If I cut you free, do you promise to be good for me?” His unintentional innuendo made me blush then I ducked my head and muttered,”Yeah. It’s not like I can do anything. You took my gun.”

“And the knife you keep in your shoe.”he informed me, cutting my legs and arms free, only for him to snap one of the cuffs around my wrist and the other to his own.

“What the hell are you doing?!” I shouted, tugging against him. He gave a grin then answered,”I know how your mind works, beautiful. I’m not giving you any chances of escaping. So sit back and enjoy the ride.” I groaned and smacked my head against the head rest for the seat, glaring out my window as Dean began humming CCR’s Bad Moon Rising. Seth twisted his hand upwards and I glanced down briefly at it, ignoring the allure it had. I wanted to hold his hand like I used to during car rides but he betrayed me. I couldn’t exactly ignore that… could I?

I turned back to the window then I felt his fingertips skim my own and he leaned closer, murmuring, ”You might as well get comfy, sweetheart. This is going to be a long ride.” I huffed and side eyed him before returning to my glaring out the window.

We passed through Ohio into Indiana very briefly, and when I woke up, I realized that we had drove all the way through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama before finally realizing our destination: Florida. I rubbed at my eyes then glanced up to see that Seth was leaning against me, his eyes closed and I sighed at how relaxed he was.

Half of my mind wanted to hate him, to punish him for all of the bullshit that he had put me through during this case. But another part of me, the idiotic side, was desperate to forgive him. I stared down at our entangled fingers then snapped my gaze up to Dean as he said,”He really does care for you. A lot more than he likes to admit. And it crushes him every day to lie to you.”

“It doesn’t change the fact that he still lied to me.” I muttered, leaning against Seth’s chest. Roman sighed and said,”Yes, you do have a point. But put yourself in his position. He just wanted to keep his best friends and his lover to himself. Is that so wrong?”

My cheeks burned with embarrassment as I stuttered,”I-I am not his lover.” I watched Dean and Roman share a unconvinced glance then I snapped,”I have never slept with Rollins, even if the thought has crossed my mind.” The two shared a laugh then Seth murmured,”Well, good to know that the feeling is mutual.” I jerked away from him, only for him to yank back on his cuff, dragging me back in.

“What, you’re allowed to cuddle with me for the majority of the ride down here but the moment that I lay my head on yours, you freak out and admit that you want to sleep with me?”he asked, his nose brushing mine. I stared at him for a while, unsure of what to say then he turned away, glancing towards our driver as he asked,”So, where we at?”

“Just crosses the Alabama/Florida border. We just switched drivers so I’m ready to finish this trip.” Roman answered, his dark eyes glued to the road ahead of us. Seth nodded but didn’t replying. We settled into a silence then we pulled into a large house, three cars in the driveway. I guess being jewel thieves paid off nicely. We entered the house and Dean set his duffel bag down, ordering,”Take your shoes off, this is white carpet and if you stain it, you will clean it. Got it? Good. Rollins, she’s your lover, you share a room with her.”

Roman and Dean, now holding hands, disappeared into a bedroom, locking the door behind them as I shouted,”We’re not lovers!” I glanced up at Seth who stared down at me then tugged me up the stairs without a word.

“Look, can we just maybe unlock these cuffs so I can get a shower, please? You made me sit in the car for over eleven hours and I really want to shower.” Seth tossed his own bag onto the bed then turned to look at me before he replied, ”Maybe. Would you rather eat first?” My stomach grumbled in response and I rolled my eyes at my body’s betrayal then we walked back downstairs to find something to eat.

He opened the freezer and pulled out mozzarella sticks, stating,”It’s my cheat weekend, so you’ll have to sue me.” I nodded in understanding and he started the deep fryer then we settled across from one another, waiting for the oil to heat up. We stared at each other then a small chime alerted us that the oil had reached its boiling point. Standing up, we dropped the sticks into the fryer, waiting for them to begin flooding.

Once we finished eating, we walked back upstairs and laid down on the bed, beginning to watch Castle Rock, the new Stephen King show on Hulu. We ended up finishing the entire first season and by the time we finished it, it was one in the morning. I glanced down at the cuffs and murmured,”Now can I get a shower? Please? It’s not like your bathroom has windows and even if you did, I’m not one for jumping out three story buildings.”

Seth’s lips twitched to the side and he looked down at the chain connecting us then uncuffed my wrist, leading me into the bathroom. He held up the key and set it down on the dresser beside the restroom door before warning,”You even think about running, I won’t hesitate to tackle your ass and handcuff you to the bed frame. Do you understand me?” I nodded in agreement then he pushed me into the bathroom, shutting the door behind me. I stared into my reflection then pulled off my shirt, unhooking my bra, and let out a scream as the door opened, Seth stepping into the room.

“What the hell are you doing? I thought you were going to trust me to be alone long enough to take a shower?” I snapped, covering my breasts with my shirt. My partner tilted his head to the side, as if considering his words, then he stated,”Mm, I changed my mind. Consider the deal null and void.”

“What?!” I shouted as he snapped the handcuff back around my wrist. I stared down at the chain and I realized that he didn’t have a shirt on then it dawned on me.

“Are you going to take a shower with me?” He looked at me with a blank expression then said simply,”Y/N, I’ve seen you naked. You’ll be fine.” I have an anxious glance to the shower and he rolled his eyes, asking,”What, you want me to lose my pants first? Fine.” Using his free hand, he unbuttoned and slid his zipper down, pushing it down as far as he could manage then wiggles out of the material the rest of the way. And to no surprise, he wasn’t wearing any underwear.

I dipped my head downwards to avoid his gaze - and his dick- then he started the water, waiting for me to strip. He glanced at me expectantly then he said,”Sweetheart, you lose the pants, or I’ll help you out of them.” With my entire face up in flames, I pushed my jeans to my knees and kicked them away, stepping into the shower.

In silence we traded places back and forth underneath the steady stream of hot water then when I couldn’t get all of the conditioner out of my hair, Seth reached up and worked the soap out, kissing the crown of my head before he murmured, “C'mon, let’s go to bed, sweetheart.”

Whether it was the kindness of that he gave and my previous crush on him, I held his hand as he helped wrap me into a towel then I returned the favor, staring up at him as he watched me, his tongue flicking out to trace his lips. I watched with intrigue when he did so and we walked into the bedroom, Seth grabbing the key to release our hands long enough to get dressed. He walked into the closet then tossed a shirt at me, along with a pair of boxers, stating,”Go ahead and get dressed.”

As soon as I was dressed, he exited the closet and clasped the cuffs down once again, the two of us laying down with my back to his bare chest. His free arm snaked underneath my head then he wrapped our connected arms around my waist.

“Seth.” I murmured as he pressed against me halfway through the night. He groaned, nestling his face in the crook of my neck as he groaned,”Shh, sweetheart. Jus’ go back to sleep, kay?”

“Can’t, you’re distracting me.” I admitted, eyes glued to where his fingers were half slipped into the boxers that I wore. He turned, taking a deep breath in, then kissed the skin of my neck, murmuring,”Is that so? Can’t think with my fingers so close to your pussy, sweetheart?” I stuttered at his statement then he uncuffed us, turning me over.

“Seth…” I drawled out, cupping his cheek. He pulled me closer then murmured,”Lovely, if we do this, there won’t be any turning back. We’ll make this official. Do you got me?” I nodded then pulled him closer before he met me the rest of the way, kissing me. I gasped into his mouth, fingers tangling into his hair before I asked,”Are you going to give me back to the Bureau?” He hummed into my mouth and replied,”Not sure yet. That all depends.”

“On?” I murmured, tangling my legs with his then he pressed his thigh upwards, the material of the boxers brushing against my clit. I gasped at the pressure then grinded downwards as he moved away then I whined, Seth kissing me again.

“On whether you’re willing to transfer down south with me.”

“As long as you fuck me and make me come, I’ll literally do anything you ask.” I gasped out as he tugged my clothes off, doing the same to himself. He flipped me onto my back and began kissing my neck, sucking hickeys into place as he purred, ”Anything?” He was the Devil, he was so perfect in my eyes, so trustworthy.

“Yes anything, you moron, now make me come dammit!” I cried out, kicking my legs out in frustration. Seth laughed at my annoyance then spread my legs, kissing from my knees up to my inner thighs then blew softly on my folds as he slid closer. I trembled under the anticipation running through my veins then murmured,”Seth please.”

His dark eyes softened at my plea then he crawled up to me, pressing kisses to my hips, much stomach, breasts, and neck before he asked, “What, you don’t want me to eat you out?”

“I-I don’t know. Maybe?” He kissed me again, soothing my nerves, and he assured me,”It’s okay, I’ll do it in the morning, sweetheart. Just lean back and hang on for the ride.” I nodded in agreement then Seth pulled my legs around his hips, wrapping a hand around the base of his cock, leading it to my slit. He coated his member with my slick then glanced up at me, asking,”You okay with this? You don’t wanna turn back?”

“Shut up and fuck me.” I growled out, guiding him inside. He groaned and finally rocked up into me, moans escaping the two of us. I tangled my hand through his hair then pulled him closer as we kissed, my thighs squeezing on his hips.

“Goddamn, sweetheart, you’re so right. Fuck me.” I raised my head and asked,”Isn’t that what I’m doing right now?” He gave a breathless laugh and changed his speed from slow and sensual to slamming up into me, asking,”Is this better?”

“So much.” I moaned in response then he slid my thighs further apart, maybe to grant him better access or to prevent bruising but I really didn’t give a shit as he slammed into my G-spot as his thumb brushed my clit, a cry of delight filling the room.

“Yeah that’s right, sweetheart, you’re just about to come on this dick, aren’t you? I know you are and that’s why I’m going to keep rubbing your pretty little clit til you can’t breathe and then I’m going to fuck my come into you.”

“You better pull out or I’ll kill you.” I snapped, flicking his nipple to catch his attention.

“Sorry, got lost in the moment. Don’t worry, I’m gonna pull out.” We shared a small laugh then I arched onto him as he pushed me into my orgasm spiraling.

“Seth!” I screamed, as he continued fucking me in search of his own orgasm then I tightened around his cock, causing him to curse and pull out as he began to come over my breasts and stomach. He rolled off the bed and walked into the bathroom for a washcloth then wiped me down, handing me back my shirt.

“Seth?” I asked quietly, cuddling into him as he wrapped an arm around my waist. He hummed and glanced down at me as I questioned,”Did you mean that? That you want me to move down here?”

“Hell yeah I want you to move down here, sweetheart. I really do love you and I think you’d like Florida.”

[haazeycoffee-archive]

A "Hot" Kiss - Short .:Friendlypack Fic:.

"And thank you again, sir, for allowing me to deliver you the freshest water in all of Los Santos, with a maximum of only 10% lead per bottle! Feel free to call back anytime you need Stan the Water man's top notch wat-".

"Yeah yeah, thanks. Whatever".

Stan was quickly interrupted by his customer, who had just slammed the door in his face. The blond-haired delivery man just mumbled out a simple "huh", before walking back over to his delivery scooter and getting on "Maybe I...talk too much? hmm.." just as he was about to drive away, his phone started to ring. 

huh... who could that be?

Kiki, Reggie, and Anna were all busy doing another big photoshoot, which, according to Kiki, was hobo-exclusive this time, so Stan couldn't go. Garrett was taking a day off form work to party with his friends, which included Alan. Brenda was busy with work, and so was Jimmy, who was selling oxy. 

A sudden nasty feeling gripped Stan's heart when he looked at his phone and saw his new boyfriend's number. He and Jimmy had just gotten together the week prior, and for some reason, Stan started to worry about him more often. Maybe it was because of all these new feelings? Stan, and Jimmy for that matter, had just came out as bisexual a week ego, so these last few days have been pretty emotional.

"Hey there, Jimmy! Everything alri-".

"ST-...AH AH STAN!".

Getting interrupted yet again, Stan was taken aback by Jimmy's vigorous breathing; it sounded like he just ran a marathon!

"Jimmy? W-What's wrong? Why are you so out of breath?".

"STAN, I-I'M AT YOUR APARTMENT. I-I NEED YOU".

Stan's expression changed from concerned to absolutely confused "Wha- ...why-".

"J-JUST GET OVER HERE, PLEASE!" Jimmy begged before violently coughing into the phone.

"O-Okay okay! I'll be right over!".

-----

After finally making it back to his apartment building, Stan parked his scooter and hurried to the stairs, running past Vincent in the process, who was trying to get his attention "CAN'T TALK NOW, VINNIE! JIMMY'S IN TROUBLE! I'LL TEXT YA LATER".

Stan was already in his apartment by the time Vincent responded, so he didn't get to hear what the ShamWow guy had said, but he was too focused on Jimmy anyway. 

"Jimothy?" Stan muttered as he stepped into the kitchen "J-JIMMY!".

To Stan's shock, the younger man was sitting on the ground leaned against the counter. He was also shaking, and was sweating terribly. His sunglasses were sitting on the counter, so Stan could clearly see that Jimmy's face and eyes were super red. Wait, ...was he crying? Was he high? And why was he panting so hard?

"STAN!" Jimmy jolted himself up to his feet and tightly hugged his water-obsessed boyfriend, before quickly pulling away.

"Jesus, Jimmy! What the hell happened?" He gasped "D-Did you overdose?!".

Jimmy sighed in aggravation "S-Stan, if I overdosed, I'd be fuckin' dead on the floor! N-No I didn't fuckin' overdose!".

"WELL SORRY FOR ONLY BEING WATER-SAVVY! What's wrong with you then?!"

"O-Okay, s-so, I-I was....I was out selling oxy, ...l-like normal, right? A-And... and the guys that robbed us at the bank, ..uh-uh b-bird, clown, bear? Th-They wanted some oxy, s-so I was more than glad to sell it to them, y-ya'know, b-because I thought if I ..d-did-didn't, they'd kill me. So I give them the oxy, a-and instead of paying me with money, they gave me a plastic zip-bag of-of peppers. I-I knew they'd probably shank me if I said no, s-so I just took the peppers and left".

Stan crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow "Okay...".

"So, I decided to take a little, ..o-oh Jesus Chri-" Another harsh cough interrupted him, and he bent over a little, placing his hands on his knees to cough more easily "EHCK, eh.. I-I sat down on a bench t-to take a little break, a-and I ate some of the peppers". He straightened himself up and wiped the sweat from his forehead "I ate three......a-and it tur-t-turns out they were ghost peppers".

"Ghost peppers?! Those SUPER hot peppers that'll burn your mouth?!".

"yES!!!" Jimmy replied with another cough, making his voice hoarse. 

"Well did you drink any water? I have plenty here!".

"DAMMIT STAN, WATER DOESN'T DO SHIT WITH STUFF LIKE THIS!! …..B-But....y-yeah, ….I drank the rest of the water in your apartment...".

"WHAT? If you knew it wasn't going to work, why'd you do it?".

"MY MOUTH IS ON FIRE, STANIEL! I PANICKED, OKAY? Y-You seriously don't have any milk?!".

Stan gave a typical glare "You know I don't believe in that crap!!".

Jimmy let out a groan of pain and frustration as he stressfully rubbed his face and pulled at his dark-teal hair with his fists "C-Could you drive me to the store s-so we can buy some milk?".

"No way! No boyfriend of mine is drinking that tainted liquid!".

"STAN, PLEASE" Jimmy begged desperately "I-I'LL PAY FOR IT! I-I just need it, please!!".

Stan sighed "Alright alright, c'mon you big baby. Let's go".

-----

"Apologize, you big a-hole! Jimmy is in a butt-load of pain and you just scolded him like a fudging jerk! Sure, milk is terrible for you, b-but if it's the only thing that'll help Jimmy, then it's fine in SOME circumstances. You love Jimmy, but he doesn't know that because you yelled at him like a big meanie!" Stan scolded himself in his thoughts as he drove to the convenience store with Jimmy in the passenger seat, who was still sweating and panting.

As they stopped at a red light, Jimmy leaned back in his seat and dramatically pressed his palms into his face "A RED LIGHT?! COME ONNNNNN! I'M DYING HERE!".

As the teal-haired man groaned, Stan worked up the courage to apologize to him "H-Hey Jimmy?".

Jimmy sighed and turned his head "Yeah, Sta-Stan?".

"I'm sorry for yelling at you back there. Water is more perfect than anything, but...it doesn't work for every situation, so... I'm sorry for being such a jerk.".

"It's okay, Stan... I-I'm sorry for yelling too...".

"A-And besides, ...water is perfect, …b-b-ut...there's two things I cherish in life more than water: my sweet baby boy Roy, ..and you".

Just for a moment, the pain from the peppers subsided, and Jimmy's heart swelled. He couldn't help but smile from ear to ear.

Stan awkwardly shuffled his hands, which were sitting on the steering wheel "U-Uhmm… heh, ...uh..." a faint shade of pink painted his face "U-Uh, me...kiss you....?".

Jimmy laughed, remembering how awful Stan was at flirting "Yes, Sunflower. Me kiss you".

Stan smiled widely and leaned closer to his beloved boyfriend, with Jimmy doing much of the same. Their lips pressed together, and as their eyes closed to enjoy the moment, Jimmy gently placed his hand on the back of Stan's head.

Sure, these two got into their fair share of fights, but they loved each other more than anything, and moments like these were always super affectionate and romantic. Warmth filled their hearts as they kissed.

After a good while of sharing sweet smooches, the two men backed away. Jimmy was still dying of the ghost peppers' unforgiving heat, but he let out a small sigh of relief "Heh, w-Why don't we... ..w-why don't we do that more often?" he asked, realizing he was out of breath again from the peppers.

"'Cause we're stupid" Stan chuckled jokingly as he began to drive when the light turned green. Jimmy, still suffering, managed to laugh gently at the man's amusing response.

Just as they started to pull into the convenience store's small parking lot, Stan began to feel a hot sensation pool in his throat. His eyes widened and he parked the car, feeling sweat gradually start to build up at his forehead.

".....St-......Stan...?".

"H-Ho-Holy shit, I-I mean crap! H-HOLY CRAP!" Stan frantically unbuckled his seat belt, his hands fumbling a little "FUCK, IT'S HOT! I-I MEAN FUDGE!".

Jimmy's eyes lit up and his jaw dropped in realization. That kiss... it must've transferred some of the scolding hot pepper taste to Stan!

Stan was in full panic mode, and was now just as sweaty and just as bright red as his boyfriend "WATER!! WATE RWATER W ATER".

"STAN, WATER'S NOT GOING TO WORK!" Jimmy shouted as they rushed out of their car and into the store. 

The cashier just watched speechlessly as the two men rushed over to the refrigerated area and searched for whatever it was that they needed. Jimmy made a break for the milk, grabbing a small bottle so he could chug it right then and there. Stan, on the other hand, was chugging down all the water he could "WHY ISN'T IT WORKING?!" he panted.

"H-Holyyyy shit, that's soooo much better!" Jimmy sighed, the pleasantness of relief and milk graced his taste buds as he continued to drink more "Thank you, sweet cow juice" he mumbled quietly as he hugged the medium-sized carton of milk close to him.

"STAN, WHAT THE FUCK?!" A sudden piercing voice disrupted them, and they both quickly realized that it was Kiki Chanel, who was with Reggie and Anna.

"Kik-K-Kiki? W-What are you doing here?" Stan panted, his mouthful of water spilling out onto his blue polo shirt.

"I told you, Stan! We're shooting for my next line of KOC! Hashtag SPICY~" Kiki posed fabulously as she named the hashtag "What the hell are YOU doing here?".

"W-WELL, JIMMY GOT GHOST PEPPERS FROM A GROUP OF CRIMINALS A-AND ATE THREE OF THEM, A-AND AS I WAS DRIVING HERE TO GET HIM SOME MILK, W-WE KISSED IN THE CAR A-AND NOW MY MOUTH IS BURNING UP! I-I WANTED TO MAKE HIM FEEL BETTER FOR YELLING AT HIM EARLIER, B-BUT I FAILED TO REALIZE THE CONSEQUENCES OF KISSING SOMEONE WHO HAD JUST EATEN GHOST PEPPERS".

"You two are dating? Well congratulations, Staniel! Damn, I didn't think you'd ever actually find someone" Reggie said with his trademark, maniacal laugh "Like, EVER!".

"Yeah, congratulations Stan! We're really happy for you" Anna said with her sweet, soft voice.

"O-OH THANK YOU" Stan coughed, his voice cracking and starting to sound emotional.

"OOH!" Kiki clapped her gloved hands together "THIS. IS. PERFECT! Stan, Jim, you two just keep doing what you're doing! Anna, Reggie, get into position and get ready to say 'hashtag spicy' on my say so!".

The two models posed fashionably in front of Jimmy and Stan, who were both still suffering from what was basically heat stroke at this point.

"HASHTAG SPICY!" Reggie and Anna spoke in a synchronized manner after Kiki told them "go!".

"Ah! Fannntastic! Wonderful! Now c'mon, team! Just two locations left! See ya later, Stan! Thanks for the photo op~". 

With that, the trio of models were gone.

Stan groaned painfully as he slammed his fist onto the fridge door, whining loudly.

Jimmy, now mostly relieved of the heat, walked over to Stan and kissed him gently on the cheek "Are you sure you don't want any of this milk? It'll make you feel better than if you popped an oxy".

The agonized water man wailed in defeat "alriiiiight!" he cried out, grabbing the milk and quickly downing the rest of it. His face immediately contorted into an expression of pure disgust. 

Jimmy sighed with a roll of his eyes "Feel better, Sunflower?".

"A-A little. Can we just go home now?" Stan continued to whine.

Jimmy chuckled "Yeah. C'mon, you big baby" he teased as he took hold of Stan's hand "Let's go".

-------

Written by: @Gay-Spaghetti

Hope you guys enjoyed this! :3 Mayyyybe I'll write more Friendlypack fics if I come up with more ideas :P Thank you, Dorkskittles for letting me submit this! Love ya! <3

Response))OMLLLL SPAGHETTI THIS WAS SO GOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!!! EEE SO TENSE AT THE BEGINNING BUT IT EVENED OUT AS IT WENT ON!!! SO GOOD SJSJSJ YOUR WRITING IS VERY ENJOYABLE TO READD!!!